The Ultimate in Fanboy Idiocy, Redux

Today is the release of the newest (and hopefully) last Bat-astrophe from Christopher Nolan. I'll probably see it eventually, because a) a good chunk of it was shot in Pittsburgh, b) a few of my friends are extras in it. My actual excitement level is slim-to-none. The fact that I've never written more about The Dark Knight than the desultory few paragraphs in the blog's early days should indicate my level of interest.

I would have let this momentous date slide without comment, except now the Nolan fanboys are crawling over each other to be the dumbest, lamest, nerdiest loser alive.

The IMDB boards are a reliable source for idiocy. Just browse through some of the thread titles here to get an idea. Of course they'll be completely different ones 15 minutes from now.

Then there's Rotten Tomatoes, where a critic who dared dislike this movie got rather vicious death threats.

Of course, a real-life tragedy has dwarfed the web chatting. At one midnight screening in Colorado, a psycho showed up and killed 14 people. My condolences to those killed in this horrible tragedy.

Of course, some IMDBers, being cretinous slugs, have decided to blame Avengers fans for this shooting.

So yeah, wake me when they bring back this guy:

I'm planning to go out this weekend with friends so probably not a lot of movie-watching in the near-future. I'll try and find something to keep you all entertained. See you in the history books, people.

Stupid Oscars

Usually the Internet Movie Database forums are an intellectual cess pool of trolls, fanboys and gossip, but occasionally a nugget of wisdom emerges. A user named Fuzzynavel1 compiled an interesting series of posts regarding 40 years of Oscar Controversy and Stupidity. If he/she posts it anywhere permanent I'll revise the link.

A few choice excerpts for your amusement:

1972 – Charlton Heston was scheduled as the host, but when he got stuck in traffic, Clint Eastwood substituted. Eastwood was not prepared, it wasn’t his fault, and he was stuck with Heston’s material, which made no sense at all coming from him. Eastwood was so embarrassed that he decided never to return unless nominated. Thankfully, most people have forgotten about this atrocious mishap. This was also the year Sacheen Littlefeather accepted for Marlon Brando. His excuse for refusing the award was Hollywood and American society’s treatment of Native Americans. Whether he was sincere or simply staging an elaborate joke is still debated. Littlefeather was not much of a Native activist but an aspiring B-movie actress who later appeared in Playboy.

1977 - The Jewish Defence League showed up before the show to protest the nomination of Vanessa Redgrave for Best Supporting Actress because of her support for a Palestinian homeland. Several of them burned the actress in effigy. She had to be snuck in the back of an ambulance through a secret entrance to get her safely into the theater. In her acceptance speech, she dedicated the award to Hollywood’s courage in resisting “Zionist hoodlums”. Of course, the producers exploded, and it fell to Paddy Chayefsky to go onstage and denounce Redgrave for subverting the Oscars with her politics. She did have her defenders, including Foreign Film-winning Israeli director Moshe Mizrahi. After the ceremony, Redgrave went to dinner accompanied by her bodyguards and no one spoke to her. When Debby Boone performed Best Original Song nominee "You Light Up My Life", she was accompanied by a chorus of little girls who were announced to have come from The John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf and they interpreted the lyrics in sign language. It was later reported that the girls were really students rounded up at a nearby elementary school, and that they were actually signing gibberish. None of them were deaf.

1978 - The biggest controversy was started by Jane Fonda, who led a campaign to prevent The Deer Hunter from winning the top prize, suggesting that her own film Coming Home told the real story about Vietnam. She hadn’t actually seen The Deer Hunter, but her friends told her it was racist. During the post-awards press scrum, when asked about The Deer Hunter, she said “I still haven’t seen it, but it doesn’t matter because our film is the best one”.

1989 – Mel Gibson had recently presented an award via live hookup from Australia, and the feed accidentally opened up again during the performance. Gibson proceeded to munch on a sandwich throughout the entire song.

1991 – Originally, the producers of the show wanted Mother Teresa to present an honorary award to Satyajit Ray, but the idea was shelved when they thought it would be inappropriate to have her mingling among celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Madonna.

1999 - Eighteen days before the awards ceremony, 55 Oscar statuettes en route from Chicago to the Academy were stolen from a Roadway Express shipping dock in Bell, California. A week and a half later, a scrap metal dealer, Willie Fulgear, found 52 of the statuettes in a Dumpster behind a grocery store. For finding the awards, Mr. Fulgear received two tickets to the Academy Awards show where he was given a $50,000 check from the shipping company. A few months later, $40,000 of his reward was stolen from a safe in his apartment. In June 2003, FBI agents in South Florida performing a drug bust found one of the three missing Oscar statuettes.

I knew there was a reason I hated the Oscars.

Dumbass Rides Again

Perhaps you didn't realize it from my recent "column", but Ben Shapiro is an idiot. A week after infecting our brains with his list of Top 10 Overrated Directors, which reads the like the drivelings of a mentally-challenged IMDBer, Shapiro gives us a new piece, listing the Ten Greatest Directors. I'm not going to take too much issue with his list, although it's a pretty basic group of directors, but it's worth noting for his combination of apologia and defensiveness over his last column.

Last week, I stirred some folks up with my Top Ten Most Overrated Directors of All Time... And by “stirred some folks up,” I mean faced down a virtual lynch mob.

Poor you! You get paid for stirring folks up with asinine film lists, and then mean Internet peoples call you names! You have the hardest job in the world, I tell you what.

Okay, some of these comments are pretty mean, but still, if you don't want mean Internet people to flog you, you'd better show more taste and talent than the average denizen of IMDB. Or else forfeit your salary to charity or something.

Who knew that Aronofsky supporters were fans of the film Fury?

Gratuitous esoteric cultural reference? Check.

If you think about it, though, this doesn't even make sense, given that Fury is very much an anti-lynching movie. But as we've seen before, the degree to which Mr. Shapiro's brain repells logic is truly astounding.

A few quick items in response to that piece. First, it was not about “bad directors”...but about overrated directors.

Yeah, we get the distinction, although if you're going to do nothing but bad-mouth them, I'd say that's as good as calling them bad.

Alfred Hitchcock is nowhere near the worst director ever (I was probably too harsh to label him “slightly better than mediocre”), but it is a travesty to label him the greatest director of all time, as so many have.

Yes, an opinion contrary to yours, O Learned One, is clearly a "travesty".

Before you accuse me of hypocrisy, let me be clear that I'm mocking this guy not for his opinions, but his utter inability to argue a point, grasp logic, or write. When your criticism of Raging Bull amounts to "it's gross", you've forfeited my respect.

The same holds true for David Lean (I appreciate Great Expectations, Brief Encounter, and swaths of Bridge Over the River Kwai, I just think he doesn’t deserve to make the top 20 list)

Do you still think Brief Encounter is "half-an-hour too long"? Granted, I wouldn't mind overmuch if you cut out the stuff with Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carrey.

Second, I neglected three directors who clearly should have made the list: Roman Polanski (somebody stop the Chinatown cult!), Spike Lee (how can he make race relations this dull?), and Tim Burton (damn you for ruining Sweeney Todd).

So your apologia amounts to trying to piss off more people.

I'm glad you didn't bring up Polanski though, because you'd probably make some self-satisfied rant about his pedophilia.

Rebecca and Suspicion are the same film, not Notorious and Rebecca;

Well, that's less of a reach than what you were previously claiming, but that's still no more than case than Notorious and Topaz being the same film.

the Orlando Bloom reference was to Black Hawk Down, not G.I. Jane

You mean Orlando Bloom isn't a woman? Could have fooled me.

Now, to the real question:

"How do I have a job?"

the top-ten greatest directors of all time

Oh.

Wait a minute, isn't this the guy who said in his last article that the auteur theory was "idiotic"? What is this article if not a celebration of auteurism?

Ben, maybe you want to familiarize yourself with the concepts of "logic" and "consistency". If you have a moment.

This is truly a rough decision – there are at least two score great directors who could make this list.

If you want to be really technical there are probably hundreds of directors worthy of consideration for such a list. But okay.

Here is my one basic criteria: directors who provide me the most viewing pleasure over the course of their career.

Damn, and my list of favorite directors was based on the "one basic criteria" of whom caused me the most pain!

That means telling a great story in the best possible way

So nothing about cinematography, camera work, acting, art direction, any of that? Gotcha.

Subjective? Sure. Deal with it.

This from the guy who says that it's a "travesty" that someone could think Alfred Hitchcock is a great director. What were saying about logic and consistency?

It's all subjective, though, and I'm sure there's someone in the Universe besides your daddy who thinks you're a good writer.

I’ll admit that this list skews toward older directors, not because older movies are generally better than newer movies (though I think they are), but because directors in the period 1920-1960 generally made more movies, which means more opportunities for directors to shine.

I would strongly disagree with the concept that quantity equals quality, but okay.

I’ll start by explaining why certain directors are not in the top ten.

So a pre-emptive apologia this time around. Nice. This must mean your list is really bad.

Francis Ford Coppola: He had a period of unbelievable creative magic. Within a ten year period, he made Finian’s Rainbow (1968), a charming musical; The Godfather (1972), which requires no commentary; The Conversation (1974), perhaps the creepiest movie ever made; The Godfather: Part II (1974), which matches its predecessor in quality; and Apocalypse Now (1979), a mad journey into the heart of darkness. Then he was done. How this talented filmmaker went from The Godfather to the atrocity that was Jack (1996) is utterly bewildering. It was tough to keep him off the top ten list. It was even harder to boot someone from that list to make room for him.

I only take issue with this because that the Godfather films alone are so friggin' awesome as to qualify Coppola for the list. Coppola has a much smaller number of films than, say, Hitchcock, and I'd say his batting percentage is about the same.

Peter Jackson: I believe Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to be the finest directorial effort of all time, surpassing even Citizen Kane.

I'll let this speak for itself. Still, I might argue that "the finest directorial effort of all time" would earn one a place on the list of greatest directors.

King Kong was overlong and CGI-obsessed

Compared to what, the modest, tightly-paced character drama that was Return of the King?

