Movie Poster Of The Week – House Of Flying Daggers

A beautiful girl, swords, spectacular fights, and much defying of gravity.

How can you beat it?

A clean green mono-chromatic image for perhaps my favorite popcorn flick of the last twenty years.  Great depth and symmetry.  That intricate Asian patterned background.  And at the center, you just can’t go wrong with the perfect face of Ziyi Zhang.  Bare shoulders.  Forehead cross thingie.

This brighter, more colorful variation really pops as well.

Unfortunately, this modern Wushu classic has yet to get the remastered Blu-ray release it deserves.  The original film negative is reported to be terribly damaged, but I have to believe there’s a way they can save it somehow and recapture the beauty of this film in HD.

One of the most amazing visual cinematic feasts I’ve ever seen – exhilarating stuff.

Criterion, are you listening?

The Letterman Legacy

The news of Letterman’s retirement next year was the sort of inevitable news that is both a small relief and sad at the same time.

It’s a relief because any big fan of his knows The Late Show has been pretty weak the last few years, coasting on automatic pilot, and nobody wants to watch their hero in decline.  It was exactly the same when Carson finally called it quits.  It was time to say goodbye.  A late night host has to be in touch with the zeitgeist he is commenting on and making fun of every night, and with the two Jimmys (Fallon and Kimmel) doing that so adroitly now, Letterman just felt more and more irrelevant.  The bittersweet irony being that both of those younger hosts, along with Conan O’Brien and everyone else under 55, learned their trade from watching Dave in his innovative early days at NBC.

Hell, even that whiny-assed right-wing sellout Jay Leno, whose retirement earlier this year was a moment for true celebration, admitted that Dave was the man who changed the late night game.  Carson was Carson and he took his show with him when he retired and then died – nobody will ever replicate the old Tonight Show and what it meant when America had only three major channels.  But Dave’s silly snarky post-modern take on the talk show would become the template for a thousand imitators and is still resonating today.

Only people of a certain age now remember how shocking and exhilarating Dave was when he began in the early 80’s.  He was deconstructing TV on a nightly basis.  There were goofy stunts (the suit made out of velcro being my personal favorite) and edgy, unpredictable interviews that could veer off into real discomfort.  The low-tech no-hype honesty of it all was unbelievably refreshing.  Dave was not putting on a persona, he was just being his own mercurial self, waving away cigar smoke after every commercial break and reveling in the absurdity of broadcasting.  The show seemed aimed at college students like myself who were ready for a more irreverent approach that didn’t play by the rules.

One of my fondest memories is how Letterman became a bridge between me and my father.  My Dad was between jobs as a stock brokerage manager at the time and had uncharacteristically grown out his beard and become a bit of a layabout.  When I came home from Boston University, he and I would stay up and watch Dave’s show while sharing a joint.  I can still remember us both laughing so hard we were crying.  It was the first time I had ever had that kind of shared experience with my Dad and it felt wonderful.  I loved that he got the same thrill I did from this very hip young show.  Any generation gap just melted away.  Neither of us was certain what to do next in our life, but by god, we were going to get a little high and laugh our asses off every night.

I think Dave continued to be just as sharp and funny through the first couple years at CBS, but after he hosted the Oscars – and was widely seen as failing – something seemed to change in him.  It was like his own low opinion of his talent began to poison his delivery and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  He began indulging in this weird OCD-like repetition of bad punchlines.  (“Uma, Oprah” was just the start)  His ratings slipped, kicking off a long losing streak to the plastic Leno.  He fired a lot of his writers and hired older guys who wrote dated Catskills-type jokes.  It was sad to watch.  But even as his monlogues and bits suffered, he was still the king of the interview – creating electric and spontaneous moments with his guests.  He has always been especially good with women.  You can tell he genuinely enjoys sparring with them and they become absolutely radiant under his attention.  He is maybe the only host that could ever make kissing a woman’s hand at the end of an interview feel humble and respectful, not cheesy.

And yes, those are all young women, but I could just as easily show a photo of Meryl Streep and you’d see the same undeniable chemistry.  The guy really really likes women.  The conservative freaks (well aware of Letterman’s political views) tried to turn this into a criminal offense when it came out he had affairs with some women at work, but I’d much rather watch the fireworks that happen when he interviews a cute actress than watch Leno talk to her with all the sexual tension and finesse of a sixth grader.  A little libido makes for good interviews.  

Anyway, I’m glad he’s wrapping it up on his own terms and leaving his very considerable legacy intact.  

It will be fun to watch his final days, as all the celebrities come back to kiss his ring and say goodbye.  Unlike with Leno, all the media hoopla will be well-earned.

