fine whine

I've been doing some thinking. My earlier dismissal of the recent War of the worlds may have been a disservice to a $200 million grossing film with A-listers on both sides of the camera. A movie that bad deserves far greater attention.

I haven't changed my mind. It's most likely the worst movie made this year that I've seen so far. What we need to ask ourselves is: what went wrong?

Was it Tom Cruise's off-screen antics and the whole Scientology debacle that distracted me? Nope. While he may be a raving loon in his personal life that hasn't impaired his acting abilities too much. His agent might need to brush up on his skills though, as Tom makes a very, very unconvincing blue-collar New Jersey native, let alone a card-carrying stevedore.

Moreover, he's the person the latter two thirds of the movie shows. Of all the people to care about... him? And two kids, and Tim Robbins?

While I harbor no ill will toward any of them (though his son's character played by Justin Chatwin isn't particularly interesting, or fleshed-out convincingly) I find the need to wonder why, with an entire planet in turmoil, we only see the briefest glances at what the rest of the population is experiencing. Such a small focus works when you've got a smaller-scale situation, like, oh, three guys on a boat and the giant shark trying to eat them, but when an unknown number of giant alien machines is tearing up cities willy-nilly (I believe we know there are at least four, based on how many are shown at any one time) there's literally a world of possibilities for people to follow and scenes to show.

Perhaps screenwriters David Koepp & Josh Friedman wanted to make sure Spielberg didn't repeat his 1941 mistake of too many characters and too much bloat*. But they took away too much. Spielberg knows how to handle reasonable groups of people in horrifically dramatic situations (like the Holocaust, though the Nazis and the aliens in this film are at once very similar and yet so different) but here he seems unable to juggle more than three people at a time.

At one point our protagonists are running to get onto a ferry, along with a throng of several hundred other people. Somewhere in the chaos they meet "Sheryl" and a child with her, though no explanation is give as to who she is other than someone Tom's character knows. She disappears from the action quickly enough, though, and isn't mentioned thereafter. Extra characters in Saving private Ryan were treated much better.

In Ryan we can find a much better example of following a small group of people against the backdrop of a larger evil, but in this case they're all believable soldiers, not a pretty-boy dockworker, an overprecocious little girl, fifteen stereotypes wrapped up into a fifteen year old, and a survivalist who might have just gone a bit over the line. All the time I watched it I was aware that these people were actors acting, and never bought into the suspension of disbelief at their characters, let alone the special effects behind them.

Some of the CGI was painfully obvious, too. Physical sets looked pretty good, and however the rich neighborhood/jet crash was put together it looked quite convincing, but far too much of the movie looked much too fake.

And I feel the need to point out that the back windows of a mid-90s Dodge Caravan do not slide down like that. They just don't. They can't. I realize that it was probably necessary for filmmakers to fake so they could fly a camera around, inside and outside of the minivan, but it was all the more distracting, and equally pointless.

Some of the effects sequences were pretty impressive, but almost all of them ran on as long as a painful Saturday Night Live sketch, well past making the point. The emergence of the tripod creature from the ground is one such scene. Likewise the eyeball tentacles late in the film, seemingly a cross between the water tentacle from The Abyss and something much more sinister.

I won't even address the jarring discrepancies in the aliens' technologies, other than to mention that they've mastered intergalactic travel and an incredible form of personal transportation, yet they rely on inefficient designs and needlessly complex solutions to easy problems. Want to clear out a bunch of people from a planet? Why zap them individually when you could just pulverize the buildings and wipe out the people en masse? Or why not build bigger death rays, say, the size of more than one person at a time?

The fact that at least once 'terrorists' were mentioned shows that everyone's still well aware of the whole 9/11 thing, but was this really necessary? I suppose I'd need to find an overprecocious ten-year-old and ask him or her what the first guess at a big attack would be, terrorists or space aliens.

Maybe I should read the book. I'd bet that ol' H.G. had New Jersey in mind when he wrote it a century ago. You should read the book too, or watch the old movie, or listen to the radio adaptation. Just skip this one.

