About a month ago, I attended a screening of Frost/Nixon with my buddy from Manhattan. I have tried to explain what Minnesota is like to him in excruciating detail and why he should leave his left wing-elitist-Jewish-yuppie-communist-etc. city. But then we saw the trailer for ‘New in Town’ with Ms. Renee Zellweger and Mr. Harry Conrick Jr. To put it bluntly, I was not happy.This trailer (which can be seen at http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/newintown/) shows Ms. Zellweger as a Florida gal who ends up in New Ulm Minnesota, only to see how crazy and wacky we are! OMG a cow in the middle of the road? No electricity? How crazy are those Minnesotans. The two years of work I had did to convince my friend that MN was a great place was immediately ruined .Boycott Ms. Zellweger’s new film and keep the truth of MN out there!

I managed to straggle back on to the MNDialog to notice something—it has been almost a month since my last post. Compared to my almost weekly posts this summer, the MNDialog got lost within classes, anti-Alaska rallies, and (*gasp*) my betrayal for another blog, The Spectacle, which is run by the Daily Spectator for which I already work for.  So for all those haters asking “Why youz be dissin’ ya roots?” I have this answer: Ignorance is not the same as necessity. But seriously—There’s a festival in New York right now, and it’s pretty amazing. There’s plenty to check out , and I even scored a sick interview with Selection Committee Member and Film Comment editor-at-large Kent Jones. Check that Out at My Website Also—Check out the Spectacle, cause I’m pretty much all over there. But I promise to bring more content here; maybe not in terms of big editorials, but probably smaller reviews and the etc. Hope the weather is nice, and let all White Sox fans burn in hell. 

For those of you heading to NY’s IcePack this year, its always a good idea to check out one of the many great movie theaters that offers countless revivals. One of the most famous, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAMcinematek, is starting a revival of the films of Howard Hawks, which will play the 15th-30th of September. Here’s an article I have for the Columbia Spectator next week that tells you why you should stop by and see one of Hawk’s classic films: 

“A good movie has three good scenes and no bad scenes.” This famous quote from 40s and 50s Hollywood director Howard Hawks became a motto for his filmmaking. But then again, who is Howard Hawks? First popularized by the French, and then reexamined by Americans, the film director made many now classic genres films yet remained an unknown figure during the era where Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock where names to the masses. And now with the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s latest revival of the director’s work, simply entitled HAWKS, which will play the 15^th through the 30^th of September, we must ask ourselves the question, are we really seeing the craft of a master or simply a Hollywood hack? Can we really put Hawks up there with names like Billy Wilder and John Ford?

If you like classic films, there’s a good chance you have seen one of Howard Hawk’s films without even knowing it. There’s his gangster epic Scarface with Paul Muni, the Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn led screwball comedy Bring Up Baby, the tense and iconic John Wayne western Rio Bravo, the dark and dangerous film noir The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart, and the World War I epic Sergeant York with Gary Cooper. Hawks, who did most of his work with Warner Bros, was never pinned down to do a specific genre, like directors such as noir director Raoul Walsh or western director Anthony Mann. By many standards, this is the quintessential point they like to make about Hawks—he preceded directors like Stanley Kubrick or Robert Altman, who could make films in different genres. It didn’t matter what Hawks was doing—he could make a great film nonetheless.

But then comes the counterpoint to that argument—Michael Curtiz. Curtiz is even more hidden from fame, despite directing Casablanca, a film probably more known than any of Hawk’s features. Curtiz also transcended genre, making musicals like Yankee Doodle Dandy, gangster flicks like Angels with Dirty Faces, and the film noir-women’s film genre mix of Mildred Pierce. So shouldn’t Curtiz be as remembered as Hawks?

Not necessarily. What separates Curtiz from Hawks are the distinct attention to camera work. While Hawks films always carry a sense of structure that push the films to become more than entertainment, Curitz films are always standard, never pushing the edge. Curtiz directed over 150 features, over three times as many as Hawks. And despite the beauty of Casablanca, most of his films are standard genre pictures that never elevate their material. So maybe it wasn’t the fact that Hawks could do different genres, but instead he could do all these different genres yet bring a distinct visual style that was greater than the Hollywod norm.

