A: Hey kids, look! A series of unrelated videos, presented in no particular order for your immediate viewing pleasure free of charge! What a wonderful world!
1999 A.D. A clip from a prescient 1967 film foretelling a glorious future in which mail is sent electronically, shopping can be done from home, and parenting has been replaced by espionage. They got pretty much everything right, except in reality, the only people secretly filming your children are NSA agents.
The Iron Man trailer. Dan Hopper at BWE thinks it looks like a retread, but I'm totally excited anyway. And not because I give a shit about Iron Man (no one does, as far as I know), but rather for one simple reason, and I'll give you a clue, it rhymes with Shmobert Shmowney Shmr.
Cop Gone Wild, which finally addresses the Q: Who's crazier? A crazy cop, or a crazy guy who drives around with a camera installed in his car's ceiling hoping to be brutalized by a crazy cop? A: Crazy cop. After a few minutes it gets boring, but the screaming part is fun. Oh policemen, you so crazy!
Osama bin Chomsky. Everyone acts like it's all weird that bin Laden is talking like a liberal blogger now. But bin Laden has always channeled liberal bloggers, including in the interview he gave immediately following Sept. 11th. Of course, no one really read that interview, except for the 9/11 Truth crackpot brigade, because the mainstream media was too incompetent to tell you about it. Luckily, T.A.M.S.Y. will be happy to fill you in! Later.
Lennon & Garant: They were looking for a job and then they found a job, and heaven knows they're musical now.
Lennon and Garant also wrote Taxi and The Pacifier, but shhhhhh.
Hopefully this means my close personal friend David Wain will help me realize my lifelong dream of bringing my Kinks musical to Broadway. Call me, Davey.
A:David Wain's The Ten hits theaters this weekend, and if you haven't heard, it's one of the funniest things ever, as reported by some of the nation's finest film critics. Well, most of them.
In the meanwhiletime, here's some bonus Wain to tide you over.
It's Episode 1 with more to come. Yay. Also, if you enjoyed that video of a young David touring Shaker Heights, there's more in his Super 8 Archive.
I'm on the way to California. Oh by the way, The Answer May Surprise You is moving to California, have I mentioned this?
A: Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman — the auteur behind many brilliant classic films you have not seen — has expired at 89. His daughter reports he died peacefully, presumably following a game of chess with an eerie hooded figure on a dark, austere landscape. From the obit:
In Europe, movie directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut helped break visual and narrative rules, but Mr. Bergman stood out for dreamy and often disturbingly psychological films that expressed emotional isolation and modern spiritual crisis.
Women were especially prominent in Mr. Bergman's films and not as cardboard heroines. Confused by their doubts and desires, sometimes entirely driven by their passions, Mr. Bergman's female characters usually stood on the brink of mental collapse. Meanwhile, his men were often hapless bystanders, incapable of understanding their own lives, much less those of anyone around them.
"The people in my films are exactly like myself -- creatures of instinct, of rather poor intellectual capacity, who at best only think while they're talking," Mr. Bergman once said. "Mostly they're body, with a little hollow for the soul."
To Mr. Bergman, solace was only possible through erotic and intellectual connections, but this was complicated when people cloak their true emotions...
Intriguing. It entices me to take my Criterion Edition of The Seventh Seal out of its Gatsbyesque plastic wrap one of these days. Until now, I only owned it so artsy girls would think I possess a vast and mysterious intellect.
On a related note, I have recently discovered, and become totally obsessed with, Scott Walker's 1969 album Scott 4. One of the best tracks is the Bergman-inspired, Spanish-flavored opener.
Sonically, it makes a nice companion to another song I've been way into lately, the White Stripes' "Conquest". And of course I identify with the mysterious and intellectually vast lyrics.
A: Scientists estimate that 71% of the world's blog posts are apologies for not having blogged lately. I refuse to become another statistic.
I REGRET NOTHING.
Yes, I've neglected my duties as my generation's surprisingerst answerer. No, I have not taken to the bottle.
