Cinema Hype

I have decided, after spending part of my afternoon in the city, that there isn’t much that beats a walk through San Francisco on a spring day (…when you’re supposed to be at work). I started at AT&T Park and walked along the water, with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, and the cherry blossoms blooming, and the big, stocky palm trees stretching out ahead of me. At the end of my walk, I popped into the Ferry Building market hall—a place so food-obsessed that there’s a special store just for mushrooms—and bought a one-ounce bar of Scharffen Berger milk chocolate. And there you have it: spring and a bit of a stroll and the scalded-milk aftertaste of 41% milk chocolate. Not a bad Wednesday, if I do say so myself.

While I ate my Scharffen Berger bar, broken into pieces for longer enjoyment, I got to thinking about movies and chocolate. There are definitely people out there who don’t like chocolate, but aren’t those people kind of…odd in the eyes of the rest of us? Which is why chocolate makes such a great subject for the movies: it’s magical, it’s innocent, it’s sexy, it’s something we can mostly agree on. It also makes a great theme movie night. Invite a few friends, plan to break your diet for an evening, and enjoy other people enjoying chocolate. Like so:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971): The original, with a screenplay by Roald Dahl, a whole cast of Oompa Loompas (as opposed to one Oompa Loompa multiplied for the remake), and an awful lot of nostalgia.

Chocolat (2000): Juliette Binoche has the cure for what ails an entire French town, as well as a bunch of river pirates. Miracle food, indeed.

Like Water for Chocolate (1992): Chocolate is passion! Love saves the day! Watch out for the naked chick on the horse, though.

The Chocolate War (1988): Something about the social hierarchy at a Catholic school, kicked off by bake-sale-induced civil disobedience. Whatever. Bud Cort and Adam Baldwin, together? I’m so there.

chocolate, chocolate movies, movies about chocolate, willy wonka and the chocolate factory, chocolat, like water for chocolate, the chocolate war, adam baldwin, juliette binoche, bud cort, film festivals

I’m about to say something that will probably get me a virtual snowball in the face: IS IT SUMMER YET? I’m done with winter. And yes, I do live in California, and yes, it was 56 degrees and sunny-ish today, and no, I expect no sympathy from the “I live in Chicago and it’s 436 below” camp. But that doesn’t mean my toes haven’t been cold since November, and it doesn’t mean all my strappy sundresses aren’t shooting me rueful looks from the back of the closet. Are cotton sheets, bare shoulders, and long evenings too much to ask?

And so I say: CHers, let’s go on vacation. Let’s blow this popsicle stand. Who needs a popsicle in February, anyway? I need some paradise movies, and I need ‘em fast. For starters:

One Night in the Tropics: Because all you need at the are Abbott and Costello to bicker you into oblivion. Sure.

Blue Crush: For those who might occasionally look up from their beach reading. Surfing, or something.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Pirates, yadda yadda, but hey! Look at all that crystal-clear water and imperialist architecture. Start with the first one and go from there.

50 First Dates: Because we all like to go on vacation and forget everything we ever knew. Or is that just me?

You know, after reviewing all the choices, it seems like paradise movies are a bit of a trap: movies about the tropics are all about things going wrong. Paradise lost, and all. Pirates, dinosaurs, ape hunting, guys kicking sand in your picnic. Maybe we just can’t handle that much sunny goodness. Maybe we need winter to show us how good we have it. In that case, I think I’d rather know a little less.

movies, vacation movies, hawaii, the caribbean, travel movies

Bless my ears, what is that sound? Is that the glorious tolling of the dial tone? Is that the sun emerging from the clouds, or the benevolent light of Al Gore shining down on us?

It IS! The internet has come back!

It’s true: Internet at CHHQ was knocked out for nearly a week by the unfortunate combination of hurricane-force winds and pansy non-native eucalyptus trees (thanks, Australia). We had plenty of time–between washing our hair, organizing our shoelaces in reverse-rainbow order, and waiting for the Netflix-bearing mailman–to think about what we’d done and come up with a good list of movies we could have been writing about, had all things been connected.

