Out of Focus

I woke up this morning chilled, shivering almost, with this headache and a bubble in my chest (well, that’s probably enough detail), feeling somewhat dazed. That’s also a good physical representation of what my brain has been doing today, specifically, being able to focus on anything. My ADD seems to be in full-force as whenever one thing gets me agitated, the voice in my head says, “Oh yeah, let’s write about that right now,” until the next subject pops up and makes me go, “No, that’s better.” Ultimately, I suffer brain-lock and nothing comes out but drivel like this.

So, while I’m having a very hard time stomaching Slate’s “Movie Club” (that Armond White is seriously not helping the headache – the man spews hypocritical bile like none other), and I still need to rewrite my great lost post about A.O. Scott’s latest example of assitude, I just can’t seem to ramble today quite as I usually do. Maybe it’s just the inadequacy I feel now that the brilliant TMFTML has made his (at least temporary) return.

Just one other thing before I leave for greener pastures (and hopefully more interesting content tomorrow), finally someone who agrees with me (although for slightly different reasons), that tonight’s premiere of season 4 of Alias is not necessarily reason to rejoice. While I think her comic book analysis is a bit unfair, Virginia Heffernan’s review of the show is correct in that Alias has lost its way, and what was an interesting and unique series in season 1 and even much of season 2, simply became much of the same and a bit blah in season 3; that the main criteria of whether or not you like the show these days is more likely based on “what you think of Jennifer Garner.” I’ll admit to possibly being the exception because while I love Garner (or at least lust her), I’m not all that crazy about the show anymore. I’ll give the new season a chance, but it’s going to have to earn its way into my rotation because in 2005, I don’t have time for this shit anymore.

Focus, focus, focus. I’m out of it.

I don’t make resolutions, actually. I formulate goals. Granted, most of my goals tend to be so broad that they become unattainable goals, which really makes them synonymous with resolutions. But that’s not really here nor there now, is it?

Last year, I watched 189 movies. That number doesn’t indicate “new” movies or films seen in the theater. Rather, that is a total number of movies I watched in theaters, on DVD or via cable during 2004. Actually, I find that total quite disappointing. Why was I so lazy? That’s barely one movie every two days. Even more upsetting is 45 of them, I watched in December, meaning that a quarter of my film viewing took place during roughly 1/12 of the year.

Why such a lousy and low number? I blame the election first. No, not Kerry losing; just the entire process itself. I found myself glued to news that wasn’t even saying anything far more than I otherwise might have been. But the problem isn’t just with movies: I barely saw any theater in 2004. I also finished too few of the books I started, and started even fewer of the ones I intended. It’s those damn magazine subscriptions, and all the TV. Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t see myself giving up the tube anytime soon (especially since I still can’t afford a plasma — sorry, bad TV tech geek joke!), but I can probably afford to watch fewer “guilty pleasures” and to give new shows less of a chance than I have in the past.

Oh, the unattainable goals? Right. Getting to that. You see, my recurring unattainable goal is to see every movie receiving a theatrical release in any given year. Now of course, unless I become a full-time critic (not really a goal, attainable or unattainable), chances are that will never happen. In fact, even if I was reviewing movies constantly, I still wouldn’t get to everything. What I can try, though, is to average watching a movie a day. It really shouldn’t be that hard for me to do that “on average.” I don’t have any silly rules about only seeing films in public settings or only watching movies I haven’t seen. It can be anything. And look, here we are on Jan. 4, and technically, I’m right on schedule. Saturday I rewatched the original The Manchurian Candidate, Sunday I saw Million Dollar Baby (more on that in another post), and yesterday I saw two documentaries, In the Realms of the Unreal and Born Into Brothels. (And you should rush to Film Forum while the latter is still playing.) Considering that I’m still playing catch-up in preparation of my year-end list (anticipted to reach the worldinterwidewebnet next Monday or Tuesday), I should be ahead of the game at least for another week or so. Woo hoo!

In addition to the film thing, I resolve to see at least one play and read at least one book a month. Now that really shouldn’t be so hard, should it? I should be able to shatter those expectations by the summer, no? No. Hmmm. Well, we’ll see, won’t we.

One thing that should be changing within the next two months is that I will most likely be leaving my job. I say “most likely” because until I actually do it, I’m having a hard time completely convincing myself that I will be giving up the relatively cushy, safe, secure and undemanding position working for a major media corporation in exchange for longer hours at less pay — at least through mid-May because after that (unless something else permanent comes along), I’ll be your friendly neighborhood freelancer.