* And not enough entertainment. If you haven't yet watched 1941, don't. It's a disaster/war/comedy/farce with a cast numbering in the 50s and jokes numbering in the low 10s.

So we were up later than usual this evening, and things were already getting silly when Jessica found the following thread on the nest.

Before I continue, I think should warn you, the reader, that what follows below could be considered of an adult nature (yet it is totally immature) and I cannot in good conscience recommend that you read it. Feel free to scroll past all of this, and continue reading the more highbrow stuff I've written.

If you're still reading, that thread began with '410bride' writing:

Admittedly I have only played this drunk, but basically you take any movie title and substitute "vagina" for one of the words. Sometimes we end up cracking ourselves up, but like I said, usually alcohol is involved.

and then a list of many a clever title, including Three men and a vagina, My best friend's vagina, and The hunt for Red Vagina.

For a good ten minutes Jessica and I drew upon our reserves of silliness and my large movie collection* and came up with many a funny title. Then she went to bed and I thought the whole thing was over, but my brain kept coming up with more titles. Here follows a list of many of them, in the hopes that they stop bouncing around my head.

• Rosemary's vagina, or better yet, Joe Gould's vagina**
• Dirty rotten vaginas
• The discreet charm of the vagina
• Big deal on Vagina Street
• Vaginas in the mist
• Vagina on the moon
• A vagina in the sun or A place in the vagina
• Vaginabusters
• Wag the vagina
• All the president's vagina
• Two by Michael Douglas: Romancing the vagina and The perfect vagina
• The vaginas down under
• Some like vagina hot
• Vagina on the river Kwai
• Deep blue vagina
• Close encounters of the vagina kind
• Big trouble in little vagina
• Attack of the 50-foot vagina
• The incredible shrinking vagina
• Three by Pacino: Scent of a vagina, And vagina for all and Dog vagina afternoon
• The secret lives of vaginas
• The Spanish vagina or The vagina prisoner
• Vagina of the living dead
• Vaginas from a mall or Scenes from a vagina
• Clash of the vaginas or Vagina of the titans
• A boy and his vagina, or maybe Johnny got his vagina
• A fistful of vaginas
• The cook, the thief, his wife & her vagina
• The vagina that wouldn't die
• Vagina without a face or Fiend without a vagina
• The incredible 2-headed vagina
• The big red vagina
• In the heat of the vagina and its sequel, They call me Mister Vagina
• Joe versus the vagina

Having typed those up I'm certain still others will come to me, so mayble I'll add more in the comments. Feel free to join in, though bear in mind it's rather addictive.

* Which contains Snatch and The Abyss, among others.

** My favorite, I think.

War of the worlds may have been ripe for remaking, but this year's attempt wasn't a worthy successor to the 1955 award-winner. It wasn't even as good of a movie.

It wasn't the worst movie we watched tonight, but it's definitely among the top three. The other two were Dead presidents and Benny & Joon. That last one was least worst of the bunch, but by no means a fantastic film.

Compared to the other two, though, it was fine art.

Some bits of it are pure brilliance. The idea of a poker game with non-monetary bets and raises is quite well done, in no small part due to the great cast. The way Sam makes mashed potatoes and grilled cheese are classic scenes, too, though nothing in comparison to Johnny Depp's Buster Keaton work. Aidan Quinn is just creepy, though, and far outshined by everyone else on screen. The screen is a bit muddled by the cinematographer's choice of filters and whatnot for the lenses: most of the movie is shot through a mesh (basically a pair of nylons) and the higher-fidelity of the DVD presentation makes that practice all the more visible and distracting.

More distracting, though, was the first four-fifths of Dead presidents, which resembled more The deer hunter than the heist movie that the commercials I remembered would have me believe. Chris Tucker shows that he can, in fact, act without being completely annoying, but little else is all that noteworthy. I much preferred Chris Rock's serious turn* in New Jack city when I watched that last week. But not by much.

