Oscar thoughts: are film professionals qualified to judge their own kind?

The concept of Oscar voting is simple, at least at a basic level: people vote for their own. Directors vote for the directing category, editors vote for the editing category, makeup artists vote for makeup (the exceptions are Best Picture, which is voted on by everyone, and some of the other "best film" categories, which have committees). It makes sense in theory: people in that line of work should be able to recognize a job well done. But I'm starting to wonder - can they?

Certain trends emerge. The win in the costume category always goes to a period piece with gowns if there is one. The editing award more often than not goes to the nominee with the shortest average shot length. Sound editing/mixing goes to the loudest movie. And acting, well, it's quite well-documented that there are basically four types of wins: The Underdog/Cinderella Story/Comeback Actor, The Historical Figure/Biopic, The "So and So Doesn't Have an Oscar Yet? Let's Give Them One," and the Caricature (extreme physical transformation or a particularly histrionic role). If these are truly the people most informed about their craft, wouldn't they be the first to break these patterns and be vocal about the fact that those are not the only ways to excel in that field? Where are the costume designers standing up and saying that it's just as hard and creative to design costumes for The Devil Wears Prada or Milk as it is for Marie Antoinette? Or that in editing, sometimes the art is in having long shots? Cinematographers this year apparently don't even know the definition of cinematography - they nominated Avatar, of which more than half is completely animated and apparently the other half just looks lame (see my boyfriend's analysis of that weak move here).

And actors. Oh, actors. Acting is a very subjective thing to judge, don't get me wrong. But 20% of the Academy is comprised of actors, over 1000 people. And of them, how many have formal training? How many are actually huge movie lovers? How many are just paycheck actors, who discovered that people throw money at them when they grace a screen? The Academy doesn't disclose its full list of members, but from press releases of new members I can glean that their ranks include such names as Seth Rogen, Hugh Jackman, Paul Rudd, Jet Li, Jennifer Aniston, and Dakota Fanning. Now before you scream at me and start listing off great roles by these people, let me state that I find them all quite affable - hell, Paul Rudd is my number one celebrity crush - but they are not Brandos or Streeps. And for that matter, what does Streep know about acting? Not about doing it, which she's obviously very adept at, but judging it in someone else is really a different skill set. It's a similar story with directors - how many actually know what they're doing and can recognize talent in others? From the same press releases, I can see names like DJ Caruso, Peyton Reed, Peter Berg, David Frankel and Mark Waters, who work almost exclusively in the genres of generically lame action or romance movies that are ironically siphoning viewers away from Oscar-nominated fare. What do they know about the craft of directing?

This is my point. I feel that perhaps when people vote on their own kind like this, they're limited to viewing candidates through the prism of their own skills, weaknesses, and experience. Having a talent doesn't automatically make you able to recognize it in others. That's why I often find awards from critics' groups and hell, even the Golden Globes to be more dynamic, varied and well, accurate - because they come from people whose sole job description is to study and critique film. They're also distanced enough from the Hollywood game to not be swayed by its politics - how many people won't vote for James Cameron because they think he's a jerk, or will vote for Sandra Bullock because gosh, she's just such a nice person and she should just win by now? I don't mind the Oscars existing - it's fine to have an awards show voted on by your peers - but it seems strange and unqualified that it became the definitive award.

Also, actors and film people are some of the most absurdly busy people imaginable. They never have time to see all, or even half of the nominated films or performances. So we're asking the group least likely and able to see all these films to vote on them. And finally, having everyone vote for Best Picture? Most of the Academy works on such a small and focused sector of production that they may not be good at judging what makes a good film on the whole. Like, what qualifies a makeup artist to help select the best film of the year over someone in another creative field, like a graphic designer? I understand the mentality that if you get everyone together who is involved in making a movie and have them vote, you'll hear all the voices of production and have a well-rounded outcome. But does it actually work that way, or do you just get a lot of input from people limited to their own expertise? And did you know that PR people and other executives who cannot vote in any other category are allowed to vote for Best Picture? Um, conflict of interest much? Wouldn't they just vote for the films from their own studio so they get more money?

I still watch the Oscars with great interest and will continue to do so. While I don't whine and call the ceremony "just rich people congratulating themselves" as many do, I no longer consider them the last word, the authority in cinema. It's more of a bizarre sociological experiment, and I predict winners on my ballot by way of convoluted psychological explanations. The Academy Awards aren't concrete, they're symbolic. They're given for careers, personalities, or as a sign of the times. And rarely do I get really worked up about any one nominee, but this year that symbolic nature can be used for good in giving Kathryn Bigelow the statue for Best Director. It can kickstart the mountain of reparations that Hollywood owes women, and it couldn't be for a more deserving candidate.

What do you think? Is the Academy qualified enough to vote for itself?

Context-free delights! #1

So sometimes when film bloggers can't think of something to write about, they post a great movie clip. That's totally fine, but I often find that the clip is either too long, doesn't work out of context or spoils things in movies that are just worth seeing in full. Not wanting to be left out of a lazy but rewarding type of blogging, however, I've devised my own system: post musical numbers that are under five minutes long and can be enjoyed completely out of context. What better way to brighten your day, or take a study or work break? Some of these movies I will have seen, others I'll have just seen the clips. I call them context-free delights. Let's begin!

For the inaugural clip, I've chosen the "Steam Heat" number from The Pajama Game (1957), directed by Stanley Donen and choreographed by the inimitable Bob Fosse. While this is not necessary information, it's fun trivia: the redhead woman in the number is Carol Haney, who was in the original play on Broadway. When she fell ill at one point during the run, her understudy filled in, who happened to be Shirley MacLaine. Hal Wallis was in the audience and gave her a contract on the spot. If you want to see Haney's other talents besides inadvertently launching careers, enjoy the clip below.

What are the weirdest Best Picture nominees in history?

While doinking around on the internet, I found an article called "Is A Serious Man the weirdest movie ever nominated for Best Picture?". I expected to find the piece comparing ASM to nominees of yore, but instead it was just a straight review/analysis of the movie's weirdness, which is fine. But it got me thinking...what other truly weird films have been nominated for Best Picture? The Academy has a reputation for playing it safe, but every once in a while something will slip through the cracks (and I'm talking about movies that are intrinsically weird, not "isn't it weird that it got nominated?"). Below, some of the great weird nominees, some of which are so canonized you may have never stopped to think how weird they truly are (in chronological order):

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

All fantasy films are inherently a little kooky, because they can make up their own rules of reality. But what makes this seem stranger than, say, the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings films is that the world is decidedly less cohesive, probably because it's all in a young girl's subconscious (SPOILER ALERT!). Tin men, scarecrows, lions, midgets, witches, flying monkeys, ruby slippers, and a "wizard" with a strange complex sound pretty nonsensical on paper and, well, it's pretty nonsensical on screen too - but it's so charming and captivating that it became a classic anyway.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Billy Wilder was Lynchian before Lynch was. It's a self-referential, gothic comedy of decay...can that phrase be used to describe any other movie ever made?! In being a part of the Wilder canon, which includes the sparkling, madcap comedy of Some Like It Hot and the bittersweet wistfulness of The Apartment, audiences can forget how truly strange this film is. I mean, when we first meet Norma Desmond, she's having a funeral for a monkey. A FUNERAL FOR A MONKEY. Like A Serious Man, people often have no idea what to make of this film's tone, or have vastly differing interpretations. That, to me, is a sign of truly dynamic cinema.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

I recently saw this film for the first time (no use berating me...I saw it, didn't I?) and for the first 25 or so minutes I absolutely could not believe it was considered a classic. It's certainly not unworthy of that distinction, but what I mean is how did something so out-there become a must-see of American cinema unquestionaly endorsed by everyone (even the stuffy and polite suits at the AFI)? It becomes distinctly less bizarre after the beginning, but that sets the mood for an unparalleled psychadelic and ultraviolent journey. The only thing that could have made it weirder is if the menage-a-trois scene was shown as originally filmed - an unbroken, 28-minute take!