But unlike say Kubrick, or even Hitckcock, Hawks films never carry a similar visual style. Within each film, the Hawks touch is always noticeable—the layers of X’s that fill the shadows of Scarface or the opening camera tilt in Rio Bravo jump immediately to mind—but one can’t follow this style from film to film. Even viewing his two most famous Westerns, Bravo and Red River, the visual styles are so uniquely different for their stories. Hawks’ most noticlbe trait, which he himself said, was his attention to always shooting at eye level, avoiding sweeping and notable camera angels. Even Hawks own argument for his films seems weak in some ways.

But just because he doesn’t have visual similarities doesn’t count him out of the race as an auteur. Take for example the Coen Brothers. Fargo, Blood Simple, and No Country for Old Men, which were also all shot by director of photography Roger Deakins, have no similar visual styles, yet one can trace the three between the pacing, framing, and particularly the themes of the films. So could we do the same for Hawks? There are some noticeable relationships in the stories of the Hawks films, the most discussed being the “Hawksian woman.” Hawks claims never to have been a feminist, but the female leads of his films are stronger and more forceful than their counterparts. Just consider Ann Dvorak in Scarface or Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep. The Hawksian woman seems to be a major common theme in almost every one of Hawk’s classic films. Or one could discuss his focus on character instead of story; Hawks protagonists always have some deeper edge to them that is much more important than where they are going. There just seems to be one problem though with connecting these stories; Hawks rarely contributed in the writing process.

Though he did do some uncredited rewrites on a few, and wrote the stories as well, Hawks never played a major part in the scripting process. It’s writing credits that drive Billy Wilder, whose films include The Apartment and Double Indemnity, to fame while keeping Hawks an obscure director. It is possible that he could have argued with studios to get the films he wanted, especially in his later years during the breakdown of the studio system, but during his prime years seems to be a bit of a stretch

But what I really think makes Hawks a great auteur is that he made simple, damn good movies that became a major influence on every genre he touched. Going back to that quote about what makes a good movie, Hawks stuck by it, and in his films, people remember the scenes of his films. Take the sing-a-long in Rio Bbravo, the entrance of Rosland Russell in His Girl Friday, or the final battle in The Thing. Hawks was a proficient director who understood the power of cinema, and could transform the films, no matter how he could. He worked within the studio to create the genres that we are all familiar with today? Would we have The Godfather without Scarface or L.A. Confidential without The Big Sleep?

Hawks films elevated themselves to reset the standard of what genre films could do. BAMcinematek’s continuation of the Hawks revival tradition will ask many to debate whether we should put Hawks on the same like as the other greats of his time. It isn’t necessary when the films are there just for the enjoyment.

Now that summer has wrapped (sorry, Death Race), let’s look back at some of the best, worst, and weirdest things that cinema has brought us.

Best Excuse to Skip the Megaplex: Man on Wire; It’s a heist film. It’s a documentary. It’s a philosophical journey; But in the end, it is an astonishing portrait of an event. Philipe Petit has no explanation for why he had to hang a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center, yet his amazing accomplishment is something that needs to be seen in this thrilling documentary. James Marsh forms his film like a classic heist flick, yet comes to something greater than that.

Best Edge Gripper: 18-Wheeler Flip, The Dark Knight; If Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman sequel had one flaw, it was that the best action sequence was actually in the middle of the film. But one moment had the entire audience in applause, each time I saw it. When that semi flips on La Salle street, supposedly defeating the Joker, its an epic showstopper. Nolan uses minimal CGI, no cuts, and no music. It’s an image that simply stands for itself.

Movie Most In Need of a Drinking Game: The Happening; M Night Shaymalan’s latest thrill ride was more of a joke ride. This terribly hilarious film has plenty of opportunities. Shots can be taken during: a) someone says the word “happening” b) a shot of trees blowing in the air c) Mark Whalberg looks panicked d) Zooey Deschanel looks like she wants out of this film. Also, if you make it to the final scene, you take a bullet into your head.

Most Ridiculous Moment That Had You Laughing Ridiculously Hard: Tom Cruise dancing in Tropic Thunder; When Tom Cruise first shows on screen in Ben Stiller’s disappointing parody of Hollywood, you got to question why he is fat, bald, and swearing. But when he starts dancing to Flo Ride and T-Pain’s dance joint “Low” along with Bill Hader on the prospect that he will become an epic billionaire, one can’t help but laugh. It’s a moment that makes you question everything that is going on, but its still hilarious.

