Reel Thoughts

I decided to use the blog format to write about the changes at Spout for several reasons.  I may go add to the Spout Feedback group or something similar later, but for right now, the blog feature is my bread and butter on this site anyway, so here it be.

I'm not so sure I'm digging the changes.  I've been a Spout member since the Beta site, and the concepts that were particularly appealing at that launch were the building lists, tagging, blogging, and community features.  The genius of the site was that it really allowed people to connect about movies, while also allowing each user to express their individual movie-watching personality.  It combined some really great features to achieve that end.

All of those features are still there, but I feel like the emphases are changing somewhat with the changes in interface and some of the other things going on, and I'm not sure the changes are keeping true with those original, highly appealing concepts.  Evolution is natural, but sometimes, evolution doesn't yield positive, or at least improved, results.

First, there's definitely a plateau on listing.  Once you've digested and re-digested films by assigning them to any lists you want, you've pretty much used that feature to its extent.  I still list movies in groups every now and again (the most famous example being the Oscars group), but there's only so much listing you can do before listing becomes a stale exercise.  Also, with the search engine in place, listing can become a tedious exercise, but I'm not sure how to make that better.

Then, there's tagging.  I tag as I watch movies, and sometimes, while I'm searching for movies, I'll tag here and there, but tagging is appealing for a minute, and then that minute fades.  Other sites, including amazon and imdb, allow tagging, but I never use this feature on those sites.  Again, that may be a personal preference thing.

The blogging feature is nice because of the way you can link an entry to a movie through the write a review feature.  That's the feature I like best.  I could blog about movies on other blog sites, but since Spout is movie-focused, this is the feature that best serves the site, at least in the current version.  After all, Karina by way of the SpoutBlog employs this feature daily and often multiple times a day.

Which brings me to the communities feature.  I think I feel as though this is the feature that has suffered the most from the changes at Spout.  Each group is only as active as its members, to be sure, but I've noticed that the activity is sputtering to a slow crawl in many groups, and not just the groups I own.  With the exception of a couple (perhaps due to its extremely active owners/members), many groups kind of fizzle to the wayside.  I'm wondering if it's because Spout, in its changes, has transformed into a website more about offering opinions on behalf of its hosts rather than empowering users to share theirs.  People can still share their opinions, but why should they when they can align themselves with "mavens," the chief of which is the SpoutBlog (see mavens interface page).

This is further complicated by the fact that the dashboard has changed to incorporate a "feed" feature, which of course was ganked from facebook, who pioneered the feed concept, allowing users to see what activity their contacts/friends are engaged in.  Personally, I found this change annoying, at least because I liked the dashboard concept much better.  The dashboard allowed me to see which conversations, that I had participated in or that were attached to groups of which I am a member, were active.  It also allowed me to see recent blog posts by my contacts and actually spurred me to pay attention to these features.  The feed shows EVERYTHING, and I know there are plans to allow it to be customized, but unless I can drill it down to those basics, I'm not sure I'm interested in any possible changes.

Also complicating matters is the new communities interface.  Before, the groups page allowed users to see many different groups: four that were currently active, eight that were recently active, the most active, etc..  That interface, I think, allowed users to see more of what's out there and also exposed new users to different groups that, while not constantly active, might be active enough to make that page.  Now, users have to search for genre-specific groups that match their interests and then have to find the activity in their feeds or in their picklists, which have been streamlined also, but do not offer options based on time like they used to do.  And those that appear on the communities interface page have been greatly streamlined; they look pretty but don't offer that range of choice, at least at first glance.

I've also noticed that Spout is now hosting ads.  That may be necessary to fund the site, but people can also purchase movies from the site.  The problem with that - which has actually always been the case - is that the movies are very high priced considering what outlets like Best Buy and Amazon charge.  The only (slight) difference is that Spout has a wide-range in availability, particularly of the foreign, arthouse, independent, etc. type movies, moreso than Best Buy and slightly more than Amazon (though Amazon does well for itself and often has marketplace options to go to private sellers for such material).  I think this is an awkward business strategy because basic free market economics calls for consumers to respond to lower priced goods if several sellers offer the demanded supply.  I've purchased one movie from this site, and that's when I had a coupon, sent to me for being part of the Beta test, to buy a movie at half the price.  Which made my selection, I think it was Batman Begins at the time, only slightly cheaper than what would be charged of me at other outlets.