* As opposed to every other role he's apparently ever played (save maybe for CB4, which I haven't seen), such as Dogma which I also recently re-watched.

Tonight I watched Walking tall, part II. Let me tell you, having grown up a fan of Hazzard county's good ol' boys (never meanin' no harm), cheering for the cops in a car chase instead of the moonshine runners feels odd, if not downright wrong.

Look around on the web and you discover many interesting things about Woody Allen's Purple rose of Cairo:

• It's supposedly Woody's favorite movie, of the ones he's made.
• It garnered him a nomination for the Academy Award for "Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen", his fourth winless nomination since sharing the honors with Marshall Brickman for 1978's Annie Hall. He would win again the next year with Hannah and her sisters.
• It probably didn't make enough at the box office to cover its $15 million budget.
• Irving Berlin's "Cheek to cheek", the song that underscores the opening titles, was used in the soundtrack of one film in the 1980s. This one. It was used in ten films during the 1990s. It is from the movie Top hat, with Fred & Ginger, as seen at the end of Purple rose.
• Michael Keaton* was originally cast in Jeff Daniels's role. Woody fired him after seeing his early footage.

But those are just bits of trivia, facts and hearsay, and easily found ones at that. You'd do far better to actually watch the movie, an eminently enjoyable, whimsical romp through the escapist nature of cinema and the whole movie-going experience.

It's delightful and fun, startlingly so for a movie set against the bleak backdrop of the Great Depression. Having avoided reading anything about the plot before watching it, everything in Purple rose was a surprise for me, and I think I enjoyed it all the more for it. So I won't ruin the plot.

One thing I feel I must point out, however, is that while Woody does not appear in the film, even in a bit role (at least that I could see), Mia Farrow has mastered his nuances and cadences so well that her lines often sound as though he could be delivering them, except that they lack most of his neuroses. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something noticeably odd. Mia does a fine job, and Jeff Daniels rises to the challenge of acting with her. Everybody does well, though, especially the ones onscreen.

I can't recommend this film highly enough. Grab some popcorn, if such is your inclination, kick back, and watch a wonderful movie.

* Keaton is of course better known for his portrayals of Batman, which I have also recently re-watched. His first turn in the rubber suit isn't all that bad, despite several telling signs that it is a product of the late 80s (Prince songs prominently figure in several scenes). It seemed to be a decent start for a franchise, if not a bit long on stylization and short on warmth. Unfortunately his return in 1992 was the beginning of the long downward trend of the franchise, with Burton given a freer hand for style and the unfortunate choice of two of the stranger villains, one of whom is as repulsive as he is implausible. Moreover I must wonder about the vehicle choices in the latter film: the police drive Chrysler K-cars (not know for their reliability or horsepower) and the same VW Jettas seem to appear noticeably many times, probably just repositioned and repainted on the tall but claustrophobic street sets.

Attack of the killer tomatoes! has some very amusing bits, including the outrageously hilarious tiny meeting room and the titling of San Francisco footage as "New York"*, but overall, it both tries too hard (naming a reporter Lois so as to allow a Superman joke later) and is lazy (commercial gags about a blind traffic cop and Jesus as a spokesman have no bearing on the plot) at the same time, and it all comes off as too many winks and not enough nostalgia. Attack is supposed to be a parody of and homage to B-movies of the 50s and later that used sparse sets, slapdash writing, stock footage, and creative-but-low-budget effects to try to tell a story in something of an earnest fashion.

I'm not certain it's entirely possible anymore to make a B-movie like that in this post-ironic modern day and age (or is it ironic post-modern?) with pure intentions. All of those black & white clunkers were amateurs trying their best at their one shot at the big screen. The 'stars' of Attack of the killer tomatoes! aren't trying to act on screen; they're trying to be outrageously funny. It doesn't work. Like I said, many a moment is funny, but overall you've gotta love this film to like it.

* Later they show a slide of what might be the Golden Gate bridge, and title it "New York?". This, my friends, is comedy.