“That Guy” Award: Danny McBride; Audiences got a double dose of originally indie star Danny McBride in both Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, and he hit it right out of the park. From his explanation of his aerodynamic-ness in Pineapple to his explosion orgy in Tropic, this man was literally on fire, and had everyone asking, who is that guy? Welcome Mr. McBride, to the A-list.

Good Movie in Bad Timing: Reprise; This Norwegian foreign flick, which echoes the films of Godard and Truffaut, was a moving portrait of two men and the opposite lives they take. Powerful? Yes. Well Made? Yes. Great Summer Programming? Nowhere near. Its too bad this film got stuck with a poor summer release, because it could have been huge come Oscar season.

Worst Use of CGI: Climax of The Incredible Hulk; I almost went with those stupid chipmunks at the beginning of Indiana Jones 4, but the last 30 minutes of The Incredible Hulk were simply boring. When will someone understand that watching two CGI characters fight is simply not that entertaining?

The Official George Lucas’ Latest Reason to Die: The Clone Wars; Can you say trainwreck? The Clone Wars essentially takes the moments of the prequels that were entertaining and thrilling, and throws them out the door. This film is a CGI kid fest that in no way shape or form lives up to the Star Wars name.

Most Boppin’ Soundtrack: The Wackness; Biz Markie? Nas? Biggie Smalls? Jonathan Levine’s indie story of a drug dealer in NYC might have been poorly crafted, but he knows the must of the 90s. This film takes all the best of 90s rap and hip hop. You will be instantly boppin’ in nostalgia glory.

Best Performance in a Movie NOT by Heath Ledger: The Cast of Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Of course Heath Ledger nailed an amazing, terrifying performance out in The Dark Knight, but not nearly enough has been said about the great members of Woody Allen’s latest comedy. Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and even Scarlett Jonhanson turn out terrific performances in this strange tragicomedy that raise the Woody Allen bar once again.

Best Film of the Summer: WALL-E; Sure, on the surface, WALL-E is a kids story about two robots, but under the surface, Andrew Stanton’s deeply complex science fiction story is much more. Stanton, using a sparse amount of dialogue, becomes a true visual storyteller. It’s a film that’s part 2001, part City Lights, and all amazing. Don’t be surprised if this comes up at the end of the year, or even stays on the top spot.

The other day, I joined a few friends who were watching Rob Cohen’s glorious epic, The Mummy: Tomb of the Emperor Dragon. I actually didn’t watch the whole thing, simply the third act of the film. I came in after my work shift was over, and just in time for the epic battle between Brendan Fraiser, Jet Li, and a bunch of CGI.

Surprisingly, I found the story still easy to get into, and not as surprisingly, I found it to be the worst 25 minutes of film I have seen this year, even beating out 21.

Now I set rules on how I could judge this third act. First, any inconsistencies in plot and anything me unable to understand how or why could simply be explained that I had missed the hour and a half before it. So when Jet Li turned into what only could be described as man-bear-pig, I couldn’t get angry.

But here was my problem: the film’s action sequence was literally impossible to follow. What is with many films this summer that refuse to allow one to follow the action? Is there a problem with using establishing shots and not an editing scheme that disconnects one shot from here to there? The Mummy simply never lets you figure out where exactly characters are or how they get from one place to another. Where is this epic battle? Are Fraiser and Bello near or far away from Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh? Will my head explode from the CGI overload?

But the problem with The Mummy has been seen in many other films this year, including Hancock and (gasp) even some scenes in The Dark Knight.

Now look at a couple of the sequences directed by David Gordon Green in Pineapple Express. The film’s action is not only hilarious, but always understandable because Green never confuses you—he’s showing you what happens, where, and everything you need to know, because its funnier. Guillermo Del Toro did a similar thing with his climax of Hellboy II, which was very easy to follow.

Take a lesson filmmakers: More shots doesn’t mean more cool. The best shot of the entire summer is the wide shot of a semi flipping, in one shot of The Dark Knight. It’s a single shot, not a collection. By doing less, you allow for a greater understanding by the audience. Follow the rule book, and let the inventiveness of the mise-en-scene do the work for you.

