Razor Sharp Precision

Following my last post a friend joked with me about the status that people sometimes place on their foodie tools, specifically, kitchen knives. You know what I mean. I'm talking about the obsessive foodie way that items are described with a loving specification and attention to brand and price that you realize that what they really want people to know that they just want you to know that their stuff is probably better than your second-rate el cheapo tool. That's right, nothing short of the finest will do for these folks, and oh, did they mention that money is no object, as long as they can pay enough to let people know that oh dear, this fine tool cost much more than that.

Yeah. You know what I mean and I'm sure we all do it now and then. But some people really get their thrills discussing their excellent taste. So it was two weeks back when I went to dinner with a friend of mine at her friends' house. The hosts are nice people, they are generous with their food and better, yet, their liquor. But also in attendance was one of the host's oldest friends, who, along with host #1 fancies himself quite a bon vivant. This man, who I'll call Frick, suddenly began talking to the host, Frack, about his need for a new fillet knife. Thus began their talk about how German knives are certainly the best. Wusthof? Oh no, I prefer Henkel. Oh, yes, Henkel makes a fine product too. Oh, I might buy one here. Yes? I'd also recommend looking there.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Keep in mind that this discussion was for a knife used to slice fish apart, something that most folks don't need to do with great regularity if they don't process salmon for a living. I wanted to suggest that purchasing a decent boning knife for about $20 the fellow would have a tool that could fillet fish as well as do a fine job with roasts, ribs, legs of lamb or pork and other butchering tasks. Oh well. Where's the status in that?

By the way, this conversation took place over dinner, as I mentioned earlier. The meal was jambalaya. Frack had made his first ever batch. It was indeed tasty, but Frack was not about to let us eat without explaining how he'd compared many recipes before settling on what he considered a fine and authentic version of that cajun classic. I had to roll my eyes on two points: First, for a recipe with shrimp, chicken and sausage, he used sweet and hot Italian sausage rather than andouille sausage, which seems a heck of a lot more "authentic" than the much milder Italian sausage. But, there are myriad jambalaya recipes and all sorts of meats can be used. Same with spices. Which brings me to the other point: While explaining his recipe vetting Frack several times explained that he rejected immediately a recipe that called for "cajun spices". That sounded too pedestrian. His solution was a hodgepodge of spices including paprika, thyme, and some cayanne pepper. Interesting mix, but I couldn't help but recall what a Luisianian friend of mine always mentions as one of the standard ingredients used by her 100% cajun mother: Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning, available in stores everywhere.

Hungry For More

I enjoy cooking. I don'tknow when I discovered that cooking could be more of a hobby than just a means of preparing fuel to be shoveled into my mouth to

be burned up in my stomach and turned into energy. But somewhere along the way I realized that taking the time to make something tasty to eat offers the opportunity to be creative, a certain amount of discipline and yet frequent chances to bend the rules to meet my wishes. Cooking gives me something to look forward to at the end of a busy day or on a relaxing Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon. It is a possibility to challenge myself to think how I might recreate something that I once ate at a restaurant or in my childhood or how to improvise something that I suddenly crave. And there are fun things to do like cutting up meat, chopping things, and playing with fire. And lest I forget, turning on the radio in the kitchen or on the back deck while making something to eat provides great relaxation and relief of stress. This is added by the fact that cooking any meal is made infinitely better with a glass of wine or bottle of beer on hand. In short, cooking has developed from a means of supplying my body with food to a full fledged hobby.

Like any hobby, cooking, for me has a variety of likes and dislikes. Here are some of them:

Knife work. For whatever reason the precision of chopping an onion, dicing vegetables, or most fun of all, cutting meat whether it be a chicken, rabbit, fish, or some other bit of critter is extremely satisfying. Perhaps it is the enjoyment that comes of seeing things prepped and ready for the upcoming stages of the recipe. Perhaps it is the sound of the knife clacking on the cutting board. Maybe it is the proud feeling of dominating the ingredients by turning them into what I want them to be. At any rate, cutting is fun.

Grilling. Ask any man who likes grilling why he likes it and what will they say? Probably any of the following: Food tastes good grilled. Fire is warm and heat is nice. Mankind's control of fire signifies our rise from knuckle dragging primates to the intelligent beings who created companies like Weber and Kingsford. Besides fire, grilling requires tools like spatulas, tongs, big long forks and knives. Grilling often involves meat, and grilled meat also signifies mankind's rise from knuckle dragging primates to the geniuses who could breed cows to create certified black Angus steak. Grilling and beer go hand in hand.

Improvising. How many times have you been preparing a certain recipe only to discover that you lack several ingredients as seen on the list? Happens to me all the time. I honestly enjoy realizing that and then rummaging through the pantry to see what I have that will best approximate the missing ingredients. Similarly, I enjoy coming home and seeing what I can whip up with whatever items I have on hand. Not only does it save a trip to the grocery store, but it often results in some pleasing-and sometimes spectacular- meals!

Sharing food with friends. As many have said in many other places, eating is a great social activity. Cooking with a significant other or friend is fun. Better yet is sitting down to eat with that person after putting together a nice meal. Same goes for a group of good friends and spending the meal chatting and savoring each bite of the meal as well as the time together.

I said I disliked some things about cooking. Here they are:

Ingredient snobbery.

So you get your stuff all verifiably locally grown from a farmer's market. And oh yes, that broccoli cost you $9.99 a pound. I don't care. Really, I don't. Everybody want's to eat tasty and secondly everybody wants to eat well. Where and how we get things are important but what nobody needs is somebody else telling them about wonderful locally grown hubbard squash and free range hormone & cruelty free pork chops. Great. Super. I'll be impressed when I have the time. Also, too many of these people tend to blanche when I tell them where I got or even what I regularly do to get hormone free, free range meat. Just eat your good food. Don't hold it over people's heads.

Sliders.

Sandwiches are great. Multiple tiny versions of a sandwich are pointless. White Castle had a good thing going for itself when it decided to make tiny hamburgers. The public, forgive the pun, ate it up. However, our postironic age of the 2000's decided that if it could be a sandwich it definitely should be available for the same price as four tiny versions of the whole thing. Besides being more work for the kitchen and no increase in taste for the customer, this is a ridiculous trend. It's the stupid version of the typically American desire to add quality by multiplication: A pulled pork sandwich? It might be even better if we made an equivalent four tiny pulled pork sandwiches! I'll give you four tiny "no's" that equal one huge one.

Kitchen speak as mainstream talk

I don't think this happens a lot but I do want to mention it. I know that executive chefs are part businessman. The work they do involves lots of ordering, counting, measuring, and further dealing with numbers. But I don't like when businesspeak extends to the food, especially meat. Please do not call meats or fish "proteins" or "product". To me, this is the same as a person saying that a man who died in a fiery car crash "passed away". Food is food, and some of it comes from living things. Those animals that became food died. (I won't even get into plants!)

The animals died. They became meat. This includes fish, deer, cows, pigs and lots of other things. Proteins are an infintesimmally small part of what creates these creatures. They are not products nor are they proteins. They are meats. For eating. Give them the respect that they deserve since they came from living things and don't just describe them as building block of matter.

Clean up.

You didn't think I'd talk about cooking and not mention the part that so few people like? I like doing lots of things in the kitchen. I dislike cleaning up my own messes. The odd part of it all? I like the orderliness of kitchens and that they can be arranged with military-like precision. I like how things have their places and you can get them to deal with a specific task. But after they have all been used... well, cleaning them just sucks.

Equipment snobs.

See "Ingredient snobs". People, you can find it written in many places: cooking requires a pot or two, a frying pan or two, and some knives. I like gadgets and I like having a kitchen full of stuff that I can use, but please don't mention the things you have just because you have them. Remember, before you had the machine you had that helped you make the dish you're bragging about, NOBODY had that machine. Your feat can be done without that expensive gizmo. Cooking is about making sure that the starting ingredients wind up with a certain taste.

Like any good trip, the story at the end is probably more important than the journey.

Old Times, New People, and the Same Things...a fond reunion

Friday August 13, 2010. The date was anything but unlucky for me. I was in Washington, D.C. for a work-related trip but that day's schedule afforded some personal time in the afternoon. I met up for lunch with one of my best friends from college. I was worried.

Why? You are thinking, "You were great friends, what could be wrong?"

Me, I'm thinking. "What do I remember since we last met?" (BTW, the last time was my visit to D.C. in 2007 or 2008. And we had a really good time in our short amount of time together.)

I needn't have worried. For one thing, my friend and I still look enough like each other that we recognized the other as soon as we were face to face.

For another thing, I approached my buddy from behind and announced my presence by uttering a classic Humphrey Bogart line in a terrible Bogart accent. He turned around out of curiosity and also the mindset of, "Only an idiot who knew that I knew this reference would say this while standing behind me would say this."

