list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around War, Inc. on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/War_Inc/295540/default.aspx Title: War, Inc.
Year: 2008
Director: Joshua Seftel
Plot: An assassin posing as a trade show producer fixes his crosshairs on a Middle East oil minister while maintaining his cover by organizing a high-profile wedding in this satirical action comedy starring John Cusack, Hillary Duff, and Marisa Tomei. Joshua Seftel directs a screenplay co-written by Mark Leyner, Jeremy Pikser, and producer/star Cusack. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 17
Number of Lists: 6
Number of blog posts: 16
SpoutRating: 2
]]>Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:00:58 GMTWar, Inc.2008Joshua SeftelAn assassin posing as a trade show producer fixes his crosshairs on a Middle East oil minister while maintaining his cover by organizing a high-profile wedding in this satirical action comedy starring <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____16329/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>John Cusack</a>, Hillary Duff, and <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____71267/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Marisa Tomei</a>. Joshua Seftel directs a screenplay co-written by Mark Leyner, Jeremy Pikser, and producer/star Cusack. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide17Tag Target (>10)6162http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s295540.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/War_Inc/295540/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/1/9/39318.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/9/2009 2:00:58 PM
Body: At the cinema, 2008 was the year when it was hip to depart from the moral outrage any conscientious individual might feel about our countries’ on going illegal and immoral war 6,000 miles away. Light satire, be it of the buddy (Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay) or “five minutes in the future, things will be even more remarkably FUBAR” variety (War Inc.) were fashionable. Stop-Loss, much like last year’s ill conceived Lions for Lambs, luke warm Rendition and sneakily powerful In the Valley of Elah, was too sincere for most audience members and a large swath of critics’ taste. On the other hand, did we really need Morgan Spurlock to go looking for Osama Bin Laden? What if he would have found him? That might have been a beheading worth watching. Thankfully the much-maligned documentarian Nick Broomfield, best known for his perpetual work-in-progress (i.e. shoddily constructed), Tragic Musicians of the 90s Docs Kurt and Courtney (1998) and Biggie and Tupac (2002), finally surfaced with a genuinely terrific film. His 2007 TIFF entry Battle for Haditha, a picture that, in perhaps the year’s biggest cinematic surprise given its author’s dubious track record and relative inexperience in the realm of narrative, is so eerily verisimilar that it puts much of what one could accurately call combat cinema to shame. Shot in grainy, fluid 16mm with Jordan doubling for Iraq, and starring non actors culled from local Iraqi refugees and ex-American military personnel, Broomfield’s movie paints a potent and altogether horrifying picture of American military brutality that would be fodder for the knee jerk responses of hawkish pundits if a) it had been seen by anyone; b) if its events weren’t almost entirely drawn from the documented atrocities of November 19th, 2005; and c) if it had been directed by Brian DePalma, whose Redacted could have been this relevant if its director wasn’t so busy navel-gazing and rubbing his bald spot. With a structural conceit that resembles Gus Van Sant’s long build up to tragedy in Elephant (but with much less artifice and showy stylistic hijinks to burn), Battle for Haditha recounts not the 2005 battle for which it’s named (that took place in August of 2005 and featured the death of just about every marine from Brook Park, Ohio), but the massacre of twenty-four Iraqis, fifteen of them confirmed civilian noncombatants, by Americans servicemen out for revenge after a member of their platoon, Corporal Miguel Terrazas, was killed by an IED within the city.  That IED was initially listed as the cause of the fifteen civilian deaths in the military’s official report on the incident, only to be discovered as the mere spark for a clinical retribution on the part of a tired, emotionally scarred and trigger happy platoon. Broomfield paints the soldiers as limited and essentially decent men who, under the right circumstances, are subject to the worst human nature has to offer. The film has a small share of inauthentic-seeming moments, which will always occur when you unleash an inspired non-performer in a set of dire given circumstances and make them create without a safety net. But even in the midst of these moments, the film retains its power to both enrage and enthrall. Especially riveting is former Marine corporal Elliot Ruiz as Cpl. Ramirez, whose rage spills over to needless violence with a ferocity that can be hard to watch at times, but whose vulnerability, his essential optimistic sweetness, breaks your heart. At times the performance seems designed to provoke a Liberal wussie’s worst suspicions about the men who serve us in uniform; in other moments, you completely fall in love with the man. It’s dynamite work, a fully lived-in sensation. That those on both sides of any armed conflict are left wounded and this is no small thing might be Broomfield’s thematic intention, but his film transcends his schematic desires by putting us so equally in the shoes of combatants on both sides. It’s also leisurly enough to glimpse small moments with surprising restraint and unexpected beauty. From he sensuality of a woman removing her hijab to have intercourse and then a quaint shower with her lover, to a soldier watching as children flee their Madrasahs in the wake of the retaliatory massacre, Broomfield reveals himself to be a visual poet, albeit a minor one. The banality of evil is the film’s (and this whole war’s) real subject, but as it floats between the daily routines of the platoon and various groups of Iraqi civilians (and a few insurgents), many of whom we know will not see another day, the film manages to truly put to bed Francois Truffaut’s notion that war cinema is always too visceral to be considered truly pacifist. I’m glad I’ve seen it and, deity willing, I never, ever want to see the real thing. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:00:58 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/9/2009 2:00:58 PMAt the cinema, 2008 was the year when it was hip to depart from the moral outrage any conscientious individual might feel about our countries’ on going illegal and immoral war 6,000 miles away. Light satire, be it of the buddy (Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay) or “five minutes in the future, things will be even more remarkably FUBAR” variety (War Inc.) were fashionable. Stop-Loss, much like last year’s ill conceived Lions for Lambs, luke warm Rendition and sneakily powerful In the Valley of Elah, was too sincere for most audience members and a large swath of critics’ taste. On the other hand, did we really need Morgan Spurlock to go looking for Osama Bin Laden? What if he would have found him? That might have been a beheading worth watching. Thankfully the much-maligned documentarian Nick Broomfield, best known for his perpetual work-in-progress (i.e. shoddily constructed), Tragic Musicians of the 90s Docs Kurt and Courtney (1998) and Biggie and Tupac (2002), finally surfaced with a genuinely terrific film. His 2007 TIFF entry Battle for Haditha, a picture that, in perhaps the year’s biggest cinematic surprise given its author’s dubious track record and relative inexperience in the realm of narrative, is so eerily verisimilar that it puts much of what one could accurately call combat cinema to shame. Shot in grainy, fluid 16mm with Jordan doubling for Iraq, and starring non actors culled from local Iraqi refugees and ex-American military personnel, Broomfield’s movie paints a potent and altogether horrifying picture of American military brutality that would be fodder for the knee jerk responses of hawkish pundits if a) it had been seen by anyone; b) if its events weren’t almost entirely drawn from the documented atrocities of November 19th, 2005; and c) if it had been directed by Brian DePalma, whose Redacted could have been this relevant if its director wasn’t so busy navel-gazing and rubbing his bald spot. With a structural conceit that resembles Gus Van Sant’s long build up to tragedy in Elephant (but with much less artifice and showy stylistic hijinks to burn), Battle for Haditha recounts not the 2005 battle for which it’s named (that took place in August of 2005 and featured the death of just about every marine from Brook Park, Ohio), but the massacre of twenty-four Iraqis, fifteen of them confirmed civilian noncombatants, by Americans servicemen out for revenge after a member of their platoon, Corporal Miguel Terrazas, was killed by an IED within the city.  