Note: The article contains SPOILERS for many films from this summer, mainly Hancock, The Dark Knight, and Iron Man.

In a recent article from film critic A.O. Scott in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/movies/24supe.html?_r=1&oref=slogin), the critic questioned the changing state of superhero films this year. It’s an interesting article, and worth a read, but one passage I found quite particular. Scott criticizes Nolan’s The Dark Knight in its third act for falling into some of the staple genre conventions, adding that Iron Man and Hancock, despite their less artistic ambitions, work better because they defy their set genre in a greater manner.

This got to me thinking: Are we still a “genre” state, and is it such a bad thing?

Going back to Scott’s words, I’m sure some fanboys would see those words as blasphemous and be reading to hang Scott for ever questioning the fallibility of The Dark Knight. But let’s look at these three films in terms of two different qualities: subversivness to genre, and overall originality in direction and style. And for this one, we are going to apply auteur theory to an extent.

Iron Man, Hancock, and The Dark Knight are all superhero films. The superhero genre has been around since about the 1970s with the first Superman film but really took off in the new millennium with the success of X-Men and Spider-Man. Each one of these films has a main protagonist who either creates or has super powers.

Hancock is probably then the most curious of these. Of the three, I really didn’t care for Hancock, and in my original review I argued that it really didn’t know what kind of film it was. Was it trying to be a superhero film or an existential drama? The premise of course was ingenious: a suicidal drunk superhero with a crisis. But the original script, which dates back to the late 90s, was much more serious than Peter Berg’s final product, which is supposed to be comical and use the talents of Will Smith to bring in an audience. In the final third, which is unfortunately the weakest, despite closest to the original script, the audience is taken in a whole nother direction. Although Hancock is awkwardly paced and poorly shot and edited, it is quite a subversive film. The main villain becomes the love interest, and the hero actually has to learn how to become a hero, instead of simply deciding to be one and a few training montages. It’s not a particularly good film, but one that provides a basis to look at these other films.

On the other flip of the coin is Christopher Nolan and The Dark Knight. Now one of the most successful films ever made, The Dark Knight  has gotten the praise usually preserved for Oscar winners. If there is one thing, Nolan is given the most range in directorial abilities on his film. His vision is clearly his—the film is much too dark in both story and tone to be a normal Hollywood film. Yet it clearly follows some of the path that most superhero sequels must go down: the hero loses his way, a new force enters the fray that makes him rethink how he must fight villains, and the ending is left on an ambiguous tone, which will be dealt with in the further installment (Personally, I thought by NOT setting up the film with Harvey Dent as the villain was a very unconventional thing to do). Yet I still find it unfair to criticize The Dark Knight because it isn’t willing to break every convention. We appreciate John Ford even if the hero always wins at the end of the Western, or Hitchcock when the mystery is finally solved. How come they are able to get away with genre conventionality yet Nolan is not?

It’s simply because genre is something we live with. We can’t escape it. The gangster still has a tragic downfall at the end of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. Even if it’s never resolved, we still find curiosity in the search for Anna throughout Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura. Clint Eastwood still rides into the sunset at the end of Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Even when directors attempt to break conventions, they must first establish them. Sure one could sit down and watch a Warhol film, but something must motivate a viewer to stay with a film, and that we should be rewarded. Would we like it better if EVE couldn’t actually fix WALL-E at the end of the film? Or if Hellboy actually became the ruler of the Golden Army and proceeded to destroy the world? Or if Carrie didn’t get married at the end of Sex and the City?

With genre, it’s always a double sided coin. We want originality yet we want the familiar. I recall countless people who were frustrated at the end of No Country for Old Men, simply because the last twenty minutes completely broke the ruler of almost every genre—never kill off your main character. Yet the film never achieves the point of McCarthy’s novel if it doesn’t. For film critics and other people who watch a lot of films, genre become a problem because it means we are seeing the same thing over and over. We can guess the ending even before the film begins. There is no surprise or originally. Genre is meant to familiarize and vary, so when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova never get together at the end of the “musical” Once, it makes us happy.

Maybe that’s why Iron Man is Scott’s favorite of these three. The film isn’t too special in terms of direction, and is more or less a fanboy spectacle. But throw in Robert Downey Jr’s off beat performance, a little political undertone, and the film’s brilliant final scene with Stark announcing to the world his secret identity, and you’ve got a subversive super hero film that still stays within the genre limits.