He was right. I was and still am that idiot. I have no regrets. We had a great time

For the first thing, we are both burgouning "foodies" and were meeting to check out one of the newest ventures of a former "Top Chef" contestant. (By the way, We the Pizza serves up some seriously good pie, especially if you like flavorful toppings, a crisp crust, and still further demand a pliable and chewy dough. Thin crust or deep dish, I was reminded of Mom's toppings and Dad's crust and in my family, those combinations always equaled tasty pizza. Those of you who feel that pizza isn't right unless it is a droopy piece of breading that disappears under the weight of an ultra-sweet tomato sauce or a gallon of greasy cheese please don't go here!)

But back to our reunion: It was great. Time had passed, we were older, pretended to be wiser, and we were just as good friends as we ever were. I was literally speechless with joy as I walked up on my friend. I wanted to know everything he and his family were up to. You know why? Because I cared. Because I knew that he had done lots in the time since we'd last talked and I knew I needed to know.

Sometimes I wonder what makes a friend a friend. Being there for each other at all time, through thick and thin is one. But I think we always overlook a second part of this- distance and time separate friends, but when we can reconnect in person and gloss over stuff and suddenly find ourselves ravenously catching up with each other, I think you have a good friend.

And by this I mean that each of you answers a question about yourself and then immediately asks the other person about their life. Or you may even ignore questions to find out what our old friend is up to. I put it like this: I am a selfish person. I don't like admitting it but I am. People often like themselves and often we like ourselves too much. But when meeting the best of our old friends we somehow manage to balance our enjoyment of talking about ourselves with wanting to know about their lives. This may sound a bit over dramatic but I don't think it is untrue.

At any rate, I ate some fantastic pizza with a great old friend. During the course of our meal we happily discovered that we are still close friends despite the distance of our lives. We used to talk about movies all the time. This time, we talked about how neither of us goes to movies as much as we once did, and also about how neither of us wants to go to most of the movies we see advertised. Age and taste play a large part in this but we share this. We realize that we've both come from the same place with regards of appreciating cinema (even if we didn't always champion the same movies). I remain in awe of my pal's family and ability to work toward his goals. I have no doubt that he'll be successful. I have no doubt that his wife is successful in her current endeavor. I have no doubt that their child is one helluva tyke and I really want to meet the kid.

What worries me is that I offered much less to him. We did some movie talk and we had a great time with it (for a truly great discussion about "Inception" check out Jim Emerson at http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/ )

But besides movie talk, my offerings were slim. I hope that I'll someday have a much more varied life that that which I see in the movies.

The Wonders of Rain

This afternoon I've been killing time at home before I get cleaned up to meet a friend for dinner and then head to a birthday party. I watched a silly but forgettable movie- "Paul Blart: Mall Cop", folded some laundry, and am now watching a baseball game. This Saturday started off just like the rest of the week- extremely humid and darned hot. But the weather forecast said a storm system was heading this way and predicted rain storms in the afternoon. The forecast proved correct with a vengeance!

Around 1 pm the sky began getting cloudy. Half an hour later it was getting positively dark. Suddenly I heard the sound of rain and looked out the window to see a steady shower. Instantly the air turned cooler and the feeling was absolutely refreshing. The yard was eagerly drinking up the water and a wonderful breeze was blowing. I felt instantly happier as the humidity was knocked out by the rain. But the rain wasn't even nearly done. After a few minutes the rain increased and before long it was coming down with such force that the drumming of the water blocked out every other noise in the house. I looked out the window and saw sheets of water and a stream flowing out of the driveway and into the river running down the street. Besides cooling the air at least ten degrees the storm was fantastic to watch. Summer thunderstorms are one of my favorite things to view.

The next hour was lovely as I settled down next to the window and watched the rain smash down on the street and roll off the eves of my house. The air smelled like ozone and water. It was lovely. There was only one thing missing. I needed a nice beverage to go with this fine storm. Since I wanted something simple and calming I ambled down to the pantry and poured some Small Batch Four Roses bourbon over some ice and then returned to my window seat. The cold, sweet smokiness of bourbon mingled with the water from the melting ice cubes went down smooth. I sat back and watched water cascade down onto the neighborhood. It was a great show and a reminder that some of the best entertainments cost nothing at all and only require us to take the time to enjoy them.

I just spent a brief time away from the city. I cannot explain how good it felt to leave behind the urban noise, crowds, traffic and pace of life for the open spaces and different paces of the country. And I was way, way out in the country. I was in northeastern Montana. Now, considering that I grew up in a rural area, it is with great emphasis that I say that the area I visited was very rural.

I loved it.

There is nothing more liberating than space. Plenty of room to make noise, be crazy, get wild and cut loose. But being out in the country surrounded by the perfect system of nature is liberating. The air is clear and the land is open. And yet with the freedom of the land I realize that there is also an element of danger, because the land thrives and survives when it is fed by those who live in it. We can start compost heaps and give back to the land or we can become the compost which feeds the land and the animals that share it with us. Perhaps this sounds a bit morbid but to me it is also an exciting thought. It helps me remember that we need to make the most of our time on earth because sooner or later we will become part of it once again.

On my brief getaway I saw mountains, river bottoms, prairie, canyons created by wind and water, a giant manmade dam and the lake it created, and so much more. The night I saw the stars they dazzled me with blinking intensity; the morning sun was intense and orange when it rose over the horizon. Several mornings snow was blowing and collecting on the ground in a reminder that the western spring comes both later and with even more unpredictable power than it does on the coast. I reveled in being able to turn around 360 degrees and see only one building- at least 30 miles in the distance. I worried that if something happened to me out in such as vast landscape nobody might notice or find me before it was too late. But when surrounded by so much beauty, the danger seems as irrelevant as it is palpable.

One day, while taking a tour of a cattle ranch I saw several horses chasing a coyote off of their territory. It was exciting to see. One sometimes thinks of horses as defenseless animals an there, in front of me, were three horses running after the lone coyote in order to defend their territory. The next evening I went to bed to the sound of several coyotes howling nearby as the ranch's border collies barked and yowled and kept the predators at bay. I loved the sounds and fell asleep wonderfully tired and eager for the next day.

It is great to go somewhere and see all sorts of wild animals, and I saw antelope, coyotes, mule deer, elk, whitetail deer, jackrabbits, gophers, grouse, pheasants and hawks. I also loved knowing that those animals were all struggling for their place in the land and that I was as well. One great thing about leaving the city is that the idea of life and death becomes , closer, clearer, more eminent; Country people are more open about the reality that beings live and die. I don't mean that they are wiser or smarter or better, but there always seems to me a greater acceptance of the transience of life in the country than in the city. In cities the concrete walls and paved streets obscure the softness of the ground and the motion of the sky. Trees are corralled and grass is limited. And people treat pets like family members and expect family members to live forever. I dislike the dishonesty and the focus on preciousness.

What is precious is being here, alive, and being able to take part in this great continuing cycle. What is silly is thinking that a person is better off treating their pet like a family member or every sunrise like a miracle or their reaching old age as a right. We should remember that our pets, like us, are animals and like living and would possibly eat us if it meant that they would live. We should remember that the sun will rise tomorrow regardless of what we do (sorry, Aztecs) but that is no reason no to appreciate it. Enjoy those sunrises! We should remember that we all age but not equally and not all to the same end point. Sure, trying to make our lives go on as far as possible is a noble idea but we need to remember that life is filled with dangers, accidents, inequalities and leaves us the freedom to make satisfying if poor choices- yes, fry that and add butter to the baked potato- but we'd be worse off if we couldn't make those choices.

What does all this have to do with my trip? I'm not actually sure. I believe that I've rambled a bit but I know that the next time I hear another commercial harping about antioxidents or see a person carrying a tiny dog wearing a sweater I'll chuckle a bit more than usual.

Things I love

Random musings about things that I greatly enjoy.

Movies. Especially seeing movies in the theater.

Talking about movies, great, terrible or just fun and interesting with friends.

Reading.

Exploring.

Hunting and sometimes fishing.

Irony.

Photography.

Making fun of my own mistakes.

Wearing comfortable jeans and brand new socks.

Milkshakes.

Dogs and cats.

Mowing lawns and the smell of the freshly cut grass.

Cooking including making bread and cutting meat. And grilling.

Early mornings, when I can wake up, that are sunny and cool.

Getting jobs done.

Finding things I'd forgotten I'd lost.

Baseball. Especially the New York Yankees. And competitions. And winning, or watching somebody enjoy winning.

Skiing.

Good bourbon, single malt scotch, draft beer.

Anitheroes.

Classic rock, hard rock, and metal. And Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, The Who, AC/DC, Metallica and Guns n' Roses.

Waylong Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and Willy Nelson. or songs that they could have sung.