Truth be told, I’m much sadder that Stephen Colbert will have to abandon his alter-ego and the brilliant satire of The Colbert Report.  For my money, it’s simply the funniest show on TV, and great political parody is much harder to come by than yet another talk show. 

But that’s another column.  Back to Dave…

I would say I’m going to miss him, but the fact is I can see him every night in the best parts of what Fallon, Kimmel, O’Brien, Meyers, or anyone else, does on their shows.

He’s right there, clear as day.   

I can’t think of a better compliment.

Girls Acting Badly

Sometimes my terminal procrastination means that by the time I get around to writing a column everything I wanted to say has…well, changed.

Earlier this year, when Girls returned to HBO for its third season and Variety gave it a sneering pan, I was itching to write a column defending it from yet another round of attacks.

Ever since its 2012 debut, this show has been as much a punching bag as a critical darling…

It’s been accused of everything from nepotism to solipsism to racism, condemned for it’s “disturbing” sex scenes and the hilariously unabashed nudity of its creator Lena Dunhum.

I was baffled at first, then angry, at the vitriol directed at such a genuinely well-written show.  It seemed to me a lot of the attacks were fueled by jealousy.  Young creative types tend to react bitterly to one of their kind rising to the top.  It was ever thus.  Here this chubby girl with a really bad arm tattoo resembling an unfinished bunch of grapes was being hailed a kind of TV prodigy or phenom, a genius even.  On top of that, she even had the backing of the reigning king of comedy, Judd Apatow.

That’s tough to swallow when you’re struggling just to get an agent.

Other attacks came from bluenose folks offended by the sexual content – which is admittedly darker and more subversive than any female writer has ever put on the small screen.  Added to this group were the feminists made uncomfortable by Dunham’s expression of her un-PC fantasies and bad taste in boyfriends.  Then pile on the ever-vigilant Diversity Police who felt she had no right to make a show about four white girls in New York City…even though she’s clearly basing it on her life experience.  (This is the one I find most galling; I’m all for diversity, but I hate censorship whether it comes from the Left or the Right, and to force some half-assed quota on autobiographical art is beyond ridiculous)  Finally, throw in the misogynistic fanboys online who were clearly intimidated by Dunham for not being another cookie-cutter hottie.  How dare she take off her clothes!  Her exhibitionism was an affront to their stunted juvenile lust.

To say all of these people missed the joke is an understatement.

Thankfully, Dunham mostly just shrugged off the criticism and stayed true to her vision.

Let me put this out there right away: I do think Lena Dunham is a genius.

Oh, you bet.  In this case, the hype machine was absolutely right…

What else do you call a 25 year-old, already with a few film credits under her belt, who then writes, directs, produces, and stars in her own TV show which quickly becomes a pop culture touchstone?  You call her Ms. Dunham.  Because that’s some Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Woody Allen shit.  From the moment I watched the first episode I knew she was the real deal.  Anyone who has suffered through an indie film festival knows that every beginning filmmaker tries to write about the emotional chaos of being in your 20’s and almost every one of them fail miserably.  The subject matter is old news, but it’s her voice that makes it fresh.  She understands the best comedy comes out of brutal self-evaluation. Her character Hannah wants to be “if not the voice, a voice” of her generation …the same way Woody Allen liked to pretend he was a suave playboy in his early comedies.  The joke is the hubris of youth.  She’s not really concerned about speaking for her entire age group, but writing about her own neuroses.  If it sheds light on the larger human condition, then all the better.  Isn’t that the key to all great writing?

The best example is the fight scene between Hannah & Marnie at the end of Season 1.  Go and watch it on YouTube if you can find it.  It’s a three and a half minute master class in how to channel real hurt into something hilarious and electrifying.  It has the unmistakable ring of truth.    

Her dialogue so often rides a razorblade edge between comedy and tragedy, naturalism and genuine wit, without compromising any of it.  That’s an unheard of skill at her age – something Neil Simon could never completely master over a life’s work of 30 or 40 plays and screenplays!  The mind boggles at the work she could create over the next four decades of her career.  If she doesn’t implode for some reason, we have a lot to look forward to.  

Now, I’m a middle-aged guy…  Is some of her worldview foreign to me?  Yes, of course.  But that’s what makes it fascinating.  Obviously, that’s exactly why Judd Apatow responded to her work and wanted to guide the show.  And I was just as shocked as other people by some of it, but I always felt Dunham was venting the messy contents of her brain; that it was organic, not a contrived gimmick.  (Okay, the chest-jizzing in Season 2 was perhaps a bridge too far)   

Also, how can you not fall a little in love with someone so at ease in her own skin?  