That IED was initially listed as the cause of the fifteen civilian deaths in the military’s official report on the incident, only to be discovered as the mere spark for a clinical retribution on the part of a tired, emotionally scarred and trigger happy platoon. Broomfield paints the soldiers as limited and essentially decent men who, under the right circumstances, are subject to the worst human nature has to offer. The film has a small share of inauthentic-seeming moments, which will always occur when you unleash an inspired non-performer in a set of dire given circumstances and make them create without a safety net. But even in the midst of these moments, the film retains its power to both enrage and enthrall. Especially riveting is former Marine corporal Elliot Ruiz as Cpl. Ramirez, whose rage spills over to needless violence with a ferocity that can be hard to watch at times, but whose vulnerability, his essential optimistic sweetness, breaks your heart. At times the performance seems designed to provoke a Liberal wussie’s worst suspicions about the men who serve us in uniform; in other moments, you completely fall in love with the man. It’s dynamite work, a fully lived-in sensation. That those on both sides of any armed conflict are left wounded and this is no small thing might be Broomfield’s thematic intention, but his film transcends his schematic desires by putting us so equally in the shoes of combatants on both sides. It’s also leisurly enough to glimpse small moments with surprising restraint and unexpected beauty. From he sensuality of a woman removing her hijab to have intercourse and then a quaint shower with her lover, to a soldier watching as children flee their Madrasahs in the wake of the retaliatory massacre, Broomfield reveals himself to be a visual poet, albeit a minor one. The banality of evil is the film’s (and this whole war’s) real subject, but as it floats between the daily routines of the platoon and various groups of Iraqi civilians (and a few insurgents), many of whom we know will not see another day, the film manages to truly put to bed Francois Truffaut’s notion that war cinema is always too visceral to be considered truly pacifist. I’m glad I’ve seen it and, deity willing, I never, ever want to see the real thing. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/11/19/37428.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 11/19/2008 1:54:00 AM
Body: First paragraph of a review that I posted last year:"If I'm in the mood for a Western, I want horses. If I'm in the mood for explosions, I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie. In either case, I don't want, say, Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in some black-and-white hovel on the rocky shores of Sturnnveggloven. In the same way, if I'm in the mood to watch echo-boomer twenty-somethings filming their friends hanging out with each other in small apartments and on the urban stoop and in the homes and basements of their parents and grandparents, none of whom will ever appear onscreen, then for those of you who haven't seen one such film before, this would be mumblecore."My assigned movie, "Funny Ha Ha," would be perhaps the first film in the mumblecore genre. Did I read something somewhere about how frequently, for some mysterious reason, the first in a genre is also the best? Homer, Milton, and Cervantes were mentioned. Could this be true of FHH? Is it the purest, as well as the first, mumblecore expression of newly-adult American modern life on the hoof, before the mumblecore melodrama of Mutual Appreciation or the variations on a theme in "LOL" or the psychological depth of The Puffy Chair? A question to keep in mind as I watch.Haven't heard much from the mumblecore community lately. What's the buzz? What's the buzz around saying what's the buzz? Stephen Holden called Baghead a mumblecore movie - comedy/horror mumblecore? Are movies like In Search of a Midnight Kiss moving mumblecore into some new merged genre? Was Old Joy really mumblecore, as it's often listed; some genre morphing might have already taken place in that one. Andrew Bujalski, who wrote, directed, and starred in FHH, hasn't made a feature film in years; he's done some acting but not made any movies. Kate Dollenmayer, who plays Marnie, the lead in FHH, appeared in Bujalski's next film and then disappeared behind the camera. There's an album with her name on it; otherwise, she's light on the google.FHH caught me in one of my watching-the-last-half-of-the-movie-first phases. I've recently finished Rules of the Game and War, Inc. that way. Watching those two films backwards helped them, in my estimation. I'm guessing in advance that watching "Funny Ha Ha," starting at the 45-minute mark, will not harm my enjoyment of the film and may help it. But we'll see.Fooey! Now I've slipped up and taken a peek at the first few paragraphs of A.O. Scott's FHH review in the NYT, wherein he tells us that the film is about a young woman's fruitless search for a little love and meaning in her life. Why did I read that? So now why should I bother dropping into the middle of the movie, already knowing that? The adventure and mystery are ruined. Feh. But I'll do it anyway. So. There Marnie is, passed out in a car. Now she stays with a girlfriend and her girlfriend goes on a job interview. Oops, Marnie is the girlfriend, not the drunk in the car. Confusion. Good. That's how I like it to be. No harm done reading a little A.O. Scott. Meanwhile, the theme of the movie is made clear in minutes, middle start or not, once I've got Marnie in my sights. Perhaps my initial excitement was a little attenuated, but now I'm involved, so onward!Marnie is wearing a T-shirt from a Newton grammar school. Newton is an upscale community in the Boston suburbs. Always made me think of fig newtons, not Isaac. I seem to remember a mall there, back in the 60s, out on Commonwealth Avenue. Bujalski was born in Boston. A good place to locate a movie about the just-graduated and I speak as one who swam in that social sea after college for a couple of years. Youth, out of school at last. FHH is the pure unvarnished article. The essence of mumblecore. Absolute minimum script, or so it appears onscreen. The meta experience identical to the dramatic experience; that is, there are two layers working here, carrying the same message: (a) level one, the young woman moving along through her first adult life structure while (b) level two, the actors live their lives for us by acting onscreen, so that, for this viewer at least, the element in FHH most profoundly moving is the sight of these twentysomethings struggling with their craft, new adult members of society, now with the responsibility of paying rent and negotiating car insurance (no small task in Massachusetts!), with the need to discover meaning in the challenges that they face and in their responses to those challenges. Not the characters, you understand, but the actors themselves. A reviewer comments "The semi-improvised performances seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters," but the point is that these performances highlight the actors not as the characters they portray but as individuals working - that is, acting. Or am I just being fooled into thinking that I'm seeing the actors, not the characters, because of Bujalski's style? But no. I know nothing about the actors; perhaps they have something in common with their characters, perhaps not. There is a signature cadence in untrained improvisation, with its small pauses not heard in everyday conversation, neither conversation between those who know each other nor that between strangers, tiny pauses born of the actor's interior monolog, pauses which replace the verbal overlaps and gaps found in everyday talk. So that as we watch, the actors think about their lines, or the direction just provided offscreen, or the act of acting, anything but the less conscious social drivers propelling the rest of us day-to-day in casual conversation. Each actor steps into the frame with an ineffable sense of innocence, usually with an embarrassed grin, and speaks, and we understand that here onscreen are living reminders of already-came-of-age, struggling with dialog as an instantiated metaphor for the whole all-of-it struggle involved in becoming an adult. I find this evocative in the extreme, a spiritual supermagnet pulling me back to that same time in my own life, with all the memories, nostalgia, speculations, and regrets attendant to it - a time in my own life when I'm more than ripe for that to happen. Could I, would I, do better a second time around? That question forms the emotional core of the movie for my demographic; the same thing happens when we watch our own children in their twenties. Where else can you get that in cinema? Not in The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure.The Boojer, by the way, saves the juiciest scenes in the movie for himself - an excruciating dinner and a later sort-of-extended-date with Marni. Cultural extra credit: compare and contrast the boy/girl dinners in FHH and I Think I Love My Wife.At the end of the second half, I return to reviewland and find:A.O. Scott: "What gives this film its quiet pathos is not so much the relative bleakness of Marnie's circumstances but the modesty of her expectations. At one point, she makes a to-do list, and its lack of ambition - spend more time outdoors, make friends with Jackie, learn to play chess - is both funny and sad."Carina Chocano: "Mainly, Marnie is staying afloat and trying to connect with others who are equally lost."Seems like I've seen a lot of this kind of hangdog vibe around the FHH reviews - negatives about mood and lifestyle - and I am not down with that (although I otherwise agree with the NYT and LA Times FHH review content). Perhaps having reached the top of the mountain makes it hard for Scott and Chocano to see those younger who are still way back down in the foothills. Marnie and her friends in FHH are newly-minted adults living life in that broad, spacious, undefined socioeconomicsphere found in first-world countries, a landscape where middle-class children find themselves free to roam, after emerging from college, if they happen to be situated in the middle of the startingout spectrum: neither