Monk

I finally hear a voice speaking for me on the threat of the movie world turning exclusively 3-D. As it is pointed out, 6 out of 10 of the top-grossing films of 2011 were 3-D.

_ _ _

I am probably America’s only monocular film critic – meaning 3-D films (along with binoculars and View-Masters) have never worked for me. I was born 90-percent cross-eyed and now have – thanks to a series of eye operations beginning when I was 18-months-old – perfect vision in one eye and negligible vision in the other. The two eyes do not synch up to produce a single 3-D image. So I am coming out of the closet to take a stand for the roughly 700 million humans like me – one out of every 10 people, it’s estimated – who cannot physically process 3-D cinema. That’s many more times the percentage of people who need wheelchair ramps to access a movie theater, which all theaters are legally bound to provide.

-- Michael Atkinson

_ _ _

I'm not a big movie person anyway and could probably live well enough without them, but I do appreciate the luxury of checking them out and coming across a few movies than I do enjoy.

A new book is out offering us an exegetical look at modern horror movies that go back to the 1960s. I am not uninterested, but such a book goes low, low down on my virtual stack of 'wanna reads'. The book reviewer has some qualms about the work, and I want to keep this point:

Elsewhere the book poses questions it neglects to answer. The author quotes the director Brian De Palma — “There is just something about a woman and a knife” — and then wonders, “But what is that something?” without once considering the most obvious, phallic interpretation.

You can’t deliver the final word on horror movies if you’re afraid to look.

Aside from being obviously amusing, I think this hits on a more general problem when it comes to discussing books and movies and even social problems. Although life on the streets is as raw as it ever was, when we deal with issues on a formal, public level, we seem to have such a strong filter for only the most politically correct perspectives, a problem which I think the reviewer raises nicely here.

What a vulgar thought it is, right, to speak of remorselessly and repeatedly stabbing a sexy young woman unto a horribly violent death, 'fucking' her life out with a knife. Yet, as he says, how obvious! That this should be entertaining may be unfortunate but it's hardly a mystery. At least it is better to exorcise this male ferocity through movies and art.

I know I get a lot of therapeutic value out of working my virtual knife into the short-skirted babes in Grand Theft Auto 4. And I think our understanding of ourselves is enhanced when we accept this shadow underside rather than assuming we are essentially angelic beings except for a few monsters among us. The wiser heads have always known that there is a bit of a monster in just about all of us, albeit more in some of us than in others.

(Source: Ty Burr reviewing Jason Zinoman's "Shock Value" for The New York Times)

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's latest thriller, "The Skin I Live In," had filmgoers fleeing the theater Thursday night at its gala premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, due to some aggressively violent and disturbing content.

...

A second exodus occurred when Banderas' character had relations with his victim at the end of the film, when even some of the French, who have a reputation for a higher tolerance for disturbing themes than Americans, had had enough.

-- Fox News

Wow, a movie whose violent rape scenes are so disturbing that even the French vacate the premises is one I should keep in mind. Though, I haven't even seen "A Serbian Film" yet, and I wonder if I ever will. My passion for these things just isn't what it used to be. Though, the ready availability of free and fully explicit rape scenes on the Internet may be a factor.

I'm finally settled in the DVD world, rather than just being an alien visitor. This weekend, I watched "I Spit On Your Grave" for perhaps the hundredth time. This time, though, to give the experience a little more spice, I turned on Joe Bob Briggs' commentary and listened to that through the whole movie. He is listed as a cult film guru, and he made for interesting viewing. This DVD, the Millennium edition, also has a commentary track by the director, Meir Zarchi, and I intend to play that one the next time I watch the movie. I've tended to ignore these commentaries for the most part, but now I appreciate how they afford a little variety for much-watched movies.

And I can only appreciate that I'm enjoying this movie today in DVD, period, with or without commentaries. I recall too well the Bay Horse years of the early nineties when I despaired of ever seeing this movie again, in any form, thinking that the self-appointed censors had gotten their hands on it and shoved it into the memory hole, lost to us forever. But here I am enjoying it. This life doth have its little joys.

