Editor’s note: Since his last post was so ridiculously awesome, we’ve asked Gallery 1988 co-owner and pop culture art curator Jensen Karp back to write up another entry. You still might want to wear protection.

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us?

The Twilight Zone (Episode #115): “The New Exhibit” (airdate 4/4/63)

The Plot: A man takes the wax figures of five famous murderers back to his home despite his wife’s wishes.

The Goods: Growing up with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is rather exciting…if you love being nervous all the time. Listen, it’s no fun, and I’m proud of how I’ve healed because it used to be pretty bad (I was a baseball pitcher most of my childhood, so that involved more rituals than a Catholic mass). I was able to kick “counting” with some therapy, and the only real aspect of OCD that stuck with me, even today, involves collecting. Whether it was the dozens of Startling Lineup action figures I had boxed and untouched under my bed or the pristine 12” rap LPs I hoarded throughout the birth and mainstreaming of rap music, I was VERY concerned about having every single one, and keeping them in a mint condition that just isn’t possible once human hands have touched them.

Today, this horrid predisposition is still visible with my DVD and Blu-Ray collection. I am very serious about how they’re displayed, stored, purchased, played and dealt with. My girlfriend has moved into my place and basically she can do whatever she wants décor wise, except touch my movie collection, or even think about mixing her titles into my alphabetized allotment (in my defense, she has the complete series O.C. box set). So, whenever I watch The New Exhibit, I fully emphasize with Martin Lombard Senescu (the obsessive collecting part, not so much the murdering).

Martin, played by Martin Balsam (who I recognized from 12 Angry Men), works at Ferguson’s Wax Museum as the curator of a rather peculiar and creepy part of the tour: Murderer’s Row. With life-size, and totally alarming, wax renderings of Jack the Ripper, Albert W. Hicks, Burke & Hare and Henri Desire Landru (all complete with weapons and Kung-Fu Grips), this might not be the part of the museum you want to try and kiss your date in. But don’t say that to Martin, who is incredibly passionate about his work and the retelling the madmen stories to tourists everyday for over 30 years. Even with Martin’s enthusiasm and loyalty, Ferguson unfortunately has to sell his museum due to low attendance (it’s going to be demolished to be a super market, and most likely NOT a Whole Foods!) much to his best employee’s chagrin.

Somehow, Martin convinces his boss to let him store just his 5 beloved murderer figurines in his basement, in hopes that he can raise funding to build his own museum soon. He may have kept his precious figures in mind with this decision, but he definitely forgot about his wife, who is rightfully concerned with this new development, especially when he explains he needs to install a heater and air conditioner for an ideal setting. After months pass without a perspective investor, electricity bills mount leaving the Senescus broke. Martin spends every waking minute dedicated to the meticulous upkeep of Murderer’s Row, which might seem normal for ODC collectors like myself, but keep in mind, he’s also having conversations with them.

Advised by her brother, Emma (Maggie Mahoney) decides things must stop, so she plans on disconnecting the air conditioner and letting her husband’s prized possession melt like their income. But when she sneaks downstairs, Jack the Ripper comes alive and stabs her mid-attempt. Martin finds his dead wife, puts two and two together thanks to Jack’s now bloody knife, and panics. Knowing no one would believe his story; he buries the body in the basement and covers the scene with cement. Things seem to be all good in Martin’s Land of Creepy, until his wife’s brother shows up, concerned he hasn’t heard from his sister. Martin makes up a bunch of stories, even claiming he’s gotten rid of the wax figures, which would’ve been a great plan had the basement’s air conditioner not been running at full speed. No matter how much the brother asks Martin to let him into the locked basement to verify the fabricated story, it wasn’t until the brother snuck in from another entrance that he confirmed things were fishy. While investigating the wet cement and connecting the dots – BAM – he’s sliced by Albert W. Hicks’s ax. Martin must now deal with a second body, digging a second plot next to his dead wife.

Then he drives away in a white Bronco.

Or at least he wishes, because his former boss, and mentor, Mr. Ferguson (Will Kuluva), surprisingly visits with good news! He found a prospective buyer for the 5 wax killers: the Marchand Museum in Brussels, who will display them and let them creep everyone out in all their glory. This news doesn’t seem to bring joy to Martin as much as Ferguson, as he almost ignores it and goes back to focusing on any small detail that might need repair. Even when Martin does finally protest, Ferguson explains there’s nothing that can be done to stop the sale. With that, Martin goes upstairs to get some tea, and the wax Landru makes sure Ferguson finds the same fate as everyone else who tried to take Martin away from his best friends, strangling him to death with a rope.

Even with his blind obsession, this is just too much for Martin. He LOVED Mr. Ferguson, in the way that Jesse Pinkman probably loves Walter White, and now it’s time for these figures to be destroyed. They’ve ruined his life, killed his family and now taken the life of a man he looked up to. As he details his plan to rid his life of Murderer’s Row, each of them come to life, slowly creeping up on the now mortified Martin Senescu, now engulfed by their angry wax arms. As they attack our disturbing main character they explain, through mental telepathy apparently, that it wasn’t them who killed all those
people, IT WAS HIM!

We fade out to find ourselves watching a tour at the Marchand Museum in Brussels. We see our recognizable 5 serial attackers from the basement, but they’ve now be joined by a new wax figure of Martin Lombard Senescu, a cold-blooded killer who took the lives of his wife, brother-in-law and employer.

And cue Rod Serling.

Listen, I don’t want to make Twilight Zone too complicated, or make myself seem slow, but until I did a little research for this analysis, I thought the wax figures were master manipulators and actually did kill Martin’s loved ones, then somehow turned him into a wax figure and pinned the blame on the former curator. But a lot of experts say that in a Fight Club-esque manner, Martin really did do the killings and was even more of a nutjob than we thought. Which is a theory I would totally buy, if we didn’t see the first killing executed by the wax figure, with our own eyes. I’m all for suspending belief, but let’s do it without playing tricks on the audience. I think I’ll settle for saying, come up with your own conclusion, because this one might step on its own feet a bit.

I do remember this episode vividly from my childhood Thanksgiving marathons, and the story still resonates. What if my obsession with Starting Line-up figures destroyed my life and everyone I cared about? What if my current DVD and Blu-ray display systematically fell on every person I consider near and dear to my heart? And all I did to combat their evil doings was clean the dust of their cases because the thought of losing inanimate objects meant more than losing loved ones. Because that’s something I would do. It’s a disorder, people. And please get your hands off my Magnificent Seven Blu-ray.

It’s a great episode written by Jerry Sohl, but credited to TZ legend Charles Beaumont, because Beaumont had a CRAZY disease that made him age insanely at a rapid pace, forcing him to hire ghostwriters in his 30s (which by the way sounds like a way more horrific episode than wax figures killing you). What if Beaumont was obsessed with Twilight Zone scripts? And he had to rewrite them 75 times a day? And dissect every single word until it sounded perfect? Then the scripts started talking to him and killing his friends, so he had to hire freelancers to write new ones, just so he could take care of the old ones and dispose of bodies, then eventually it all caught up and the scripts teamed up to engulf him with their stapled binders? WHAT IF?

Cue Rod Serling.

What do you think?

The Trivia: Wax museums have been a popular time waster since the late 1700s when Marie Tussaud took her sculptures around Europe.

On the Next Episode: Julie Newmar sexes up the Zone with devil horns and an offer we can’t refuse.

Catch-Up: Episodes covered by Twitch / Episodes covered by FSR

We’re running through all 156 of the original Twilight Zone episodes over the next several weeks, and we won’t be doing it alone! Our friends at Twitch will be entering the Zone as well on alternating weeks. So definitely tune in over at Twitch and feel free to also follow along on our Twitter accounts @twitchfilm and @rejectnation.

Jensen Karp is a massive fan of The Twilight Zone, the co-owner of Gallery 1988 which focuses on pop culture-infused art, raps under the name Hot Karl, used to write for the WWE, has graced Reject Radio with his presence and hosts his on podcast on Kevin Smith’s SModcast Network called Get Up On This.

Editor’s note: To celebrate our 100th episode, we’ve asked Gallery 1988 co-owner and pop culture art curator Jensen Karp to write up the entry. You might want to wear protection.

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us?

The Twilight Zone (Episode #100): “I Sing The Body Electric” (airdate 5/18/62)

The Plot: Three arguably neglected, but definitely motherless, children are taken by their father to a store that builds them a robotic grandmother in an attempt to rid them of their sadness. As a result we witness mild family drama, a confusing moral and an episode that is widely proclaimed as “the worst Twilight Zone ever.”

The Goods: Remember when you first heard that George Lucas was making 3 new Star Wars movies and you were like, “This is going to be awesome! CAN NOT MISS!” Or when you jumped up and down hearing that Steven Speilberg was going to take the reigns of A.I. from the recently deceased Stanley Kubrick to create a Sci-Fi Nat King Cole/Natalie Cole-ish collaboration that couldn’t miss? Or even when the casting of Bio-Dome was announced and everyone exclaimed that a Pauly Shore/Stephen Baldwin buddy comedy would be a sure-fire laugh fest? The last one may have been just me, but the point is: sometimes your “dream line-up” that looks incredible on paper, should just stay on paper. The real twist of I Sing The Body Electric, is, that only in the Twilight Zone, can two pioneering geniuses like Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury team up to create crap.

When a widowed, busy father (David White), who has an uncanny resemblance to Walt Disney, hits a dead end with his 3 lonely children, he buys them a female robot, hoping it can fill the mothering void in the household. Two of the children immediately fall for the Total Recall Mary Poppins, who they have now dubbed “Grandma” (Josephine Hutchinson), but one child, Anne (Veronica Cartwright), sees too much resemblance to her mother, who she believes ran out on her when she died (YIKES! tough crowd) and rejects any attempt at Computer Love. The hurt forces Anne to run away, and unfortunately right into the path of a speeding van. Right before impact, “Grandma” pushes Anne out of the way, and demonstrates the ultimate sign of love for a child – becoming roadkill. But like all robots, and Tyrese’s movie career, she can’t be killed. One by one, we watch her fingers move, forcing Anne to finally love “Grandma” because she can never abandon her like her mother did (WAIT, WHAT?). After some rare mid-season narration from Rod Serling, we see that the children have now grown up and are on their way to college, with “Grandma” still as a loving surrogate mother. But with the kids now becoming adults, it’s her time to return to the robot shop, most likely to be stripped down and used like old car parts. She looks back on her time with the family, proud of her work raising three impressive adults, admits she even learned something in the process, and she walks out the door.

And then she walks back into the house, with her face now melting, exposing steel bone structure, feral wires and wildly blinking buttons, carrying a laser gun, yelling “NOT SO FAST, BRATS!”

She doesn’t do any of that, but she should’ve, because the episode ends with her walking out the door, everything tied into a cute, little Lifetime movie bow, lacking any sort of twist or science fiction, leaving even the biggest TZ die-hard fan wanting more. The episode was written by Ray Bradbury (of “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Martian Chronicles” and the guy who got mad at Michael Moore about a movie title fame), and I could only imagine the buzz created by hiring him for the 100th episode. What we didn’t know was that this was actually the third Bradbury script commissioned by Serling for The Twilight Zone, and the other two were either too complicated or confusing to ever start production. Add to matters that “I Sing The Body Electric” received enough bad feedback from production and the network behind the scenes after it was filmed, that it went through numerous reshoots and recasts, even having production fall into two calendar years. It was doomed from the first “Action!” but again, it’s a real Sci-Fi fantasy duo, so they never wanted to fully give up on it. Which is unfortunate.

When researching to write this, I learned a bit about Bradbury’s other two Twilight Zone attempts, “Here There Be Tygers” and “A Miracle of Rare Device,” and couldn’t help but wonder if those would’ve been such stinkers as well. Even though Serling penned episodes like Walking Distance and A Stop At Willoughby were obviously influenced by Bradbury’s earlier work, I can only liken Rod to N*Sync and Ray to the Backstreet Boys. One may have been first with the formula, but the successor perfected it (sorry, Howie D).