at one end on the turf of the cinematically-ever-popular male slackers so often seen onscreen, nor the other end on that of the striving medical-school, law-school, and computer-geek proto-professionals; that is, Marnie and her friends are living the unfocused life that many of us lived in our twenties. I speak as one who stumbled off the college campus for the last time to find myself, at the age of 23, living alone in Boston, working at a job I wasn't interested in, and looking for love after refusing to commit to marriage and being dropped by my intended, who switched to her Plan B awfully quickly, it seemed to me. The quiet pathos for my demographic didn't happen then, it's happening to us now, in our dotage, on the viewer's side of the screen. Where is the pathos in Marnie's freshness and energy and in the potential of youth, for Marnie and her friends with an open and unknowable and limitless future stretching ahead of them, or in the knowledge that Kate Dollenmayer herself has moved on into that future, or in Bujalski's vision? Marnie's to-do list in no way lacks ambition; is in no way funny or sad. The act of making that list metaphorizes the ambition of the young; the contents of the list highlight the innocence of youth; it's a list drawn up by someone with all the time in the world and, interestingly, it is a list quite similar to such a one as made up by someone at the other end of life, without much time remaining.So I asked my daughter about this quiet-pathos thing, her being 23 and a recent graduate and living in Boston, all the same as Marnie; her reply: "As far as waitressing goes, I feel embarrassed about it at times, but I've actually made some valuable connections and now have places to stay and help finding employment if I want to go to South Carolina, Maui, Australia, or Columbia (have business cards/notes/emails from all of these people). Plus I make ok money, work with nice people, take home free food (ok, thats not completely kosher but its not like I get a salary or even hourly pay that amounts to anything after taxes). Plus, Im learning to speak Haitian Creole while simultaneously turning enemies into friends (the cooks didnt like me at first bc they assumed I was racist and told me so, but when I asked to learn their language they are suddenly happy to see me each day). So from my lowly job Im gaining: communication skills, agility training, extreme multi-tasking experience, networking opportunities, and employee benefits (that's the free food). Sounds almost ambitious when phrased correctly. This isnt to say I dont doubt what Im doing because I do, every day, multiple times a day. I get asked time and again by my bosses, co-workers and customers "why are you here if you have a degree from an Ivy League school??" One person even went so far as to say I was being selfish because letting my parents spend all that money to send me to a good school only to "disregard" my qualifications by working in a chain restaurant was just like throwing all that tuition money in the trash. Obviously obtaining "street smarts" and trying to experience different ways of life before choosing the "purpose-driven" one is something only misfits and failures do... So what am I trying to say here? Maybe im just trying to rationalize my own current existence when in reality it is just as ambitionless and lost as Marnie's. But maybe if the reviewers got off their NY Times and La Times high horses and really thought about what it means to EXPERIENCE and LIVE life, they might see things a wee bit differently. Or maybe not. Am I giggly all the time? as my friend Lynnea would say: "HELLS no!" But I dont think Ill look back on this period of my life and see it as a time of just "staying afloat" (my high school years on the other hand...)."One more take on the pathos meme, quickly, before getting on with the movie: Marnie celebrates her birthday quietly. Proactive note to lugubrious reviewers: this also is not pathos. What the heck did I do on my birthdays back in Boston? Who knows? I do remember being in a laundromat at North Station on Christmas Eve one year. It was snowing. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were in town, so The Garden was deserted except for me and an old woman. I went back to my room and drank. I still remember that, so I guess it means something to me, but I didn't feel pathetic at the time. I felt lonely but pretty good.Ginormous. I've had that word in my head. I'm thinking that if I write it down here, maybe it will go away.And so on to the first half of FHH.Oh my God. Bujalski saddles Marnie with an unrequited-love jones, up front. Booge, how could you? What were you thinking? This is something a novice twenty-something filmmaker would do. Oh, right. But this is why watching War, Inc. backwards helped the movie so much; the process cut out loads of unnecessary plot points till it was too late to matter. In the same way, I was able to watch the downslope of FHH without these moulting feathers of love annoying me. Hmm. Now Marnie liplocks some dude at the twenty-eight minute mark. I would never have predicted that. Oh, no, and then she osculates again three minutes later with her married-dude friend. I'm so glad I'm coming to this at the end and not at the beginning. Why? Because in the second half she's staring into the future without seeing beyond the walls of her room, locked in her head while her anger percolates unfelt somewhere down there lower in her body - after the drinking and smooching fail her - but I understood that, in the second half of the movie, without the presumptive romance-o-motivation of the first.No. I'm overreacting. Belay that last paragraph. I've been Hollywoodpavlovianized. This is not Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the last minute of Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail. This is random lowkey young adult semijoyless evolutionary smootching, pebbles in a pond that cause no ripples. Marnie pretends that it didn't happen, isn't happening, and I'll do the same. Romance is a big deal for these kids, perhaps the biggest deal. My twenties were mostly a history of bad dates. Easy to put off career issues to the next decade while getting the living part right. So Booge perforce makes use of that, but not so much that we can't shrug when the lips meet, and then move on. But still, this series of fraught encounters with men, I don't know; quit beating the drum, Booge. This does remind me, though, that I watched the original Forsythe Saga backward. As with Marnie and Alex in the second half of FHH, something heavy had obviously gone on between Irene and Soames, and Fleur's life was constantly perturbed by it, but it seemed more romantic to me to not know what that something was, not to know what had happened - seemed more romantic than watching the first half and seeing whatever it was that happened actually happen. Thesis: nostalgia coupled with imagination is always stronger than dramatic invention, probably because lived experience, including the actual act of imagination, is more visceral than skoptophilia and its milder brethren.New-Age side note: Coincidence #1: Earlier in this screed I wrote a sentence using the word "evolutionary" and then I started FHH up again and watched the last ten minutes of the movie, which I hadn't seen yet (minutes 35 to 45) and Marnie says to Alex or Alex says to Marnie, "You're the most evolved person I know." Coincidence #2: Later that day, I went to Blockbuster to return Get Smart (I'm rating it "j" on a scale of 1 to q) and while there I picked up The Last Request, which somebody somewhere liked a little bit, and while I was checking out, the clerk asked me how I liked Get Smart and I said, Anne Hathaway is no Barbara Feldon, and when I got home and started The Last Request, there Barbara was, in a starring role. The odds of plucking up a Barbara Feldon movie at random? Antiginormous. Coincidence #3: Marnie's shirt has the number 18 on its back. I'm 18b. My daughter, I learned THE SAME DAY, is living in apartment #18 in her building on Concord St. Consult your Jung! These coincidental whorls in the universal fabric happened ON THE SAME DAY as Obama's election and mean that FHH is connected to the core zeitgeist of the planet. You read it here first.Propositions: (1) The first half of a movie is usually better than the second half when the movie is watched in normal order. (2) Watching the second half of a movie first often improves the movie. Sometimes, watching the second half is sufficient in itself. (3) Thus, perhaps whichever half you watch first is the best.I had to ask Wilson, who assigned this movie to me, what the last two spoken lines of the last scene were. They seemed crucial in defining the mood of the movie, but mumblecore being named mumblecore for a reason, I couldn't make out what Alex and Marnie said to each other. Fortunately, Wilson could. And those two lines bear out my contention, or so I think, that Bujalski is a deeply optimistic guy and FHH is, in the end, a celebration, not a paean. In that final scene, Marnie shows some anger, a desire to move out into the world, and a rejection of the feckless Alex. Good for her and good for a society and economy (knock on wood) where youth is able to rattle around a little. I watched a mumblecore movie made by Joe Swanberg a while back, in which the protagonists grow stronger in the face of Swanberg's efforts to render them helpless; Bujalski throws down some marbles in Marnie's path, but his affection for her never lets her fall hard enough to break anything.This film that launched a genre reminds us that being young and being old are two entirely different things. (Bujalski turned 30 this year.)
