Smiley's Tropical Escape

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:04:32 +0900

So, I watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium the other day. Don't look at me like that, I was on a nine hour flight across the Pacific. I was desperate.

Anyway.

I really wanted to like this movie. I really did. I like odd, quirky, feelgood movies. Especially ones whose main message is railing against the dying of the light and making every moment count. I'm a sucker that way. I mean, I like The Neverending Story. Hell, I like Toys. And I wish Emporium was of a rank with either of them.

Wonder Emporium did have a few noteworthy and memorable moments. There are a few genuinely sweet moments, a few genuinely comic moments, and even a cameo that put a huge grin on my face. It's just a shame that none of those moments had the movie's lead in them.

The movie has three plots: Boy must learn to make friends. Girl must begin to believe in herself. Man must rediscover his belief in magic. And all three will do so with the help of an unlikely hero - Mr. Magorium. Unfortunately, it doesn't really deliver on any of hem. Much. The standard elements are all in place and are all used well - you know the funny moment in the first act turns out to have emotional significance in the third; themes are presented with all the subtlty of a brick to the nose.

The trouble comes in that Dustin Hoffman, a capable actor in many respects, tried to play the title role as a version of Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka. And the movie really needed Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka.

What I mean is, Depp's Wonka is an oddball who knows he's odd. He knows that the rest of the world does not operate on the same mechanics that he does and so he pushes it further and further away until he is more clown than confectioner. Wilder's Wonka, on the other hand, did not care if the world thought him odd. He was perfectly content to run his factory, and by extension, his life, on his own terms and he thought only in terms of candy.

Magorium is weird and knows it. He revels in it. He speaks in deliberate non-sequiters, trying to impart an entire philosphers worth of wisdom into every quip and pun. His eccentricities seem affectations rather than genuine discombobulation. (It's a word. Trust me.)

The movie sets up a contrast between the weird and wonderful Magorium and ultra straight laced Henry, played by Jason Bateman in the movie. And here is where the above problem really begins to come through. Bateman's journey is so entirely disparate from anything Hoffman does; rather, his journey is manifest through the store itself (and it is a character in itself, as well as being the best part of the movie).

The ostensibly main plot, Natalie Portman's journey to believe in herself is one we've seen a thousand times. And here, again, we need a restrained, genuinely odd Magorium, rather than the deliberate clowning Hoffman gives us.

The other plot I mentioned gets dropped more or less completely at the end of the film.

The movie is worth...obtaining...if not buying or, really, even renting, if only to see the effects that have been put to marvelous use bringing the store to life. But that's about it. Dammit.

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Rendezvous

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 08:41:39 +0900

Rendezvous

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Script Frenzy 2007 Results

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:27:49 +0900

SF_Winn_120x240

Yup. Finished my script tonight. All 20,000 plus words of it.

Don't know if it's any good, don't really care. It's done. It can sit in the drawer for a few months until I'm ready to deal with it again.

I think I'm ready to go to bed now.

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Confessions: I Love Bad Movies

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:23:19 +0900

Tremors

I love bad movies. Well, not bad, like, Ed Wood level bad, but cheesy. You know, the goofy, weird, odd, bizarre, fun movies that are just a little embarrassing when you have to admit how much you enjoy them?

Yeah, those movies.

Recently in Japan, the prices have begun to come down on DVDs. A lot of the studios have been releasing their back catalog for under ¥1,000 yen (roughly $9.00 U.S.) per film. Primarily, of course, these are the older, more forgettable movies, as new movies tend to get the full, 19 disc special enhanced, reworked mega edition treatment.

All of which means, that yesterday, when I found Tremors for ¥900, I was ecstatic.

Tremors, for those who don't know, is a 1990 vehicle for Kevin Bacon about underground monsters in a remote location that like to eat people. The movie takes place in a small town called "Perfection". Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward star as two handymen who make a living doing odd jobs for the residents of Perfection. Over the course of a working day, residents begin to disappear in mysterious and gruesome ways. When the monsters causing the disappearances are found the surviving residents band together to take on the monsters in a battle of survival.

Tremors is, really, a very well done B movie. The plot hits a lot of familiar beats but does so in a way that is fun and entertaining while being just shy of cliche.