And so we at CH would like to share the Hunker Down for the Storm Fantasy Film Festival. Enjoy!

Twister: It’s hard to know what’s better about this movie: the confluence of every character actor in Hollywood or the hilarious attempts to create romantic tension between Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt (because there’s a couple that belongs together, right?). Bad ’90s weather movie, blah blah blah. It’s great, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Hard Rain: Wow, robberies suck. Especially when it’s…raining really hard? I don’t know.

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts: Spike Lee on Hurricane Katrina. Heartbreaking, and might make weather-related complaining irrelevant.

The Perfect Storm: Bad weather can ruin your day, especially when you’re on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Another one to make all land-bound storms feel a little anticlimactic.

The Ice Storm: May or may not include an actual ice storm. But check out that indie-friendly cast! Drama can’t be far behind. And, uh, icicles. Emotional icicles. Yes! That’s it.

Glad to be back, everyone! Stay warm and dry, and safeguard your DSL. Trust me.

film festivals, fantasy film festivals, Twister, The Ice Storm, The Perfect Storm, When the Levees Broke, Hurrican Katrina, Hard Rain

I spent this weekend at my old summer camp. It was great–a memory down every trail and a story around every corner. The truth is, I love camp. I love swimming and boating and the knowledge that all you really have to do that day is have fun. I love quiet moments in the forest and rowdy meals with friends and s’mores after dark. I think more adults should go to camp. Wouldn’t that kind of good, clean fun be good for us all?

The film industry is no stranger to summer camp. So, in honor of a fine weekend spent in the mountains, CH staff presents Fantasy Film Festival: Where’s My Bug Spray? Edition.

Meatballs (1979): Classic.

The Parent Trap (1961) and The Parent Trap (1998): The original is great (or it was when I was eight), and this is a rare instance in which the re-make is just as good–probably because parts of the summer camp scenes are copied verbatim from the original.

Ernest Goes to Camp (1987): You know what I mean, Vern?

Addams Family Values (1993): aka Wednesday Addams Goes to Camp. Come on…I can tell you’re intrigued. Don’t lie.

Wet Hot American Summer (2001): For the grown-ups, just what we never knew we needed: a summer-camp movie spoof. With, admittedly, an awesome cast.

Now, don’t blame me if you find your bed short-sheeted tonight. I had nothing to do with it.

What are you doing for the Fourth of July? Are you spending your glorious Wednesday off in the backyard with scads of family and friends, flipping burgers and playing innocent water-balloon games that inevitably get horribly out of hand? Are you heading down to an open field or a body of water for a fireworks show? Or is it just too hot out there, and you’re sheltering in air-conditioned place until the nuclear summer passes? (CH staff will be attending a friend’s Revolutionary War reenactment, complete with marshmallow muskets, but that’s immaterial.)

If you’re one of those screw-the-heat-let’s-close-the-curtains people, have we got a plan for you! How about this: a day of patriotic movies. Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, the Kevin Costner movies? We thought so! And so:

1776 (1972): Everybody’s favorite founding-fathers musical. Fine edu-tainment, I tell you, with a Richard Henry Lee song and everything.
The Patriot (2000): It’s a hard life fighting for your (almost-)country and having Heath Ledger as your hot son.
Born on the Fourth of July (1989): It has the Fourth of July in the title. How could we leave it out?
Jefferson in Paris (1995): Yes, everyone’s favorite constitution-framer had some issues, and yes, it takes place in France. And yes, it has Nick Nolte. Still: relevant.
Dave (1993): Anyone can be President! But it helps if you look like the guy who’s already got the job.

Watch out for those fireworks, kids! Have a happy Fourth.

Fourth of July, Independence Day, patriotic movies, patriotism, America

Yesterday we at CH covered movies to make your blood turn to syrup, but there’s just no way to keep that up. Today it’s time for the other side of the coin: movies to prove, once and for all, how great it is to be single:

War of the Roses: Your marriage is falling apart; may as well throw a custody battle for the house into the mix, right? The granddaddy of all unromantic movies, apparently.