Orson Welles: Citizen Kane requires no explication – it is justifiably seen by many as the greatest directorial job ever. His Othello is similarly creative and inspired. The Magnificent Ambersons follows the pattern. But Welles destroyed himself and his career, and the fates should never forgive him for wasting his unparalleled talent.

Nothing on Touch of Evil or Chimes at Midnight or The Trial or F for Fake? Welles' life after Kane was extremely rough, but that doesn't in any way diminish the work he did put out.

Stanley Kubrick: Overrated

That was your last list, numbnuts. Keep focused on the topic at hand.

Fritz Lang: M is the best foreign language film ever made. Period.

No.

Perhaps if I’d seen more Lang, I’d put him up in the top ten (the only other films I’ve seen of his are Fury and The Big Heat), so I’ll claim ignorance here.

Just here? Don't be modest!

Fred Zinneman: Perhaps the best conventional director of all time – a man who simply puts on camera what needs to be there. He’s not the artist that any of the top ten are, but he did create The Day of the Jackal, A Man for All Seasons, Oklahoma!, From Here to Eternity, and High Noon, a list to be reckoned with.

Good on ya, mate, you got one right!

Victor Fleming: How hard was it to come up with this list?

It completely destroyed your faculties of reason and coherence, apparently.

John Huston: The best adventure director of all time, responsible for The Man Who Would Be King, Moby Dick, The African Queen, and The Maltese Falcon. Again, not enough versatility to put him over the top.

What. What? WHAT!?!

Okay, let's take a look at what he just said.

The first three films would qualify under the general rubric of "adventure" films, despite the difference in time and setting. But The Maltese Falcon is a friggin' film noir! What "adventure" does anyone go on there?

This isn't even to mention Huston's Westerns (Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), social dramas (The Asphalt Jungle), musicals (Moulin Rouge, Annie), romantic character dramas (The Dead), etc. Not all of them are all-time masterpieces, but surely you'd agree that Huston's resume spans a large number of genres.

No versatility. You need a dictionary, boy.

I'm thinking of starting a petition to get this guy fired and out on the street. In these hard economic times, lots of people need work, and when there are people starving, Ben Shapiro should not have a job writing for Big Hollywood.

That is all.

This Post is Overrated

This piece by Ben Shapiro of Big Hollywood (apparently a far-right Michael Savage-loving bag of douche among his other faults) is one of the dumbest film articles I've ever read, steeped in poor writing, bad argumentation, pointless name-dropping and a distinct lack of facts - not to mention an apparently deliberate attempt to piss off as many film buffs as possible.

Besides the whole pointlessness and subjectivity of the overrated debate, Mr. Shapiro - who must be someone's son or distant in-bred cousin - writes a pathetic little screed that wouldn't be worthy of being posted on Film General. And yet he seems to have an audience of thouands in a popular online publication.

Let us see what Big Hollywood is getting for their money. I'll abstain from commenting on David Lynch, Darren Arnofsky or Woody Allen since, I'm ashamed to admit, I've seen none of their films. Well, except for select comments that I can pluck out of context.

Top 10 Most Overrated Directors of All Time

A redundant headline that can perhaps be blamed on the editor. We'll let this pass.

Ever since the advent of the modern motion picture industry, critics have praised directors as the key to great film.

Um... no. For most of early Hollywood, stars and producers were regarded as the primary movers-and-shakers behind a film. The auteur theory as such only came about in the '50s with the advent of Cahiers du Cinema and their looks at John Ford and Howard Hawks.

So you're one sentence into your article and have already made an idiotic comment. This bodes well.

The auteur theory of cinema is idiotic

I wouldn't say it's "idiotic", but I might agree it's overly reductive and overused by certain critics. The most important name on a film is variable, and quite often it's not the director. Fair enough.

since writing is truly the key

So replace one idiotic, overly simplistic critical dogma with another? Okay.

It is one of the great travesties of artistic justice that no one remembers the writers of great movies – nobody knows Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, for example, but everyone remembers Frank Capra.

It's one of the great travesties of universal justice that more people know who you are than any of the people you just name-dropped.

Directors get too much credit when a movie goes right, and too little blame when a movie goes wrong. There are certain directors, however, who get credit even when movies go wrong. Here, then, are my top ten overrated directors of all time…

Wait, wait, wait - I'm sorry, what the fuck is this? You just forced us to sit through a little self-satisfied rant about the idiocy of the auteur theory, and then you create a lengthy list-based article based around the concept of the auteur?

Well, I guess consistency isn't going to be a hallmark of Mr. Shapiro's article.

Ridley Scott: Ridley Scott has, for some odd reason, received accolades that far outpace his actual accomplishments.

I almost agree with this, as I'm no big fan of Ridley Scott's. So not a bad start.

Michael Mann: All style, no substance.

That's really all he has to say. That's not an abridged quote. Look it up yourself.

I think you can see what kind of analytical mind we're dealing with here. This might pass muster as a random message board post but as part of a lengthy published article, it's beyond worthless. Especially when he has space for extended rants and idiocy regarding other directors.

David Lean:

You just fucked with the wrong blogger, pal. Now the gloves are coming off.

Everything Lean made is too long by at least half an hour.

Which thirty of the eighty-six minutes of Brief Encounter would you cut out, oh great one?

I know it’s mortal sin to suggest that Laurence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Ryan’s Daughter are anything less than masterpieces, but … they’re all less than masterpieces.

Thanks for the insight. Your criticism of Lean amounts to "his films are long", which immediately labels you as a pillock. And who in hell thinks Ryan's Daughter is a masterpiece anyway (besides me of course)?

Mike Nichols: No. Just no. The Graduate is contemptible and snort-worthy spoiled 1960s-child angst. The ending of that movie alone makes it unworthy of human viewing.

I have sympathy for this particular opinion, inasmuch as I hated The Graduate, but this is the only film Mr. Shapiro seems apt to comment on in Nichols' lengthy career. Nothing on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Catch-22 or Primary Colors or Angels in America or Charlie Wilson's War, all good-to-great films.

In fact, who in hell thinks Nichols as an all-time great director anyway? He seems to be one of those craftsmen like Michael Curtiz, Robert Wise and Fred Zinnemann whose films are better-known than their director.

Quentin Tarantino: I recently watched Inglourious Basterds and marveled at Tarantino’s skill. But he is a gifted high school child given a camera for his birthday, and entranced with his knowledge of cinema.

Meh, I like Tarantino's early work but I agree with this up to a point, at least in regards to his last few films.

Which means, in simple terms, he doesn’t know how to tell a story

Wait. What? What?

What!?!

Are you seriously arguing that Tarantino is a bad storyteller? That's his greatest fucking asset as a filmmaker, you imbecile. Argue that he's self-indulgent and self-important, that he's completely unoriginal and rips off older movies, that he's overly fascinated with gorey violence, that he cares more about wowing the Cannes crowd than making a good film. But don't sit there and tell me Tarantino cannot tell a story.

To paraphrase William McAdoo on Warren G. Harding,

No one in the history of Planet Earth ever cared what William McAdoo said about Warren G. Harding. Ever. This is name-dropping at it's most puerile and obnoxious, and funnily enough it comes in the midst of mocking Tarantino for same.

This would be the historical equivalent of Tarantino using a Death Rides a Horse track in Kill Bill: it might sound cool, but no one cares.

Sometimes Tarantino’s films actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner … until the idea dies of servitude and overwork.

Do you even understand what you just wrote, you pretentious douchebag?

From his otherwise skipped-over Woody Allen commentary:

As a side note, he made Diane Keaton into a “legitimate actress,”

Apparently The Godfather films didn't do that?

Christ, what a dunderhead...

Martin Scorsese('s)... films are entirely devoid of anything resembling likable characters.

Yeah, I might agree with this, but that doesn't make it bad. I don't think Scorsese wants us to like Tommy DeVito or Travis Bickle or Ginger Rothstein.

With the article wheezing to a climax, here comes the heavy title-dropping! Fasten your seatbelts.

Nobody cares what happens to Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed (in fact, in one screening I saw, people cheered when he got it in the head).

Arguing a generalization by anecdote. Nice.

The Aviator takes as long to tell as Howard Hughes did to live.

Modestly clever I guess.

on a side note, there is no excuse for killing Liam Neeson in the first ten minutes of a film

Yeah, because his leaden and wooden presence is rarely necessary for a film to be entertaining. In any case, Scorsese is hardly the only one guilty of this - Neeson has made a career out of playing doomed mentors.

Casino is nasty, brutish, and long.

Yes, it is, but it's also Scorsese's most complex and underrated film. And your quoting Hobbes, while slightly less pathetic than your McAdoo namedropping, fails to impress anyone.

Goodfellas is similarly disgusting – you feel the need to take a shower after watching.

Disgusting? Well, it's not exactly a paragon of moral virtue, but I'd save that classification for something like a gore-soaked slasher flick.

The Last Temptation of Christ is baffling.

That's it. It's baffling. Genius.

Raging Bull is gross

What are you, six? Gross is when your classmate picks his nose and rubs the booger on your jacket. A boxer's life degenerating into depravity is many things, but "gross" is far from the word I'd use.

Mean Streets is gross and soporific

It's my love for the bizarrely dichotomous perhaps, but I love the mixture of an incredibly immature comment with a "big word" in the same sentence. Indubitibly, dude.

Taxi Driver is perhaps the most overrated film in Hollywood history — dreary, grungy, and subzero.

Dreary, yes. Grungy? Explain that one. Subzero? Now you're making shit up.

1. Alfred Hitchcock:

The sad thing is I'm not at all surprised.

He never made a great film.

To make such a broad claim about a director who made sixty-seven feature length films, and at least a dozen acknowledged classics, you'd better have some real ammunition to bring to the table. Sadly, I'm expecting Ben to be feeding .22 bullets into his .50 machine gun.

The psychoanalysis at the end of Psycho is laughable.

I think most everyone will agree that the Simon Oakland exposition scene at the end is overlong and completely unnecessary. But that's about three minutes of a two-hour film.

