4

Kingdom of Heaven could've been such a great film

10.30.05 @ 7:26PM Tags

But it’s not.

3

A basketball TV show that's better than most basketball movies

10.20.05 @ 3:34PM Tags

Basketball season is about to be underway, and here I am with a busted ankle. So how do I get my roundball fix? Vicariously, through the pacifying device.

I just finished watching Nike: Battlegrounds on MTV2. If you’re a fan of the sport, quite simply, I think you should check out the show (it just concluded, but it will likely be rerunning on MTV for months). Hosted by none other than Nike’s LeBron James (or is it the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James?) and featuring Nike athletes Andre Iguodala (reppng Chicago) and Ben Gordon (repping New York, despite the fact that he now plays for the Bulls), the 6-part series follows the team tryouts, the coaching, and the final showdown (played between the two cities, in LeBron’s hometown of Akron). It also stars a number of Nike’s basketball shoes, although I found the cross-promotion between Nike and MTV to be completely bearable–in this case, the agenda of the corporations involved happens to match up well with what the audience wants to get out of the show, I think. And that is, promoting basketball, and all the highs and lows that go with playing it–in a team context, this year (previous seasons were devoted to one-on-one contests, which I thought were less interesting).

Directed by filmmaker Derek Cianfrance and produced by ad agencies Wieden + Kennedy and @radical.media (both of which I’ll be sending out an unsolicited resume and reel to soon), the show completely lives up to its potential, with the exception of the mediocre theme song. Oh, and the Asian kid clearly made it only because he was Asian. What, in the whole city of New York they couldn’t find an Easterner with game? The coaches claimed he made the team because of his “high basketball IQ.” Well, he probably had a high regular IQ as well, but neither is going to help you much in a streetball game. The only contribution he made to the final showdown was an airballed layup. Way to go. (See comments) But: the black-and-white stills and graphics give the two cities gritty character, and the music selection (a blend of electronica and instrumental hip-hop) effectively heightens the drama and gives the show some extra heft.

Damn, there I go in “reviewer” mode. It’s funny, as soon as I finished watching the last episode a few minutes ago, I told myself I was gonna hop on the computer, write a sentence or two about the show, post a link (every episode can be watched here at MTV2.com), and that was gonna be that. And then here I am writing all this.

But there’s so much more to say about the significance of this show: about it being produced by two multinational corporations in cohorts with each other to essentially promote themselves, about the significance of ad-agency-produced television and the attention span it caters to, about the availability of television content online and the changing revenue stream, about the adeptness with which high-schoolers can give media interviews these days, about the contributions of reality TV to the Warholian idea of 15 minutes of fame…

But I’ll leave all that to someone else, preferably some sort of qualified critic. I need to finish my reel, so I can start contributing to all these things myself.

8

The month in movies (special 2-month edition)

10.11.05 @ 12:24PM Tags

I haven’t yet figured out an ideal way to post updates to the Actual Movies page. As it is now, the page is incomplete, it’s updated irregularly, and an “update” consists of adding one or two movies to a much longer list, which no one even notices anyway.

So this is where I say that I’ve come up with a great new way of leveraging this ratings system into something larger, more organized, and more interactive (there were no comments allowed on the Actual Movie page before–this was not intentional). But, alas, I have not. First off, No Film School 2.0 is coming soon, and by that I mean I’m attempting to redesign this place (is a web page a “place?”), and that should fix the comments problem–although it will probably introduce entirely new problems. But even if comments were working on the Actual Movies page, how would they work? Not very well: the list is updated regularly, which means that while the old movies would be removed from the page, the old comments would still stay on top. Thus there would be a long list of comments irrelevant to the current list of movies (well, maybe not a long list). Sure, I could delete the old comments, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

What?

What I mean to say is, I appreciate any comments I get, and I wouldn’t want to just delete them. If someone actually did give me a horse in real life, I probably would examine its teeth, just because I’d have no idea what else to do.

