Things have been slow around here lately. But, I assure you, we all have our reasons. So just take a few minutes to absorb this image. No newspaper required in this Japanese bathroom.
And…link.
So typically, I like the idea of a Top Ten list for the best films of the year. Top 20 seems a bit much - you should just say something about every movie you’ve seen the entire year if that’s the case. But a very respected cinema publication solicited me for my top 20 of 2008 (okay, so it was actually just a reader’s poll), and I decided to oblige. As is par for the course most years, I made it to a lot of movies over the past few months (November, December, and a few in January) as Oscar season neared. However, I fell far short this year in my typical and much-loved arthouse/foreign/independent film going, which is eminently possible living in New York City. So if my list appears to be more mainstream-centric this year than others, that is the reason why. I pledge a return to my old escapades for 2009 in that area. But still, in the end, I did see a large chunk of 2008 offerings, mostly in the theater, and supplemented by a dose of Netflix these last few weeks to catch up on any Oscar noms and other fodder, I’ve got a decent amount from which to pick for my top 20. I will follow my own assumption about top 20 lists in general from above and include a few comments about some other films (not all) that were noteworthy for one reason or another.
1. Burn After Reading
Although a bit darker in its’ humor, this movie reminded me of I Heart Huckabees in that it was entirely and absolutely comfortable to not at all take itself seriously, resulting in such an inordinate amount of silliness and sarcasm that it was impossible to not giggle furiously the entire way through it. I think, because of how idiosyncratic and individually goofy each character gets, you can’t help but enjoy how much fun the actors probably had playing them, and be even more entertained because of it. “You’re in a league of morons” is one of my favorite quotes ever.
2. In Bruges
Uproariously funny and witty dialogue that combines so well with the surprising amount of legitimate pathos - and absolutely no sappiness to spoil it all. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson played off each other so well. Man, I loved this film.
3. W
Each actor’s interpretation of his/her character alone makes it one of the funniest movies in a while (someone might have thought I was suffering conniptions from all the squirming I was doing while trying to balance out laughing with simultaneously paying attention). Brolin and Dreyfuss (who leans in and speaks in such a gravely-low Cheney voice that he should have ominous music playing in all his scenes) stood out to me.
4. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
It’s already been said, but this film oozes so much sensuality, romance and culture without being a big production, which makes it that much more appreciable. I thought the narration added a whimsical touch, and was very welcome. A lot of movies can show off a locale in a half-decent manner, but Woody Allen clearly knew how to showcase very unique and beautiful aspects of the Spanish countryside and cities.
5. The Wrestler
Rourke’s character and performance alone make this movie resonate deeply. Marisa Tomei was also touching and heartfelt (not to mention extremely good-looking naked). Bruce’s theme song was so fitting and true, and the strip club scenes notwithstanding, the scenes in the deli were perhaps the best in the film (for entirely different reasons); really, we just learn so much about Rourke’s character in those, and gain such a respect for him that one wouldn’t normally expect for a character of his ilk.
6. Frost/Nixon
A really intense movie with great performances and absorbing scenes throughout. Langella was awesome, and I thought Michael Sheen, with how his character was written, was up to task too. In fact, all the supporting parts lent important detail to the film.
7. Milk
Sean Penn was spectacular, as was the recreation of the setting and time period. This movie was very well-paced and didn’t suffer any moments that didn’t hold your attention - always very high marks for me.
8. Happy-Go-Lucky
The detail and empathy in each character and scene in this film was something very few could pull off. Mike Leigh was one of them, and it was made even more impressive by the fact that there wasn’t much of a plot. London was very charming as a backdrop. Just like during the course of the film, Sally Hawkins’ character grows on you after the fact. Such a real film.
9. Man On Wire
Everything in this movie - the interviews, the recreations, the archive footage - was put together so well. There aren’t many more compelling people than Phillipe Petit about whom to make a film, and they didn’t sell him short. Uniquely interesting.
10. Che
The craft of filmmaking on display in this film was astounding. Almost like a very long History Channel re-enactment, really, but so exceedingly well-done.
11. Slumdog Millionaire
The film’s energy was palpable, and the way the premise was executed was wholly original and intriguing. Great music, great atmosphere, and all the top-notch technical work really showcased this vibrancy of the setting in India.
12. Frozen River
Really sympathetic portrayal of an honest, decidedly unglamorous location and its’ protagonists. In this type of movie, you need genuine, subtle, realistic acting to pull off the legitimacy of the film, and it definitely happened here, the three leads especially.
13. The Reader
Very good acting performances by all. Great storytelling that weaves very well and very thoughtfully through different time periods of past and present and connects them like any good film should.