North by Northwest relies on the tried-and-true random helpful coincidence to save our hero, time and again.

Would you make this criticism of Dickens or Shakespeare or any other novelist who uses coincidences? I'd actually say North by Northwest has really clever plotting, and they get him into trouble as much as they get him out of it. Not realistic, perhaps, but certainly excellent for that type of film.

It brings to mind one of Twain’s rules of writing,

How many times do I have to tell you? No one cares.

Spellbound once again relies on amateur psychoanalysis.

Okay, I'll give him this one, since there's not much more to it.

Notorious is the same movie as Rebecca.

Excuse me, what the hell?

Notorious: a CIA Agent recruits the daughter of an executed Nazi spy to help break up a ring of neo-Nazis, marrying one of them. She falls in love with the agent, but gets poisoned by her husband and his mother.

Rebecca: a middle-class woman marries a handsome, rich widower who worships his ex-wife. As she struggles to adjust to her new life, her husband's chief servant tries to drive her insane. Meanwhile there's a murder investigation into Mrs. DeWinter's death.

Yeah, no difference at all between those two.

Rear Window makes one reach for the fast-forward button.

If you have the attention span of a caffeinated chimp.

Vertigo makes one reach for the cyanide.

Why? Care to back up this argument with a modicum of analysis or actual criticism? Or are you just a prick little kid who can only laugh, point and name-call at things he doesn't like?

Wait, I know this one!

In some ways, this little rant of mine is the pot calling the kettle black. But I have an excuse: I'm a blogger whose stuff is read by maybe a dozen people. Mr. Shapiro doesn't have that excuse. Plus he wrote a really stupid piece of shit article and I'm just making fun of him.

The Ultimate in Fanboy Idiocy

Just when you think people couldn't get any stupider, you come across an article like this, that makes you realize how great it is to be a cynic.

James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora

Okay, let's please read this again, shall we?

Some people saw a movie, and not only did they like it, they liked so much that they're going to kill themselves because it's not real.

And somebody wrote a 1140 word article about it.

...

You can't really get any dumber than that. Except that I'm not only reading this article, but writing a lengthy "Fisking" of it. But let's move on.

On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope.

Why does it not surprise that hopeless fanboys would hang out at a message board?

The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their
confused feelings about the movie.

This is news? Overspill from other threads leading to the creation is quite common. This is only news to a moron who's never been on a message board.

Shit, why am I reading this again?

"I wasn't depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ," Baghdassarian said. "But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth.

Maybe its because Earth actually exists and isn't a made-up movie fairyland.

Anyway, I can't be too upset that we don't live on a Dinosaur Planet with 7 foot tall Blue Kitties. But that's just me.

I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."

People who spend every waking hour on the Internet are living in "a completely different world." It's called Mom's Basement.

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.

"That's all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about 'Avatar.' I guess that helps. It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie," Elequin posted.

So you could go from one obsession to another! Thanks for revealing how big a fucking loser you are.

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.

The unasked question here is whether or not he contemplated suicide before seeing the movie.

"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them.

Watching Lawrence of Arabia made me want to be a millionaire Oscar-winning film director who shags anything in a skirt. The difference is, one of our dreams is (theoretically) possible.

I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted.

This sounds pretty close to what I experience when I see a really great movie. Who doesn't break down crying watching the epic panning shot in Lawrence of Arabia, or watching the flashback in Once Upon a Time in the West, or watching Deborah leave Noodles on the train platform in Once Upon a Time in America, or listening to Lara's Theme? Well, who doesn't that's not named Groggy Dundee, anyway?

So, nothing at all wrong with that, but then...

"I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.'"

Well, it ain't gonna happen. You'll be a loser in any life.

Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.

Well, I suppose that is what comes from being picked on in school your whole life.

The world of Pandora is reminiscent of a prehistoric fantasyland, filled with dinosaur-like creatures

Because human interactions with dinosaurs always go well:

mixed with the kinds of fauna you may find in the deep reaches of the ocean

You mean like these guys?



Yeah, how magical.

Compared with life on Earth, Pandora is a beautiful, glowing utopia.

That is a matter of opinion.

Ivar Hill posts to the "Avatar" forum page under the name Eltu. He wrote about his post-"Avatar" depression after he first saw the film earlier this month.

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray.

So you woke up color-blind?

It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," Hill wrote on the forum. "It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."

You're only saying that because your toaster oven is on the fritz, HughesNet is cutting back on your broadband connection, and your dad scrambled the Playboy Channel. And worst of all, Mom is making you get a job.

Reached via e-mail in Sweden where he is studying game design

Wait, you called a random guy all the way in Sweden to ask him his thoughts on Avatar!?!

Jesus H. Christ.

Hill, 17

Well, he has an excuse. But the moron who wrote this article doesn't.

"Virtual life is not real life and it never will be, but this is the pinnacle of what we can build in a virtual presentation so far," said Dr. Stephan Quentzel, psychiatrist and Medical Director for the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "It has taken the best of our technology to create this virtual world and real life will never be as utopian as it seems onscreen. It makes real life seem more imperfect."

I'd say duh, but this is the one sane person in the article (except possibly Stephen Lang) so I'll let it pass.

Fans of the movie may find actor Stephen Lang, who plays the villainous Col. Miles Quaritch in the film, an enemy of the Na'vi people and their sacred ground, an unlikely sympathizer.

I hope that even the fans find his character the enemy and not the actor. I guess this was an attempt at cleverness by the guy writing this.

But Lang says he can understand the connection people are feeling with the movie.

So Ike Clanton, Stonewall Jackson and Charles Winstead is a fanboy!?! Say it ain't so!

The bright side is that for Hill and others like him -- who became dissatisfied with their own lives and with our imperfect world after enjoying the fictional creation of James Cameron -- becoming a part of a community of like-minded people on an online forum has helped them emerge from the darkness.

They find a community of people who are even bigger losers than they are! That will cheer them up because they didn't think that was even possible until now.

Quentzel said creating relationships with others is one of the keys to human happiness, and that even if those connections are occurring online they are better than nothing.

I guess that's true.

"Obviously there is community building in these forums," Quentzel said. "It may be technologically different from other community building, but it serves the same purpose."

If the purpose is to make people completely unable to function in real life, then mission accomplished.

I know all too well the ravages of Internet addiction, but the worst I can be accused of is posting too much on IMDB or being a David Lean fanboy:



Which doesn't quite qualify me as a nutcase. (Other things do.)

Some people are just beyond help. It's one thing to be socially awkward and to try to escape into books (remember those?), movies and even the Internet - that's something I can certainly relate to. It's quite another to devote yourself utterly the world of the movies, living your life through its characters. I may find T.E. Lawrence a relatable character in many ways, but I don't wish I was him, or that I lived in the Hijaz killing Turks for a living. And it's pathetic because these people will never be able to function in real life.

If you're going to kill yourself because your movie world doesn't exist, you are beyond pathetic.

This reminds me so much of that Simpsons episode with Emily Blunt as the crazy girl who creates Equalia with Lisa because her life is so boring. Lisa was able to realize just what a nutcase her friendly really was, though it took being locked in lobster cages by Jimbo and his bully buddies to snap her out of it. I doubt most of these people will, even when they turn sixty and are still living in their (now-deceased) mother's basement like a techno-Norman Bates.

Within the fan community, suggestions for battling feelings of depression after seeing the movie include things like playing "Avatar" video games or downloading the movie soundtrack,

So cope with depression by doing things that remind you of what depresses you. I gotcha.

in addition to encouraging members to relate to other people outside the virtual realm and to seek out positive and constructive activities.

This seems like telling a serial killer to stop killing people and go make popsicle stick houses. It ain't gonna happen.

I don't think there's really a story here, just pathetic fanboy losers being interviewed by lazy reporters cashing in on Avatar's immense popularity. Thanks for alerting us to their existence, Jo Piazza. Even your name sounds like a fraud.

Maybe I'll actually see this damned movie this weekend. Hopefully I won't be so awed by its splendiferous splender that I'll feel all suicidal like and go on a killing spree when I get back to Oakland. I'm more likely to feel that way if it sucks, quite frankly.

Besides, I don't think General Allenby would take it too kindly if I found a new obsession just now. And you've got no disguise from Allenby's Eyes!

Blech.

"Groggy's About To Get His Horizons Broadened!"

"These are degenerate films, you know. As a loyal member of IMDB, I should detest them."

My syllabus for World Film History:

Week One
Introduction to Course
Jan 6 Screening: Dogme #1 - Festen ([The Celebration], Vinterberg, 1998, 105 min); excerpt The Name of this Film is Dogma 95

Week Two
Jan 13 Early Cinema
Lumiere Brothers films, Le Voyage dans la Lune ([A Trip to the Moon], Melies, 1902, 14 min), The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903, 11 min), The Cheat (Demille, USA 1915, 59 min); The Scar of Shame (Pelegrini, 1927, 68 min)
Reading: Chapters 1, 2, 3

Week Three
Jan 20 German Expressionism
Screenings, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari ([Cabinet of Dr Caligari], Weine, 1920, 67 min or 51 min), excerpt Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922, 84 min)
Reading: Chapter 4, Caligari essay, and Courseweb Coates “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”

Week Four
Jan 27 Soviet Montage
Strike (Eisenstein, 1925, 82 min) and Dezertir ([Deserter] Pudovkin, 1933, 105 min), excerpt Potemkin
Read; Chapter 5, Courseweb Eisenstein “A Statement,” Pudovkin “On Editing”

Week Five
Feb 3 French Impressionism and the Avant Garde
Screening: Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel, 1928, 16 min), Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928, 82 min), excerpt Dulac
Reading Chapter 6, Bazin article (119-127)

Week Six
Feb 10 Italian Neorealism
Screning: Germany, Year Zero, Rossellini, 1945, 100 min), Il Miracola (Rossellini, 1948)
Reading: Chapter 11, Zavattini essay (151-158)