Listen, I know it’s a sweet little story. And although I question if it’s a smart idea to tell a child “Love this robot, because it won’t leave you like your dead mother did,” I can never really “hate” a tale about family. Things seem underdeveloped (like why the kids are deemed so unfit for society when they actually seem super normal for children with a dead mom or why people aren’t making a huge deal out of a robot store on Main Street), but it is a Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling mash-up, so this episode will always have a place in my heart. “I Sing The Body Electric” is the Miami Heat of the Twilight Zone series: So many great parts, but unable to deliver – yet still worth talking about.

But I am really excited for these upcoming Hobbit movies. With all those people involved: it can’t miss.

What do you think?

The Trivia: A young Veronica Cartwright played Anne, and ends up being one of the better elements of the episode. Later in life, she would land roles in both Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien, so the good news is, she would eventually work in good Sci-Fi!

On the Next Episode: A clumsy angel is offered an opportunity to earn his wings by helping out a strange city woman named Agnes Grep.

Catch-Up: Episodes covered by Twitch / Episodes covered by FSR

We’re running through all 156 of the original Twilight Zone episodes over the next several weeks, and we won’t be doing it alone! Our friends at Twitch will be entering the Zone as well on alternating weeks. So definitely tune in over at Twitch and feel free to also follow along on our Twitter accounts @twitchfilm and @rejectnation.

Jensen Karp is a massive fan of The Twilight Zone, the co-owner of Gallery 1988 which focuses on pop culture-infused art, raps under the name Hot Karl, used to write for the WWE, has graced Reject Radio with his presence and hosts his on podcast on Kevin Smith’s SModcast Network called Get Up On This.

Editor’s Note: With Ashe taking a much needed vacation, we turn to the insightful talent of writer Maxwell Yezpitelok for this week’s list. Go read more of his work. But read this first. And then go check that stuff out.

Woody Allen has to have one of the greatest casting directors in show business, if we overlook the fact that for some reason they keep casting short middle-aged Jewish guys opposite women like Julia Roberts, Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron.

But seriously, look at all the big name stars that keep showing up in his movies, sometimes for the whole movie and sometimes for just a few seconds. In honor of that genius scene in Midnight in Paris where Adrien Brody completely kills it as Dali (only to never again), here are the greatest actor cameos in Allen’s forty-something films:

10. Christopher Walken in Annie Hall

Yes, Marshall Mcluhan gets all the glory, but this isn’t just one of the most bizarre Woody Allen film cameos ever — it’s one of the weirdest scenes in motion picture history, period. It’s just completely out of place in a film like this: with the exception of the short interlude with Diane Keaton and her parents, this sequence could easily belong to some sort of deranged horror movie (something by David Cronenberg, probably).

Walken’s creepy performance turns what was probably meant to be a quick throwaway joke into something truly disturbing.

9. Sylvester Stallone in Bananas

This is just perfect. Five years before Rocky, a virtually unknown (except for fans of Party at Kitty and Stud’s — do not look it up if you’re at work), Stallone plays a subway mugger in this short silent sequence from Bananas. Like almost everything in Woody’s “early, funny movies,” the scene is completely disconnected to the rest of the plot, meaning that Sly’s character sadly doesn’t show up again. Unless you choose to believe that this is Rocky himself, that is.

8. Regis Philbin in Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex

The most shocking thing here to anyone who wasn’t alive in the ’60s or ’70s is learning that Regis Philbin existed back then, and served pretty much the same role he does today: good natured, inoffensive television host. That’s what makes this skit so hilarious, especially if you imagine Regis is saying that “Do you molest children?” line while making idle conversation with a guest in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or something. Incidentally, Burt Reynolds also appeared in the last segment of this movie, playing a brain cell.

7. Larry David in Radio Days

While we never get a good look at him, it’s impossible to miss Larry David’s voice as the communist neighbor in 1987′s Radio Days (which starred a very young Seth Green). A few years later David would become internationally well known as the voice of George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld (and also for co-creating that show, I guess). David also had a short cameo as the theater owner in Woody’s segment in New York Stories, and much later would star in his film Whatever Works alongside some unruly, youthful hair.

6. Sharon Stone in Stardust Memories

She only appears for a few seconds (about a minute in, and then at the very end), but trust me, you can’t miss her. This was Sharon Stone’s first film role ever, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she got every other part in her career because of it. Basic Instinct may be her most famous film, but she’ll always be “Pretty Girl on Train” to me. Fun fact: Stardust Memories was also the first film role of Brent Spiner, the guy who played Data in Star Trek: The New Generation.

5. Jackie Mason in Sleeper

Jackie Mason is a veteran stand-up comedian best known for being extremely Jewish. He plays a robot here. I’ll admit I’m not the biggest Mason connoisseur in
the world, but this scene is hilarious even if you have no idea who he is. Sleeper also features a cameo by then-President Richard Nixon, but I’m not counting it because it’s unclear if it was voluntary.

4. Tim Roth in Everyone Says I Love You

Knowing the context makes this even weirder: Tim Roth’s character is introduced late in the film as a thuggish ex-convict fresh out of jail. In this scene he starts
coming on to Drew Barrymore’s character (who’s engaged to Edward Norton’s character), and just when it looks like she’s gonna have to take out her rape whistle, he starts singing a sweet love song to her. Reportedly, none of the actors in this film knew it was going to be a musical when they signed up for it, but the experiment actually worked pretty well … unlike that time Woody’s producers infamously edited a musical number by The Lovin’ Spoonful in the middle of his movie What’s Up Tiger Lily? without his permission.

3. Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity

This one’s a little long (for a cameo anyway), but it really pays off at the end. It’s almost impossible to find video for this scene in The States, but DiCaprio’s ten minutes on screen is his entire role in Celebrity, which didn’t stop the producers from putting his face in the middle of every poster for the film (go on, Google it). Plus, the main guy from Entourage shows up here as a member of DiCaprio’s entourage, thus creating a space-time paradox that could destroy the whole universe if you think too hard about it.

2. Robin Williams in Deconstructing Harry

So you’ve managed to get one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world to appear in your film, and what do you do? Why, you make sure his face is
completely blurred for the entire duration of his scenes, of course. Williams was only one of many celebrity cameos in Deconstructing Harry, though: there’s also Tobey Maguire (NSFW), Julia-Louis Dreyfus (also NSFW) and probably the greatest part in the film, Billy Crystal playing The Devil and comparing sins with a post-Mia Farrow scandal Woody.

1. Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall

That’s it. That’s Jeff Goldblum’s entire dialogue in this movie: “I forgot my mantra.” And it’s one of the greatest performances in his career. You may have noticed that Paul Simon also shows up in that clip, but he’s actually a recurring character in the movie, for some reason. Like Deconstructing Harry, Annie Hall is packed with celebrity cameos, but the difference here is that most of these actors weren’t
famous at the time: besides Goldblum and Christopher Walken there are cameos by Sigourney Weaver (for about ten seconds), Shelley Duvall, and John Glover, possibly best known as Lex Luthor’s father in the show Smallville.

“Maxwell Yezpitelok has written horror comics and children’s television in his home country, Chile. He’s currently working on his first screenplay, a psychological drama, and he also writes and edits humor articles for Cracked. You can find out more about him by following him on Twitter.

Count down and read more Cinematic Listology

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of Guest Author month at Criterion Files: a month devoted to important classic and contemporary bloggers. This week, David Ehrlich, whose bimonthly column Criterion Corner was a favorite at Cinematical, takes on Paul Schrader’s incredible biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Tune in next week as Adam Charles returns Criterion Files to its usual rotation, and in the meantime you can take a look at the previous entries from guest contributors here.

Infamous Japanese iconoclast Yukio Mishima once said “I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line…,” a sentiment which suggests that his eventual suicide came only once his creative resources had run dry. Yet, as Paul Schrader’s sublime film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters so fluidly illustrates, Mishima ended his life with a self-administered sword thrust to the chest not because he was out of words, but rather because the page had never been a sufficient canvas for his artistic expression, or one to which he had ever intended to confine himself.

POETRY WRITTEN WITH A SPLASH OF BLOOD

In his novel “Runaway Horses” (the second installment of the informal tetralogy referred to as “The Sea of Fertility”), Mishima articulated: “Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.” Those words ostensibly belong to the novel and not the novelist, but Mishima’s fevered yearning for a harmony between pen and sword demands that we accept the consistent ideology of his heroes as that of their creator. Whereas most authors are encouraged to write what they know, Mishima wrote who he was, assigning names to the slivers of his persona so that his novels wouldn’t read like manifestos.

Buried within Criterion’s appropriately gilded DVD set is an anecdote about Mishima’s funeral, whereat mourners were supposedly surprised to learn that they each knew him less than they had thought. A textbook case of being unable to see the forest for the trees, I imagine, as those who knew Mishima were likely too close to recognize that he couldn’t be understood via face-time, but rather only when seen through a kaleidoscope. But for all of the false verisimilitude with which he conducted his social life, Mishima was hardly a man of secrets. In fact, he might be the most public man to have ever lived. Extremely candid fragments of his persona were sold by the millions in bookstores across the world, definitive clues to a mystery no one recognized until Mishima — on November 25, 1970, the day of his seppuku — staged a coup d’état intended to restore political power to the Emperor of Japan.

So far as Mishima was concerned, his own life and physical being were the purest forms of artistic expression — finite and ephemeral, perfect and complete. Not a facsimile or a distillation, but the real thing. It wasn’t a sustained piece of performance art for the sake of keeping up appearances — Mishima wasn’t the Chinese illusionist from the beginning of The Prestige or a precursor to Lady Gaga, he was simply of the mind that ideals were best communicated through expressive action.

So what does that make Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters? Of what value is a biopic about a man for whom art was ultimately a shadow of life itself? In those terms, it seems a tacitly reductive exercise, like streaming an IMAX presentation over a webcam — any film about him, it would follow, is ostensibly shackled to an antagonistic relationship with its subject. And yet, despite (or because) of its complicated dynamic with its namesake, Mishima remains the greatest movie ever made about a historical figure.

EVERY GREAT MAGIC TRICK CONSISTS OF THREE PARTS

Schrader’s masterstroke was to devise a tripartite structure that speaks to Mishima’s fractured persona without necessarily submitting to his ideology. Here’s how it works: The film begins with a blurb of text that reveals Mishima’s eventual fate, thus preemptively muting any suspense and compelling the audience to look beyond the mere facts of Mishima’s life. Then, the first thread: Mishima on the day of his ritualistic suicide. He wakes up, throws on a sparkling blue robe (one of the film’s only nods to Mishima’s controversial homosexuality, a matter that his widow insisted Schrader leave alone), and then prepares his military apparel. This is filmed in garish and unromantic color, recalling the Maysles Brothers’ later documentary work.

Plaintive voiceover (much of which is borrowed from Mishima’s biographical essay “Sun and Steel”) then begins to coax out some context, slipping us into the shiny monochrome of Mishima’s early years. We see him as a young boy forced to care for his vaguely vile grandmother, and watch as he blossoms from an introverted wallflower into an imposing physical figure. And then — abruptly and most critically — the screen is alit by searing streaks of gold and green as text invites us into a dramatization of Mishima’s 1956 novel “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion,” the first of three novels that Schrader will bring to life. The sets for these sequences are wildly artificial — scale is askew, colors are unnaturally expressive, and rooms and buildings split apart and slide about on visible rails. Tying all of this together is Philip Glass’s fluid score, an immersive, swirling, even celestial body of music, which helps unify Schrader’s three aesthetics into a single cohesive portrait of a man who was more than an aggregate of his facts.

I THINK THIS MIGHT JUST BE MY MASTERPIECE

If it sounds complicated on paper, in practice it unfolds like a clear biographical antecedent to Inception. And — even more so than in Nolan’s blockbuster — Mishima fuses form and function to the point where its very structure is hugely expressive of its subject. A trite and true biopic of the conventional mold (think Amelia, if you can) would have implicitly drawn a line between Mishima and his image, whereas Schrader’s approach blends it all together, uniting man and myth in much the same way as Mishima ostensibly harmonized pen and sword.

