THE SLIFR MOVIE TREE HOUSE #1: INTRODUCTIONS

Jim, Sheila, Jason:

Welcome, all, to the inaugural edition of the SLIFR Movie Tree House, one which I hope will become an annual tradition in the style of a certain other yearly gathering of movie-oriented brains to both celebrate and perform an autopsy on the film year just past. But before I introduce this year’s participants, a word about the name of our enterprise would probably be, if nothing else, at least good form.

The previous coy reference to that “certain other yearly gathering” was of course
directed at the Slate Movie Club, and though we are here essentially lifting the e-mail exchange-critical roundtable format from the Movie Club wholesale, I didn’t exactly feel right about simply calling our version the SLIFR or any other kind of Movie Club. So, in thinking about what I wanted to brand our little undertaking, I imagined that if theSlate folks really were a club, then their exchanges would naturally be happening in a clubhouse. And the next best correlative to that idea that came to mind for the SLIFR version was not a clubhouse (since we would be eschewing that word), and certainly not the back room of some famous restaurant—the painting of the Algonquin Round Table that graced the top of my last post was meant ironically. And though I have not had either the occasion or the location to do so in many years, I remember a time when, if there was something serious to be discussed, my friends and I would gather in a dilapidated old tree house in the backyard of one of my compadres. And so the best place I could think of for my online gathering of film-tastic friends to take place would be in a tree house of the mind, a place where the popcorn and soda are free, where any point of view has safe harbor, and yes, where even girls are allowed. (Some childish things should definitely be put away.) Privacy is the only thing this particular tree house cannot promise, its walls being porous in the very latest virtual manner. But really, the conversation, wherever it takes place, was always meant to be shared, and so even though there are only four of us setting up shop in the beginning, anyone who wants to join in the fun in the comments thread will be welcomed. That’s the great thing about this being a virtual tree house— neither parents nor the fire marshal need worry if we pack the place beyond capacity.

Near the end of the 2010 Slate Movie Club, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote about his turnaround on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a movie he hadn’t much use for upon seeing it originally but which cast a spell on him the second time around. Here’s something he said that seems germane to what’s happening today in the tree house:

“The world in Wright's film is at once actual (real friendships, romance, and heartbreak) and figurative (comic book visuals, video game graphics, pop-up annotations). When Ramona Flowers tells Scott that one of her previous boyfriends punched a hole in the moon for her, and then Wright shows us a little hand-drawn-looking moon with a hole through it, it's not just a fanciful metaphor; it's real/unreal, poetry made tangible. Before Scott Pilgrim, whenever I referred to a friend that I made online but hadn't met in person, I felt sheepish; I've even put implied quotes around the word ‘friend.’ Post-Scott Pilgrim, I don't do that anymore.”

The three folks joining me this week are people who have been important to me from early on in my online writing, which began in 2004. I have never met any of them face-to-face, yet I think of them (and I think of them often) as friends in precisely the same way I think of friends whom I’ve known more traditionally for years. Each one is someone whose writing I treasure, someone whose intelligent willfulness to call me on my own ideas and expressions is always done in the spirit of friendship and sincere investigation of what the movies can mean, and who always finds a unique angle from which to look at even the most scrupulously, relentlessly examined films and trends. And they are honorable people, one and all, people who love the movies but find plenty of room to allow the non-cinema-oriented pleasures, wonders and frustrations of life to inform their writing, to percolate through their words and thoughts and expressions, and to, intentionally or not, ward off the mythology surrounding online writers as basement-dwelling, digitally enabled boors with little experience outside the movies.

Case in point: Jim Emerson has spent plenty of time engaging with the world of cinema through his blog Scanners, an enterprise self-described as being chiefly about “movies, criticism, journalism, politics, religion, music -- ok, basically whatever comes up.” Working from Seattle, Jim is the founding editor of Roger Ebert.com as well as the late, lamented Microsoft Cinemania (It was the first CD-ROM I ever owned) and other encyclopedically oriented Web sites. A former member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Jim wrote about film for the Orange County Register and has written for such publications as Film Comment, Premiere, the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. Jim also booked independent and foreign films for the Market Theater, a successful Seattle “art-house located in the city’s historic Pike Place Market and also booked an ongoing film series at his alma mater, the University of Washington. (The fact that this tree house harbors two participants partial to the Oregon Ducks of Eugene bothers Jim not a whit, or so he claims.) He has enjoyed creative collaboration with Julia Sweeney, his friend of many years, co-authoring with her the play and screenplay Mea’s Big Apology and the film It’s Pat: The Movie, and served as “Extra Special Creative Consultant” for Sweeney’s stage monologue Letting Go of God. Jim, you were an early supporter of this blog; your writing has been influential and instrumental in its survival and growth and it’s a real honor to have you join us this week.

