Bigger, Faster, Stronger*

- starts very personally and relatably.  Looking up to Arnie, Stallone, Hulk

- interesting to revisit the Cold War influences into films like Rambo, Commando

- Ass-kicking as an American product

- Narrator/"protagonist" really is an expert in it

- it's about the people who don't make it, which is most of us

- for a movie about 'roids it comes from a surprising angle

- tone for the movie is funny and intelligent, not sad and moralizing

- from this POV steroids are not that big of a deal

- story told from a broader world POV.  Bigger than just steroids-- more about competition.

- shows baseball scandal as a real debate about America's morality/value system

- Very thorough.  Shows the people who are helped by steroids. 

- Gets you into a position where you start thinking Steroids aren't such a big deal

- connecting news headlines from over the years effectively - Lyle Alzado, Chris Benoit

- It's all really about chasing things that don't exist

- starts getting a little bigger than its britches in talking about enhancements in everything

- a factual and psychological study

- the tragedy of humans trying to succeed beyond their means.

Goya's Ghosts

Sad to say but I still think Natalie Portman's best role ever was in The Professional when she was a kid.  Here in this movie you get the chance to see her act badly-- twice, as she plays the roles of a mother and the daughter.  More on this in a sec.  The film was directed by Milos Forman ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "People vs. Larry Flynt") and also stars Javier Bardem and Stellan Skaarsgard, both excellent actors.  Immediately I found it kind of odd that all the characters were supposed to be Spanish but were all talking English, and some didn't look very Spanish at all.  Javier Bardem felt like he was a Spanish guy playing an American guy with a Spanish accent so I found his accent a little strange.  The movie was fine but it was more of a political tome about the insanity of using torture to get confessions (timely, anyone?) than it was a film.  So, Natalie Portman played a woman put to "The Question" to get a confession about eating pork.  Seriously.  After confessing, she gets thrown into a prison where she's raped by a monk, has a kid, and has it stripped away from her.  She gets locked there for 15 years until Napoleon rolls in and takes over.  Basically, they show the passage of 15 years on Portman's face by making her look like the girl in the Exorcist and giving her fucked up teeth.  You could almost imagine her looking into a mirror after being done up and laughing her ass off.  Later, Goya finds her daughter who (shockingly) looks just like her except she has dark hair and fucked-up teeth again.  Portman's acting is pretty much just a reaction to what she looks like, and is completely lacking in depth.  After having seen the Goya exhibit at the Prado in Madrid, I'm really disappointed by this film.  Instead of examining the life of this guy, it really just uses him to lecture us about the director's political views.  Some redeemable scenes and educational but will not leave you satisfied.

Rachel Getting Married

It's cool to see a big Hollywood director like Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) go back and do a real independent film--though some of the film did feel like indie-film-by-number, like the title sequence, and some of the shaking of the camera throughout the movie, and the end credits.  That being said there were parts in the movie where I got really lost in the story, the emotions involved felt so real.  Movies like this can be tricky-- going in I kind of knew that there was a reason that the Anne Hathaway character (Kym) acted out, was tortured and weird, etc. etc. and i was expecting it to be early child molestation or something like that, but they handled the reason very delicately and unexpectedly, and i think the payoff was effective and really made you empathize with the Kym character.  I thought that the movie could've been about 15 minutes shorter-- they really take you through the whole rehearsal/wedding ceremony.  The director made it feel like you were also a guest at the wedding, watching along and participating, which is great if you've always wanted to be a part of a hippie/love-is-all-you-need/vegetarian family.  I liked that every character was torn between what they knew what they should do and what they really wanted to do, esp. Kym's sister.  Also really well done in the movie was the little reaction shots throughout.  I'm trying to use this tactic more and more in my own work, where you basically tell the whole story through the facial expressions of the characters.  Like when Rachel's anal best friend is giving her rehearsal dinner speech and you see these quick, one-second shots of people gristling and wincing at the mild inappropriateness of it.  This is definitely a movie by a director/writer that have lived a bit and know how to recreate reality-- it's material that could've been mauled by a younger director.  Overall it's definitely worth seeing.

The Assassination of Jesse James....

So this is a movie that would've been really great with a little more editing.  There was something really slow and dreamlike about a lot of the sequences which was great, but sometimes it got a little excessive.  And I thought the VO was a little too close to what was done at the beginning of "Magnolia" that made it feel too self-conscious about itself.  You could feel the director thinking too much, if that makes sense-- it's like a seamstress not covering up her stitches.  There's a whole section in the middle that could've been cut out but the beginning and the end are dynamic and Casey Affleck gives a ridiculously good performance as the ambitious, talentless, cowardly Robert Ford.  I think there's a little of that character in all of us.  In the end I thought it was a cool message about a legend growing weary of his legend and how in our culture today we all think we could/should be big stars even if we don't have the gifts to make it there.  I don't think hard work gets you all the way.

My Favorite Directors

People tend to look towards the past when naming their favorite directors:  Truffaut, Antonini, Hitchcock, Wilder, Altman, blah blah blah.  My favorite directors are pretty much exclusively guys that are still alive and working.  It's hard to watch an old movie, years after it was released, and feel the same resonance as something that you see right as it comes out.  Like "Chinatown," which I still think is a masterpiece, but I wonder how it would feel if I saw it in the theatre on opening night, before hearing any cineaste gush about how it's sooo amazing.  Anywho, here are my favorite directors not in random order:

1. Paul Thomas Anderson

2. Alexander Payne

3. Christopher Nolan

4. Terrence Malick

5. Stanley Kubrick (OK, he's an exception)

and then some other directors I also enjoy:

6. Spike Lee

7. Ryan Fleck

8. Scorsese (too popular of a choice, picking him doesn't mean much anymore)

9. Steven Soderbergh

10. Lasse Hallstrom

I'm sure there are a few I'm forgetting, but pretty much my TOP 3 choices represent my truly favorite filmmakers, and really I think PT Anderson is above and beyond any director working today.  I'd love to hear what you all think.