Cries and Whispers (1973)

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I have not seen this movie. But I did see a clip. And even if the rest of the movie is a formulaic romantic comedy (which yes, I know it's not), that clip alone guarantees its inclusion here. Any film featuring a heavily arranged soundtrack of screams and heartbeats is usually way too out-there for Oscar. Maybe the prestige factor of Bergman secured the spot?

Taxi Driver (1976)

Movies that can be accurately classified as "feverish nightmares" don't usually score too well with the Academy, but the 70s were a different time, I guess. What solidifies the weirdness most of all is the false-note happy ending that resonates similarly to the ending of Blue Velvet - is he dead? Dreaming? What just happened, exactly?

All That Jazz (1979)

A jazzy, autobiographical musical about death. Yup. Again, that phrase describes exactly zero other movies.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

If this film seems pedestrian now, it's only because it spawned a million imitators and its style became the norm. Let's add up the elements: man-rape in a torture dungeon, soliloquies about cheeseburgers and foot massages, a hitman finding God, a man called in specifically to teach two formerly-tough hitmen how to clean a car. It's nuts!

And that's just what I know of. The 20s or even the 80s have many now-obscure nominees that may contain volumes of weirdness. So it looks like A Serious Man has some pretty awesome company, and it goes to show that sometimes, when the stars align, the Academy will recognize great films outside the usual comfort zone.

What Best Picture nominees do you find weird? (If you need your memory jogged, the full list of nominees and winners is here.)

What made you first realize the potential and/or power of film?

For today's post I'm going to dive into a bit of personal history, hopefully encouraging others to do the same and share. I'm talking specifically about when I first learned that movies could be more than flickering images and fleeting entertainment.

As a kid, I didn't really care about movies - at least no more than other kids. I dug the classic Disney fare and such, but strangely, I was at no point in my childhood or adolescence exposed to the movies considered nostalgic staples of my generation. I'm talking Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, The Goonies, ET. I don't know how this happened. I don't take any personal responsibility (for that time) because those are the films that your parents or peers sit you down to watch. And they just didn't. The closest I came was sort-of watching Back to the Future II at a sleepover while drifting in and out of consciousness.

I think the first step to discovering greatness in cinema is discovering awfulness. I remember starting to think somewhere in the 11 or 12 year old range that some of the goofy comedies I was seeing with groups of friends were objectively bad. I didn't dare voice this out loud, of course.

But the movie that opened my eyes and changed everything was The Royal Tenenbaums.

Before that, it didn't occur to me that movies could have style. Movies were just vehicles for things happening and people doing things. They were a contained dojo where characters went to fight and fall in love. But the idea that some hand of God (the director, I later learned) could guide these proceedings and imbue them with a unique perspective? Revolutionary!

Watching it on DVD alone in the basement of my newly-divorced dad's house, age 15, I was entranced by the bizarre cast of characters with their strange affectations, interspersed with dead-on inserts of objects and people. It was like nothing I had ever seen. And yeah, I understand it's not exactly Eisenstein or Godard, but you gotta start somewhere.

When my dad casually asked what I thought of whatever that movie was that I watched, I literally lacked the vocabulary to describe it. I remember my reply very distinctly, for two reasons: 1) looking back, it was kind of silly and 2) my dad mocked me mercilessly for it (in a mean-spirited way). What I said was: "The cinematography was very...crisp."

Crisp. This was all I could muster to describe what I had witnessed. Sharp, dead-on shots...I mean, I suppose it's not a terrible description from someone who doesn't know any better.

A less influential but still memorable footnote in my cinephile development was when I discovered realism in filmmaking. This happened when I watched Soderbergh's Traffic, which I was forced to watch by my dad so I wouldn't do drugs. (Where the perceived risk was in a straight-A student with straitlaced friends, I don't know.) I remember being struck by the verite style, and delivering this rather poorly stated verdict after viewing: "For the part that was supposed to be rich soccer moms hanging out, it REALLY SEEMED like there were rich soccer moms hanging out." That's actually kind of a big revelation after you get used to the strange rules of the cinematic dojo, where you just accept that every kiss is accompanied by an orchestral swell and everyone is strangely articulate and on-the-nose.

From there my fate was set. I started to seek out indies voraciously. There were four major obstacles to that goal: 1) I lived in the suburbs and the closest remnant of culture was a mall and multiplex a 25-minute drive away 2) I didn't have a car 3) my parents were not remotely interested in any of these films or facilitating me seeing them and 4) neither were my friends. Thank God for DVD. I started watching now-forgotten indies like The Good Girl and Pumpkin, finding out about them from the newspaper. I was almost more open-minded then, because in my desire to devour as many indies as possible I was less snobby about how good they were rumored to be. It was okay as long as they were trying. My father responded to this newfound interest by saying things like "Oh, we'll be in here watching Armageddon, but you'll hate it because it's not artsy." This is a challenge I continue to face for my tastes. Now, however, I at least have a kindred spirit in my boyfriend, who not only is a fellow cinephile but also attributes his love of film to the first time he saw The Royal Tenenbaums. Awww.

So, what's your story? When did you realize / what made you realize the potential of film beyond the formulaic fare at the multiplex?

Great performances by actors outside of their peak years

I'm always intrigued by actors who have great performances in films that come years or even decades after their "prime." Sometimes they're doing the exact same thing, just a little older and wiser. Other times they have to learn completely new acting styles. Here are some of the most impressive examples I can think of, whether it be continuing a persona or inventing a completely new one.


1. Robert Mitchum in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
This was the performance that gave me the idea for the post. Seeing Peter Yates' long-lost treasure for the first time, I was stunned at the transformation Mitchum had made. A stock tough guy of 40s and 50s noirs, his trademark was his cool aloofness. He was hardly "method" by any means, and though he was always a magnetic screen presence you could never quite tell if he was playing detached or was just bored. As the title character in Eddie Coyle, however, he transmutes that into a totally naturalistic, world-weary character with a bit of warmth. Instead of playing a cool guy on top, he's now at the bottom being kicked around by life.

2. Shirley Temple in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
Temple pretty much wrote the book on child stardom, being the top box-office draw for three years in the 30s. She started acting at age 5 and was essentially done at age 21. Most will always remember her as a bouncy little girl, but if you want a glimpse at what could have been if she stuck with Hollywood, check out this screwball comedy. As a lovelorn teenager, Temple demonstrates alarmingly good comedic timing and holds her own opposite Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. But then she simply had to go and help the world or something...lame.