]]>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:54:00 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog11/19/2008 1:54:00 AMFirst paragraph of a review that I posted last year:"If I'm in the mood for a Western, I want horses. If I'm in the mood for explosions, I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie. In either case, I don't want, say, Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in some black-and-white hovel on the rocky shores of Sturnnveggloven. In the same way, if I'm in the mood to watch echo-boomer twenty-somethings filming their friends hanging out with each other in small apartments and on the urban stoop and in the homes and basements of their parents and grandparents, none of whom will ever appear onscreen, then for those of you who haven't seen one such film before, this would be mumblecore."My assigned movie, "Funny Ha Ha," would be perhaps the first film in the mumblecore genre. Did I read something somewhere about how frequently, for some mysterious reason, the first in a genre is also the best? Homer, Milton, and Cervantes were mentioned. Could this be true of FHH? Is it the purest, as well as the first, mumblecore expression of newly-adult American modern life on the hoof, before the mumblecore melodrama of Mutual Appreciation or the variations on a theme in "LOL" or the psychological depth of The Puffy Chair? A question to keep in mind as I watch.Haven't heard much from the mumblecore community lately. What's the buzz? What's the buzz around saying what's the buzz? Stephen Holden called Baghead a mumblecore movie - comedy/horror mumblecore? Are movies like In Search of a Midnight Kiss moving mumblecore into some new merged genre? Was Old Joy really mumblecore, as it's often listed; some genre morphing might have already taken place in that one. Andrew Bujalski, who wrote, directed, and starred in FHH, hasn't made a feature film in years; he's done some acting but not made any movies. Kate Dollenmayer, who plays Marnie, the lead in FHH, appeared in Bujalski's next film and then disappeared behind the camera. There's an album with her name on it; otherwise, she's light on the google.FHH caught me in one of my watching-the-last-half-of-the-movie-first phases. I've recently finished Rules of the Game and War, Inc. that way. Watching those two films backwards helped them, in my estimation. I'm guessing in advance that watching "Funny Ha Ha," starting at the 45-minute mark, will not harm my enjoyment of the film and may help it. But we'll see.Fooey! Now I've slipped up and taken a peek at the first few paragraphs of A.O. Scott's FHH review in the NYT, wherein he tells us that the film is about a young woman's fruitless search for a little love and meaning in her life. Why did I read that? So now why should I bother dropping into the middle of the movie, already knowing that? The adventure and mystery are ruined. Feh. But I'll do it anyway. So. There Marnie is, passed out in a car. Now she stays with a girlfriend and her girlfriend goes on a job interview. Oops, Marnie is the girlfriend, not the drunk in the car. Confusion. Good. That's how I like it to be. No harm done reading a little A.O. Scott. Meanwhile, the theme of the movie is made clear in minutes, middle start or not, once I've got Marnie in my sights. Perhaps my initial excitement was a little attenuated, but now I'm involved, so onward!Marnie is wearing a T-shirt from a Newton grammar school. Newton is an upscale community in the Boston suburbs. Always made me think of fig newtons, not Isaac. I seem to remember a mall there, back in the 60s, out on Commonwealth Avenue. Bujalski was born in Boston. A good place to locate a movie about the just-graduated and I speak as one who swam in that social sea after college for a couple of years. Youth, out of school at last. FHH is the pure unvarnished article. The essence of mumblecore. Absolute minimum script, or so it appears onscreen. The meta experience identical to the dramatic experience; that is, there are two layers working here, carrying the same message: (a) level one, the young woman moving along through her first adult life structure while (b) level two, the actors live their lives for us by acting onscreen, so that, for this viewer at least, the element in FHH most profoundly moving is the sight of these twentysomethings struggling with their craft, new adult members of society, now with the responsibility of paying rent and negotiating car insurance (no small task in Massachusetts!), with the need to discover meaning in the challenges that they face and in their responses to those challenges. Not the characters, you understand, but the actors themselves. A reviewer comments "The semi-improvised performances seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters," but the point is that these performances highlight the actors not as the characters they portray but as individuals working - that is, acting. Or am I just being fooled into thinking that I'm seeing the actors, not the characters, because of Bujalski's style? But no. I know nothing about the actors; perhaps they have something in common with their characters, perhaps not. There is a signature cadence in untrained improvisation, with its small pauses not heard in everyday conversation, neither conversation between those who know each other nor that between strangers, tiny pauses born of the actor's interior monolog, pauses which replace the verbal overlaps and gaps found in everyday talk. So that as we watch, the actors think about their lines, or the direction just provided offscreen, or the act of acting, anything but the less conscious social drivers propelling the rest of us day-to-day in casual conversation. Each actor steps into the frame with an ineffable sense of innocence, usually with an embarrassed grin, and speaks, and we understand that here onscreen are living reminders of already-came-of-age, struggling with dialog as an instantiated metaphor for the whole all-of-it struggle involved in becoming an adult. I find this evocative in the extreme, a spiritual supermagnet pulling me back to that same time in my own life, with all the memories, nostalgia, speculations, and regrets attendant to it - a time in my own life when I'm more than ripe for that to happen. Could I, would I, do better a second time around? That question forms the emotional core of the movie for my demographic; the same thing happens when we watch our own children in their twenties. Where else can you get that in cinema? Not in The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure.The Boojer, by the way, saves the juiciest scenes in the movie for himself - an excruciating dinner and a later sort-of-extended-date with Marni. Cultural extra credit: compare and contrast the boy/girl dinners in FHH and I Think I Love My Wife.At the end of the second half, I return to reviewland and find:A.O. Scott: "What gives this film its quiet pathos is not so much the relative bleakness of Marnie's circumstances but the modesty of her expectations. At one point, she makes a to-do list, and its lack of ambition - spend more time outdoors, make friends with Jackie, learn to play chess - is both funny and sad."Carina Chocano: "Mainly, Marnie is staying afloat and trying to connect with others who are equally lost."Seems like I've seen a lot of this kind of hangdog vibe around the FHH reviews - negatives about mood and lifestyle - and I am not down with that (although I otherwise agree with the NYT and LA Times FHH review content). Perhaps having reached the top of the mountain makes it hard for Scott and Chocano to see those younger who are still way back down in the foothills. Marnie and her friends in FHH are newly-minted adults living life in that broad, spacious, undefined socioeconomicsphere found in first-world countries, a landscape where middle-class children find themselves free to roam, after emerging from college, if they happen to be situated in the middle of the startingout spectrum: neither at one end on the turf of the cinematically-ever-popular male slackers so often seen onscreen, nor the other end on that of the striving medical-school, law-school, and computer-geek proto-professionals; that is, Marnie and her friends are living the unfocused life that many of us lived in our twenties. I speak as one who stumbled off the college campus for the last time to find myself, at the age of 23, living alone in Boston, working at a job I wasn't interested in, and looking for love after refusing to commit to marriage and being dropped by my intended, who switched to her Plan B awfully quickly, it seemed to me. The quiet pathos for my demographic didn't happen then, it's happening to us now, in our dotage, on the viewer's side of the screen. Where is the pathos in Marnie's freshness and energy and in the potential of youth, for Marnie and her friends with an open and unknowable and limitless future stretching ahead of them, or in the knowledge that Kate Dollenmayer herself has moved on into that future, or in Bujalski's vision? Marnie's to-do list in no way lacks ambition; is in no way funny or sad. The act of making that list metaphorizes the ambition of the young; the contents of the list highlight the innocence of youth; it's a list drawn up by someone with all the time in the world and, interestingly, it is a list quite similar to such a one as made up by someone at the other end of life, without much time remaining.So I asked my daughter about this quiet-pathos thing, her being 23 and a recent graduate and living in Boston, all the same as Marnie; her reply: "As far as waitressing goes, I feel embarrassed about it at times, but I've actually made some valuable connections and now have places to stay and help finding employment if I want to go to South Carolina, Maui, Australia, or Columbia (have business cards/notes/emails from all of these people). Plus I make ok money, work with nice people, take home free food (ok, thats not completely kosher but its not like I get a salary or even hourly pay that amounts to anything after taxes). Plus, Im learning to speak Haitian Creole while simultaneously turning enemies into friends (the cooks didnt like me at first bc they assumed I was racist and told me so, but when I asked to learn their language they are suddenly happy to see me each day). So from my lowly job Im gaining: communication skills, agility training, extreme multi-tasking experience, networking opportunities, and employee benefits (that's the free food). Sounds almost ambitious when phrased correctly. This isnt to say I dont doubt what Im doing because I do, every day, multiple times a day. I get asked time and again by my bosses, co-workers and customers "why are you here if you have a degree from an Ivy League school??" One person even went so far as to say I was being selfish because letting my parents spend all that money to send me to a good school only to "disregard" my qualifications by working in a chain restaurant was just like throwing all that tuition money in the trash. Obviously obtaining "street smarts" and trying to experience different ways of life before choosing the "purpose-driven" one is something only misfits and failures do... So what am I trying to say here? Maybe im just trying to rationalize my own current existence when in reality it is just as ambitionless and lost as Marnie's. But maybe if the reviewers got off their NY Times and La Times high horses and really thought about what it means to EXPERIENCE and LIVE life, they might see things a wee bit differently. Or maybe not. Am I giggly all the time? as my friend Lynnea would say: "HELLS no!" But I dont think Ill look back on this period of my life and see it as a time of just "staying afloat" (my high school years on the other hand...)