My Sassy Girl

So this is a remake of a hugely popular Korean movie-- and it went straight to DVD in the states.  That's why the title seems so weird because I think it's a direct translation (kind of like Chinese fireworks).  It stars that dude from "Bring it On" and that chick from "24" and was directed by the French guy who directed "Love Me if You Dare" which was a big French hit I guess.  The biggest problem with this movie was the writing.  Felt like it was written by some over-eager fresh out of college guy douchebag who has a relative in the business.  The director seems to do what he can to make it watch-able but his style is also full of gimmicks- whip pans, fast motion, sound effects and overly lush sets.  The font at the beginning of the movie was super annoying, that hand-written innocent kind (it's amazing how important the font and opening credits can be, but it is essential for setting a good tone).  There's too many fuck-ups by the director and writer to name them all but here's a few that really annoyed me: 

- after the girl passes out he carries her over his back back to his apartment in broad daylight;

- here's a line from the movie, verbatim-- "Yes I'm free and loving it!"; 

- when the country boy goes to the big city he says hi to everyone he passes on the Brooklyn Bridge (barf!); 

- the makeup and wardrobe are so immaculately clean and crisp, even for the main guy's sloppy best friend

- in general it's a 20 year old philosophizing on love and life and honestly, no one that young has the right to tell anyone how things are-- unless they grew up in the streets, and then that's usually only good for one movie.

Not to say there aren't redeeming things about the movie.  The concept is pretty interesting and there are some clever plot twists, but they've been pretty much wasted by the heavy-handed writer and director.  I think I'll see the Korean version to see if it's any better.  That reminds me of the movie "Il Ultimo Bacio" which became "The Last Kiss" in America.  Original far superior to piece-of-shit Zach Braff remake.  PLEASE STOP CASTING HIM.

Snow Angels

This film is by one of my favorite directors - David Gordon Green who also directed "George Washington," "All the Real Girls," and "Undertow".  People kind of see him as a second-rate Terrence Malick but I think he's more of an evolution of him.  One thing he can do is affect you and everything he does (almost everything) feels genuine and real.  It's amazing how you can tell from the first frame of a movie whether a director knows what the hell they're doing or not.  Everything in the movie plays out so casually.  Usually the more explosive the situation, the more casually it's played, like all the scenes right before Kate B's death.  There's no suspenseful angles or stirring music to move the scene, just the real emotions of the actors.  Reminded me of "Elephant."  I liked the use of the distant camera in the movie, shooting at a wide angle makes the audience feel like they are observing quietly, like you're spying on them.  At the same time there's not all that zooming in and out that "Friday Night Lights" overused.  Everything was great about the movie until the third act when it got all Hollywood-y and someone had to break out a gun.  Of course.  But other than that it's a film you can really examine to learn how the director slowly builds a feeling through tiny, human events.

Sex and the Shitty

So, decided to rent Sex and the City, using Natalie as the excuse to watch it.  We actually saw SJP in Paris this year and I got a nice paparazzi pic of her with my camera.  She actually looked pretty good though the 1/2 inch thick of foundation was kind of gross in retrospect.  So I was actually a minor fan of the show-- thought the writing was sharp and somewhat relatable, but the film, the film was horseshit.  It was way too long, the laughter was all canned and it really didn't get going until the wedding was called off.  The movie should have begun there instead of an hour beforehand with all this bullshit exposition that could've taken five minutes to set up.  The Charlotte character was one-dimensional and played to the worst of female stereotypes and it felt like the cast didn't get to rehearse for the scenes or get warm for the first half of the film.  There was some genuine/emotion by the end but it was too late.  Writing about this movie has bored me, so sorry if it has bored you too.  Don't see it.

30 Rock

So I've started watching 30 Rock on DVD after staying with my friend Phil in DC and hearing him laugh his ass off while watching it.  I decided it couldn't totally suck.  Took a while to get going but it is pretty good and it helps that each episode is under a half hour.  I really like the pacing of the show-- the editing is really fast and Tina Fey and cast are constantly in motion which I think is great.  It takes a few episodes to break through some of the character cliches (Alec Baldwin's robotic boss, Tracy Morgan's zany black guy, and Tina Fey's klutzy, post-feminist workaholic) but it does get to some genuine emotions.  I'm usually not such a fan of woman comedians (forgive me) but Tina Fey plays up the self-deprecation and desperation and I think that's what makes anyone funny.  I'm trying to remember examples of this but I'm not watching it now and I didn't write it down so I don't have an illustrative details.  I have this same problem when it comes to anything I do creatively-- I can come up with concepts but not examples.  Sonofabitch this thing is getting off track.  So the show is pretty good, but not great but I would recommend it.

My Film Journal

So, for a while now I've been keeping a film journal of all the movies that I watch.  It helps me to take note of interesting techniques and ideas in films that I don't want to forget.  It also helps me remember what not to do-- I've recently come to believe that a bad movie had more to teach you than a great one.  My annoying douchebag cousin once said "you love what you know."  And though he's still a douche, he was right on that one, and the more I delve into the world of film, the more passionate I become about it.