Comfortably dingy bars and fancy restaurants.

Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Robert Mitchum, W.C. Fields, all the Marx Brothers (and Zeppo too), Abbot and Costello, King Kong, Henry Fonda, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Leslie Fiedler, Roger Ebert, Sam Peckinpah, Jim Henson, John Milius, Walter, Hill, John Ford, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Willem Dafoe, Paul Newman, Herman Melville, James Ellroy, Ernest Hemingway, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Derek Jeter, Ted Kennedy, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickins, Clint Eastwood, Don Siegel, Bruce Campbell, Kate Winslett, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, The Simpsons, Lost, Norm MacDonald, Paul Verhoeven, Vincent Price, James Coburn and Charles Bronson, James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, Toshiro Mifune, Akira Kurasawa, Kurtwood Smith, Claude Rains, Lauren Bacall, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Susan Sarandon, Slash, Pete Townsend, Etta James, Patsy Cline, Johnny Carson, Conan O'Brian, and antiques.

Something for Ted Murphy

Tonight's post is brief. Today, my co-workers and I learned that one of our colleagues died. This was unexpected and obviously, the news brought a mixture of shock, disbelief, sadness, loss and grief.

Ted Murphy was a man that I didn't know well but one that I respected and enjoyed working with during the few years that we shared a roof- and a boss. Prior to and during his last assignment at my place of work, Ted had the opportunity to channel his deep love of cinema into the role of reviewer. Ted was a man of great and strong opinions. Those opinions, like all good ones, were a mixture of thought, knowledge, and gut reaction. He was never shy to share his. His opinions, like many good ones, were often correct.

When we had the opportunity to talk together about movies, acting, performers or many other things I enjoyed listening to Ted because he always had much to say on a subject and was always well prepared to back his argument. Ted often lead me to either rethink my original stance on a topic or to agree with him while still finding great wonder in the different ways in which we reached a shared opinion. He was well versed in cinema, theatre and life. Ted was uncompromising, attentive to details and always passionate about his likes and dislikes. All of these were boons to his work at our office and to his work as a reviewer.

I'd like to direct anyone interested to a link to his reviews posted at rottentomatoes.com as well as his website, Murphy's Movie Reviews. As with true review of a work of art, agreeing or disagreeing is worth less than reading and coming away with more information and thoughts than you had before seeing a review, especially if you have seen the work being reviewed. This is true with movies, theatre, television and even with a baseball umpire's strike zone. I hope that you will take a moment to avail yourselves to some of Ted's reviews.

Thanks.

http://www.murphysmoviereviews.net/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/author/author-3521/

My Best List

I've been talking about it for a while and now here is where I lay it all out and explain- by way of a list- the sort of movie viewing experiences that meant a lot to me. This is a group of pictures that helped make or further reinforced my love of going to the movies. Mind you, I may not love each of these movies but the experience of seeing them the theater in some way made me more aware of how and why I value the cinematic experience. In some cases the big screen helped me more clearly see the artistry of these specific movies and the magic of the cinema in general. Whenever possible I have included dates of the events for reference purposes.

#1 ET: The Extra Terrestrial (1982) The first movie I remember seeing in the theater starring "real people." It is not that I hadn't been to the theater prior to this, but E.T. is the first movie I remember seeing that was not animated. I had seen and loved several re-released classic Disney animated features already, but E.T. was real! The people were not cartoons. They looked and talked like people I saw everywhere. The boy, Elliot, played with Star Wars figures just like the ones I had at home (this, perhaps more than any other fact, linked the diagetic world of E.T. with the world in which 5 1/2 year old me lived in). But somehow I quickly came to relate and understand the very frightened-but friendly- alien creature. Somehow I still knew that the alien was a product of movie magic as much as I knew that the little boy and his family were not. But I didn't disbelieve anything the story showed me. I rooted for E.T. to get home, to feel better and find his people. I rooted for Elliot's pain to hurt, for him and his brother and sister to comfort their Mom in her tough time as a single parent. And still, and perhaps most importantly, E.T. scared the crap out of me. When Elliot first encountered the alien behind the house I yelped with shock and horror. Maybe it was that my own house had a field out back; Maybe the scene was just filmed perfectly by Spielberg, but I did then and still do jump every time Elliot and ET first meet. This scare is also one of the first things I looked forward to seeing when I saw E.T. the second time.*
*This occurred several weeks after I first saw the movie. I begged my parents to take me back, despite and because of the joys and horrors of my first viewing. Why would a young child want to expose himself again to that emotional roller coaster? I felt deep down that E.T. was more than just an afternoon of fun. I just knew that there was something there that Ihad to see again. Suffice it to say I went eagerly to the 2002 20th anniversary re-release. Frankly, I think kids are strong enough creatures not to be scared, worried or scarred by a few federal agents holding guns when you consider this movie's emotional toll on a person, especially a young person. Hooray for tough and determined kids. Future filmmakers and members of the Ratings Board, please take note.

#2Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan (1982) The second "real" person movie I remember. Again, real actors. My Dad and I watched reruns of the original Star Trek each Saturday night so I was a little bit familiar with the series' characters by this point. But I wasn't prepared for what could happen on the big screen.
Wow! I can't describe the excitement that a young boy feels when he has seen his first glimpse of the worlds beyond our own. Not to mention getting a full screen view of some of his greatest heroes. James T. Kirk was one of the greatest heroes I had seen in 1982. With little understanding of military procedure, damn, did I know that Kirk was the man to follow. He wasn't perfect but that clearly made him better than those that were. Despite his troubles his exciting and loyal crew/friends braved anything to save everybody from a really neat guy, a mean guy with cool long grey hair and a weird leather vest. That guy was bad but I couldn't take my eyes off of him. But, I still knew that Kirk from night Saturday TV should, and would win.
-Important dramatic lesson: Evil is bad, but villains can have lots of fun. In fact, they can have more fun than the heroes. Part of this is that villains are often conflicted less than the heroes, and this was long before the days of emo. I sort of knew that what I was seeing was beyond the ultra-coolness of watching the Space Shuttles launch from Cape Canaveral, but it was obvious to me that it was connected to things like the Sinbad the Sailor stories tI loved hearing at bedtime.
To this day, I still get chills from the words "Botany Bay". And earwigs.

#3 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) Caught between a rock and a hard place: One fateful summer Saturday afternoon I was given a choice between going to my Little League picnic or a matinee of this movie. Over two decades later I realize this choice existed only because that afternoon presented my Dad with his best opportunity to see the movie. Also, having already seen Raiders of the Lost Ark on tv or, possibly, home video, I realized a valuable lesson: There will be another Little League picnic next summer but the movie is now.
I don't think either Dad or I regret my choice.
And while it didn't happen to us, I think this movie gave parents more nightmares than it did children. Despite the hype of the horrors of the Temple of Doom's bug eating, heart pulling and monkey brains not only did I play baseball the following summer, but so did all of my friends who also saw the picture. Though I wouldn't begrudge a Thuggee if they served it when I was a guest at their palace...

#4 Raiders of the Lost Ark (released 1981, theater ca. 2000 and several times since) Finally. Remember your first kiss? Now remember the first kiss that was better than your first. Like making out with that high school crush at a friend's wedding and thinking "Finally! Everything is as it was supposed to be!!"
What can I say. Pure escapist and fun that could only be created in America because it is truly an American adventure. So pure and fun, so dangerous, so exotic and yet after a whirlwind around the globe in record time before winding up back in the the States where you started and just as much in love as you were when you left an instant before.
Since then and forever. This movie made it work. This movie will always work. The electricity will never fade.

#5 Chinatown (ca. 2001, 2003, and ca. 2005) I first saw this on home video on the recommendation of my parents who, appealing to the budding film major in me, rented the tape and said, "You should watch this if you like movies." I watched it. I liked it. Or I thought I did. I just didn't fully understand it.
Later, in college, I saw the movie for a class. The subsequent lecture went into detail about the symbolism, the layering, the performances and so much else. This was when I started to realize that the term 'art film' did not need to mean black and white silent or foreign language pieces involving jarring cuts jumping to shots of eyeballs, waves, knitting needles, razor blades, hooded figures, llamas, or whatever else punctuated by only jarring chords of violin or major chords on piano.
This reminds me of a documentary or interview or DVD bonus feature where Spike Lee was asked to name his favorite or most influential movie. After moments of pause he said something like, "I don't know. I always have to say... Chinatown. (pause and then breathlessly adds) Chinatown!" Like Spike, I remain awestruck every time I see this movie. Especially on the big screen. The larger the screen the more the movie highlights how everything about it is designed to show how limited vision can be. Odd that this can lead us to see more.

