Recreating Hitchcock

I'm terrible at updating this blog.

But, even if it's three years old, I found something worth sharing -- and re-publishing something many other bloggers have published -- again. And that is Vanity Fair's shots of modern actors recreating some of the most famous scenes in Alfred Hitchcock's work.

I love Hitchcock films and many of these images are exciting to see as actors from our generation mimic these frames of celluloid that are ingrained in our minds when we think about Hitch.

So, without further ado ...

One of the greatest movies of all time...

There are a lot of films that aspire to be called "The Greatest Film of All Time" but there is only one that truly lives up to that title. And it's about an androgynous person named Pat Riley.

Based on the old Saturday Night Live skit "It's Pat" from the early 1990s, the film "It's Pat" details the life of this androgynous person named Pat Riley, Pat's life and the comedic attempts of everyone around Pat to figure out whether Pat is a man or a woman.

The story finds Pat trying to establish Pat's self and along the way Pat meet and falls in love with Chris, another androgynous person. But Pat's failures in life and repeated job-jumping forces Chris to dump Pat. Meanwhile, Pat's neighbor Kyle becomes obsessed with learning what Pat's true gender is.

Whether it's Pat falling down the stairs and crushing Pat's nuts ("Awwww, there goes my afternoon snack!") or it's Pat getting a hug and seeming to be very excited only to find out that it really was a banana in Pat's pocket, hilarity ensues at every turning point in the film. Even when Pat finds Pat's self on stage to play with the band Ween. Even one man, who is obsessed with learning whether or not Pat is a man or a woman, goes to great lengths to hack into Pat's computer using every word from A to Z in the dictionary before finding the password.

Movies based on Saturday Night Live skits usually fail in terms of quality -- whether it's plot, acting, comedic writing and lines, the overall story, film techniques or other aesthetics. But "It's Pat" is one of the most beautiful movies you'll ever see based off of an SNL skit that was often times cut because Adam Sandler had a song to sing. The plot is top notch of trying to figure out what gender Pat is and the aesthetically, the film is just beautiful. Granted, it's not like the vistas that Terrence Malick shoots in his films, but it is beautiful nonetheless.

And comedic? HO! My stomach and ribs hurt when I was done watching this movie on account of how hard I was laughing. You can keep your "The Hangover" thank you very much. This is the funniest movie I've ever seen. Bar None.

In closing, just let me say: Happy April Fools Day.

My wife is going to get pissed...

My wife is going to get pissed, because I just found a new film production/distribution company to obsess over.

Thanks to Criterion, I read an article the other day about a film company that Adam Yauch, aka MCA of the Beastie Boys, founded in Tribeca called Oscilloscope Laboratories. Yauch's new project produces and distributes independent films. They have done some music, but mostly its  films that -- from what I've seen -- are think-pieces. I could be completely wrong; there are some dramas in the collection, of which "Howl" is one. But I would classify the common bond of these films as something the audience will learn from.

Yeah, he jokes about how he might be Criterion's competition while delivering his Top 10 favorite films in the Criterion Collection -- yet, says seriously, that he's not their competition.

And realistically he's not.

These films aren't as polished as Criterion; they're not getting the restoration treatments and they're not getting fancy packaging. I can't speculate on all the films -- as I've only seen three so far -- but I'd say the common tie(s) that bind are 1.) these films are educational or informative and 2.) independent in their production.

What sparked this new obsession, though, was picking up "A Film Unfinished" from the library the other day.

I'd been wanting to see the film after reading about it being named as one of the best films of 2010 on one of the year-end best-of lists. The synopsis seemed rather intriguing -- and the film really was.

The basis of the film is that crews of Nazi filmmakers were sent to the Ghetto in Warsaw to film the conditions of Jews there. Some of the conditions were staged as propaganda to show that some Jews lived an extreme life of comfort and that conditions in the Ghetto weren't bad. Other portions of the filming revealed otherwise: starvation, overcrowding, disease, sickness and extreme poverty. It wasn't a very uplifting documentary -- to say the least. However, what was strange about it -- and this is the $1 million question -- is that while the Nazis had a paper trail surrounding a lot of things (including filmmaking), there is no paper trail about why people were sent to Warsaw to film the conditions in the Ghetto or why this film exists.