I loved this movie when I was in high school, but I don't know that I would have picked it up if I hadn't recently listened to First Showing dot Net's Hypecast featuring cult movies. Listening to that show reminded me how much I enjoyed watching good bad-movies back in the day. And re-watching Tremors just sealed the deal.

It's still true: I love bad movies.

And I think most people do. It's why any discussion of favorite films always contains a section of cult movies or guilty pleasures. It's why Ed Wood has a following in the first place. There is something about the odd or bizarre movie that strikes a chord with people.

Which is not to suggest that everyone likes the same cult movies. I love Rocky Horror Picture Show and everything John Waters has made. That doesn't mean that my mom would.

Further, I am not sure how far down to break the category. After all, I wouldn't really classify Crybaby as a bad movie. Odd, sure. Cult, yes. Bad? No. On the other hand, I don't think anyone can call RHPS a good movie even though there are few more fun movie-going experiences to be had on this planet. So I don't even know what term should be used: Bad Movies, Cult Movies, Bizarre Movies, Guilty Pleasures. They are all apt and there are examples of each sub category that I love.

The biggest question though, is why. Why do we love these movies? Is it because they're weird, or different, or unique, or do we just enjoy imperfection as an art in and of itself?

I think it is all of the above, in different proportions for different people. But for me, it's that sense of fun that permeates so many of the cult movies. Crybaby, Tremors, RHPS, Buckaroo Banzai, and countless others, they're all fun.

Now then, I have to go see if they've released Tremors 2 yet.

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Cinema, Films, Movies, and the Like

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:39:23 +0900

A few weekends back, I sat down with my wife and mother-in-law and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

My mother-in-law had invited us over for dinner and my wife thought it would be a good idea if we brought a DVD to watch after dinner. The trouble was, in the three months she had had a DVD player, my mother-in-law had watched all our best DVDs. So, my wife and I headed off to the video store, where I wandered up and down the aisles looking for something that I had not seen, but looked romantic enough for my wife and funny enough for my mother-in-law. My wife’s patience gave out at the thirty minute mark.

I walked back to the classics aisle and grabbed the first thing that caught my eye: Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. We rented the DVD and the evening proceeded as planned. The next day, I returned the DVD and called my mother-in-law to see if she had any request for the next weekend. She did not, but she mentioned how much she had enjoyed seeing Charley Chaplin and John Wayne movies when she was a girl.

I had known about John Wayne; in fact, some of the DVDs she had borrowed from me were Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Hearing that she also liked Charlie Chaplin, however, sent me searching through the stacks again, looking for a copy of the Little Tramp. When I could not locate a copy at any of the video stores in town, I decided to just buy the DVD and give it to her as a gift.

My wife, upon learning about this, was quite pleased, but also a little jealous. She wanted me to find movies for her; she wanted me to seek out the classics that I know she has not seen and for us to watch them together. This request sent me looking for more modern classics of movie making. (She has not, for example, seen E.T or the Goonies.)

I was having a lot of fun finding movies to show to my wife and / or my mother-in-law. Their very different ages and tastes made it a bit of a challenge to find something that I thought they both might like, and sometimes I went for something that I knew one would love and the other would, well, sit through. At the same time, I was getting a little bored. We, as a family, had sat through several movies, all of which I had already seen, sometimes three or four times. (The Wizard of Oz comes to mind; which, just for the headtrip, I highly recommend watching in Japanese.)

So, I turned my search to Amazon and found this book: The 100 Best Movies to Rent You've Never Heard Of: Hidden Treasures, Neglected Classics, and Hits From By-Gone Eras. The book details just what the title suggests, an eclectic and informed selection of movies that you have probably skipped over in the video store, if your video store even has them. These are not cult films, nor are they all that hard to find, the are more just, lost in the shuffle films - good movies that got passed over for one reason or another. The book arrived and I immediately sat down to watch (and enjoy) the first movie listed - The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn.

Soon after, I started looking for the second film in the book, Aguierre, the Wrath of God. I was now searching out movies for three different people: myself, with this new book of films that I had largely never heard of, my mother-in-law, who likes classic westerns and romantic comedies starring the elite of old Hollywood, and my wife, who likes action and romance in equal parts and who has not seen most of the movies of my childhood and teen years.

It was time to get organized.

I went to Lists of Bests (I'm SunToad) and searched out a couple of classic film lists. I chose to start with Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies as well as building a list based on the book I had bought. I then added the list for Steven Jay Schneider’s 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, just because.