But if the film assumes the fractured shape of Mishima’s ideology, Schrader is equally careful that he’s never beholden to it. Schrader doesn’t cooperate with Mishima so much as he uses him to reach a higher strata of portraiture. The eloquence of the film’s abstractions and artificiality reveal Mishima to the viewer in a way that a chronological account of his life never could — indirect but complete. Mishima was a man who was introduced to millions but only known to himself, and so fevered dramatizations of his novels (especially such revelatory works like “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion,” which scalps its author’s parallel understandings of beauty and destruction), are not only more penetrating than a conventional narrative, but also potentially more honest or “real” than even unmediated documentary testimony. It’s a notion that can be traced back to Andre Bazin’s “Myth of Total Cinema” — the closer the cinema inches to the mirage of facts, the further it will sprint from truth (see also: Herzog, Werner). Schrader meets Mishima on the latter’s terms, and in the process puts so much emphasis on form that the particulars of Mishima’s nationalistic martyrdom are scattered rather than enshrined. As a result, Schrader is able to respect his subject without having to also sanctify him in the process.

Having said that, the film forges a relationship between Schrader and Mishima that isn’t only complimentary, it’s practically symbiotic. Mishima — motivated by nationalistic ideals — gave his life to incite a moment’s harmony between pen and sword, and Schrader’s film lucidly captured that brilliant flash on celluloid (perhaps more comprehensively than Mishima himself might have thought possible). Mishima looked beyond the arts to etch his self-portrait, and Schrader looked to Mishima’s self-portrait to craft a biopic that obliterates the genre entirely. Through the film, the demonstrative relationship Mishima shared with the various texts of his creation is reborn in the relationship that artists share with those who interpret their work, a universal notion that supersedes the militaristic pageantry of Mishima’s death and goes straight for the implicitly human narrative that lead him there.

If all lives tell a story, Mishima simply wanted to write his own. Schrader created an electrifying testament to the idea that — for all of his wayward foibles — Mishima lived his masterpiece, and in doing so the great mustached filmmaker gave us one of his own.

Put down the sword and read more Criterion Files

When David Ehrlich isn’t staging a coup d’état, he’s busy making movies (you can see a trailer for his latest here) and writing various Criterion-related musings on his Criterion Corner blog. You can, and should, follow him on twitter @davidehrlich and @CriterionCorner.

Welcome to the fourth and penultimate installment of Guest Author month at Criterion Files: a month devoted to important classic and contemporary bloggers. This week, Matthew Dessem, who keeps himself quite busy writing his way through every single title in the Criterion Collection at The Criterion Contraption, takes on Billy Wilder’s oft-overlooked masterpiece Ace in the Hole (1951). Tune in next week for an analysis of a different title from a new author, and you can take a look at the previous entries from guest contributors here.

We all know the story: deep underground, there’s been a terrible accident. Lives hang in the balance! Time is of the essence! But if everybody pulls together, if we all really believe, there’s a chance we can bring the lost back, blinking, into the sunlight. The important thing—whether we’re talking about Floyd Collins, Kathy Fiscus, or Jessica McClure—is to pay attention. We all know the story—and apparently we love it. The Wikipedia article about last year’s Copiapó Mining Disaster is 10,500 words long. William Shakespeare only rates 6,800. What on earth is going on? In his breathtakingly cynical masterpiece, Ace in the Hole, Billy Wilder suggests some answers—but you’re not going to like them.

Sending Our Love Down a Well

The first time we see Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, the brash, hard-nosed reporter at the center of Ace in the Hole, he’s serenely riding through Albuquerque in an open convertible, a vision of power and ease. Except his convertible is being pulled by a tow truck, he’s been fired from the last eleven newspapers he wrote for, and he’s willing to settle for less than a fifth of his old salary to write for the local paper, a rag that, as he puts it, “even for Albuquerque, is pretty Albuquerque.” Tatum wants one thing, and one thing only: a great story to put him back on his feet. And if the film’s opening scene shows us nothing else, it’s that Tatum can bluff and bluster his way into getting what he wants. So when he finds an unfortunate treasure hunter named Leo Minosa trapped underground in a collapsed Native American cliff dwelling, we know exactly what kind of story he’s going to be writing. Even if reality doesn’t cooperate.

There’s no problem with the victim. Leo, amiably portrayed by Richard Benedict, is the next best thing to a blonde toddler: a veteran whose main concern is getting out of the cave in time for his five year anniversary. Add his pious mother and father, struggling to eke out a living selling hamburgers and Navajo rugs, and you’ve got the makings of a Pulitzer. But Leo’s wife, a bottle-blonde as desperate to escape New Mexico as Tatum himself, doesn’t fit the narrative. So in Tatum’s story, she becomes “the grief-stricken wife with a tear-stained face, trying to fight her way into the cave to be at her husband’s side,” even once he starts sleeping with her. The corrupt local sheriff becomes a “tireless public servant who never spares himself.” And most important of all, what should have been a relatively straightforward twelve-hour rescue job becomes—at Tatum’s direction—a complicated seven day drilling operation, to give the story time to build. Too bad for Leo.

Tatum’s edits to reality give us some clues as to why we pay more attention to 33 Chilean miners than, for example, the 120 U.S. soldiers who died in Afghanistan during the same period—or more to the point, the 34 mining related deaths in the United States the year before. In the “Tatum Special” version of the story, there aren’t any villains: everyone he writes about, from Leo on up, is a hero. The only bad guys are, as one of the film’s radio announcers puts is, “stubborn rock and fleeting time.” Well, the battle against “stubborn rock and fleeting time” doesn’t raise many difficult questions. You don’t really have to pick sides in that battle. At one point, Tatum says that his philosophy is that “Bad news sells best, because good news is no news.”  Maybe so—but he seems to be interested in a very particular sort of bad news. Bad news in which no one is to blame is the best news of all.

Mr. and Mrs. America

Before the ink is dry on Tatum’s first story about Leo, a car full of tourists arrives, wanting to see the big show for themselves. By the fifth day, Lorraine is telling workers from the “Great S & M Amusement Corp.” where to set up the Ferris Wheel. Like many things in Ace in the Hole, the way Wilder portrays the crowd seems too cynical, until you realize that this really happens. Police estimated the crowd at the Kathy Fiscus rescue attempt at between 5,000 and 10,000, and she was only trapped for one weekend. As Floyd Collins slowly died of starvation in Sand Cave, he had the dubious comfort of knowing that the crowd on the surface could eat at a different concession stand every night. (Heroes, all of them). After Collins died, Victor released a commemorative record. A few years after that, some enterprising young businessman bought the cave, had Collins dug up, and put his body on display for tourists in a glass-topped coffin. It’s easy to say Wilder is condescending, and it’s true that the gawkers in Ace in the Hole are not subtly drawn. But when you compare it to the public record, it quickly becomes apparent that, if anything, Ace in the Hole may not be harsh enough.

The Curse of the Seven Vultures

In 1951, Billy Wilder couldn’t have imagined how Pavlovian journalism would become. There are entire industries devoted to tracking user behavior on the internet, and using it to figure out exactly what the public wants to read about. We’ve got an even more massive industry that uses that data to decide what to write about, and where to send the cameras. If you’re a journalist who believes you might have a responsibility to tell people things they didn’t want to know about—well, you’d better hope you’re Paul Krugman or look into changing professions. I don’t think Wilder could have guessed at how bad things would get, but he was right about the larger problem: there’s no incentive to tell the truth. There are certain kinds of stories the public likes to hear and certain types they don’t. That’s true for fiction as well as journalism: Ace in the Hole was a flop twice over. Paramount buried it. Wilder never made anything else as searing. So much for uncomfortable truths.

They say societies get the media they deserve. Spend a few hours reading David Brooks and you’ll be convinced we must have done something awful. Give them their due, though: the American media is undoubtedly the Greatest Show on Earth, a blustery hullaballoo that’s making some people very rich and keeping everyone else entertained. But as the middle class continues to implode, as the wealthiest take more and more of the pie, as Medicare is dismantled and the casualties pile up and the ocean levels rise, well, as Chuck Tatum might say, keep this in mind, fan.

If the pounding of the drill is louder than the merry-go-round, you’re not at the carnival—you’re in the cave.

When Matthew Dessem isn’t digging in collapsed caves for the best scoop available, he’s busy writing detailed analyses of every single title (that’s right, every single title) in the Criterion Collection at The Criterion Contraption. You can, and should, follow him on twitter @matthewdessem.

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Editor’s Note: This editorial contains spoilers for Source Code, so if you haven’t seen it 1) you should and 2) you probably won’t get the jokes either. It comes from guest writer James Kopecky who has thought far too much about what happened at the end of Duncan Jones’s latest.

When I see a movie, I take it as a two-hour-long glimpse into a reality that has a rich history, as well as an ongoing, unwritten future. After the credits roll, I assume that the characters and the story keep moving, most likely in the direction they were headed when the picture ended. So when I saw Source Code, I thought about what happened to the characters after screen faded to black.

This turned out to be problematic for me, because the ending of Source Code raised a slew of questions, some more perplexing than others.
As we all know, Source Code is the story of “recently deceased” Army helicopter pilot Captain Colter Stevens repeatedly inhabiting the body of recently deceased Chicago school teacher Sean Fentress for the last eight minutes of the latter’s life (hilarity ensues). At the end of the movie, we are to believe that Captain Stevens continues to live on inside the body of mild-mannered Sean Fentress in an alternative universe. In this new reality, the nuclear bomb has not gone off, everyone on the train (except the black business man in the seat next to Fentress) makes it to Chicago on time, and Russell Peters embarks on a comedy career appreciated by people other than just Indian college students. Surely, a happy ending for everyone… or is it?!?

What satisfied audiences everywhere may not realize is that ultimately Sean Fentress still dies. There’s no doubt that his man parts give Christina the ride of here life in the very near future, but for the rest of his body’s natural life, it will be Captain Stevens at the helm. For all intents and purposes, the consciousness that was Sean Fentress fell asleep on a Chicago bound commuter train, and in at least a dozen or so separate realities, he never woke up again. Turns out Duncan Jones loves giving the screw job to public school teachers as much as Wisconsin.

I can deal with Sean Fentress dying. That doesn’t bother me. He was going to die anyway when the bomb went off, and at the very least Captain Stevens, an American hero, gets a new lease on life. What bothers me is that we leave Captain Stevens as he is about to have his first date with the lovely Christina and are to assume that everything works out well from then on in this new, better universe. But what’s really happening is that Captain Stevens now inhabits the body of a total stranger that he knows absolutely nothing about.

What if after their first date, Caroline decides she’s not “that kind of girl” and gives Captain Stevens (now Sean Fentress) a simple kiss on the cheek, saving that sweet, sweet poonanny for date number two? What does Captain Stevens do then? Go home? How? Where is home? All he knows is that Fentress takes the train in to Chicago for work. If Captain Stevens somehow figures out what train station is in Fentress’s home town, what does Sean Fentress’s car look like? Does Fentress even have a car? What if he rides his bike to the train station, as could be expected of a modestly dressed, possibly liberal school teacher?

What’s the combination to Fentress’s bike lock?

What’s more, Fentress’s cell phone is broken. Setting aside the notion that Captain Stevens can’t use Google Maps to get directions to an apartment he’s never been to before, how does he get a hold of anybody? It’s not like he can call his old family, because as we see in the final scene, Captain Stevens’s body is still “recently deceased” in this new reality. More importantly, he now can’t call Sean Fentress’s family either.

Forgetting about the fact that he would have absolutely nothing to talk to Fentress’s family about because he’s never met them before (which I feel would raise some red flags in the Fentress household), he doesn’t even know their phone numbers. With a broken phone, he is almost completely cut off from every person Sean Fentress ever knew. I don’t know about you, but the last time I committed a full ten-digit phone number to memory was the day I got my sweet ass Nokia 8210 back in 2001. So I have to assume, like me, Sean Fentress’s sole means of storing contact information is that stylish little smart phone he was rocking until Captain Stevens stole his life. And what if, as I postulated before, his date with Christina doesn’t go well and she decides this new, more spontaneous Sean Fentress isn’t for her? If that happens, Captain Stevens is in for a pretty shitty weekend because he will have just lost contact with quite literally the only person on Earth he knows.

Where to now, Stevens?