But that’s also a story for another time, and as long as it doesn’t get in the way of my “important” resolutions above, it doesn’t even really matter.

Yes, the first rule of writing anything on a computer is to save, save, save. Well, January 3 has not been too kind to me so far, and the lovely, fascinating (it could happen!), long post I was just about 2/3 of the way through has somehow disappeared. I’m not even sure why. The computer didn’t crash, but I somehow managed to press a succession of buttons that told MS Word to quit and not save the document I was writing. Yup, I did it without touching the mouse, which is why I’m baffled.

This comes after a morning during which I arrived at work at 10 AM. Now while many of you might be gasping, I should acknowledge that 10 AM isn’t so unusual for me in my current job. In fact, for the last couple months, it was unusual only in the sense that it might have been on the early side of things. What was different about this morning is that while I arrived at 42nd & 6th around 10, I left home on the Upper West Side at 8:45 AM. That’s a good 45-50 minutes longer than it ever takes me to get to work, and only some of this long trip was really my fault.

After leaving my apartment this morning and heading for the bank on the way to the B and C lines at 86th and CPW, I realized that I had left my Metrocard and work ID (necessary to get into the building) at home. So I had to turn around to retrieve them. By the time I finally got to the subway, it was just before 9:15 AM, which must have been a magic time to arrive because soon after I heard the announcement that due to “an altercation,” downtown local service was delayed. If we wished, we could hop an uptown train to 125th and then take an express back downtown. But since train service was simply “delayed,” I figured that was more trouble than it was worth.

I doubted my decision when I noticed the C train passing us by on the express track, but then staying put didn’t seem like any better of an idea when the announcement was repeated about 5 — maybe 10 — minutes later. You see, by that time I was staring at a not-moving A train on the express track, just sitting there in our station, torturing all of us standing on the platform. “Sure,” it would say. “Here I am. It would be so easy to get on me while I’m not moving, but, OH … oh … no, no, no. You can’t cross the local track. You don’t want to accidentally hit that third rail. And besides, I won’t open my doors for you anyway.”

Finally, about 5 minutes after the A train did leave, another announcement was made saying that all downtown service had been suspended due to a police matter. Now I’m not sure whether or not this meant the uptown-to-125-to-catch-the-downtown-express option was dead or not; the announcement was a bit confusing. But I decided to leave the station, hike over to Broadway, and hop on a 1/9 train to Times Square. So of course, just as I get back to ground level, it starts to rain. No, not hard; just a drizzle, really, but water from the sky onto my head nonetheless.

And at 10, I got to work.

I then proceeded to start the post I had been planning this whole weekend, especially since reading the inane and pointless (and dare I even say simply wrong) pieces by A.O. Scott and Tom O’Neil in this Sunday’s New York Times Arts & Leisure section, not to mention some other stuff, when suddenly it disappeared in a way unlike anything I have seen before.

So Happy New Year everyone. I’ll get back to this stuff later when the frustration subsides, and I’m once again able to put these minor annoyances into the proper perspective. For now, I actually need to get back to work.

Sorry to disappear like that this week. When I was last here on Monday, I gave you the top 10 (13, really) TV series of the year, and promised a return to discuss a few more that aren’t the best-of-the-best, but deserve mention. But it’s been a weird week with way too much death in the world, and maybe because of that, not matter how much I try to distract myself with movies, I just haven’t really been in the mood for writing.

2004 was a weird and in some ways not-so-great year: Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl caused such an uproar in that first month, but its fallout aside, that ridiculous controversy seems quaint by comparison. Iraq, Bush’s reelection, Tsunamis causing the worst natural disaster in (maybe) ever … the deaths of a lot of important, fantastic and talented people (most recently including Jerry Orbach, laid to rest today, who’s importance to the Broadway stage is being slightly overshadowed by his personality on Law & Order) — it’s hard to make sense of it all. I’m not really sad to see 2004 go. A lot of things will be changing for me in the next year (and I’ll bring them up as the come along), and hopefully it will all be positive. But isn’t that what we all do in the New Year: even more so than making resolutions, we create new hope, for ourselves and those around us.