Week Seven
Feb 17 England and Northern Irish Noir
Screening: Odd Man Out (Reed, 1947, 116 min), excerpts from Poitin (Quinn, 1979, 65 min)
Reading: Courseweb McIlroy “Rorschach Test: Carol Reed's Odd Man Out”

Week 8
Feb 24 French New Wave
Screening: A bout de soufflé (Breathless Godard, 1960, 90 min), excerpts from Band a part (Godard, 1964, 95 min)
Reading: Chapter 16, 17, Neupert “Breathless” Courseweb
MIDTERM EXAM

Week Nine
Mar 3 New German Cinema
Screening: Veronika Voss (Fassbinder, 1982, 105 min)
Reading: Chapter 22
PAPER 1 DUE

Week Ten
Mar 10 SPRING BREAK

Week 11
Mar 17 Francophone Africa
Screening:Black Girl (Sembene, 1966, 65 min), Boram Saret (Sembene, 1966, 20 min)
Reading: Chapter 25, Landy “Black Girl”on Courseweb

Week Twelve
Mar 24 Post neorealist Italy
Screening: Il Desserto Rossa ([Red Desert], Antonioni, 1964, 120 min)
Reading: Chapter 19-21 including Lev (259-264)

Week Thirteen
Mar 31 Post war Japan
Rashomon (Kurasawa, 1950, 88 min) excerpt from Kwaidan (Kobayashi 1964 165 min)
Reading Chapter 13

Week Fourteen
Apr 7 Hong Kong and China
Chung Hing Sam Iam ([Chung King Express], Wong Kar Wai, 1994, 102 min)
Reading: Chapter 24, 26

Week Fifteen
Apr 14 28 Days Later (Boyle, 2002, 113 min)
Reading: Chapter 28

Looks like I have my work cut out for me.

See you tonight for another John Ford review!

New Years' Resolutions

Welcome to our second full year of Nothing is Written! For the eight or so of you who ever read this blog, thank you for your continued support. I hope you will continue reading my semi-legible scribblings until I die of exhaustion or run out of movies to review. I've already rewatched A Fistful of Dollars today, and TCM is obliging me with showings of The Informer, In Which We Serve and Notorious later this week - plus my first World Film History class on Wednesday! I hope to see either The Young Victoria or Avatar in theaters this week if my schedule permits, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

It's a New Year (and decade for that matter), and like most people, I'm making resolutions. I'm not bothering to make resolutions involving my weight or spendiness, although I hope a new girlfriend may be in the works, but for my faithful readers, I'll do my best. Just be warned that I'm no more apt to keep these promises than any in real life.

Here are some things you will hopefully see this year.

- I don't think I'm going to bother trying to see all ten Best Picture nominees this year; that's just too much of a goddamned hassle, especially with my classes and this weather, and in all honesty only a handful even look worthwhile. I'll see whatever looks interesting to me, which means you probably won't see a review of Nine any time soon. Whether I'll even watch the Oscars this year is open to question, but that may be the basis for a rant so I won't say too much.

- I'm finishing my film minor (no longer a major) with World Film History. I will try to review every movie we watch if it's interesting enough to review. If nothing else you'll see big, long essays turn up in early March/late April. I won't guarantee essays on A Trip to the Moon or assorted avante garde crap though. Let's just hope these bastards let me sit through an entire Eisenstein film this term...

- David Lean Quest 1.5! Which means that I'm going to back track, rewatch, and review the David Lean films that I missed during my previous quest. This shouldn't be too difficult; I own Bridge on the River Kwai on DVD, Summertime can be instantly watched on Netflix, In Which We Serve will be on TCM this week, and the Dickens films are at the Hillman for whenever I have time. I hope to do the same for Sergio Leone and Stanley Kubrick, time permitting.

- More John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock reviews than you can shake a stick at!

- A super-big omnibus article of the masterful Leprechaun franchise - if I can be bothered.

- More rantings about human stupidity! Because there's nothing people like better than seeing a loser 21-year-old spout off at blocks of text posted on teh Intrawebz!

- 1000% more IMDB!

- I would love to solicit recommendations for reviews/articles from my readers, if any of you are willing to contribute.

- Hopefully I can twist Analee's arm to have her provide another review. That's entirely up to her, of course.

Failure to live up to any of these promises will lead to my summary execution. I'm counting on you to hold me to this promise!

I just got done shovelling the driveway, so STAY COOL!

Groggy's Top 10 Villains

Today IMDB posted a link to this article, sort of a commentary of an interview with NPR film criic, talking about why people find movie villains so fascinating or some garbage like that. I think a lot of the reasoning therein is rather insipid, inaccurate and simplistic, but on the other hand, it did get my own brain working, which is occasionally a good thing.

What makes a villain interesting depends on the story - or the villain himself. There are tragic villains, men who were good at one time, but were corrupted into being evil, or are driven to evil by circumstance or revenge. These certainly make complex and interesting characters, who might well be protagonists in another story. A great many examples come to mind, from Shakespeare's Richard III and Iago to blockbuster villains like Mr. Freeze to Davy Jones. On occasion, though, the just plain evil rotters, who were born evil and have little or no justification for wickedness, are just as effective. Witness the popularity of Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight, who despite the idiotic claims of the above-mentioned author, is best-observed as a psychotic who delights in causing chaos and destruction.

Really, what matters is that the villain is compelling - that the writer, director and actor do a good enough job of making him memorable, regardless of whether his motivation is avenging a slain family member or a loose screw.

Here is my fairly provisional list of my top ten movie villains. For a somewhat more comprehensive list, peruse this video of mine.

10. Colonel Saito - Sessue Hayakawa (Bridge on the River Kwai)

Saito is one of the ultimate examples of the tragic villain. The brutal head of a Japanese prison camp in World War II, he is an artist and engineer out of his depth dealing with an officer like the bullheaded Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), a born soldier with a literally unshakeable conscience and constitution. Despite his protestations of following the Bushido code, Saito clearly has no stomach for his work, and engages in a stand-off with Nicholson on account of sheer, bull-headed pride, even as his bridge project falls short of completion; the scene where he breaks down in his hut after ceding ground to Nicholson humanizes him to a degree that the British Colonel never is. Even with his limited command of English, former silent-film star Hayakawa (who won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor nod) makes Saito a compellingly tragic figure, nearly matching Guinness's Oscar-winning turn, and arguably emerging as the more sympathetic of the two.

9. Eve Harrington - Anne Baxter (All About Eve)

The only female on this list (probably because I'm some sort of sexist), Anne Baxter portrays Eve Harrington as a truly repulsive yet chillingly believable ladder-climber. At first, she's convincing enough as a star-struck aspiring actress worshipping Margo Channing (Bette Davis), whose bitter descent in decrepitude and obsolescence provides a perfect cover for Eve's creepy infiltration of Margo's celebrity. However, her subtle, near-undetectable scheming soon puts Eve towards the top, and always firmly in control. Her displays of false modesty become increasingly hollow, and after we learn her true motives - when she suddenly bears her blackened soul to the helpful Karen (Celeste Holm) - they become downright chilling. Ultimately though, even Eve is no match for the duplicitous theater critic Addison De Witt (George Sanders), who puts the conniving Eve in her place - for the moment. At the end of the film, we see Eve as arrogant as ever - though it seems the ultimate cinematic justice is just around the corner.

8. Emperor Maximillian II - Tom Hollander (Land of the Blind)

Tom Hollander is a perennial favorite of this blog, and his manic performance as the spoiled-brat dictator of Robert Evans' excellent dystopian satire is undoubtedly his career-best. Maximillian is alternately funny, frightening and even sympathetic - a Kim Jong-Il-esque dictator who uses the film's fictional country as a private playground, making Godawful films, engaging in sex games, randomly killing staff members, pigging out on lobster, and generally acting like a child too big for his britches - which indeed he is. He shows no signs of intelligence or insight, is manipulated by his Lady Macbeth-ish wife (Lara Flynn Boyle) and advisors, and his very imbecility is what makes him so dangerous - when this child throws a temper tantrum, people die. And yet, when Maximillian is faced with execution by his political rival Thorne (Donald Sutherland), he becomes strangely sympathetic - an ignorant, childish slug with no right to be where he is, he is somehow undeserving of his cold-blooded murder. Of course, it doesn't help his case that Thorne's totalitarian revolution proves even worse, even if there's a method to his madness.

7. Liberty Valance - Lee Marvin (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)

Lee Marvin's star-making turn as the sadistic Liberty Valance is one of the greatest rotters in film history. He's a bastard without a single redeeming feature, a gun-toting, whip-wielding loud-mouth who robs stagecoaches, whips old ladies, beats unarmed men, murders ranchers, steals steaks, shoots up towns, rigs elections, and hangs around Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef, oozing flamboyant menace from every pore. He's not a remotely subtle or layered character, but as a depiction of pure evil on film, he has very few equals. When it takes the combined might of James Stewart and John Wayne to take a man down, he has to be one hell of an SOB.

6. Uncle Charlie - Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt)

Casting actors against type is a common trick, but when it works, the effects can be devastating. Witness the role of Joseph Cotten, the nice guy-next-door from Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Third Man and Gaslight, as the psychotic Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. Cotten and director Alfred Hitchcock trade brilliantly off of Cotten's screen persona; even though he's introduced as a vampiric figure hiding in a dark room at high noon, he's such a swell guy that it's no wonder everyone cottons (look, a pun!) to him.

Of course, it doesn't take long for the facade to break, as Charlie degenerates into impromptu rants about the uselessness of widows, and the generally foul nature of human society. Cotten is brilliantly chilling as he segues seamlessly from polite small talk to some of the nastiest monologues outside a Strindberg play. The seductive, hypnotic effect Charlie has on everyone around him makes him all the more creepy; he's evil hiding in plain sight, and no one except his niece (Teresa Wright) seems to notice. The banality of evil has never been more palpably portrayed on film.