Closer: A painstaking, unflinching look at infidelity among two couples. Depressing, but good.

Eraserhead: David Lynch circa 1977; love as horror film. Bonus points to anyone who can get through it without nightmares (alien baby alert!).

Fatal Attraction: Note to self: keep pets away from Glenn Close. Ew.

American Beauty: Failing marriages, an unhealthy fixation on Mena Suvari, videos of plastic bags; just the thing to make sole control of the remote look suddenly attractive.

Unfaithful: Things here just…don’t end well. Trust me.

Heathers: Pine- and sap-free, guaranteed. “What’s your damage, Heather?”

Don’t we all feel a little bit better? Or is that a little bit bitter? Happy Valentine’s week from CHHQ. Or not. Whatever you prefer.

Valentine’s Day, unromantic movies

Speaking as a single woman, it seems that there are really two ways to approach Valentine’s Day. Either it’s the Scourge of Winter and must be avoided at all costs, or it’s something to be embraced to the point of forgetting there’s supposed to be a guy around in the first place. Bring on the chocolate! Pass the wine! Are those some dangly heart earrings I see? Excellent.

In the somewhat ambivalent spirit of the upcoming holiday, we at CH would like to present a two-post series on the films of Valentine’s Day and the films of those who would rather give February 14 over to someone else, say…Haters International. Whatever. Today we’ll be exploring a week’s worth of the sappiest, tear-jerkiest, eye-rollingest movies out there–we’re talking the romances that would make any Harlequin writer say, “Girl? Please.”

Without further ado:

An Affair to Remember: Cliched, but there it is. Any movie that other movies hold up as the Gold Standard of Sap must clearly be on the list. Plus, “her shriveled little legs!”

Return to Me: Super-sweet, but also kind of great. Bonus: directed by Bonnie Hunt, who knows a funny joke when she sees it.

Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken: Mostly loved by horsey little girls and post-Jake Ryan Michael Schoeffling fans in the 80s. ‘Nuff said.

Garden State: Supposedly hip and charming, but the ending gives me hives. It’s like bathing in maple syrup.

Ghost: Before Meredith on The Office defiled it, this one was the romance movie of the 80s. Love from beyond the grave! Clearly sweet and…not…creepy? Ho-kay.

The Notebook: The CH staff must admit that someone around HQ hasn’t seen this one, but Googling “sappiest movie” yielded so many Notebook hits that it made the list, fair and square.

Somewhere in Time: How can a Jane Seymour/Christopher Reeve time-travel movie not instantly raise the old insulin level?

Tune in next time for anti-Valentiners and the movies they love!

movies, Valentine’s Day, romantic movies

Happy New Year (slightly belated) from Cinema Hype! The CH staff took a much-needed hiatus for the holiday, wherein not a single film was analyzed or quoted or even watched (okay, that’s….a lie). But things are looking up for 2007, and we’re ready to take on the world of celluloid! Bring it on! (It’s already been broughten.)

Along with the glorious in-ringing of the new year, we here at Cinema Hype would like to announce a new CH undertaking: the 501 Project. Starting this month, CH will be watching and reviewing all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners in a row, starting with the 1927-28 winner (Wings) and proceeding all the way up to the present. This isn’t a race; there’s no time limit or weekly quota. But upcoming Oscar films will be announced here for the benefit of anybody who wants to watch along. We’d love to hear from the CH community about the supposed best films of the last 80 years–comments and e-mail are our bread and butter around here.

The name 501 Project comes from the serial numbers stamped on the heels of all Oscar statuettes beginning in 1949–rather than begin with number one, the ID numbers began with 501. That, and it’s a nice name.

Here’s to a good year and lots of good film.

Academy Awards, 501 Project, film history

I hope all of you CH readers had lovely Christmases, if you’re of the Christmasing persuasion; things at CH Parental Headquarters were generally delightful, what with all of the Scrabble and the hanging around in pajamas and the opening of gifts.

