Speaking of superlatives

Yesterday I ordered a copy of "one of the best books on film ever written": The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by film critic David Thomson. I saw it enthusiastically mentioned in that Cary Grant article. Wikipedia describes it as "a collection of biographical essays, the book has entries on well over a thousand film directors, actors, screenwriters and other filmmakers whose works span the history of world cinema." ("Acclaimed film director Peter Bogdanovich calls the book 'an intellectual Filmgoer’s Companion' and 'an invaluable standard text for students, fans, and serious enthusiasts.'")

You can buy it for $5 used on Amazon!

The greatest actor who ever lived?

I just read in a very learned article in The Atlantic — I mean, it was flatly asserted — that Cary Grant is the greatest actor who ever lived. Does anyone want to weigh in on this?

Ahem!

Ms. Rush, I couldn’t help but notice that your profile incorrectly states the Knork was invented in Wichita. It was invented in Newton, by a Newtonian, and the business that sells it (although it started in Wichita) is now in North Newton.

So there!

New people!

Welcome, AEL and mcmindes (stay tuned: her name might be changing). The way this blog works is that every two weeks someone picks a movie and we all discuss it. We go in alphabetical order by user name. Currently (as of Monday, Jan. 29), we're discussing Ben's pick, "The Incredibles." We'll discuss it until Monday, Feb. 12, when we'll start on cl's pick, which is "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (available on Netflix, if not at your local video store... you can get a Netflix account for $5 a month, but you probably know that). We have done only one revolution so far; cl got the first pick, and now we're back to her. The way we've been doing it is that the person who picked the movie starts the discussion with a couple of questions or comments and then everyone else joins in. On Feb. 12, when we start discussing Cl's movie, the next person in line, Driftwood, will announce his pick. It's meant to be fun and low pressure, so contribute as much or as little as you like. Note that we have a "recent comments" bar, so if you want to comment on movies we discussed in the past, feel free!

A Movie You Should See

On Sunday I went down to Berkeley with the express intent of seeing this movie. It was so worth the trip. This film is beautifully acted and even move beautifully shot. It is certainly the kind of movie that is well worth going out of your way to see it on screen. Those of you in Lawrence or otherwise not too far from Kansas City should go in and see this at the Tivoli where it starts March 16.

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=climates

Art?

One of my reasons for choosing this film was that it is so different than the other films we’ve discussed. Can a film like The Incredibles even be compared with a “serious” film like Sunset Boulevard or The Last Picture Show? It’s a totally different type of art, if it can be called art, but I think it is just as good at what it does as those films are at what they do.

Music

What did you think of the score? It seemed to be classic American superhero music that would work for something like Superman or Batman or The Mask. I thought it did the job very well without being a parody.

Dynamic characters

I think all of the major characters in the film were round. I think Mr. Incredible and Violet Parr were the most dynamic characters. Did you think the characters were well-developed, and were the changes in Mr. Incredible and Violet believable and meaningful?

Sound effects

Did anyone else notice how great the sound effects were? In scenes where Mr. Incredible was walking alone in cavernous areas like the bank that Bomb Voyage was robbing, his footsteps were delicate, hesitating, and reverberous, and it greatly heightened the suspense of those scenes. Dash’s running made wonderful noises, like a hummingbird or a bumblebee. And I’m sure there are a thousand other effects that were just so appropriate that I never would notice them.

Family film

Do you think this film succeeded as a “family film,” that is, a film that adults and children would love to see together? I think it did, and one of the reasons is little jokes for the adults that weren’t big enough to get in the way of the film for kids who would not get the jokes (for example, when Elastigirl looks at her butt and sighs). Another reason I think it works for adults is the good acting, great animation, and depth of characterization. Kids and adults would both appreciate the great look and sound of the film and the fast, steady pace.

Elastigirl

I think Holly Hunter’s acting did even more for this film than Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible’s shoulders. She had several difficult-to-deliver lines, and they were all perfect. A few examples: saying goodbye to her husband when she thinks he might be having an affair, telling the children what to do when she realizes that their lives are in danger, and telling her husband to throw her to save their baby.

What did you all think of the acting? I think Craig T. Nelson did well also, as did the writer/director, Brad Bird, who played Edna.

Computer animation

I hate computer animation. Something about it -- perhaps the unnatural way things move -- almost always nauseates me. But not only did the animation in The Incredibles not nauseate me, I found it entertaining and fulfilling. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on what made it so good, but after some reflection, I came up with the following elements:

1. Lifelike construction and movement in people, especially in the shoulders and hair. Hair usually looks bad in animation, but I thought the characters’ hair (especially Helen Parr/Elastigirl) looked and moved naturally. As a barbershop quartet performer, I’ve been told that the shoulders are “barometers of emotion” and that I should move them expressively to illustrate the mood of a song. I think the characters’ shoulders were used as barometers of emotion in the film. Compare how Bob Parr looked when he was beaten-down at his job with how he looked after defeating the first robot -- much of the change was in the shoulders. And even better, think of how defeated Mr. Incredible looked near the end of the film when he told Elastigirl that he wasn’t strong enough to risk losing her again -- the emotion was in the shoulders.