5. Gentleman Brown - James Mason (Lord Jim)

About two hours into Lord Jim, around the time the plot goes off the rails, James Mason shows up out of nowhere with a wonderfully portentious introduction. He casually strolls up to co-villains Curt Jurgens and Akim Tamaroff, as the latter declaims:

"This Gentleman Captain Brown has given more men unto death than the bubonic plague. From Java to Fiji, he's wanted for slavery, for mutiny, piracy, rape, murder - and some things that aren't even mentioned in the Bible!"

Although Mason has maybe fifteen minutes of screen time, he's a wonderfully odious presence, whose mere appearance inspires foreboding and dread. It certainly doesn't hurt that he has some of the best dialogue in movie history, to wit:

"You're out, he's in - but HE'S the fool?"
"Drunk, you're useless!"
"His Highness has pretensions to heroism - a form of mental disease induced by vanity."
"You have a natural talent for disaster! Try and improve yourself into an ordinary failure by keeping your mouth shut!"
"Shut your gob!"
"If I'm an expert judge of human weakness, depravity and avarice - and I am - then we shall not go unrewarded for our labor."
"His Highness has the wreaking stench of a converted sinner."

Imagine James Mason saying those lines and you should have no trouble understanding my appreciation of the character. My only criticism is that he doesn't show up sooner.

4. Colonel Von Waldheim - Paul Scofield (The Train)

When we first meet Colonel Von Waldheim, he is enraptured by a gallery of French paintings, awed beyond words by sheer artistic beauty. He engages in a civil discussion with the museum curator (Suzanne Flon), who thanks him for protecting the art during four long years of Nazi occupation. Then Waldheim's henchmen arrive to take the paintings away, and the Colonel's cultured nice-guy image is immediately shattered. And we see that Waldheim's interest is not simply an aesthetic appreciation for art, but a personal obsession - he will stop at nothing to see this paintings protected, but only if they remain in his hands.

The beyond-brilliant Scofield (A Man for All Seasons) portrays Waldheim motivated by an abstract idea of beauty and its worth - nothing else matters but these expressions. Where he's villain is that he won't share the art with those considers unworthy of having it - but does he have a point here? When he declaims to Burt Lancaster's embattled Labiche at the end, "Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it", we can certainly understanding, even if we find the Colonel warped - how much blood has this man shed for the shake of a crate load of paintings? To be fair to Waldheim, however, it is at least something tangible, unlike the inscrutable riddle of patriotism and pride for which millions die.

3. Marcus Licinius Crassus - Laurence Olivier (Spartacus)

The ultimate in Roman decadence and brutality, Crassus is a ruthless fascist who flaunts his wealth and power, and will stop at nothing to return Rome to his bizarrely idealized "tradition". He is a Machiavellian schemer par excellence, engaging in a political chess game of with the gleefully crooked Republican Gracchus (Charles Laughton), fanning the flames of Spartacus's (Kirk Douglas) slave revolt into a major uprising that sees him poised to take over Rome. He is also, at base, an insecure man who wants to be loved, trying without success to seduce his servant Antoninus (Tony Curtis) and Spartacus's lover Varinia (Jean Simmons), and having little more success in persuading his political rivals to come to heel.

Though a bit hammy at times, Olivier is generally excellent, capturing all of Crassus's many facets: the cold-blooded schemer, the ruthless dictator, the driven patriot, the empty, insecure man. The scene where, with all the power of Rome behind him, he is humiliated by a bound and silent Spartacus is a wonderful piece of acting; Crassus's control is only illusory, and he is destined to lose it in short order anyway, as we see with his conversation with Julius Caesar (John Gavin) at film's end. Joaquin Phoenix's turn as Commodus in Gladiator was clearly modelled on Olivier's Crassus (don't bother mentioning Fall of the Roman Empire, which has a distinctly different characterization of Commodus) - if Olivier's Crassus were a whiny teenaged castrato.

2. Frank - Henry Fonda (Once Upon a Time in the West)

Imagine a smiling Tom Hanks shooting a defenseless eight year old and you have the shock registered by 1968 audiences in Henry Fonda's introductory scene in this film. The iconic Hollywood good guy, up there with John Wayne as the eternal symbol of righteousness in films like My Darling Clementine and 12 Angry Men, is a cold-blooded, remorseless hired gun, usurps the power of his dying boss (Gabriele Ferzetti), rapes our heroine (Claudia Cardinale), and all around proves himself to be a cold-blooded son of a bitch with not a single redeeming feature. And the most frightening thing is that it's all so casual; Fonda does not seem remotely ill at-ease playing a psychopathic killer, which makes his performance all the more chilling. Who doesn't get goosebumps as the final flashback unfolds, with a bearded younger Fonda slowly coming into focus, spitting out a cruel "Keep your lovin' brother happy!" to the young Harmonica before lynching his brother?

1. Bruno Anthony - Robert Walker (Strangers on a Train)

Another Hitchcock villain, even more chilling than Uncle Charlie, Walker's Bruno gets the top award. When we first see him, he seems a bit too friendly towards Guy (Farley Granger), but otherwise not a bad person. That he discusses murdering people shouldn't bother us overmuch in a Hitchcock film. However, the absolutely chilling scene where, seemingly on a whim, he stalks Guy's disloyal wife through a carnival and kills her, lets us know that we're dealing with a psycho - and not just any garden-variety psycho either. And, of course, he expects Guy to hold up his end of the bargain, leading to scene after chilling scene of Bruno watching Guy from a distance - at a party, a tennis match or a family gathering, there's nowhere he's safe.

Walker wins by delivering a marvellously subtle performance, not resorting to mad man stereotypes but remaining restrained and believable even in the depths of dementia. Although many critics read a homosexual angle into Walker's portrayal, it seems more to me that he's just plain sick - a highly intelligent and jovial, but childish, immature and utterly warped individual, spoiled rotten and turned into a killer by a combination of lousy parenting and mental illness. The film doesn't explain Bruno's psychosis (unlike, say, Psycho) but gives us enough clues (troubled past, domineering mother, distant father, posh lifestyle) for us to piece things together. A combination of Norman Bates and the Terminator, he is truly the most repulsive and frightening villain in film history.

A Word On Roman Polanski (Or, Why [Some] Of His Defenders are Degenerate Morons)

By now, I'm sure you're all aware that director Roman Polanski has been nabbed by authorities in Switzerland for his rape of then-13 year old Samantha Gailey in Los Angeles thirty-some years ago. After days of reading about the issue and arguing futilely about it on (where else?) Film General, here's my two cents.

A lot of people, from Hollywood directors to French politicians to geeky FGers, are rallying to Polanski's defense and making him into something of a perverse cause celebre. There are legitimate reasons, perhaps, to drop or reduce the charges on Polanski:

- Although I'm more inclined to believe the victim's side of the story in this instance, to be absolutely fair to Polanski, there's enough ambiguity in the situation that there could possibly be room for doubt as to what exactly went on.

- The crime happened thirty-two years ago. (I will say, though, that there is no statute of limitations since he was convicted and then fled.)

- Polanski himself is 76, hasn't (apparently) engaged in such activities since then, and at his age is arguably no danger to anyone.

- The victim herself has expressed willingness to forgive Polanski, on more than one occasion. This has little legal strength but it's certainly a powerful emotional appeal, and might in and of itself make the justice system's actions cold-blooded and hard to defend.

- The judge who was prosecuting him was an ambitious prick who planned to railroad Polanski for little good reason, and so he had at least some justification for fleeing.

These are arguments that, even if I take issue with them up to a point, I could accept and at least be on the same wavelength as. But too many people, from the misogynist amoral teenage apes of IMDB to the bone-headed gliteratti of Hollywood and beyond, to even French and Polish politicians (!), more specious, idiotic reasons are being advanced, that range from the illogical to the idiotic to the insane.

- What Polanski did was not a crime, or else should not be.

- There are people with far worse crimes out there, why should the US focus on Polanski?

- The girl in question was old enough to say no, she consented to it, etc. Some have even gone so far as to argue that because she may have had sexual relations prior to that, she somehow deserves it.

- Polanski has somehow atoned for the crime through his admittedly traumatic life.

- The American criminal justice is corrupt, mean-spriited and barbaric.

- Polanski has made a lot of great films since the crime - doesn't that exonerrate him?

Allow me to address each of these points in fairly abbreviated fashion:

- That's not for you to say, is it, bonehead? Too bad we don't have your wisdom to enlighten all of us, eh wot?

- Bullshit moral equivalence. What Henry Kissinger did in Chile or Cambodia or Angola may well be a crime, but it has no bearing on this case in particular, so drop your smug act of superiority. Unless you want to argue that only murderers and capital criminals should be prosecuted.

- Although Ms. Gailey (now Geiner) has expressed willingness to forgive Polanski, she has not changed her story but for a few details. Her testimony seems to indicate the equivalent of a date rape, where she was drugged and clearly resisted his advances. Not to mention, I would seriously argue that a 13 year old girl - let alone one who was drunk, on drugs, and being advanced upon by a much-older, very-famous film director - isn't old enough and sound enough to consent to sex anyway (If you believe otherwise, you're either overgeneralizing or just being a pig.) As for the latter point, I hope I don't need to detail how misogynistic and disgusting it is - but to the amoral monkeys who don't see pedophilia as a bad thing, well, there's no hope in persuading them anyway.

- Polanski certainly had one hell of an awful life, losing relatives in the Holocaust and the murder of Sharon Tate by the Mansons. Should that alone clear his record? No. Pretty much every criminal has some background circumstances that might drive them to crime, from a broken home to a traumatic incident to mental illness. Should they all be pardoned too? In any case, Polanski hasn't expressed any regret over the incident, so why should we factor this in?

- Maybe so, but I don't see it as being remotely relevant to this particular case. He committed a crime, was convicted of it, and fled justice. Most repulsive, to my way of thinking, is the implication that Polanski is somehow a martyr to justice for sodomizing a thirteen year old girl. Come on, you idiots, let's not make him into Martin Luther King Jr. (although it wouldn't surprise me after the way Hollywood rolled out the red carpet for Tookie Williams and Mumia Abu Jamal).