So. Without actually figuring out an ideal way of updating the Actual Movies page, I’m going to start a separate monthly post here where I reach a haphazard verdict on all the films I can remember seeing over the past month or so. This will allow all of us to engage in the universally enjoyable activity of debating things of little consequence–in this case, whether so-and-so movie fits into so-and-so category, as ill-defined by my arbitrary ratings system. This monthly post will include old movies as well as new ones. In case you have no idea what this is all about, the Actual Movies, Explained page contains the vague criteria behind this ratings system. Without further ado:

Actual Movies
8 1/2
All About My Mother
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home
The Constant Gardener
Cool Hand Luke
Donnie Darko
Gates of Heaven
Pumping Iron
The Shape of Things

Pseudo-Actual Movies
Amelie
The Brown Bunny
Corpse Bride
Dead Man
Dangerous Liaisons
_____________land
A History of Violence
In America
March of the Penguins
The Motorcycle Diaries

Not Actual Movies
And 1 Mixtape: Volume 7
Broken Flowers
Casino
Crash
Finding Never____
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Gunner Palace
Jack Johnson: The September Sessions
Jungle Fever
Wedding Crashers

And now, some obligatory caveats and qualifiers:

There are times when I find myself watching a lot of films, and there are times when I do other stuff instead, like reading books, or living life. I’m not really living life right now (broken ankle, unemployed, living in the suburbs with the rents), so I have plenty of movies to post for the time being. One day, when I’m living in a refrigerator box in New York City, I’ll look back at these days fondly.

Just because a movie is on this month’s list doesn’t mean I’m seeing it for the first time, so don’t go telling me, “Oh, you just saw Citizen Kane? You really should go to film school, you dilettante.” To which I reply: nice choice of words–I see you went to grad school. For biochemistry.

One of the great things about movies (and music, and books, for that matter) is that your opinion of a film can change, as your life changes. A movie I don’t like today I may love tomorrow, or vice-versa. Basically: don’t hold me accountable for what I say here–I just thought it at the time. What do you want? I’m 24. I’m navel-gazing.

Which, by the way, is a term that I thought meant something different than what it actually does (“excessive introspection”). I would have defined it as, “checking out a nubile’s midsection.” This would make sense, since, parallel with an increase in the term’s popularity, there has also been a societal increase in belly-button piercings and midriff-revealage–both good reasons to gaze at the navel. Can a definition of a word be changed? I still say that the phrase’s definition seems kind of obtuse.

Anyway, please comment if you agree or disagree with my evaluations of the above films. Or you can comment on movies you’ve seen recently, and whether you thought they were Actual Movies. Or not. Or sort-of.

Again, the explanation behind all this is here. Give it a read or a skim–I say skim because, unlike your comments, my explanation is a bit long in tooth. That is, if you choose to examine its teeth. Asshole.

1

Current Actual Movies

10.10.05 @ 9:07PM Tags

If you are unfamiliar with this new and ridiculous ratings system, please refer to the Actual Movies, Explained page.

Actual Movies

• After Innocence¹
• Batman Begins
• Bob Dylan: No Direction Home
• Closer¹
• The Constant Gardener
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
• The Self-Made Man
• Why We Fight¹

Pseudo-Actual Movies

• Charlie_____________________ory⁵
• Corpse Bride
• A History of Violence
• Hotel Rwanda
• How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
• The Incredibles
• March of the Penguins
• The Motorcycle Diaries
• Ray⁶
• Rize
• Shake Hands with the Devil
• Sideways
• Sin City

Not Actual Movies

• The 40 Year Old Virgin
• The Aviator
• Born Into Brothels
• Broken Flowers
• _______ and the Chocolate Fact___⁵
• Constantine^{3, 2}
• Crash
• The Education of Shelby Knox
• Elektra^{3, 2}
• Fantastic Four⁴
• Finding Neverland
• Four Brothers³
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• House of Flying Daggers
• The Island
• Kung Fu Hustle
• The Machinist
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith
• Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior
• Star Wars Episode III
• War of the Worlds
• Wedding Crashers

¹ Yes, yes, yesssssss! See this film at all costs, even if your only option is to see it with someone who is an ex-spouse, or criminal (or both).