One thing that wasn’t bad about this year was film, though. I think this was the best new television season in a long time, and that goes double for movies. While there has been as much painful-to-watch trash as ever, this has really been an extraordinary year for movies, large and small. Top 10 film lists keep popping up everywhere (plenty of them at via the Village Voice critics poll and indieWIRE has its staff and “insider” polls), and I continue my attempts to catch-up so that within the next week or so I can deliver mine. I’m sure everyone is burned out on top 10 lists, yet you’re waiting, breathlessly, unable to contain yourselves for mine. Oh yes, I know it’s true.

(What? Sorry. Dozed off there. Such a relatively nice dream.)

Anyway, I hope to be back in full-force and better mood come Monday. Meanwhile, here’s hoping that everyone out there has a happy, healthy and, most importantly, fun New Year. Because, you know, it’s not like this is just another day on the calendar or anything – this is the day that the calendar ends!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I get really annoyed whenever I hear people talk about how there’s nothing but crap on television. You change a couple words in that sentence, and it’s fine: say, there’s a lot of crap on TV, and I’ve got no problem, but “nothing but”? Sorry, you’re just watching the wrong things, and obviously it’s my job to set you straight.

I’ve done my best to watch everything at least a couple times, but with 7,854,326 channels across the cable and satellite spectrum, obviously I can’t get to it all. Among the shows that plenty of TV critics seem to love but I just never saw this year are the big three from FX: The Shield and Nip/Tuck (which I have seen, just not this year) as well as its newest cousin, Rescue Me. Tomorrow I’ll discuss the shows that deserve mention but didn’t make the top 10, as well as the worst and most overrated! But for now, I’m just going to (unfairly) pretend that FX doesn’t exist and present you with the definitive list of the top 10 television series of 2004!

(Full comments after the jump or by clicking the title!)

1. Arrested Development
2. Desperate Housewives
3. Deadwood
4. Lost
5. The Wire
6. Curb Your Enthusiasm
7. The Amazing Race
8. The Simpsons
9. Gilmore Girls
10. American Dreams

Knocking on the door: Chappelle’s Show, Da Ali G Show, South Park

Continue reading “THE BEST TV OF 2004: IF YOU SAY THERE’S NOTHING GOOD ON, YOU’RE JUST NOT WATCHING THE RIGHT THINGS”

Friday I mentioned my plans for a big movie marathon. I actually saw about 10 movies in the theater and watched another five at home. I wanted to get to more current releases, but the damn schedules just weren’t going my way. Regardless, I noticed an unfortunate common thread among all the current releases: filmmakers creating scenes but not movies. The vast majority of all the current films I saw suffered from a lack of consistency in tone and story. Well, I might try to write more about all of these at a later date, but just so everyone would know I actually am as insane as I sometimes report to be, here’s a run-down of my past four days (with some basic yeas and nays – click the title for brief comments):

Thursday 12/23

• Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst: a sad skip-it
• Being Julia: skip-it
• Birth: wanting to be seen, but skip-it
• National Treasure: just above the see-it line

Friday 12/24

• Alexander: Stay away – far, far away. One of the worst of the year.
• Spanglish: Just misses. Skip-it.
• The Woodsman: See-it, but be prepared.
• Closer: See-it, but no huge rush.
• The Stepford Wives (DVD): The original. See-it to see what the remake did wrong!

Saturday 12/25

• The Boondock Saints (DVD): Skip-it, unless you’ve seen Overnight.
• In the Mood for Love (DVD): See-it/Rent-it.
• Baadasssss! (DVD): See-it, and see the film that inspired it.
• The Human Stain (DVD): See-it, but it’s lacking.
• Intolerable Cruelty (cable): See-it, if there’s nothing better.

Sunday 12/26

• The Aviator: Very big see-it, but get comfortable.
• Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: You haven’t read the books – see-it! You’ve read the books – skip-it!

More substance after the jump ….

Continue reading “WEEKEND WRAP-UP: IF ONLY THEATERS WOULD SCHEDULE MORE TO MY LIKING”

When all is said and done, Chrismukah will have lasted about 18 days this year. Not too shabby. I started my little movie marathon yesterday and successfully managed to get to four films. In case you’ve been waiting, don’t you fear: I hope to have my own Top 10 movies of 2004 list coming in the next couple weeks. I just still have a bunch to see. (And Karen, no it is not OK to put a film on your list you think will end up there if you haven’t seen it. I’m sure I’ll be mentioning a film or two I haven’t seen and therefore didn’t consider, but it can’t make “the list.”)

Strangely enough, with the end of Chrismukah comes the end of presents, and I still haven’t received my Criterion Collection Holiday Gift Set. I can’t believe there’s not one measly person out there willing to spend $5K on me. Geesh.

