Death and Rebirth

It feels like it has been months since I dreamt.  I’ve been instead having glimpses and clips of something that I know occurred, but one that I cannot piece together.  But yesterday was different - in my dream, I remember driving back to an old workplace and, while not recognizing anyone there, I was filled with joy to remember that a secret area I used to go to was still undiscovered.  It was something sacred and hidden - something that was still mine in a place that I had thought lost and forgotten me a long time ago.  I woke up with one thought on my mind - this blog.

It’s funny how life works.  In my last entry, the movie that was randomly picked timed up perfectly with some personal matters I was going through.  Then so much occurred - death, life, renewal, removal, recouperation, regret, rejuvenation.  Now rebirth.

Time to get around to watching The Royal Tenembaums.  Expect more soon.

Live, Sister, Live

Trying really hard to get back into a normal habit here involving writing, so I'm going to make this one quick in order to move onto the next movie in line, one I hope provides more inspiration that Die, Sister, Die.

It's not that Die, Sister, Die is a bad film.  Yeah, I fell asleep during it (three times), and that caused me to rewatch it until I finished it in one sitting while awake.  It is just REALLY boring and it doesn't know it's tone.  One minute its a dramatic piece on the relationship between siblings, next it's a hyper-gory dreamlike movie where heads are being lopped off, but usually it's a mystery story that has a pretty obvious solution to it.  Hint - if you are wondering what happened to the third sibling, the title is a HUGE spoiler.

Alright.  Time to move on.  C'mon....I'm hoping for a great film to build enthusiasm and momentum here.

And 321 is....

You know, I do believe that there is a reason for everything.  The Royal Tenembaums it is, which is funny because I was just thinking this morning that it would be appropriate for me to watch this movie in order to process some serious and personal issues that are occurring in my life.  Looks like I'm meant to see this film at this time.

The Spaces Between Days

Holidays are a funny thing.  While they are a welcome step away from daily activities, they also become a break in routine.  You step out of the routine, you lose your pace and your focus.  Matters get upended, sleep is lost, priorities are shuffled - a basic clusterfuck.  So, while I'll like to blame 'the holidays' for my lack of writing, it's actually my break from routine that is to blame. 

Where were we?  Yeah - True Grit.

Now, with this 'project', I knew that there would come a time where I would watch a film that I had bought but hadn't seen before.  Yeah, I know its a little strange to buy a film you haven't seen, but there was a time when video stores would sell five DVD's for $20, and I would more often than not find three films I would really like and had to randomly choose two in order to complete the sale.  That's what happened in this case - it was the fault of Blockbuster that I own this movie.

I tend to be hit and miss with Coen Brothers movies.  I either REALLY enjoy them (I'm looking at you Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy) or I'm indifferent - for instance, I'm indifferent about this one.  It's a pretty film to look at, mainly due to the landscapes that the film is set in.  It hearkens back to a John Ford movie - beautiful wide country shots for our interpret heroes to ride across.  Real cowboy stuff.

For the most part, the story is a revenge plot.  Josh Brolin kills some girls father, girl gets consumed by revenge, hires a Westerm version of The Dude to track him, Matt Damon does a Brad Pitt impression.  And, like most narrated films, you know that in the end the narrator will survive because they are telling the story.  Sprinkle in a few Biblical images, like a dark tunnel that someone falls into after they achieve their revenge as they struggle to get back into the light high above them - then you cue up a snake that bites them.  Pretty standard stuff - not bad, not great.  A movie that you get to fill out the necessary five titles to get a sale.

Yup.  Over that film, time to go to the next!  But before we do, lets do some housekeeping.

- I bought a movie recently, so it's getting added to 'the list'.  It's a documentary called Never Get Tired.

- End of the year always makes me want to look back and see the great media that was released.  In years past I usually put out a list of the top movies or albums that I listened to, but this year I want to do something different.  Gone will be the traditional numbered list, and instead will be a smorgasbord of different things for people to hear about.  Sure, I've got my 'number ones', but I'm more interested in talking about WHY I liked the things that I did.  Expect that soon - be forewarned, though, because it's going to contain a lot of discussion about Ghostbusters.