² No, no, no. This is terrible. Your two hours would be better spent at a WNBA game.

³ This disclaimer is devoted to the film that I saw against my will, either by being dragged to the theater or by just happening to be in a room where it was on the Pacifying Device. Verdicts on this film are generally obvious and expected (in fact, many times this movie would have been tagged with a 4 (see below)), but it was included on this list just so I could feel like I got something out of watching it.

⁴ Either I did not see this film, or it is not even out yet, yet I still passed judgment on it. Not having been born yesterday, I managed to save between $5 and $12 by avoiding this film. If a 4 is later removed, it means I was unsuccessful at avoiding it.

⁵ When a film is split up into multiple categories, it means that the film cleanly divides into different ratings–by half, by act, by location, etc. If the first half of a film was great and the second half was terrible, then the text of the title is divided in a similar manner–the portion of a film’s running time that falls under the particular rating is written out under that heading, and the rest of it is written out as _____. If a film bounces back and forth frequently during its running time, it generally just falls into the “Pseudo” category; the split rating is reserved for situations where there were distinct, palatable changes in quality.

⁶ Bumped up a category due to Jamie Foxx’s performance.

6

Some like it raw

10.4.05 @ 4:40PM Tags

There’s a problem with sex in the movies: there’s not enough. Crotchety old people complain about nudity a lot, which is amusing–do these people not shower?–but if anything, sex is drastically underrepresented on film. Here at No Film School, I declare that we do not see enough cellulite on celluloid. Well, not that I WANT to see more cellulite, although that would probably be a good thing for body image, realism, etc.

The point is this: I normally vehemently disagree with people who point fingers at sex in the movies as a bad thing, and there are plenty of people Republicans who do so… just before they return to their office, and do their interns over a desk. Democrats also get in on the action, I should note; intern-doingship is a bipartisan activity, and in some cases may even be a bisexual activity. But this new study makes a pretty good point, which is:

[They studied] 87 films, in which there were 53 episodes of sex. Only once in those sex scenes did a condom feature, and that was a reference to birth control, they say. In 98% of sexual episodes, which could have resulted in pregnancy, no form of birth control was used or suggested.

That’s true. When’s the last time you saw a sex scene where someone actually went to the nightstand drawer?

There are a lot of places one could go in analyzing this. Should it be assumed that when you see Charlize Theron riding Ben Affleck, that the movie just skipped the application process, and that he’s wrapped? Certainly no amount of diffused lighting and romantic music can smooth over the graceless pause that accompanies safe sex. But the fact is, if they did have a scene where our stars go through the prophylactic process, it would just be awkward. Oh wait–it is awkward–in real life.

The general, unspoken rule in sex scenes seems to be to cut out all the unpolished parts. In Hollywood movies in general, and relationship movies in particular, this is the case: instead of showing what the guy actually did to get the object of his affection, romantic comedies just cut to a montage sequence where the guy and girl playfully tackle each other on the beach, buy each other cotton candy, and wear sweaters. This way the filmmakers avoid any potentially not-funny jokes that the man may make in the courting stage. All awkwardness is excised. Nowhere is this rule of cutting followed more closely than in physical lovemaking. Indeed, take a moment and think about all the things that have happened in your own sex life that you never see portrayed on the screen; when’s the last time you saw Heather Graham clean up?

Part of the mainstream appeal of movies has always been that the characters on screen don’t have to deal with the annoyances inherent to the real world: job problems, health problems, birth-control problems. Certainly there are some films that portray these things, but in general, this “excise the inconvenience” rule explains why you don’t see baby-control portrayed on the screen.

Basically: there’s an obvious dichotomy between real-life sex and on-screen sex, and contraceptive use is only one of many differences. Many people go to the theater to escape the awkwardness of real life, and the last thing they want to see is Russell Crowe sheathing himself in latex–his box-office appeal barely held up to becoming a Cinderella Man, much less a Trojan Man.

Not included in the published study: the dichotomy between the hotness of people having simulated sex on-screen, and the hotness of people having actual sex in real life.