Sheila O’Malley is the superlative writer at the heart of The Sheila Variations, a blog like Jim’s not tied simply to things cinematic. Sheila is one of the best writers I know on the alchemy of acting, but she also dazzles with her wit and acumen in burrowing into the heart of the literature she loves. She has devoted a goodly portion of 2011 to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, continuing an investigation into the form which was preceded by examinations of such poets as Eamon Grennon and Michael Longley from The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry and Emily Bronte from Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats. But lest I paint Sheila as some sort of high-minded shut-away holding forth on “high” culture from her attic, please note that she has also written eloquently about Robert Mitchum in The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Leo McCarey and Make Way for Tomorrow and films germane to our discussion this week like Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer and Bong Joon-Ho’s Mother. And her archive on the pieces she has written on actors is an embarrassment of riches—enriching for her lucky readers, embarrassing in the quality of her observations that so effortlessly put so many of us to shame. I remember stumbling across Sheila’s site in the early days and realizing that, like Jim, she too had crafted a model for how excellent, inquisitive, personal writing could thrive in a virtual sea of underachievers. It’s a genuine thrill to have you here, Sheila, because I know the conversation is going to be fun and you're going to make us all look so much smarter in the process.

Jason Bellamy mans the goings-on inside The Cooler, itself overseen by a still from Steve McQueen frosting his heels inside of one of the movies’ most famous coolers in The Great Escape. I’m not entirely sure how long Jason has been at this whole blogging thing, but a glance at his movie review archives suggest a history that stretches back quite a while, and it’s one that every movie fan should get to know, if they don’t already. I’ve always admired Jason’s writing for its cogent, economic analysis and straight-shooter thinking. And with fellow writer Ed Howard, Jason has established himself as a reliable, unpredictable source of fascinating, challenging, in-depth conversation about the movies in an ongoing feature for The House Next Door entitled, appropriately enough, The Conversations, in which he and Howard allow themselves unlimited space and enthusiasm to apply to whatever cinematic subject suits their fancy. (Currently under the microscope: Darren Aronofsky.) Jason is a frequent correspondent in the comments thread at both Scanners and SLIFR and I always look forward to reading his often-lengthy responses because I know they’re going to be well-considered, respectful and frequently challenging to one aspect of the premise of whatever he’s responding to. But Jason is the kind of guy who always makes me feel honored when he writes, either on my blog comments or in personal e-mails, for the reasons already cited but also because he’s the only person I know who writes longer e-mails than I do (sometimes). He also hails from Eugene, Oregon, number-one on my list of Beloved Places on Earth, thus providing further proof of the quality of that good old Willamette Valley stock. I write this on the eve of the BCS National Championship college football game which pits number one-ranked Auburn against the #2 Oregon Ducks. The outcome of tomorrow night’s game could affect the mood around here this week, I suppose, but I’d like to think that Jason and I will be able to rise above all that… unless Oregon wins, of course. But however the game turns out, I am beyond happy to have you here with us this week, Jason, because I know that a conversation with you, if your writing to date can be trusted, will be one to remember.

Okay, this has gone on to a ridiculous length for a simple introduction. It’s time to open the gates and let the horses out. I’ll do so by referencing one last quote from Matt Zoller Seitz culled from last week’s Slate Movie Club, a thought that crossed my mind more than once as I viewed, of all things, The King’s Speech a couple of days ago. Here’s Matt:

“One of the reasons mainstream movies are so generally mediocre to awful is because the ability of the average viewer to read images is only slightly better than their ability to read text. And the system likes it that way; it's much easier to crank out variations on cheeseburgers than to challenge moviegoers' aesthetic palates and expand their range of acceptable cuisine. But viewers won't give a damn about the aesthetic, political, and social components of filmgoing if we don't open the door of personal response—emotion, minus the whithers and wherefores and qualifiers, the wearily above-it-all routine—to lead them to a consideration of films outside their comfort zones.”