New title!!  Hey, ho - lets go!

Lets see what number we get......

....and the movie is.....

DIE SISTER DIE!  We are going to have a field day with this one - promise it will be much longer that this post.

Concerning Hobbit Pets

So, in preparation for this project where I write randomly about one movie that I own, I thought about some of the hardships I might come across while writing - one of those hardships was finding something to write on movies that I had seen numerous times.  Some of these movies, like Star Trek Into Darkness and Mixed Nuts, I rarely watch, but others?  Others I watch quite a bit.  With those movies, I knew I had to rethink what I had once thought of a film during my viewing, digging harder to find deeper and more interesting meanings than I had done before.

Yeah - that didn't happen when I rewatched Lord Of The Rings - The Fellowship of the Rings.

I tried.  I tried really hard.  I kept coming across talking points that had been covered time and time before.  The symbolism of the races and how they related to various world wars.  I tried with some of my personal experiences, which amounted to 'I watched this movie in the theater when it first came out with my mom and brother, my mom fell asleep and I wished there was an intermission.'  Mind you, there was also, 'We bought the extended edition and had people over to the house to watch it in preparation for The Two Towers.'  While those experiences were some that I've cherished over the years, the personal memories for Fellowship have been overshadowed by better ones, specifically in the buildup to Return of the King.  THOSE memories are great ones - they involve late night sushi, standing in line for quite a long time and sleep deprivation that accounted for some interesting and memorable one-liners from the friends I was with.

But what was I going to talk about with Fellowship of the Ring?  While a great movie, it becomes the first part to a greater story and - in my case - a first part to greater personal stories to come.  So I rewatched this hoping to come up with at least one insight that I hadn't seen before, something that could transform the way I think of this movie as it relates to the whole story along with it standing on it's own.

Nothing truly insightful came up....except for one minor detail that I never really looked into before:

Hobbits own pets.

Saying it out loud, it makes sense - the whole opening scene 'concerning hobbits' show them going about their daily lives, and in those scene you see them utilize animals, such as pigs, to tend to their crops.  Because of the personal allusion that we make to the hobbits as the main characters (they look and talk like us, they enjoy the same things we enjoy, we see qualities we strive for in ourselves like bravery and commitment in them), we think of them as us.  But seriously - have you ever seen a pig wearing a yoke tilling earth?  It's not that feasible of a task.  Sure, in the sense of Middle Earth animal 'equal opportunity', they CAN perform the task, but - for the same reason us humans do not use pigs for plow our earth - the task isn't suited for them.  This may be an imaginary world, but I'm sure the strength needed to complete that task without the animal getting tired is why pigs aren't suited for this line of work.

Later in the film, the Ring Wraiths come looking for hobbits with the last name of Baggins - they approach a hobbit who tells them that the only Baggins around live at The Shire.  But did you ever notice what was behind the hobbit in that scene?

A dog.  A good sized dog, by the looks of it.  HOWEVER, keep in mind that hobbits are on average three feet tall.  That dog, which looks like a Gerrman Shepard mix, looks to stand to the hobbits waist line.  That makes sense for regular humans - waist height is the normal size for a dog like that - but on a hobbit their waist line is at around the height of 1 1/2 feet to two feet.  That dog that you see in the movie is a full-grown miniature dog that - at full grown height - is about half the size of what we would consider a normal dog.

That got me thinking - if hobbits breed their dogs smaller, could they essentially breed specific traits into animals, like the strength needed to plow into pigs?  While considered by much of Middle Earth to be 'simple, earth loving creatures', were hobbits actually utilizing genetic manipulation through breeding to bring out unseen traits in animals so they can use them in their daily routines?  The answer is yes - they did take part in this manipulation through breeding because.....wait for it....hobbits had done it before and have been doing that for years with their growing of 'pipe weed'.  Their 'pipe weed', known throughout Middle Earth as some of the best, was developed by them through years of cross-breeding and genetic manipulation to bring out certain qualities in the strand. By using this simple concept of genetics that they were already prone to do, they could easily apply this to animals.  It's just like growing corn - through this type of genetic breeding, you can phase out small corn and grow much larger corn.

