Much Ado About Nothing: My November Movies

Here's what happened in the month of November:

1. Obamania in Grant Park
   
2. My best friend's wedding
   
3. Trip to Italy and Paris with my other best friend
   

You tell me where the movies fit into that. But honest, I hoped they would! But it would be dishonest to say I didn't sneak in any at all. Those few flicks, ten in total, are as follows, the "November Movie Wrap-Up." Pathetic.




Entourage, Season 4 - (2007) - DVD
Seen: Saturday, November 1, 2008
It's not even a movie! Just a TV show that I don't even like! I whine, I whine, but in actuality I surprised myself with the affection I had for this season, perhaps the least sexist of the seasons so far.

Well, that's something anyway.

From left to right: Turtle, the sweet n' pudgy pal longing for a lay; Eric "E," the "conscience" of the show as Elvis Mitchell dubs him, also the dullest, making Blake Lively's Serena on Gossip Girl seem charming; Vince, the superstar dripping with women and subsidies for his band of brothers; Ari, the show's true center of gravity. Don't ever take the camera off him and any scene wherein he fights with his wife and/or his assistant Lloyd; Drama, Vince's c-list big brother with a temper and an empty slate of auditions.

For the life of me, I am addicted to this 22 minute sugar-pop show. But I'm quitting cold turkey. After 4 whole seasons of no real character growth or narrative movement, I just can't be burdened with more of the boys' carnal delights carried out on screen. Today, I quit.


Hearts and Minds - (1974) - DVD
Seen: Thursday, November 6, 2008
I give this movie to those objectors of violence in the mainstream entertainment media, and to anyone who remains in the camp of pro-war politics.

Here on gory display are unmediated images of mutilation, death, murder and the veritable extermination of a nation--systematic acts built and sold by the US government. I think of this documentary as an uncomfortable reminder of why violence exists in movies at all and why they are valid onscreen experiences. The unspeakably real nature of Hearts and Minds's content is reason enough to query the nature of violence seen in anything from a horror to a western.

Why do we watch horror and violence? The short answer is that no matter how dreadful it is a part of human experience. And in the case of Hearts and Minds, worth remembering.



Ballast - (2008) - Film
Seen: Saturday, November 8, 2008
This is the first movie that made me truly seasick. I made it to the end of The Blair Witch Project on the big screen with an empty barf bag, but the last 20 minutes of Ballast gave me severe vertigo. What a shame that is, because as much as I want to praise this movie for it's minimal story of a single mom reconciling her relationship with her son and brother-in-law amidst her ex-husband's suicide; and for the bleak scenery and dialogue that matches that story exactly in tone, my woozy time in the theater has tarnished that experience. That doesn't seem like reason enough to dismiss a movie of Ballast's caliber from the 2008 Top Ten list that I am currently in the final stages of devising. So I will do the film a favor and vow to watch it again, this time on DVD. Then, come those seasick times, should they arrive at all, a simple press of pause on the remote should give me my sea legs back.


Throwdown - (2004) - DVD (projected!)
Seen: Saturday, November 8, 2008
I think I said somewhere in the last post to this blog that I had a favorite Johnny To film, but that is totally being trumped with this awesome little gem, Throwdown, which is so full of wonder and endearing characters that its rough-and-tumble fight scenes mostly amount to irony. I adore it.
















Happy-Go-Lucky - (2008) - Film
Seen: Sunday, November 9, 2008
The more I think about this movie the more I love it. It's a simple sentiment, really, all there in the title.












Cloverfield - (2007) - DVD
Seen: Friday, November 14, 2008
A catastrophe/monster film in response to 9/11.

Loud and clear.









The Trouble With Harry - (1955) - DVD
Seen: Friday, November 14, 2008
I'm lying. I didn't watch this on the 14th. I began to, but then the sleepies took over and out like a light I went as the DVD counter rolled on. No matter, I've seen it before, and I was lucid long enough to see at least my favorite part--the shot here at left.




The Muppet Movie - (1979) - Film
Seen: Sunday, November 16, 2008
My primary memory of The Muppet Movie comes from a two minute ice show performance I did when I was five years old, dressed in a flourescent green "frog" leotard with a googly eyes headband to make me look as closely related to Kermit as possible while under a spotlight and on figure skates in a suburban ice arena to the beat of "Movin' Right Along."

My memories of the movie itself are vague, but the shot of Big Bird in the sequence here struck me as very familiar, and no wonder since he was the Muppet character I knew best from the flick at the time I originally saw it (these were still my Sesame Street days after all). The Film Center ran a roughly month-long Muppets retrospective in November, which is how I saw this on 35mm. It was a decent print, but weathered on its sound strips and was a tad faded. It was impossible to hear at certain points, while the musical sequences nearly blew our eardrums out; and there was a burnt orangy tinge to the picture.

On the heels of The Muppet Movie came the second half of the double-feature...

"A Better World" - (various release dates) - Projected video
Seen: Sunday, November 16, 2008

...and this prompted the first time I was angry with the the Film Center for a rather misleading double bill. "A Better World" included a number of not-usually-seen (code for I-don't-know-how-rare-they-are-to-call-them-"rare") screenings of environmental conservation commercials with Kermit and Co. and a couple of episodes of Fraggle Rock being projected from a staticky VHS copy. It was unwatchable so we left after the first Fraggle episode.


Manderlay - (2005) - DVD
Seen: Monday, November 17, 2008
Um, you won't beat me up if I tell you this was the first Lars Von Trier movie I saw, will you? Okay, good, because I really loved this which is not something I think I would have felt from the impression I get from everyone about Dancer in the Dark. The latter is a movie that either people love or hate but feel obligated to say they love. There's a lot of pain in that movie, as there is in Manderlay, too, a sequel to his earlier Dogville if I'm not misinformed. And my question is, how in the world does it work out that a Danish director understands American culture and social history so well? I would have appreciated a supplementary African American history course from Lars when I was still in school. And one quick note on the second most important thing about this movie, the incredible realization of space--a whole world on one set with so few props; orchestrating something so minimal to produce an image and story so rich has a gravity to it that has not yet impacted me fully. This movie simply blew my mind.