She exposes her gloriously imperfect body at every turn, and it achieves just the result she’s aiming for – true intimacy.  She’s letting us in, stripping her character of any armor or vanity, and expecting us to recognize Hannah as “one of us”.  It’s part of that same brutal honesty.  She’s completely aware of the comic effect, but there’s also a brazen self-confidence alongside the vulnerability.  And I believe it’s precedent-setting, actually; that she changed something with those scenes – not just for young women with body-image issues, but for all of us.  Art takes giant strides forward when artists find new ways to be real.  That’s what she did. That’s why it pisses off prudes, feminists, and misogynists all at the same time – and that’s how you know she’s doing something right.

So, yeah, I was going to write all of this much earlier…

Then Season 3 happened.

It’s ironic I haven’t seen much criticism of the season online – presumably, the “haters” aren’t watching anymore and the fans are already sold – but I thought it was a pretty huge stumble.  Oh, there were still some great moments here and there, but overall it was a mess.  

The drop in quality may have been a product of Dunham handing over scripting duties to other writers, as even the most devoted showrunners eventually are forced to do.  Or maybe writing her upcoming book caused her to lose focus. Whatever the reason, the season felt fractured and frantic.  It jumped all over the place, never found it’s rhythm.  None of the individual episodes had a feeling of being a satisfying chapter on their own.  None of the four leads were given a full story arc.  Poor Marnie and Shoshanna were almost completely wasted.    

This while the show wasted time introducing too many new characters – all of them terrible people…and not in a funny way.  Gaby Hoffman’s character, Adam’s mentally ill sister, seemed to drop in from a horror movie.  Hannah’s squabbling aunts and angry cousin were much too broad and forced.  Richard E. Grant’s drug addict was a good idea, but underutilized.  It felt like there were missing episodes needed to fill in these subplots.  Louise Lasser goes from meeting Jessa in one episode to asking her to help her commit suicide in the very next – I literally had to check the guide to see if I missed a show.

But why add on any of these people when the leads are being so underserved?  

For instance, Hannah’s intriguing struggle with OCD was casually tossed away after one episode…

Why?  It could have been truly groundbreaking stuff for a comedy series.

The episode where Hannah tries role-playing in an effort to spice up her sex life with Adam (problem: she “rewrites” the scene in the middle of having sex) had a bit of the old magic, but Adam, always aggravating, has become so inconsistent as a character – loving boyfriend one minute, rage-filled weirdo the next – that he’s really the show’s biggest liability.  If the intent was to get us to understand him better, they failed completely.  Again, I can only speculate that Adam is based on a real life Exe that Lena Dunham still has conflicting feelings about and therefore cannot be “fixed” as a character.  This happens to writers.  Erich Segal famously wrote Love Story about a girl who rejected him in college – so it’s no surprise that Ali MacGraw is kind of a bitch and dies at the end.  The anger is right there between the lines.  Dunham needs to move on.  Whoever Hannah dates next can be freaky, just hopefully more comprehensible as a real human being.       

However you couch it, transitional season or treading water, it was a major letdown.

Right now they are beginning production on Season 4 and I have to believe both Dunham and Apatow (who is no slouch, obviously) are astute enough to do a full post-mortem and bring the series quietly back to center.  After all, I’m just holding it to its own high standard.      

I’m still a fan and Dunham is still a genius…but unfortunately, Girls joins that long list of shows that has at least one bad season ‘tripping up’ the run.

But hey – the show, like Dunham herself, is only human after all.

Catching Up With The Rabbit

Hey folks, it’s been a while…

I have so much to comment on and I’m way too late.

First of all, the Oscars.

If you read my post last year, you know I love the obligatory photo of the smiling foursome of winning actors.  These four are a little more reserved than usual – no clinking of the Oscars – but still a happy and attractive bunch.  Lupita Nyongo is a glowing change of pace and welcome “surprise”.

What was particularly nice this year was the sincerity of the acceptance speeches.  They all gave very genuine and heartfelt speeches, especially Lupita, whose emotion was so exhilarating and refreshingly un-pretentious – actually, much like her “competition” Jennifer Lawrence the year before.  These are the moments I watch the Oscars for, when people from out-of-nowhere win the lottery and we all get to live vicariously through them and celebrate the victory of talent over the longest of odds.

Otherwise, I thought the show was pretty good overall.  Ellen maybe relied on the audience stuff a little too much, but I liked the way she relaxed the crowd and made the whole thing more accessible.  I would definitely ask her back for next year.  It moved along at a fair clip, the music was generally good.