The truth is genre is not that bad of an idea. Every film can be categorized, and the best are usually members of a particular genre. Blade Runner and 2001 are clearly science fiction. Apocalypse Now and Dr. Strangelove are war films. Annie Hall is a romantic comedy. The Godfather and Goodfellas are gangster films.

So is it right to hate on The Dark Knight for being a genre film? I don’t particularly think so. I might enjoy a surprise every once and a while, but enjoying a genre film is hardly a crime. 

Finishing my first week in the French New Wave marathon was difficult, but Mr. Jean-Pierre Melville made it easier for me. Now came the hard part. On my desk sat three films from Jean-Luc Godard. It looked like the biggest challenge possible—how could I sit through so much Godard without losing it. I had seen Breathless three times, and still did not praise the film as much as admire it. And as The 400 Blows and Hiroshima mon amour had shown me, along with a few helpful suggestions, there would be no way to pin down the French New Wave to a single movie or filmmaker. But Godard was the name that could not be separated from the movement, and if I could love his work, maybe the others could come.

So I started with what I thought might be the most accessible of his work. It was in color, widescreen, and even had Jack Palance in it. But Godard’s Contempt from 1963 is of course trying to lie straight through its teeth about being accessible. In a way, Godard is trying to insult his audience by thinking he would go mainstream, and does it in an almost hilarious manner. Godard is showing that he knows how to make mainstream, but is never going to give it to us. The film is absolutely gorgeous to look at: Godard shows wondrous work in CinemaScope, and his locations are astounding, along with his smartly choiced color schemes. Both Palance and German director Fritz Lang, cast as himself, make for great fun and jokes. And Michel Piccoli is perfect as this low life loser who is miles away from Hollywood males. You expect him to try and save his girl from being taken by Palance but through the entire film, he is simply dominated. Take that with some great conversations about Homer’s The Odyssey and its true intentions, and Contempt set me off on a good pace with Godard. Unlike Fellini’s 8 ½, which is also another 60s New Wave filmmaker responding to his art, Godard wants to anger his audience, and does so brilliantly.

Thinking that Godard wasn’t so bad, I dived right into Alphaville, ready to have some science fiction fun. But then Alphaville quickly took everything I didn’t like about Breathless and amplified it. Simply put, it was incoherent, impossible to follow, and just a little boring. Sure I could recognize the brilliance of how he turned Paris into a future dystopia, and how great he uses sound and shot compositions, but I was frustrated with this film the entire time. It was simply too cold, too convoluted, and too over the top. It was what I feared when I started this marathon—a film made by a man who never cared about what his audience thought. It may be what I thought about Contempt as well, but Alphaville had none of the same spunk and energy of that film. By the end, I questioned whether Contempt was simply a mistake in the Godard filmography.

So I took out my final film from Godard, hoping to see which Godard was really there. And in Band of Outsiders I found myself finally understanding the essence of the French New Wave, as I started to be frustrated by the lack of subversive elements than find comfort in them. It’s not that I didn’t like Band of Outsiders; I quite thoroughly enjoyed it actually. But at the same time, Godard’s film seemed to not try hard enough—it had too much plot, not enough conversation, and a happy ending. I was angry! Godard was supposed to challenge me, not make me enjoy. Or had I finally succumbed to the power of the French New Wave and couldn’t get enough of it. Of course the famous sequences in Band of Outsiders were what I loved from Godard—the Madison dance, the moment of silence, the run through the Lourve—it was Godard playing with cinema and out perceptions, which I felt he was all about. I never explored Godard’s political cinema, which occurred a little later, but these three films all seemed to comment on the state of cinema in the studio system. He truly tore down the walls, messing with what we can and cannot do in the movies, and did it in style.