Hobbits are the Monsanto of Middle Earth.


Alright!  Now that we got that done, onto another movie!  What number comes up this time.....

Now to find number 384 on the list.....

It's remake time!  True Grit, by the Coen Brothers, made in 2010....

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I've ever seen this film all the way through....this is going to be exciting.

- Z

Adversity Row

We can argue about the purpose of a movie sequel or reboot in regards to box office revenue, but - in essence - their purpose is to continue the story for characters we come to love.  A sequel provides a new challenge for people in a story to continue growth, while reboots provide a new interpretation of challenges that maybe were not once seen or developed.  Characters do not need introdutions - we can dive right into story and character development, 

In the case of Star Trek Into Darkness, you get a sequel to a reboot.  We have the new character iterations of the reboot, and the chance for new adversity for them to face with the sequel.  I will be discussing Star Trek at a later date when it comes up on this list, but the idea behind the reboot gave an opportunity for new and different character arcs, since 'the past' was altered for all at the beginning of the movie.  

So, how come at the start of this film is everyone getting along so well as a team?  The story starts going at full speed, quite literally with a chase.  As the chase progresses, we see each of the primary characters of Star Trek come into the story one at a time.  Their roles are already defined in this setting - Scotty is worrying about the Enterprise, Sulu is challenged with piloting, Bones is worried about a situation he's not suited for - each have a conflict.  But, it needs to be mentioned, because this is important - the roles that they are in are for old classic Star Trek characters.  It is, in a sense, the conflicts that the original characters before the reboot faced.  These people, however they may seem like it, are not the old crew - because of how the original reboot was handled, the past of each person is different.  While they are acting like people we know, they are vastly different.  That is the core of what Star Trek Into Darkness becomes - having these new people face their new adversity, growing away from the molds set from the original storyline and becoming their own personality.  What better way to spur this conflict than to have the greatest villain the crew of the Enterprise faced - Harry Mudd.  

Just kidding.  While it would have been amazing to have Harry Mudd return, it doesn't take the brain of a Tribble to know that they were going to throw Kahn into the mix.  Kahn, along with being one of the best Star Trek villains, is also tied to the second film of the original series.  I'm sure the filmmakers were very aware of the parallels that they were drawing from that, and it did not just stop with the villain.  Dialogue and plot situations are shared between Into Darkness and The Wrath of Kahn, usually just substituting out the person who is delivering the lines.  By the simple inclusion of Kahn, as a Star Trek fan you would automatically draw the parallel that this wasn't going to end well for some.  Kahn was the main adversary to the Enterprise as a whole - remember, it was his conflict that started the ball rolling to eventually have the destruction of the Enterprise in The Search for Spock occur as they were attempting to rescue Spock on Genesis.  So, before I go more off the rails on Star Trek lore, lets just look at some of the conflicts that are faced in this movie.

One of the more subtle conflicts is the one faced by Scotty.  He is the voice of the Enterprise - his warning about the torpedoes in the first act directly leads into his removal from the Enterprise.  Most of this film has Scotty away from the ship, basically placing him where he was first discovered in Star Trek - alone and isolated on his own planet.  While the old Scotty was stuck in this isolation and tied to the Enterprise, the new Scotty breaks free from this and takes action, stowing away on a different ship to eventually save his ship from destruction.  His role is less of a background engineer and more of an action hero as he helps with the mutiny against Admiral Marcus.  Once he secures his position as his own individual, he is reunited with his 'love' personified as the Enterprise.

Uhura is similar in many ways to Scotty, taking essentially an inactive role on the old Enterprise as a futuristic secretary/telephone operator.  As chief communication officer, she simply conveys and passes along messages, with her only significantly active role in the old movies being a 'sexy palm frond dance' that was used to distract people.  This Uhura is different - she takes action, specifically for her main conflict in this movie in dealing with a Klingon patrol.  Uhura isn't passing on a message in this situation - she is directly delivering a message TO the Klingons, putting herself in direct physical proximity and danger in doing so.  She removes the buffer of a communication hail between her and others to take a physical presence, growing to the point that in the final conflict with Kahn she herself beams down to face him.  She eschews the old model of being an inactive presence to an active one.