Nine years after the war, someone found a storage facility in the middle of nowhere filled with stock film and stuff that was never meant to see the light of day when they found four cannisters of film with the title "Das Ghetto" on them and found these rolls of film that are shown in this documentary. There's no soundtrack to the film, no script, just recorded observations of day-to-day life for a short period of time in this neighborhood -- before the deportations to concentration camps started.

Well, upon watching this film, I'd seen the buzzing logo of Oscilloscope before the film started (which I recognized, but couldn't place from where ... thanks to the vast volume of weird movies I view) and while checking out the extra features, I browsed the other available titles. I didn't see much.

So I went to their website ... and jackpot!

I've also seen "Howl," which featured James Franco portraying Allen Ginsberg, in a beautifully crafted film about Ginsberg's time during the obscenity trials surrounding his epic poem juxtaposed with images of him writing the poem, talking about the poem, reading the poem and the stuff going on in his life during the period he wrote the poem -- as well as some trippy animations mixed in of the subject matter of the poem.

Franco delivered a great performance that not many of you will ever see, but the real lasting legacy of this film is really about freedom of speech in the country and who has the authority to label something obscene. Granted, I'm probably not a good judge on that as my judgment on obscene is a little bit more loose than that of others, but...

Finally, and one of the more memorable films I'm sure my wife has actually taken the time to watch with me, is "Dear Zachary ..." Good, god. This film was amazing. It's basically a documentary about this guy who breaks up with his girlfriend and she goes off the fucking deep end and drives from Iowa to Pennsylvania where he's living and -- as all evidence points to her -- kills him.

He's found the next day, face down in his car with five bullet wounds.

She flees to Canada, because she has dual Canadian-American citizenship and upon her arrest, reveals that she is pregnant with this guy's child. After a lengthy child custody battle between this woman and her victim ex-boyfriend's parents, she eventually is tentatively released from police custody, regains custody of her son and eventually jumps into the Atlantic Ocean from a fisherman's wharf holding onto the now 13-month-old child. Both die. And everyone involved is pissed because Canadian law is so convoluted that basically one justice's opinion that this woman poses no threat to herself or others -- despite the fact that a Canadian judge has ruled that there is enough evidence against this woman that she could stand trial for murder in both Canada and the U.S. -- is allowed to be released to commit an even more heinous act.

The laws have since been changed in Canada -- thanks to the outcry of some lawmakers who saw this film and were appalled at what they say.

All three were really good movies and while I'm looking forward to seeing more, there was one film that really caught my eye and was the impetus for making you wade through all this aforementioned bullshit to get to my point ...

If you've ever seen a film with John Cazale in it, chances are you've seen one of the greatest films in American cinema history. And that's no lie. John Cazale's film career spans about six years and five films -- from "The Godfather" in 1972 to "The Deer Hunter," which he was filming when he died of bone cancer in 1978. All five of his films were nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category.

Who has he played? Well, his most famous role -- and one that you've probably seen him in -- is as Fredo Corleone in both Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" and "The Godfather, Part II." He was Stan in Coppola's "The Conversation," an amazing film in its own right that has been largely overshadowed by the success of "The Godfather(s)" and Coppola's later work with "Apocalypse Now." He played Sal, opposed his good friend Al Pacino, in Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon." And he was opposite Robert DeNiro (again ... sort of) in Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" as another character named Stan at the time of his death.

Five great films of the 1970s and he had a pretty big part in them all. Yet, he might be one of the most under-rated actors of that decade -- starring with the likes of Pacino, James Caan, Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken and his fiance at the time of his death, Meryl Streep.

What interests me the most about seeing this film is the interviews offered by his contemporaries remembering him in this biography for what he did in a span of about six years -- even shooting his scenes in "The Deer Hunter" while he was dying. And, I think that interviews with today's under-rated stars Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi and Phillip Seymour Hoffman will lend an interesting perspective to this biographic documentary.