I think each of the writers represented here is comfortable with the idea of bringing the personal to bear on one’s experience of a film, much more so that perhaps film critics of previous generations have tended to be. I’m curious about two things: What movies did you most personally respond to from this past year, and if you wrote about that movie, how did you bring that response to bear on your writing? And what about that idea of the average viewer’s ability to read images? For example, there’s a level of visual sophistication going on in The King’s Speech that isn’t by any means groundbreaking or even envelope-pushing, yet it tends to reinforce the feelings of isolation and despair being felt by Bertie (soon to be King George VI) by means as simple as purposefully imbalanced placement of solitary figures in the frame. And my guess is that most people who see and enjoy The King’s Speech, to name but only one example, don’t experience it as anything other than fairly straightforward visually, which I think is perfectly understandable and not necessarily incorrect in the whole.

Also, I just got back from a showing of Blue Valentine and I’m so glad I don’t have to write about it this second. I’m not sure I’d trust anyone who could formulate and articulate an immediate response to a movie whose emotions are as ragged and contradictory as the ones in this movie. I will say, though, that the performances were suitably raw and effective, and I am pretty much in awe of Michelle Williams right now. Sheila, have you seen Blue Valentine? Because I’d surely love to hear you talk about Williams does here. I'd agree with Stephanie Zacharek: I have no idea how she does what she does, because I can’t “see” her acting, but she gets to a level perhaps no other actress reached for me this year.

And what about True Grit, Jim? Does it seem strange to you than the Coen Brothers have a $100 million+ hit on their hands? And did Mattie Ross badgering the colonel about buying back the horses he sold to her late father strike you as the family-friendly corollary to Chigurh toying with the gas station owner in No Country for Old Men?

Looking forward to striking it up with you all, friend-os. Let us seize the cinema of 2010 and see what shakes out.

Dennis


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FOR MONDAY: THE SLIFR MOVIE TREE HOUSE

Well, another edition of the Slate Movie Club is in the books, and darned if film culture isn’t slightly richer, or at least more enlightened, for it. Host Dana Stevens set the table with a knowing nudge by asking why anyone would like Black Swan (a question that will put a smile on my face whenever it is asked, in public or private), which ensured that the Club would kick off in a lively fashion. (Dan Kois’ appreciation flowchart somehow charmed both the film’s supporters and detractors.)

And for every grand defense of a film, like Matt Zoller Seitz's sincere appraisal in support of the alleged “squareness” of The Fighter and its familial underpinnings, in which he eloquently proclaimed that “Emotion is the gateway drug to all cinephilia,” there again was Kois, who is never afraid to go to the humor well. (This is the guy whose review of Babies consisted entirely of the word “Babies!” iterated around 50 or 60 times.) But he was good for stirring the pot too—it was his wondering aloud whether David O. Russell was “wasting his crazy talent” on movies like The Fighter which inspired Seitz’s response, for which Kois also had a response:


You (Stevens) say that The Fighter `is no more about boxing than The Apartment is about the insurance industry,’ but I don't remember The Apartment stopping dead in its tracks for eight minutes so Jack Lemmon could sell insurance!”

Stephanie Zacharek got a couple of good ones off at the expense of Russell’s movie too, a movie which, by the way, will probably be in my top 10 for the year. I loved The Fighter, but I had to admit I found Melissa Leo a little… scary, and perhaps not always the way the actress and her director intended. In regard to her scenery chewing, Zacharek had this to say:

“Why is there so much damn acting in this movie? Melissa Leo is big, all right. She's big all over the place. It's the sort of thing that doesn't just beg to be noticed: It knocks on your door, kicks it down because you didn't respond fast enough, comes in and steals your TV, your laptop, and your toaster, whacks you upside the head with a two-by-four, and finishes by shouting, `Gimme an Oscah, ya fuckin' retahd!’ Now that's acting.”

(I had a conversation this week with a friend who insisted that, in light of all the rafter-swinging histrionics in The Fighter, Mark Wahlberg came off looking like he was half asleep, but that’s a conversation for another day…)

Zacharek was typically sharp throughout, testily defending Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, and I especially enjoyed her comments about the back-end of list-making, digging around for the nuggets surrounding all the obvious choices on any given critic’s year-end round-up:

“I just don't see what good a critic's, or anyone's, Top 10 list is unless you choose mostly from the heart or the gut… On the other hand, the movies that I've put on lists that were, at the time, deemed wackadoodle choices (by the aforementioned feetie-pajama brigade, at least) are often the ones that have stuck with me for years: something like David Koepp's Ghost Town or Bob Dylan's America-as-dreamscape Masked and Anonymous, to choose a few randomly random examples.”