The last conflict I will look into is one and the same - Kirk and Spock.  Their friendship is structured on the concept that each is one distinct side of a coin - one side emotion, the other side logic.  As the movie progresses, its a battle of Kirk against his emotions and a battle of Spock against his logic.  Spock tries to explain that the needs of many outweigh the needs of a few and Kirk tries to explain the reasoning of saving his friend from death in a volcano.  As the story progresses, their roles reverse - quite literally, from the original series. Kirk sacrifices himself in the reactor core, something that Spock did himself in The Wrath of Kahn, because he sees that as a captain, his responsibility is to the needs of many instead of his own.  Spock, upon seeing his friend dies, uses his emotion to pursue and capture Kahn - he, in fact, delivers Kirk's famous line from the original series, 'KKKAAAAHHHNNN!'  In the end of the movie, while each are still rooted in their own values, they have grown because they have taken on some of the qualities of their other half - a Star Trek yin/yang of values.

Side note - Bones totally came up with the cure for death.  They should of just kept Kahn in deep coma freeze and siphon off his blood occasionally to keep others alive and cured of disease.  I'm sure he would have won the Starfleet equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Science for that shit.


Time to remove this movie from the list and generate a new number!  Lets see what we get.....

Alright!  230 it is....time to find out this movie on the list.......

Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Rings it is!  That may take some time, with it being a rather long film, but it will come soon.

- Z

90's LA Cinematography Memories

There is no way around it - time distorts memory.  A simple act, once it occurs, starts to warp and bend through that lens of time whether it's occurred within an hour or a few decades from when you try to remember it.  Voices lose their resonance.  Faces start to blur.  The images takes on a strange, smudged-like haze that diffuses light, making it look like a smoggy Los Angeles day.  Or, at least, what I imagine a smoggy Los Angeles day, usually from sometime during the '90's, to look like.  When I imagine or remember LA, my head decided to have a cinematographer from that decade 'light' the picture in my head.  I imagine something like a mix between that Altman movie, The Long Goodbye and that Billy Idol video for LA Woman.  Or a movie like the Last Action Hero or Lethal Weapon, where you always get that 'one shot' of the sun setting on the west coast giving off those heat waves.  Maybe time has distorted those movies for me - there might not be a 'sunset shot' in those movies, or when I watch them the lighting might not be so....well, so LA.  That's what happened to me with Mixed Nuts.

For some reason, I remembered the movie looking like an overcast, smoggy day.  Where everything is bright and hazy, with not much color.  But I was wrong - it looks just a plain old, normal day.  It's when you look closer, you pick out some points of light and patches of color.

The first case of this happening was during the credits.  Mind you, its been years since I've seen this movie, long enough to forget who was in it, so I figure its been about a decade or so.  I remembered the principle actors and actresses in it - Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Julliette Lewis, Adam Sandler - but I'm not sure I remember THEM and their roles or that they were the easiest to pick out from the cast featured on the DVD cover.  So, it came as a pleasant shock when I saw two recognizable names in the cast list:

Parker Posey and John Stewart.

YEAH!  John Stewart!  Daily Show John Stewart!  I know, I know - he was an actor and comedian before he picked up the gig from Craig Kilborn, and for the record I did watch the show when Kilborn was hosting. I still think one of the greatest moments on that show was when he and Belinda Carlisle did 'that dance' she used to do when he interviewed her, but I think that's just because I'm a huge Belinda Carlisle fan.  Anyways, I was going to see John Stewart in his pre-prime years....and JUST as I was starting to wonder when that was going to happen, quite literally John Stewart rolls on the screen.  Yeah, just in case you forgot when this movie was set and filmed - the 90's - they made sure to have every extra or bit part player slap on a pair of roller blades and go at it.  Sure enough, not just John Stewart but Parker Posey was on roller blades.  And as just as soon as they rolled into my life, they rolled away.  The Unstoppable Roller Bladeing Power Couple of Posey/Stewart does show up a few more times in the movie, but it's played for the same gag which is kinda disappointing.  Parker Posey has the most of their dialogue, which leaves John Stewart with the Herculean task of delivering such lines as "YEAH!" and "GET 'EM!".  You've come a long way, Mr. Stewart.