But Captain Stevens could just get a new phone, with all Sean Fentress’s contacts restored, because Fentress’s cell phone provider reliably backed up that information for him on a regular basis, right? Bullshit he can, because no cell phone provider is “reliable.” I know, because I use AT&T. But that’s beside the point. How can he get a new cell phone? What cell phone provider did Sean Fentress use? Even if Captain Stevens could ask Christina that question without looking like a total crazy person, why would she know that information? Now, I’ve never courted a woman on a Chicago-bound commuter train before, but I have to imagine my opening line wouldn’t be, “So, my Verizon signal kicks some serious ass on this route. What provider do you use?”

It may seem like I’m harping on the cell phone thing, but I’m just using it as an example to prove my point. I could be using anything. Like, even if he could get a new phone, how would he pay for it? We know he has no cash because he used his last $126 to buy Russell Peters some swagger. But even if he had saved that thick wad of scratch, there’s no way $126 would be enough to cover the cost of a new smart phone before the two-year contract term expires. Where does Captain Stevens get money? What bank did Sean Fentress use? What is Sean Fentress’s PIN number? Debit or credit? How much money does Fentress have left in his account? You see, we know absolutely nothing about Sean Fentress other than he rides a train to work, he’s a teacher, and he’s got mad skills when it comes to hitting on recently single women that are considering a career change.

Now hold on tight, because we’re about to sail in to some considerably darker waters.

What if Sean Fentress has a wife and kids, and he’s been hitting on Christina to break up the monotony of a life he secretly hates? We’ve already established that he could never call this wife, even if he knew he was supposed to, but now that Captain Stevens is running the show, Sean Fentress may just fall off the face of the Earth as far as his loved ones are concerned. I’m sure the Fentress family could accept that their beloved husband/son/brother/uncle/best bro died in a train explosion, because nothing can be done about that, but now we have to believe that they live in a world where Sean Fentress left for work one morning, never to be seen again (unless of course he is filmed in the front row of Russell Peters’s next Comedy Central special, now that white people are allowed to attend). But it could be even crazier than that.

What if Captain Stevens miraculously makes it back to Sean Fentress’s home (Mrs. Fentress and Sean, Jr. not included) and sitting in the living room is another dirty bomb and a note that reads, “Dear Sean. You know the deal: I do Chicago, you do New York! Let’s burn this mother down, buddy. Love, Derek Frost.” Or, even scarier, what if Captain Stevens opens Sean Fentress’s bedroom closet to find a bunch of dead bodies that used to be skinny brunettes who recently quit their teaching jobs to enroll in LSAT prep courses? Suddenly that lovely day Captain Stevens spends walking around the shores of Lake Michigan with Christina doesn’t seem so sweet anymore, does it?

Perhaps we can suspend disbelief and assume that during those brief moments that Captain Goodwin and Dr. Rutledge are debating the merits of using a human torso to fight domestic terrorism, some lab tech is briefing Captain Stevens on every minute detail of Sean Fentress’s life. Let’s say Steven’s knows where Fentress went to high school, what his dog’s name is, and whether or not Fentress would enjoy a Caucasian-friendly Russell Peters comedy show if he got free tickets (“Sean. Thanks for giving me my swing back. Namaste, Russell Peters”), he still has to live out the rest of his life as Sean Fentress.

Up until he was “recently deceased,” Captain Stevens was an Army helicopter pilot who saw some pretty serious action during multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan. How well do you think he will adjust to being a public high school teacher in downtown Chicago? More so, as a military pilot, I’m sure Captain Stevens had pretty good grades in math, science, and possibly even geography, but what if Sean Fentress taught drama? What if he was the girls’ volleyball coach? What is Captain Stevens going to do then? If he wants to stay dressed in nice things, he better hope Christina is more committed to law school than she was to being a teacher (or possibly just make sure she never sits next to another smooth-talking gent on the train who may or may not be a domestic terrorist/serial killer), because I get the feeling his days are numbered with the Chicago public school system.

Is this article pure rubbish? Am I over-thinking an incidental plot element instead of appreciating the movie as a whole? Is this a great movie, even though it has left me with a head full of unanswered questions? The answer to all of these questions is unquestionably “yes.” All this ranting aside, I really enjoyed Source Code and I plan on seeing again some day. I just wanted to share with you some thoughts I had after seeing this very enjoyable movie. And we can all take solace in the fact that if this movie really ends the way it appears, with a former military man teaching at an inner city high school, then The Substitue Quadrilogy finally got the prequel it deserves.

Until next time…

James Kopecky is a recent graduate from law school, practicing law in the Austin area. Although he scored well on the LSAT, he’s recently been convinced by a gruff-but-handsome stranger on a commuter train to give up his legal practice and go after his teaching certificate.

Welcome to the third installment of Guest Author month at Criterion Files: a month devoted to important classic and contemporary bloggers. This week, Catherine Stebbins, writer for CriterionCast and Cinema Enthusiast, takes on G.W. Pabst’s silent classic Pandora’s Box (1929). Tune in every week this month for an analysis of a different title from a new author.

The first time I saw G.W Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, I thought I knew what Lulu, the character played by Louise Brooks, would be like. All I knew was that Lulu destroyed the lives of those around her. I expected her to be a typical femme fatale, with perhaps a bit of the vamp in her; sexy, manipulative, cold, calculating, powerful. I expected her to be a scheming woman with a plan for destruction.

Lulu is a very complicated character because she is in many ways the direct opposite of the femme fatale despite the amount of damage she inevitably causes. I chose to write about Pandora’s Box because it means a great deal to me. Most importantly, it introduced me to Louise Brooks. I idolize her for all she had to endure, for never compromising and for the enigmatic personality she brought to the screen which has never been matched. By looking at Lulu as a character, I hope to give at least a little insight into her performance in Pandora’s Box and the complicated and ultimately symbolic character she portrays with Lulu.
The name of the film immediately gives some indication of Lulu’s character in the parallels it suggests between her and the myth. Pandora was the first mortal woman in Greek mythology. She was made as a punishment for mankind due to the actions of Prometheus because powerful women were seen as destroyers of man. She possessed incomparable beauty, charm and skill. But she opened a box out of curiosity and released all of the evils in the world and by the time she closed the box the only thing left in it at the bottom was hope.

There are obvious similarities between Pandora and Lulu. Most importantly, curiosity was Pandora’s motivation for opening the box; not some calculated plan to unleash evil on the world. Curiosity can be seen as synonymous with naiveté, which is exactly what Lulu has. Lulu is not the femme fatale. She is a naïve woman who is somewhat unaware of the effect she has on people and of the damage she causes whether it is her fault or not. Lulu does not purposely ruin the lives of the people around her and this is a key characteristic.

In the commentary for the film with Mary Ann Doane and Thomas Elsaesser that can be heard on the Criterion Collection edition of Pandora’s Box, Doane makes a statement that reveals another important characteristic of Lulu’s. Doane states that “she is a character for who the past holds no weight.” Lulu’s sole motivation is pleasure in the present. She does not mean to hurt anyone. She fails to comprehend that her actions affect others and that other people have their own individual feelings and desires. She does not learn from past mistakes and refuses to compromise or dwell on the past. Additionally, Lulu will not learn from past mistakes and is capable of shaking the past off no matter how traumatic it may be.

An example of this is when she returns to Alwa’s place after she escapes from her trial for Schon’s death. Alwa comes home to find Lulu coming out of the bath. She acts insensitively to what Alwa is going through. She smiles even though he has lost his father; she pokes him and he says “How dare you come here.” She looks slightly confused and says “Where else should I go but home?” She smiles, he shakes a hat into her hands and then Lulu gets violently angry and then throws the hat across the room. She then completely changes moods, smiles and crosses the room to go look at herself in the mirror in her bathrobe. Lulu wastes no time moving on from life-changing events so she can continue pursuing the present moment. The way Lulu acts in this scene is not malicious but simply unmindful; because of this, we continue to care about her despite her blatant inability to take other people’s feelings into account.

Another key characteristic of hers that harks back to the natural curiosity of Pandora is Lulu’s childishness. We are the most curious as children and this is what Lulu essentially is; a child. She becomes the most childlike around her “father”/pimp Schigolch. She is the most familiar with him and sits on his lap whenever she sees him. The most extreme example of Lulu’s childishness is the tantrum she has backstage at the revue she participates in. Schon brings Charlotte his fiancée backstage at the revue which Lulu is performing in and shows

her around. When Lulu sees Schon, her expressions and mannerisms are that of an upset child. Her brow pushes forward and her lips pout out and Lulu suddenly looks like a five-year old who did not get her way. She stomps off and refuses to perform in the show, pushes people out of her way and makes a large commotion in front of Schon.

A piece of behind the scenes knowledge during the making of the film can also shed some light on how Pabst might have seen Lulu. When she shoots Schon, G.W Pabst told Louise Brooks to react by saying “Das Blut!” meaning “the blood!” Although neither the line nor Brooks’s lips uttering the words make it into the film, this direction is an indication of Lulu’s childlike nature. Instead of telling Brooks to react to the fact that she just shot and killed her lover and her best friend’s father, Pabst tells her to react to a much more abstract thing. A child would unlikely understand the full implications of the death of someone and instead would react to the concrete physicality of the blood. Pabst’s direction of Brooks during this scene suggests that he also looks at Lulu as having childlike qualities.

For all of Lulu’s characterization, her mere presence gives off a sense of symbolic purpose. The connection to the figure of Pandora and the elusiveness of Lulu elevates her to a mythical-like status. This is why it takes a figure like the assumed “Jack the Ripper” to eliminate her; someone with that historical status is the only one who has the ability to destroy her. The way Pabst’s camera depicts the actress, and the meaning that Brooks’s presence and performance give to the film add to the fascination that comes with Lulu, making her a unique character and an iconic presence in film.

Louise Brooks never poses for the camera. It makes her all the more appealing, and Pabst uses this to his advantage by adding different lighting techniques, most notably soft focus and expressionistic lighting to enhance her undeniably unique qualities. Using soft focus for close-ups was standard, but Pabst’s use of it veers towards visual poetry. The casting of Brooks, an American among a cast of Germans, gives her an added air of mysteriousness and unfamiliarity to audiences; she sticks out even more so because of it. Louise Brooks plays Lulu with a natural air that has never been equaled. Rumor has it that the reason that Pabst did not cast Marlene Dietrich over Brooks was because he had said that “one sexy look and the picture would become a burlesque.” He needed Brooks’s effortless quality in front of the camera to make the film stand out among others and he knew it.

Brooks’s real life antics make the character of Lulu even more engaging to a modern day audience. She was promiscuous, very much into sex and desire almost to a fault. She and Lulu represented the modern woman who was in control of her life, her sexuality and of the choices that she made. Unfortunately for Brooks, many of these were bad choices, but she made her own life by her own rules. The Hollywood system could not contain her. All of Lulu’s seductive qualities were Louise Brooks’s. Pabst managed to capture the essence of her. This is not an act; beyond the definite construct of Lulu, I believe we are seeing Louise Brooks herself.

Lulu is a character in cinema that has become an icon, representing desire, eroticism; a woman who seems to be in control of the camera that photographs her, her femininity and her power. Lulu is brought to life by Louise Brooks, a legend in her own right, who is unforgettable as Pandora’s Box. Make no mistake that in the end, for all its other accomplishments, of which there are many, Brooks makes this film. She is sex and desire. She is a curious child. She is living completely for herself. She is mythically symbolic. She is Lulu.

When Catherine Stebbins isn’t busy translating advice from German directors, she lends her perceptive critiques to CriterionCast and her blog Cinema Enthusiast. You can, and should, follow her on twitter @cinephile24.

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Sometimes, the splash a filmmaker makes with his or her first feature ultimately breeds a wave too harsh to ride as a career living up to the beginning.

While everyone and their mother points to a film like Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature, Breathless, as the (in my eyes definitive) auteur’s crowning achievement, it’s almost as common to hear the director discussed as a filmmaker of diminishing returns.

However, while his debut is for all intents and purposes a brilliant, all-time classic, it’s not until his third feature, the neo-musical fever dream known as A Woman Is A Woman, that one truly gets a hold of what kind of filmmaker Godard, in all of his feverish style, truly is.

Starring a trio of fantastic thespians — Godard staple Jean-Paul Belmondo, Godard’s muse Anna Karina, and French New Wave star Jean-Claude Brialy — Woman follows the story of Angela, a sweet and caring exotic dancer, who is not only torn between two men, but also by the fact that she’s trying to have a child with her current beau, Brialy’s Emile. Told through the lens of what Godard has described as “the
idea of a musical” A Woman Is A Woman is both unlike anything the director had done prior, and the crowning achievement of what he has done in his post-Breathless career.