3. Cary Grant in Charade (1963)
Cary Grant never truly stopped being Cary Grant - but there were a few different degrees. Take Classic Grant and subtract about 50% of the roguish flirtatiousness, because he's older now and that would be gross, and you get Older Grant. In earlier drafts of the screenplay, Grant's character was much more aggressive with Audrey Hepburn, so he only agreed to take the role if she was made to be the aggressive one. It worked. Grant still has every ounce of charm, just in a more refined way.

4. Charlie Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952)
The transition to sound ruined a lot of careers, but Chaplin's was not among them. He clung to silents well past their general extinction, but when he did give sound a whirl (or rather, dialogue - Modern Times was playing around with sound effects in 1936) with The Great Dictator, he proved to be every bit as effective. TGD still relied heavily on physical comedy, however, so the real surprise was his delicate acting style of the two films mentioned above. Hearing Chaplin speak seems almost blasphemous at first, but once you get used to it he appears to operating in a distinct British comedy style - think Oscar Wilde. In Verdoux he is the title character, a soft-spoken Bluebeard who marries and murders rich women for their money so he can support his "real" family. In Limelight, he goes self-reflexive to play an aging vaudeville star in a downright melodrama. The weariness of years of clowning hangs from his face, and his gives his ballerina protege sweet advice about life. You can't really say you know Chaplin until you've seen his later roles in addition to his manic early ones.

5. Judy Garland in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Faced with casting the role of Irene Hoffman, a woman who became infamously wrapped up in a case of "racial pollution" for having alleged relations with a Jew during WWII, someone thought to cast Judy Garland and that someone was brilliant. Known in the 40s for her super-bubbly, virginal roles in musicals, she packs a huge punch to the gut as an old, beaten-down woman who, though not Jewish herself, was another of the Holocaust's many victims. Acting-wise, this was probably much less of a stretch for Garland than her cheerful roles, due to her miserable, drug-addled personal life. Whatever the case, it's a knockout.

6. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Okay, admittedly I haven't seen Swanson in any of the films from her peak years in the silent era. But I don't have to in order to make my point - it's a simple fact that during these years, Swanson almost always played a sexy vamp. The profound inversion of her persona that results in Norma Desmond is one of the more genius moves in the history of cinema. Is she playing herself? Does Gloria Swanson really sit around all day and watch her old movies in a decaying mansion? Maybe! She was astoundingly prolific during the silent era, but struggled for roles afterwards. This movie could be a virtual documentary for all we really know.

7. Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Typical blustering and pathetic Jack Lemmon character + time = more blustering and pathetic. Where he was just kind of a pitiable nerd in The Apartment, by GGR the years added to his persona make him a full-fledged sad sack. Not that that's a bad thing - few do sad sack better than Lemmon. His performance punches your heart in the face.

What are your favorite post-prime performances?

Redesign!

I redesigned the blog! By redisgned, I mean picked a new Blogger template and scooted stuff around. I got all cocky from reading some hacks on the internet but it turns out I'm not destined to be a programmer, so this is about as fancy as it will get. I also added a banner up top with images from some of my favorite movies, and anyone who guesses them correctly wins...bragging rights. Enjoy what I hope is a more aesthetically pleasing blog experience!

The power of the face in cinema

In film school, one of our required courses was called "Media Criticism and Theory." I had it with arguably the worst of the professors teaching it, a guy so inexplicably consumed with white guilt that he had us read all these weird and highly irrelevant essays about how white people were ruining everything. But one thing stuck with me, and that was from critic/writer/essayist Walter Benjamin in his famous essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Essentially, the bit was (or so my professor summarized) that in this wacky industrial age of art, the only thing that can maintain an "aura," or captivating presence, is the human face. I went and re-read the essay today and am actually having trouble finding where it says that (you can slog through it yourself here). The closest it comes is talking about the aura emanating from old-timey photographs of dead people. But even if both my professor and I interpreted it wrong, I stand by it as the truth.

It makes sense that human faces would be universally captivating. Faces are essentially the first thing that babies recognize. A study found that babies, MINUTES after birth, preferred looking at pictures of human faces over other subjects (side note: where do you get the babies for this research? "Excuse me, ma'am, may I borrow your newborn? It'll just be a moment..."). Personally, I've always been drawn to faces in art and photography - I just find it more interesting, as something I feel fundamentally connected to. It's a living person, not a bowl of fruit (which isn't to belittle still life).

So what does this have to do with cinema specifically? Well, I tend to think that the human face is the first and last great spectacle on the screen. What other object of focus can make you laugh, cry, shudder, or experience virtually any other emotion? (And not the movie as a whole - just a shot of something.) I'm not even involving words or sound in the equation - just the image of the face. Any number of comedians have elastic faces that can make you laugh, dramatic actors have emotional faces that can make you cry, and a range of people have faces that are frightening by themselves or with a little help from makeup. Think how powerful that is.

The reason this popped into my head recently was from watching two very different performances directed by two directors who just "got" the face thing. The first is obvious; the second, less so.

I saw Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc for the first time last week and was blown away. Here is a silent film from 1928 that features mostly close-ups of makeup-free faces to tell the story of Joan of Arc. Renee Jeanne Falconetti, as the title character, gives what Pauline Kael called "maybe the finest performance ever recorded on film," all without speaking a word. How? Well, Joan of Arc was alternately thought to be crazy and schizophrenic or a saint, the daughter of God. Falconetti communicates all this and more with her bleak, frenetic, fearful, tear-stained, hysterical, pious face. It has more impact than a thousand on-screen explosions or sex scenes. It was art, but also a spectacle in its own way. I was transfixed like I haven't been for much more complex visuals.

I also watched the little-known film Love Me or Leave Me last week, which stars Doris Day and James Cagney and tells the true story of 1920s singer Ruth Etting. I highly recommend it, since it blasts open the 50s, the biopic, and Doris Day's persona to show a bickering, loveless marriage and a moral conundrum of fame where no one is right. Naturally, being a film about a singer, there are many scenes of Day singing (not in the style of a musical - more the straightforward depiction of a Walk the Line or Ray). This was the first Doris Day film I had seen, and I know she's considered a bit of a lightweight actress but definitely not in this one. The director, Charles Vidor, could have really spiked up the musical numbers and made it more musical-esque (and there are a couple of those, but only because they take place at the Ziegfeld Follies), but mostly he just lets Day speak for herself. I'm not a big fan of concerts and usually for me watching someone sing is about as worthwhile as listening to a painting, but I was entranced. From the jubilance in her eyes for "Stay on the Right Side, Sister" to the mournful and self-protecting stance of "Ten Cents a Dance," she imbues every song, no matter how standard, with a deep meaning.

I must be in the minority on this one, otherwise blockbusters would be more in the style of Bergman than Bay. But sometimes, the power of the face catches on with the general public. Even the fanboys and/or Middle America connected to Heath Ledger's Joker, a performance that relied heavily on dialogue and body language but was also fairly face-oriented, I would say (beyond the makeup,too - the crazy eyes, the tics, the restless mouth). And what about one of this year's breakout roles - Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa? Sure, we love to hear him dissect and prance about his dialogue, but would the performance be half of what it was without his facial gymnastics? Tarantino, for all his cuts and mayhem, left the camera pretty stable on Landa so he could just work the audience. If you still don't understand what I mean, think of it this way: I could watch those performances on mute and still find them pretty compelling.