Of course, the same cynical critics were out the next day carving it up like a Thanksgiving turkey.  That never changes.  I love when people complain about the length of the show as if it’s something new.  It’s like complaining about the length of the Super Bowl!  (Which this year would be apt, given the performance of the Broncos)  I do have to agree with the people who criticized the film montages.  I usually love those segments, but this year they seemed pointless.  Even the In Memorium section wasn’t that well put-together…and as much as I admire Bette Midler, it is probably time to retire “Wind Beneath My Wings”.  Almost any other song would have landed better.

Generally, I was happy – but maybe that has more to do with the two bottles of champagne we drank and the fact that I got 22 out of 24 on my Oscar pool!

I didn’t win much money, but it’s been years of losing and a matter of (wounded) pride.


What else?  

True Detective, the HBO miniseries, was all the buzz the last couple months.

I was hooked like everyone else, but in the end, probably didn’t love it quite as hysterically as some of the other fanboys online.  It was slightly too contrived and self-aware.  But, man, it delivered some exciting moments.  The actors did an amazing job and the dialogue was often a real treat.  I’m on board for the next season, anxious to see how they change up the tone and setting and who they cast as the leads.  Rumor is it will be two female detectives.  I just love the idea of anthology series becoming hot again – it would make TV so much more interesting.

Meanwhile, the most memorable thing about THIS season was…


…Alexandra Daddario, who just about broke the internet with her nude scene.  It was one for the ages.   Wow.  It’s safe to say she has a dedicated following now.  


Words fail me.  Thank you?  God bless you?  Excuse my drool.

Ahem.  No good segue here…

Like so many movie fans, the tragic death of Philip Seymour Hoffman hit me hard.  It’s not an exaggeration to say he was one of the most brilliant actors of our time and the fact that we have been cheated out of 30 or 40 more years of his genius really stings.  However, great talent is often coupled with great personal pain…and at least now he is at peace.

Not that I would have ever actually been able to get it made, but I long had a film idea that involved Hoffman and Jack Black as middle-aged fuck-up brothers with nothing but failure and each other to lean on.  I think it could have been a classic pairing.  I would have loved to see how they bounced off each other comedically and the natural pathos underneath that bond.  I think Black is a hugely underrated talent.  I predict he will be Oscar-nominated himself someday.


Can you see it?

Somebody would definitely have put those two together…

I also finally caught up with a lot of movies I hadn’t seen  –


I thought Dallas Buyers Club was excellent and deserved all it’s awards and more.  I was surprised the director didn’t get nominated – he injected such anarchic energy into what could have been a staid TV movie.  Same goes for Nebraska – which would have been my choice for Best Original Screenplay instead of Her.  Bob Nelson, just another anonymous working hack of a screenwriter, wrote it over twelve years ago and it’s just beautifully constructed and paced.  

All Is Lost, with Robert Redford, was less impressive than it’s reputation in my opinion.  I think it would have worked much better with a different lead.  Redford has never been able to show true vulnerability as an actor.  That’s just not what he does.  The best we get here is close-ups of his weathered leathery face, but there’s nothing much behind it, so, I never felt the desperation of his situation the way I should have.  It’s a shame but Redford is ultimately a big disappointment these days, as an actor and as a director.  He runs a mean film festival, I’ll give him that.

Just look at what Bruce Dern does with every scene in his film, whether he has any lines or not – the way he communicates so much with so little, a mere flicker of an eye – the way he allows himself to be not just vulnerable, but frail, with all vanity thrown to the wind – this is what separates a gifted character actor from a rather limited leading man who no longer can play the romantic lead.



Redford may be old, but he won’t allow himself to BE old on screen.  He has never let go of his vanity.  In his whole storied career, he has never really transformed himself into another person.

He was just a movie star.

Which brings us right back to the great loss of this man…

That’s it for now.  

Movie Poster Of The Week – Rocky

Utter Simplicity

Some of the very best poster images are the very simplest.  They not only manage to sum up a two hour movie in one image, but also create something that becomes iconic in pop culture.

This is one of those.

You have to cast your mind back to the original 1976 Rocky – before it was cheapened by countless bad sequels.  

Who would expect a boxing movie to be sold with such an elegant, even poetic image?  

There are so many interesting choices here…


First of all, they could have used a picture from the climactic boxing match, promised the audience lots of violence and action – no matter how dishonest that would be – but instead chose to focus on the movie’s love story.  They knew the key element of the film was it’s heart.  Sure, the big fight is exciting stuff, but the movie really soars when, after taking a beating, eyes swollen shut, Rocky yells desperately for Adrian and they embrace in the ring.  He’s the winner even though he lost.  That paradox is what’s powerful. 

