Best Picture Showcase 2011

After previous years visiting the day long movie feast that is the AMC Best Picture Showcase, we have been pretty worn out. Sitting through 5 movies is not a chore, but the day sometimes semmed to drag on an there were long awkward periods when not much moved quickly. Yesterday however was different. The staff seemed to be engaged with the group in the theater, the break for lunch/dinner was just the right length of time and the movies were all relatively brisk. We did not have any three hour epics of slow moving Englishmen, or Blue Aliens. Instead most of the movies were 2 hours or less. I also think that the scheduling helped. The toughest movie to get through was not the last movie of the day but the second. It was sandwiched between two comedies that helped alleviate much of the grim scenario of the middle movie.

We were invited to participate in trivia contests during every break. The staff sometimes was a little under prepared in asking the questions but they were good natured and let the audience provide answers and comments along the way. Once again we won more than our share of the trivia prizes so from a personal perspective it was nicely satisfying. Best of all, as we were leaving after the last movie, we were all thanked for coming with a nice commemorative poster of the event. The personal contact at the end of the long day and a treat to go with it left my group refreshed rather than weary.




I thought the promo trailer was great and they played it before each movie so we were all reminded why we were there together. It was a lot less tiresome than the repetitive word jumbles and quote trivia on the slides. It make the experience feel unique for our group although I'm sure it is playing in other AMC theaters as well.


Toy Story 3

Again it was a delight. I am am sentimentalist and movies like this are designed to appeal to me. There are adults out there who may believe that an animated film is make for children. They are wrong, children may love an animated film, but anyone with imagination and heart could not fail to love a movie like this. As I said in my end of the year posting, this was not my favorite animated film of the year. That does not mean it is unworthy, it simply means that my taste was influenced by the new as well as the familiar.

127 Hours

A harrowing story told really well. There is of course a scene that,everyone who knows the real story the movie is based on,is dreading. I forgot the one element of the scene that bothered me so much the first time, and it got to me again. Amanda had to turn away while Aaron our hero makes his escape, Anne watched it through her hands and scarf. The incident that got her the most though was not gruesome but heart-wrenching, when a bottle of water was spilled, Anne reacted with a involuntary arm movement that smacked me in the arm, I may have a bruise, but it is a badge that shows how much we got involved in the man's story.

The Kids Are All Right

This was the only movie that played yesterday that I had not seen. It was very funny at times and all the actors were really solid. I think Mark Ruffalo has reached the point where it is clear that he has the goods. This felt like a small movie and one that was actually personal. Most films like this don't get released in theaters anymore, they are made for premium cable channels and shown to broad audiences, but the reaction doesn't get shared like it does in a movie theater. It was not the filmmaker's skills that draw attention to this piece, but the actor's craft and the screenwriter's creativity.


True Grit

I have a separate post on this in the December pages of the blog, and my opinion has not changed. This is a solid western, with excellent performances and some grim story telling. The tone is different than the John Wayne movie of 1969, but the story is the same and the dialogue often feels as if it was verbatim, but here it is more elaborately arcane and successful. The mild differences strengthen the movie in many cases but there are some elements that are less satisfying, including the tag ending of the movie that feels like a punch in the chops after all we have gone through.

The Fighter

I don't know if there will ever be a Mixed Martial Arts movie that will have the drama of a good boxing film. MMA may be the wave of the future, but boxing seems to carry so much more substance to it that there is not any comparison. Of course there was a good wrestling movie two years ago, so maybe it will happen. This film is a showcase for acting talent in almost every scene. If Christian Bale fails to win the supporting actor award, I will wonder why for the rest of my days. This was a fitting way to end the day and leave us wanting more.

next week we will get more with five other films. I have not seen Black swan or Winter's Bone yet, so I think i have a lot to look forward to. Plus we will get the two top contenders for the best picture award, The Social Network and The King's Speech. Look for us to update live next week between the movies.

Showcase

Toy Story 3 was great and 127 Hours was harrowing. It has been a good experience already, we won some prizes at trivia and we have True Grit next

Actually it was The Kids are Alright, I would not be surprized if thefe were an upset in the supporting actor catergory christian Bale still is the pick here but Mark Ruffalo was fantastic True Grit is next .You can read my previous comments in the December posts.

Academy Awards Showcase

For the fifth year in a row, the AMC theaters are screening all the nominees for best picture in a single showcase. The first three years we went, it was Five pictures and we thought we were pretty hardcore. Last year the Academy increased the number of nominees, and the AMC showcase went to two Saturdays in a row, five pictures each day. We are headed off to the showcase tomorrow, looking forward to five movies. There are 15 theaters around the country that are showing all 10 films in a 24 hour period. I could not talk Dolores into it, but I may have to do it on my own next year, just to say I did. I'll try to update from the theater tomorrow, I can't wait.