- This last one is, without a doubt, the most idiotic. If it were confined to IMDbers, that would be expected and no big deal, but members of the French and Polish governments are saying as much in protest of his arrest. Give me a fucking break, people! Art undoubtedly has its value in society, but that does not exonerrate an individual from responsibility for their own actions. To quote George Orwell, "If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear."

Not much more to say, except that those who advance such arguments reveal a great deal of unpleasantness about themselves.

Let's face facts here. Whatever the reasons advanced, most are defending him because he's a film director, plain and simple. If Polanski were Joe Schmoe, a politician, or (God forbid!) a priest, these people would either not care or be all over him like Mr. Freeze on an ice pun. But because Polanski is an artist and a celebrity, he's somehow above the law, and we must unquestioningly forgive him his trespasses.

Well, screw that. If you really think that a film career exonerrates a man of a heinous crime, you've forfeited my sympathy and respect, and outed yourself as an amoral ape.

O

Since I haven't had much movie-watching time of late, here's another review from the IMDB comment archives. Hopefully my first Pitt News review is forthcoming, sooner rather than later. Until then (or my next free two hours for film watching)...

Odin James (Mekhi Phifer) is the only black student at Palmetto Grove, a private school in the Deep South. He is the star of the basketball team, is dating Desi (Julia Stiles) daughter of the school's dean, and is loved by teachers, coaches, and students. All that is, except Hugo (Josh Hartnett), the insanely jealous son of the basketball coach (Martin Sheen). Enlisting the help of hopeless outcast Rodger (Elden Hanson) and his girlfriend Emily (Rain Phoenix), Hugo launches a convoluted scheme to destroy Odin's life, convincing him that Desi is cheating on him and also turning him against best friend Mike Cassio (Andrew Keegan). Odin's jealousy eventually gets the better of him, and a tragic conclusion becomes inevitable.

Adapting Shakespeare for teens is a process that generally strikes me as intellectual masturbation or pompous self-importance. The themes of Shakespeare's plays are so universal and more importantly oft-copied that claiming descent from Shakespeare seems like a desperate attempt to add class to an otherwise typical film. Luhrman's Romeo+Juliet was a loud, flashy mess, redeemed only by its lead actors. Ten Things I Hate About You and She's the Man were disposable fun but more or less interchangeable with any number of other teen flicks, and in any case bearing only tertiary relation with their source material. I'm not impressed with She's the Man claiming descent from Twelfth Night because its basic story has been done five million times since.

However, O stands above these films, despite a few notable flaws, namely the ending. Tim Blake Nelson adapts what is (in my opinion) Shakespeare's greatest tragedy Othello into a modern setting with surprising skill, keeping the spirit and themes of the play intact and even adding additional layers to it.

Shakespeare's play is as much about the villainous Iago as it Othello. Despite his wickedness, Iago is a sympathetic character; he is clearly a tormented man with inner demons he doesn't know how to face. In this film, Hugo has additional motivation beyond merely being passed over for promotion (or acknowledgment as MVP). His father barely acknowledges his existence, while embracing Odin as "the son I never had". As despicable as Hugo's actions are, it's easy to see what would drive him to such extremes.

Also added is an exploration high school caste system. Usually dealt with in a truncated and comic fashion, it is devastatingly portrayed here. Rodger, Hugo's accomplice, is the son of one of the school's contributors, but also a geek who is beat up and picked on by pretty much everyone. There is a painful scene where Cassio torments him at a basketball game until he leaves. Hugo's alienation from his team mates is also a major factor, and it's easy to see why many people thought of Columbine when the film was released. People cast out by society are likely to their revenge, and this film shows that with devastating effect.

Perhaps inevitably, the movie gives more weight to Odin's race than the source material did. The film features several sex scenes, including a disturbing one at mid-point where Odin's jealous begins to take hold in the middle of coitus - a scene that is both disturbing and effective. Odin is a model student, a great player, and liked by almost everyone in spite of his race, and yet as Hugo's scheme begins he begins reverting to stereotypes - he does drugs, is violent and moody, and at the end is driven to murderous rage. Odin is a victim as much of his own demons as Hugo, and the movie does an excellent job showing that.

The biggest problem with the film is the end. Although abbreviated, the movie does a good job following the original text, and the film is perfectly paced. Until the climax. The decision to reduce the last two acts into a brief montage scene was a mistake, and ruined the pacing of the film. Odin's monologue at the end justifying his actions would have been more powerful if the movie hadn't just leaped into it.

The cast is uniformly solid. Mekhi Phifer is powerful as Odin; his portrayal of Odin as a victim of his own insecurities is spot-on, and he is a thoroughly believable character throughout. Josh Hartnett, whom I've never rated as much of an actor, surprised me with a powerful performance as the treacherous Hugo. Julia Stiles' part as Desi is underwritten but Stiles cannot be faulted for that, and as always her performance is top-notch. Andrew Keegan, Rain Phoenix, and Elden Hanson also create memorable characters. Martin Sheen and John Heard are effective as the two most prominent adult cast members.

Despite the rushed and flawed ending, O is definitely the best of the teen adaptations of Shakespeare. The spirit of the original play is kept intact, and the characters are adapted well into a modern context. Definitely worth a look.

It's All Subjective

If I'm going to devote any time to bashing moronic opinions, I might as well mine the fertile fields of IMDB's Film General board. I spend way too much time prowling that board, and while there's much interesting discussion that happens there, too much time is devoted to asinine off-topic sniping. Some of these threads and flames are entertaining - ask any veteran about the Mounty-Slurry Feud - but most are just annoying, petty childish bickering. However, such childish vendettas are nowhere near the that results when board members attempt to debate issues of art and philosophy...

Today there were several trollish threads of users sniping incessantly at each other, per usual. One thread, involving a user named "McFlyin" complaining about how he gets no respect for liking Transformers 2, degenerated into a lengthy slugging matching about Film General's pet topic: subjectivity in art.

Some brief excerpts to give you an idea of what we're talking about here:

Matt Velvet (aka Trolling Streetcar):

There's a point where taste stops being subjective and becomes fact. Roger Ebert wrote a great article about this.

Watchmen being better than The Love Guru is not an opinion. It is a fact. Watchmen took much more effort to make, it is much more intelligent and complex, and it is much more entertaining. Thus, it is a better film. Fact.

...

If you think Step Brothers and Transformers 2 are better than The Godfather, you are wrong. That's all there is to it. You are wrong

.

A-ha, but Independent Thought Alarm (among others) takes issue:

Pull your head out of your ass. Effort and complexity do not make better films. Intelligence and entertainment level are purely subjective. If he thinks Step Brothers and Transformers 2 are better than The Godfather ... then they are better films to him and that's all there is to it. You can still consider The Godfather better, and that opinion is equally valid. Stop being such an arrogant jerk and let him have his own taste. I agree with s-bui, that is nothing but elitism. You have no better taste than McFlyin, just different taste. Now get over it.

You see? That settles it. It's all subjective.

Seriously, though, this seems to be an issue that FG just can't keep away from. A recent article by Roger Ebert also addressed this issue, in response to bitching from Transformers 2 fans (my, they're a surly bunch!) about his acid-laden review of the film. To wit,

We should respect differing opinions up to certain point, and then it's time for the wise to blow the whistle. Sir, not only do I differ with what you say, but I would certainly not fight to the death for your right to say it. Not me. You have to pick your fights.

You tell 'em, Rog!

Though FG seems to enjoy kicking this issue around more than most, it's certainly an argument I've heard many other places, both online and in real life. Where does the line between fact and opinion end? (A corollary, similarly self-defeating argument is: What is art?) Is it right to dismiss someone who likes, say, Billy Jack or Terminator Salvation as a blithering idiot? Is his taste worse than me, who considers Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather Part II as some of his favorite films? Here's my two cents, so hopefully I'll never have to opine on this idiotically self-defeating argument ever again:

The whole argument is really self-defeating, and, not to be ironic, subjective. Everyone has their own comfort zone, their own point up to which we can accept the other guy's point-of-view as valid, just as personally-defined as our taste in movies. I may accept that many people think The Reader is a brilliant masterpiece while I think it is absolute crap, for instance. It's a movie that has artistic merits that can be argued, even if they elude me. Is it fair, though, to say that something like 300, which shows virtually no skill other than replecating the page of a comic book, is completely devoid of merit? In my opinion, yes. Regardless of objective technical worth, not all films are equal; Silent Night Deadly Night 2 is not "objectively" the same as Citizen Kane, and for me it's foolish to try, for the sake of some esoteric, up-own-arsed pseudo-philosphical argument that three people on the Internet will ever read, to argue otherwise.

As an actual, real-life young man between the ages of 18 and 25, I enjoy a good dumb action movie on occasion, like Die Hard or Speed, but I would never argue they are cinematic masterpieces. Reasonable people can disagree on films, and I might not even mind a coherent, well-reasoned argument on why The Dark Knight is an all-time masterpiece. But the dope teenager who likes Spider-Man 3 and whose opinion is limited "omg that movie rawx", I do not accept as having the same validity as mine. You may think that douche-ish; I would tell you to get a fucking clue and to get your swollen head out of your ass.

To reiterate an obvious point: Objective fact and quality are virtually non-existant in human society, and this should be an obvious point to every sentient being. However, in this case - arguing that there is no difference in quality at all between two films, even if it's Leprechaun in the Hood versus The Godfather - it seems to be taking an argument to an extreme and rendering it completely pointless. It is a pointless exercise in circular logic to argue otherwise.

I guess a summary of my view is, You're entitled to your opinion but I don't have to respect it. I may be willing to listen to a defense of Transformers but so far as I'm concerned that's just so much wasted effort. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. If that makes me a snob, so be it - I am what I am and that's all that I am.

In any case, isn't it subjective whether or not something else is subjective? From my point-of-view an issue may be subjective, but from someone else's it may be concrete fact. Ergo, post-modernism, where nothing actual exists actually - in my personal opinion/perception of course. Oh my God, I've become one of them...