My blogging time will probably still be limited over the next few weeks, while I complete my perpetually imminent move to California. So in lieu of whatever I usually do here, I'm just going to be posting circa three noteworthy links a day, every day. Except for on days where I post fewer than three links, or none, which will be most days.
"Didn't you used to be Eddie Valiant? Or did you change your name to Jack Daniels?" is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies. A couple weeks ago, I came across a draft of the screenplay. It's way different than the final film in a ton of ways, and it includes the deleted "pig-headed" scene that appears on the DVD, excerpted here:
Also, the original "Didn't you used to be..." line doesn't include the part about Jack Daniels. This sort of thing is very exciting, if you're as deeply into Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as I am. Which I'm guessing you're not, so let's move on.
Scientists estimate that 71% of the all-time greatest American films involve corruption and delusion in Los Angeles. (In their plots, I mean. If you include the real-life corruption and delusion, the number jumps to around infinity%.)
A: I finally saw Children of Men last week, and I found it to be pretty much the best film in the history of ever. Alfonso Cuarón has officially graduated to genius status.
If you haven't seen it, see it. All you need to know about it is nothing. Just SEE IT.
Anyway, immediately following the film, my friend Oo. recommended "Battle of Kruger" on YouTube, and it too BLEW MY MIND. Maybe everyone's already been there done that with this vid (six million+ hits in the past couple months), but if you haven't, SEE IT. Like now:
All you need to know is that it's "A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and two crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park while on safari."
It is imperative that you watch the whole thing. Trust me.
A: Hey, good question. Before I answer, a few things to consider.
Transformers is a movie based on a cartoon based on Hasbro's desire to sell more toys. It seemed like a really awesome idea when I was five years old.
Its heroes, the Autobots, are robots who transform into vehicles; its antagonists, the evil Decepticons, are also robots who transform into vehicles. Everyone saves a lot of money on parking.
constant shout-outs to "freedom," "evil" (actual mottos: "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings," and "We will put out the fires of evil," which together comprise 85% of statements issued by the Bush White House);
PHONE MESSAGE LEFT ON JON VOIGHT'S ANSWERING MACHINE: "Hey, Jon, this is your agent. Seeing as how you're an Oscar-winner and one of the great actors of our time, I have four great scripts I want to run by you. Okay: One is the eagerly anticipated sequel to Baby Geniuses; the second is an adaptation of one of the finest books ever written by Mitch Albom; the third is a made-for-CBS biopic where you'll be playing Pope John Paul II; and the fourth one is this thing about toy robots with the power to turn into common automobiles. Don't worry about the contract details, I already forged your signature. Okay, I should get going — I got 'til 5PM to pay off these gambling debts or they're gonna take my other thumb."
A: Not to disturb you, but please note that the disturbing suburban disturbance film Disturbia receives distribution to suburban (also urban) districts today, Friday the 13th (how disturbing!). Is it worth your six to eleven dollars? The answer may unsettletain you.
Disturbia: Every killer lives next door to someone, give or take.
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned an advance amateur review of Disturbia, in which the reviewer largely just seemed disturbia'd by what he referred to as an abundance of boom microphones:
"I have never seen such an incredible proliferation of visible boom microphones in any other movie. Seriously, there was a microphone visible somewhere at the top of the screen for almost the entire length of the film. At some points in the movie, more than one microphone could be seen at a time. I understand that things slip through the editing process but this was just ridiculous." [original review available in the vicinity of here]
In response to that post, beloved commenter Dashiell suggested "the boom mike problem is the fault of the projectionist, not the filmmakers," which I assumed was true. It is a little-known fact that, when you see a movie in the theater, you're usually not getting the complete contents of the reel itself; the projectionist cuts off a bit of the top and a bit of the bottom to fit it properly on the screen1. Exactly how much is cut off depends on the film and the projectionist. I seem to remember reading somewhere that directors don't necessarily worry about boom mics slipping into the top of the frame, since it's assumed they'll be cropped.
