Monday, December 26, 2011

Doug Asks Patrick Questions About Movies

Patrick knows a lot about movies. Doug has seen Heartbreakers dozens of times. In an effort to expand Doug's cinematic horizons, he'll be asking Patrick questions about movies in a column we're calling "Doug Asks Patrick Questions About Movies."

Don't forget to enter the F This Movie! Win Our Stuff! contest!

I know Citizen Kane is essential Orson Welles, but what other movies do I need to see in order to have a meaningful conversation with JB (don't say The Transformers: The Movie)?

Good question. Good question? I wanted to make sure I get this right, so I went right to the source and asked JB:

Well, every Orson Welles movie is worthwhile, but towards the end of his career, they get a little dicey because he was making them on such small budgets under such extreme conditions.

Touch of Evil, it seems to me, is essential viewing and one of the best film noirs ever made. The story goes that when Charlton Heston noticed that Welles had been signed to play the sheriff, he just assumed that Welles was directing as well. Apparently, that is why Heston agreed to star in the picture, and when this was made clear to Universal, the studio allowed Welles to direct as well. Welles wound up thanking Heston by essentially stealing the film from him-- turning the story of young Mexican-American go-getter into the story of a corrupt, washed-up sheriff.

His Lady from Shanghai is also essential noir and features the amazing "hall of mirrors" scene at its climax.

For examples of pure filmmaking, you can do worse than Welles' The Trial or F For Fake, which are both master classes in film editing. And of course, don't miss Welles' performance in The Third Man; it is one of the joys of cinema.


Doug -- Well, every Orson Welles movie is worthwhile, but towards the end of his career, they get a little dicey because he was making them on such small budgets under such extreme conditions.

Touch of Evil, it seems to me, is essential viewing and one of the best film noirs ever made. The story goes that when Charlton Heston noticed that Welles had been signed to play the sheriff, he just assumed that Welles was directing as well. Apparently, that is why Heston agreed to star in the picture, and when this was made clear to Universal, the studio allowed Welles to direct as well. Welles wound up thanking Heston by essentially stealing the film from him-- turning the story of young Mexican-American go-getter into the story of a corrupt, washed-up sheriff.

His Lady from Shanghai is also essential noir and features the amazing "hall of mirrors" scene at its climax.

For examples of pure filmmaking, you can do worse than Welles' The Trial or F For Fake, which are both master classes in film editing. And of course, don't miss Welles' performance in The Third Man; it is one of the joys of cinema.

Varsity Blues is a perfect movie. I mean, it has everything -- bone-crunching football action sequences, a great villain (Jon Voight), Ali Larter's whipped-cream bikini, a stripping teacher, "My Hero" by Foo Fighters, "I don't want your life," a cartoonish performance by Ron Lester (Billy Bob) BEFORE he underwent duodenal switch surgery (losing 348 pounds!), the Beek ... what was I talking about again? Oh yeah -- why aren't more movies like Varsity Blues?

Why are no two snowflakes alike? Why can you not hold a rainbow? WHY CAN YOU NOT TOUCH THE SUN?? You've answered your own question.

Five underrated Christmas movies -- go!

Once you get past the obvious choices like Die Hard and Gremlins and Home Alone and Christmas Vacation and, of course, motherfucking Reindeer Games, there's still a handful of Christmas movies I like to watch every year. THIS IS THEM:
  1. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang - Between this, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Lethal Weapon, Shane Black OWNS Christmas. Every single person should see and like this movie.
  2. Better Off Dead
  3. The Family Man - I can't defend liking this movie, but I'm already on record as not hating Brett Ratner.
  4. Go
  5. While You Were Sleeping - Sandra Bullock is a giant brown sweater.
I know this is a bad year for movies, but just how pathetic is it?

Apparently, it hasn't been bad at all, though most of us wouldn't know it. In his recent essay "Accept the Mystery" at AV Club, Scott Tobias calls 2011 a "quietly great year" for movies, by which he means that a whole bunch of good movies came out but we didn't see them. Most of the movies on a number of critics' 10 Best lists received only a limited release; some, like Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, didn't really get released at all. If you're a professional film critic who attended three to four film festivals this year, you probably saw a number of great movies and consider 2011 a good movie year. But the rest of us have had to make do with Tree of Life at best -- at BEST -- and lots of terrible Hollywood product at worst. Actually, there have been quite a few decent-to-good movies that have come out this year, but very few great ones (even my favorite of the year hardly qualifies as a "great" movie). So while I appreciate writers like Tobias trying to point us in the direction of some good stuff we missed or never had access to, it's hard to accept it when he talks about how great a year 2011 has been. He and I have had very different movie years.

What is your least favorite Oscar-winning movie of all time? And why? Show your work.