Lights, Camera, Action

From the very outset, the viewer is told that the film, like it’s main character, is wholly rooted in being self-conscious. The film itself plays with not only tropes of films within the medium, but ultimately with the audience as a whole. Not afraid to shatter the fourth wall, Godard almost, in a way, doesn’t believe that the fourth wall exists. Putting the words “Lights, Camera, Action,” at the start of the film plays more like a command than a proclamation. With a style both cinematic in its nature and also very verite, A Woman Is A Woman has a feel of something more along the lines of a Godard-directed documentary – as if the filmmaker, and more so the audience, is right there in the room with these
characters.

Personified in a pair of brief moments consisting of a panning camera and subtitles, the film feels narrative in many ways, but also has a distinctly verite feel to it, something rooted deeply in Godard films, prior and post (particularly in his later career, in a film like Le Gai Saviour, one of his most experimental). Almost as if we are privy to being on a set visit during the shooting of the film in many ways.

The Auteur’s Auteur

While that word may be tossed around like a baseball these days, the concept of being an auteur may not be better cinematically personified than within Godard, The French New Wave, and particularly A Woman Is A Woman.

Featuring various in-jokes from other New Wave features (I’m thinking of one particular joke mentioning Shoot The Piano Player), Godard in this film, maybe better than in any other piece of his canon, proves that he is to the world of cinema what Pop Art was to the classical art world. Taking various queues from films or entire genres, A Woman Is A Woman is stylistically wholly rooted in the style of Godard’s canon, and also conceptually inspired by specific portions of cinema. Taking these inspirations, one ultimately discovers (as proven in one particular scene between Belmondo and two sunglasses-wearing Breathless wannabes) that this director has taken his knowledge, and is now inspired by nothing more than himself. An auteur’s auteur.

A Musical Is A Musical

A Woman Is A Woman may not ultimately look, taste, or smell like a musical, but it is still very much exactly that. Inherently a whimsical and fully alive piece of comedic cinema, the film holds the same sentiments as any classical music from that era. Featuring charming performances from the full trio of actors, the film is ultimately the sweetest of Godard’s features. Not without its dark humor and social commentary, the film places those ideas on the back burner, focusing on bringing the viewer color, comedy through music (be it musical cues, or the like), and most importantly, a truly moving romantic triangle which ultimately has its story told through these musically tinged moments.

Oh, and a great score ultimately helps as well.

Featuring music penned by iconic composer Michel Legrand, the film may lack in moments of heartfelt singing or multi-person dance sequences, but what it does have is heart. Heart the likes only Godard could craft. Oozing this sense of melancholy, the film has a simple premise, but is ultimately told through a style not only influenced by musicals of years prior, but one that does away with the oft-cliché artifice, and sticks to the conceptual skeleton.

I Think I Exist

However, unlike much of the rest of Godard’s canon, a deep discussion is not ultimately what this film attempts to spark. While it does have a lot to say, particularly when it comes to women and womanhood as a whole, it’s also just a viscerally enjoyable film. Featuring a cavalcade of stunning shots, this is in many ways the director’s most interesting film visually and directorially. Also, while they may not be as transcendent or era-defining as some of the performances Godard would be given before or after, they are still absolutely enjoyable. Karina is a special kind of beautiful in A Woman Is A Woman, both in an aesthetic way, but also charismatically. The viewer truly can’t take their eyes off her, because of both her indescribable good looks, but also because she’s simply so damn charming. Both Belmondo and Brialy are equally as charming, but in a very Godard-ian, conceptually masculine way.

Overall, while he may be best known for a film like Breathless (a better film in my eyes) or A Band Of Outsiders, it’s A Woman Is A Woman that proves to be the director’s most distinct and singular. Admittedly, the film is currently out of print in its Criterion Collection form, but if you can hunt this sucker down, you truly should. A perfect combination of Godard’s style, passion for cinema, and thematic elements, A Woman Is A Woman is an in your face fever dream of a musical, that does away with the cartoonish aspects of the genre, and just gives the viewer something far more pure. Full of sweet sadness, the film is Godard at his most artistic; his most vibrant; his best.

When Josh Brunsting isn’t busy singing “Chanson d’Angela” or having silent lovers’ quarrels by obscuring book titles, he lends his insightful musings to CriterionCast and Gordon and the Whale. You can, and should, follow him on twitter @isavedlatin89.

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Welcome to Guest Author month at Criterion Files: a month devoted to important classic and contemporary bloggers. Each Wednesday for the month of April, a writer and fellow Criterion aficionado from another site will be giving their own take one one of the collection’s beloved titles. This week, David Blakeslee, writer for CriterionCast and Criterion Reflections, takes on Jean Painleve’s

With the attendant buzz and ephemeral fanfare that accompanies a new Criterion release now faded after nearly two years and 100 additional spine numbers, I think it’s safe to say that Science is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé is one of the most easily overlooked DVD sets in the Criterion Collection. Lacking anything in the way of sexy celebrity star power, built around the career of a director unfamiliar to most contemporary movie fans, and mainly because it’s relegated to the seemingly dry and stale category of “nature documentaries,” Science is Fiction probably doesn’t leap off the shelf into the hands of even the bravest blind-buyers. Who can blame them for simply concluding that Disney, National Geographic and the BBC’s Planet Earth and Life series, in all their Hi-Def 1080p glory,  have surpassed these primitive, mostly black & white curiosities? And yet, I think I can make the case that this impressive three-disc set is one of the most entertaining, versatile and rewatchable titles that Criterion has issued.

So that’s what I’m here to do.

Let’s start with the man himself. Jean Painlevé had a career and personal story as admirable as any director in the Criterion canon. Disc 3 of this set offers a nearly 3 hour mini-series of TV episodes that allow us to get to know him on a personal level. Born to privilege in Paris (his father served multiple terms as the Prime Minister of France), Painlevé came of age at a crucial time, as the Surrealist movement flourished in the 1920s. Though not a full-fledged Surrealist himself, his early films bear the marks of that influence, and he collaborated in various ways with Luis Bunuel (as “chief ant handler” in Un Chien Andalou), Antonin Artaud and Michel Simon, all really cool dudes that you should learn more about if you haven’t already.

His educational pursuits led him to explore medical and eventually zoological studies that, combined with his early fascination with the emerging medium of cinema, led him to become a significant pioneer in both disciplines. He developed camera equipment and filming techniques that allowed some of the earliest filmed explorations of underwater life, at both the everyday and the microscopic scale. An iconic photograph of Painlevé in his diving gear, wielding a massive apparatus that would subject many a lesser man to instant drowning or permanent back injury, captures the essence of this marvelously imaginative innovator.

But it’s not just the technical aspects, as impressive as they are, that make Painlevé such an essential figure; it’s what he did with the footage, how he presented to humanity some of the first impressions our species had on a mass scale of the extraordinary weirdness lurking in the waters all around us at every moment of every day. Disc 2 provides an exemplary collection of his more straightforward, educationally-based scientific films. In them, he demonstrates a solid capacity to make abstract concepts like dimensionality, time and distance accessible to a general audience. As an added bonus, we get some 1930s-era speculations about space exploration and an operatic clay animation of the French folktale Bluebeard. I tell ya, this set is loaded with surprises!

But the real treat, where I’m ending up but a first time viewer should start, is Disc 1, a career-spanning collection of the aquatic films for which he’s most famous. Here is where Painlevé’s marvelous combination of droll wit, benign confrontation and sheer visual poetics come to full their full fruition. Begin with a straight viewing of the films as they were first conceived, with Painlevé’s intended narrations, where we explore the mysteries of sea urchins, sea horses, vampire bats, liquid crystals and the love life of the octopus. Despite Painlevé’s serious efforts to advance scientific research, he is no dry pedagogue. Indeed, he’s a strong advocate for anthropomorphism, reading human emotions and motivations into animal behavior, usually with sardonic overtones. And he does so not by talking down to viewers in the cutesy manner we often associate with films about animals, but with a sophistication best appreciated by adults who’ve lived a little. The short video clip on Criterion’s Science is Fiction page, with its quip about “no officially sanctioned position” for octopus sex, offers just a brief sample of Painlevé’s willingness to engage viewers on a level they can relate to.

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the films on Disc 1 in their original versions, featuring the intriguing blend of narration and avant garde musical soundtracks (including jazz, popular tunes and noise collage) that Painlevé had in mind, an additional treat awaits. Indie rock legends Yo La Tengo provide an alternative suite of musical accompaniment to the first eight films on the disc, and it’s this sublime blend of sound and pictures that has made Science is Fiction my most frequently played disc of the nearly complete Criterion library that I own. I simply love putting it on as a sonic wallpaper when I’m doing other things, knowing that I’ll be surprised and delighted at  any moment I glance up to take notice of whatever output is emanating from my A/V system. Here, the lack of necessity for narrative engagement and the open invitation to just jump in the pool and splash around is too good to pass up. The deeply elemental nature of what Painlevé captures in his camera, combined with Yo La Tengo’s mastery of organic improvisational musical textures to accompany the visuals, always puts me into a pleasantly meditative, mildly transcendent state. More than a simple collection of fractal images or skillfully assembled polygons, the organic quality of Painlevé’s work, though reduced to 2-dimensional portability, renews my appreciation of the essential and astonishing wonderment that is life itself. I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask for much more than that from watching a movie.

Besides being a fan of pioneering nature documentaries and watching all the Criterion releases in chronological order, David Blakeslee is a featured writer and voice for CriterionCast and Criterion Reflections, and you can (and should) follow him on twitter @CriterionRefs.

Come up for air and read more Criterion Files

These Are My Top 5 Today

Ask me tomorrow, and the list would surely have Blue Velvet, Buñuel and something with Marcello Mastroianni in it.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Of my favorite quintessential LA movies (Chinatown and The Big Lebowski being the other two), this is the most underrated. It is also hands down my favorite Robert Altman picture. Elliot Gould is just terrific as Phillip Marlowe, navigating the usual noir obstacles while trying to clear his friend’s name of a murder he (hopefully) didn’t commit.

Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (1990)

I mean, what’s not to like: a plot that reads like a comedy version(!) of William Wyler’s The Collector (in truth, partial inspiration came from Wyler’s The Desperate Hours, but that’s another story), Almodovar’s uber-sexy fable has Antonio Banderas (with finely honed comic timing and a killer smile) freshly released from an insane asylum and on a beeline to kidnap recovering junkie pornstar Victoria Abril (in her sexiest role) until she can fall in love with him. Accused in the US of all sorts of political incorrectness and hit with a ridiculous NC-17 rating (thanks to a hilarious little plastic scuba diver swimming up against Victoria Abril in a bathtub), this movie amps up Almodovar’s Hollywood fetish (if Women On the Verge riffed on Preston Sturges, this one has great Hitchcock references and a score by Ennio Morricone) and manages to poke fun at tv commercials and musicals, all the while seducing us with two of the most winning star-crossed in recent memory.

Bedazzled (1967)

Not the Elizabeth Hurley remake, but the genius Stanley Donen original. I still don’t understand how the guy who directed Singin’ In the Rain (and one of my all-time-faves, Funny Face), ended up doing a Peter Cook-Dudley Moore Swinging 60s London comedy, but there you go. Featuring one of my favorite ever songs in a movie — the title track — sung hilariously by ultra suave Cook in his debonair rockstar persona, easily one-upping needy Dudley Moore with his “Love Me!” pop hit, this also includes a classic bit of comedy in a car where Dudley Moore and the girl of his dreams can’t quite bring themselves to have sex because of the horrible guilt they feel. Oh yes — and a scalding hot Raquel Welch as Lust in an over-marketed cameo that so threatened to derail the marketing campaign it prompted Cook to try and change the title of the movie to “Raquel Welch”.

Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

I could pick Le Samourai or Army Of Shadows just as easily, but every couple of years, the rumor pops up that this is being remade, and right now there’s a Liam Neeson project in preproduction, so I say — see the original before they destroy it. Melville made movies that were so freakin’ cool that even the French New Wavers couldn’t snub their noses at him (and French guys really know how to do that). This one is the culmination of all his themes — honor among men, fate, the minutia of crimework and policework (in short, all the things that Michael Mann often gets wrong and John Woo simply adorns with white doves and slo-mo) with impossibly cool Alain Delon in his best overcoat yet, masterminding a heist with a freshly-escaped convict and a recovering alcoholic ex-cop, played by the amazing Yves Montand. This character has maybe my favorite intro in any movie, so I won’t spoil it here, but it’s bizarre. Add to that a smart police inspector with three pet cats, sexy Paris clubs with choreographed numbers and a super tense (and unbearably silent) heist and you have a perfect movie.

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

I feel about this the way I feel about Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. It’s not cool to say it’s your favorite movie by that director, but this is the one I keep coming back to. Yes, I was obsessed with Brazil and saw it a million times, but Twelve Monkeys has a particular pull for me in that it works perfectly as sci fi, as poetry and as a woman-going-crazy movie. This last reading, watching the movie from Madeline Stowe’s POV, is my favorite version. She is so convincing as this buttoned-down scholar obsessing over Cassandra complex, that I just keep wanting more scenes with her. It’s redundant to say it’s the best overall work Bruce Willis has done — he is actually sweet(!) in this — and Brad Pitt is hilarious channeling Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now (among others). I also love what Christopher Plummer does with two simple words: Women. Psychiatrists. Man, I love this movie. Great tango-influenced score and awesome source music too. This goes in my can watch any time, any day pile (along with North By Northwest and Raiders).

Editor’s Note: This review comes to us from guest writer Aaron Turney who has written for several other publications and formed just as many bands.

By: Aaron Turney

Segovia famously denounced the idea of an electric guitar by likening it to a toaster. He despised the idea that such a beautiful instrument would be plugged in like a household appliance. But not many kids have posters of Segovia hung above their beds. They want to be Hendrix or Page with a wall of Marshall stacks flanking them on all sides. A Fender or a Gibson harnessed around their neck, slung low while tossing off musical acrobatics like “Stairway to Heaven,” a riff so famous many English music shops banned kids from playing it.

It Might Get Loud is a film for the bedroom dreamers and weekend warriors, a chance to see three of guitar rock’s finest players (by way of U2′s The Edge, Jimmy Page, and Jack White) on the same stage sharing licks, trading tips and talking about how they got to where they are. What are they going to impart to each other? Can the young guy teach the old dog new tricks? Will they all discover that they share a mutual love of crocheting?

You’re not going to get the Cliff’s Notes on being a guitar god from watching the film. There isn’t much instructional material for good reason. Who could teach Page anything? The Edge’s style is already so cemented that it’s not going to change. Jack White will probably start four new bands by the time you finish this review and won’t play guitar in any of them. But just because The Edge and White already have their own way of doing things doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate the classics. When Page stands in front of the two and starts strumming the opening lines to “Whole Lotta Love,” White and Edge both flash a damn-I-wish-I-had-written-that-riff grin – the same one they had in the bedroom at fourteen.

But these three did not get together to teach each other technique. Those looking for tips on how to speed up your right hand flat picking should pay for some music lessons. This film, like director Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 An Inconvenient Truth, takes what could be a plunge into tedious minutiae and focuses on the story so that your girlfriend that you dragged kicking and screaming into the theater like a Saturday afternoon at Guitar Center won’t dump you after the credits roll.

Guggenheim follows the timeline of the trio using archival footage as rare as film of Zeppelin’s first shows filmed for Scandinavian TV to a modern day U2 concert DVD that your dad probably got for Christmas last year. Some of the most revealing footage is of the guitarists’ stories of their first real instrument. Guggenheim takes each guitar and superimposes it against a black background, giving us a larger-than-life view of the instrument. The Edge discusses his beloved Gibson Explorer, Page his first Stratocaster, and White, an old Kay archtop given to him by his brother for helping moe a stove to his brother’s thrift store.

Despite solid interview spaces, one misstep in the film is Guggenheim’s choice of such an antiseptic location for the three to meet up. It’s a glorified airplane hangar with a small stage loaded with amps, guitars, sofas and a turntable. Instead of using tight shots trying to create an intimate feel in such a large space, he would have done well to have chosen a more intimate location, and perhaps one more historic like Sun Studios in Memphis – considered by many to be the birthplace of Rock ‘N’ Roll and the studio U2 used to record parts of “Rattle and Hum.”

The solo interviews are where the unguarded personality of each performer comes out. When Page rifles through a stack of old 45s and throws Link Wray’s “Rumble” on the record player, Page plays air guitar to the track, grinning like a little kid when the sound gets aggressive. The Edge breaks out a box of old cassette tapes, many unlabeled. What he discovers are demos for “Sunday Bloody Sunday” with Bono yelling out time signatures over the band as they build the track from the ground up. It’s these moments that make you see each of them in less guitar-godlike form. They are just teenagers trying to capture a sound or finish writing a four-minute pop song. The on-location shots of The Edge roaming his high school to find the first stage U2 performed on and Page’s guided tour of Headley Grange, the home the band used to record Led Zeppelin IV, offer us a much-needed inside look at the artist’s creative environments.

While the focus of the movie is clearly the instrument, it could be argued that technology is just as much a part of the story. Page is the pioneer of the instrument, and one of the first people to use the new distortion boxes in the mid-60s. By the time the Edge picks up a guitar there are dozens of pedals on the market and much cheaper than the first generation of effects boxes. In the first few minutes of the film the Edge doing his own version of yoga at his home in Dublin, his Blackberry outstretched at arms length. In his home studio he tinkers on his laptop with effects surrounding him. He is a geek for technology. You would be dreaming if you think there’s a cell phone in White’s suit pocket.

“Technology was a big destroyer of creativity in the 1980s,” Jack White says while driving his 50s style Cadillac around a Nashville suburb. When he plays his favorite song: an a cappella track by bluesman Son House, it’s as if his eyes quit working and shift all their energy to his ears. He’s transfixed by the track.

The technology that White claims hampered creativity was the thing that helped a Dublin youth who was pissed off at the spandex, hair spray and cocaine fueled 18-minute solos that ruled the airwaves create an alternative sound. But Page single-handedly invented the cocaine fueled 18-minute solo. It’s an interesting lineage to investigate, but it’s kept to the biographical parts of the film and away from the group meeting. Otherwise we might have actually seen the fistfight that White predicts before the trio meets in person

Unfortunately the awkwardness of the initial meeting carries through most of the film. The real value is in the independent interviews where the story can focus on the relationship between performer and his instrument. By the time the three perform the Band’s “The Weight” on acoustic guitars with the Edge and White taking lead vocals (Page insists he doesn’t sing), they have developed a level of comfort. As they play the song it feels as casual as a nighttime jam session around a campfire. Perhaps that’s because after talking about guitars for an hour and a half it’s more fun to just play.

Editor’s Note: Marcus Dunstan got his start with writing partner Patrick Melton when they won Project Greenlight for their original screenplay Feast. He continued on the dream career path co-writing Saw IV, Saw V, and the upcoming Saw VI. His directorial debut, The Collector, hit theaters on Friday, so we thought it would be fun to have Dunstan share his Top 5 Films with us. The parameters aren’t exactly defined, like most things here at FSR, so it’s unclear whether these are his Desert Island Movies, the five that most inspired him, or the five that simply hit him the hardest. Luckily, in his own words, Dunstan offers up what he calls…

The Five Films That Keep Comin’ Back

There are days made bad when a tire goes flat.

There are days made devastating with tragedy or when a loved one passes.

Then there is a particular kind of bad day that can only be categorized as a bizarre-bad day. A day so strangely bad that it is as if a little cosmic challenge tests one’s desire to stay on one path or pick another.

That sort of day happened for me six years ago when I sneezed and filled my pants working the late shift at Blockbuster Home Video only to find myself in light colored Khaki’s side-stepping the new release wall as I began to compromise the integrity of the room. A customer was locked in the sole bathroom for a mile…and I was seconds from giving up a layer of dignity that would never grow back.

I crouched in an aisle, my mind didn’t know whether to repeat curse words or say a prayer. My eyes pulled focus and I was face to face with my “Employee Picks” section. The titles I had selected now simultaneously mocked and described my current plight: Midnight Run, Frequency, Southern Comfort, HELP, and Open The Fucking Door Please, You Slow Bastard Patron…

I took off my Navy ‘Buster blouse and tried to wave away the cloud of sour air that was forming around me. The faces of customers began to shrivel. Oh lord…any mili-second they would know it was me…then CLICK! The restroom door opened, and I dove in, football-style.

I hid the destroyed boxers in a Subway sandwich sack and buried said sack at the bottom of a trash hamper. I finished the remaining five hours of the shift in a paper-towel diaper. On the drive home, the flu blessed me with the first streams of a thick, neon mucus that ran free from my nose like a rapids.

I took a look at was what left of myself in the rearview mirror and thought, “…Okay, if I can keep my double-chin up on a day like this…why not keep pushing and give this pursuit of the horror movie business one more year…?”

Fortunately, a visit from “luck” occurred in the subsequent year and today, I submit for any and all that care to see, my current Employee Picks…

1. Suspiria

I was 12. This was the first film I watched through my fingers. I had to sit very close to the old wood-encased Zenith TV for I watched it late a night as my family was sleeping twenty odd feet away. Sitting that close to Mr. Argento’s tale of witches in a ballet academy was a magnificent, all encompassing experience. The Goblin score shook-trembled the old wood floors beneath my pj’s and the bold colors washed over the blanket around my head like a Willy Wonka snuff film. I don’t know why I have such love for an experience so damn traumatizing…but that is how the cookie crumbled. Suspiria allowed horror to be beautiful. It allowed savage violence to be mesmerizing. For every tale a child could hear to keep them on the straight and narrow…Suspiria seemed to be that tale for the adult that wanted to be scared like a kid once more…What a gift!

2. Escape From New York

I have a friend with one eye, and the fact he has a sci-fi hero to look up to that is cooler than any Marvel concoction is a tribute to how dry-ice cool this film still is. It is built on a foundation of attitude and frustration and yet made with a discipline that is telling of every drop of sweat that went into it. The horror lover in me was thrilled when the crazies attacked Snake Plissken and he displayed…fear. An action hero meeting up with a force that the audience could find terrifying and the hero found terrifying as well was an ultimate thrill. Action films by and large have built heroes so indestructible and calm under pressure that the urgency of any plight is undercut. Kurt Russell’s version of a badass showed up with an organ missing, a chip on his shoulder and an adroit sense of when to cut and run. The smooth, gliding camera work of Dean Cundey is the silent stalker amongst the cast. The camera prowls and exposes vulnerabilities that Snake’s good eye may not even pick up. Escape From New York is caffeine for the eyes. It makes one grateful for two middle fingers.

3. John Carpenter’s The Thing

Yup. I watch this one about every six months to remind myself how horror and sci-fi should hang out more often and to never ever think there isn’t enough room for a powerful social metaphor in any film. I first saw this epic when I learned the hard way I was allergic to the pesticides sprayed on a local golf course. I was as swollen and immobile as the frozen victims of the Arctic Outpost and it was on this night…I learned it could be cool to grow a beard. However, I was 11 and that would have to wait another decade or so. Mr. Carpenter’s The Thing is the perfect answer to the “why do all these remakes?” question. For every twenty or so crappy re-do’s, a genuine triumph emerges. There is affection for the horror and a wondrous awe presented in the sci-fi elements of the tale. The performances are top-notch and the crisp whites and steel blues of the anamorphic cinematography add up to a magnificent experience. John Carpenter’s The Thing is the old friend that never let’s ya down.

4. Being There

Peter Sellers. Nuff said. This film is an inarguable classic, and so I won’t dare repeat what film historians have already written more eloquently. However, I will explain the lasting impact that this film had on my life. I was about to be rejected from the fifth film school I had applied to. All of my work was about horror, creatures, and backed up by KISS tunes. I had acne to boot and so dates were out of the question and yet horror movies were always there. My weekends were spent in the basement watching them again and again with my parents and sister. We bonded over the jumps and the cheesy mysteries. I didn’t read a lot beyond Stephen King and Fangoria. That was what I loved…and yet…apparently…it was holding me back from moving on in the eyes of academic world. On the last application I filled out for a college with a film program, I had to submit a review for a movie. It couldn’t be a horror movie, however. So, I watched Being There. The entire time my head was turning over itself thinking how great this movie was but my brain just didn’t think like that. My first nineteen years just didn’t shape that. And then the last line of the film comes up…”life is a state of mind.” I picked the pursuit of horror movies right then and there, damned what anyone else found proper, and never sent in the last application. With all the punches that can be hurled one’s way…it was a simple relief to see Peter Sellers walk on water and just roll with them.