But now I'm wondering if DJ Caruso, the director of Disturbia, might have taken that assumption a bit too far. The film hasn't even been released, and yet I've already noticed quite a small but not insignificant number of people (maybe one to two percent of my traffic over the past week) finding T.A.M.S.Y. by Googling things like "distubia microphone showing" or "disturbia boom mic".
1 This is why the Eyes Wide Shut DVD is not available in a letterbox edition; Stanley Kubrick shot it in full-frame. If the film looked "widescreen" when it first came out, it's only because the projectionist cropped it at the top and bottom to provide a larger, wider picture.
Steven Spielberg had previously claimedJoe Johnston (of Gremlins and Jurassic Park III) was his "go-to Jurassic guy," but with Johnston's reps denying the director's involvement, looks like the job is still open.
"I don't know if he is in talks with them or not, [but] maybe David Lynch [should direct] it just to kind of shake things up a little bit. That would make it kind of interesting and unique," the 40-year-old actress said of her longtime collaborator. "I don't know [who] — I just hope it's as irreverent as Steven has always wanted them to be." [link via Mara]
David Lynch!?!? Under normal circumstances of an actress making such an absurd claim, I'd assume she were either talking out of her crazy ass, or just joking. Except for two things: (1) As MTV News notes, Dern and Lynch have worked together several times before, including on Blue Velvet and the new Inland Empire, and (2) the comment "I don't know if he is in talks with them..." Why would she disavow knowledge of something that no one would ever have believed, unless it were actually true!?
Needless to say, I hope Dern gets her wish — and I encourage Spielberg to SPARE NO EXPENSE in making it happen. I mean, David Lynch directing Jurassic Park IV would be awesome on so many levels, my head might explode.
And maybe it's not such an unnatural pairing! The only people who understand David Lynch films are also the the target audience for Jurassic Park sequels. Namely, incredibly high people.
A member of the Cleveland LJ community just posted the news that Case Western's film society would be screening Disturbia for free Thursday. I thought I'd do some poking around on the Web to see if it'd be worth the zero dollars to check it out.
I was skeptical, because usually when you name your film Disturbia, it means no one's really trying. But the things I learned... may surprise you.
THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE FILM DISTURBIA
In this scene, Disturbia's stars — Shia "Would you like to buy a vowel" LaBeouf and Sarah "ROEMer!? I barely even KNOW 'er" Roemer — find themselves disturbed in suburbia.
1. It's called Disturbia, really. That's the name they came up with over at DreamWorks. Because it's set in suburbia. And it's disturbing. Disturbia. Official title. Too late to change it. Already bought the URL and everything.
2. The tagline for Disturbia is "Every killer lives next door to someone." Really.
DreamWorks, baby, c'mon. Are you fricking kidding me? Are you fridding me? Is this a tax write-off of some kind?
B: All we need now is a tagline. A: What about "Every killer lives ne—" B: Sure, whatever, who fucking cares. We need to find more cocaine.
#3: If you were getting the impression that no one was even trying here, I refer you to the advance review now on IMDb, entitled There was a boom mic in EVERY SINGLE SHOT:
I gave this movie a six because, despite the constant presence of boom mics, it actually got my heart racing once or twice and the acting was quite good. Seriously, though, there's a microphone in nearly every shot.
Honest to Bo Derek. The Ten is really, really good. Like, one-of-the-funniest-comedies-I've-ever-seen good. Not to set your expectations too high or anything — but oh God, so very funny.
Keeping in the spirit of the film — which is split into ten stories, each loosely (very loosely) based around one of the ten commandments — here are TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE TEN:
1. In case you missed it the first time, here's the teaser trailer:
2. Going in, I had high expectations — being a big fan of The State, Stella and David Wain's comic sensibilities in general — but I also sort of expected The Ten not to meet those expectations. If that makes any sense.
I have a history of underrating comedies the first time I see them. I think it's because, as a whiny former drama major, I tend to get distracted when a film's plot is just an excuse to string together jokes (as regular T.A.M.S.Y. readers know, I also get distracted when a film's plot is an excuse to string together anything, e.g., Spartan war victories), even if the jokes are very funny.