So when I chose my final film in this marathon, I found myself a little sad that it wasn’t really a French New Wave film. Yet I still seemed to have plenty of fun with Jacques Tati’s Playtime. This 1967 film really showed none of the French New Wave aspects, and director Tati was not a product of cashiers, and at 60, had no use for any of the new school style of filmmaking. Instead, the big influence for him and his character of Mr. Hulot seemed to be Charlie Chaplin and his famous anti-silent silent film Modern Times. Commenting on the slow impenetrable world, yet at the same time enjoying the chaos of human interaction it creates, Tati starred, wrote, and directed that brilliant and wild comedy. Tati understands visual so much, and knows how to work them to maximum effect. The big restaurant scene is absolutely breathtaking for the amount of information there is visually to process, which is at the same commenting at how chaotic our world can still be for all its boundaries. Despite not fitting with the theme, Tati brought a light heartedness that made a great end to this marathon.

So had I accomplished my goal by falling for the French New Wave? Probably not. But its such an impossible task, when really considered. At one point, the French New Wave is defined by trying to break everything you know and love about cinema. And at another point, its influence makes some of the revolutionary things it does harder to understand. And to add to my predicament, I chose the wrong films by adding Melville and Tati. But I wouldn’t call it a complete failure. I had gained new respect for these filmmakers and there attempts to change cinema. And I wasn’t completely bored. It was an experiment, and it helped me understand what the possibilities of cinema were and weren’t.

So after taking a break, its time to move onto the Italians, with two films each from Antonioni and Bertolucci…stay tuned.

            Being home for the summer, working an easy though (extremely) low paying job, allows one some time to do some personal film watching credit. Though my college isn’t about to award me points for writing, I have always wanted to do more work from my so called Netflix University. My latest project, following a series of classic screwball comedies, has been to take on the French New Wave.

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Now my previous experiences with the French movement of cinema that revolutionized it forever has been a little dull. After seeing Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless three times, I still admire it than actually enjoy it. Francois Truffaut’s Jules et Jim for me might be the perfect film though, combining a romance with a certain French mysticism (the recent Norwegian film Reprise, one of my favorites of the year, has many homages to this). And then there’s Alain Renais’ Last Year at Marienbad, which has been hitting the art houses in a new 35mm print since January. This film perfectly can describe my so far relationship—beautiful to look at, but absolutely frustrating to watch.

What makes the French New Wave so difficult to appreciate today? For starters, its much more difficult to understand the radicalism of the flicks almost 50 years later. The critics of cashiers du cinema who became the directors of the movement were responding to classical Hollywood. They wanted to break down the walls and set their own space. To today’s audience, a lot of their so called revolutions might be seen as particular. Just check out Pulp Fiction or Memento. Check out Scorsese, Altman, Polanski, or Coppola. What use to be rejection was formed into social consciousness. When we see French New Wave today, we notice the irregular storylines, but even those have begun to fade to normal.

So my goal is a daunting one, come to not only appreciate, but love the style of the French New Wave. For the first week, I set out four films.

The first two  would help me get a greater sense of the explosion of the French New Wave. Along with Breathless, two other films are widely cited as the beginning of the movement: Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Alain Renais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour. I sat down with Mr. Truffaut first, trusting him from the last time we had encountered each other.

Yet I fell into the trap immediately set out. First the first 90 minutes of the film, I simply didn’t get it. The film felt so…regular. There was nothing that immediately popped from my head. The film’s story about a young boy who can’t seem to fit into society reminded me exactly of the old Hollywood social problem films like The Grapes of Wrath or I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.  Why had this film exploded at Cannes in 1959, I thought. Sure, they are not filming on sets, a staple of the movement, and Truffaut beautifully captures France. But as the film reached its final moment, the iconic moment started to make more sense. As our protagonist runs to the ocean, the film literally freezes on his face, leaving both him and us into the unknown. It was the realism that made this film beautiful. Besides cashiers study of the American auteurs, the other huge influence was the Italian neorealism movement. This was the French version of that, yet with some new characteristics that De Sica or Rossellini would never of tried. Yet even after thinking about it, The 400 Blows was still a let down, and a hard start to my marathon. It had moment of joy, sorrow, and an amazing ending, yet it just didn’t jump out like I hoped it would.