."One more take on the pathos meme, quickly, before getting on with the movie: Marnie celebrates her birthday quietly. Proactive note to lugubrious reviewers: this also is not pathos. What the heck did I do on my birthdays back in Boston? Who knows? I do remember being in a laundromat at North Station on Christmas Eve one year. It was snowing. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were in town, so The Garden was deserted except for me and an old woman. I went back to my room and drank. I still remember that, so I guess it means something to me, but I didn't feel pathetic at the time. I felt lonely but pretty good.Ginormous. I've had that word in my head. I'm thinking that if I write it down here, maybe it will go away.And so on to the first half of FHH.Oh my God. Bujalski saddles Marnie with an unrequited-love jones, up front. Booge, how could you? What were you thinking? This is something a novice twenty-something filmmaker would do. Oh, right. But this is why watching War, Inc. backwards helped the movie so much; the process cut out loads of unnecessary plot points till it was too late to matter. In the same way, I was able to watch the downslope of FHH without these moulting feathers of love annoying me. Hmm. Now Marnie liplocks some dude at the twenty-eight minute mark. I would never have predicted that. Oh, no, and then she osculates again three minutes later with her married-dude friend. I'm so glad I'm coming to this at the end and not at the beginning. Why? Because in the second half she's staring into the future without seeing beyond the walls of her room, locked in her head while her anger percolates unfelt somewhere down there lower in her body - after the drinking and smooching fail her - but I understood that, in the second half of the movie, without the presumptive romance-o-motivation of the first.No. I'm overreacting. Belay that last paragraph. I've been Hollywoodpavlovianized. This is not Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the last minute of Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail. This is random lowkey young adult semijoyless evolutionary smootching, pebbles in a pond that cause no ripples. Marnie pretends that it didn't happen, isn't happening, and I'll do the same. Romance is a big deal for these kids, perhaps the biggest deal. My twenties were mostly a history of bad dates. Easy to put off career issues to the next decade while getting the living part right. So Booge perforce makes use of that, but not so much that we can't shrug when the lips meet, and then move on. But still, this series of fraught encounters with men, I don't know; quit beating the drum, Booge. This does remind me, though, that I watched the original Forsythe Saga backward. As with Marnie and Alex in the second half of FHH, something heavy had obviously gone on between Irene and Soames, and Fleur's life was constantly perturbed by it, but it seemed more romantic to me to not know what that something was, not to know what had happened - seemed more romantic than watching the first half and seeing whatever it was that happened actually happen. Thesis: nostalgia coupled with imagination is always stronger than dramatic invention, probably because lived experience, including the actual act of imagination, is more visceral than skoptophilia and its milder brethren.New-Age side note: Coincidence #1: Earlier in this screed I wrote a sentence using the word "evolutionary" and then I started FHH up again and watched the last ten minutes of the movie, which I hadn't seen yet (minutes 35 to 45) and Marnie says to Alex or Alex says to Marnie, "You're the most evolved person I know." Coincidence #2: Later that day, I went to Blockbuster to return Get Smart (I'm rating it "j" on a scale of 1 to q) and while there I picked up The Last Request, which somebody somewhere liked a little bit, and while I was checking out, the clerk asked me how I liked Get Smart and I said, Anne Hathaway is no Barbara Feldon, and when I got home and started The Last Request, there Barbara was, in a starring role. The odds of plucking up a Barbara Feldon movie at random? Antiginormous. Coincidence #3: Marnie's shirt has the number 18 on its back. I'm 18b. My daughter, I learned THE SAME DAY, is living in apartment #18 in her building on Concord St. Consult your Jung! These coincidental whorls in the universal fabric happened ON THE SAME DAY as Obama's election and mean that FHH is connected to the core zeitgeist of the planet. You read it here first.Propositions: (1) The first half of a movie is usually better than the second half when the movie is watched in normal order. (2) Watching the second half of a movie first often improves the movie. Sometimes, watching the second half is sufficient in itself. (3) Thus, perhaps whichever half you watch first is the best.I had to ask Wilson, who assigned this movie to me, what the last two spoken lines of the last scene were. They seemed crucial in defining the mood of the movie, but mumblecore being named mumblecore for a reason, I couldn't make out what Alex and Marnie said to each other. Fortunately, Wilson could. And those two lines bear out my contention, or so I think, that Bujalski is a deeply optimistic guy and FHH is, in the end, a celebration, not a paean. In that final scene, Marnie shows some anger, a desire to move out into the world, and a rejection of the feckless Alex. Good for her and good for a society and economy (knock on wood) where youth is able to rattle around a little. I watched a mumblecore movie made by Joe Swanberg a while back, in which the protagonists grow stronger in the face of Swanberg's efforts to render them helpless; Bujalski throws down some marbles in Marnie's path, but his affection for her never lets her fall hard enough to break anything.This film that launched a genre reminds us that being young and being old are two entirely different things. (Bujalski turned 30 this year.) http://www.spout.com/blogs/the_american_dream/archive/2008/7/3/32096.aspx Post By: The_American_Dream
Post To: The_American_Dream Blog
Post Date: 7/3/2008 7:13:56 PM
Body: After seeing this movie, and several of the comments bellow, I am forced to ask "Was this really that bad?". Perhaps "War, Inc." is not all the hype that it has gotten. It isn't, even to the point where I may feel betrayed by the trailer. But, in answer to the question, I would have to say that it wasn't that bad. "War, Inc." brings several good things to the screen. This is a satire, that in itself is worth something to me. That the subject of gloomy documentaries can be humorous and poignant to the subject. This is a good thing, and it is something that is lacking in this world with gloomy documentaries. Another point about this movie, it is not really indie; indie really is just some guys with a camera and little or no money, with the idea that they have something overwhelmingly important to say by not doing much at all with an audiences time (as in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", which itself isn't very indie anyways) and that can yield perfectly fine results as well. "War, Inc." differs from this in that, although it is in limited release, it has many of the blockbuster qualities, seeing it, one realizes that the production was hardly pressed for money. This movie also does have something to say to the world, maybe it is something that you hear everyday on NPR, but that does not make this movie any worse for what it is. As for some actual reviewing, as opposed to simple opinions on what "War, Inc." is or is not, I would have more positive things to say for it than some of what has been said here. But not, however, glowing with endless lines of praise for it. As I have said, it was even a bit of a let down. But, Cusack does mount a tripled outfit as writer, actor, and producer which may be somewhat of a stretch, having some amount of control on almost every aspect of the film (except, I assume the streak of peroxide blond hair he sports). Never the less, this movie does not loose itself to John Cusack, which is one of the best things the movie does not do. Also, as I said before, "War, Inc." brings something to the audience in that it allows a chance to have some amount of joviality over the ugliness of the truly grotesque world we happen to live in. This is not a problem, "South Park" is a masterwork of this and it, like "War, Inc." gives us pause for humor as well as self reflection on what we do. This is something to be commended. The point is that "War, Inc." although a let down, I found to be just fine for what it is. This cannot be said for some other movies, movies that fit into really another category all together or lack some vital part to them. "War, Inc." does not reserve itself to such halls. In its case, one should find an amount of middle ground for what it is as an existential work of satire which it lives up to perfectly, and a movie which is more second rate but not totally problematic.