14. The Visitor
Such a leisurely paced and laconic film with great, realistic characters. The directions the film takes seem surprising at first and up being very moving.
15. Stop-Loss
A very sympathetic treatment of individuals in the type of situation that seems often overlooked and not closely examined. This film never tried to be more than it was, which might have been a temptation with the subject matter.
16. The Dark Knight
Ledger and the execution and scope of the set pieces are what elevate this film above the nonsense of how over the top it got. If this movie could have taken a step back for a few seconds and gathered itself anywhere in all the madness, it might be half as good as everyone thought it was. But still supremely well-done in many areas.
17. Hancock
So underrated and misinterpreted by many. Will Smith is so watchable, and the film itself was very likable.
18. Gran Torino
Just a solid movie, with a good slice of Detroit to take in.
19. Revolutionary Road
A very good script, with Michael Shannon’s great character and performance bringing the action (and film) up a few notches. Didn’t get boring like this type of film is often apt to do.
20. Tropic Thunder
Too many side-splitting scenes to discount. Stiller, Downey, and Jack Black were all hilarious.
These two movies were in my original top 20, but were bumped in the last couple weeks as I saw more, so I’m including my initial comments:
> The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - not as interesting as it purports to be, but still a few magical moments. Not really worth all the fuss in the end, but still intriguing to watch.
> Rachel Getting Married - getting past all the movie’s show-offy wedding scenes lets you into some good character layers and interaction.
Most Horrible Relaunch of One of the Best Franchises in the History of Cinema: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
I’m still having trouble believing how bad it was. So, so stupid and juvenile. I’ve been heartbroken since I saw it.
Worst Movie of the Year: Mamma Mia!
I didn’t choose to see this, we just tagged along with some others. Some of the worst production values ever, and the general mindlessness just blew me away. Too stupid and poorly-made to even be unintentionally funny bad (unlike another one from this year, Vantage Point). Easily one of the worst movies I’ve watched all the way through ever.
Another Crap Comic Book Movie Which Everyone Thought Was Good But Actually Wasn’t: Ironman
I had stayed away from this, but still had some expectations that it might be clever and funny. Not even close. First of all, I think the premise that some whiz kid playboy who is the head of an ultrahuge and influential weapons manufacturing company is a megacelebrity and beloved international tabloid sensation is supremely insulting in this day and age. Every other character in this movie besides RDJ was absolutely worthless. The script was so plain and just dumb. Yuck yuck yuck.
I also feel compelled to say that Wall-E, though solid and clever in many parts, did not really do it for me overall. Robot love is just not something with which I can connect, I guess.
Don’t dump my beloved man-crush Shia LeBeouf, and replace him with a douche nozzle R&B singer like Chris Brown.
We’ve all heard the song, but have you ever thought about the message?
“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you, don’t you, don’t you…”
Carly Simon is sitting around, thinking about an arrogant ex-boyfriend, yada-yada, who thinks everything is about “him”. So she writes a song about him? It defeats the purpose! The song is about him.
Somewhere out there, this douche nozzle is three beers deep in a pub with his boys. ”You’re So Vain” comes on, and the first thing out of his mouth is “you know this song is about me, right?”. You just fed his vanity a cheeseburger and fries.
Something to ponder.
I like things to be simple. If I have a simple question, I want a simple answer. To me, the simplest of questions is “what’s the weather like?” If you tell me it’s 65 degrees, I instantly know what that means and what I should wear. The same goes if you tell me it’s 55, 45 or 35 degrees. So why can’t there just be a way to very quickly find out this, the simplest of all information?
The weather channel will tell you what it’s like outside. But only if you happen to turn it on at the right moment (on the 8’s, as they like to say). And weather.com? Sure that site will tell you the weather. But it’s an eyesore to look at. See for yourself:
The information contained in that red circle is all I want to know. But they have to fill in the rest of the space with a bunch of useless and annoying pictures and information. I don’t want to watch a video of my local forecast, I don’t want to buy an HP product and I don’t want to click on any of those useless links. I hate it all.
So imagine my joy when I came across this website. (NOTE: Link may not be safe for work.) It tells me all I want to know in the simplest of ways. This website has restored my faith in humanity.
“If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence,” a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence “because these guys are flailing. We’re taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”
That was in response to statements made by a commission of Latin American leaders on the failures of the U.S. war on drugs. Read all about it here.
Yes, that’s one way to measure success. I’m just not sure the “more dead bodies, the more successful we are” approach is very effective in advertising your cause. What it’s very effective at doing is making it plain and clear that the war on drugs is a complete waste of time, money and people’s lives. I don’t understand how policy makers can believe that it makes any sense to continue trying (and failing) to keep drugs out of this country. No matter what they do, the situation will not change.