#6 Goldeneye (1995) My first James Bond movie in the theater. Movie is just ok. Opening sequence: Bond infiltrates enemy espionage center inside a giant dam. Bond blows it up and escapes. Bond flees for his life. Bond skydives after a runaway airplane, catches up to plane and climbs in. Bond pulls plane out of nosedive an instant before the plane smashes into mountain. Audience GOES WILD. I GO WILD. Not yet having seen Raiders on screen as an adult my adrenaline flows and I remember why screen heroes exist.

#7 Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) Months of anticipation. The day draws near. My friend Mad Jack waits practically overnight in line to get tickets for a group of us. We can't wait. We couldn't because we all had finals. This is our senior year of college. We have waited an entire lifetime to see this movie. A plan is made and the dream becomes reality. We'll see the movie and then go to Buzzy's Roast Beef, a 24 hour Boston food landmark. The screen light up! The fanfare blares! The crowd cheers!! The movie exists! The movie plays. The movie happens. It ends. People leave. It ends up just Mad Jack and I go to Buzzys, talking about the movie the whole time. We have roast beef sandwiches. We go home. In all cases the anticipation was better than the result. I wouldn't have it any other way.

#8 Jaws 3-D (1983) Giant shark. Eats people. Blows up. All in 3-D. I was almost seven years old and loved it. What can I say? I haven't yet seen some of the new wave 3-D stuff since Captain Eo in 1987 so I'll reserve judgment. I have since 1983 seen the original Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space in 3-D, as well as the original House of Wax, so I'll wait before I talk about how the past has transferred to the present.

#9 There Will Be Blood (2008) Early January I go to the theater. The movie ends after about two and a half hours. It seems like instants since it began. I didn't expect it to stop. I've seen the proof that masterpieces still exist. I call Mad Jack. I tell him to see it as soon as he can. I float home on a movie high. I've watched it again since I bought the dvd. I feel that my initial impression is still right.

#10 Black Book (2007) A rainy day in spring. Badelaire and I see this at our local independent Art Deco theater. We realize that Paul Verhoeven is not dead. Like Chuck Norris, he was just waiting. Drama, intrigue, war, sleaze, violence and something close to perfection. Finally, just like TWBB, a movie made by somebody who cares about delivering a movie and not a product. This movie was made to be seen and made to be felt. In the gut as well as in the mind. It works brilliantly. Puzzles, wonders, horrors, and grotesques. Everything that cinema could possibly be.

#11 Undisputed (2003) Amazing! A great B movie. I didn't know they still made them this good. I'd see it again in a heartbeat. You'll like it more than you think you will, you snob!

#12 Pulp Fiction (1994) I was one of probably ten people in the hometown theater. None of my friends save a few wanted to see it and none of those who did could go that day. I went alone. I may not have had a better time in the theater for the next five years because suddenly, I felt I was in on something hip and new and fresh and exciting. I chuckled here and there, I grimaced then and again, I burst out laughing more times than I can count. I seemed to be the only person in the theater who was having those reactions. At one point, one of the more grisly moments, actually, I was jolted to silence when I realized that not only was I the only person laughing, but the other patrons were looking at me. Chagrined, I sat back silently and cursed them for not being in on the joke and yet I was smugly glad they were not. If they did not want the movie I would embrace it. And I did. A week later I saw it again with my pal Mark and not only did I laugh and wince and sit on the edge of my seat as I did the first time, but Mark did as well.
In your face, other folks!!*

*A year and a half later when I went to college and found that everybody there loved Pulp Fiction as much as I did. I felt less special and I begrudged myself for buying what I thought was a way cool John Travolta as Vincent Vega poster for my dorm room wall. Oh, youth. I saw it again in the theater this past fall. I was overjoyed- the movie holds up.

#13 Robocop (1997) First semester of my junior year of college I was passing through a hallway on campus and ran into several classmates. We got to talking and, as we were all in film classes, got to talking about movies. These guys, they were what I considered the cool kids. They seemed to eat, sleep, eat and talk movies. And they knew their stuff. I looked up to them. It felt great to talk with them. As it turned out two of them were going to see Robocop out at the Harvard Film Archive. I didn't know the place was but psyched when they invited me along. I jumped at the chance because Robocop was a movie I knew and loved. And now I could see it with the real movie crowd!
We trucked out there, me, Cat, and Mad Jack. The movie began. Early in, when newscaster Casey Wong pumped his fist and said "Good luck, Frank!" I mirrored the motion out of habit. As I did out of the corner of my eye I saw Mad Jack do the same. Wow! I was with the right crew!
After the movie, in between bursts of laughter, Cat recounted his amusement seeing MJ and I do that (Cat was sitting between us) and while we all laughed I realized that art can not only bring people together but it can lead people to do silly things. Thus, great friendships were born and I gained a great memory.

#14 Cape Fear- the 1962 version (1998) I'd seen this movie on video and wanting to see it again, I enticed my pals Mad Jack and D to see this with me. MJ and I, as described above, had found we shared many similar tastes in movies. D did as well and is still one of my great friends. However, his tastes also included pictures that were more heartfelt and emotionally wrenching, like Hud, Jules et Jim, and anything with James Dean. Anyhow, we went to see Cape Fear because I somehow convinced them it was a good idea.
Gregory Peck was never a bad actor. To boot, he was always commanding and nothing if not respectable. How was it then that Robert Mitchum could play a reprehensible, oily- no, that's too good- base villain and still steal the show?
Because Robert Mitchum was one of the most believable actors of all time. Good, bad, drunk, sober, virtuous, base, kind, cruel, you always got Robert Mitchum. The man played it all without coming across as anything less than a real human. Even as a villain he could be comical, but you knew that he was only daring you to laugh at him. Nobody was fool enough to take that dare.
The movie plays. We were silent and taken by it. I didn't realize how much until we left and D says this to the best of my memory and paraphrasing:
"He was completely outmatched. Peck."
MJ and I: "Huh?"
D: Mitchum just...outdid him. By doing nothing. Peck'd talk...and... (D is one of the best Good Guys I've ever known. I don't think he rooted for the bad guy but here I know he knew why people sometimes could.)
Us: He just let him.
D: YES! You, he, Peck tried so hard and there was nothing he could do. He shouldn't have won..."
I think that that movie ended as it did only because in those days the good guys had to win. But I think they wanted to show what we all come to know. That is, the bad guys often have not only the charm, the smarts, the strength and the tools to win, but the most dangerous of them have the ability to make us think they'll win. And what's worse, we start thinking that we not only can't stop them, but that we want them to win.
To this day I hope D has seen Mitchum in Out of the Past and The Yakuza, playing noir heroes who we root for and yet know will never win. I still sometimes feel bad for taking him to see something so evil and so wonderful.

#15 7 #16 The Sixth Sense (1999) and Fellowship of the Ring (2001) I saw each of these movies with a group of friends. Each movie contains a scene that made me leap out of my seat in fright. Each time I was laughed at, I laughed at myself, and still realized that the movie had so perfectly pulled me into its world that I reacted as I was inside it. Wonderful times.

#17 Matinee (1992) Siskel and Ebert recommended this movie and I dragged my Dad and brother. Best movie nobody ever saw. My Dad is a harsh critic as well. I was entranced when I left the theater. I asked Dad what he thought (and he was my ride home as well!) Suddenly I was shocked to hear Dad say "That was a GREAT movie!" Whaa? What did I miss? I caught everything and yet it wasn't until repeat viewing after repeat viewing that I saw the movie for what it was. This was my taste of symbolism before I got to appreciate Chinatown. To this day Matinee's final shot of the helicopters sends chills down my spine.

#18 The Mummy (1999) The film stuck in the gate and melted. The only time, to date, that this has happened. In the middle of the climactic sword fight. I was shocked because until this point, this was only something I'd seen happen in the movies. But there, before the eyes of me and my friends and the rest of the audience, the film discolored and then melted into an orange molten goop that suddenly vaporized. Jolted out of the moment by the flickering white light I realized that my shock was shared by two hundred other people. Suddenly we all wanted our movie back! Feed us! we cried to the projectionist. Within ten minutes the film was spliced back together and the movie ended. We got free passes to another show. I enjoyed seeing The Mummy but I enjoyed more how completely it had sucked all of us in until the film on which it was printed literally died.



#2 Pinocchio ....whatever size screen the emotions can't be contained...too big to be contains

A Recent Viewing That Mattered

Yowza! Tonight was one of those nights. This was a night thirteen years in the making, actually. I saw a picture that I'd first heard of when it was just the idea of a college professor whose enthusiasm for the actor Brad Douriff and fascination with myth inspired him to write a script with Douriff in mind for the lead role. The thought excited me because as a college sophomore and soon-to-be film major here was a man, lecturing me and my classmates, who was on his way to making himself a real filmmaker. Hot dog, was I excited! Little did I know then of the vagaries and trials of landing a production deal and securing interested collaborators, cast and crew and the pocketfull of miracles that it takes to turn a script into a movie. Yup, just a thirteen year wait.