Maybe, someday in the future, when we've exhausted all the possibilities for car chases and blowing things up, there'll be a sort of reset and we'll come to embrace the ultimate spectacle again. I can dream, right?

What are some silver screen faces you've been drawn to?

Is this actually a [poster]? #8

My boyfriend and I have had Netflix streaming for a few months now, and it's pretty much the best thing ever. Today I was browsing their new arrivals, and the fun thing about browsing their new arrivals is that usually it's a page of stuff you've heard of and then page after page of movies that have no right to exist. I discovered that there's a children's film called "Dog Gone" whose plot isn't that outrageous in the grand scheme of kid movies, but the poster was too insane not to share. You're welcome.

Boston in cinema - Part II

I have already written about the dismal state of my home city/state on screen, focusing mostly on the city itself and trying to dispel the myth that it is all a thug-ridden shithole. Now, due to a series of pop-culture and personal events, I feel the need to be vocal again - this time about the Bay State's population.

I had a job interview recently in my current home of Portland, Oregon. The interview went well, and at the end the woman noted my place of origin from my resume and then said, "Wow, you totally got rid of your Boston accent."

She skipped right over "did you ever have an accent?" to go straight to "the only explanation is that you had one and then it went away." I blame movies.

I explained to her what I call the "Boston Accent Ring." You make a dot - that's Boston. No one is from Boston proper, in the same way that virtually no one is from Midtown Manhattan. It's all professionals and students. Now, there's a ring of smaller towns around the metro Boston area where people DO have the accent (also, a few scattered towns nearby and parts of New Hampshire). And then beyond the ring, nothing. Massachusetts has about 6 million people in 351 towns/cities. Scanning a list of towns, I could only come up with about 17 that definitely (or probably) produced the accent, some very small. And that has to assume that parents of child have to have the accent as well, so the family would have to be in that area for at least two generations. Plus the greater Boston area, due primarily to its acclaimed colleges, draws mostly people from other parts of the country and/or world.

With that math in mind, how does it make sense that EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN EVERY MOVIE SET IN BOSTON has this accent? Did they all grow up in these 17 towns? Let's use New York to give some perspective: that's like saying that every person in New York State is from Queens, or giving every cinematic New Yorker a Polish accent because New York has a bunch of Polish people. Actors are making themselves look stupid and producers are spending money on all these dialect coaches for NO REASON. (I'm only referring to modern-era movies - the accent started cropping up in the 70s and by the end of the 90s no Boston film was without it).

Why does this matter? It's just a silly accent, right? Well, yes and no. The Boston accent, unlike, say, a British one, has really bad connotations. It implies that you're a near-illiterate douchebag whose head is so clouded with love for the Red Sox that you literally cannot form another thought. You're rowdy, impulsive, dumb, trashy. And, if you're in the movies, you're probably also a criminal. The accent carries with it a whole persona. (Slate writer Jessica Grose suggests "Massholes" as a follow-up to "Jersey Shore." Hey, it makes sense.) When the woman at the interview expressed her amazement that I got rid of my accent, she said in a weird way that seemed to contain echoes of "Barack Obama is really eloquent for a black person."

In a way, the onscreen Boston/Massachusetts goon evolution somewhat parallels (parallels - it's not nearly as bad, I'm aware of that) what happened to African-Americans in movies. In both cases, a stereotype/archetype was born that the audience couldn't get enough of, and became so pervasive that people thought it was actually true of everyone in that group. Now, these Massholes do exist, but again their numbers are so small that it's ludicrous to have them represent a whole population.

Where's my evidence that people can't enough of the Boston goon? The first episode of this season of American Idol, that's where. It was the Boston audition round, which I feel especially qualified to discuss since I was there. Yup, I was a PA at the first round of auditions. So anyway, they shuffle the locations for the auditons each year. For example, they wouldn't go to Boston and New York in the same year because they know that people from one will go to the other and vice versa. So essentially, we had the entirety of the East Coast hopefuls in attendance up to where the next audition spot, Atlanta, started taking over. I watched the episode only because I worked on it, and I noticed that aside from the really good people, they showed a disproportionate number of Boston goons. They must have really hunted for them, because I stood behind one of the tents (they don't show this on TV, but in the first round you sing for a couple of producers in one of 13 tents) for hours and hours and don't think I saw a single one. Why? Why can't you have just generic weirdos? My only explanation is that they're trying to give America what America thinks Boston is. And there's no sign of slowing down, with Edge of Darkness and Shutter Island on the horizon and Julianne Moore's absurd representation on "30 Rock" (where I guess admittedly, they do mock everyone). Are producers afraid of having their films called inauthentic because their audience doesn't know the truth?

As I mentioned in my other post, I can't think of another city has this representation problem. Aside from Chicago in the 30s, when the movies would have you believe it was comprised entirely of sneering gangsters, every on-screen city has hoodlums, intellectuals, professionals, losers, winners, uglies, hotties, everything. Even the South, which a lot of people thoroughly and honestly believe has nothing but toothless incestuous people in trailer parks, has the rich and restless suburbanites of sex, lies, and videotape, the pretty young lovers of The Notebook, and the pimps and thugs of Hustle and Flow, among others.

It's a stupid stereotype that somehow completely erases the fact that Massachusetts is somewhere between first and third most educated state in the nation (whether you count it by bachelor's degrees, college graduates, advanced degrees - it's always in there), and has historically been really progressive. We wouldn't have all the history, accomplishments and notable figures to our name if we were all just a bunch of meatheads.

Lest you think I'm being too sensitive, I can totally laugh at my own people - I always thought the SNL sketches with Rachel Dratch and Jimmy Fallon as screaming Massholes were hilarious. It's just an oversaturation issue that's actually causing America to think badly of a state that doesn't deserve it. I don't want to live my life in other states perpetually explaining that I didn't escape from Planet of the Sox-Obsessed Apes. We gave America basketball, the birth control pill, the telephone, the liquid-fueled rocket, the Kennedys. We're on the cutting edge of medical and scientific research. We had the nation's first public library, high school, compulsory school attendance law, planned industrial city, public park, subway, college, and right for gays to marry. We're kind of a big deal. Let's hope these caricatures don't erase that.

P.S. - In researching for this article, I heard about Next Stop Wonderland again, which appears to be the only modern-era Boston film where people are normal? It's definitely on my to-see list now.

Middle-aged people who can't behave at the movies

I will begin with a story. When I was a lot younger, I used to go with my mom and sister to a community pool during the summer. In the women's locker room, I started to notice that all of the women that were in their 50s or above would wander around stark naked. You would get an eyeful of everything from a few wrinkles to varicose veins and boobs dragging on the floor. And there was no discretion, no modesty - these women almost seemed like they were wandering around the locker rooms aimlessly in the nude. It was rather inconsiderate to those who, um, didn't want to see all that. One day, I asked my mom, "Why do they do that?" Her response? "They just don't care anymore."

What does this have to do with moviegoing? Well, believe it or not, I've noticed a parallel between locker room nudity and movie theater politeness. As a child, you have no self-awareness. You'll scream indiscriminately in a movie theater because you can't comprehend that it's an environment where you shouldn't. Similarly, you'll run around naked in a locker room (or often, any number of places) because you can't even conceive of that being a problem. Then, as you get older, you get self-aware and insecure. You would never be seen naked anywhere. This continues through your teens, twenties, thirties. You start to learn appropriate behaviors for different environments. But then, as middle age hits, you've served your time. You've been polite, you've held back. So you let loose. And this is my explanation for why at about half the movies I go to, there are middle-aged people behaving worse than children. I didn't want to get ageist here, folks, but you made me do it.