]]>Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:13:56 GMTThe_American_DreamThe_American_Dream Blog7/3/2008 7:13:56 PM After seeing this movie, and several of the comments bellow, I am forced to ask "Was this really that bad?". Perhaps "War, Inc." is not all the hype that it has gotten. It isn't, even to the point where I may feel betrayed by the trailer. But, in answer to the question, I would have to say that it wasn't that bad. "War, Inc." brings several good things to the screen. This is a satire, that in itself is worth something to me. That the subject of gloomy documentaries can be humorous and poignant to the subject. This is a good thing, and it is something that is lacking in this world with gloomy documentaries. Another point about this movie, it is not really indie; indie really is just some guys with a camera and little or no money, with the idea that they have something overwhelmingly important to say by not doing much at all with an audiences time (as in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", which itself isn't very indie anyways) and that can yield perfectly fine results as well. "War, Inc." differs from this in that, although it is in limited release, it has many of the blockbuster qualities, seeing it, one realizes that the production was hardly pressed for money. This movie also does have something to say to the world, maybe it is something that you hear everyday on NPR, but that does not make this movie any worse for what it is. As for some actual reviewing, as opposed to simple opinions on what "War, Inc." is or is not, I would have more positive things to say for it than some of what has been said here. But not, however, glowing with endless lines of praise for it. As I have said, it was even a bit of a let down. But, Cusack does mount a tripled outfit as writer, actor, and producer which may be somewhat of a stretch, having some amount of control on almost every aspect of the film (except, I assume the streak of peroxide blond hair he sports). Never the less, this movie does not loose itself to John Cusack, which is one of the best things the movie does not do. Also, as I said before, "War, Inc." brings something to the audience in that it allows a chance to have some amount of joviality over the ugliness of the truly grotesque world we happen to live in. This is not a problem, "South Park" is a masterwork of this and it, like "War, Inc." gives us pause for humor as well as self reflection on what we do. This is something to be commended. The point is that "War, Inc." although a let down, I found to be just fine for what it is. This cannot be said for some other movies, movies that fit into really another category all together or lack some vital part to them. "War, Inc." does not reserve itself to such halls. In its case, one should find an amount of middle ground for what it is as an existential work of satire which it lives up to perfectly, and a movie which is more second rate but not totally problematic. http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/6/30/31929.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 6/30/2008 6:01:26 PM
Body: An addendum on this post noted that War, Inc, the satire co-written by and starring John Cusack which I loathed but which has become something of a surprise spring hit, was scheduled to come out on DVD tomorrow after just seven weeks in theaters. I wrote: War Inc['s DVD release] is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Ah, but then the target moved: shortly after that post was published, I got an email from David Hudson informing me that the film’s DVD release has been bumped to October. The move happened apparently quite suddenly––a number of outlets have published reviews of the film in recent days, ostensibly pegged to the original DVD release date, as the film’s theater count stayed steady this past weekend. Box Office Mojo currently has the title up as a release for tomorrow, although Amazon has changed their sales page to reflect a new release date of October 14. So why the sudden switch? It could be due to a combination of a number of factors: the film is still doing sort of okay in theaters (though it doesn’t look like it has the legs to grow beyond its current count of 33 screens, it only dropped about 12% last week, to earn a per screen average about equivalent to that of certified summer sleeper The Visitor); there also may be a case to be made that it’ll be easier to sell DVDs of a political satire in the weeks immediately leading up to the election, than in relative lull in the campaign season (and a holiday week, no less). But the exact thing that looked sort of brilliant about the seven week window plan––that First Look would be able to capitalize on more or less organic serendipity about the film, due to the fact that Cusack’s tireless talking head campaigning on its behalf has sort of worked theatrically, and would thus not have to spend extra money on a campaign surrounding the DVD––now looks like money down the drain. If the DVD reviews to come out in the past week are any indication (Steve Erickson called War, Inc “a lowest-common-denominator comedy, the equivalent of a Larry the Cable Guy vehicle for readers of The Nation“), the distributor will once again be forced to rely on creativity to sell their DVD in lieu of critical support. And creativity costs money. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:01:26 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog6/30/2008 6:01:26 PMAn addendum on this post noted that War, Inc, the satire co-written by and starring John Cusack which I loathed but which has become something of a surprise spring hit, was scheduled to come out on DVD tomorrow after just seven weeks in theaters. I wrote: War Inc['s DVD release] is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Ah, but then the target moved: shortly after that post was published, I got an email from David Hudson informing me that the film’s DVD release has been bumped to October. The move happened apparently quite suddenly––a number of outlets have published reviews of the film in recent days, ostensibly pegged to the original DVD release date, as the film’s theater count stayed steady this past weekend. Box Office Mojo currently has the title up as a release for tomorrow, although Amazon has changed their sales page to reflect a new release date of October 14. So why the sudden switch? It could be due to a combination of a number of factors: the film is still doing sort of okay in theaters (though it doesn’t look like it has the legs to grow beyond its current count of 33 screens, it only dropped about 12% last week, to earn a per screen average about equivalent to that of certified summer sleeper The Visitor); there also may be a case to be made that it’ll be easier to sell DVDs of a political satire in the weeks immediately leading up to the election, than in relative lull in the campaign season (and a holiday week, no less). But the exact thing that looked sort of brilliant about the seven week window plan––that First Look would be able to capitalize on more or less organic serendipity about the film, due to the fact that Cusack’s tireless talking head campaigning on its behalf has sort of worked theatrically, and would thus not have to spend extra money on a campaign surrounding the DVD––now looks like money down the drain. If the DVD reviews to come out in the past week are any indication (Steve Erickson called War, Inc “a lowest-common-denominator comedy, the equivalent of a Larry the Cable Guy vehicle for readers of The Nation“), the distributor will once again be forced to rely on creativity to sell their DVD in lieu of critical support. And creativity costs money. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/6/30/31928.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 6/30/2008 6:01:12 PM
Body: An addendum on this post noted that War, Inc, the satire co-written by and starring John Cusack which I loathed but which has become something of a surprise spring hit, was scheduled to come out on DVD tomorrow after just seven weeks in theaters. I wrote: War Inc['s DVD release] is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Ah, but then the target moved: shortly after that post was published, I got an email from David Hudson informing me that the film’s DVD release has been bumped to October. The move happened apparently quite suddenly––a number of outlets have published reviews of the film in recent days, ostensibly pegged to the original DVD release date, as the film’s theater count stayed steady this past weekend. Box Office Mojo currently has the title up as a release for tomorrow, although Amazon has changed their sales page to reflect a new release date of October 14. So why the sudden switch? It could be due to a combination of a number of factors: the film is still doing sort of okay in theaters (though it doesn’t look like it has the legs to grow beyond its current count of 33 screens, it only dropped about 12% last week, to earn a per screen average about equivalent to that of certified summer sleeper The Visitor); there also may be a case to be made that it’ll be easier to sell DVDs of a political satire in the weeks immediately leading up to the election, than in relative lull in the campaign season (and a holiday week, no less). But the exact thing that looked sort of brilliant about the seven week window plan––that First Look would be able to capitalize on more or less organic serendipity about the film, due to the fact that Cusack’s tireless talking head campaigning on its behalf has sort of worked theatrically, and would thus not have to spend extra money on a campaign surrounding the DVD––now looks like money down the drain. If the DVD reviews to come out in the past week are any indication (Steve Erickson called War, Inc “a lowest-common-denominator comedy, the equivalent of a Larry the Cable Guy vehicle for readers of The Nation“), the distributor will once again be forced to rely on creativity to sell their DVD in lieu of critical support. And creativity costs money. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:01:12 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com6/30/2008 6:01:12 PMAn addendum on this post noted that War, Inc, the satire co-written by and starring John Cusack which I loathed but which has become something of a surprise spring hit, was scheduled to come out on DVD tomorrow after just seven weeks in theaters. I wrote: War Inc['s DVD release] is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Ah, but then the target moved: shortly after that post was published, I got an email from David Hudson informing me that the film’s DVD release has been bumped to October. The move happened apparently quite suddenly––a number of outlets have published reviews of the film in recent days, ostensibly pegged to the original DVD release date, as the film’s theater count stayed steady this past weekend. Box Office Mojo currently has the title up as a release for tomorrow, although Amazon has changed their sales page to reflect a new release date of October 14. So why the sudden switch? It could be due to a combination of a number of factors: the film is still doing sort of okay in theaters (though it doesn’t look like it has the legs to grow beyond its current count of 33 screens, it only dropped about 12% last week, to earn a per screen average about equivalent to that of certified summer sleeper The Visitor); there also may be a case to be made that it’ll be easier to sell DVDs of a political satire in the weeks immediately leading up to the election, than in relative lull in the campaign season (and a holiday week, no less). But the exact thing that looked sort of brilliant about the seven week window plan––that First Look would be able to capitalize on more or less organic serendipity about the film, due to the fact that Cusack’s tireless talking head campaigning on its behalf has sort of worked theatrically, and would thus not have to spend extra money on a campaign surrounding the DVD––now looks like money down the drain. If the DVD reviews to come out in the past week are any indication (Steve Erickson called War, Inc “a lowest-common-denominator comedy, the equivalent of a Larry the Cable Guy vehicle for readers of The Nation“), the distributor will once again be forced to rely on creativity to sell their DVD in lieu of critical support. And creativity costs money. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/6/30/31919.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 6/30/2008 4:00:57 PM
Body: The most notable DVD release of the week* has to be the first season of Mad Men, which hits the street tomorrow just in time for newbies to get caught up on the AMC series before season two premieres in late July (it’s been available on iTunes for quite some time). I went on YouTube looking for clips from my favorite episodes and found the above fan vid, which focuses on Betty Draper (January Jones), the miserable model-turned-housewife of mysterious ad man Don Draper. I love it, if for no other reason than that it really draws out the way the show takes mid-century cinematic archetypes and weds them to real-seeming, endlessly multi-faceted characterizations. This clip specifically highlights Mad Men’s Hitchcock allusions: the slate-gray, Madeline Elster-esque suit that Betty wears to therapy; Don’s spying, here symbolized by his employment of a home movie camera like something out of a cross between Peeping Tom and Rear Window; and my favorite, Betty’s fateful encounter with a flock of birds. Betty is clearly based on the typical Hitchcock blonde-in-peril, a cool, vaguely shallow but anxiety-plagued beauty on the run from some kind of terror. Betty rocks the porcelain face with the furroed bros as well as Grace Kelly or Tippi Hedren, but she’s got virtually nothing tangible to fear (with the possible exception of her husband’s infidelities, but it’s made pretty clear that she’s certainly not the only girl on the block with that thorn in her domestic side) beyond her own sadness. She’s also got nowhere to go but the supermarket, and her only outlets for her tensions are sexual fantasies about door-to-door salesmen and a really weird relationship with the young son of the local single mom. It’s like a hypothetical sequel to North By Northwest, where Cary Grant’s character goes back to his normal work life in Manhattan and Eva Marie Saint’s moves into his suburban split-level and starts taking care of his kids. No wonder Betty drinks during the day. *Unless you count War Inc, which is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:00:57 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog6/30/2008 4:00:57 PM The most notable DVD release of the week* has to be the first season of Mad Men, which hits the street tomorrow just in time for newbies to get caught up on the AMC series before season two premieres in late July (it’s been available on iTunes for quite some time). I went on YouTube looking for clips from my favorite episodes and found the above fan vid, which focuses on Betty Draper (January Jones), the miserable model-turned-housewife of mysterious ad man Don Draper. I love it, if for no other reason than that it really draws out the way the show takes mid-century cinematic archetypes and weds them to real-seeming, endlessly multi-faceted characterizations. This clip specifically highlights Mad Men’s Hitchcock allusions: the slate-gray, Madeline Elster-esque suit that Betty wears to therapy; Don’s spying, here symbolized by his employment of a home movie camera like something out of a cross between Peeping Tom and Rear Window; and my favorite, Betty’s fateful encounter with a flock of birds. Betty is clearly based on the typical Hitchcock blonde-in-peril, a cool, vaguely shallow but anxiety-plagued beauty on the run from some kind of terror. Betty rocks the porcelain face with the furroed bros as well as Grace Kelly or Tippi Hedren, but she’s got virtually nothing tangible to fear (with the possible exception of her husband’s infidelities, but it’s made pretty clear that she’s certainly not the only girl on the block with that thorn in her domestic side) beyond her own sadness. She’s also got nowhere to go but the supermarket, and her only outlets for her tensions are sexual fantasies about door-to-door salesmen and a really weird relationship with the young son of the local single mom. It’s like a hypothetical sequel to North By Northwest, where Cary Grant’s character goes back to his normal work life in Manhattan and Eva Marie Saint’s moves into his suburban split-level and starts taking care of his kids. No wonder Betty drinks during the day. *Unless you count War Inc, which is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/6/30/31918.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 6/30/2008 4:00:47 PM
Body: The most notable DVD release of the week* has to be the first season of Mad Men, which hits the street tomorrow just in time for newbies to get caught up on the AMC series before season two premieres in late July (it’s been available on iTunes for quite some time). I went on YouTube looking for clips from my favorite episodes and found the above fan vid, which focuses on Betty Draper (January Jones), the miserable model-turned-housewife of mysterious ad man Don Draper. I love it, if for no other reason than that it really draws out the way the show takes mid-century cinematic archetypes and weds them to real-seeming, endlessly multi-faceted characterizations. This clip specifically highlights Mad Men’s Hitchcock allusions: the slate-gray, Madeline Elster-esque suit that Betty wears to therapy; Don’s spying, here symbolized by his employment of a home movie camera like something out of a cross between Peeping Tom and Rear Window; and my favorite, Betty’s fateful encounter with a flock of birds. Betty is clearly based on the typical Hitchcock blonde-in-peril, a cool, vaguely shallow but anxiety-plagued beauty on the run from some kind of terror. Betty rocks the porcelain face with the furroed bros as well as Grace Kelly or Tippi Hedren, but she’s got virtually nothing tangible to fear (with the possible exception of her husband’s infidelities, but it’s made pretty clear that she’s certainly not the only girl on the block with that thorn in her domestic side) beyond her own sadness. She’s also got nowhere to go but the supermarket, and her only outlets for her tensions are sexual fantasies about door-to-door salesmen and a really weird relationship with the young son of the local single mom. It’s like a hypothetical sequel to North By Northwest, where Cary Grant’s character goes back to his normal work life in Manhattan and Eva Marie Saint’s moves into his suburban split-level and starts taking care of his kids. No wonder Betty drinks during the day. *Unless you count War Inc, which is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:00:47 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com6/30/2008 4:00:47 PM The most notable DVD release of the week* has to be the first season of Mad Men, which hits the street tomorrow just in time for newbies to get caught up on the AMC series before season two premieres in late July (it’s been available on iTunes for quite some time). I went on YouTube looking for clips from my favorite episodes and found the above fan vid, which focuses on Betty Draper (January Jones), the miserable model-turned-housewife of mysterious ad man Don Draper. I love it, if for no other reason than that it really draws out the way the show takes mid-century cinematic archetypes and weds them to real-seeming, endlessly multi-faceted characterizations. This clip specifically highlights Mad Men’s Hitchcock allusions: the slate-gray, Madeline Elster-esque suit that Betty wears to therapy; Don’s spying, here symbolized by his employment of a home movie camera like something out of a cross between Peeping Tom and Rear Window; and my favorite, Betty’s fateful encounter with a flock of birds. Betty is clearly based on the typical Hitchcock blonde-in-peril, a cool, vaguely shallow but anxiety-plagued beauty on the run from some kind of terror. Betty rocks the porcelain face with the furroed bros as well as Grace Kelly or Tippi Hedren, but she’s got virtually nothing tangible to fear (with the possible exception of her husband’s infidelities, but it’s made pretty clear that she’s certainly not the only girl on the block with that thorn in her domestic side) beyond her own sadness. She’s also got nowhere to go but the supermarket, and her only outlets for her tensions are sexual fantasies about door-to-door salesmen and a really weird relationship with the young son of the local single mom. It’s like a hypothetical sequel to North By Northwest, where Cary Grant’s character goes back to his normal work life in Manhattan and Eva Marie Saint’s moves into his suburban split-level and starts taking care of his kids. No wonder Betty drinks during the day. *Unless you count War Inc, which is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post… Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/lopezdash/archive/2008/6/19/31400.aspx Post By: lopezdash
Post To: The Movie Blog
Post Date: 6/19/2008 12:34:15 AM
Body: In his latest movie, "War, Inc.," John Cusack uses humor to tackle a serious subject, creating a pointed satire of America's military actions abroad. Cusack produced, co-wrote and stars in "War, Inc." Cusack will be online Friday, June 20 at 2 p.m. ET to discuss the movie, his politics and his career. In addition to his work in Hollywood, Cusack has become a vocal critic of the Bush administration, recently appearing in this MoveOn.org video that criticizes both President Bush's and John McCain's policies. Submit questions before and during the discussion.