It is 10:15 we are in and waiting for the first of our movies, Toy Story 3. This was on my 10 favorites last year. My grandnephew Maysn had this on his ipod at Thanksgiving, that was the only time I saw the film after the 3D experience on opening day. More than a year ago we went and saw Toy Story 1&2 in a 3D format. All of them looked great. We were not given glasses when we came in so this must be a standard version of the film. Last year at the Best Picture showcase, we saw Avatar in 3D and then changed theaters to see the other nine films. They told us as we came in we will stay here all day, just like the other years. It's going to be great.

The Day the Movies Died: Movies + TV: GQ

The Day the Movies Died: Movies + TV: GQ

GO FAR: The Christopher Rush Story by Zack Arnold — Kickstarter

Let's make this happen

GO FAR: The Christopher Rush Story by Zack Arnold — Kickstarter

'The Mechanic' 2011

This was the first film I saw in the last two weeks and it was fine as far as it went. The main problem was my expectations. I enjoy Jason Statham in many movies. He is a good go to tough guy and when I first heard about the movie I thought this was a pretty good bit of casting. One of my students in the summer Interpersonal class, got a chance to see this back in July at a test screening. He was not particularly enthusiastic, but I still had very high hopes. He did not know that it was a remake and this is fundamental to my difficulty relating to some of my students. They are often bright and friendly but many have no sense of the past. It is as if the world started when they became conscious of music or TV. The other day, the name of Billy Dee Williams came up in class and I said "Lando Calrissian", someone quipped, "how did you come up with that?", as if it were an obscure referent. Even the Star wars movies are somewhat abstract to many of them. So how could any of them appreciate the great Charles Bronson, a guy they would see as their great grandfather, based on age alone. And so it was that most people seeing this movie will have no expectation because they have no knowledge of what came before. This is probably a good thing for the current movies success but a bummer for those drawn in by the original.

In the summer blog, I mentioned the Mechanic as a film I knew almost by heart. It was not on the list of summer movies I wrote about, but every time Charles Bronson is mentioned, "The Mechanic" is one of my go to images. The 2011 model is serviceable as an action film with some interesting twists, but it lacks the tension of the original. In the opening, there is a clever assassination, but we don't see it set up, there is no suspense, and although we can appreciate afterwords the originality of the approach, it doesn't set up the main character very well. All we learn is that he is ruthless and maybe a little too smart. In the original film, we see the first hit set up, we watch as the victim strolls through a set of ordinary activities as he is being stalked. We get a bird's eye view of the daily minutiae that makes up his life. The assassin, also watches, we see him planning but we do not immediately understand how he is going to carry out that kill. Then, we marvel at the clever way the observations have been followed and the murder committed. All of this is done without any dialogue, and our silent killer tells us more about his personality with thirty seconds of squeezing a ball of paraffin wax, than we get in an hour and a half with the new guy. This is another difference between film makers of today and those of the past. The screenwriter for the new version follows the story beats, but misses the nuance of the story. The action is jacked up quite a bit at the loss of suspense.

There is one good suspense scene in today's movie. Arthur Bishop, the title character, has taken on an apprentice,Steve, one that is loath to follow directions and is trying to make a mark for himself and get a little battle scarred along the way. Three weeks of set up is designed to get him close to another contract killer that is the subject of the current assignment. When the young apprentice backs away from the original plan, there is uncertainty as to how it will be resolved. A tough and brutal fight ensues and there is good reason to believe the outcome will be a disaster. Steve is played by Ben Foster in a crazy eyed manner reminiscent of the same kind of sidekick role he had in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma a couple of years ago. He had less screen time in that film, but was a more vivid character than the troubled psycho he plays in this film.

I did like the update that was done on the story in regards to the relationship between Bishop and the man who he works for and is destined to become a target. There is a greater sense of clarity concerning why he would care about the apprentice, but while it was more logical that the original it was less interesting. The consequences in the second half make a more driven plot element than the original, but the revenge theme is a well worn trope. Character is critical to making us care about the outcome when the protagonist is a bad guy, and the apprentice is a psycho. Statham's version of Arthur Bishop has some of the same quirks as in the original, but he does not sell it. The music, the car, the woman he has sex with, are all just costumes for him to put on, they do not seem like they are real. Bronson may have had a stoic face, but he sold isolation, superiority and menace without having to paint it on.

The contemporary music, and the style of shooting is solid. The movie has been put together well by people that are competent, but the script and the acting are the weak links in the film. I have been quoting an annoying line used by Jan Michael Vincent in the first version for more that thirty-five years. His character was an interesting jerk, but it was clear he was always an irritating guy from the way he delivered the lines. I cannot remember a single sentence from the movie today. There was nothing clever in the dialogue, and the acting consisted of character traits rather than true character. If the original had never existed, this movie might seem better, as it is, there is little to recommend it except for strict lovers of hard action. They screw around with the ending, so it is so much less memorable that the first film, and as a result deserves it's lesser status.

Here's a trailer for the retitled original: Enjoy

Best Sci-Fi Effects of All Time, as Voted by You | Underwire | Wired.com

Best Sci-Fi Effects of All Time, as Voted by You | Underwire | Wired.com