Cinema Hype

Pop! Go the twenty-
one Red Ryder BB guns
in solemn salute.

The world lost a true niche contributor yesterday when director Bob Clark was killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Clark is best known for directing the infamously unsentimental Christmas movie A Christmas Story, though he also made a score of lesser-known films over the course of his thirty-year career. Most of Clark’s films seem to fall under the children’s and horror categories, including adaptations of the children’s books Fudge-A-Mania and Maniac Magee and the charmingly and accurately named Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (which he actually made twice, having remade it shortly before his death).

One likes to think that Clark will be remembered fondly with many a rendition of “You’ll shoot yer eye out!”

Bob Clark, A Christmas Story

Torture film billboard:
off-putting, or unfit for
public consumption?

Billboards for the new movie Captivity went up last week in New York and L.A., only to be taken down again when the studio that made the movie began receiving calls from irate citizens. The billboards show actress Elisha Cuthbert, the star of the movie, being kidnapped, caged, tortured, and ostensibly murdered (which, it must be said, pretty much weeds out potential audience members just looking for a pleasant afternoon at the movies). According to studio spokespeople, the billboards were a mistake: the production company received the wrong files and didn’t get any kind of greenlighting from the studio. This begs questions of why the images existed in any billboard-able form in the first place and why nobody at Lionsgate is checking their ad proofs these days–i.e. I’m not sure I believe them–but it still brings up some interesting points. What makes a film ad “too much”? What brings a violent image from “unpleasant” to “unacceptable”? Is the American public especially sensitive to images of torture these days (i.e. would this poster be less offensive to us in a different national context)? How could the studio have put together an effective but less offensive ad?

Readers? What do you think?

Captivity, Captivity billboard, Elisha Cuthbert, censorship

I feel like I’ve come to a good place in my Netflix queue. Do you know what I mean? My queue and I are not always at peace in this manner. For one thing, it’s a little embarrassing, as a movie blogger, to admit that I mostly use Netflix for TV shows–I could spend years, probably, catching up on the shows I’ve missed. And then sometimes there are those obligation movies we all add to our queues, the things we Should Have Seen, but actually could sort of take or leave.

But right now I’ve found a bit of a groove: I’m looking out over a wide swath of movies, and they’re good movies, or at least movies I’m looking forward to. I’ve got a couple of noteworthy Project 501 films and some regular old non-new non-award-winners coming up, movies I want to watch just because I want to watch them. That’s kind of a nice feeling.

Red-headed Hepburn,
murderous Winona(?), and
hot Redford, oh my!

Air from a grate or
rising seas? Nancy equals
Joe? Hubba hubba!

I’m not even sure I really get the joke of this poster–he’s…Marilyn Monroe, obviously, and….?–but I’m also not sure it really matters. It’s funny. More than that, the movie’s going to be funny. Steve Carell, Lauren Graham, and Bible humor! What could possibly go wrong?

Bike engines rumble;
Travolta, please step away
from Macy’s career.

You know how sometimes they make movies where you watch the preview and think, “I just don’t understand”? I mean, somewhere there’s probably an audience for every movie; people saw Boxing Helena, after all. But then there’s Wild Hogs, a Harley movie starring John Travolta, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence, and I just…can’t wrap my mind around it. Is there really that much overlap between the Harley crowd and the “Oh, That Crazy Wilson” Fan Club? And anyway, William H. Macy, you are causing me to doubt you, which should never, ever happen.

Wild Hogs, John Travolta, Tim Allen, William H. Macy, Martin Lawrence

U.S. soldiers face
off against girl in glasses
for gold statuette.

Hollywood and Highland may be your basic mall/Hare Krishna magnet 364 days of the year, but the red carpet and the giant golden statues are probably just about ready by now. Oscar night is this Sunday, and while CH will be tending more towards sweats-and-slippers chic than, say, the free-million-dollar-jewels look, the bloggish coverage will make you feel like you’re standing on the rope line. Or at least like you’re on the couch, sharing our popcorn.

The Namesake’s trailer:
attracts readers better than
a Pulitzer prize.

Three situations in which one is bound to come up empty-handed: 1) Hallmark at eight p.m. on Valentine’s Day; 2) the pie section of Costco on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving; and 3) the public library anytime someone adapts a novel for the screen. Ever tried to check out a Harry Potter book to refresh the old memory for the movie? What about The Devil Wears Prada any time last year? It’s like trying to get chocolate during the Blitz.

This is the power of a really good trailer: the movie becomes not enough. Suddenly the film looks shiny and colorful and new, but shouldn’t the book be even better? A good trailer reminds the audience that perhaps if the light were a little better, they could crack open a brand new copy of whatever’s showing next.

Anti-automated dialogue replacement poetry for the auditory anarchist in all of us:

Down with looping sound!
Let’s go natural: vegan
listeners unite!

Some actors take awhile to find their niches. They wander around a bit; they try a few personas on for size; sometimes, they find that they’re best suited to being chameleons and never settle into any kind of groove. Chris Cooper, it seems, may have found his spot in the Hollywood sun; he has two upcoming films on the subject of national security, having also recently completed Jarhead and Syriana. It’s his thing. We at CH can’t think of anybody more suited to the role–who else is hard enough, smart enough, and crazy enough to either singlehandedly defend or take down his own country’s government without batting an eye? Congratulations, Chris. Please don’t cut off our fingers for typing this. Sir. Thank you. In your honor, sir, a poem:

Cooper messes with
Phillippe’s mind, sells secrets
to U.S.S.R.

You know what we need more of in this world? Math movies. We need more films adapted from nineteenth-century math-based novellas. Don’t you think? And I think more of them should have characters voiced by actors who play the President of the United States.

Oh! Oh my! Looks like I’m in luck! And this is going to be…in…theaters?

Flatland trailer with
talking polygons: strangely,
so mesmerizing.

(Seriously. Watch it.)

Documentaries are a funny thing. Often, documentary films start with the decision to pluck something ordinary out of obscurity: New York City schoolchildren learning to dance, say, or a trip to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Documentaries show events that are already past. Only rarely does a documentary coincide with something momentous and new. The new film God Grew Tired of Us is one of those times: it chronicles the journey of the “Lost Boys,” four young men (out of thousands) orphaned by war in Sudan and brought to the United States to start a new life. It’s been five years since the Lost Boys arrived in the U.S., but the war that brought them here continues. This is no novelty piece for the past; it’s a call to action in the present.

God Grew Tired of Us:
heartbreak in Sudan and hope
in America.

“Let’s see…we’re making a film for pre-teen girls. We’ve got singing and dancing…(fictional) girls with Nicole Richie waists, J-Lo hips, crop tops, and no noses of which to speak…I just don’t know who could possibly help us out with this. Really. I’m at a loss.”

Paula Abdul to
star in Bratz? Casting people
everywhere: “Well, duh.”

Because they’ll never truly get old, and because when you need an intrepid girl-star, who do you call but Sarah Michelle Gellar?

There’s a new Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles film;
cowabunga, dude!

Never have I been prouder to be a child of the 80s. Turtle power!

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.

Pre-Oscar Christmas
rush means so many movies
and so little time.