Of course, I have yet to see this movie and my opinions are loosely based off of what I read on the site, but made stronger by what I already know about Cazale -- that his agent did a really fucking good job selected five amazing roles for him in his unfortunately short career -- and the fact that one guy I work with, Rich, who barely watches any movies and hates most of the stuff I would fawn over anyway happened to catch this on HBO and was thoroughly impressed and said it was really good (if that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is) -- as we were talking about it at work tonight.

So needless to say, after I've moved this to the top of my Netflix queue and finally watch it in the very near future, I think my wife is going to have another film company obsession to deal with other than my affinity for Criterion.

And my wife is going to get pissed.

Lina Lamont should be shot ... and other good music and dance routines that are in no way related (or fit into the overall general plot) to this movie

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Adam’s rating: ★★★  (out of 5)

Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly

Rated: none. 103 min.

No. 10 on AFI 100

No. 5 on AFI 100 reissue

No. 78 on IMDB Top 250

Starring: Gene Kelly,
Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds

"Singin' in the Rain": No. 10 on AFI 100; No. 5 on AFI 100 (2007); No. 78 on IMDB Top 250

This was – and is – a tough film for me to review. While I typically despise musicals, I surprised even myself in liking this film the first time I watched it. However, after some careful reflection, I’m beginning to reconsider.

Leaving out the signature scene near the end of the movie when Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) figures out how to fix his trainwreck of a movie he’s making and some of the musical choices, the criticism I have for this film are plenty.

This film is a complete echo of “Sunset Boulevard” and knowing that it was made in 1952 – two years after Billy Wilder’s classic film noir -- makes this matter worse.

The concept of making a film about the start of the talkie in the history of Motion Pictures is half-ass unique. What’s interesting about this film is the portrayal of how the quick transition to sound affected Hollywood and the silent film stars. But, the long-term effect the transition to sound had in making young stars and starlets of the silent era obsolete is much more interesting in “Sunset Boulevard” – and, as Norma Desmond portrays in that film (which will get its review eventually), much more cryptic.

While there is something to be said for making a film about the immediate effect the advent of the talkie had on silent stars – and it is an idea with merit – it really boils down to what type of film you prefer? Would you rather watch an overtly bubbly, all problems get solved film like this, or a dark, cynical film noir from one of American cinema’s greatest writer/directors of all time?

My other love/hate beef with this film is the music. Initially – and I still feel this way – I love the music. About halfway through the film when Lockwood is recounting the tale of how he got big in Hollywood with Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) and once we get into the need to create Lockwood and Lamont’s next film into a talkie, that’s when the songs get interesting. I was particularly impressed with “Make ‘em Laugh” and “Moses Supposes” – as well as “Good Morning” and the dance sequences that accompany each song.

The biggest problem I have with the music is it doesn’t fit the movie. At all. And I didn’t really see this or become very cognizant of this fact until it was pointed out to me by a friend who was surprised when I said I liked this film based on the tongue-lashing I gave “Gone With the Wind” and she had to tolerate me bad-mouthing it.

Even the title song, “Singin’ in the Rain” and its iconic scene have nothing to do with the movie at all.

And frankly, that and the fact that this film is a more bubbly, happy-go-lucky version of what happened to the stars of the silent-era as the transition from silent to talkie hit is what’s wrong with this film.

Oh, and Lina Lamont’s voice.

Fake Criterion: The Kubrick Collection

One of the more coveted items for the Criterion Collection are Stanley Kubrick's collection of films. While early films like "Paths of Glory" and "Spartacus" have seen DVD and Blu-ray releases, the popular titles from the 1960s, 70s and even into the 80s have yet to see a DVD release on Criterion.

I even toyed with the idea of using the masqueraded and topless woman from "Eyes Wide Shut" for my design. But, much to my surprise, the photos were all pixelated and I decided to keep this somewhat family-friendly. I'd really like to take another shot at "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange." I feel I went to basic and mimicked the new designs on the remastered DVDs that came out a few years ago.

While these are some of the more popular Criterion fakes, it only felt natural to use these as my next installment of fake designs as some of these films are among my favorite films.

2001: A Space Odyssey

A Clockwork Orange

The Shining

Dr. Strangelove ...

Barry Lyndon

Eyes Wide Shut