If anyone in the Spout development hub (customer care, site construction and so on) reads my blog, I hope you know that I do love the site and plan to continue using it if for no other reason than I like to flex my writing muscles as it relates to film, and Spout offers me the best way by which to do that.  On the other hand, I'm a longtime user that has a basis for comparison for these changes, and that's my opinion in the here and now, as it were.

Thanks for reading, and cheers.

Under discussion:

Cinderella Man  (2005)

Cinderella Man represents the last of the movies lent to me by my friend, who has since left town again, so I'll probably have to mail back her movies, but I digress.  I put off watching this movie for several reasons.  First: Russell Crowe.  I think he's a good actor, but for some reason, his presence in a movie sometimes turns me off.  I don't know what it is about him, but he's not my favorite, though I did like him in LA Confidential and A Beautiful Mind.  It's a quality I just can't put my finger on.

Second: this movie is about boxing.  Of all the sports in the world, I like boxing the least.  Well, maybe I like it slightly better than professional wrestling.  I just don't understand why we need organized fighting, and the only reason I know anything about boxing at all is because I used to play Mike Tyson's Punch Out, or whatever that game was called, on Nintendo when I was a kid.  Remember that game?  Great graphics, right?

Despite these qualms and quandaries, I found myself engaged in Cinderella Man enough to like it.  The film sort of has a quality not unlike its chief subject: it's determined to hit you in the head until it knocks you out as you cheer on the main characters.

The film is a biopic about James J. Braddock, the "Bulldog from Bergen" New Jersey.  In the 20's, he was a promising professional boxer, who had won several bouts and was doing well for himself until a broken hand and a stunning loss to light heavyweight champion Tommy Loughran destroyed his career, including a revocation of his boxing commission, and sent his professional hopes into a tailspin right about the time the Great Depression started.  Braddock spends the next several years trying to work for peanuts like so many others in support of his wife Mae (Renee Zellweger) and his three children.  When he and his family are at their lowest, with barely any money to pay for heat and electricity, Braddock's manager, Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti), arranges for Braddock to fight one last fight at Madison Square Garden, where he got his start.  He's up against the number two seed for world champion, John Griffin, and due to being too old and out of shape, he is expected to lose.  He agrees to the fight for the money promised him, but against all odds, he wins the fight with a previously weak left hook that has been strengthened by doing hard labor at the docks.  With this success, Gould convinces Braddock to train for the world championship, taking on heavyweight champion Max Baer (Craig Bierko), who, according to the film, has killed at least one opponent with his own ruthless fighting prowess.  Braddock's comeback, and his quest for the championship, becomes a story of hope and triumph for all struggling during the Depression, as he pushes toward a literal fight for and of his life, and reporters hungry for news dub him "Cinderella Man" in advance of the ballyhooed contest.

As with all biopics, the filmmakers take some liberties with the truth of the real-life story to create drama and obstacles for the hero.  After the film was over, I looked up Braddock at the Wiki and found a blurb about Baer as well.  For example, in the film, Baer is depicted as a ruthless, uncaring, sucker-punching cad with a penchant for provoking his opponents and hitting them in places that are illegal even in boxing.  In fact, my engagement with the film did not really begin until Bierko's Baer showed up with his cocky swaggert, lewd remarks about Mae, boasts about how his uppercuts cause murder, and jabs to Braddock's private parts.  According to the Wiki blurb, Baer was gentle, strong, soft-spoken, and felt terrible about the one opponent who died after going up against him. Information like this tends to knock my enjoyment of the film down a tiny bit. 

Ron Howard directed this picture, and he handled the material with his usual skill and attention to detail.  I was particularly impressed with the art direction, for the reproduction of 1930s New York City as a backdrop was quite stunning.  The city tenements where the poorest lived, the Hooverville in Central Park, the number of 1930s vehicles and storefronts, including an old Dillard's, were wonderful, and once my disbelief was suspended, I really felt like I was living in that time frame, holding onto hope that Braddock would reign victorious.