The most relevant example of this is Wet Hot American Summer, David Wain's first film, which I saw alone in a nearly empty theater in Times Square, very shortly after its release, and which I found intermittently funny but also to be, uh, kind of just a dumb sketch about '80s summer-camp movies stretched over 97 minutes. I never, ever would've expected Wet Hot to attain the cult status it has, especially among people too young to have watched The State during its original run on MTV.
Upon subsequent viewings, I like Wet Hot much more (I'd give it an 8 out of 11), but still not quite as much as other people do. It's got very funny jokes, yes. But it is also unapologetically dumb, and unapologetically a sketch stretched over 97 minutes.
3.The Ten is better and funnier than Wet Hot. Yeah, I went there.
4. Part of what makes The Ten better than Wet Hot is that, instead of being one bizarre sketch stretched into a full-length film, it's ten bizarre sketches stretched into a full-length film. The ten stories intertwine with one another in direct and indirect ways (sometimes as continuations of previous stories, sometimes just to allow for running jokes, a Wain/State specialty), but each is its own full story. So even if one sketch falls flat for you, it won't overstay its welcome.
But the other thing that makes The Ten so great is that, as far as I'm concerned, none of the sketches fall flat. Each story is based in a absurd, convoluted, State-worthy premise (the film is cowritten by Wain and Ken Marino), but nothing bombs.
5. So much of the hilarity is based in those absurd, convoluted premises that I'm hesitant to explain anything in detail. Suffice to say, it's a David Wain movie, so there are the obligatory references to erections, vaginas, titty fucking, prison rape and lite rock of the 1970s. And naturally, lots of good one-liners and running jokes. The Wet Hot fan base won't be disappointed.
If you want minor spoilers beyond that, you can read this positive review at the blog Not Coming to a Theater Near You, or the IFC Blog's thumbs down.
I do want to say this much: One of the sketches that the IFC Blog specifically says "doesn't work," and calls "odd-for-odd's sake" is one of the bits I found most hilarious: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods," which features Liev Schrieber and Joe Lo Truglio as neighbors whose efforts to one up one another result in a battle to see who can order the most CAT scan machines.
6. Not only is it a successful comedy, but The Ten is surprisingly viable as an art film (or at least a parody of an art film), too. The stories incorporate a surprising thematic range at times, including a Bertolucci-esque tale of Gretchen Mol's sexual awakening in Mexico, and an animated story about a deceitful rhinoceros' fall from grace (featuring the work of Aaron Augenblick, best known for Wonder Showzen, and the voice talent of Jon Benjamin).
7. The glue that holds The Ten together is Paul Rudd, as Master of Ceremonies "Jeff," who attempts to introduce each story (his crumbling marriage to Famke Janssen keeps getting in the way).
I found these tiny vignettes to be the least funny bits in the film, and the only thing about The Ten that could be called even remotely predictable. But even they didn't suck.
8. When I was the aforementioned whiny drama major, one of my professors taught me a good rule of thumb (she was talking about theater, but I think it applies to film, too): If the actors are generally good, the director was good. If the actors are generally bad, the director was bad.
By that rule alone, The Ten establishes Wain as an excellent comic director. There are a lot of famous people in the cast (and not only people known for comedy, as in Wet Hot), and the fact that all of them are able to mesh in so smoothly with the State veterans, in a series of quintessentially Stately bits, says a lot about Wain's talents. Because the movie does get extremely bizarre, and never do the actors seem anything less than comfortable and wholly committed.
Particularly funny, I thought, were Schreiber, Oliver Platt (as a second-rate stand-up comedian impersonating Arnold Schwazenegger) and Gretchen Mol. Speaking of which,
8 1/2: Gretchen Mol is just insanely hot. I know that, over the past decade, it's been said a million times that such-and-such film was going to make Gretchen Mol extremely famous, and it's proven false every time, but The Ten is going to make Gretchen Mol extremely famous!
Winona Ryder is also pretty funny/hot. But she plays a girl who sleeps around a lot, so it wasn't exactly a stretch or anything. (Wait, I just realized that casting Ryder as a girl who sleeps around a lot — and in the story "Thou shalt not steal," no less — is actually a very funny joke in itself. I'm sort of dense.)