Speaking of choices that go against the grain, Karina Longworth goes on the defensive re her choice of Trash Humpers as her number-one film of the year—a position she shouldn’t be too surprised at having to take. Having not seen Trash Humpers, I’ve got more of an issue with her dismissal of Another Year, which comes with the requisite reminder that The Human Centipede is apparently the more worthwhile picture, one which she prefers to Leigh’s film. (“In fact, I kind of do,” wrote Longworth, “but I didn't actually write that.”) Longworth insists her proclamations about all three films are sincere, and who am I to say they aren’t? But they also feel a lot like grandstanding on the part of a young critic who, as it has been observed elsewhere, doesn’t do much to convince readers with evidence from the film that her objection to Leigh’s movie has more to do with what’s on screen than with her impatience in regard to a film about the emotional decay and/or unlikely contentment of a score of middle-aged Britons. She does draw an analogy regarding what she dubs Birthday Cake Cinema that is worth a tumble, though.


Finally, Matt Zoller Seitz, a critic I’ve long admired, comes up with a compelling climax to the Club with his words on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and another film I’m very surprised hasn’t been more widely discussed this season, Matt Reeves’ Let Me In. In the entry ”Two Films That Subtly Changed Some of My Attitudes about Movies and Life”, Matt documents his own history with Pilgrim-- one which closely mirrors my own. Those of us who raised objections to Edgar Wright’s film initially had to listen to revolting, race-and gender-based objections to the film (which had nothing to do with more reasonable aesthetic-based arguments) and accusations from the film’s admirers, who were inevitably younger, that we were just too old to get it. Which is an element I did then and would even now cop to— a Nintendo-based world is one full of references I surely don’t get and one that doesn’t mean much to my personal experience. (I wonder if Karina Longworth be willing to admit as much about Another Year’s focus on Londoners drawing satisfaction from tending their gardens or falling into an abyss of self-abasement and alcoholism?) Matt may be more familiar with this world than I, but his initial objections to Pilgrim had more to do with his mood when he saw the film and his rejection of the behavior of the titular main character. And it’s fascinating to track his response upon seeing the film again, in which he details how the film’s inventive visuals suggested another way entirely of looking at the film. I think it’s pretty brave for a critic to admit that uncontrollable factors like mood and screening conditions can affect one’s response to a film, and that one’s initial reaction need not be the final word.

And Matt's conclusions re the viability of the concept of the remake—that we ought to throw out the idea that the merest suggestion of a remake is akin to blasphemy—are compelling, especially when Let Me In is the example being held up for evidence. Of course Matt isn’t suggesting that all remakes are suddenly good, only that the work itself, as always, should be the proof. As he puts it, “The batting average of remakes is no better or worse than the batting average of originals. Musicians cover great pop songs without being condemned in advance. Filmmakers deserve the same privilege.” This bit of conversational writing is one of the most interesting things I’ve read over the past year, and I couldn’t agree more—I’m one of the few people I know who thought John Moore’s remake of The Omen was a terrific movie in its own right, a visually brilliant cover version of an old favorite. Matt’s final post was, for me, the high-water mark of this year’s Slate Movie Club.

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And now we’re gonna try our own version. For years I’ve read the Slate Movie Club and wished I could take part. Now, in this D.I.Y. age of the blogosphere, the time has come. SLIFR will essentially crib the format for Slate’s annual exchange with our own rosters of writers and see if anything else interesting shakes out. The SLIFR Movie Tree House commences Monday, January 10 and will run the entire week, with contributions from myself, Jim Emerson of Scanners, Sheila O’Malley of The Sheila Variations and Jason Bellamy of The Cooler and The House Next Door. These are all talented writers and cogent thinkers whom I admire without reservation, people who aren’t concerned with whether the movies they back will screw with their film crit street cred. What’s more, I consider them all friends (though I haven’t met any of them in the flesh, another theme touched on in Matt’s final Slate). They are also folks whose opinions tend to diverge in interesting ways (I doubt any of us would agree on the year’s best picture) and who have always found respectful and intelligent ways of mounting a counterargument. I’m not expecting a testy week of e-mail exchanges. But what I am expecting is that the combination of folks gathering in what I hope is the inaugural meeting in this tree house will prod and inspire and support and challenge each other through a lively exchange that will be well worth reading. A simple hope, true, and not an unambitious one, but one I’m convinced we can more than live up to. And there may even be a surprise contributor or two to drop into the mix mid-week, depending on how everyone’s schedules shake out.