5. TIE: The Crow and Slapshot

The Crow: In 1994 I remember painting my face up and driving out to the Coralville, Iowa 3 Plex to buy tickets for myself and buds to see this film opening night. I then found myself watching it another twenty-four times over the next couple of years. Over and over again this stark revenge tale sucked me in with a pulsating score & soundtrack that honored the graphic novel’s inspirations as much as the cinematography honored the novel’s panels. I knew I wasn’t the only one this film affected for on subsequent Halloween’s, no matter which University Of Iowa kegger one may attend, there were always a handful of ‘Crow’s’ quietly hanging out in a circle with filled red cups and bobbing their heads in unison. Every now and then a film anchors itself to a terrific feeling or a sense-memory which is far beyond the running time of a movie. It meant a lot to share a love for The Crow with buds, and it raised the bar for graphic novel adaptations to come.

Slapshot: George Roy Hill. Thank goodness I was too young when I saw most of Mr. Hill’s films. Slapshot was about as angry and violent a comedy ever was or has been. So many passionate people are genuinely “throw-the-chair” pissed at each other in this story and yet the film’s humility allows us to love their fight for an evening of dignity. I once heard of a psychiatrist that began to prescribe films for patients instead of drugs. I guess if I ran into the right kind of rough day, I know I could pop in Slapshot and watch a terrific assemblage of actors unleash a foul tirade, a lewd act, or a lovely high-sticking and just let that bad day wash away. Among the many magic acts a great film can accomplish is turning a blue a day bright. Slapshot is one of the very best feats of violent, humorous magic.

And that is all that is fit to report today, folks.

I think a person’s top five keeps changing as life keeps on changing. I noticed that I recently watched Crank 2: High Voltage three times in two days, and I’m eager to see it again.

It is definitely a film with an affinity for those lovely bizarre-bad days…

-Marcus Dunstan

A fan film, remake, spoofs… amateurs have been creating movies inspired by their favorite films for more than 40 years. Fan Films have existed since the 60s and the art of inspired shorts got a big boost from the recent movie Be Kind Rewind featuring Jack Black and Mos Def. In this movie the two go about “sweding”, recreating feature films and describing them as having come from Sweden. Whatever you want to call it, some of these amatuer works are as entertaining as their originals. Here are some great examples:

Tron

Back to the Future

Star Wars: A Cardboard Hope

Matrix Reloaded Lego

Jurassic Park

Lego Spiderman

Not Just Rough Cut Grainy Film… Recreating a 1,000 Extra Scene

How we 3 graphic designers created D-Day on a shoe string budget for the TIMEWATCH program “Bloody Omaha”…

MTV Movie Awards Honoring Amatuer Spoofs

This year MTV is making spoof videos a big part of the Movie Awards… they’ll even be giving a golden popcorn award to one of the winners. Speaking with an inside source, MTV will be building the 7 winning spoofs into the show… so not only will the celebrities in the audience get to see them so will the national  TV audience. Word is there haven’t been a ton of entries either, so this would be a good opportunity for some creative people to get on MTV.

8 Great Movie Trailer Recuts

And just for fun here are some clever and some very well done recuts of trailers to some popular movies…

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Sleepless In Seattle – Horror Movie

A Top Gun Love Story

Glen & Gary & Glen & Ross (NSFW Language)

Scary Mary Poppins

300 – PG Version

The Shining – A Romantic Comdey

Titanic: Two The Surface

Goonies of the Caribbean

School of Rock – Horror

Even more trailers recut at www.thetrailermash.com

Everyone has favorite television shows, but what everyone doesn’t know is that there are active online communities discussing those favorite shows! Yes, there are Wikipedia entries on most of these shows that will tell you some basic information but if you really want to get into your favorite shows, and especially if you want to interact with other like-minded television buffs and discuss these shows (as well as exchange conspiracy theories), you have to look elsewhere. Lucky for you we have compiled a list of Wikis covering some of the most popular television shows being aired today (in no particular order):

1. Lost

Fans of the hit TV show “Lost” will find all their prayers answered at Losttvfans.com. Complete with character descriptions, character back stories, and episode guides, fans new and old alike will find something to enjoy on this active, constantly maintained Wiki. Visitors will also find videos, quotes, and a discussion form to hash it out with other fans of the show. While anyone can view the Wiki, registration is required for anyone looking to participate in editing it.

2. Jericho

Fans of “Jericho” will find much of the same amenities at the Jericho Wiki. Whether you’re looking for plot summaries, ratings information, episode guides, or the cast, you can find it all here. In addition, registered users are invited to participate in an active discussion forum on all the ins and outs of their favorite show.

3. CSI

CSI fans just can’t get enough of the heart-pounding, edge of the seat thrills that CSI has to offer, and luckily for them, a fine Wiki has stepped in to fill the void! This CSI Wiki brings you everything from spoilers, character analysis, episode guides, pictures, videos, and discussion forums, ensuring that fans both casual and die-hard will find something enjoyable and satisfying. Registration is required to participate in the forum, but anyone is free to stop by and view the Wiki.

4. Heroes

Heroes fans are in for a treat if they visit HeroesWiki.ew.com. There, they will find all the Heroes-related content they could ever hope for, including the origins of the show, analysis of mythology and symbolism, character and episode guides, and a discussion forum. Registered users have the privelege of editing and participating in these areas, while non-registered users are still free to stop by and see what the site is all about.

5. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Fans of the Sarah Connor Chronicles will enjoy devouring all the juicy content available for them at this Wiki. Unlike some of the other Wikis, this one goes so far as to provide users access to the producer’s blog, where all kinds of inside insights and information about the inner workings of the show can be found. Additionally, the discussion forums, character guides, and episode information common to the other Wikis are here in full force.

6. Californication

If you find yourself yearning for more after every installment of Californication, this Wiki is what you have been looking for. Here you will find more information about the show’s characters, cast, plot, and episodes than common viewers ever care to theorize about. When you’re done with that, you can jump into one of the dozens of high-spirited conversations going on in the discussion forum, where other die-hard fans can be found. All in all, the Californication Wiki is a great resource for all fans of the show.

7. Dexter

Another popular Showtime show is Dexter, and its fans also have an excellent Wiki to turn to. The Dexter Wiki packs all the juicy rumors and Dexter-related content under the sun into one, easy-to-read location that fans can edit and have a voice in. Character guides, episode guides, ratings information, and discussion forums can all be found right here, and you can even get involved in editing them by registering for a free user account.

8. Weeds

When it comes to mature humor and heart-pounding action, Weeds has few peers in the TV world. Fortunately, there is a Wiki befitting of such a powerful show. Here, the show’s fans will find all the inside dirt about the character, plot, episodes, style, and families, as well as the opportunity to discuss it all with other passionate fans. If you’re unsatisfied with how the “general interest” sites cover Weeds, you should find that this Wiki does a far better job.

9. MythBusters

MythBusters is the kind of show whose fans especially benefit from having a Wiki. If you can’t remember a certain myth you saw but can’t wait to tell your friends about, this Wiki will be your best friend and ally. Here you will find blow-by-blow recaps and archives of every MythBusters episode, as well as inside information and behind the scenes peeks that you just wont find anywhere else. You can also register and have a voice in all of the content being posted.

Well, it seems that Comic Book Resources likes to be a credible news site and do research before posting any of the JLA rumors flying willy-nilly around the web.

In the site’s “Comic Reel Wrap” posted on Sept. 4 they say that the latest set of rumors originally posted by IESB and then by us here, have apparently been debunked.

It seems that a vigilante poster took power into his own hands and sent over a couple of false leads to IESB just to see what kind of rumors he could get onto the site.

This vigilante poster makes his comments on The Planet:

i got bored one night, was fed up with what obviously appeared as IESB posting complete B.S. about JLA (not to say that everything they’ve posted is BS), so i decided to put it to the test. i dont want to type the whole story again, so i’ll cut and paste what i posted at SHH!:

this recent “rumor” from IESB is complete and utter B.S., and i can say this with certaintly because im the one who fabricated the whole thing and mailed it in.

but this wasnt the only “email scoop” i sent them. and Robert Sanchez’s response and reaction to each email was very telling of IESB’s questionable tactics…..

Seems that the boy is none too fond of the way sites post all sorts of slapdash rumors posted on movie sites.

Hey, if anything good comes out of this it’s that this rumor more than likely this rumor from Film Junk is really, really not true, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

You would think that after four of anything, it would get old and stale. The fourth movie in the Die Hard series Live Free or Die Hard delivers from the first minute and doesn’t rely on old tag lines. Okay so there is one “Yippee-Kah-Yay”. But by the time he gets around to saying it, it’s more for old time sake.

No surprise the movie follows the same plot line as the previous releases. Terrorist are set on taking over the world and John McClane (Bruce Willis) is in the wrong place at the wrong time, just so he can save us all from a certain doom. Yes, his marriage is over and yes his daughter, Lucy McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), hates him. The plot is set in the present Post-911 era.

The movie is based on an article which appeared in the May 1997 Issue 5.05 of Weird Magazine A Farewell to Arms, written by John Carlin. This Pre-911 article states that the real threat from terrorist isn’t from a nuclear bomb, but is in the form of cyber-terrorism. If a terrorist organization can break into our infra structure they can bring us to a stand still in a matter of days.

John McClane must team up with a super hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long), who unknowingly wrote part of the code for the terrorist. Together they must track down the terrorist and stop them from turning the nation’s computers against us.

Unlike many sequels this film doesn’t require you to know the details of the characters life in the previous films. You don’t have to know who John McClane is or even what the article A Farewell to Arms is about. This script stands on its own. At times the action scenes are a bit over the top and really stretch your ability to not laugh out loud. At one point I thought I was watching Spiderman.

Overall I feel this is definitely a movie worth seeing. It was funny at parts and it kept you engaged. What the movie didn’t do was talk down to the audience. This may not be an instant mega block buster, but it will stand the test of time and do well in DVD sells.

The Upside: The film isn’t preachy. It’s nonstop from beginning to the end. You will not be board.

The Downside: Some of the stunts are a bit over the top. Some of the scenarios don’t add up to reality. But then again it is just a movie.

On the side: Justin Timberlake was in talks to play the role of John McClane’s son. Lets all thank the film gods for small favors.

They say all good things come to an end. After a series of successful cinematic adaptations of some comic classics (Batman Begins, Sin City, 300), Transformers definitely proves this old saying right. Michael Bay (Armageddon, The Island, Pearl Harbour) has a big contribution for this demise. He delivers in this movie his trademark action-driven directing style but clearly fails to grasp fine-art concepts such as plot depth, character development or precise editing timing.

The central plot involves the Autobots and their archenemies, the Decepticons bringing their robot war to Earth in search for a cube-shaped “All Spark” device which is powerful enough to create new robot life and destroy Earth in the process. The film starts when an American military base in Qatar is attacked by a mysterious and unknown enemy, the only survivors being Captain Lennox, played by Josh Duhamel (Turistas) and his team. Jon Voight (National Treasure, Pearl Harbour) plays the secretary of defense encharged of managing the situation. Shia LaBeouf (Disturbia) plays Sam, a pitiful L.A. high-school student and clich© character who offers Mikaela (Megan Fox from Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen) a ride in his first car, which incidentally turns out to be an autobot named Bumblebee, a character to whom Mark Ryan (The Prestige, Charlie’s Angels) lends is voice. After Sam being attacked by one of the Deceptions, Sam and Mikaela join forces with the Autobots, led by the legendary Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen (Winnie the Pooh) in the cast’s best voice performance), in an epic battle against the Deceptions under the commands of the menacing Hugo Weaving’s (The Lord of the Rings, V for Vendetta) Megatron.