9. I saw The Ten at the Cleveland International Film Festival's midnight screening Saturday night/Sunday morning. I arrived just as the lights were going down, and as I entered the packed theater, someone in the crowd loudly mock-whispered "The whole front row is open!" in a tone oddly reminiscent of David Wain himself. Except I didn't think Wain was actually there.
Turned out, he was. After the credits finished rolling (and stick around for the credits, by the way — the theme songs are hilarious), a CIFF spokesdude introduced Wain, who gamely answered a series of inane questions ("What was it like to work with all those actors?", "Is there going to be a second season of Stella?", etc.).
Nothing substantive came of the Q&A session. I just wanted to note that David Wain instructed me on where to sit for a screening of a David Wain movie, which is like my proudest achievement ever.
One other thing about the screening: The film appears to have been really lushly shot (by a little-known cinematographer, Yaron Orbach), especially for a comedy, which is another reason I think it's legitimately successful as an art film. But it was hard to appreciate the look of the film fully — because, for reasons unknown to me (and, apparently, Wain), the CIFF didn't show an actual print of it. They had a videotape. And if you want to know what a videotape looks like on a big movie screen when you're sitting way up front, the answer is: Really, really shitty.
10. My brother just told me about this video, and it is adorably hilarious. In which a nine-year-old David Wain provides a tour of his hometown, Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Wow, this post is really long. Sorry.
10 1/2: I forced my parents to go see the screening yesterday afternoon, and they also really, really liked it. This makes me even more convinced that The Ten is going to be as wildly successful as it deserves to be.
A: I just saw Deal or No Deal for the first time last night. Wow, that shit is mean. Never before has a game show been so complexly constructed to guarantee its guests will go home some level of disappointed.
Anyway, I'm glad I could provide that observation. And what about that Ken Jennings, huh??? He sure does win a lot at Jeopardy! Tune in to my blog next week, when I'll be proffering my thoughts on the recent film Dances With Wolves. Did it deserve its Oscar? THE ANSWER MAY SURPRISE YOU!
DEAL OR NO DEAL: If you do not complain about T.A.M.S.Y.'s recent unannounced hiatus, I will make you a special offer: Next week, I'll give you a sneak-preview write-up of David Wain's hotly, wetly anticipated new film The Ten, which premiers Sunday at Los Festivalo en Cinematatta de Cleveland — four-plus months ahead of its August 3 release.
Those last two links appear to be down right now, but whatever, here's The Ten's (WARNING: uncensored) teaser trailer.
Tickets are still available, I believe, for both the noon and 4:45 showings, if you're in the area.
EARLIER: David Wain has a cameo in last fall's travelogue by fellow Statesmen/Stella creators, the MichaelsShowalter & Ian Black.
POSTSCRIPT: David Wain has a blog, although it too is down right now. Also, um, is the Internet dying?
A:T.A.M.S.Y. saw 300 Sunday night, and to be perfectly honestopolous, it was not much better than just fine. The battle scenes might be worth the price of admission on their own (true to Spartan tradition, Snyder takes great pleasure in the big fat Greek bloodletting), but overall, the flick takes itself way, way, way, way too seriously.
It's a spartan story in every sense of the word. And despite the crushing heaviness and the many sternly delivered speeches, I'm still not clear of what the film's POV was meant to be, aside from being (a) accidentally pro-troop surge1 and (b) unabashedly pro-Sparta.
Subtract the eye-popping visuals, and you're left with a lot of draggy yammering — mostly alpha males sounding off furiously, signifying nothing.
GRANTED: We Greeks do take ourselves too seriously sometimes, and we're a big fan of the dramatic, unannounced gestures, particularly if we're on our seventh ouzo. But behind all the drama and the epic poetry and the nationalism and the carousing and the fatal pride, the Greeks love a good joke. Or at least a few smashed plates.