OK, maybe I’m being a wee bit unrealistic. Oh well. Meanwhile, here are a couple notes for the holiday weekend:

• One of my favorite parts of The Week magazine is the “Briefing” section in which the editors play 20 questions (although it’s more like 5-10) with one issue. In the most recent “Briefing,” The Week tackles Santa Claus. For instance, did you know that St. Nicholas and Kris Kringle are actually completely different people whose identities in folklore have become merged? Or that the celebration of St. Nick was originally Dec. 6 and didn’t become merged with Christmas until the late 17th Century? Or that the current image of Santa Claus as a big fat jolly guy in a red and white suit with large beard developed over a long period of time but really became solidified by none other than Coca-Cola in the early 1930s? In fact, the red and white coat is specifically because Coke’s colors are red and white! And for most of history before then, he looked quite a bit different? Go read the article; it’s fascinating. The weirdest part is that Santa himself has obviously agreed to go along with all these changes over time. He must have, otherwise the alternative is that he’s … wait, no … I won’t believe you. Santa’s real. I know it!

• You want Christmas movies on Christmas? TCM obviously gets into the Christmas spirit starting tonight at 8 PM with Christmas in Connecticut, Meet Me in St. Louis, Holiday Inn, and The Shop Around the Corner. Are you a red-stater all upset about society having taken the “Christ” out of “Christmas”? You’ll want to watch TCM’s double-bill (starting at 10:30 AM) of Ben-Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told. And while NBC owns the exclusive rights to It’s a Wonderful Life now, TCM decides to bring the non-Christmas Capra to our televisions with a night of classics including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe,, and It Happened One Night.

• By the way, if you happen to be home tonight and are flipping through the channels, you might run across the new A Christmas Carol: The Musical on NBC starring Kelsey Grammer as Scrooge, which originally premiered earlier this month. If I might make a suggestion, stay as far away from it as you can. This thing was absolutely terrible (yes, I watched it!). A smarter choice tonight might be the great A Christmas Story which TBS starts showing tonight at 8 PM and then continues repeating for the following 24 hours. No, I’m not kidding – 12 showings, with the last one starting at 6 PM tomorrow. That’s good timing because tomorrow at 8, NBC takes advantage of their exclusive rights and broadcasts It’s a Wonderful Life. I don’t quite get the backlash against this film over the past several years. I suppose so many other sappy, schmaltzy imitations have made this picture a little more quaint in its sensibility, but is there any film that treats sentiment and the holidays better? More importantly, just think what the world would be like if there had been no It’s a Wonderful Life! (Sorry, didn’t mean to get so meta there.)

Here’s hoping everyone has a great holiday weekend wherever you are. See you Monday with my Top 10 television series of 2004 and a report on movie movie-filled weekend.

So one of today’s top stories in Variety today is about how HBO made over a billion (!) dollars in “pure profit” for big momma Time Warner this year (subscription req’d). I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Wow! It must be great to work for HBO. That much profit, I’m sure all the employees got some kick-ass bonuses this year!!!”

Well, it is great to work at HBO for many reasons (and sometimes, it’s not so great to work there for others … but that’s another story). I’ve done it for the majority of the past 8 years working in two different departments, although that string is most likely coming to an end within the next two months. No big bonus though for the little worker bees like me, although the company did decide to close for two extra days (today and next Thursday) this holiday season giving everyone two three-day work weeks/four-day weekends. I’m thinking it might have been even nicer to just close all next week, but I guess companies don’t make over a billion dollars by making moves like that. Still, a cash bonus might have been nice too.

Anyway, today’s day off coupled with my girlfriend’s departure to Florida to visit her family for the next 6 days means just one thing: movie marathons. Posting will be light until Monday when I plan to unveil my long-awaited (HA!) top 10 TV shows of the year, which of course is the definitive list, so you won’t need to read any others. Between now and then, I plan on trying to catch-up on a lot of stuff I haven’t seen, and that means that over the next four days, I plan on seeing somewhere between 10-16 movies.

No, I’m not kidding. Besides, Saturday is Christmas; I’m Jewish; throw in some Chinese food, it’s kind of how I’m required to celebrate. The only variable being that this year I may choose to revel in my heebness by holding my own private 11-1/2 hour marathon of all three Lord of the Rings Extended Edition DVDs.

