Internet Commentator

Twist and Sh*te

The Onion A.V. Club has a nice roundup of some of the most notable film "twist" endings, good and bad. I thought this really nailed The Village:

The Village (2004)

Plot: The inhabitants of an old-timey village never leave proscribed boundaries so as not to run afoul of terrifying beasties that take their fashion cues from Little Red Riding Hood.

The big twist: Oh my God! It isn't an old-timey village at all! The movie is actually set in the present! (Cue melodramatic organ music.) The beasties are just villagers in silly costumes, and the senior villagers are modern-day folks who, perhaps horrified by the ubiquity of cheesy plot twists, chose to opt out of contemporary society.

Does it work? Put it this way: If you freeze-frame the moment when the climactic twist is revealed, you can actually see a leather-jacketed villager on water-skis leaping over a shark in the distance.

Could it work today? Unlikely

Save the video library!

The Boston Globe's John Swansburg composes an elegy to the video store. Reason's Tim Cavanaugh breaks out the world's tiniest violin:

For my money, obsolete media and institutions can be pretty clearly sorted into those that had some charm (vinyl records, manual typewriters, dial phones, 35-mm cameras) and those that had no charm (video and audio cassettes, 110 cameras, non-cordless bush-button phones, any personal computer more than three years old). After giving it a full five seconds' thought, I'd have to sort video stores into the latter category. I've never met the hypothetical wise clerk who's seen everything—not even at the legendary Kim's, where the clerks have the shitty attitude without the expertise to back it up. [...] I suppose there's a question of where the next Tarantino will come from, but since even Tarantino has proven unequal to the task of being the next Tarantino, I'm not losing any sleep over that.

It does seem preposterous to me to bemoan the video store which surely belongs to the pre-internet era. As Cavanaugh points out, the internet outdoes the best video store thousandfold. I'd also argue that it offers more of a community of like-minded individuals. Swansburg tries to make the case for a video library as a sort of home for the cineaste, a place to be among likeminded individuals. This rather depends on a) living near other film buffs and b) all y'all going to the store at the same time. Neither condition applies to the web.

More parlour game nonsense

OK, so we've had the provincial Irish soul artists and the exotic Irish football teams so how about some films relocated to Ireland:

Death in Ennis

The Sligo Sanction

84 Carrickmacross Road

Gangs of New Ross

Things to do in Dunleer When You're Dead

Escape from Galway

Bad Day at Blackrock

Last Tango in Portrush

An American Werewolf in Lucan

As before, contributions are welcome.

"Go on without me"

Great post by Belle Waring on Children's tv and filmic conventions:

No, the thing I don’t understand with Little Einsteins is, since it’s an absolute given that the creators had all kinds of earnest meetings about the ethnicity of the characters etc., what was the motivation to just revert to ordinary filmic conventions and make the white boy the leader? I sort of imagine them feeling, well, me made enough concessions in putting the asian chick in, so… Finally, if the Little Einsteins ever get in any real trouble that little black guy is toast. (This just reminds me of watching Final Fantasy. When the one big black marine sacrificed his life for the white guy and his magic scientist girlfriend I thought “even a digitally animated brother can’t catch a break.”..

"even a digitally animated brother can’t catch a break" indeed. I think the only film I've ever seen that bucked this convention was Deep Blue Sea where (even though Samuel Jackson buys the farm in a quite spectacular fashion early on) LL Cool J's character makes it all the way to the end and even makes the comment: "brothers never make it out of situations like this. Not ever."

Please note: It's not an opinion...

"It’s a provable fact, like Fermat's Last Theorem" - This guy really doesn't like Kirsten Dunst.

Moral Relativism

Natalie Solent notes C-3PO's breach of the Geneva convention:

You know that the state of the world is getting to you when you get to the bit in Return of the Jedi where R2-D2 and C-3PO pretend to surrender to the Imperial Stormtroopers just before the Ewoks attack and you shout, "That's a war crime C-3PO! You deserve to be shot!"

Of course this was a long time ago in a far away galaxy. Perhaps perfidy was condoned under the Tattoine accord or whatever was their equivalent of the Geneva convention.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

William Sjostrom ponders replacement Bonds mooted by the Guardian and is, correctly, unimpressed. Like him, I couldn't imagine Clive Owen or Eric Bana carrying it off. Jude Law is way too pretty for 007 and I'm trying to pretend that the Guardian was joking in suggesting the vastly overrated and incredibly irritating Ewan McGregor as James Bond.

One of the reasons proffered for the preponderance of (allegedly) closet gay Hollywood actors is that the public, eminently capable of suspension of disbelief in all other areas, is stubbornly resistant to doing so when it comes to the lead character's sexuality. Thus, Keanu Reeves is "believable" as a doctor or a lawyer, Sean Connery is "believable" as a Russian submarine commander who, by some fluke, managed to grow up in Scotland. Yet conventional wisdom holds that nobody buys any of the "chemistry" between Anne Heche, then Ellen Degeneres' paramour, and Harrison Ford in 6 days 7 nights and that this is not because Ford is almost old enough to be her grandfather but because of Heche's (then) sexuality. Once an actor comes out, they tend to be considered best suited for gay roles.

So, AtlanticBlog's endorsement of Rupert Everett as the new James Bond offers the intriguing suggestion of a gay 007. Whither, in this case, the Bond Babes? "Gadgets and Girls Guys" doesn't quite have the same ring or appeal...

Say it ain't so

Q: What do the following actresses have in common?

1. Halle Berry

2. Hilary Swank

3. Frances McDormand

4. Angelina Jolie

5. Mira Sorvino

A: Each has won an oscar in the last ten years and, apparently, none have been pregnant.

In an unrelated development, David B discusses the scurrilous claim from a gossip website that, according to "her" doctor, one "Oscar-winning Hollywood superstar" was born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, that is: genetically male, with undescended testes in place of ovaries, but outwardly female in appearance.