So, as entertaining as it was, I hope the Slate folks haven’t sated the general appetite for this kind of forum, because we’re marching forward regardless! Please join us beginning Monday for what should be a good time poking at the still-warm body of the movie year just past in hopes of finding something more interesting than Natalie Portman’s Oscar chances to talk about. I feel sure we’re up to the task!

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"WILL YOU WATCH THE BOOM SHADOWS ON MR. ALTMAN, PLEASE?!"

All I meant to do was log on my computer, check over some material and then shut down for the day. Well, as anyone who has logged on to a computer in the past 15 years is likely to know, when you do so you might well see an item on the sidebar which grabs your interest, and to click on it might well mean falling down a virtual rabbit hole, the beginning of a chain of clicks leading from one tangential subject to another until you’re so far removed from your original intent and focus that you might not even remember what that original intent and focus was. (Proponents of Chaos Theory must just love the Internets.) My home page is the MUBI Twitter feed, which is, for a film fan/critic/geek/whatever, just asking for trouble. And so as I do every day I peruse the offerings provided by David Hudson and company with anticipation, of course, but also a modicum of fear that I will get sent tumbling down the MUBI hole into a great tangled nest of connections and posts and articles and feeds from which I might likely never emerge to do any actual work. Today was ALMOST like that, but it turned out a little bit better, or more constructively, than usual.

I innocently clicked on a link which was titled “Mel Brooks’ Short-Lived Bromance with Cary Grant.” Sorry, but I’m unable to resist clicking on a link with a title like that. So I did, and it led me to a site called Old Hollywood, a beautiful Tumblr site full of beautiful, stark, impressionistic, you-name-it imagery from the classic early days of the American film industry. And on this site was posted, via YouTube, the following clip featuring Mel Brooks on the Tonight Show telling the story of his lunchtime dates with The Man Who Once Was Archie Leach:



From the looks of Brooks and Carson, I’d wager that the clip dates somewhere around 1978-1980. When I clicked on the embedded video to watch the clip again on YouTube, I stumbled on yet another Brooks clip, this one, I’m guessing, from the late ‘60s and the heyday of The Dick Cavett Show. Brooks is discussing his career and segues into a hilarious bit in which he does serviceable Bogart and Cagney impersonations— not Humphrey and Jimmy, but Bogart’s sister Susan and Cagney’s aunt. This bit leads to a pitch perfect bit on Sinatra singing “America the Beautiful” which, if you didn’t get the joke already, will lend a wonderful dimension to Brooks’ show-stopping “High Anxiety” number from the film of the same name:



Both of these clips are great treasures-- forgive my nostalgia-- from an era of TV talk shows where folks were just as likely to land on a panel for their qualities as fascinating people and raconteurs as for their need/desire to promote something. (In the Cavett clip brooks sits next to the perpetually smirking Rex Reed, who I can quite clearly recall being a fixture on Carson, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore and other talk shows of my youth.) And these clips, oh, but they whetted my appetite for more Brooks on the cheaply carpeted chat show dais.



The lure of the virtual rabbit hole now droning in my ears, I glanced over to the sidebar on YouTube and spied something with the tantalizing descriptor “Brooks Bitches about Harry Cohn.” Good enough. I’ll bite. But what struck me, before Brooks even started on his banter, was that the clip opened with a brief shot of a very young (40-ish) Robert Altman sitting on the same panel. Of course I’d stumbled onto another clip from The Dick Cavett Show, this one more easily datable from around 1971, and as Brooks recalled a couple of amusing stories about the infamous Columbia Pictures martinet, the camera would occasionally cut to the reactions of the others on the panel. It was slowly revealed that the others on the panel were, in addition to Robert Altman, Frank Capra (whose book The Name Above the Title had just been published) and an almost unrecognizably youthful Peter Bogdanovich. Another glance at the sidebar revealed that someone on YouTube had made available, in six-to-eight minute segments, the entirety of an episode of The Dick Cavett Show where these four directors gathered at Cavett’s pad just to shoot the shit. It struck me immediately, of course, how much about TV talk shows really had changed. Bogdanovich and Brooks casually smoked on the set and traded observations about the film industry; Bogdanovich casually showed off his smarts about Hollywood History and critics (John Simon gets some well deserved bruising); Altman was kicked back and just freshly steaming off of MGM’s brusque treatment of Brewster McCloud (At one point Brooks almost made me choke with laughter over his hilarious ad lib interruption of Altman, which is quoted above); and Capra was not someone at whose feet the others sat but instead a colleague in art, with his own war stories to tell. Just try to imagine even suggesting such a summit meeting to the producers of shows hosted by Jay Leno, or Ellen DeGeneres, or Jimmy Kimmel, or David Letterman, or (shudder) Oprah Winfrey. We as a culture don’t have the investment in films as anything more than disposal entertainment that could possibly justify any of these shows constructing an hour around, say, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Judd Apatow and an old-schooler like, well, Bogdanovich. The producers would cry that no one would be interested, and they’d probably be right. But then again, none of these shows is loose enough in format to even possibly entertain the notion of an actual panel discussion about anything in the way that Cavett’s show was geared, or Carson’s, or Mike Douglas’s.