I haven't seen a lot of the most notoriously bad Best Picture winners (like The Greatest Show on Earth), mostly because I rarely seek out bad movies on purpose -- unless it has the words "Garbage," "Pail" or "Kids" somewhere in the title. But back when I gave any credence to the Oscars, I was pretty annoyed that A Beautiful Mind won Best Picture, because that movie is such blah barf that I can't even force myself to remember why it was the worst. Same goes when the award went to Gladiator, a movie I liked well enough when it was an entertaining summer movie about a GUY WITH A SWORD FIGHTING A TIGER, but which loses some shine when you start hurling awards at it. And though I didn't really hate it at the time, I find it funny that Crash won a few years ago. That movie is RIDICULOUS.

These days, I could care less about the Oscars -- not because I'm too cool for them or anything (there is very little for which I'm too cool, with the notable exception of School), but because they very, very rarely award the things that deserve it. Accepting that reality has freed me up to appreciate the one thing the awards bring to the party: they get people talking about a couple of movies that general audiences might not otherwise seek out, so movies like Once or There Will Be Blood get some attention they might not get if not for the Oscars. Lately, though, it seems more and more like the dog is eating its own tail; instead of a bunch of people seeing the movies that are nominated, the Academy just nominates movies that a bunch of people have seen. That's how The Blind Side wins Oscars (!), and why The Help will no doubt get a Best Picture nomination in the coming months (also because of RACISM). It's just another step on the Oscars' forward hurtle towards total irrelevance.

What was the question again?

6 comments:

  1. JB is so enthusiastic about Welles he repeated himself! :-P Personally I think "The Third Man" is Welles' pinnacle as a bigger-than-life character actor (yes, even more than "Citizen Kane" which isn't a putdown to the latter's story-telling and technical accomplishments) and "Touch of Evil" his best-directed movie. Even with studio-imposed edits done against his wishes the movie is still very good. With his wishes followed the restored director's cut version is just about the perfect end-of-the-cycle film noir, just as the snake was eating its own tale. The only movie of Welles
    I don't get the hype for is "The Magnificent Ambersons." Even edited/compromised as it is many people still hold it in high regard, but I think it's just boring.

    My least favorite Best Picture winner? "The English Patient" (permanently lowered the bar for getting an award by following the 'Oscar bait' template to a 'T'), "Crash" (lots of average-to-bad movies get nominated but few actually win; this is one of the really bad one's) and "Around the World in 80 Days."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually, JB only gave his answer once. I was the one repeating what he said, because the column is called "Doug asks PATRICK," not "Doug asks JB." It seemed only right. Also, I FORGOT ABOUT THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Ugh. Seeing that movie once might have been one too many times. THANKS for the reminder, which I mean both sarcastically and sincerely.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Patrick is being nice here and attempting to cover up one of the latest symptoms of my worsening dementia. You see, Patrick is being nice here and attempting to cover up one of the latest symptoms of my worsening dementia. What?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Happy New Year Gents - I just wanted to chime in and assure Patrick that at least one person got the joke.

    I'll be watching Citizen Kane for the first time this weekend so I'm interested to see if it gets me all bonered up for more Orson Welles. For some reason I've always had a hard time watching OLD movies but, after watching Scrooge (with Alistair Sim) over the holidays and really enjoying it, I think I may have grown out of my boredom with movies from before the 70s.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks, Sol. I was thinking it didn't come across.

    "All bonered up" is most definitely going to work its way into the FTM lexicon, so thank you for that.

    Let us know what you think of Citizen Kane. I hear it's very good! I wouldn't know. Black and white movies give me the YUCKS.

    Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Heheh - glad I could make a contribution.

    So I watched Citizen Kane and really enjoyed it. I wish I knew more about the history of film leading up to, and shortly following, that point as I think it would allow for a greater appreciation of why it was so ground-breaking. I do think it's telling that about 15 minutes in I had to double-check what anniversary it was as it didn't FEEL like a 70-year old movie - even without a lot of knowledge I just intuitively got that it was ahead of its time.

    Most of the acting was great - I am all bonered up for more Orson Welles - though not a typical dreamy leading man I found his performance very captivating.

    Was also really impressed with the makeup - I've seen less convincing aging effects in movies from the 90s.

    Interesting, compelling story - like how it was told out of order - I don't know, it all just works very well and I already look forward to giving it another watch. I may do so with the Ebert commentary turned on so he can help fill in some of my knowledge-gaps.

    Perhaps it has something to do with the quality of blu-ray versus what I may have seen on TV, or a maturing taste, or a bit of both, but I'm pretty excited to start (re)visiting some of these classic movies which always used to just immediately flick my boredom-switch. I've already known for years that Hollywood has been shovelling a lot of crap down our throats for quite awhile now so I look forward to watching some genuinely GREAT movies.

    ReplyDelete