It’s simple supply and demand. My guess is that demand for drugs is relatively unchanging since they’re not hard to get and people are going to do what they want despite arcane prohibitive laws. So the price of drugs will be determined by the supply. Every time drug police confiscate a cache of drugs, it decreases the overall supply and thereby raises the price. When the price rises, it makes the drug trade that much more of a lucrative option for people looking to make money. More people enter the business supplying more drugs and things return to the original equilibrium. The same works for killing drug gang members. If a cop kills a supplier, the number of suppliers goes down, increasing the value of suppliers. Then more people want to become suppliers and things return to normal.
And what is the overall outcome? Last year, more than 5,000 people were killed across Mexico in connection with the drug war. Of course most of these people were killed by gang members and not drug police. But that doesn’t change anything. The only reason the drug business is run by gangs in the first place is because it’s illegal. In normal commerce, businesses solve their disputes through the use of contracts and the court system. Since these are not options for the black market drug business, the only recourse is to solve disputes with bullets.
President Obama just announced his appointee for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. If he really wants to change things, this would be a great place to start.
A cyberspace coup has occurred at Midwest Gothic! Your beloved writers have been destroyed. No longer will you, dear readers, be forced to endure their endless and nonsensical diatribes on politics, world events, science fiction television and the stupidity of all human beings. We are your redemption! We are your salvation! And we would like to introduce ourselves:
1. General Veendrill
2. Dirk Charleston, CPA
3. Fat Man
4. Ice Cream Sandwich
5. Beanie Czar
Some professors at Ohio State University conducted a study that examined cooperation among research subjects. Modifying the classic prisoner’s dilemma game, in which participants decide whether to cooperate or defect, the researchers offered varying amounts of money depending on what choice the participants made. So for instance:
If both cooperate, both get $3
If one defects, he gets $5 while the other person gets nothing
If both defect, both get $1
Previous research indicates that people are more likely to cooperate when larger amounts are involved, say, hundreds of dollars as opposed to three. Well, these researchers set out to determine if it was a higher dollar value that led people to cooperate more or if was merely a larger amount of anything. So they compared cooperation rates when the amount earned could be 3 dollars or 300 cents. And, for some reason, they found that people cooperated more when they could earn 300 cents as opposed to 3 dollar bills. They then interpreted this as meaning that people care more about large amounts of things (300 vs 3) as opposed to their value when deciding to cooperate.
I interpret this as people are stupid. First, people are stupid for favoring 300 cents over 3 dollars just because 300 is larger. They have the exact same value and a second grader would recognize that. Second, people are stupid for favoring the larger amount because now they have to carry 300 pennies around with them. As long as people continue to carry around pennies, we’ll never get rid of that damn coin.
There are many U.S. policies to which I am unabashedly opposed. One of these suites of policies is various trade restrictions that lawmakers and presidents place on foreign imports. Trade restrictions do nothing except help a very small constituent of voters while raising prices for all consumers. And among the worst type of trade restrictions are those placed upon imported food. Well, it just so happens that, a couple days before leaving office (former) President Bush sent a clear message to foreign food producers: I am a major A-hole.
In its final days, the Bush administration imposed a 300 percent duty on Roquefort, in effect closing off the U.S. market. Americans, it declared, will no longer get to taste the creamy concoction that, in its authentic, most glorious form, comes with an odor of wet sheep and veins of blue mold that go perfectly with rye bread and coarse red wine.
Cheese with an odor of wet sheep may not appeal to all U.S. consumers, but there are probably many that would like to continue purchasing this product. The same goes for consumers of French truffles, Irish oatmeal, and Italian sparkling water, all of which were included in the tariff bill. Instead, Bush has made it incredibly costly to purchase these products because he felt he wanted to punish European governments for restrictions they have placed on U.S. beef imports. Wah wah.
Let European countries do whatever they want. Their citizens will just pay more for beef. These new tariffs do nothing but increase the prices of these foods (and their U.S. subsititutes) for U.S. consumers. They also hurt the U.S. food importing industry:
”It’s extremely unfortunate from our point of view,” said Eugene Milosh, executive director of the American Association of Exporters and Importers, a leading trade group. ”It puts people out of business.”
They also lead to further retaliations:
Earlier this year, the European Community released a list of American products that would be considered for counter-retaliation. These included honey, walnuts, hybrid corn seed, beet pulp and dried fruit.
These policies are nonsense. They do nothing more than limit consumer choice and purchasing power while creating ineffiencies in the production of food. Some other countries may have enacted such policies first, but Bush has only caused the problem to worsen. Well done Mr. Former President.