Ultimately, having endless arguments on the issue of subjectivity and opinion vs. fact is futile and pathetic; the same arguments are trotted out ad nauseum without end. It would be nice if FG could stop boring the world and twisting brains in knots, but it ain't likely to happen in this lifetime.

Rant over. I'll try and have a new review up for you tomorrow.

Ernest Borgnine Interview

I don't why this was just linked on IMDB since it seems pretty old, but here you are - a nice interview with the great Ernest Borgnine. And while I'm watching SpongeBob SquarePants, to boot.

The Ten Greatest Comedies of All Time: A Groggy Dundee Special

I am not amused.

Well, it's the end of November and I'm back at Pitt for the last leg of what's been a long and agonizing semester. So before we plunge headlong into our sanity-destroying finals, you, the faithful reader, might as well receive a special treat. And here we deal with that one genre that, our tastes and favorites aside, we all love in some way, shape or form: the comedy genre!

Now, what kind of comedy do I like? This is a question that every cinemagoer or human being has to ask themselves, and I'm afraid I don't have a definite answer. My taste in humor is fairly fluid; I like tart wit and arch wordplay from a Howard Hawks or Aaron Sorkin, but an excess of it, or poorly written excuses for such, tends to grate my nerves (The Lion in Winter and Juno spring instantly to mind). I like bodily function jokes, sex jokes and profanity in certain contexts, but not non-stop parades of shit and semen like American Pie and Harold and Kumar Steal The Public's Money. I like slapstick in the hands of someone like The Three Stooges or John Candy, but I may find the work of Chris Farley and even Charles Laughton annoying as hell. It's all about timing, about context, about presentation, about talent. There's really no way to define comedy, least of all my own taste in it. I laugh at Woody Paige on Around the Horn as readily as I laugh at His Girl Friday, which might implies I'll laugh at anything if done well.

So, what do I find funny? Whatever makes me laugh.

This is restricted to film comedies, as if I were to include TV shows this list would have to be expanded to 500 or so. And although it might make the list under different circumstances, I'm excluding How to Steal a Million because I wrote a full-length review of it not long ago (and Peter O'Toole is already over-represented on this list as it is). So, without further adieu, and add the Silent Night Deadly Night 2's Theatre Douchebag's fanfare for your soundtrack...

Groggy Dundee's Top 10 Comedies of All Time!

Honorable Mentions: The Horse's Mouth, Harvey, And Now For Something Completely Different, Arsenic and Old Lace, Sabrina, The Ladykillers (1955), Blithe Spirit, Meet the Parents (2000), Roman Holiday, The Captain's Paradise, How to Steal a Million

10. Doctor Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964, Stanley Kubrick)

Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove is one of the best and most timeless satires ever made. It's warnings about nuclear war and the ridiculousness of man's desire for war and one-upsman-ship are as timely as ever, even if our threat is from stateless terrorists rather than a monstrous superpower. Kubrick's bleak, cynical view of humanity serves the material very well; when a discussion of nuclear survival scenario turns into a question of conflict with the other guy, you don't know whether to laugh or wince at the horrific absurdity before you. The quite obvious and pervasive sexual metaphors provide a Freudian subtext (or supertext) to the film, but their primary focus is to highlight the absurdity of what's going on rather than to provide any sort of psychological depth or examination. Kubrick doesn't explain, he merely shows us what is. Given the state of the world - where dirty bombs and suicide bombers have replaced ICBM's and H-Bombs as the terror du jour - and the historical propensity of Mankind to advance for the sake of self-destruction, one can see Kubrick's point.

Peter Sellers' triple performance is oft-praised, and rightfully so as an achievement of acting. RAF officer Mandrake (a parody of Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai) and the mad title character with the alien hand and absent Nazi mind ("Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!") are entertaining, but Sellers really does a great job in his more understated role as the Adlai Stevenson-esque President Muffley (his phone conversation with the Russianis the definite high point of the film). However blasphemous it may seem, it's fair to say that Sellers is not the greatest performance in the film. That would be George C. Scott, who as Buck Turgidson embodies all of his gung-ho, self-parodying he-man masculinity into a character who would be terrifying if he were not so funny. Scott would only ever approach this performance with his garlanded Patton, where he played a more or less identical character (caricature?). His dark analogue, General Ripper (Sterling Hayden in perhaps his best performance), is simply an extension of his character. Slim Pickens provides a fun role as the gung-ho squadron leader, Keenan Wynn has an amusing cameo as the "prevert"-hating Bat Guano, and James Earl Jones can be briefly spotted as one of Pickens' crewmates.

9. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996, Jim Mallon)

How could I make a list of things that are funny without including the film adaptation of the greatest television achievement in the history of man? MST3K is a show that you either love or don't get (don't know about hate) - it's an acquired taste, but a taste worth acquiring. Although not all fans are satisfied with the movie (for one thing, it's twenty minutes shorter than an episode of the TV show - God knows why), it's a solid enough entry in the series, and a good introductory primer to those not already familiar with the show. Watching the film is enough of a litmus test on whether or not the show is for you.

For those of us who consider ourselves MSTies, there is nothing funnier than Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot (Trace Beaulieu) and Tom Servo (Kevin Murphy) sitting back and teeing off with reckless, mean-spirited abandon at a steaming pile of cinematic excrement. A lot of people get enjoyment out of the interstitial material involving the mad Dr. Clayton Forrester (Beaulieu), and his strangely-absent sidekick TV's Frank (Frank Coniff), but for me, the purity of the film mockery has always taken precedence over the sporadically amusing "host segments".

The movie - the not-too-bad Universal sci-fi flick This Island Earth, which features impressive-for-it's-time special effects and a wonderfully hammy Jeff Morrow performance - provides fertile ground for riffing. As often as the film is criticized for "dumbing down" the riffs for a mass audience, one has to wonder: Who gives a fuck if there isn't an extra reference to Bootsy Collins or Sophocles? The stuff onhand is funny enough that anyone, be they a die-hard MSTie or an unlearned groundling, could theoretically find funny. Highlights include the "Science, Industry and Technology!" exchange, and of course the Normal View song. Perhaps the best part is when Mike and the Bots riff over their own credits - "Eastman! He came from the East to do battle with the Amazing Rando!" If you like this kind of thing, you'll have a blast and be quoting it for the rest of your life, whenever you're not actually watching it of course. If not, well, move on.

8. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987, John Hughes)

This film is a masterful little gem from John Hughes, who found his niche directing such well-regarded teen angst classics as The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. It takes the usual sitcom approach of taking something from everyday life and exaggerating it out of proportion. Who among us HASN'T experienced a horrendous series of inconveniences? Well, Neal Page (Steve Martin) experiences them all, within one twenty-four hour period. I know this film (along with a certain episode of SpongeBob SquarePants) flashes through my mind everytime I get stranded in Homestead or Squirrel Hill waiting for a bus at midnight that's likely to never come while being harrassed by hoboes and vagrants. It's a feature-length bit of observational humor, and great writing and acting manages to give the one-joke premise far more mileage than it has any right to.

What makes the film work more than anything else are its two leads. Steve Martin plays his usual character - the uptight, snappy, sarcastic and mean guy. He's not really likeable, but in this film his exasperated anger is quite understandable - who wouldn't be a jerk in such a situation? The late John Candy is even better, doing a fabulous job at making a potentially silly role - the obnoxious "talker" and goofy comic relief buddy - memorable, fun and sympathetic. The two leads have fantastic chemistry, making what could have been a run of the mill comedy film something special. Even the bit of mawkish sentimentality at the end is done reasonably well, seeming to come from the characters rather than the contrivance of a Hollywood screenwriter.

The film has a number of classic scenes, including Neal and Dell's eventful night in bed together, Neal's race to get a taxi (with an uncredited Kevin Bacon), Dell's efforts to raise money through selling his shower cap rings, an exasperated Neal's excellent, mean-spirited rant to his unwitting colleague ("The next time you tell one of those stories... Have a point!") and Dell's heartfelt rebuttal. It also contains perhaps the funniest exchange in movie history: after Neal's rental car is stolen, he confronts the overly cheery secretary (Edie McClurg) with a vicious, profanity-laced rant, only to be perfectly shut down by the secretary: "You're FUCKED!"

7. My Favorite Year (1982, Richard Benjamin)

In case you haven't guessed by now, I think Peter O'Toole is an amazing actor, perhaps even the best ever. In My Favorite Year, he gives one of his lightest yet best performances as Alan Swann, the washed up matinee idol who is signed for a fifties' variety show, only for him to be discovered to be a drunken wastrel. O'Toole has fun with the role, playing off his own persona to make the necessary drunken shenanigan scenes work wonderfully. And yet, there's a poignancy and intelligence to his performance that is beyond most films of this type. His relationship with Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker), the struggling young writer who recommended and idolizes him, is the backbone of the film, forcing to Swann to own up to who he is and the distance between his onscreen persona and his real-life personality. This is yet another example of why the Academy needs to get fucked; O'Toole's eight nominations without a win are a crime, and his layered performance is certainly among his best achievements. Still, it's perhaps understandable why he lost to Ben Kingsley's turn in Gandhi...

Many comedy films have a big chaotic set-piece that serves as the pay-off for the build-up, and this film is no exception. The wonderfully chaotic final duel between the TV crew, the cast and a group of gangsters allows Swann to at last live up to his heroic reputation. The script sparkles with wit and originality, the characters are mostly likeable, and there are fun supporting turns, particularly Joseph Bologna as the obnoxious Sid Caesar-esque TV host, and Suspiria star Jessica Harper as the lovely assistant/love interest. It's a lovely bit of filmmaking all around, and comes highly recommended. O'Toole is the centerpiece, but the whole film is worthwhile.

6. Groundhog Day (1993, Harold Ramis)

Whenever the topic of "film everyone loves/nobody hates" comes up on IMDB or elsewhere, this charming little film is almost always near the top of the list. At my house, it has been a staple seasonal viewing for years, and it's one of those movies that never gets old no matter how many times you see it.