Back to the movie - as with sticking roller bladers everywhere to remind people that this film is set in the 90's, the soundtrack just pummels you with Christmas music to remind you that this movie is set during Christmas Eve/Christmas.  The music is relentless - every second seems to be occupied by a song, with the only lapse in silence coming when it suits the needs of a comedic joke, like when Madeline Kahn abruptly stops in an elevator that is timed just right to sync with a stop in the music.  Imagine going to Wal-Mart when they play the holiday music and watching this on a TV while there, and you basically get the same effect - non-stop holiday music in the background.  But it's not like there are other visual cues to remind us of the time of the year - Christmas lights are strung in quite a few shots, a Christmas tree takes front and center as a plot device and the lead supporting actor wears a Santa Clause suit for the entire movie.  You really can't forget that this takes place during Christmas.

It may seem like I'm coming down on this film, but it does have it's endearing qualities.  Madeline Kahn, like everything she does, is just remarkable.  Yeah, over the top at times, but that's Madeline Kahn for you - there are even times when it felt like she was having free reign to just improvise during the movie and it was a bit of a relief.  The movie also reminded me of a wacky, situational French comedy, like La Cage Aux Folles or a Tati film - lots of fast, visual gags, quick one-liners and a scene with someone riding their bicycle in an apartment/office, which may be just something I associate with French cinema.  This makes sense - the movie was based off of a French film.  Liev Schreiber is also kinda adorable as a trans-woman.  Adam Sandler is also not in the film as much as I thought he would be.  He seems tacked on, like the filmmakers knew he was popular at the time, so they threw together a part large enough to warrant him being on marketing material but small enough to not overshadow Steve Martin.  His role, basically a pre-Billy Madison man-child that plays silly songs on the ukulele, couldn't have been played by anyone else.  Oh!  Haley Joel Osment has one line, and that was a bit of a surprise to see him when he's like four years old.

Not the greatest film.  Definitely not the worst film.  There are better Christmas movies out there, but it's a nice change of pace.  If you watch it, watch it to see Madeline Kahn be fantastic.

Now that's done, time to remove Mixed Nuts from the list and randomly draw another number....lets see what we get.....

OK!  352....and that movie is......

Star Trek Into Darkness!  First time a sequel is going to show up on this project, so let me describe what is going to happen when it does -

We are just going to watch that one film, not the entire series. Star Trek will have it's day in the sun.

- Z

No Beginning Or End

"When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'No, I went to films.'" 

- Quentin Tarantino

I remember hearing this quote back sometime in the mid-90's.  Can't tell you where or when I heard it, but that's not important.  It's the effect it had on me that is important.  I have loved film all my life, but this quote really struck a nerve with me at the time - if I was going to tell people that I love film and movies, then I have to watch ALL TYPES OF FILM AND MOVIES.  No genre or boundary was safe - my world, which consisted mainly of Spielberg blockbusters and sci-fi epics at the time, was flooded with French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism.  Where I once would worship at the altar of Pulp Fiction, I started to see that it was a pastiche of other films that I wound up liking better.  I still hold on to those films that I originally had a passion for, but when you try to flood the swamp with fresh water, you wind up making a larger area that maybe has about a foot or two of clean water at the top and a shit-ton more swamp dirt at the bottom.  For every immaculate Ozu movie that I found, I would also find something like the outlandish work of Andy Sidaris.  Nothing was, or has been, off limits.  I would watch movies, but I would also acquire them in a variety of ways as well.  Might as well own them, right?  I mean, what would happen if I ever wanted to watch something again?  You just can't FIND a movie like Robo Vampire on iTunes or Blockbuster, and who knows when you'd get an urge to watch a movie about...well, a movie about a kung-fu ninja robot vampire that looks like a tin foil Robocop.