…er, distraction, I guess, would be more appropriate. I know lately it’s seemed like the Matt Show around here, but rest assured, we’re working on some very big things here at MG, namely trying to get our sister site (my baby) www.WhoIsSaintJames.com off the ground. If you’re out of the loop or not one of three people I speak to on a regular basis, Saint James is a comic book company started by Jesse and myself, which we’ll be rolling out toward the end of February at the Florida Mega Con. Not sure what to expect surrounded by nerds, geeks, and dorks for three days straight but…should be interesting.
Stay tuned and ciao.
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is waging a war on salt. Claiming that high amounts of salt can increase blood pressure, a major factor of heart disease, the city is going to try to persuade food manufacturers across the entire country to agree to gradually reduce the salt content of food. This of course comes not long after NYC’s recent initiatives to ban smoking and trans fats.
High amounts of salt can increase blood pressure. So what? The salt content of food is already displayed on nutrition labels. If you want to limit your intake of salt, read the label and wisely stay away from things such as turkey meatballs and chicken noodle soup. Problem solved.
The worst part about this, however, is this little passage:
Thomas Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, said he wants manufacturers and restaurants to join the war on salt voluntarily. If they don’t, the city could pass legislation making it the law.
So the NYC definition of voluntary is ‘do this on your own or we’ll make you do it.’ That appears to be the exact opposite of voluntary. Government officials can spend all the time they want wishing businesses and people would act the way they want them to act. But when they talk like this, they’re simply exposed for the power-loving imbeciles they really are.
If you’ve been reading this blog (regularly or intermittently) since at least December 15, you’ve noticed that the show Quantum Leap has come up for discussion. In this discussion, Rob and I debated the merits and shortcomings of Quantum Leap and The Pretender. Over here, Rob and Ryan created a tournament bracket of time travel shows (hey guys, where’s round two?) in which Quantum Leap easily defeated Sliders. Needless to say, we love the show.
But certain details have recently been uncovered that have, quite frankly, shaken my confidence in the show. The other day, Rob and I were discussing what actually happened when Sam Becket leaped from body to body. More importantly, what happened during the first leap? Did only his mind leave the project or did his entire body disappear upon entering the leap chamber? Well, Rob directed me to the wikipedia entry for the show which states:
In early episodes, it was unclear whether Sam’s mind was leaping into other people’s bodies, or whether his mind and body leaped together. Later episodes make it clear, however, that Sam’s entire body has traveled through time, and that ‘the illusion of [his host’s] physical aura’ surrounds him, making him look and sound like that person to whomever he interacts with in the past (conversely, Sam’s counterpart in the future is surrounded by a similar aura, and looks/sounds, to people at the project, like Sam).
Well, this answers one of the more important and general questions of the show, but it only raises more specific and (I think) very critical issues. First, what is this about Sam’s counterpart in the future looking and sounding like Sam? That would imply that this counterpart was talking to the people in the project. If that’s the case, it appears that this person is fully aware that he has been transported to some scientific lab in the future. So what happens when that person returns to his actual place in the past? Wouldn’t he retain the memory of having just traveled through time to the future and back again? After all, Sam retains the memory of his leaps. This person would most likely do the same. And upon returning, that person would have quite a tale to tell.
The second and much more critical issue has to deal with sex. If both Sam’s mind and body travel through time, that means that Sam’s genetic material travels with him. If the only thing that remains of the host is the illusion of an aura, then that implies that Sam’s genetic material has completely replaced the host’s genetic material. So what, you say? Well, what happens if Sam has sex with a female during one of his leaps and she becomes pregnant? She might think she’s having the baby of someone in the past, but that child is going to carry Sam’s DNA. That’s going to make for one awkward birth when the child emerges with physical features other than the host’s. But even more importantly, what happens if Sam impregnates someone in the past prior to the date he was actually born? In the dimension of time, Sam doesn’t exist at that moment. And yet, there’s the chance he could pass his DNA (which should not yet exist) on to someone else. This is huge!
Now, I am not a physicist so there’s much I don’t understand about space-time and relativity. And if Sam were aware of these issues, I’m sure he attempted to avoid copulation at all costs. And if you’ve been watching Lost, you heard Daniel’s explanation that time can be imagined as a string on which people can move forwards and backwards. They cannot, however, change the events on that continuum and create a separate branch of that string. This would imply that, according to linear space-time theories, it would simply be impossible for Sam to pass on his DNA before it actually existed. But that doesn’t settle the supposition that Sam could pass on his DNA once it existed. He could create a child during a leap if that leap was to a time after his actual birth.
So there you have it. Why am I getting so worked up over unanswered questions and possibilities from a fictional television show that ended in 1993? Because that’s what we do here.