The filmic Sin City, behind the direction of Robert Rodriguez, was carried by its gallows humor: Death was its joie de vivre, and immorality its POV. Snyder does well in translating the Miller-esque visual brilliance of Sin City to ancient times, but he fails to find a suitably epic substitute for Robert Rodriguez's sociopathic glee.
Delphi hot: One sexy piece of oracle.
The flashes of levity in 300 are few + far between (even counting the running gag about how awesome it is to give your life for Sparta, which is about as hilarious as Jim Lehrer). But the flashes of real gravity are even fewer and far betweener.
HOMER SAYS WHAT? The problem at the heart of 300 is that it confuses epic-ness with self-assurance. It celebrates King Leonidas' pride as fatal, but refuses even to consider that it might be a flaw. Anyone who dares question the logic of waging war is either a traitorous pussy or a corpse waiting to happen (usually both).
As the ancient Greeks will tell you, loving war doesn't mean never having to say you're sorry. Snyder and Miller seem to have ignored that what makes a violent epic epic is the reflective eye at the center of the storm, the traitorous pussy voice inside every hero that pauses to ask What does it all mean? Here and there, even Achilles felt like a heel.
IT'S ALL GAELIC TO ME: I did enjoy 300's characterization of the Greeks as civilization's breadbasket of awesomeness — but why were the Greeks themselves all played by dirty fooking micks?
DISCUSS AMONGST YOURSELVES: I'm pretty sure that the crowd pictured in the film's final shot would have required more people than were actually alive on Earth in 500 B.C.
ELSEWHERE: Film blog Solace in Cinema compares shots from 300 the film to Miller's original illustrations from 300 the graphic novel. Very cool.
Juice is like wine: Kid Leonidas, hungry like the wolf.
EARLIER:Why do filmgoers so love the Greeks? 1 It's funny, by which I mean strange, that the film's to troop surge or not to troop surge suplot so closely mirrors current Congressional debate. I haven't read one of Frank Miller's hotheaded soapboxes in nearly a decade, but based on everything I know of the man from my fanboy days, I'm certain he must despise George W. Bush with every fiber of his being. Miller's favorite topic is freedom of speech, and protecting our freedom's is not exactly W.'s strong point.
So it's even funnier, by which I mean stranger, that 300 aims to glorify democracy and freedom through violently stifling debate. Do Snyder and Miller realize they're trying to make an epic hero out of Karl Rove?
A few years ago, movie audiences first proved their desperate hunger for Greek-themed celluloid when they flocked like lemmings to the mediocre My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Against all logic or reason, the Nia Vardalos vehicle eventually became the most lucrative independent film in the history of time. Now that's desperation.
Last weekend, the Grecian formula was spil't again — and lo and beholdopolous, it's still turning Hollywood's hair green: Spartan propaganda piece 300 rode a gilded chariot to cash-money Olympus with a reported $70 million opening.
HOY HOY HOY, indeed. Hellenicism hasn't proven so lucrative since the last time I got cleaned out by the Greektown Casino.
300, of course, is Zach (Dawn of the Dead) Snyder's hyperreal adaptation of Frank (Sin City) Miller's Greeks-and-gore graphic novel. You probably already saw it, but refresh yourself with this thrilling trailer:
NEXT:T.A.M.S.Y. reviews 300. Yes, T.A.M.S.Y. actually saw a movie within six months of its release. I'm as amazed as you are.
A: No. You are pouring those bees into my face for nothing.1
1 In case this requires further explanation: While discussing how badly that Ghost Rider movie is going to suck, a Digg commenter cited this compilation of scenes from Nicolas Cage's The Wicker Man. I hadn't seen the film, nor these clips, and I found them deeply enlightening.
Try to imagine this as the montage that would be shown during the Oscars in a hellish dystopia where The Wicker Man had been nominated for Best Picture.
I'm almost curious to see the film now, just to know what series of events could have possibly led to (1) Nicolas Cage fist-fighting Leelee Sobieski and (2 through 100) whatever the fuck the rest of that was. But then I remembered I'm all out of weed. Also turpentine.