So, over time, I've picked up some movies here and there to add to my movie collection.  

Eh - I'm gonna get honest.  It has been more than 'picking up' movies.  Including VHS movies, bought or bootlegged, my movie collection is up in the thousand range.  Whittle it down to just DVD's and Blu-Rays, and it's about half that number.  Whittle out the TV shows and kid programs, and you have even less.  If we are getting specific - because, as you are about to find out, this blog is going to be all about this specific number - as of this time of writing, you get exactly 417 titles.  That's a lot of movies.

This is the point in this conversation is where we come to what this 'blog project' is all about.  It's that time.  The urge to watch these movies that I've been collecting over twenty or so years is here.  Problem is, I had no clue where to start.  I'd spend a good hour or so looking through my collection, become overwhelmed with options, throw my hands in the air with exhaustion and just put on The Force Awakens again or an episode of Black Mirror (side note - San Junipero is absolutely incredible).  Then, about two weeks ago, I had an idea.

I was lamenting to myself how I felt I abandoned my last project where I wrote about movies.  I was hoping to write about a different horror movie for each day of October, but I became too overwhelmed with the structure of a full month of watching a set schedule.  I found, once 'locked' to a list, that I was becoming bored.  I wanted something unexpected.  I didn't want to wake up on a Wednesday to know I was going to watch X movie - it ceased to become fun and instead became a chore.  It was like planning to eat spaghetti on the 20th when I already had a ton of Italian food to eat that whole month.  So I stopped.  But, in the end, I was left with a thought - I would have LOVED to have written about movies for the month, but I wish I didn't have to choose what movies to watch.  I wish my choices could be pulled randomly from a set of movies that I enjoyed in one way or another, for better or worse.  That's when the idea hit me....

I would set up my movie collection in such a way that I could, once a week, randomly pick a film.  I would take that urge I had to re-watch movies that I already owned, sandwich it between my passion for talking and writing about film and fill it randomly in the middle with a flavor of the week.  Perfect.

So, in the spirit of random choice, I converted my movie collection to a database list of 417.  I limited the list to what I had easily on hand - that is a mix of blu-ray, DVD's and digital movies.  Tossed out the TV shows and the kid shows, but kept the kid movies and a few other 'TV movies' that were in their cases or movie folder.  I downloaded a random number generator where I can set it between 1 and 417.  I generate that number, then lookup the movie associated with that number.  Then - VOILA - I would watch and write about that movie.  When it was done, I would remove the movie from the list, thus upping the odds for the other movies to be watched.  Rinse. Repeat.  If I get a new movie, I just add it to the list.  Simple!  I can continue to watch what I want to, but I would commit to doing this project at least once a week.  Maybe more if I had the time, but never less.  To keep it fair, I'll provide pictures of the random number along with the movie on the list.  You can also expect me to write occasionally about other things as well as my mood hits me.

ALRIGHT!  

Ready?  

Steady?   

Here we go!

Truth be told, I'm kinda excited/nervous about this.  I wish I could tell you, the reader, what resides in this list, but you will see in time...I feel there's some exciting stuff there....gonna hook up my phone so I can then download the screenshots onto my computer....

SPEED BUMP ONE.  Having trouble syncing my phone to my computer.  No worries - that's why I got this handy dandy flash drive here that can hook up to my phone.....

OK!  Ran the number and posted the screenshot on Facebook so I am committed to the number.  That number is 259.

Now time to find number 259 on the list......

Mixed Nuts.  The first movie in this project is Mixed Nuts.  Was kinda expecting something epic and grand, but I got Mixed Nuts.  The 1994 Steve Martin/Madeline Kahn comedy with a crazy Juliette Lewis and Adam Sandler.  Yeah.  Not figuratively crazy.  If I remember, they are legit crazy in this movie.  At least its a holiday movie, eh?  Kinda appropriate!  Looks like we are committed!  Ha!  Committed!  This is already a barrel of laughs.

Remind me to never ask for anything ever again.

Write-up and review coming later tonight!

- Z