And the movie wasn't all that good. It was memorable. The whole piece is not something I will ever forget that I have seen. While its content might be shifted to the back recesses of my mind from this day on if I hear "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" I'll recall the whole movie. I just wish I liked it more. I just wish there was more powerful material to make me want to recommend the movie for being great. Of course I still want you to see "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" because I want the filmmakers to make more. (By this I mean the writer and co-producer since the director you can look up and see that he'll be just fine.) This movie was fascinating not because of what it was but because of what it could have been. Because of what I had expected from it, namely, a richly layered examination of mythic themes of death, drama, matricide and the glory of crazy and weakness brought about by hubris. Instead was a long feeling movie that wasn't that long and a thing that didn't feel like it was what it could have been.
But I was able to see this movie with two friends who were as ready to see it as I was. And one of them had already seen it and was more than ready to see it again with me and our friend Sean.

Following the movie we spent the drive home talking about the movie and praised the successes and examined all the ways in which we thought it failed. Not because was loved the failure but because we really, really wanted this to be a success. To paraphrase "Swingers" we hoped this movie would be the here of the PG-13 movie. We were reeeeeally rooting for this one. And yet the experience was enriched because the viewing was so perfectly cast and attended by the writer himself. Everything about this evening made the experience of seeing it and responding to it afterward perfect. I'll never forget it because in the long run, this helped me appreciate previous movies much better and will help me think critically about future movies. And I shared both the viewing and the analysis with friends.

This is not to say that just seeing a movie with friends equates a good viewing experience. Nor, I would argue, does just seeing a great movie in the theater equal a great viewing experience. The best movie experiences in my life have occasionally had nothing to do with the quality of the picture but rested in the analysis afterward or the people who were there and what and how we deal with what we see with who we see it with.

I'm going to refrain at this time from commenting more about "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" because it is so new to me and because I have not set out here to review it, but to touch upon the experience of seeing it. I hope that I have made clearer some of my feelings about the experience of dealing with it. (And I have mentioned a few of my thoughts about the work, but with any piece art, regardless of the piece's success, I think feelings are the most immediate response to the work. I can't think anything about it if I don't first feel something. And yes, this means I don't equate a number of movies with art since they don't create any true feelings in my gut and create nothing lasting more than the thought "Oh, I've seen that."*)

"My Son, My Son..." is not a successful work of art, but if you have a chance to see it I beg you to do so. I don't predict that it will rock your world though parts of it might weird you out. But I do know that I provided me with a great night of discussion about the nature of drama and what makes great- and even good drama. This is the treat of making the effort to see those attempts and to see them with people whose opinions and ability to think freely and critically. This is why nobody should ever forsake going to the theater, no matter how big your television screen and no matter how busy you and your friends are. Get together. Watch, think, talk, think some more and reflect. You'll come out wanting to see more movies so that you can more fully examine all the theories borne of that latest experience.

*I do not consider artistic movies that create automatic feeling such as oh, say, "Transformers", which make me feel the desire to never see anything so terrible ever again. And I'll admit that I know that despite my best intentions I'll feel the desire to again see a terrible movie, if only for an hour or two of escapist pablum that won't do anything other than remind me of the works of art that I truly cherish.)

Why Watching Matters

Before writing more about movies I've watched and what I think about them I realized I wanted to examine watching movies because I believe that the experience of seeing the movie is as vital to experiencing the movie as it was meant to be. Sure, home theaters are great. And if you have a nice big flatscreen television or have been over to a friend's place and watched a movie on one, you know that is sure beats whatever tv you had at home growing up and that tiny set you had in the college dorm. But I hold that no matter what a movie at home is still like looking at Van Gogh's "Starry Night" reproduced in a magazine.
Of course, with "Starry Night" in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and many movies at you local theater there will be a crowd. But darn it, that is part of the experience. The difference is that the painting must be viewed amongst a crowd because it is world famous and hangs in only one spot where interested people come to view it. Movies can be played in multiple theaters at the same time so the crowds might vary from venue to venue, but almost always there's somebody else there with you. That's the whole point!
A painting or a sculpture does not necessarily gain anything from being viewed with a crowd. In fact, the viewing can be diminished if there are too many people since, as with when I went to the MoMA and saw Van Gogh's wonderful painting, I had to negotiate a throng of ogling people who were also trying to view the painting. Some people were holding aloft their cameras to snap a digital photo of the piece (Besides being rather rude, folks in this case you're definitely better off with that quality magazine print of "Starry Night"!). So I saw the painting and while I can't put to words how fantastic and awe inspiring it was, there was no collective experience, just a mob of people trying to grab for themselves a little bit of inspiration while avoiding trampling or being trampled by their neighbor.
Movies were designed for that collective experience and yet the lovely dark of the theater gives each member of the audience the chance to disappear into that happy place in their mind where they become immersed with the experience of what they see all while taking part in a group experience as the other audience members react to the movie in their own way. That simultaneous solitude and collective experience really makes movies special. You could say that the same hold true to a sporting event but honestly, I think the darkness of a theater makes only a symphony performance or a live play the only thing close to the movie experience.

I do hope you think that I don't enjoy art galleries- or sporting events- because that couldn't be farther from the truth. I just agree with all the critics and film writers who have analyzed and lauded sitting in a darkened theater and watching a series of images projected at 24 frames per second with a group of anonymous people. They said it better than I can, I'm sure, but there is such a great immediacy of the work when you hear yourself gasp or laugh or cry and suddenly realize that you are not the only one making that response. Similarly, for me there is nothing better than bursting out with laughter or yelping in terror and realizing that I was the only person within ten rows who did so. To me, this either increases the humor of the humor because I decide that everybody else missed what I saw or adds to the scare because I realize how completely I'd put myself in the hands of the filmmakers and allowed them to scare me. I absolutely love that.

I also cherish sitting back at a key moment of a movie I know by heart and being able to listen to the audience so that right before an unexpected scare, horrific reveal, shocking twist, hilarious line, comic double take, astounding stunt, gorgeous shot or some astounding work of filmmaking I can feel the movie's power by focusing on the audience's reaction. Watching people suddenly realize that Groucho and Harpo are actually mirroring each other or knowing that that fellow with popcorn in his hair did not know the shark was coming to the surface at that moment is worth the price of admission.

There is a thrill that I get meeting friends at the theater to watch a movie. It is a chance to share anticipation and then submit ourselves fully to the movie without all the distractions that go along with watching a video in somebody's living room. Sure, home viewing can be great but there we're meeting for a group activity in which we include a movie. At the theater we meet for a movie watching experience that includes group activity. I look forward to the moment the lights come up and we can all finally share our response with each other. The end of the movie brings with it the much anticipated "What did you think?", "Who was that woman in that scene?" "Remember when that thing happenend? I absolutely hated everything after that point!" and any number of immediate responses which we share and elaborate on in an attempt to analyze the movie experience.

I can't say enough about seeing movies in theaters. I know I could say more but film theorists have done so much more before me that there's little point in rambling on. However, I'm going to follow up shortly with a quick list of some of my favorite movie theater experiences. Perhaps they'll remind you of some of your own. Perhaps a same movie gave you a similar- or completely opposite response. Those are the sort of things that help bind all of us who love movies and appreciate the joy of the theater.

Who retires in spring training anyway?

Ah, best intentions.

I began this writing project with the best intentions to put to print (or to Web) thoughts about what I consider an intriguing and important medium of art and entertainment.

Yeah.

Best intentions are worth about as much as the Red Sox organization's sudden re-welcoming and symbolic retirement of Nomar Garciaparra. Sure, they signed the former Sox shortstop to a one day contract so he could announce his retirement form pro baseball nearly six seasons after the Sox traded him away. They traded Nomar because he was miserable in Boston and though he was still loved, so many fans were glad to see him go since it seemed nobody could tolerate any more his public disenchantment with the Larry Lucchino/John Henry/Terry Francona team. But more than that, the once eager and agile Nomar seemed to be looking for excuses to sit back and watch the game from the sidelines while his teammates and competitors busted their humps to win games and make the playoffs. The Nomar of April through July of 2004 seemed like he'd become sick of the work involved with playing and winning. Yeah, it was work because while just a game to us, he was being paid vast sums of money and like even a lowly cubicle worker at a nameless company, people who paid Nomar and those who paid to see him play expected a certain effort from him on the field. Not that he didn't put on some good performances the first half of the 2004 season, but more noticeable was Nomar's annoyance with the effort involved.