POST-SCRIPT: Wow -- "The Wicker Man" turns out to have directed by the (sometimes-)briliant playwright/filmmaker Neil LaBute, who was apparently not out of turpentine. He did a stellar job of covering up his involvement with this film, which appears to be the only stellar job he did involving this film.
LaBute's first two films were both very strong: In the Company of Men and especially Your Friends & Neighbors. And then he drove his career off a cliff. Several times. He's still a solid playwright, though, last time I checked. -- 10:16PM
CORRECTION: IMDb is wrong: LaBute did rewrite Anthony Schaffer's original screenplay. He's even Razzie-nominated for it (Wicker is up for five Razzies, including Worst Picture — although to LaBute's credit, he was bumped from the Worst Director category by Ron Howard). And maybe it isn't fair to say LaBute covered up his involvement with the film, since he'd publicly defended it a month before its release (and he's still willing to discuss it with crappy British e-rags).
Also, someone in Spokane, WA recently found this post by blog-googling for references to the director. Spokane is LaBute's hometown, so: Neil, if you're reading this, I still love you. -- 02/10, 1:39PM
A: ...or is it? The answer may surprise you. Unless you have no idea what I'm talking about, in which case, I refer you to this bit of news out of Sundance:
PARK CITY, Utah -- The organization responsible for rating movies announced changes Monday aimed at making the process more meaningful to filmmakers.
The Motion Picture Association of America said a longtime employee will become a liaison to filmmakers to offer advice on scripts and explain the ratings process.
"It's an attempt to listen and build relationships and see if there are some things we can improve," MPAA chief Dan Glickman told reporters. "There's an impression we haven't been as accessible or approachable."
What makes this particularly noteworthy is that the "impression" Glickman refers to -- that the MPAA is neither accessible nor approachable in regards to the process of rating a film -- provides the central thesis for Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated.
The IFC film's official site even offers visitors the chance to sign a petition calling for just this sort of reform.
TFINYR has already been nominated for Best Documentary Feature by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (unsurprisingly, An Inconvenient Truth won). Whether it will be recognized by the Academy will be revealed in a few hours.
My completely uninformed prediction: It will. And you have to wonder if the MPAA felt inclined to trumpet these changes first, as a bit of a preemptive strike against an Oscar slap in the face. Because if Academy voters officially honor Dick's filmic attack, it'll only provide more evidence that Hollywood hates the current film-ratings system (and by most accounts, it does).
Whether TFINYR has any chance to beat Al Gore to the Oscar podium doesn't really matter; in the ways that really matter, Kirby Dick may have already won.
(Um, unless the MPAA "changes" turn out to be little more than window dressing. Which is, you know, almost certainly the case.)
RELATED:This Film Is Not Yet Rated is released to DVD today. How convenient. IFC may very well have timed the release to coincide with this morning's Oscar noms, but the MPAA's announcement, of course, makes the film all the more timely.
UPDATE (10:25 AM): Dan Glickman has officially responded to this post. In fact, he reads The Answer May Surprise You so closely that he issued his response before my post had even been written. Damn, these guys are good. Anyway, his denials pretty much guarantee that I'm right.
The Oscar nominees have been announced, by the way -- and This Film Is Not Yet Rated is Not Yet Nominated. So please ignore the above prediction. It was obviously a typo.
Last night, I was complaining about how fast the Google copyright cops were, to have removed the new Simpsons trailer from YouTube so quickly. But I guess it was just a temporary glitch, cuz the link works fine now. Enjoi.
out of its Gatsbyesque plastic wrap one of these days. Until now, I only owned it so artsy girls would think I possess a vast and mysterious intellect.
. One of the best tracks is the Bergman-inspired, Spanish-flavored opener.
.
, excerpted here:
last week, and I found it to be pretty much the best film in the history of ever. 
. It seemed like a really awesome idea when I was five years old.
DVD is not available in a letterbox edition; Stanley Kubrick shot it in 
, which is supposedly 
. How convenient. IFC may very well have timed the release to coincide with this morning's Oscar noms, but the MPAA's announcement, of course, makes the film all the more timely.