There is a lot of overlap on these lists and I do not intend to complete any of them anytime soon, like within the next decade or two, but I do intend to use them to help me find movies for my family to watch; movies that we can all enjoy with our varied tastes and interests.

And, of course, because they are on the web and they are social, anyone who chooses to can play along at home. So, feel free to copy the lists and delve into the back shelves of your local video store or second hand emporium.

Good luck and thanks for reading.

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Book: Clerks and Chasing Amy - Two Screenplays

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:58:31 +0900

Clerks and Chasing Amy: Two Screenplays

Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith has been one of my favorite directors ever since I first saw Clerks, way back in the day. My friends and I would quote the movie constantly; my roommate in college even wrote Silent Bob's single line on a note-card and stuck it on the back of the door to our dormroom. We called it a conversation piece.

Time moved on and we continued to watch Kevin Smith movies - Mallrats and then Chasing Amy. Then we graduated.

Fast forward a decade and I have been becoming reacquainted with Smith's catalogue; after having watched Jersey Girl and Clerks II, I went back to the beginning and watched Clerks and Mallrats again. Clerks was much better than I had remembered and Mallrats was much worse. The benefit of being ten years older, I suppose.

Anyway, while on Amazon, I came across this book, "Clerks and Chasing Amy: Two Screenplays" and decided I would give it a look. The book is just what it says, the scripts for the two films, plus the Bluntman and Chronic comic book and a short introductory essay by Smith himself. It was an entertaining, if quick, read and I enjoyed being able to finally read all the thank you credits at the end without having to stare at my t.v. screen from a distance of only three inches.

What was most enjoyable for me, however, was that these scripts are un-edited. In other words, they contain all the cut scenes and original dialogue. (If you are unaware of the original ending of Clerks, I really recommend checking for it on YouTube or somewhere - it's...different.)

It was also fascinating to see how much of the dialogue was unchanged from the screenplay to the film, something that I imagine would not be true for, for example, a Robert Altman directed movie.

I was, however, a little disappointed in the lack of content. After all, the internet is full of screenplay and script repositories, so I feel a little cheated at having paid for them. I would have preferred more commentary from Smith, in the form of footnotes, or something, to justify the cost of buying the dead tree editions of the scripts. (It has been pointed out the the copyright / publishing date on this is 1997, when there was not so much on the internet.)

In short, the book is a quick, fun read for fans of Smith or for those who are interested in the process of filmmaking, but there is not much content that cannot be found online for those who look hard enough.

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Film: Broken Flowers

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:35:44 +0900

Broken Flowers

My wife and I sat down to watch Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers the other night. We had our popcorn and our tea and then we had vastly different reactions. Now, two days later, I can't get the film out of my head and I'm still wondering what it means.

The story is a pretty basic, if original one. Bill Murray plays Don Johnston, with a "T" as he says several times in the movie, a confirmed bachelor who has never really wanted anything else. The movie opens with Johnston's current girlfriend leaving him and immediately moves into the main plot premise. Johnston receives a letter with no signature and no return address, informing him that he has a son whom he has never met.

From there, Johnston is off on an adventure, prompted and urged on by his neighbor and best friend, to find the woman who bore his child and, possibly, his child.

The viewer is treated to four very different reactions by Johnston's old lovers as he forcibly intrudes on their lives. We see a warm welcome, cold, indifferent, and hostile in pretty much that order without ever finding out too much about Johnston or his relationships with these women.

The end of the film leaves several questions unanswered, and, although I enjoyed the movie, these unanswered questions are nagging. I don't feel that there were enough clues given in the movie to let the viewer draw any conclusions about Johnston's character, or what changes may have occurred within him, save one, which I won't spoil for the viewer.

Bill Murray is fantastic as always, keeping to his recent roles of mature man grows up, as seen in Lost in Translation and Rushmore. Jim Jarmusch is a director that takes some getting used to, but one who is well worth the effort of doing so. He provides a very lush, bright canvas for the viewer to work within, while keeping the story moving quickly and efficiently.

Overall, I really enjoyed it, while my wife hated it, and for the same reason: No definitive answer is given for any question raised by the movie. The viewer must look into the film and draw what conclusions he or she can without losing sight of the films main themes of loss for what one never had, and desire for something one has never known.

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