So it was with some excitement that I realized that most of this particular episode of The Dick Cavett Show was probably all right here, which is when my afternoon became dedicated to piecing the puzzle together and providing some context. How much more relaxed and enjoyable this kind of program seems to me now, in an age where promotion and synergy and bombast has all but replaced the space where guests on shows like these used to pause to take breaths, to think about their next comment, and where the hosts actually seemed interested in what their guests had to say.

Forgive me if I have bungled the order of the segments, but as far as I can tell this should work. (If it doesn’t, go ahead and click out of my order—see if I care!) The first segment on Altman has had its embedding capability disabled at the source, but you can click the link and access it just fine. Then come on back here and enjoy the rest of this brilliantly, casually entertaining show.

Part One, in which Dick Cavett introduces his first guest, Robert Altman

Part Two: Old pal Mel Brooks joins in the fun…



Part Three: Brash, young and scholarly, Peter Bogdanovich spins stories of the glorious days of black and white…



Part Four: Bogdanovich ain’t done. Hear now tales of Leo McCarey and others…



Part Five: But that’s not all, folks! A discussion of critics leads Bogdanovich to level down on John Simon…



Part Six: In which poor, meek, demure Mr. Brooks gets a word in edgewise (!) about Harry Cohn…



Part Seven: Legendary director Frank Capra, inspired by Altman’s tales of studio interference and market research screenings, talks about his own woes with Lost Horizon…



Part Eight: More from Capra on Lost Horizon and Dirigible…



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If anyone knows of any missing pieces to this audio/visual puzzle with which I could update this post, your input would be most appreciated. My thanks to David Hudson and MUBI for so innocently making sure that today’s tumble down the virtual rabbit hole would be so rewarding and enjoyable in a manner that entirely balances out its devastation to my daily timetable!

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FUNK DECIMATOR: JB's INNER CHUCKY!

When these two giants of pop culture meet, there's bound to eventually be "One Less Lonely Girl" in the audience! Especially when Chucky Bieber whips out the hardware for his big solo hit "Ade Due Damballa (Give Me the Power, I Beg of You)," which enters the charts this week at number one!

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2011: COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY

Members of the Japanese girl-pop group AKB48, featured on this year's NHK New Year's Eve Variety Special, wish you a Happy and Prosperous 2011!

I used to hate the New Year’s holiday. Growing up, it always seemed like Christmas’s sloppy seconds, an extension of relaxation time, sure, but also a time to ruminate upon the fact that the big one was really over, a time for the disappointment of everyday life (which was never as much fun as anticipating Christmas) to start seeping back in. And it all built up to a midnight celebration that seemed more obligatory than filled with genuine feeling or excitement or hope. At least my own family’s New Year’s Eve “parties” always did—How thrilling could the ringing in of the new year really have been if the signature image I have of those momentous occasions is a plastic platter filled with mixed nuts and unevenly sliced squares of sweaty cheddar cheese? But eventually, to paraphrase Coach B.A. Strothers (G.D. Spradlin) dressing down his one of his star players, a deflated Phil Elliot (Nick Nolte) in North Dallas Forty, it became time to put away childish ways of noting the passage of a previous year and the arrival of another. (Strothers was quoting the Koran, I believe.)

