fine whine

So yesterday, as I was standing in line for about an hour for the "Drop zone", evidently the world's tallest gyro-drop, there were monitors blaring and looping an odd mishmash of footage. Incidently said loop was about an hour long, which gives me pause to think that most people in the park spend more than an hour, overall, standing in line. Don't they deserve better than just one hour of VH1 nostalgia, cheesy TV show promos, music videos and movie trailers?

Speaking of those trailers, I saw what has been made of theStepford wives and John Frankenheimer's Manchurian candidate. Back in 1962, John Frankenheimer was still a relative unknown (he hadn't made the hokey Reindeer games or the dreadfulIsland of Dr. Moreau yet) and Frank Sinatra was trying to be a serious actor (it would be below me at this point to mention his appearance in Cannonball Run 2). Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz had shown him to be a talent to watch in 1962, and people certainly were watching later that year when he released Manchurian candidate, though many of them didn't seem to care for its timely takes on communism, mind control, MacCarthyism, feminine domination and electioneering. Those themes translate pretty well today, which is probably what prompted Denzel & co.'s recent remake, though only time will tell if it stands up as well as the original.

Time certainly has been less merciful to 1975's Stepford wives, knowlingly made with one foot set in the then-modern urban(e) atmosphere of women's liberation and the other firmly on the floor of June Cleaver's kitchen. While the science fiction element is even more easily explained in this world of Aibo, Asimo and Robo Sapiens, the horror aspect of a reversion to the stereotypical fifties can now only be played for kitsch and camp humor. When I heard Matt Broderick's name attached to it (he who was in the remake of Godzilla) I expected an all-out comedy. Nicole Kidman's somewhat neutral on this account, having played in drama, thriller and comedy alike. To discover that Bette Midler had taken on the Paula Prentiss role, well, made my head spin. Bette's not an actress known for her sublety, and what little of the trailer I saw only confirmed that no stops were left un-pulled in the making of that film.

So anyway, with those two remakes in theaters and on the horizon, what can we expect next from the bottom-of-the-barrel scrapers? Some other contemporary "classic", updated for our 00s-sensibilities, say a new Convoy or perhaps Wall street? Perhaps they'll strike gold with the whole paranoia thing and we'll see another Three days of the condor through a Parallax view. Isn't enough enough?

So tonight Jessica and I watched Belleville rendez-vous or as it has been dubbed (har har) The triplets of Belleville. It was unlike pretty much anything I'd seen before, though I'd said that not too long ago about the incredibly bizarre anime FLCL, but for different reasons."Different" is really the watchword for either, come to think of it.

I'll likely be returning to Belleville soon, as I am sure to have missed many of its lush details and tiny gags, much like Jacques Tati's Hulot films, one of which makes a poster appearance in the cartoon. As for FLCL, I've been reading things about it and the more I read, the more it makes sense -- like Mulholland Drive, but without the lesbian sex.

On a lark and a sort-of recommendation from Scott I borrowed the already forgotten 2002 WWII submarine horror/thriller Below, not too long ago. I'm not sure what brought it to mind today, but what popped up first was a single scene, a pretty cool one in retrospect. In it, one of the seamen is wandering through a dark corridor and sees his reflection in a particularly shiny of bulkhead or door or something. It matters not that which what he sees his reflection, but that his reflection is time lagged by about half a second. My description cannot do it justice, but suffice to say it was very memorable.

Thinking about it made me wonder about other single scenes from otherwise unremarkable movies that I've stocked away in my memory. One in particular stands out, from fairly early in the rather dismal House on haunted hill (the remake with Geoff Rush, Famke Janssen and Peter Graves, that is). There's a part of the film, early on, when gaiety and fun still reign (and terror is but a shadow of, er, foreshadowing) and Chris Kattan is still alive, wherein characters are traipsing through the rooms of the former asylum with a camcorder. They find one room, ostensibly once an operating room of some sort that appears empty to the eye but the ol' Handycam picks up a whole different environs, replete with a doctor and nurses, a patient and other various medical paraphernalia. Adding to the creepy-ness is a sideways glance by the doctor, whereby the idea that he's somehow aware of its presence (and thus its implications) and he does a freaky head-shaking that looks, well, freaky. It's a great moment. As for the rest of the film, particularly the inkblot monster chase at the end? Skip it except for the bit in the torture chamber--which is too bizarre for me to even try to describe, let alone explain.

So what is it that makes these moments so memorable and the rest so not? That which brought all of this to mind today was a little ditty by (Mr. Show's) Bob Odenkirk over on Chunklet. At one point he said:

... it occurred to me that there's a lot of comedies that come out where people like only four or five scenes. I remember the last Austin Powers. You know, you'd talk to people about it and they'd go, “Oh, it's great! I didn't like Goldmember, but I liked this, and that, and this!” And they name, like—everybody names, like, three things. And it's like, “So you liked three things and that makes it a great movie?”

I can't help but agree (how better to prop up my hastily-formed opinions than to yoke myself with an established yet still cool comedy guy?) but I have widened my scope on this beyond comedy to thrillers. It could likely go even further, but I am just one man, after all.

So anyway, as for these moments, is it possible to have a film comprised entirely of them? The example that came to mind was Princess bride, but not every single scene is utterly memorable, just almost all of them. That, though, is a comedy, and we're discussing scary movies, but my expertise in scary movies is sorely lacking. Without stooping to comedy-horror (i.e. the Raimi/Evil dead canon), are there any examples of scary movies just rife with these sort of moments? I suspect somebody would throw in the first Exorcist, but I didn't find it scary and too much of it is nondescript and merely ordinary to me. So... discuss.

So I watched the Alec Guinness "classic" The man in the white suit (1951, directed by Alexander Mackendrick). It was a truly unique movie. I can't say that I mean that in a good or bad way, really. It's just so different as to be only possibly called "unique". I know not of any other movie about a man seeking to create the perfect fabric, one that repels dirt and cannot be torn or cut without an acetylene torch. That's just the beginning, though, as our protagonist succeeds halfway through and spends the rest of the movie trying in vain to share his creation with the world. He's up against merely the capitalists and the workers... hijinks ensue, naturally.

I can only imagine the way they're going to pitch the eventual remake. If they manage to get the Encyclopedia Britannica people to make a product placement deal again. As such it could be intelligent, as the original made a fair stab. The comedy's probably as funny as the science is correct: I'm not sure and I don't want to find out.

Watch it if you want to see something unique, though, pick it up at a nearby library (Blockbuster's not going to carry it, I'd wager).

Oh, and if you're reading this, Jessica, that one guy is Michael Gough who did, in fact, play Alfred in the Batman movies. So there.