Secondly, they chose to show the couple walking away from us.  Since we can’t really see their faces, it forces us to examine their body language…  Adrienne’s calm posture and look of adoring support and Rocky’s hulking gait and the punch-drunk tilt of  his head.  Most of all, it makes us focus on their tightly-gripped but gentle hand-holding at the very center of the picture, the unshakable connection between them.  And it highlights the contrast in their appearance – her chaste pantsuit and goofy hat and his bloody/sweaty/dirty boxing trunks.  Beauty and The Brute, if you will.


Thirdly, by limiting it to a black-and-white image, it communicates gritty realism.  Which is true, at least, of three quarters of the film’s running time.  And, yet, by showing them alone in silhouette, with no setting or background details at all, it tells us there is something almost mythic about their love.  They are above and beyond the not-so-pretty circumstances of their lives.   The endless white around them is purity itself.  Which is also an accurate representation of what made the movie so special. 

Finally, there’s that tagline which, again, underplays the drama and highlights the emotion instead.  He’s not just lucky for getting a shot at the championship…he’s lucky for finding love. 

Even the contrast in typeset – his name in big block letters, but the tagline lower-case, with a period, not an exclamation point – reinforce that this is the story of a nobody who becomes a somebody.     

It’s really an amazing marriage of advertising and storytelling.

Of course, the other poster they used – the famous shot of him raising his hands in the air after running up the museum steps, also seen from behind – is even more iconic.  And is equally restrained, when you consider the kind of lurid boxing (even bloody) imagery they could have built a campaign around.  This subtlety was probably a bit of a lucky accident.  At the time, a boxing movie was considered incredibly passe (a year later the George C. Scott parody film, Movie Movie, would spoof 1930’s boxing movies).  The studio’s advertising department would have been keenly aware of this perception and was likely trying to downplay the actual plot of the movie as much as possible…as well as get women into the theatre.

But, no matter how pragmatic, they created great movie art in the process.

Of the two classic posters, this one is my favorite.


It just sings.       

Murdering Another Classic

Albert Finney Can’t Believe It Either

If you happen to read my piece on the recent updating of Carrie, you know my disgust at the epidemic of pointless remakes that continues to plague Hollywood…

But even as jaded as I’ve become, I was still surprised how angry I felt when I heard Ridley Scott plans to remake the 1974 classic Murder On The Orient Express.


This is just a whole new level of stupid.

Granted, it’s very early days.  I’m hoping some executive comes to his senses and nixes it down the line.    I’ve already had to endure bad remakes of The Thing, The Bad News Bears, The Heartbreak Kid, The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3, on and on.  But even those examples make more sense than this idea.  This is wihout a doubt the worst candidate for “re-imagining” I’ve ever heard.

Let’s start with the teeny tiny little matter of the original film being ABSOLUTELY PERFECT.

You might think this is a subjective opinion on my part.  It’s not.

It can’t be done any better.  Period, end of story.

The late great Sidney Lumet simply created one of the lushest, most decadently enjoyable entertainments ever made. He directed an incredible all-star cast (Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, etc) in the ideal realization of Agatha Christie’s most ingenious mystery.  What else could you want?  It’s a big fat slice of old-fashion escapism.  A comfort movie of pure class.  And because it was such a highly-stylized throwback (and anomaly) in gritty 1974, the film has never dated.  It’s as creepy, smart, funny, exhilarating, and ultimately, moving, as it was the day it was released.

(Which, as I remember, was Christmas.  I have a very vivid memory of going to see it on an appropriately snowy Christmas Day with my family…shuffling into the warmth of Denver’s huge old Century-21 theatre – long gone today, of course – fully packed elbow to elbow with people…and two hours later, wallking out with that feeling only a real “movie-movie” can give you)

Let’s also ignore the fact that it was ALREADY remade for television – TWICE.

Hell, there’s even been a video game.

No, let’s just skip to the really really stupid part.  Why in the world would you remake a “whodunnit” where the answer to that question and the twist solution to the mystery is A) Everything, B) Extremely Famous, and C) Instantly ‘spoiled’ by pressing a button on YouTube?  What’s the point??

More Brilliant Art By Amsel

As always, it seems to be only the name they want.  A Baby Gap version with an entire cast is in their early 20’s?  Updated to a modern-day setting even if it makes no sense?  With whiplash editing, EFX and music stings?  Maybe a climactic chase on top of the train?  Or a CG avalanche?  If it’s not a shot-for-shot Psycho thing, then all they can do to justify it’s existence is tart it up and change it for change’s sake.

(I direct you to the god-awful Sleuth remake by Kenneth Branagh)

Eventually they won’t be able to resist changing even that iconic ending to something, uh, “better”.

…As the name gets shortened to “Murder Express!”.

Hollywood is beyond shameless now.

They have become a jonesing heroin addict in a skid row doorway willing to drink cough syrup if they have to…just to get a faint echo of a past thrill.