When I moved to Los Angeles I spent most of my 30s playing the “I’m Required to Go Out on New Year’s Eve and Have Fun” game, which resulted in probably about one or two hours of actual fun over the course of seven or eight years of midnight partying. (Most of the time was spent twisting in the wind and whiling away the moments before the big ball dropped in the company of my soon-to-be-wife and her then-boyfriend, third-wheel style.) But since we’ve been married we’ve spent every New Year’s Eve enjoying the holiday in the Japanese manner, and I’ve never looked back at a December 31st with regret since. We don’t even stay till midnight at my wife’s parents’ house anymore. The Japanese New Year's Eve variety show we watch every year to commemorate the occasion is rebroadcast from a transmission that runs live at 6:00 am, so the local NHK affiliate here can schedule the program at an earlier hour. What used to begin at 8:30 or 9:00 and end somewhere around 2:00 a.m. now starts at 6:00 and ends tidily at 10:30 p.m. By then we’ve already raised our glasses over a lovely sushi dinner and can pack our tired, pajama-clad kids into the car for a pre-midnight ride home. And honestly, as a 50-year-old man with a generous portion of everyday worry, there’s no place I’d rather be at 11:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve than tucked into my bed with my wife, two squirmy preteen hot potatoes tucked between us, watching Dick Clark, conqueror of old age and now, apparently, debilitating medical trauma, carry on in his bid for pop culture immortality. Doesn’t look like the ball drops anymore, but chanting a string of descending numbers gets the idea across just fine nonetheless.

But there’s something about getting older and thinking back on those loved who have been lost that has made me look upon the end of the year as a time not for obligatory celebration, but for genuine reflection and appreciation. And so, if quoting myself isn’t entirely too gauche, let me do it just this once:

"When I was a young boy a very wise school teacher once told me to never keep all my thanksgiving bottled up for the official holiday but to spread it throughout the whole year. I certainly remembered that instruction (I was a second or a third-grader, I believe), but I sometimes wonder if I do very well at honoring it and living it out. If so, then good grades all around. But if not, then I can only ask for the indulgence and forgiveness of everyone around me who deserves better. Let this week be the reckoning and the restitution."

In that spirit, all my thanks, best wishes, and everything good I can generate from my heart and my brain toward a happier, more productive and more surprising 2011 to everyone who has touched my life in a positive way in 2010. Those cherished folks include (off the top of my bald head):

Bruce Lundy, Patty Cozzalio, Nonie Cozzalio, Emma Cozzalio, Yoneo and Kimiko Yokoe, Reggie and Neoma Cozzalio, Don Mancini, Danny Getzoff, Michael Torgan, Farran Smith Nehme, Peet Gelderblom, Charles Taylor, Stephanie Zacharek, David Edelstein, Phil Blankenship, Julia Marchese, Melissa Ashbaugh, Ali Arikan, Ariel Schudson, Brian Conboy, Paul Reilly, Scott Schoenberg, Scott Hewitt, Katie Warrener, Sarah Countryman, Liz DeKam, Kimberly Braasch, Sean Newcombe, Doug Cotton, Cathie Horlick, Richard Harland Smith, Paul Gaita, Jeff Allard, Nicholas McCarthy, Greg Ferrara, Bill Ryan, Lucas McNelly, Bob Westal, Keith Uhlich, Ed Gonzalez, Matt Zoller Seitz, David Leslie Johnson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jennifer Tilly, Vanwall Green, Peg Aloi, David Cairns, Dottie Soghomonian, Teresa Peplow, Martisa Mapp, Brian Saur, Aaron Aradillas, Michael Miller, Lyn Lasneski, Paul Brunick, Jim Emerson, Paul Matwychuk, Katherine Wilson, Simon Abrams, Sheila O’Malley, Jason Bellamy, Ed Howard, Anne Thompson, Anne Richardson, Tom Sutpen, John McElwee, Deirdre Games, Becky Levine, Bill Cadbury, Chris Stangl, Paul Herndon, Dan Jardine, Haruka Sometani, Janet Leehman, Jeff McMahon, Jeff Thurman, Jennifer and Jeff Owen, Jennifer Tini, Kelly Reichardt, Jim Hassinger Jon Lanthier, Nick Schager, Mike Werb, Michelle Brien, Patrick Robbins, Paul Clark, Peter Avellino, Peter Podgursky, Philip Concannon, Rob Humanick, Sal Gomez, Scooter Burbank and the Shotgun Break, Shannon Fanourakis, Shawnee Smith, Sue Swingle Elder and Terrea Bryson… (deep inhale)

And of course, to everyone who reads this little project of mine, now well into its sixth year of diverting your attention (and mine) from the more pressing matters of the day my best wishes as well. Your patience during this rather slow period on the blog is very much appreciated and will soon be rewarded with a treasure trove of reading designed to amuse you during that precious bathroom alone-time. And there is actually is plenty to look forward to, a 2011 countdown to ecstasy if you will (and if your standards are similar to mine) on tap for the coming month:

• Old friend Lucas McNelly is an independent filmmaker who is not afraid to keep himself on the cutting edge of creative storytelling and creative ways of financing those projects. He’s about to embark on an ambitious, year-long undertaking called A Year Without Rent, what I like to think of as a Travels with Charley for the age of truly independent, D.I.Y. filmmaking, and he’ll be along here to talk about the origins of the project and the adventure which lies just ahead.