I should first quantify this statement: I probably don't see as many blockbusters as the average person. I was nowhere to be found for Transformers 2 or 2012, but I did see and enjoy Sherlock Holmes. Those types of films are the ones where the audience pest you're most likely to find is the teenage hooligan. Since blockbusters comprise the backbone of the American moviegoing experience, the teenage hooligan has been generalized as the number one theater pest. But triple their age, and you'll find yourself with the primary menace to foreign, independent, and classic films.

A couple of summers ago, my local rep house did a series of rare film noir double features. My boyfriend and I (read: early 20-somethings) hurried off to the theater with geeky film-nerd excitement. We were by far the youngest people in attendance (we even bumped into one of my professors). Everyone else was 40+.

It was the worst-behaved audience I have ever seen in my life. And I'm counting kid's films and blockbusters.

Everyone, EVERYONE talked at full volume the whole time. They made snarky comments. They laughed nonstop (and these were not comedies). Since this was a small, university-owned venue, there were no ushers. It was unbearable. It makes you wonder why they even bothered to come.

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I saw A Single Man. It's the artsy film debut of a fashion designer - like, you're not gonna wander into it by accident, and on the off-chance you do, it's probably because you meant to see A Serious Man. It stars Colin Firth, and there's a scene where his character is on the toilet. It's not supposed to be funny - it's just the vantage point of the character's house where he can see his neighbor's yard. You can't see any genitalia or anything. There's no bodily function noises. And yet, the second they saw someone on a toilet, the whole highbrow audience started laughing. I've seen the same thing happen at other indie/foreign films when someone is naked, there's a sex scene, etc. You know, things that would make a 12-year-old giggle.

My theory for this is that this middle-to-upper-class middle-aged folks see good reviews of these films in The New York Times and want to seem edumacated and sophistimacated by seeing them, yet they apparently lack the maturity to do so. I don't know exactly, but this isn't blind prejudice because I'm just reporting what's actually happening.

And teenagers and young people aren't the only ones fiddling with their phones, either. I saw The Yes Men Fix the World with my 54-year-old dad at the Film Forum in New York, and he texted THE ENTIRE TIME. I kept gesturing to him to stop, and he wouldn't. I thought it was maybe something urgent or business-related, but no, he was just trying to arrange to get tickets to a baseball game. Clearly, stepping outside for a single brief call would have been out of the question.

So I implore you, baby boomers: BEHAVE. Indie and foreign films often contain sexual situations and other things you have to be 17 to see, or artistically challenging moments. If these situations are literally outside of what your maturity level allows, please don't attend. There are people there trying to experience serious art appropriately. Put your god damn phones away. Try to set an example for the young whippersnappers.

P.S. - This extends to other art forms too. I'm a big dance buff and last year I saw an amazing show by Jirí Kylián called "Black and White." It featured dancers moving their bodies in unexpected but really dynamic and interesting ways, and even periodically using their voices. For some reason people moving their bodies in unexpected ways makes most people really uncomfortable, so my evening was almost ruined by rampant laughter and coughing. (Whenever there is silence in a live theater piece, the audience goes wild coughing.) And again, these are blue-blood fine arts patrons.

Have you found this to be the same problem as me? (All ages welcome to comment, of course!)

Judging adaptations on their own merit

My boyfriend always says you gotta be able to separate the stuff from the stuff. This cryptic phase has a plethora of applications, but I'm finding it increasingly relevant in discussing how critics and audiences receive certain cinematic adaptations. I recently saw Nine and, despite going into it with low expectations from the critical beating it had received, thought it was pretty great. It's no instant classic, of course, but it's definitely nipping at the heels of Chicago, and that puppy won Best Picture! It's sexy, fun, well-acted, well-sung, well-designed, and an all-around fulfilling time at the movies. Quality-wise, it's like Zombieland, another well-executed popcorn movie that critics loved. So I can't help thinking that this critical trashing has something to do with the fact that Nine is not as good as its source material, a little movie you may have heard of called 8 1/2.

Consider this quote from respected critic Claudia Puig: "Nine should have been called 4 1/2 because it doesn't come close to the work of the master who inspired it." That's a completely unfair assessment. Just because a movie isn't as good as one of the greatest films of all time, it's crap? Here's another, from critic Rob Thomas: "You don't have to love Federico Fellini to hate Nine. But it helps." Roger Ebert: "Nine is just plain adrift in its own lack of necessity." Roger, nobody asked you to evaluate the necessity of this film, just the film itself.

All this has got to stop, because it's keeping people from enjoying a good film that never even tries to be as iconic or great as 8 1/2 (and that's not a bad thing!). Classic films have been musical-ified at least as far back as the 50s, maybe further. I think the only unnecessary kind of remake is one that takes a really great and beloved film and makes it again without changing much. Making it a musical, updating it with new technology, changing the circumstances, or reinventing a film that wasn't that good to begin with all create something that's different enough to give a fair shot.

Films adapted from sacred cows of literature have the same problem. The Road, while received much more favorably, drew a lot of grumbles that the "unfilmable" book was ever adapted. Youth in Revolt (which admittedly hasn't come out yet) has drawn preemptive grumbles lamenting that the 500 pages of brilliance captured in the novel can't all be conveyed on screen. That's true - but you have to accept that film and literature are different mediums that will most likely tell a story differently. Film will rarely be able to achieve, for example, the character depth of a source novel, but it also adds visual and auditory elements.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as an "unfilmable" anything - look how many successful films came from material stuck with that label. Things might be adapted poorly, but that's not the source material's fault and should never prompt declarations that the film's real problem is just its existence.

So if you ever find yourself using "it's not as good as the original" as a critique, stop yourself and think. What's really the problem? Is it the directing? The screenplay? The acting? If you can't answer that question, then you're not really giving the film a fair chance. After all, think how silly that critique sounds in certain contexts - like, nobody complains that The Ten Commandments isn't as good as the Bible (arguably the most beloved source material of all time!)

What do you think? Are you as sick of this trend as I am?

Best forgotten and overlooked performances of 2009

There's a certain blank-slate magic in the air before movie awards season, when everything is fair game. Praises are sung in the moment. But then it gets to the end of the year, and for starters, the first three-quarters of the year in film are almost completely forgotten. Then, one critics' group will come forward with their picks. And another. Momentum builds for certain films and performances. And then it gets to a point where it becomes hard to deviate from the status quo. Thankfully, I feel that 2009 has been a pretty rich year for film, which has led to less of a consensus (I mean, obviously films and people emerge as frontrunners, but opinions are more divided this year). In the course of this snowballing, performances get lost. Maybe they were earlier in the year, they weren't seen by enough people, or they were just somehow overlooked, but for some reason they're not cropping up with distinctions and awards even though they completely deserve it. I've compiled a list of what I feel are the overlooked/forgotten performances of the year. Now, I want to be completely clear: I'm not saying that these are necessarily better than the performances getting all the recognition. In most cases, I don't think they should yank the rug out from under the Clooneys and the Streeps (in other cases, definitely!).