Yet, the film also descended heavily into a kind of manipulative melodrama.  It's a true story with a happy ending that most people with a history book or a memory stretching back that far would know, so the filmmakers' challenge was to show Braddock's journey in a way that makes the audience forget what's to come.  Howard is the master of making the audience forget about the ending they already know; consider Apollo 13, which is also one of my favorite movies, and how despite our collective knowledge that Jim Lovell and crew touched down on Earth again safely, we actually feared for them watching the film.  The same is true here, except there seemed to be an extra emphasis on tugging, even yanking, at the heartstrings at key points.  A pout or a tear from Zellweger's Mae, or an idealistic speech from Crowe's Braddock, or an inspirational pep talk from manager Gould, not all of which I can believe truly happened, made the film feel more like a soap opera than an against-all-odds comeback for a boxing title.

In fact, I get the sense that Ron Howard and crew were trying extra hard to make sure that the viewing audience sympathized with Jim and family, almost as if there was distrust that the story could sell itself.  And maybe they're right.  I was mildly bored or casually interested for much of the film, at least until Braddock started fighting the low-blows of Baer.  Then, I started flashing back to the Karate Kid Part III, as Bierko's Baer reminded me of the meathead hired to take revenge on Daniel-san in that movie.

The performances were a mixed bag.  Paul Giamatti was, as always, simply breathtaking as Gould.  He has the ability to truly make me forget his real-life persona.  He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (which he lost to George Clooney), and he was so committed to the role, I could see veins popping out on his foreheard during his most passionate urgings to Braddock or bouts of temper at Baer.  Renee Zellweger gave a passable performance as Mae, though it was nothing that stretched the limits of her talent as seen in her other films.  Russell Crowe also did a good job, though his forced New Jersey accent sounded like a cross between Pesto (the Joe Pesci Good Feather bird) and Ralph the Dog (an animated caricature of Rain Man) on Animanics.

All in all, though, I wasn't blown away by the film.  I was happy by the inevitable end and cheering for Braddock along with his hordes of followers, but it was a sports movie like any other and wasn't anything that knocked me out.  I rate the film a 7.5, between shaky and very good, due to the flaws I noted above.  As for the test, it's not a pass.  I don't own any sports movies except Field of Dreams, which is not the same underdog-achieves-victory-despite-all-odds sort of thing.  I normally don't have any interest in them, and I was only interested in this film due to its attachment to the Oscars.  If you like sports movies, however, especially if they are about boxing, this is probably a good one to take a swing at.

Under discussion:

Music and Lyrics  (2007)

Music and Lyrics appeared on my Netflix queue for two reasons and two reasons alone: Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.  I really love both actors.  Hugh Grant has only ever played foppishly charming or charmingly cad, but he's managed to charm the socks off me almost every time.  Plus - wait for it - he's a fine, fine man with an accent to boot!  Drew Barrymore is simply a good actress, though I enjoy her most often in comedies, when her natural exuberance kind of shines through.  I didn't have very high expectations for this film, though, because it's one of those romcoms or chick flicks (and I'm the chick who doesn't always like chick flicks).  I merely thought it would be a nice, mindless movie to watch and enjoy, pleasant to the eye and ear if nothing else.

In reality, and maybe I just feel this way because I had such low expectations going in, this film is surprisingly clever.  It most definitely has its clunky points, and it's predictable and modestly formulaic, as all films of this genre are, but it has some unique qualities too, not the least of which is that it's actually funny.