Soon after, my hopes of admiration were brought back. The opening thirty minutes of Alain Renias’ Hiroshima, mon amour, are utterly perfect, and could have been a film on its own. We know there are two characters—A French Woman, and a Japanese Man—yet all we see if parts of their bodies as they make passionate love. Yet instead of hearing a soft core pornographic film, they instead discuss the event. It is astounding how Renais paints both sides reactions to the event. The French woman acts like she was there, while the Japanese man refuses to remember it. Edited against documentary footage of the event and its aftermath, this opening was exactly what I wanted the French New Wave to be—it was minimalist, yet deeply composed, strange, yet deeply thematic. Unfortunately, the film goes in a route similar to the frustrating Marienbad, painting a mystery between these two people and their past. Yes, it continues to work within the framework of the opening, but it feels like almost another film. Like his later work, it is very beautiful—Renais knows how to work the camera—but frustrating in terms of narrative. Again! I had failed to fall in love! Yet I was so close this time—maybe the next man could turn me back.

Holding off on going with a triple threat of Godard, I turned to a filmmaker whom I could trust. He wasn’t exactly real French New Wave, and his films were more American than French. Jean-Pierre Melville is quite the man. First of all, his last name wasn’t actually Melville, but Grumbach. He liked author Herman Melville so much that he adapted it, and interestingly, almost every leading man in a Melville film seems to be fighting for a white whale. He fought in WWII, spent time in New York where he fell in love with gangster films, and then returned to Paris to make his own independent features. I had already seen two films of his—the beautiful and haunting Le Samourai, and the epic French Resistance picture Army of Shadows (which, despite being released in 1969, had been rarely seen outside its home country until 2006). The biggest problem of Melville was that he just wasn’t really the same as the other French New Wave. He was on a level all on his own. His style was definitely anti-Hollywood, but not how Godard or Truffaut would see it. He was slow, deliberate, and quiet. I chose two works of his to continue my marathon—one early, and one late. The ironic part was that the first film, Bob le flambeur (Bob the Gambler) was made in 1956, three years before the cited beginning of the French New Wave. Yet the film is crucial, because Godard has said many times that without the film, he could have never made Breathless (Melville plays the author who Jean Seberg interviews). Bob le flambeur was then, exactly what I wanted, or my Hollywood conscious self wanted. It definitely had a plot, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. But Melville didn’t make a Hollywood film at all. From the opening moment, Bob le flambeur literally takes you to (what he calls) the hell of Paris. For thirty minutes, before any plot development happens, we are simply introduced to characters. Unlike Melville’s later films, he doesn’t go sparse on dialogue. His main character, Bob, is a gambler after all. He’s not a hitman like in Le Samourai—Bob finds his solace in other people, in appearing in a certain image, despite his old age. Bob le flambeur does turn into a heist film, though one of the first non-film noir ones at that. Although Melville’s film doesn’t play like his later ones, much less a French New Wave, there is a certain aura around it that makes it feel special. Is it a genre flick or a character study? There are moments that recall the later influences—a great scene has Bob imagine the heist without any police or even guards—but Bob le flambeur stands on its own, separate from the movement.

If Bob is a gem, then my other Melville choice, Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Cricle), was a diamond in the rough. Much more in the vein of Le Samoura, the film stars Alain Delon as a recently out of jail gangster who returns to crime after a series of strange coincidences, and teams up with two unlikely people for the perfect heist. The film is based on a Buddha quote that Melville made up about two men, and their meeting in a red circle. Everything in this film is like a set of dominos, yet its done with the same quiet and slow pace done in Le Samourai. During the actual heist, which lasts maybe thirty minutes of the film, not a single line of dialogue is heard, and Melville paces it out in real time. Yet its still as thrilling and epic as today’s heist flicks. Melville loved the forties gangster flicks, and always knew that at the end, a tragedy must occur. Just like Double Indemnity, all the pieces fit together, leading to the main character’s downfall. For some reason, the French New Wave directors loved the American gangster films, and one find their influence covered in them. From Jean-Paul Belmondo channeling Humphrey Bogart in Breathless to this flick, gangster flicks are the quintessential American story I guess. Only in America does one rise and fall through crime.

So at the half way mark, this French New Wave experiment has been quite a frustrating and fun ride. Next week, with three Godard flicks and Jacques Tati’s Playtime to go, it will be curious to see if that epiphany on the greatness of the French New Wave is to come. 