Best Actress

Rachel Weisz as Penelope Stamp in The Brothers Bloom
Cinema has its share of man-children, but women-children are a lot harder to come by (specifically, ones that are just naive but without a mental illness). Enter Penelope: she's brilliant and cultured, but has never left the house. Once two charming con men take her into their world, she opens up and takes the audience on her crazy ride. Weisz throws herself into the role with wild abandon - she actually learned a staggering array of instruments, sports, and talents for the part, and has great all-the-way moments like frantically humping the floor with a childlike declaration of "I'm horny!" (The fact that I found that scene funny and endearing instead of disturbing should make my point.)


Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna Dreyfus in Inglourious Basterds
Virtually absent from the film's trailer but really its driving force, Laurent's breakthrough performance is a knockout. Maybe audiences didn't see the true genius because she spends so much of the film speaking through gritted teeth and guarding her secrets for dear life, which isn't as immediately impressive as hardcore scenery chewing. But it snakes into your brain and stays there, right down to the iconic image of her maniacally laughing black and white face on a movie screen consumed with flames. I'd say the performance echoes Al Pacino in The Godfather.


Maya Rudolph as Verona in Away We Go
We all know the familiar story of a woman trying to free an emotionally stunted man from his shell. But what happens when the gender roles are reversed, and a happy-go-lucky man tries to do that for his girlfriend? Rudolph shows us beautifully, starting with an indignant smack to her boyfriend's head when he suggests she might be pregnant to some candid and completely unforced personal moments. She goes beyond being a funny lady from SNL, and then some.


Amy Adams as Rose Lorkowski in Sunshine Cleaning
Adams has virtually conquered the market on adorable - from perky pregnant southerners to princesses (she's even kind of a cute nun). Her persona is put to perfect use in this bittersweet comedy, where she applies a touching sincerity to what would be unbearably hokey in the hands of a less capable actress (she talks to her dead mother on a CB radio, for god's sake!).



Best Supporting Actress

Samantha Morton as Olivia Pitterson in The Messenger
Morton may be kind of nuts in real life (there are strong indications that she lied about having a stroke), but on screen, she aways delivers. As a newly widowed army wife, she's not glamorous, but she's real. In a series of hypnotic long takes, she lays her heart bare in a much more candid and real way than, say, Halle Berry's hysteric thrashing and screaming in Monster's Ball. I found myself hanging on her every word, literally entranced.


Olivia Williams as Miss Stubs in An Education
I wanted to like this movie, but I just didn't get what the fuss was about. Sure, it was solid, but I didn't feel it was anything special. All the attention has been lavished on star Carey Mulligan, but Williams, in a great supporting performance, has been ignored. I lamented not seeing Williams more after her amazing work as another teacher, Miss Cross, in Rushmore, and here she brings a quiet intensity to her interplay with Mulligan's Jenny that plays like a dramatic version of Cady's relationship to Miss Norbury in Mean Girls. (I know it's not a very highbrow example, but they are completely identical.)


Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Cavendar in Whip It
For as formulaic as this film got, one sharp and welcome deviation from formula was the main character's mother. So often in these teen sports movies, the mother is a shrieking caricature whose sole purpose on earth is to prevent their teenage daughter from participating in her sport of choice for completely arbitrary reasons. But Marcia Gay Harden is better than that. She's excelled in supporting roles in films like Pollock and Mystic River, and she brings the same elegant and multidimensional approach to this role. She's a real person, a real mother, and you find yourself agreeing with her a lot of the time. I also want to give a shoutout to Kristen Wiig and her role as Maggie Mayhem in the same film; much of my praise is the same. In a beautifully understated scene, Wiig tells our spunky protagonist that her mom might be right, but in a way that never feels preachy.

Best Actor

Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell in Moon
I'm not alone in gunning for Sam as Sam - there's a lot of support, including an online petition, to get him an Oscar nomination. After all, how often do you see a film featuring one actor playing multiple versions of a slightly different character...who interact with each other...successfully? I can't think of another. Moon is a great film all around, but without the anchoring performance it would fall apart. Rockwell is compulsively watchable in everything, and this introspective sci-fi odyssey is no exception.


Nicolas Cage as Terry McDonagh in Bad Lieutenant
Werner Herzog understands the truth about Nicolas Cage: if you want to get anything out of him as an actor, you have to let him run around and be crazy. He doesn't do subtle, he does crazy. Frankly, from early reviews I was expecting a lot more crazy, but there are still plenty of deliriously pleasurable moments to be had. From Cage's inexplicably Jimmy Stewart-sounding voice when he's high to random and over-the-top sex acts. It's funny, weird, disturbing, and sad.

Tom Hardy as the title character in Bronson
Quick, name a performance from this year that featured extremely large amounts of body painting, bizarre makeup, yelling, fighting, and full-frontal male nudity. There is only one answer - and that alone should give you a hint as to how bold this performance as Britain's most violent prisoner is. Plenty of actors can do psychopath, but rarely in such an extravagant, immersive, comical, and brave way. To further prove his chops, Hardy is just as good in psychotic prison scenes as he is when demonstrating his profound discomfort at normal social interaction in the "real" world. This is usually the gonzo stuff that award-givers love, but maybe it was underseen or just too out there, which is really a shame. If nothing else, they love the award physical transformation for a role, and this one rivals any I've ever seen.


Michael Sheen as Brian Clough in The Damned United
I could always tell that Michael Sheen was a talented actor, but in the first few roles I saw him in I felt like he wasn't being given enough to work with. He was pretty good in The Queen, but it was Helen Mirren's show. He was pretty good in Frost/Nixon, though the character wasn't very fleshed out and Frank Langella had the flashier part. In TDU, he finally got his chance to shine. At first nothing seems extraordinary, and then you realize a) that Sheen has become the character so fully that nothing even seems like acting, and b) that a man that just seemed cocky actually created a fierce sports empire driven by nothing other than his own selfish ambition. Combine those two factors and you get a compulsively watchable, egotistical asshole. That you root for.


Adam Sandler as George Simmons in Funny People
I am not one of the many who threw popcorn at the screen during Funny People because there was not a suitable sex-joke-per-minute ratio. It's a drama, people. And while I definitely thought it was uneven, it had great elements like Adam Sandler's performance as George. Wistful, sad, and autobiographical, Apatow managed to tap the same depths in Sandler that Paul Thomas Anderson did in Punch-Drunk Love.


Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre in The Informant!
Okay yes, technically this performance is getting buzz, but I don't understand why it's not a "given" like Clooney or Bridges on the lists. Maybe because it's funnier and more bizarre, and hardly the archetype of awards bait. But god dang it, that's what makes it great! Damon's Whitacre has such a fractured mind (from bipolar disorder) that he can compartmentalize everything in his life to the point where there is no overlap. When he lies (as he does often), it's unclear whether he believes it or not. Often, in movies featuring a constantly lying character, the audience knows the truth. Not here. Damon strings us along, pulling us into Whitacre's mind with hilarious interior monologues on subjects ranging from word pronunciations to polar bears that occur when he zones out. Damon has the advantage of being an actor with no defined persona, so he can seamlessly slip into roles like this one.