Alex Fletcher (Grant) is a washed-up 80's icon from fictitious group Pop!, a throwback to Wham! with a little Duran Duran thrown in for good measure.  They hit it big in the 80s, until the band's manager convinced Alex's other half, Colin, that he was the true star of the group, at which point he departed for greener pastures.  Alex was left in has-beensville until the wave of 80's nostalgia overtook the country in this decade.  Now, he makes his living playing to state fairs and amusement parks - that is, until his manager (Brad Garrett) clues him into Cora Corman (Haley Bennett), a satirical mishmash of every pop tart of the here and now from Britney to Christina to Jessica/Ashley, who is looking to record a new song with a "retro" singer to spice up her new "spiritually aware" album.  She's offered the opportunity to several artists with the intention of picking the one she likes.  Alex is keen to do it, except for one small problem: he has a gift for melody but has never written a lick of lyrics.  Fortunately, he encounters Sophie Fisher (Barrymore), the substitute "plant girl" (apparently, washed-up 80's icons hire people to water their plants), who has an uncanny gift for writing meaningful yet catchy lyrics, unbeknownst to her.  Alex convinces Sophie to partner up with him, which she does, though she is hesitant due to her recent breakup/emotional baggage caused by ex-professor and ex-boyfriend Sloan Cates (Campbell Scott), who wrote a novel about an emotionally damaged girl based largely on her.  Not to mention the fact that Sophie's sister Rhonda (Kristen Johnston) is a huge Pop! fan.  Yet, each composer's weaknesses, and their natural chemistry, makes for some solid gold writing, and some solid foundation for the inevitable romance that develops.

Like I indicated earlier , I wasn't expecting to like this movie as much as I did, but the film is, surprise of surprises, quite witty and clever.  Hugh Grant is pitch-perfect as Alex.  He is smart, funny, and charmingly self-deprecating, as only Hugh Grant can be, and he has a passable singing voice.  The film opens with the music video to Pop's big hit, and it is absolutely hilarious how satirically nostalgiac it is, not to mention Grant's turns at Pop's "signature" dance moves.  In fact, I think Hugh Grant is really the center of this film.  Not to say that Drew didn't do a good job and was especially appealing and likable as Sophie, because she was, but the biggest laughs came as a result, or at the expense, of Alex and his rapid-fire witticisms and/or his musical efforts.

The songs are quite good too; they're catchy and cute.  The opening video had me from it's first synthesized note and precisely coiffed new wave Brit-band salute, but it was also clever how the video appeared again during the closing credits as a "pop-up" video, to talk about where Alex and Colin are now.

Hugh and Drew had on-screen chemistry, though I detected that it took some time for them to be comfortable with it.  I could tell, in the opening scenes of the movie, that this chemistry was not natural or comfortable when these two actors began filming.   I get the sense that they had to work at it a little, and they did, because they seemed to fit together much better by the inevitable happy ending.  I think their chemistry worked best in the scenes that took on some aspects of screwball comedy, such as in Alex's apartment, when they were being kind of ridiculous while volleying witty remarks to each other in rapid succession.

Also, some of the plot points were clearly contrived, even if they were meant to be funny.  I have never heard of a professional plant-waterer, and even if there are such people, I find it very surprising that a has-been 80's pop idol would find the extra funding to pay someone to do such a thing.  Though Sophie's knack for killing the plants was quite hilarious.

Furthermore, I didn't really buy the whole Sophie-has-emotional-baggage deal.  I suppose I would be traumatized by someone writing about me in a less than positive light, but to have it interfere with a potentially wonderful opportunity to co-write a song for a pop sensation, making money and schmoozing with a cute British guy in the process?  The screenwriters were clearly trying to jimmy an antagonist source into the plot that wasn't quite believable.  Of course, what more can be expected in a formulaic (even if quirky) genre movie?

Still, I enjoyed Music and Lyrics in spite of myself and my initial expectations, and for me, with this particular genre, that's saying something.  I give this movie a 7 for being shaky but still entertaining.  I also think it might pass the test.  I'm telling you, the fake music video alone is worth five bucks, but the fact that the movie actually made me laugh in a heartfelt way caught me off guard.  My favorite lines/scene was when Sophie makes a crack about Alex's pants being consistently too tight, and he, in stride, remarks with mock, Hugh Grant-type humility: "They cut off the circulation to my legs and make the blood rush to my heart."  Trust me, it's funnier when he says it.  In any event, give this movie a try.  It might put a song in your heart (whether or not you're wearing tight pants).