Or maybe I’m being too kind.

“Can you fucking believe it?” “I cannot, Sir”

–RR

Breaking Perfect?

It’s been funny, and sometimes surreal, reading the reaction to Breaking Bad this week…

I read some columns/reviews that sounded almost hysterical in their condemnation of Walter White, a fictional character on a TV show.  They couldn’t believe how evil he was.  They scoured their Thesaurus for words that could adequately describe the level of his evil.  They wanted to make sure we knew “he’s NOT A HERO!”  Presumably, in case we felt a sudden desire to shave our heads and start that meth lab in New Mexico we’ve been dreaming about. And if we identified or felt for him any way – or just found his downfall exciting – then we must be very sick individuals who really need to explore our conscience.

On Huffington Post, Maureen Ryan wrote a long, tedious column on the “Oxymandias” episode, breaking it down moment by moment like a pretentious English Literature professor at a third rate college. Helping us to “understand” it.  Finding metaphors within metaphors, symbols within symbols.  Basically rewriting it for us with her own private spin.  As if we needed it explained, as if it’s not a piece of entertainment that either works (oh boy, did it) or doesn’t.  It was one of the most self-indulgent, solipsistic pieces of crap I’ve ever read online.  And she did it with no wit or sense of humor at all.  But, the punchline was that she had somehow completely missed the point of the phone call scene towards the end of the episode.  That’s when Walt spews vitriol at Skyler over the phone…then we realize, as Skyler does, that he is saying all of it for the benefit of the eavesdropping cops – in order to absolve his wife on record and keep her out of  jail.  There are multiple emotional layers to it, but there is no doubt Walt is putting on a performance. The writer of the episode verifies this herself in an interview.  But Miss Professor Critic is so traumatized by his words that she doesn’t “get it” and calls it the ultimate show of Walt’s evil.  All the subtle nuance and shades of grey (Walt’s tears, Skyler says “I’m sorry” and means it) that the writers have so painstakingly put into every episode of BB for the last six years totally eludes her.

Dozens of readers corrected her, told her to watch it again – so she writes ANOTHER long-winded column doubling down on her mistake and accusing her critics of being, essentially, wife-beaters.

As absurd as it sounds, that was the implication.  We had become too attached to Walt and we were blind to the fact that he was a monster.  His rant was bigger than we knew: It was the bile of a man (read: like all men) that has secretly hated his wife from the start.  We were just too misogynistic ourselves to see clearly.   That’s why we “attacked” her for her mistake.

When the truth is, just like Walt, her ego could not allow her to admit she was wrong.

Now, let me be clear.  I am very aware there is a group of idiotic fanboys who have heaped abuse on Skyler’s character (and even worse, the actress) over the years simply because the woman didn’t want her family in the meth biz. That’s just stupid.  And absolutely misogynistic.  But I think the vast majority of the audience has plenty of sympathy for her dilemma.  It’s just that Walt is our PROTAGONIST.  He is our main character, the one we have been following from the start.  We know more about him than even his wife does.  We’ve seen him change.  We’ve seen him do terrible things.  And we’ve seen the humanity that still peeks through after all the carnage and destruction he’s caused – the chemistry teacher and family man still there underneath the goatee.  So, of course we still feel for him. That’s the point!  And there’s still some small part of us that hopes he succeeds in some small way even though we know he is doomed and deserves the certain death coming his way.  Warner Brothers figured this out in the 1930’s.  If a character dies at the end, he can do just about anything first – and we get to go along on the wicked ride, guilt free. Film & TV history is littered with anti-heroes, from Michael Corleone to Travis Bickle to Tony Soprano, who we find oddly compelling despite their flaws.  Doesn’t make us all homicidal sickos.

(Although, I like to think Tony Soprano did a bullet dance in that diner before the Journey song ended.  In my book, he was much worse than Walt.  Now THAT was a misogynistic series)

What upsets me is this supposedly intelligent critic is denying the very complexity that this incredible series is built on, the moral ambiguity that has made it an instant television classic.

But she’s not the only one.  I read several pieces with the same silly bent.  By folks with the same apparent lack of viewing comprehension.  TV has evidently gotten too smart for it’s own critics.

This guy at least makes a few good points before he gets carried away.

So why all the sudden finger-wagging moralism?  Why do we need to be told by these people how we are supposed to feel about Walt and his tragedy?  Have we become so PC and fragile that we can’t take a dark ride in the Tunnel Of Sin?  Or is it just that everything is easier to digest in black and white?

Whatever the reason, I find it condescending.