No matter what the reasons, he was visibly tired and the fans and Red Sox office were even more tired of watching him be tired of doing his work. So in July 2004 the Sox traded him to the Chicago Cubs. Then, once he was gone a bunch of people grumbled that he was gone. But when the Sox won the 2004 World Series without Nomar, few said that they could've done it with him. So, despite the public's grumbling by fans about Nomar's departure Red Sox fans rejoiced that Nomar returned (briefly) to leave baseball as a Red Sox. It was more than a little silly but I guess time heals wounds. Nomar was back and ended his career where he began and since he'd left the Sox had won one and then another for two World Series titles. Yaaay! Everybody wins!

Bah.

What does all that mean? It means that I am familiar with the sentiments on all sides of yesterday's Red Sox mini drama. More than two months ago I vowed to myself that I'd finally start writing things down and hopefully create my own little pile of writings about mostly movies and some other stuff that intrigues me. Like baseball, my thoughts and interests might interest others and leave many more unmoved in any way. At any rate I figured it was a good way to keep myself somewhat mentally limber or at least tell a few friends, "Oooh! That was cool, me like big 'splosion movie!!" However, I got a few pieces written, made some notes for a few more and then sort of drifted away from the whole process after about three weeks of unfocused attempts to pick up with my pet writing project.

But now I'm back. I've resigned with Team Repeat Offender to continue what I started. I'm looking back at my Nomaresque disenchantment with the time and effort that it takes to sit down and write something and I find it amusing and rather lame. After all, what is more self-indulgent than to find excuses to think one's own self-indulgent pet project too difficult and time consuming to evenings mostly spent watching television, movies or reading books? If I'm slothful enough to do that I think I can spend a larger fraction of my sitting time trying to write something that involves organizing thoughts into hopefully coherent observations about cinema.

A good friend of mine has also mentioned his recent attempt to get back to his own writing. He mentioned that he'd gotten sidetracked again and again from his writing because of this that and the other. And because, ugh, it is hard and takes up time that could be spent doing other things and hey, I should do some laundry and oh, what did Netflix send me today? Oh, don't want to watch that right now but maybe I'll catch a few episodes of Dexter on the Internet. Yeah, it's just such a pain when the effort of doing something we decide that to do full or part time becomes such a drag. Heh. But isn't that the rub? Anything worth doing takes some effort and sometimes the most rewarding things take the most effort. Especially if it is a new skill. Few people start a thing and are really good at it. They might find a certain aptitude or intuition toward what is right or what works better than another method but there is a great deal of effort needed to get beyond that hump.

So, like my friend who just wrote about trying to write in order to get back to writing, I hope you'll forgive me my little piece about how the difficulty of doing something can make the effort needed to do it. It'll might get us traded right before we might've won the World Series.

So, that said, let Nomar and Red Sox fans everywhere enjoy the fact that Number 5 came back in time to leave. I'm going to try to stick around rather than force myself into retirement.
And anyhow, if I quit this writing project I'll at least walk away after the season ends rather than in the middle of spring training. Now, back to the batting cages I go...

A Hairy Situation

An astute comment was made following my last post. I completely agree and want to add a few extra words about why I think certain monsters mean more than others And frankly, I don't think Americans, or anybody, can afford to forget about monsters and turn them into folk heroes or something not to fear. It isn't good to be scared all the time, but there are very good reasons to be scared and it does nobody any good to turn primordial fears into folk heroes or romantic icons. Scary things exist for a reason and those reasons are important. Like still waters, cultural themes run deep and are worth keeping in mind, and beasts, goblins, ghouls and goblins emerged, admittedly, out of our more primitive cultures but for reasons that have become almost sophisticated in their simplicity: people don't know everything and we don't live forever. Heck, we can't even control ourselves all the time. I don't mean control ourselves 'as a people' but you, or me, or that woman in the checkout line who is visibly agitated or the guy getting on the bus who is obviously going to snap if his dollar bills is rejected by the bus machine.
So yeah, monsters are everywhere in pop culture. And sooner or later all monsters meet other monsters. But to me, some monsters mean more than others. Read on...

Sooner or later yet another "combo monster" movie will be made, hopefully not based upon a series of sub-par novels aimed at young girls. Listen folks, I've said I like combo movies...DIG IT- ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN!! and I didn't even mention the very entertaining and fairly well done "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man". What is shameful is the idea that horror is either A) a brainless formerly human slug that eats living people...at least when it is shot in a brainless manner by humans who supposedly have brains or B) the constant idea that the undead, soulless vampires are somehow sympathetic. Listen people, in some ways that vampire movie theme could be an movie based on either the Red baiting crazies of the 1940's/1950's HUAC trials or the soulless idea of the creeps who suck the minds of others to get them to blow up civilians- pick your venue there. Hell, I think there is a vampire story somewhere that should be set in China. Unfortunately, Max Brooks tried to get the ball rolling the other way by starting his very inventive World War Z in China....when really, there is the best part to start the vampire plague. Think of it, a thousands of years old culture, sucking the blood out of the vibrancy of the people of that land and attempting a slow takeover of everything around it.
Unlike zombies, there are too many minds in the People's Republic to make the zombie metaphor accurate. Hearts beat, minds think and really, it is the blood and not the minds that the governing body wants, because like Dracula and so many other fictional vampires, the People who supposedly represent The People in that place do the thinking for the masses, as long as there are beating hearts that can be appealed to.
A friend of mine made a very astute comment about my last post regarding the certainty that a zombie/werewolf movie must be in the works if there has not already been one. The observation is spot on. I'd just like to add an extra two cents on that thought because it is very good and I think that as long as monsters are important to people in the United States (and I hope they always will be, because frankly, we need to keep monsters alive in our minds but never, never allow ourselves to get too complacent about them) they deserve thought and a certain amount of understanding. Anyhow, here's a bit more about the shambling undead and the damned hairy beasts who enjoy walks on moonlit nights and tearing out the occasional throat.
So here we go:

Werewolves are the brutes, the angry, the rebellious and also the resistance in all those monster movies. They are always the most human because they are the most flawed. The flaw is that in those afflicted with the werewolf curse the rage and anger and animal nature is much more evident than it is in you and me. Well, perhaps in you.
Monsters are worse when they are cold and distant or lack any form of conscious thought. Monsters are more captivating when they remind us why we are alive and see the shock and awe that people can wreak when we get just a bit too much alive. Especially when all that fierceness causes others to become dead.
Say what you want about zombies symbolizing American cultural slavery to civilization/consumerism/complacenty and vampires symbolizing the angst of hormonal teenagers and the plight of immortality (which really, who has that?), but werewolves focus on life, death, and us. All of us.
That is why the werewolves always seem to try to keep people safe from the vampires.

Zombies and wolves

I watched Zombieland this afternoon. The movie was fun, mainly because it showed survivors in a world run amuck with zombies doing what I imagine would be the most fun to do. That is load up with a bunch of the best weapons you can find, put on some comfortable clothes, hop into a cool car, and drive around taking out as many of the undead as possible. There are also nods to the Zombie Survival Guide in the rules described by the character Columbus. And in general the movie tries to put a tongue in cheek spin on the zombie fascination of the past decade. While not Shaun of the Dead level funny, Zombieland is enjoyable and features amusing characters who find greater satisfaction as ghoul exterminators than they had before the rise of the undead. The movie doesn't try too hard to scare but it does create some suspense when people attempt to avoid the gnashing jaws of the undead. Fun stuff, if you like zombies, and these days it seems everybody in America does. 21st century zombies may not carry the symbolic weight of the ghouls in George Romero's classics Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, but zombies have acquired pop status. That is nice and all, but the thing is, when it comes to movie monsters, I prefer werewolves. I say this days away from the premiere of the new Wolfman with Benicio del Toro which may or may not be terrible. But while the zombie (and depressed vampires in love) may be most popular these days, I'm still a sucker for werewolves.

Zombies are creepy but also rather boring. Whether the shambling ghouls in Romero's movies or the modern day speedy zombies, they remain mindless eating machines. The zombies don't care that they are zombies. They are just decomposing sacks of instinct. To paraphrase Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws, zombies just walk and eat and make more zombies. That's it.

Werewolves are much more exciting. They represent the unleashed fury of the human subconscious. They are people who are monsters and have, at best, a limited control over their monstrous abilities. Werewolves have personality and can figures of pity or scorn depending on how their plight came about and how they deal with their full moon fever. This leads to two types of werewolf. Type A are tormented figures who agonize about the horrible deeds they do when the moon is full and try to control their bestial urges. Type A werewolves began with Lon Chaney Jr.'s Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man. Type B are the more than happy to unleash the beast and revel in their supernatural strength and power. And they also love chewing up people. For this sort of nasty fellow check out Robert Picardo as Eddie Quist in The Howling.

Now werewolves have been used as action heroes and vampire menaces in the Underworld series and as, well, I have no idea what they do in Twilight but there is apparently a werewolf in there somewhere. But I generally like my werewolf movies uncluttered by other monsters. I want werewolves on their own, snarling and stalking through foggy woods or leaping out of dark alleys. Which movies do this best? I'd like to suggest a few.