• And speaking of D.I.Y., next week, after many years of envious enjoyment reading the Slate Movie Club and its stellar roster of film critics ruminating on the past year in film, I decided it was time we did our own version. So I contacted four of the smartest people I know and asked them if they’d be interested in trading observations on the movies and movie trends of 2010 over the span of a week, and they said yes! So starting next Monday, January 10, you can join Jason Bellamy, Jim Emerson, Don Mancini, Sheila O’Malley and myself as we hash it out in the SLIFR Movie Club. Slate’s doing theirs that week too, and that’s the one thing we probably won’t talk about!

• Then there’s my annual long-winded, hopefully not so long-delayed as last year’s, roundup of The Year in Film, in which my picks of the year are unveiled and surrounded by a circus of meaningless observations and hot air regarding the good things and bad things I saw happening at the movies during the last 12 months. I’ll try not to give away too many surprises during the Movie Club, but I did do a bit of a turnaround on a movie I saw last summer, and it won’t surprise many, I’m sure, to find out that Black Swan is likely to appear only during the Razzie portion of my program. I’ve still got a few titles to catch up on, but it isn’t unreasonable to think that I might have everything ready for you to read sometime before the end of the month, unless my stint on jury duty on January 24 somehow monkeys with my writing schedule. Stay tuned.

• Finally, Edgar Wright returns to the New Beverly Cinema in January with a two-week cell block riot of movie programming called The Wright Stuff II. Wright’s original series in 2008 was the inspiration for other filmmakers and actors like Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovich, Patton Oswalt, Rian Johnson and Diablo Cody to come up with their own mini film festivals, so it should be a real rush to see what Wright has in mind for an encore. Schedules permitting, I’m hoping to have a chance to sit down for a chat with him about the festival, in which we’ll talk about his career, his influences, the reception of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which many found more wonderful than I did) and, of course, the smashing lineup of movies and special guests he’s got lined up. Look for my interview with Edgar Wright right here sometime around January 14.

Hopefully that’s not all, but just looking at it written out here it feels like a month’s worth of goodies to me! Here’s to a great month to start out 2011 at SLIFR and to the endurance of my typing fingertips to bring it all to you!

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ZAPPA CLAUS SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS (2010)!

I know I'll be accused of regifting, and those who would say this would be right, but it's such a great picture (one brought to my attention by the equally great Larry Aydlette, who is hopefully by the tree with his family as I write this) that I can't resist showcasing it again this season. The director of such mighty cinematic treats as 200 Motels and Baby Snakes would like to wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! Not sure why, but I always think of a particularly warm and sentimental FZ ditty this time of year, one which handily balances the good cheer, no doubt so welcome, with a little astringent elixir of societal good sense to carry us into the coming year. So, from FZ's brilliant 1981 NYC Palladium concert (in large part segmented and televised via the long-missed weekend late-night variety show Night Flight, here is "Dumb All Over."



"Dumb all over/Yes, we are/Dumb all over/Near and far/Dumb all over/Black and white/People, we is not wrapped tight..."

Regardless, Merry Christmas, everybody!

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COZY ON UP WITH THE HORROR DADS FOR A CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE CHRISTMAS

The Horror Dads over at TCM’s Movie Morlocks (of which I am one) have decided that the best way to move on up through the last hours of Christmas Eve and beyond is with a discussion of the sort-of holiday-oriented Val Lewton classic Curse of the Cat People (1945). Ladle up a steaming cup of wassail, snuggle beside the fire or the tree (but not a tree on fire, please) and enjoy the dads as we dissect the pleasures of this unsung treasure and wonder if we would have been as angry in 1945 as many patrons were when they ponied up to see a sequel to Cat People that had no cat people or curses, a movie that turned out to be less horror film than a psychologically acute fairy tale. It’s a fun discussion, brilliantly moderated and edited as usual by our grand overseer Richard Harland Smith. Click now before Santa stumbles in!


Merry Christmas, all, and to all a good night!

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