Especially since Vince Gilligan and his writing staff have crafted The Perfect Final Season…

Along with all the gasps and twist & turns we’ve come to expect, they have surprised us with many moments where Walt proves to not be as far gone as we thought. When Hank shows up in the desert, Walt calls off the Nazis and tells them not to come.  He surrenders.  He yells for them not to shoot, even though he is in handcuffs and on his way to prison.  Then he offers his entire fortune, 80 million dollars, to save Hank’s life. (One of these critics said this had more to do with his desire to “control people”.  Oh shut up!  He was desperately trying to save Hank’s life, period)  Then he is devastated when Hank is killed.  Not because it “lays bare his hypocrisy”, or any such intellectual bullshit, but because this guy was his brother-in-law and he had honestly believed he could keep his criminal deeds from coming back and hurting his own family.

Yeah, yeah, he turns really nasty on Jesse – because he, rightly AND wrongly, blames him for Hank’s death. But I don’t think that story is over.  I have a feeling that machine gun in Walt’s trunk is going to save Jesse’s life, and that Jesse will be the last person Walt speaks to before he dies…

I think they’re going to give our monster a small measure of redemption.

I may be wrong.  If so, I’ll be glad that Breaking Bad faked me out yet again.

I like Walt.  He’s completely messed up, but I like him anyway.

Sue me.

And PS: It’s a fucking TV show.

Movie Poster Of The Week – The Bad News Bears

Not the best resolution on this picture, but it’s the best I could find…

A lot of the posters I highlight in this column will be from the 1970’s – not only because it is a favorite film era for me personally, but also because some of the best poster artists worked at that time.  This was before the much-more pedestrian use of photography became the norm for movie art in the 80’s and 90’s.

Jack Davis, the very distinctive MAD Magazine cartoonist, was the perfect choice for The Bad News Bears in 1976.  His wacky, juvenile, anarchic but sly drawing style fit the story of a misfit little league baseball team like an old worn-in catcher’s mitt.

Zoom in and check out the details of the motley crew in the background.  Has anyone ever captured Walter Matthau’s hound-dog mug any better?  Probably only Al Hirschfeld in the New York Times.  Davis gets the attitude just right.  Tapping the ash from his cigar and cradling a beer bottle.  Tatum O’Neal at age 14 may have been more of a challenge and the likeness is a little more generic, but he captures her confidence.  Hard to believe now, but at the time, a girl playing little league baseball was still controversial, almost a political statement. Her pose on the poster says: “What’s the problem?  Deal with it.” The whole irreverent style tells us, that despite the young cast, this is NOT a kid’s movie.

(And it wasn’t…  It was actually a pretty sophisticated satire on the American sickness of competition, the belief that winning is everything.  Like most 70’s films, it had a blunt unapologetic edge.  Bill Lancaster – yep, actor Burt’s son – wrote an absolutely brilliant script, and went on to write The Thing as well)

The Bears, breaking out the beers

The fact that Davis was the artist for all those wonderful movie parodies in MAD Magazine and was here using those talents to advertise the very same movie they would later mock was a kind of meta-perfection. That’s why I love it.  It’s not the most beautiful piece of art on it’s own, obviously, but it captures a pop culture moment and is a sublime representation of a classic comedy.

Look at the weak airbrushed rip-off art they made for the weak airbrushed remake in 2005.

Ugh.  The kids have been literally smoothed over and made “cool”.

They even try to make freakish Billy Bob Thornton look good.

You could write a whole thesis paper on how this sums up the different eras – the one sloppy and wild and creative, the latter cleaner and prettier and still trying to imitate the earlier time.

It also contrasts a true artist with a mere illustrator.  (Sorry, Anonymous Studio Hack)

On top of his enormous legacy in hundreds of issues of MAD, Davis did similarly gonzo posters for Stanley Kramer’s It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Woody Allen’s Bananas, and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye.  

Like all the greats, you know his work instantly when you see it.  It’s wonderfully rude.  It’s ridiculous, busy, overcrowded with detail.  Wikipedia says all his characters have “distorted anatomy…big heads, skinny legs, and extremely big feet”.  Yeah, so?  What’s the problem?  Deal with it.

Long live da’ Bears.  The original uncool messy ones, with big heads and feet…

And long live Mr. Jack Davis, who turns 90 this year.

The Return Of ZATOICHI

Movie geeks rejoice!

For fans of the Blind Swordsman and his flashing cane-sword: Christmas is comin’ early, baby!

This week, Criterion announced the upcoming release of the whole Zatoichi film series in a Blu-ray/DVD combo box set, with brand new completely remastered transfers.

Well, ALMOST the entire series.  And I’ll get to that in a minute…

But first, if you have no idea what I’m talking about – well, I envy you.  It means you have yet to discover this ridiculously entertaining franchise and in that case you’re in for a real treat.