]]>Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:34:15 GMTlopezdashThe Movie Blog6/19/2008 12:34:15 AMIn his latest movie, "War, Inc.," John Cusack uses humor to tackle a serious subject, creating a pointed satire of America's military actions abroad. Cusack produced, co-wrote and stars in "War, Inc." Cusack will be online Friday, June 20 at 2 p.m. ET to discuss the movie, his politics and his career. In addition to his work in Hollywood, Cusack has become a vocal critic of the Bush administration, recently appearing in this MoveOn.org video that criticizes both President Bush's and John McCain's policies. Submit questions before and during the discussion. http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/6/2/30342.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 6/2/2008 4:01:14 PM
Body: Now that War, Inc has topped the specialty box office two weeks in a row, using the unfunny “incendiary political cartoon” (the poster’s words, not mine) as a stick with which to beat the “critics are irrelevant!” dead horse has become the new hotness. “Despite the negative reviews, I found War Inc. innovative and subversively ironic,” Vicky Ward writes at Vanity Fair.com. Noting that Cusack was able to cull poster quotes from like-minded famous friends such as Arianna Huffington and Diablo Cody (the latter’s a new development, as she apparently hadn’t delivered her blurb as of the taping of this clip), Ward positions the success of the film as an instance of “the audience” rising up against the bullies of the critical establishment: The encouraging results may be proof of the power of viral marketing, an instance when the subculture becomes the culture…it won’t just be the anti-war message of the movie that is groundbreaking; War Inc. could become a model for a new, grass-roots type of marketing, in which a film’s potential audience (with a little help from the director) may be better able to advertise it than the so-called experts are…if the drum roll is loud enough, the views of critics [can] be overruled by people who will see what they want to see, no matter who tells them not to. Yeah, I don’t know about that. I’m one of those critics who hates the film, of course (which proves Ward’s suggestion that “on the Web, voices sang a different tune” to be not quite accurate), but I do admire the way it has been marketed, and not because the film’s “potential audience” is doing the advertising––to equate a number of boldfaced names who were shown the film before its release specifically in exchange for kind words with organic word-of-mouth seems almost immoral. One of my theories as to why the passels of War on Terror movies produced by Hollywood have failed, is because they’ve all been sold like Hollywood movies to typical Hollywood audiences. People who want to consume Hollywood films are generally looking for escapist fantasy (cough, cough); people who actually want to engage with the issues surrounding our current global situation are generally not looking for Hollywood films. By using that “political cartoon” tagline on the poster, and surrounding it by quotes from people who are generally associated with either alternative political culture or a field compatible to it, the distributors have positioned War, Inc not as a movie, but as an experience that needs to be taken in––the way one takes in a Naomi Klein book or a Keith Olbermann special comment––in order to be able to participate in a circular conversation that claims to be about dissent whilst purposefully excluding it. If there is any real audience-to-audience communication responsible for the film’s continued success, it’s got to be the choir preaching to the choir. A story like Ward’s is its own work of marketing: it plays into that idea that War, Inc is an “alternative” product, approved by neither critics nor film festivals, and thus more attractive to a consumer who is openly distrustful of anything “official.” Because when it comes to subversion of the Hollywood system, Vanity Fair knows best…right? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:01:14 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog6/2/2008 4:01:14 PMNow that War, Inc has topped the specialty box office two weeks in a row, using the unfunny “incendiary political cartoon” (the poster’s words, not mine) as a stick with which to beat the “critics are irrelevant!” dead horse has become the new hotness. “Despite the negative reviews, I found War Inc. innovative and subversively ironic,” Vicky Ward writes at Vanity Fair.com. Noting that Cusack was able to cull poster quotes from like-minded famous friends such as Arianna Huffington and Diablo Cody (the latter’s a new development, as she apparently hadn’t delivered her blurb as of the taping of this clip), Ward positions the success of the film as an instance of “the audience” rising up against the bullies of the critical establishment: The encouraging results may be proof of the power of viral marketing, an instance when the subculture becomes the culture…it won’t just be the anti-war message of the movie that is groundbreaking; War Inc. could become a model for a new, grass-roots type of marketing, in which a film’s potential audience (with a little help from the director) may be better able to advertise it than the so-called experts are…if the drum roll is loud enough, the views of critics [can] be overruled by people who will see what they want to see, no matter who tells them not to. Yeah, I don’t know about that. I’m one of those critics who hates the film, of course (which proves Ward’s suggestion that “on the Web, voices sang a different tune” to be not quite accurate), but I do admire the way it has been marketed, and not because the film’s “potential audience” is doing the advertising––to equate a number of boldfaced names who were shown the film before its release specifically in exchange for kind words with organic word-of-mouth seems almost immoral. One of my theories as to why the passels of War on Terror movies produced by Hollywood have failed, is because they’ve all been sold like Hollywood movies to typical Hollywood audiences. People who want to consume Hollywood films are generally looking for escapist fantasy (cough, cough); people who actually want to engage with the issues surrounding our current global situation are generally not looking for Hollywood films. By using that “political cartoon” tagline on the poster, and surrounding it by quotes from people who are generally associated with either alternative political culture or a field compatible to it, the distributors have positioned War, Inc not as a movie, but as an experience that needs to be taken in––the way one takes in a Naomi Klein book or a Keith Olbermann special comment––in order to be able to participate in a circular conversation that claims to be about dissent whilst purposefully excluding it. If there is any real audience-to-audience communication responsible for the film’s continued success, it’s got to be the choir preaching to the choir. A story like Ward’s is its own work of marketing: it plays into that idea that War, Inc is an “alternative” product, approved by neither critics nor film festivals, and thus more attractive to a consumer who is openly distrustful of anything “official.” Because when it comes to subversion of the Hollywood system, Vanity Fair knows best…right? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/6/2/30341.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 6/2/2008 4:01:06 PM
Body: Now that War, Inc has topped the specialty box office two weeks in a row, using the unfunny “incendiary political cartoon” (the poster’s words, not mine) as a stick with which to beat the “critics are irrelevant!” dead horse has become the new hotness. “Despite the negative reviews, I found War Inc. innovative and subversively ironic,” Vicky Ward writes at Vanity Fair.com. Noting that Cusack was able to cull poster quotes from like-minded famous friends such as Arianna Huffington and Diablo Cody (the latter’s a new development, as she apparently hadn’t delivered her blurb as of the taping of this clip), Ward positions the success of the film as an instance of “the audience” rising up against the bullies of the critical establishment: The encouraging results may be proof of the power of viral marketing, an instance when the subculture becomes the culture…it won’t just be the anti-war message of the movie that is groundbreaking; War Inc. could become a model for a new, grass-roots type of marketing, in which a film’s potential audience (with a little help from the director) may be better able to advertise it than the so-called experts are…if the drum roll is loud enough, the views of critics [can] be overruled by people who will see what they want to see, no matter who tells them not to. Yeah, I don’t know about that. I’m one of those critics who hates the film, of course (which proves Ward’s suggestion that “on the Web, voices sang a different tune” to be not quite accurate), but I do admire the way it has been marketed, and not because the film’s “potential audience” is doing the advertising––to equate a number of boldfaced names who were shown the film before its release specifically in exchange for kind words with organic word-of-mouth seems almost immoral. One of my theories as to why the passels of War on Terror movies produced by Hollywood have failed, is because they’ve all been sold like Hollywood movies to typical Hollywood audiences. People who want to consume Hollywood films are generally looking for escapist fantasy (cough, cough); people who actually want to engage with the issues surrounding our current global situation are generally not looking for Hollywood films. By using that “political cartoon” tagline on the poster, and surrounding it by quotes from people who are generally associated with either alternative political culture or a field compatible to it, the distributors have positioned War, Inc not as a movie, but as an experience that needs to be taken in––the way one takes in a Naomi Klein book or a Keith Olbermann special comment––in order to be able to participate in a circular conversation that claims to be about dissent whilst purposefully excluding it. If there is any real audience-to-audience communication responsible for the film’s continued success, it’s got to be the choir preaching to the choir. A story like Ward’s is its own work of marketing: it plays into that idea that War, Inc is an “alternative” product, approved by neither critics nor film festivals, and thus more attractive to a consumer who is openly distrustful of anything “official.” Because when it comes to subversion of the Hollywood system, Vanity Fair knows best…right? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:01:06 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com6/2/2008 4:01:06 PMNow that War, Inc has topped the specialty box office two weeks in a row, using the unfunny “incendiary political cartoon” (the poster’s words, not mine) as a stick with which to beat the “critics are irrelevant!” dead horse has become the new hotness. “Despite the negative reviews, I found War Inc. innovative and subversively ironic,” Vicky Ward writes at Vanity Fair.com. Noting that Cusack was able to cull poster quotes from like-minded famous friends such as Arianna Huffington and Diablo Cody (the latter’s a new development, as she apparently hadn’t delivered her blurb as of the taping of this clip), Ward positions the success of the film as an instance of “the audience” rising up against the bullies of the critical establishment: The encouraging results may be proof of the power of viral marketing, an instance when the subculture becomes the culture…it won’t just be the anti-war message of the movie that is groundbreaking; War Inc. could become a model for a new, grass-roots type of marketing, in which a film’s potential audience (with a little help from the director) may be better able to advertise it than the so-called experts are…if the drum roll is loud enough, the views of critics [can] be overruled by people who will see what they want to see, no matter who tells them not to. Yeah, I don’t know about that. I’m one of those critics who hates the film, of course (which proves Ward’s suggestion that “on the Web, voices sang a different tune” to be not quite accurate), but I do admire the way it has been marketed, and not because the film’s “potential audience” is doing the advertising––to equate a number of boldfaced names who were shown the film before its release specifically in exchange for kind words with organic word-of-mouth seems almost immoral. One of my theories as to why the passels of War on Terror movies produced by Hollywood have failed, is because they’ve all been sold like Hollywood movies to typical Hollywood audiences. People who want to consume Hollywood films are generally looking for escapist fantasy (cough, cough); people who actually want to engage with the issues surrounding our current global situation are generally not looking for Hollywood films. By using that “political cartoon” tagline on the poster, and surrounding it by quotes from people who are generally associated with either alternative political culture or a field compatible to it, the distributors have positioned War, Inc not as a movie, but as an experience that needs to be taken in––the way one takes in a Naomi Klein book or a Keith Olbermann special comment––in order to be able to participate in a circular conversation that claims to be about dissent whilst purposefully excluding it. If there is any real audience-to-audience communication responsible for the film’s continued success, it’s got to be the choir preaching to the choir. A story like Ward’s is its own work of marketing: it plays into that idea that War, Inc is an “alternative” product, approved by neither critics nor film festivals, and thus more attractive to a consumer who is openly distrustful of anything “official.” Because when it comes to subversion of the Hollywood system, Vanity Fair knows best…right? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/comedy/MemberTagFilms.aspxcomedy
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