The film's plot is pretty straightforward: grumpy TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) arrives in Punxsutawney, PA to cover the annual Groundhog Day ceremonies, only to find himself trapped living the same day over and over again. Phil is predictably flummoxed by his predicament, trying to use it to his advantage, then trying to escape from the nightmare through suicide and other means, but ultimately he learns what's truly important in life, and becomes a better person through his experiences.

There isn't much I could say about this film that hasn't already been said. The film is an incredibly charming and witty movie, making the repetitive, mind-numbing horror show of being a societal cog a literal event, and having a great amount of hay off of it. Murray has never been better, utilizing his charming yet cynical persona to the fullest, Andie McDowell is sweet and charming as his producer/love interest, and the talented supporting cast (Chris Elliot, Brian Doyle-Murray, Stephen Toblowsky) contributes fine work on the edges. The ending is sweet, charming and perfect, showing a man who genuinely grows and changes from his experiences. Sometimes a happy, even sappy ending works, and this is one of those times. Plus, you won't be able to get a certain Sonny and Cher tune out of your head for the rest of your life...

5. The Lavender Hill Mob (1950, Charles Crichton)

It would not be a Groggy Dundee list if I didn't have an Ealing Comedy/Alec Guinness film on here somewhere, now would it? The Cinematic Master of Disguise gives one of his best performances in this film, about Henry Holland, a meek London banker who decides to rob a shipment of gold bullion in order to escape the dreariness of office life. The movie embraces the best of the Ealing Studios' attributes: a depiction of a charming fantasy England, a wonderfully eccentric sense of humor (or humour I suppose), and a whimiscally anarchistic nature. The scene where Holland and his cohort (Stanley Holloway) run up the Eiffel Tower at full, dizzying speed is a cheerfully absurd bit of madness rarely surpassed elsewhere. The film lacks the dark nastiness and social satire of such other Ealing offerings as Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit and The Ladykillers, but in this instance, it's not necessarily a bad thing; sometimes entertainment is preferable to depth, and such a case is this.

Aside from Guinness, Stanley Holloway does a great job in one of the few films that I don't find him aggravating and punch-worthy in. Sid James and Alfie Bass also turn up in small roles as fellow crooks. Cinephiles may have fun spotting a young Audrey Hepburn and Robert Shaw in small roles; Hepburn's brief pre-stardom bit part is to die for.

4. The American President (1995, Rob Reiner)

This film is the second teaming of Rob Reiner and that masterful screenwriting God Aaron Sorkin. After the dynamite courtroom drama A Few Good Men, they instead turn to a much lighter film, with a movie that, though occasionally treacly, mawkish and predictable, hits on all cylinders. A film need not be cynical to be witty, and mean to be insightful or interesting. Early on the term Capra-esque is used in a conversation, and that definitely applies here.

The movie is a sweet romantic comedy dressed up with a smidgen of political intrigue and depth. Handsome, charming and intelligent liberal President Michael Douglas struggles to balance a Presidential re-election campaign, various world crises and a budding romance with environmental activist Annette Benning. Douglas and Benning are a charming couple, and the supporting cast contains fine performances by Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox and Richard Dreyfuss. But really, as in most of Sorkin's work, it's the witty, rapid-fire script that does the walking (and talking). Although the political issues aren't covered in any real depth, with Sorkin promoting his views as the only answer and Republicans as hideous demonic Gorgons, the average viewer probably won't give a damn considering the whole. In essence, it's a feature-length pilot for Sorkin's later TV series The West Wing - but in my eyes, there isn't a damned thing wrong with that.

3. Young Frankenstein (1973, Mel Brooks)

Movie spoofs have fallen a long, long way from the likes of Airplane and the best of Mel Brooks. Nowadays, when shit like Scary Movie and its innumerable illegitimate satanic seed pose as "parody" films, it's reasonable to conclude that satire is all but dead.

Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein is perhaps the high-point of the spoof genre, and of Brooks' career. Brooks had a hit-and-miss career, with great works like The Producers and this film, and drek like History of the World Part 1 and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, struggling to mix zaniness with observational wit and failing as often as he succeeds. Fortunately, in this particular film he succeeds one hundred percent, creating a perfectly crafted, atmospheric and hysterical piece of work.

Brooks takes on a formidable target - the Universal horror pictures of the 1930's, including King Kong, Dracula, The Wolf Man, and particularly (of course) the Frankenstein movies. He does so by replicating the source material, filming on the same sets and utilizing striking, expressive black-and-white photography that rivals even that of their inspirations. The movie stays remarkably close to the plot of these films, particularly Bride of Frankenstein; the Monster (Peter Boyle) escapes, encounters a cute little girl, is fed by a blind (and in this case clumsy) hermit (Gene Hackman), is imprisoned and chased by a mob. This method of spoofery would be aped time and again by its innumerable illegitimate cousins and offsprings, but never as well; they (and "they" know who they are) don't understand that the point is to put a fun twist on a film, not to merely replay it for the sake of recognition.

Gene Wilder gives a marvellously over-the-top performance as Dr. Frahn-ken-steen, who slowly goes mad and reverts to his grandfather's old tradition of digging up corpses. Peter Boyle is equally funny as the Monster, playing the right notes of childlike innocence and naughty silliness. Perhaps the best performance, however, is Marty Feldman as Igor, the impatient and occasionally mean-spirited helper to Frankenstein who is anything but the subservient imbecile he's usually made out to be ("What hump?"). The movie contains a plethora of fun performances: Madeline Kahn as Wilder's impatient wife, Cloris Leachman as the ominous Frau Blucher (Whiney!), Teri Garr as the ditzy assistant Inga, and Kenneth Marrs' posable police inspector (who owes a great deal to Dr. Strangelove). It's truly a treat, and with set-pieces like Frankenstein's opening lecture, the search for the correct brain ("Abby Normal"), and of course the centerpiece "Putting on the Ritz" routine, it's hard to say how you could go wrong.

2. His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)

This film is one of the indisputable greats of its genre, and I might argue of film period. It epitomizes the screwball comedy, the rapid with ridiculous situations and much-too-hip and verbose (yet extremely cool) protagonists. Pretty much TV sitcom finds their origin in these films, with snappy dialogue and a crazy situation building beyond control to a climax. Few if any subsequent films or TV shows, however much they copy the formula, have been able to replicate its success.

The movie has a wonderfully zany and convoluted plot, as smooth-talking editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) tries to convince his reporter/ex-wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) to not retire and settle down with nice but dull Bruce (Ralph Bellamy), while a criminal (John Qualen) escapes from jail on the eve of an election. The film takes shots at all sorts of targets throughout, leaving no one immune from the zingers and barbs of Charles Lederer's acid screenplay. Really, no one in the film comes across as overly sympathetic (except, strangely, killer John Qualen and Helen Mack as his "girlfriend" - with poor Ralph Bellamy as the fall guy); the journalists are conniving sharks, the police inept, the politicians greedy and selfish. In such a situation, where everyone is corrupt, mean-spirited, or spineless and emasculated, the only solution is to side with the cool guys.

Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are a wonderful couple, with an amazing degree of sexual and onscreen chemistry. Grant, an old hand at this genre (Bringing Up Baby, Arsenic and Old Lace) plays his usual character type - the sly, smooth, deceitful charmer - to the hilt, while Russell is an immensely sexy and tough real woman who struggles to keep up with Grant's endless scheming. The entire supporting cast clicks to a fault, and Hawks' direction keeps things moving at an impossibly brisk pace. It's endless fun to see these characters stabbing each other and spouting out rapid-fire dialogue with reckless abandon, and the deliciously ridiculous denouement is all part of the fun.

1. The Ruling Class (1972, Peter Medak)

Finally, after a list made up largely of "safe", "mainstream", "conventional" choices (some of which are no doubt baffling), I pick a film that embodies anarchism and hateful, mean-spirited disdain for politeness and civility. The Ruling Class is a movie that gives a big fat middle finger to pretty much everything in society, from religion to politics to class structure and socialism. It's so crass, mean, over-the-top and unsubtle, that it makes Monty Python's Flying Circus look like a Noel Coward drawing-room comedy. And yet, it's a masterpiece throughout - one of the few films that is able to go the completely nasty route and get away with it, because it's done with such style and skill that one excuses the meanness of the whole enterprise.

The movie is the broadest satire of possible, chronicling the assumption of the schizophrenic Jack Gurney (Peter O'Toole) to an English peerage, and his "treatment" from belief that he is Christ to belief that he's Jack the Ripper. The movie takes a shot at everything imaginable; not one target emerges unscathed. The humor is not subtle; it is painted in the broadest possible strokes, its targets of politics, class and religion not only poked fun at, but demolished. The movie moves from one gag to the next, never stopping for breath. And not only does it move from gag to gag, but also from genre to genre; the satire evolves at times into a musical, a horror film, a swashbuckler and psychological thriller/film noir. Strangely, however, the movie manages to remain the sum of its parts; its rapid changes in tone create a wonderfully delirious atmosphere.

The movie features a plethora of brilliant performances. Peter O'Toole gives an astonishing turn as Jack, encapsulating both of his disparate personalities - in effect, giving two performances for the price of one - and mixing humor and deadpan seriousness whenever the occasion calls for it. Only his performance in Lawrence of Arabia betters his work here, and even then we're talking neck and neck here; and believe me, prior to this film, I would have thought that nigh-impossible. The supporting cast is a corncuopia of great British actors, from Alastair Sim as the befuddled Bishop, to Arthur Lowe's amusing scene-stealing as a Bolshevik Butler, Kay Walsh and Patsy Byrne's hysterical pair of fuddy-duddy ladies, Michael Bryant's sadistic psychiatrist, and Nigel Greene's indescribable cameo as the Electric Christ.

Concededly, The Ruling Class will offend or not interest many of my readers, as many of the other films on the list will. The rest of us can enjoy the wonderfully over-the-top and head-scratching scenes like Jack and Grace (Carolyn Seymour)'s wedding, the confrontation with the Electric Christ (Nigel Greene), the random insertion of musical numbers into the story, and the alternately chilling and hysterical ending phantasmagoria - revealing the House of Lords to be the rotting ghosts that they are.