In other news, I finally finished It’s a Wonderful Life, just in time. I now believe that I had never seen the whole thing–somehow I always seemed to arrive just as George crashed the car, and then wondered why nothing made sense. Now I know: Donna Reed and “Buffalo Girl;” planning to see the world and then staying in Bedford Falls; lending people money when they don’t deserve it; disappointment and disillusionment. Now that I’ve seen the whole thing, I see why people cry at the ending: it’s such a sad story and such a desperately happy ending, and it’s hard to be very snarky about it at all.

Thus endeth the Most Wonderful Time Film Festival; I might sit down with either The Family Stone or the original Miracle on 34th Street–both are still sitting next to the DVD player–but any further Christmas-movie viewing will be strictly for extra credit.

Merry and Happy to all! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Christmas movies, It’s a Wonderful Life

I know you’re probably wondering what happened to the Most Wonderful Time Film Festival. I had this huge list of Christmas movies I was going to plow through. I still do. So what happened? It’s a Wonderful Life happened. George and Mary and Clarence and Zuzu happened, and so did disillusionment and redemption (I hear) and Frank Capra’s utter inability to cut anything, ever.

How is it that people watch this movie straight through? I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s not. I’m enjoying it. But the story of George Bailey’s life is long. I’ve been watching it all week, trying to finish–it’s like a giant bowl of pasta, where you feel like you’ve been eating and eating and eating, and you still have half the bowl left to go.

So that’s where the film festival stands: there’s a stack of borrowed movies in my living room and one behemoth American classic holding them all up (in the figurative sense). With a little luck and a little persistence, there will be more Christmas movies before the holiday ends.

Until then, I’ll be on the couch.

I apologize to all who were waiting on this week’s Thursday haiku (and I know there were many, many people waiting…right?); a minor act of God, also known as a cranky internet connection, kept me poetry-free. But. Getting on with it:

Trying to finish
It’s A Wonderful Life soon;
things look dubious.

I have a request to make. It’s nothing, really. Just…the next time I pray for guidance, can Cary Grant come to visit? He doesn’t really even have to do anything, per se–I’m not sure he’d have much to say about my life–but I’m sure that having him just stand around and look debonair would be quite helpful.

What I just described is essentially the plot of the 1947 movie The Bishop’s Wife: a workholic bishop (David Niven) and his beautiful wife (Loretta Young, assisted by her spectacular cheekbones) pray for guidance about building a cathedral and about their marriage, and Grant shows up in the form of an angel named Dudley. It’s a good movie, but it sometimes feels like it’s missing something, like somebody forgot to decide what’s really going on in the script. There are questions left unanswered: Is it a drama or a comedy? What’s the deal with the random ice skating? And, most importantly, what really happens between Dudley and Julia?

The structure of the Dudley/Julia relationship (and therefore the movie) is strange from a romantic comedy standpoint. Usually, a woman either ditches her stodgy old flame for the new man who truly understands her OR she tests the waters with a dashing newcomer but later realizes that the original lover was the better choice. Here, Julia connects with the dashing newcomer…and then she stays with the stodgy old flame, even though he’s still the less appealing of the two men. It’s a point of ambivalence for the audience: we realize that Julia should and will stay with the bishop, but it’s so much easier to root for Dudley, even if it’s inappropriate (and he’s a heavenly being, which I’m trying to ignore).

Furthermore, the script addresses the fact that the bishop and the townspeople are scandalized by the friendship, but nobody seems to think that the audience might agree. There’s the feeling that somebody should say something, or that either Julia or Dudley needs to acknowledge that maybe the bishop has reason to be upset, but the movie generally glosses over those concerns. Toward the end, it’s finally implied that Dudley may have fallen in love with Julia, but the ninety minutes before that are a vaguely unsettling series of flirtations, situations that anybody who’s ever been in a relationship would recognize as inappropriate. The movie might make more sense if it didn’t require us to believe in the ignorance of the main characters, or if it addressed the awkwardness and worked through it.