Best Supporting Actor

Christian McKay as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles
McKay had plenty of practice playing the larger-than-life Welles - he did so in a fruitful run of a one-man show. The tricky part of playing a real person, especially one as dynamic as Welles, is elevating the performance above mere impersonation. McKay achieves this by toying with the characters and the audience just like the real Welles did - like Welles' out-there documentary F for Fake, you never know when he's telling the truth or being genuine. Similarly, McKay's Welles is just as slippery with sincerity, which makes him a treat to watch.

Fred Melamed as Sy Ableman in A Serious Man
The Coen universe is dotted with wonderfully absurd characters, and Sy Ableman marks another one of their great creations. Condescending and slimy but with a strangely soothing presence, his contribution to this deadpan experience is capped by his brilliantly serious delivery of the line, "I think, really, the Jolly Roger is the appropriate course of action." Ableman is a serious man, all right - a seriousness that leads to absurdity that brings the funny.

Billy Crudup as Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen
Brad Pitt was nominated for a Golden Globe and Oscar for creating a character with insane technology in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - and yes, the finished result was visually impressive, but I found the character and performance to be pretty bland. Why not reward a successful fusion of the two? Dr. Manhattan is great to look at, of course, but Crudup pulls off the incredible feat of conveying a superhuman being that knows and can do absolutely everything, but has no attachments to this world and exists beyond emotion. Just as Dr. Manhattan exists on infinite planes of being, so does Crudup's performance.

Jackie Earle Haley as Walter Kovacs/Rorschach in Watchmen
On the other side of the Watchmen spectrum is someone too emotional. Haley - after a buzzed-about comeback in Little Children and with his upcoming role as Freddy Krueger - might become permanently typecast as a psychopath/creeper, but I'd probaby pay to watch it every time. He is unrelenting, merciless, and sometimes even right. There's a reason that Rorschach is, as my boyfriend claims, a fan favorite, and Haley brought all those conflicting reasons to life.

Special Mention: The cast of Humpday - Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmore
I'm singling this film out because it's awesome, and there's no reason that it couldn't have been a totally accessible hit like I Love You, Man except for lack of a huge marketing budget and a fear of indies. I had heard of the mumblecore movement before but never really explored it, and hell, if it just means talky scenes that are hilarious, improvised and unbelievably realistic, consider me a fan. Delmore, as the wife of a completely straight man (Leonard) who is considering having onscreen sex with his best male friend (Duplass), has a series of amazingly profound scenes where she and her husband grapple with what love means in the 21st century. That sounds like a drag, but it's fresh, honest, and often funny. Duplass and Leonard have great bro-chemistry in their escalating dare. The three of them work together for a sense of realism that's never dull (i.e. if the word realism scares you because it makes you think of Italian Neorealism with really long shots of "the common man" shining his shoes). SEE IT!

Special thanks to my boyfriend and his blog, The Rail of Tomorrow, for helping me remember why I liked things.

The Oscar nominations will be announced February 2nd. Maybe they'll wise up and nominate some of the above.

Do you agree? Then what are your favorite forgotten/overlooked performances of the year?

What's the point of the "awareness" documentary?

Yesterday, my boyfriend asked me if I was interested in seeing the documentary Collapse with him, which according to IMDb is "a portrait of radical thinker Michael Ruppert [who] explores his apocalyptic vision of the future, spanning the crises in economics, energy, environment and more." I declined, because, well, what's the point?

I have always had a vague problem with "crisis" documentaries that I have never really been able to put into words. I could finally crystallize my feelings after seeing the excellent The Yes Men Fix the World. The film follows the Yes Men, two men who expose hypocrisy and stupidity in corporations and the government through elaborate pranks. Think Michael Moore meets Borat. In addition to causing a stir, though, the pranks have a purpose - for instance, one of them poses as a representative of the New Orleans government and promises to reopen a public housing area, thinking the real government will be too embarassed not to follow up on it. It doesn't actually work, but they get a lot further than you'd think. Most amazingly, though, it had a hopeful ending. They pass out a fake issue of the New York Times that has optimistic headlines like "College is made free for everyone" and "war in Iraq ends" and show people reacting positively to it, and end on the basic message that if two guys can get as far as they did, anyone is truly capable of making a change.

That was it. That was why Michael Moore's films had always left a sour taste in my mouth. It wasn't because of the subject matter - the Yes Men tackled subjects like a city in India left ravaged by the effects of a chemical disaster - but that the message seemed to be "this sucks and there is nothing anyone can do to fix it." Particularly in Roger and Me, which ends on an almost snarkily ironic credits sequence that features the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice," Moore doesn't seem concerned with making things better, only informing people that things are terrible. And this begs the question: what's the value of just plain awareness?

I'm going to put out the bold idea that it's not worth very much. The idea is that from awareness will come action, but at least from personal experience I never find that it works that way. Moore's films (I'm just using him as an example, there are obviously others) are so depressing that they become paralyzing. You walk out of the theater feeling too bad to do anything. Usually the only thing borne from that kind of "awareness" is cocktail-party banter. "Say, did you know that the town of Flint, Michigan is falling apart at the seams? Simply dreadful! Would you like another martini?" I experienced a fundamentally different phenomenon with The Yes Men, however. By staying positive and particularly ending a positive note, the film galvanized and energized me instead of draining me. I wanted to do something. (I didn't, because I suck, but this was closer than I had gotten before.)

The other problem is that is often's unclear what viewers CAN do to make a difference. I learned in a psychology class that contrary to popular belief, human beings often don't engage in helping behavior not because they don't want to or they're heartless, but because they simply don't know how. They see a situation and keep walking because they genuinely don't know what to do and how to contribute. Thus, I think these kinds of documentaries could benefit substantially from a screen at the end that says something like "We have started a fund for the people you see in this film, go to blablabla.com to learn more and donate" or maybe have people with collection jars outside the theater. There's nothing wrong with guiding people and giving them a little push. It can be hard to come away from a film of that sort and immediately formulate a way to connect yourself to the cause.

Finally, an inherent problem with the "just awareness" movie is that it costs money to make. Maybe a lot of money - obviously, not an Avatar-type budget but still thousands of dollars. If this movie is not going to motivate people to help, wouldn't the money be better spent helping the cause yourself? Returning to Roger and Me, the budget on that film was an estimated $160,000. Michael Moore himself said the film was a failure because it didn't cause anyone to jump to the aid of Flint. Well, Michael, maybe that money would have been better spent on the citizens of Flint - saving families from eviction, opening a public help center, something. It could have done a lot of good. Did he think a bunch of eccentric billionaires would see it and spill open their wallets? Furthermore, Moore's stunts - asking senators if they'd send their children to Iraq, trying to track down the CEO of General Motors - don't really accomplish anything. He could have led by example, perhaps - use half the money to help the town and the other half to document it.

I want to be wrong about this. If you have stories of yourself or people you know seeing depressing crisis documentaries that motivated them to open hospitals in Africa or even shell out some cash, please tell me. But as far as I can tell, the "awareness" model should be reevaluted and those filmmakers should take a cue from the Yes Men.

What do you think?

Eight movies all high school girls should see

The current wave of Twilight-mania has got me thinking. I didn't read the books or see the films, but I've read a great deal about them and what I know has me worried. Arguably, Twilight is the number one voice getting through to teenage girls these days (and their mothers, apparently). Whereas past teen girl obsessions such as boy bands were relatively harmless and neutral (their message? love is fun and everybody dance!), Twilight gives us a "heroine" whose sole interest in life is a guy. She allegedly says she would die without him and has no other interests, hobbies, or aspirations.