2. Incredible depth and detailed backgrounds. The backgrounds were never washed out or blank colors as they often are in animation. And think of the layers of movement in any of the scenes where people were flying. And all of the scenes with water, especially at night with the moon on the waves, were incredibly realistic.

3. The animators clearly prided themselves on small details that were probably labor-intensive but which added emotion and realism to scenes. For example, there’s a scene where Bob Parr is sitting at his desk and the scene is about to end and it is dark and the angle is from overhead and is backing away when he knocks over a cup with pencils in it and they spill on the floor. Because the shot is from far above and is backing away, the pencils are tiny, but they are the only thing moving in the scene at the time, and they add to the sense of futility that the scene painted.

4. The colors are vibrant but not oversaturated or garish.

What are your opinions of the animation’s strengths and weaknesses?

Christy's pick

Christy's pick, which we will begin discussing two weks from now, is an Australian movie called "Picnic at Hanging Rock," by director Peter Weir.

Blogger switch

I had to switch to the new #$%@*(! blogger today. If you are unable to post and/or comment, please let me know.

Ruth

Though I initially sympathized with her character, I ultimately disliked Ruth and what she seemed to do to Sonny. First, there's her twisted viewpoint on fidelity: She's not the kind of woman to get divorced, she says, but she has no problems dumping her emotional baggage onto a high school lover. She's obviously invested more than physical intimacy into her affair with Sonny, asking him his favorite color to give her ideas of how she'll paint the room.

Though Jacy led to no good, I thought Sonny's relationship with her at least liberated him from an unhealthy relationship with Ruth. I thought Sonny's attempt to leave town toward the end was going to be his emancipation ... the way Jacy and Duane had found a way out, and Sam the Lion and Ralph also had escaped, in a way. Maybe that overwhelming sense of loss when Ralph died drove Sonny back into town to emotionally connect with anybody who was left, and that person was Ruth.

I read the last scene in Ruth's kitchen as more of a tragedy. Sonny reaches out for her forgiveness, for some kind of emotional connection, and she relents only after lashing out at him as though he were her peer (her make-believe husband?) and not just a boy. Then the burden of living is erased from her expression and transfers to his as their hands touch. The apathy on Sonny's face tells me that the trap of that claustrophobic town has closed around him for good.

Idiots and Mexicans

Whenever I hear racist stuff in movies I always wonder how the audience would have reacted and whether the same stuff could be said in quite the same way today. In "True Grit," there were comments/portrayals regarding Chinese men and American Indians. In LPS, the town whore makes a disparaging comment about "idiots and Mexicans" and Duane makes the comment that his "next piece of ass will be yellow." And no one in the world of the film bats an eye, because that's just how things were ... but the movie came out in the early 1970s, when there was a lot of race consciousness and the Vietnam War was going on. Do you think the audience winced a little then? I'm sure much worse things were being said in small-town Texas at the time, if Bogdanovich was going for verisimilitude.

The future?

Something I find REALLY intriguing about the movie — because I think it would be damn hard to convey in a work of art — is that it simultaneously offers a merciless critique of the era and the circumstances that produce it AND some undeniable nostalgia for same. I think we are supposed to glean that the generation that came before Sonny and Duane's was nobler somehow, more fun, more life-affirming, more morally distinguished, and yet it's the generation that gave rise to the current one. There's definitely a theme of youth being wasted on the young (the awkward, unsatisfying makeout sessions, the beautiful Keats ode about mortality that falls on deaf ears in the English class). And there's a sense that youth used to be more glamorous, isn't there? That a nobler age has passed with the last picture show? Do you think the film is forward-looking at the end (ready to embrace the coming sexual revolution and the implosion of "Leave it to Beaver" America) or that it's fundamentally a nostalgia piece clinging to a more romantic past?

Never you mind

The last scenes of the movie really impressed me: Sonny speeding out of town in his truck (the movie began with his creeping into town in the truck, trying to get it to run, and there was a night scene somewhere in the middle when he stops his truck in the road and gets out and looks back at the town). But right after he passes the city limit sign, he turns back and goes to see Ruth. What do you think made him turn back?

And what, exactly, do you think she meant — after her marvelous tirade — when she said, "Never you mind, honey, never you mind"? And why did the movie end with that sentiment? A message of compassion? Forgiveness? Something else?

Sonny, we hardly knew ye

Timothy Bottoms as the President in "That's My Bush!"

Son of a preacher man

Toward the end of the movie, I felt it was on the long side, but when I was trying to figure out what could be cut, the only thing that seemed plausible were the scenes with Joe Bob Blanton, the preacher's son. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought he added something to the film — at least something to ponder. Are we supposed to see him as an incipient child molester, a victim of a psychosexual disorder? Or as a predictably twisted product of the sexually repressed era, the bullied schoolboy for whom romance is out of reach and who finds other avenues of sexual expression? Presumably Sam left him $1,000 in his will because he felt sorry for him somehow (or is there another explanation?). Is the fact that he's the preacher's son meant to to be a message about religious hypocrisy? About character being built not on churchgoing but on having life experiences that nurture your humanity?