So did “Wanted” fill your Bad Movie needs? The Loom of Fate not doing it for you? If not, then here’s a way to take it to the next level. Fathom Events has decided to bring back the ever so classic 80s flick War Games to the big screen for one night only. For those who don’t know this classic film, it stars Ferris Bueller (aka Mathew Broderick) as a computer nerd who can hack any system. But when he hacks the Department of Defense and finds a special computer that attempts to play a game between him and Russia. But its not just a game…its actually the world! Can Bueller and that chick from the Breakfast Club that Emilio would only date once she was hot (Ally Sheedy) stop Nuclear Armageddon and World War 3??? Why out of all the movies a company could choose does War Games get brought back on screen? Well, it is the 25^th Anniversary, and apparently there is a sequel coming out soon as well. War Games isn’t exactly a “classic,” but if you are looking for some classic Reagan-esque Nuclear fear mongering, this should hit the spot. Anyways, On July 24^th at 7:30PM, War Games is back and even better than ever—be there. Theater ListAMC Eden Prairie 18AMC Arbor Lakes Megastar 16Brooklyn Center 20AMC Rosedale 14

Trailer

So everyone may hate Uwe Boll for his “bad” movies (Chris will defend them, I haven’t seen them, it’s irrelevant). But there is a new duo out there who is actually ruining America. Unlike Mr. Boll, whose films are at least fun and cheesy if not trying to be somewhat original or daring (or at least with Postal), these two have made a name for themselves and are making money somehow. And they are liked by some people.

I’m talking about Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

Now who are these two idiots? They brought you Date Movie. And Epic Movie. And Meet the Spartans. And now they are bringing Disaster Movie.

So what makes these guys so terrible? Well first of all their films reach a new level of suckiness never touched by Mr. Boll. The idea with all of their films is this—take a recent pop culture (or even future at the time of shooting) and make it funny some how by covering it in feces or making it get hurt. Repeat for 90 minutes.

Plot? O F**k a plot people will still laugh.

Let’s look at the trailer for their latest masterpiece. I have it below, but I warn you it may cause internal bleeding, cancer, or even AIDS.

First joke: Iron Man appears! That’s funny cause Iron Man just came out in theaters in May! It’s very topical! So what’s the joke?

A Cow falls on him.

Now will someone please explain how this could ever be considered funny? There’s plenty to make fun of with the character of Tony Stark/Iron Man, so why the hell choose a COW???

Ok, maybe that one was a dud…how about the next: Hannah Montana gets hit by a meteor and then in her dying words tells her fans to buy her new album???

Funny…

Hulk looses his shorts…original.

The Enchanted girl gets hit by a car

Next joke—Hancock (from the upcoming movie Hancock will Will Smith) takes a shot of his booze, flies up and crashes into a light post.

So that makes five jokes in which some recent character (or FUTURE??? Why can’t you make things that will last longer than three months in the minds of people?) gets hit by something. Very original and funny.

Next we have men dressed up as the Sex and the City girls…Now this joke was once funny…It was called Some Like it Hot and its over 50 years old now.

Finally, we get Carrie from Sex and the City getting her ass kicked by Juno ala the way in the trailer for You Don’t Mess with the Zohan where Adam Sandler beats up a guy with his feet.

So there you have it. Theirs is bad. And then there is this. Now there used to be great parody. There still can be, thank you Mr. Pegg, Mr. Frost, and Mr. Wright. But these movies don’t even 1. Parody the right films and 2. Parody the films actually. If you look at any of these jokes, none actually make fun of the idea of any of these films. They are gags that have 0 idea of what needs to be made fun of with these flicks.

Now here’s the biggest problem with these films and Mr. Friedberg and Mr. Seltzer. And its not their fault—ITS YOUR FAULT. Somehow, their last three films have taken a $20 million dollar budget, and made $80 million each. WHO IS GOING TO SEE THESE FILMS AND WHY??? There’s Mr. Boll, making bad films but at least with some originality and actual plots and characters who can’t even get any financing anymore. And here are two idiots, who throw sketches together from things that are either jokes from yesterday’s paper or what they think will be jokes and call it genius.

Please, find a way to boycott these men from ever working again. If you know someone who is planning to see the film, rob them of all of their money. If you plan on seeing this film, please explain yourself that your plan is actually to burn the reel while at the theater, or maybe consider finding a way to lower your carbon impact on this planet, hopefully by shooting yourself.

Die Friedberg and Seltzer.