Criterion does a good job of summarizing the series –

The colossally popular Zatoichi films make up the longest-running action series in Japanese history and created one of the screen’s great heroes: an itinerant blind masseur who also happens to be a lightning-fast swordsman. As this iconic figure, the charismatic and earthy Shintaro Katsu became an instant superstar, lending a larger-than-life presence to the thrilling adventures of a man who lives staunchly by a code of honor and delivers justice in every town and village he enters. The films that feature him are variously pulse-pounding, hilarious, stirring, and completely off-the-wall. This deluxe set features the string of twenty-five Zatoichi films made between 1962 and 1973, collected in one package for the first time.

Colossally popular yes, but I’m still shocked by how many American movie lovers have never even heard of these films.  I found them very late myself.  In 2003, I stumbled onto film #5, Zatoichi On The Road, on the Independent Film Channel’s weekly “Samurai Saturday” matinee.

Up till then, with the exception of a few Kurosawa classics, I had zero knowledge of the Samurai genre.  I think I lumped them together with the cheap badly made Kung-Fu movies of my childhood.  Nevermind that Samurai warriors are Japanese and Kung-Fu is Chinese – what the hell did I know?

Suddenly, my finger was frozen over the remote control, my jaw dropped…

I was watching this chubby blind guy who seemed to be a strangely brilliant combination of Charlie Chaplin and Clint Eastwood – a slightly bumbling and big-hearted defender of underdogs who, when necessary, took out the bad guys with the most amazing badass swordfighting skills ever put on film.

I’d never seen anything like it.  I was instantly hooked.

It was the beginning of an obsession, not just for the rest of the series, but for all the films of the late great Shintaro Katsu.  I just couldn’t believe this wonderful performer and filmmaker, a screen legend in Japan, had been completely ignored by American audiences in the 60’s and 70’s.  (And 80’s, 90’s…)  How was that even possible?  Here was a kind of parallel series to the James Bond films or Spaghetti Westerns and a few subtitles kept them off our screens?  I even lived in Hawaii and regularly went to a drive-in on Oahu where I was exposed to exploitation films of that era – how was Zatoichi not on any of those double and triple bills??  That’s when I realized the full extent of our cinematic xenophobia.  It opened my eyes, made me wonder what other great foreign popcorn classics had slipped past me.

Anyway, the chubby blind guy has made it to High Definition now, so all is forgiven.

So, as they say, the set includes all 25 original films from 1962 to 1973…

The Tale of Zatoichi / The Tale of Zatoichi Continues / New Tale of Zatoichi / Zatoichi the Fugitive / Zatoichi On the Road / Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold / Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword / Fight, Zatoichi, Fight / Adventures of Zatoichi / Zatoichi’s Revenge / Zatoichi and the Doomed Man / Zatoichi and the Chess Expert / Zatoichi’s Vengeance / Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage / Zatoichi’s Cane Sword / Zatoichi the Outlaw / Zatoichi Challenged / Zatoichi and the Fugitives / Samaritan Zatoichi / Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo / Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival / Zatoichi Meets The One-Armed Swordman / Zatoichi at Large / Zatoichi in Desperation / Zatoichi’s Conspiracy 

…But not the final one – simply called Zatoichi The Blind Swordsman – made much later by Katsu in 1989.  I can only guess some kind of rights issue got in the way.  The omission is a bit of a bummer, but also makes a little sense when you think that a four-season Zatoichi TV series and a decade of absence separate those first 25 films from Katsu’s swan song.  It’s easier to see that film as it’s own unique entity.  I just hope someone else releases it on BD and does a similar remastering.

The GOOD NEWS is that film #14, Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage, which had it’s own rights issues and was only available in crappy pirated versions on DVD, is back in it’s proper place and the continuity intact.

There has already been some quibbling among the fanboys on Blu-ray.com about the size of the set, the “needless” inclusion of the DVD’s, and the cardboard sleeves that hold the discs, but it hasn’t dampened anyone’s excitement. Let’s face it, with the history I just described, this “niche” series may very well have never reached BD at all.  And now it will be preserved for the ages in beautiful Criterion-style clarity.

It’s available for pre-ordering on Amazon for $157.  Releases on 11/26.

Or, if you’re new to it, load up your Netflix queue!  Believe me, you will not be sorry.

I’m going to celebrate with a couple saki bombs.  Kanpai!

 

The Rabbit Is (A)Live

I look cool but I cant see a thing.

Welcome.

I don’t care how you stumbled on here by mistake…please read me and leave a comment.

How else will I be able to monetize this baby in the year 2020?

Shameless opinion and ego-driven venting below.

Thanks.