Aside from the strange dynamics between Dudley, Julia, and the bishop, The Bishop’s Wife is a solid holiday classic: nothing fancy, but there is plenty of snow and talk of Santa and the obligatory un-Scrooging of a main character, and that’s kind of the point.

The upshot: A decent, old-fashioned Christmas movie; worth seeing if you can ignore the elephant in the room.

Christmas wonder, joy of the season, blah blah blah. What I learned from Elf is that I totally want to go on a date with Will Ferrell. It’s a little weird, I know, especially if he’s wearing the tights and pointy shoes. (Maybe some people go for that; I don’t.) But judging from his first outing with Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), he’s not the type to sit in a cafe and make boring small talk. I’m just saying.

Anyway, the movie. The point of Elf isn’t the script, or even the characters, really. It’s all sort of basic holiday family movie fare: Scrooge-y businessman changes forever after run-in with excruciatingly cheerful/naive main character, etc., etc. The point of Elf is Ferrell. The best thing–or the most notable thing, anyway–about Ferrell as an actor is that he’s not afraid. He embraces whatever he’s doing. He commits. Sometimes (ahem…Anchorman), it’s enough to make a girl turn off the TV, but in Elf, it’s just funny. Endearing, even. Buddy the “Elf” is a sweetheart, and Ferrell makes it work by being utterly, steadfastly sincere. And that is what Elf is really about. Isn’t it?

It’s been a good year for George Clooney. A good decade, really. He’s in his prime, directing and acting in good movies; he’s politically active; he’s still ranking high with the ladies. He sweeps around Hollywood being all handsome and debonair and self-deprecating, and everybody loves him for it. He’s got a new movie coming out tomorrow, The Good German, in which he denigrates the effects of war, which…seems relevant. There was a time, though, when Our Man George wasn’t riding quite as high as he is today, and isn’t it in all of our best interests to remain true to our roots? In that vein, I give you the George Clooney Retrospective Fantasy Film Festival:

Predator: The Concert: George’s first big-screen appearance (not to disparage his highly esteemed turn on The Facts of Life, but we’ve got to be a little choosy, right?), in which a grizzly bear terrorizes a big-band show in the forest. We’re sure he–George, that is–was perfectly noble in the role.

The Harvest: In which George plays the “Lip-syncing transvestite,” an image that pretty much speaks for itself.

From Dusk Till Dawn: The first movie in which George may have actually been seen by the general public.

One Fine Day: Hairpin turn! Our versatile hero makes a pit stop in the Land of the Mundane Romantic Comedy just long enough to romance Michelle Pfeiffer, then breathes a sigh of relief that he never has to do that again (the MRC, not Pfeiffer).

Out of Sight: When George Met Steven. The beginning of a beautiful friendship, and also of our George’s climb up the critical-acclaim pile.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?: George plays Ulysses Everett McGill, and therefore becomes automatically awesome. He’s [not] bonafide! What’re you?

Good Night and Good Luck: George does his first writer/director/star project, and smart people everywhere fall in love with him. So does the Academy. People who are pro-censorship (or, I suppose, pro-McCarthy), less so.

What’s next, George? We want to be charmed, and we believe you’re the man to do it.

I’ve been putting off writing about White Christmas since Saturday night. I watched it with my whole attention. I enjoyed it. That’s the issue, actually: I may have enjoyed it too much to critique it. I just love it so much.

There, I said it. I love White Christmas. A lot. A lot, a lot. It’s just so funny, and then Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen start dancing, and The Bing and Rosemary Clooney start singing, and they love him, they love him, especially when he keeps them on the ball, and….this is what happens. I go all gooey as soon as they start singing about snow, and I can’t get it together until after the goofy little ballerina girls tip-toe their way around the giant tree at the end. It’s just so good: so sweet, so sharp, so much fun.

That’s all. Watch White Christmas, if you’ve never seen it. Watch it even if you have seen it. Simple, classic, charming. Perfect for a Saturday night writing Christmas cards or just curling up with some popcorn.