After the somehow promising first 30 minutes, the movie starts to fall apart. The weak and unrealistic dialog is full of one-liners which seem target at a young adolescent audience. Transformers is an old and long series which has a relatively well developed story, full of ideas passible to be explored on a film. However, it quickly becomes clear that Mr. Bay wants to give us his interpretation of Transformers instead of continuing the storyline of the old animated series. The antagonism and strugle for power between Megatron and Starscream is a Transformers‘ strong plot driving mechanism, which has not been addressed at all in this film. The search for the “energon” resource was also left out and replaced by a never-heard-of-before “All Spark.” The original transformers where capable of deep emotional actions including, among others, treachery, loyalty, courage, cowardice. These ones seem more like ghetto guys, which hang around to help humans fight the battle against the Decepticons for them, instead of fighting it themselves. This makes the existence of the Autobots in this film almost superfluous and the whole point of the film dubious.

The film has major continuity and plot consistency flaws. For example, the opening scene, when an unidentified helicopter approaches an american military base, two jet fighters are sent to intercept it. In the next scene the helicopter calmly lands in the middle of the base without any further resistance nor explanation to what happened to the jet fighters. The editing style is also poor, confusing and erratic. At some times important scenes seem to have been completely left out, for example how Optimus Prime lost the final battle against Megatron.

Having plot holes, although undesirable, is somehow understandable in a feature movie. However, Transformers even has cinematic photography holes: a fight takes place during the day, when asked for backup from a military base it suddenly becomes sunset, and when the fighting jets come to help it’s daylight again! Extreme long shots and close ups are hard-cut into each other, in blatant violation of basic continuity rules, which could even be justified by the roughness of some of the battles, but ultimately just makes the viewer dizzy. All these distractions prevent even the most willingly viewer to achieve a state of suspension of disbelief and enter into the film. This film also borrows several scenes from other films like Batman, Terminator 3 (even Terminator’s leitmotif is there)!, Schindler’s List, etc. I’m sorry to point out the obvious to Mr. Bay, but it takes more than a cocktail of other film’s famous scenes in order to make a new successful film…

ILM’s loud aural and visual special effects is the only area where the film shows some spirit, with the robots displaying some contortionist skills in their unorthodox transformations. Unfortunately their shallow personality is also reflected in their uncharacterised visuals, making it difficult to distinguish between them: it is for example difficult during the final showdown to tell who’s winning or losing.

More than 20 years have now passed since the 1986 The Transformers: The Movie film and fans were rightfully waiting for a successful revival of the series in form of a good cinematic adaptation. However, Mr. Bay’s Transformers is a disappointment at almost all levels, except maybe for the special effects and is posed to enter the poll of the soon-to-be-forgotten films of Summer 07. Shallow plot, clich© characters, uninspired directing, unconvincing acting (Megan Fox topping the list) and Hollywood’s money making machine at its best.

Grade: C-

This movie has it all: controversy, powerful acting, nudity, and deaths that will have you wincing in pain. After a viewing of American History X, other than marveling over the powerhouse storyline, all you will be thinking is “What a performance,” by actor Edward Norton. To say this film is “good” is an immense understatement. True, it is heart-wrenching and disturbing, but will leave you in awe with one word in mind: WOW! This ranks up with those must-see-films that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Back in 1999, surprisingly, this film only received one Academy Award nomination for Edward Norton’s impacting performance as a Neo-Nazi skinhead named Derek Vinyard. It marked Whoopi Goldberg’s third time hosting the yearly spectacle full of glitz and glamour. The more noticeable films that got more praise and larger audiences were Shakespeare in Love with thirteen nominations, Saving Private Ryan with eleven nominations, and Life is Beautiful (Italian title: La vita ¨ bella) with seven nominations. That was a year that was full of surprises with Shakespeare in Love stealing the Best Picture award from the expected Saving Private Ryan and Roberto Benigni winning the coveted Best Actor award for his portrayal in “his” film Life Is Beautiful from the ever so popular Tom Hanks in the epic Saving Private Ryan. The show is a once a year event to see even if it did drag, this particular year, a shade passed the four-hour mark.

American History X was directed by Tony Kaye, written by David McKenna, produced by New Line Cinema, and stars Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Fairuza Balk, and Ethan Suplee. This film was made in 1998 and was given a solid “R” rating by the MPAA. The story follows a skinhead who is sent to prison for three years for murdering two black men who attempted to steal his truck. After being released he is completely reformed into a new human being, but returns home to find his younger brother is in the process of being a Neo Nazi himself. He now focuses his life on making sure his brother doesn’t follow a similar fate.

This film has so much depth, focusing on Edward Norton as the star skinhead and Edward Furlong playing his younger brother who looks up to him for guidance. Fairuza Balk, who got her breakthrough in the film The Craft, plays the dark and at times terrifying girlfriend of Norton’s Derek Vinyard. And finally, Ethan Suplee, from the hit series My Name is Earl, plays Vinyard’s overweight best friend, also a mean skinhead. I also extremely liked the use of black and white scenes to illustrate flashbacks and color for the present. The ensemble cast and chemistry of everyone works to a “T” and never ceases to amaze.

Norton’s portrayal of Derek Vinyard is the focus and power of this film. He fully transformed himself for this role, packing on some extra 30 pounds of muscle for the character’s intimidation, even though he bares a huge swastika tattoo on his chest. In the first part of the film he is buffed out and fully shows us what he is capable of, but by the second half he hides his noticeable strength beneath his clothes. Norton spends a good majority looking mean and harming those around him to hide how he truly feels on the inside. This film is not for the faint of heart and really digs deep and pulls our heart-strings as if it’s an emotional tug-of-war.

Would I recommend American History X? Well it is definitely not for kids. I wouldn’t even say it’s viewable to anyone under 21. It is a film that every adult should definitely see (except, of course, the faint of heart). The only thing I can compare it to is the controversy and power of Dead Man Walking and the performance Sean Penn gave in that film (another strong, powerful film that I would recommend).

David Lynch (Eraserhead, Mulholland Dr., Twin Peaks) is known for depicting in his films a singularly dark and disturbing view of reality, a nightmare world punctuated by defining moments of extreme violence, bizarre comedy and strange beauty. His films are set in small towns, with most scenes portrait as surreal, nightmarish and dreamlike sequences. Strange imagery in particular close-up, wide-angled-distorted faces and a meticulously crafted sound design are staples in his work. In Inland Empire Lynch gives us all of that and much more, in a unique experience which lasts around 3 hours but which will certainly stay in the audience’s mind much longer after living the theater.

It’s somehow common in this days to have movies with several endings. This time Lynch pushed the cinematographic art further by having a movie with several starts. The sinister black and white opening scene features a polish man and a prostitute with blurred out heads. It progresses into a living room of three rabbits, where a common world, almost non-sense dialog is being spoken over a soundtrack of sporadic laugh. A clear reference to the plotless Lynch’s Rabbits. After that what seems to be the plot’s main thread is introduced.

Laura Dern (Blue Velvet, Happy Endings) plays, in a typical Lynchian style, several roles including Nikki Grace, an actress which has had better days. She is cast as the lead in a romance called “On High in Blue Tomorrows.” Nikki’s butler answers the door to a creepy polish woman, played by Grace Zabriskie (Twin Peaks), claiming to be a new neighbor. Over coffee Nikki becomes alarmed when the woman tells her strange polish folk tales and seems to know too much about the film role she is in. Nikki asks the woman to leave, but she just keeps talking, telling her that if this were tomorrow, Nikki would be sitting ‘over there.’ Nikki looks and is horrified to see herself sitting on a different settee in her vast living room, and with her look Lynch transports us into tomorrow.

The film proceeds by showing how Nikki prepares for her dream role together with Devon (Justin Theroux; American Psycho, Mulholland Drive) in a film directed by the great Kingsley Stewart, a very good interpretation by Jeremy Irons (Lolita, Kingdom of Heaven). Only later are Nikki and Devon made aware of the project’s history: it is a remake of a previous movie, which doomed production ended as reality stepped into its fiction and the film’s onscreen/offscreen lovers were killed. From this moment on, Nikki’s reality begins to slip into that of her character and we are fully absorbed into Lynch’s universe where time twists and entangles over itself like an amorphous entity.

Particular attention should be given to the folk legend told by Nikki’s neighbor as it is the key to follow this point, as well as some of the twists which will follow, until one of the final scenes where Nikki sees the former polish actress.

In this film, Lynch continues the tradition of naming his projects after the location where they are set. Inland Empire‘s title works at a double level, referring to both Southern California (the location where the film takes place) and the self-conscious, or the “inland empire” of the mind. Lynch was also responsible for the editing and cinematography and opted for a yellowish sepia looking through out the movie. The movie is mostly filmed with an handheld camcorder in documentary style. This choice is normally justified when portraying real-life events, therefore in this movie it seems to be in counteract to Lynch’s dream world. But then again, this type of disjuncture seems to be one of the effects that Lynch wants to achieve in this movie.

Inland Empire presents themes on prostitution, movies, people good with animals, yesterday being tomorrow, brutal murder, marital infidelity, memory and identity. These themes are presented almost as sketches, in a apparently inconsistent way, where only the attentive viewer can devise some structure. It seems as if Lynch opted to have a foggy main plot thread, where specific scenes are enhanced by those sketches, in order to reinforce their meaning and emotions transmitted to the viewer, as if putting some flesh in a main skeleton. This chimeric scene structure also includes a critical commentary on sitcoms, where the most banal actions and dialog of three rabbits elicit a fervous laugh of an absent audience.

The music score, featuring original tracks by David Lynch, a track by Angelo Badalamenti (Mulholland Drive) as well as several pieces by polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, is consistently moody, creepy and atmospheric.

It will be hard for someone to find a deep meaning or symbolism in this movie. The blurry main story line is patched with what seems incoherent random scenes, which seem to be used to deliver different kinds of emotions to the viewer. Nevertheless, it is a movie of profound impact and gut wrenching moments. The best way to appreciate it might be to sit back and let Lynch show you a part of his mind. Strongly recommended for hard core Lynch fans which will definitely watch and study it more than once.

Inland Empire is set to be released on DVD on Summer 2007.

It’s like Rob Lowe or R. Kelly. I can’t really blame the guys for getting down and dirty with a trashy, little under-18 whore. Just don’t put it on tape, guys. Trust me, I never do.

When I heard the message Baldwin left for his daughter, I stood up and cheered. It is about time for some of the filthy-rich parental snobs in this town to be willing to lay the smack down on their trophy wives in training.

It’s unfortunate that a judge denied the chubby actor a chance to visit his daughter in the near future. I wish he had met up with her on 4/20 and straightened her ass out like he threatened to. Then maybe we wouldn’t have so many fucked up princesses roaming the streets of L.A. Maybe a little ass-whupping from Alec will help this girl deal with society, ’cause her ex-spank-material mom sure ain’t doing it for her.

In fact, she’s making it worse. Everyone whose praising Kim Basinger for being a great mom for leaking this tape to the media needs to get their head examined. They seem to forget the fact that this broad’s biggest claim to fame (aside from winning an Oscar in the biggest “What the fuck?” moment of movie history) is taking up the ass from Mickey Rouke in “9 1/2 Weeks.”

Basinger’s playing games with the courts and with the media. The judge should strip her of her parental rights instead of Baldwin, who seems to be the only one in Hollywood willing to discipline his thoughtless little pig of a child.

And stop fucking apologizing! I’m sick of people apologizing, like it makes it all better. Trust me, when I told my first wife I was sorry for plowing her sister after a night of binge drinking, it didn’t make one damn bit of difference.

No matter how much Michael Richards apologizes, we all still know he’s a racist sonafabitch. No matter how much Mel Gibson apologizes, we all still know he’s about as much a Jew-lover as Heinrich Himmler was. And no matter how much Don Imus apologizes, we all still know he’s a douche bag. (See my previous article “The Top 10 Nappy Headed Hoes of Hollywood” for more on this issue.)

Look, like that skeletal nut-job Don Imus, Alec Baldwin is a douche bag too. He’s been a douche bag for years. In fact, he’s one of the few people in Hollywood who is actually somewhat proud to be a douche bag. Does it surprise anyone that he’s a douche bag to his own kid?

Bring on the pain, Alec! Bring on the pain.