The Wolf Man (1941) This is the one that established the mythology of werewolves- the full moon, the silver bullets, the cursed victim trying to come to grips with the monster he unleashes. Lon Chaney and Claude Rains are great, Bela Lugosi appears as a cursed gypsy whose idea of a midnight snack is young women. Also important for Marie Ouspenskaya as Meleva the gypsy who tells us for the first time that even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers at night can become a wolf when then wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) Sure, it is a comedy, but there are some genuine thrills and chills here as Larry Talbot (Chaney again) enlists Bud and Lou to stop Dracula's plan to revive the Frankenstein monster. Perhaps this helped inspire the werewolves versus vampires theme of Underworld? At any rate these monsters tear it up a mansion and though Talbot is still tormented by his werewolf curse, he is also determined to stop Dracula's evil plan at any cost.

Curse of the Werewolf (1961) It has been ages since I've seen this British werewolf movie but I remember being enthralled by the story of Oliver Reed's wolfish hero who becomes a wolf man and loses the love of his life. This movie took the werewolf legend back to medieval Europe and benefits from the great atmosphere and gorgeous technicolor blood.

An American Werewolf in London (1981) This movie set the gold standard for werewolf transformation. Rick Baker's special effects are still outstanding and remind me that in this era of CGI effects sometimes the detail and work of the more complicated make up effects used in days of yore. Also, the movie is wickedly funny and has its share of good scares.

The Howling (1981) This is probably my favorite werewolf movie. Joe Dante packs this movie with great cameo performances and lots of in jokes for horror buffs (including naming characters for directors of earlier werewolf movies). Rob Bottin's werewolf makeup is extremely gruesome and the creatures are terrifying. Also, the movie generates genuine scares, especially in the scenes involving the psychotic Eddie. This guy would be terrifying if he wasn't a monster. Also, the movie's dark humor sends up the 1970's New Age gurus who urge people to find happiness by getting back to nature by showing that some folks can go back too far. The ending suggests that even monsters aren't enough to scare people these days and there is a running gag that connects the ubiquitous Smiley Face button with psychos before Rorschach came along.

Dog Soldiers (2002) This movie tells of a group of British commandos whose training exercise in the wilds of Scotland takes a horrific turn when one of the group is bitten by a werewolf. Soon the squad are holed up in a deserted farm house and fending off some very nasty werewolves. This movie delivers excellent tension, fine performances and some wonderful makeup effects. The monsters are truly spectacular creations writer/director Neil Marshall creates a picture that is like a haunted house thriller with some genuine monster scares. This is a great modern addition to the genre.

So, I don't know what the new Wolf Man will hold. Looking at the trailers I can't say I'm filled with high hopes as it looks like a lot of decent actors running about a lot of computerized fog and some watery looking monster CGI. Frankly, I'm afraid that George Waggoner's 1941 monster classic has been remade with the more-is-more treatment. I don't know how scary it will be because I'm afraid that the filmmakers will have worked so hard to put all their money on screen that the monster aspect will be watered down and the scares will be few and far between. The long delay of The Wolf Man's release doesn't indicate that the studio had much faith in this product but studios have been wrong before. I suppose I might find out. Though to be honest, a big budget Hollywood remake sounds like a werewolf movie made by a bunch of zombies. That is scary indeed.

Good Business is Where You'll Find It

Back to wrap up about Robocop:

- Great character actors make anything better. Robocop is full of them and better yet, gives them ample opportunity to play each part to the hilt. The result is a movie world filled with figures who are menacing, heroic, funny and frightening and don't ring false.
My favorite example of this is Clarence Boddicker and his gang. Look up Ray Wise and Paul McCrane but best of all, check out Kurtwood Smith as Clarence. Who ever saw such a total badass who wore glasses and had a wimpy sounding name? Smith just kicks butt as a brilliantly vicious crime boss. What's my favorite Clarence moment? While there are many great bits- like when r standing down a pissed off business partner ("Guns! Guns! Guns!") or explaining his philosophy to Officer Murphy ("Cops don't like me. So I don't like cops.") my favorite moment comes withing seconds of Clarence's first screen appearance: His fury and heartlessness explodes onto his own men. In the middle of a getaway with cops in pursuit, Boddicker orders Emil to slow down the van. Emil respectfully questions this order, "Slow down?! Are you crazy?" And then Clarence goes ballistic. He yells "JUST F***ING DO IT!" and hauls off and kicks Emil as he curses him out. The kick always gets me. Clarence is so furious and so crazy that he freakin' kicks Emil since a slap just isn't enough. It is no surprise when a minute later Clarence creates a diversion by hurling one of his goons onto the hood of the pursuing police car.

-Great satire. The media breaks are filled with some of the funniest spoofs of American culture. This includes the need for quick information above in-depth coverage, inefficient automobiles, the entertainment of war (Nuke 'Em another another quality family game from Butler Brothers), and the fact that everything is for sale- even hearts- this last ad subversively shows that people can freely purchase mechanical hearts before the movie focuses on the cyborg's quest to remember what made it human.

-Great action sequences illustrate how efficient Robocop is at stopping crime with the maximum force possible. The shootout in the drug warehouse allows Robo and Clarence's gang to shoot it out and it is then that Robo starts using some of Murphy's fancy gunplay. The climactic chase in the steel mill is even better and mixes a car chase with gunplay, construction equipment and toxic waste in unforgettable fashion.

-Timelessness. Released in 1987, Robocop has aged fantastically since its vision of the future is not reliant on elaborate production design so that everything from the robots to the skyscrapers looks quite plausible twenty years later. Thankfully there are no hover cars or sleek domed cities or complex science fiction creations beyond Robo himself and ED-209, his mechanical nemesis. Robocop continues to be fun to watch because it still depicts a future that we can imagine building for ourselves.

I'd Buy That For a Dollar!

I lucked out a few nights back. You see, I've spent days thinking about what I'd like to say about movies, on the art of film, and what makes something both so fun and so good that you'll drop everything to watch just a little bit of it at any possible opportunity. What I'm not talking about are those brilliant works that you watch and love and appreciate and might never watch again. This distinction is different for everybody but for me it would entail titles like Breaking the Waves and Annie Hall. I've seen these movies, I've found a great appreciation for them but though I liked the movies for their respective brilliance neither one is something that I'd feel like revisiting again and again to study and enjoy for my amusement or just to pass a few hours. Robocop however, is just such a movie.

I love this movie.

Sometimes I am at a loss to understand my tastes. This includes not only why I like a movie but why I return to some over and over again: What constitutes a great work of art? - a subjective question if there ever was one. Do works of art define the filmmakers or the culture that spawned them or the people who like them. Hell, how much does "liking" a piece constitute "appreciating" it? And sometimes there are intangibles like "coolness" and fun factor that act like a bit of butter or cheese over a kid's serving of broccoli and camouflage the nutritious stuff with a tasty treat. Robocop is almost so good that you don't notice how smart and thought provoking it actually is.

To be blunt, I think Paul Verhoeven's Robocop is one of the best movies of the 1980's and one of the best science-fiction pictures that I've seen. In many ways, this movie is the 1980's. The action, the cars (yes, those are Ford Tauruses), the business executives, the coke, the fashions and whole "More is More!"attitude are very 80's. But yet Robocop is as timeless as it is of its time. And what's more, this sucker moooooves!

So much in so little time. Maybe the deceptively simple presentation helps make Robocop worth revisiting again and again. The plot is short and sweet: top cop shot and turned into crime busting robot while businessmen vie to be top guy, causing one of them to die. Robo attacks street crime but moves on corporate big time and nails the fat cat who falls out a window. Splat!

That is the framework that screenwriters Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner use but they add layers to their screenplay and Verhoeven runs with their ideas and presents a sci-fi action movie that is not only a great grab-a-beer-and-order-a-pizza armchair thrill ride but a reflection of 1980's American consumerism and corporate culture, a Christian allegory of rebirth (No, really, Verhoeven really did see a link between Officer Murphy and Jesus) and a deeply black comedy that examined many facets of human behavior.

So, how did it do this? I'll write in a moment of the perfect storm of factors that make Robocop indispensable viewing.
Coming soon, very soon....part II of this post

Decade of Perhaps Decadence

Happy 2010 to all. And I spell that out as two thousand and ten. No "Twenty Ten" for me. It is not that hard and while it may save smattering of time and computer memory to....oh, wait, those twenty ten folks don't care about the computer memory. They just want to say things faster. Well, I pity them when it becomes the year twenty thousand and ten because my brain will be laughing at their predicament from its place in whatever pickling jar my gray matter will be residing and continuing to keep up its curious analysis of movies and whatnot.