Now, this is hardly unprecedented in art or culture. Shakespeare was cooking up the same stuff with Romeo and Juliet, which needless to say is considered a classic of literature. But there's three key differences here. The first is that, in my opinion, the ol Bard doesn't exactly condone the young lovers' behavior and attitudes, whereas in Twilight it kinds of seems like the reader is the idiot if she, too, wouldn't give her life for Edward. The second is that there was no mass media in Shakespeare's time, and at no point were posters of Romeo plastered across teenage walls and girls would come out in droves to see the play. The third is that at the time the play was written, women's role in society was just to be mothers and wives. They actually did not have interests, hobbies, or aspirations. It's a little hypocritical, then, to still be pushing that type of character in a day and age where the media is at least attempting (not always successfully, of course) to push the opposite.

So what's the antidote? Well, I hardly have the persuasive powers of the Twilight franchise, but I've comprised a list of movies that I think have good messages for the teen girls of today. Now, before you think these are hokey picks, I fully understand that today's teens are savvy and cynical (except perhaps when it comes to sparkly vampires). When I was younger (and I'm talking single-digits age here), my mom would always rent me this VHS from the library called "Free To Be You And Me!" It was basically Sesame Street with a lot more moralizing and a lot less puppets - a deliberately multicultural group of kids spouting life lessons about how you should be yourself. While I understand that that video was aimed at a much younger age group, that type of film doesn't speak to teens. It just sounds like health class bullshit. In a similar vein, I also excluded films like Thirteen, which go to such lengths to discourage every dangerous youth behavior imaginable that it just gets ridiculous and you end up tuning it out.

The films on this list are good films in their own right and can be enjoyed by both genders. Similarly, there are great films that spread gender-neutral messages, so I didn't feel the need to include them. And in terms of artistic merit, every person alive should see Citizen Kane, The Godfather, etc. etc. In summary, this a list of really good and solid movies that send good and solid messages specific to today's female youth.

Mean Girls (2004)
A high school flick starring Lindsay Lohan? The uninformed may roll their eyes, but those in the know are aware that this packs the one-two punch of being based on a nonfiction book and being written by Tina Fey. It manages to warn girls of the dangers of being seduced by the in-crowd and why you shouldn't be a bitch while maintaining a killer sense of humor and never being preachy. Ironically, I first saw this in high school and thought to myself, "Gee, I'm really grateful that my female friends aren't mean like that." In college, I realized that I actually had had mean friends who were systematically destroying my self-esteem without me even realizing it. If you take nothing else from this film, consider these wise lines: "Calling somebody else fat won't make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn't make you any smarter."

Superbad (2007)
This film, in addition to being hilarious, is like a field guide to the adolescent male. They're horny and stupid, but they're also loyal and have ultimately good intentions. And yes, I have actual men who completely agree with me on this.

Jezebel (1938)
At first glance, this movie is just about Bette Davis acting her heart out in an antebellum period piece. If that's all it is for you, that's fine, and it's a solid drama. But upon closer inspection, I actually find the film to have a rather complex message. Southern belle Julie keeps men hooked by being high-maintenance and difficult, which young girls even today often feel they must do to keep men interested. BUT - then her fiancee gets fed up with it and leaves, and since that doesn't cause her to change her ways her behavior goes on to more disastrous consequences. By the end, it's when she is humble and selfless - even though her prized looks are marred by a dangerous journey - that she becomes a true woman. In short: ladies, cut the drama. It piques men's attention but doesn't make them stay, and you're not doing yourself any favors.

An Education (2009)
The main moral of this film applies to both genders: education is good for you. While that may seem obvious and preachy, it comes via the tale of a girl who took the long way around to find out. Education is more than books and rote memorization; it's learning about things beyond yourself and your world. Calculus, while not applicable to anything outside of a few select careers, teaches you to stretch your brain and think logically. Ancient history, which you may never think about again, opens your eyes to the origin of your civilization. My point is that education can teach you who you are, what you want and what you can do. The film's protagonist, Jenny, laments that her schooling is interfering with what she wants to do, like explore French culture. But the desire to do that would never have existed if it wasn't for her education. The gender-specific part is that she almost throws everything away for a man, which is never, ever, worth it. On the TV show "Boy Meets World" (big fan, won't lie), the super-smart Topanga turns down a chance to go to Yale so she can accompany her fiancee Cory to a community college. I never forgave her. It may be less romantic to audiences, but if Cory truly loves her then he can understand and be waiting for her when she graduates. Maybe you sacrifice a career or a lifestyle choice for a guy, but an education is a groundwork that you often can't make up later. (You can go back to school, of course, but it's different outside of your formative years.)

Whip It (2009)
Usually, a young girl's only hope for seeing a girl-power sports movie is some formulaic family-friendly junk on ABC Family. I can't say in good faith that Whip It isn't formulaic, but it provides some welcome deviations from the formula, such as the cute guy not being the main goal and solving everything, the best friend having her own life, the sport in question being pretty brutal and kickass and most importantly, the parents not being fundamentally incorrect fascists because they disagree with their daughter's choices. There are plenty of movies out there reinforcing the idea that parents just don't understand, but this is the only one I can think of (where the daughter is the protagonist) and the parents are said to have a good point.

Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Sex is healthy, and a desire to have sex is healthy - even for women! This may seem really obvious to some people, but depending on where you grew up and how you were raised, it may come as a shock. Elia Kazan's heartbreaking film communicates this by showing how horrible things can become when young lovers are not allowed to express this natural impulse, but mostly from the female perspective. The film was made in 1961 and takes place in 1929, but the same battle rages on today. I'm not saying that young girls should just give it up for anyone, but this was a committed and truly loving couple who were still kept apart due to arbitrary moral rules. The film also underscores a point I read in an article once: that while many parents and authorities automatically discredit young love because they don't want their children getting hurt, they may actually cause more harm by doing so because it creates a cycle of teens being told that their feelings aren't valid until a certain age. And then how could you explain all the high school sweethearts that stay married for years?

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1981)
Okay, so now that we've established that sex is normal, Fast Times reminds us that sex isn't everything. It has the unique distinction of being a high school sex romp directed by a woman, and while it offers plenty of goofy delights not the least of which is a future two-time Oscar winner starring as a stoner named Spicoli, it never completely loses sight of reality. Most impressive is that a first sexual encounter is depicted as both unimpressive and rather physically uncomfortable for the woman (it came as harsh news to me that all intercourse did not result in screaming orgasms for the woman regardless of her level of experience, arousal, etc.) and that later that same woman gets pregnant and gets an abortion. Basically, the main character goes through a lot of really mature and serious stuff before realizing that she just wants to be a teen. It shows consequences without being condescending and after school special-y, and yet is still somehow a lot of fun and sorta deep.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001)
Lest you think this has any ties to later imitators such as Date Movie and Epic Movie, well, it doesn't. It came first and is actually a really funny parody of teen movie cliches that effectively exposes how absurd they are. It bears perhaps the most important message of all: movies are not real life.

For a similar list for the lads, check out my boyfriend's corresponding post here.

What movies would you add? Or, if you were a teen girl at one point yourself, what movies did you see in your formative years that effectively schooled you on life lessons?