Meanwhile, I’m just rambling. If you want to read something interesting, check-out any number of people listed on the right. I’ll be back when I have something more interesting to say. Happy day before Christmas Eve!

I can believe I forgot to mention this in my post last week mentioning the Gothamist interview with Nancy Schwartzman, but not only is there a great new issue of Heeb Magazine out on newsstands now (featuring the Beastie Boys — who give their first “Jew interview” — on the cover), but tomorrow night is another edition of Heeb Storytelling, again at Joe’s Pub.

The last edition of Heeb Storytelling back in August sold out way in advance, and I procrastinated so long, I couldn’t get tickets. Tomorrow night’s event still has tickets available which you can purchase downtown at Joe’s Pub or via Tele-charge. The cover is $15.

I haven’t been to one at Joe’s Pub, — their original location was at Lansky Lounge. The evenings I did attend were a lot of fun, and the lineup tomorrow night looks great. Which is of course why I can’t go — friend’s birthday party: same time, different locale. But if you’ve never been, give it a try. I’m sure it will be a blast.

Well, this is it. I’ve been touting it all month, and now it’s the final three days of Film Forum’s fantastic “Essential Noir” series, and while there are four films being shown (two today and tomorrow and two more on Thursday), there is one which is by far the most important. And no, I’m not talking about Strangers on a Train, a fantastic film in its own right and one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best.

Instead, I want to focus my attention on Robert Aldrich’s brilliant noir classic, Kiss Me Deadly (<screening with Strangers on a Train today and tomorrow) which introduced another iconic character to the film firmament, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. (Actually, a really crappy version of Spillane’s Hammer book I, the Jury came out two years before, but I’m not counting it.) This isn’t the same Hammer you and I remember from the mid-’80s, a somewhat toned down version with Stacy Keach playing the title role. Previous noir main characters were choir boys compared to the Hammer given to us by Aldrich through the guise of actor Ralph Meeker. Dashiell Hammett’s Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe aren’t morally ambiguous in the least when put side-by-side with Hammer.

Spillane’s Mike Hammer was a true anti-hero, and never more so than in Aldrich’s film. His name is his character: hard, unyielding, and ready to nail anything in his way. In Hammer’s world, he and his own well-being comes first. He created the stereotype of the tough-guy detective who doesn’t pay attention to the grander right and wrong as long as it’s right for him. He’s American through-and-through, and in 1950s America, that means there’s nothing worse than a Red. He’s also as misogynistic as they come, treating every woman as poorly as possible, but not caring because he knows another dame is around the corner. He even pimps his own secretary (who, of course loves him and will do anything for him) in order to entrap cheating husbands. In Kiss Me Deadly, he tries to save a woman and then find her killers, but more because he’s been made a fool rather than any altruistic feelings.

Kiss Me Deadly is one of the bleakest and in some ways most depressing of all noirs. It is a film of the atomic age, made in an era where the only thing that scared this country more than Communists was the USSR destroying the US with a nuclear bomb. Those fears come to play in Kiss Me Deadly, albeit in somewhat bizarre fashion. The ending (or endings since there are two that are very similar except for a couple shots which actually do change a great deal – which one Film Forum will screen, I’m not sure) will either make you sigh, gasp or become really upset. Whatever the case, Kiss Me Deadly is more than simply “essential” noir. It’s noir at its darkest and most dangerous. It’s the real world turned upside down – finding the blurred line between good and evil is almost impossible because in this film, everyone is on the wrong side of good, just to varying degrees. But in this noir world – a world reflecting a 1950s America where we masked its fear in idealism and tried to hide its dark side, not so different from what we’re seeing now – there are no happy endings because the modern world doesn’t provide them.

Kiss Me Deadly is definitely the don’t miss highlight of these final three days, but that doesn’t mean Thursday’s series close is shabby – a twin bill of films by the great Jules Dassin. I’ve never actually seen Thieves Highway, but Night and the City is one of the more famous noirs, featuring a great performance by Richard Widmark, a hustler and dreamer whose every get-rich-quick scheme simply gets him in trouble. When he tries to get involved in the corrupt Greco-roman wrestling market in London, he takes one step too far. Dassin’s Night and the City is a great character study and fantastic film, and if you happened to see the 1992 remake with Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange, you owe it to yourself to see the original (and try to forget the absolutely terrible Irwin Winkler version).

Continue reading “FADE OUT OF THE DARKNESS, BUT KISS ME DEADLY FIRST”