So, here we are, two thousand and ten. We are ten years into a new century. For those of us who were born twenty or more years into the last century, we thought we'd never get here, since the 1980's were rife with warnings of thermonuclear war. And if it wasn't the 80's movies, we had severe warnings from movies and books and just general word of mouth that had been going on since the late 1940's. ..."We'll meet again...don't know where, don't know when." And yet here we are.

Don't worry folks. I don't think that mere human survival past the 2010 marker means that we'll last forever. It just means that we have lasted past arbitrary dates created by fantasists and forward-thinkers of the late Twentieth Century. We proved them wrong mainly by being far behind the curve of the predictions of science-fiction movies of the latter half of the Twentieth Century. Heck, on of my favorite movies, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, has been made obsolete since we did not have eugenics wars during the 1990's or the technology to send criminals into deep space-stasis. On that note, we won't even talk about what you or I was doing back on Judgment Day in 1997.

Happily, here we are. And what do we do now that we are here? Some will certainly look ahead but since I am more fascinated with history I will look into the past, not counting my eagerness to see upcoming movies!

So, off the top of my head and probably I'll wish it were up to review, here are 10 movies that all of a sudden make me think that the art of movies isn't dead. And that makes me glad, because if the art of movies isn't dead that means that the art of the novel and the art of the stage are also not dead since both of them were determined to have been killed off by other newer forms.
Oh, and while we might worry about it and while yes, movies can be influenced by it (and certainly audiences can be) I don't think the Internet has killed movies....yet. It may have hurt directors... and quite certainly actors.... but that is another topic.

And by the way, I've given no importance to order with the exception of my number one pick. Therefore numbers 10-2 fall in no order representative of merit beyond the fact that I think that they are super. In fact, I'm making this list up as I go along. The whole thing is fairly spontaneous and may account for some of the exclusions that you might decry. I know that I will regret leaving something off of this list myself so I will not be surprised if anyone reading this feels the same. Also, some exclusions are simply due to my not seeing every movie in the world as I did back in college. Some exclusion are due to the fact that I think that I saw some of your favorite movies and I think they stink. Some inclusions are due to the fact that I think some movies that you loathed were in fact gems. Hopefully everything breaks even in the end. So, here goes.

Yours in subjectivity,

Indyguy

10. Y Tu Mama Tambien. Wow. Sex, love, rock and roll. Or at least some music that our crappy car radio plays as we try to find the beach that we made up. But then again sometimes the random guessing of imagination is right. And sometime the random nature of life is cruel. Or kind. Or sweet. Or just random. And always filled with choices and situations that meet our realities and fantasies no matter what culture we are from. This movie looks at those choices and the desires that inspire them as well as the consequences along the way. Glorious travels from chaotic beginnings, the nature of friendships and the desires of humanity. And how everyone loves beauty and life. And how fleeting it all can be. Plus, it is foreign so American will think it is good from the get go.
Hey, folks. It is!

9. Black Book. Here is a harrowing war tale. Here is a topsy-turvy (in a most unexpected sense) love story, here is a taut wartime suspense tale, here is a sordid, violent, sleazy piece that...is all of the above and more and still has a human heart beating. Here is the most recent and best movie by Paul Verhoeven since Robocop. Doubt me? See it!

8. Love Actually. Ok, I don't think this is the best romantic movie of all time. Nor do I think this is the most romantic format for a movie. But well, I think this is one of the most well written romantic movies of the past decade and while it has moments of treacle it wisely has moments of sourness, sadness, scorn and confusion. This is a standard formula, see: Life, It's a Wonderful for more details. Lots of famous faces, some truly unforgettable moments at Christmas or whenever. Maybe not an All Time Classic but certainly worth our time to remember and cherish.

7. Pan's Labryinth. Remember being a kid? Remember how it was a daisy-filled meadow of sunshine complete with butterflies and a constant sound of angels plucking rainbows like ethereal harps? Well, neither does Guillermo del Toro. This was not a fun movie. But neither was this movie unimportant. It was very important. Not only did it show us how important fantasy is and how much it can become a part of real life, but it showed better than most the oft-told chestnut that the worst you can imagine is sometimes less than the worst you can live. Tender, visionary, painful, real. Watch....and feel. Remember when your parents wouldn't let you see some things because they thought it would be bad for you? This movie shows you those things, and the things you saw instead, and the reason why they tried to shield your eyes. Unfortunately, children are curious. Fortunately, children are curious.

6. Casino Royale. Remember when you cared about James Bond? Listen, this is probably not the best action movie of the decade or the best superhero movie (see Spiderman 2 or Iron Man for that, Hellboy close runner up) but this one hit all the right notes, and for a British agent, he hit all the themes that resonate with the United States, or at least the American mythos- building oneself up from nothing through toil and elbow grease (and waxing a few enemy agents), smarts, cunning, inginuity and heck, despite being strong and fast and smart having a heart. Oh, and the heart can get broken. Yeah, even tools can get damaged, Ameri...er, Bond.. and you must keep honing. Working. Looking. And sometimes serving others, despite your better thoughts but that pesky call to duty calls you back. Heck. In some ways, this movie is the ultimate tie between our two oddball gulf wars (but that is another story...)
And besides, while the follow up left much to be desired, a good start means that those Bond producers have much incentive to keep trying to keep there movies interesting and relevant. And filled with oh so awesome men's fashion.

5. The Descent/The Devil's Rejects These horror movies made me leap out of my seat. They also made the unpalatable palatable for critics and horror fans alike. But better than that, they actually did more than try to just be nods and winks to genre schlock from days past (for that, please see Roth, Eli). No, these puppies were the real deal. Lean, mean scaring machines. A bit different in tone- one a claustrophobic haunted house movie that focuses on hero-no! -heroinism- and shows how much that we children of the earth can fear the mother that bore us all. Are my words accidentally symbolic or just me being a fancypants? Watch and decide.
And the other is a not-so-shaggy dog that envokes the dusty horror of Texas Chainsaw and The HIlls Have Eyes while still focusing on the main thing: People can be brutal. Or they are all brutal. Or we can all be brutal. What is the truth? Maybe that is the horror.

4. The Incredibles. Ok, it was a toss between this and Wall-E. I guess I might've been trying to think of an animated title just to fill aa slot to show how well rounded I am, but then again, I just had a tough time choosing between these two. But remember when you were a kid and you were old enough that your parents would show you stuff that looked cool? Remember when you thought you were being sly and seeing TV shows and movies that were beyond your age limit? I remember that stuff. I saw it again in this movie. I felt young and yet I felt mature. All the time I felt transported and challenged. So what if there was a purported Ayn Rand philosphy behind it, because that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. This movie, however, does.

3. Femme Fatale. I don't know anything about this movie and yet I saw it. And yet Brian de Palma movies are all about seeing things. But then again, they are about how seeing can be believing but don't believe anything you see. But some people say they are just about murdering women and ripping off Hitchcock. But then again, there is something to homage. But this didn't seem like Hitchcock. This didn't really seem like homage. Women lived- or died- or lived and died or- something. What was this movie about? I don't know but I know it was about movies. And I know de Palma likes movies because he used movies to tell this story. Sometimes the story is all we have except in a de Palma movie, when sometime all we're left with are the images we've seen and the story is ours because we're seen them. What does this mean? I don't know, but there was also a heist plot going on. And Rebecca Romeijn is beautiful.
Listen! If art can be profound and shallow, so can I.
So nyyyyah!

2. Grizzly Man. Death and fur. Man and nature. Man is nature. Man needs nature. But does nature need man? Man likes to think so. Man can certainly effect nature (sorry Republicans!) but can man relate to nature? Love is a many splendored thing but does the meaning of love transcend what we are? Heck, does it even matter to those other things? Timothy Treadwell certainly thought so. His opinion got many people up in arms. His opinion also got him dead. His death got Werner Herzog's attention. The result is worth seeing. So is Treadwell's footage. For all his quirks the man took some beautiful images of a wonderful landscape that is still untrammeled by humans. Treadwell spent thirteen years in that world before it ate him. Herzog examines it skeptically but with a jealous-sounding awe. We should always be afraid about what could happen to us. And also about what we can do, speaking of which...

1. There Will Be Blood. This movie was to me Americana. It is the start all be all of the idea that became The Godfather, Chinatown (Plainview to Noah Cross is obvious for much more than the voice), King of New York and even the crazed mini-nation building of Apocalypse Now! and other movies. This movie is very long but to me it felt too short. This movie is decades crammed into a short two and a half hours. This movie is electricity. This movie is a tragedy because it shows that drive moves us all, drive can create monsters, and even monsters can love. But monsters can put drive and ambition over love. "Most people don't want to admit that at the right time and the right place...they are capable of...anything!

See you in Afghanistan!