The director of “The Road” is an Australian, John Hillcoat, best known for “The Proposition,” and many crew members were Aussies as well. In conversation the “Mad Max” movies, the Australian post-apocalyptic thrillers starring Mel Gibson, came up a lot, and not favorably. The team saw those movies, set in a world of futuristic bikers, as a sort of antimodel: a fanciful, imaginary version of the end of the world, not the grim, all-too-convincing one that Mr. McCarthy had depicted.

“What’s moving and shocking about McCarthy’s book is that it’s so believable,” Mr. Hillcoat said. “So what we wanted is a kind of heightened realism, as opposed to the ‘Mad Max’ thing, which is all about high concept and spectacle. We’re trying to avoid the clichés of apocalypse and make this more like a natural disaster.”

-- Charles McGrath for The New York Times

Just recalling the book makes my eyes mist, if not so much about the characters and the story, then for what it may portend about the future. And the movie promises to capture much of that emotional value.

♠
Cooking my dinner, I catch a little bit of "12 Monkeys", that apocalyptic, time-travel movie, and I'm thinking that I'd rather be watching that movie than the one I have in my VCR, Bill Murray's "Scrooged", the movie I saved to tide me over this Christmas emptiness. I need to keep an eye out for "12 Monkeys". It's one for the collection. A re-watchable.

xXx

♠
We are starting to get some buzz for the upcoming James Bond movie, though we are a long way away before that will be coming to theaters, as the new Hollywood trend seems to favor giving its big movies a little buzz far in advance of their release, even before they are made. Of course, we are particularly interested in seeing how Daniel Craig will continue to evolve the character, after having given doube-oh-seven a new lease on life. The new director, Marc Forster, has some interesting remarks toward that end:

The ability to generate suspense from some of the more aberrant emotional states may serve him well in his new assignment, because Bond, as played in his most recent incarnation by Daniel Craig in “Casino Royale” (2006), seems, Mr. Forster said, “very isolated, a man who’s damaged in some way.” Mr. Craig’s Bond felt to him like “a completely new interpretation of the character,” he said. “This James Bond is darker, more tormented. He’s humanized, in a sense.”

And that, he said, is the quality that will allow the franchise to go on. “In the ’60s and ’70s, when Sean Connery and Roger Moore were playing the role, a large part of the appeal of the James Bond movies was the travel to exotic locations, but that’s not such an attraction anymore,” Mr. Forster said. “People travel a lot more now, and with the Internet they’re more aware of what the rest of the world is like. In a way the most interesting place for a James Bond movie to go is inward — deeper into Bond himself.”

I'm looking forward to it. I only hope they don't go too far down the poltical correctness route. Being studly is not like being a racist, and Bond doesn't need to be feminazi-approved, nor do we really need a bisexual Bond. Dark and serious is good, though, very good.

xXx

♠
I'm actually taping "Turistas" for the collection. Horror movies, at least those that aren't sexploitative, are not likely candidates for the collection. However, although this movie is not really sexploitative, there is some hawt babe-nudity and a certain pleasant camaraderie, and the scenes of shock and torture are actually quite limited. The story of anti-Americanism and the black market in body organs has some depth and bite to it, helping to make the whole package work, I think. It should be more fun than "Child's Play" to watch now and again.

xXx

♠
When thinking about old TV shows, "Mannix" is one that comes to mind. Apparently I'm not alone. If money was not an object, I could see myself getting the Mannix DVDs for old time's sake (sports jacket flapping in the wind, like a superhero's cape), provided that the series does eventually come out on DVDs. While browsing at Amazon, after being inspired by this article, I also develop a hankering to see the first season of "Police Woman".

None of this is going to happen. I find myself running tight for books that I have counted on getting into this winter. I don't expect to get any DVDs for a while.

( article )

xXx