I had a nicely whiny editorial all written, about the ineptness of PayPal and AOL – but then I thought, “You don’t need to hear me complaining about life again”. So, here’s guest columnist Emily Fata to complain about life instead…
A little background first. She has been after us to buy her a cellphone for a while. Precisely why she needs one – apart from the obvious one that ‘all her friends have one’ (a fact open to some dispute, actually) – has yet to be established. But we said that if she worked to pay for it (two hours, twice a week – and work is a loose term, encompassing whining, moaning and complaining about work as well as actually productive and gainful employment), she could have it.
This, however, proved too much for her to cope with – particularly when put alongside shopping at the mall, hanging out with her friends, and so on. The following was received by Chris and I as her letter of resignation – we feel sure she has a great future in front of her, perhaps as a trial lawyer, a diplomat or an enforcer for a loan-shark, guilt-tripping debtors into paying up… Who’d be a parent? 🙂
Another year draws to a close, and so while there may be no obelisks on the Moon, that does mean it’s time to inflict another top 10 list on you. I make no claim to have seen every film released during the year, so this is obviously not going to be comprehensive…but I strongly suspect that few of those I didn’t see, would have a snowball’s chance of making it onto here. This is the major benefit of being a non-professional critic – I don’t need to sit through the dreck.
Mind you, even allowing for an informed selection, there were still a number of films which were endured rather than enjoyed. This was particularly true of the multiplex where, especially in the first half of the year, it seemed that the wider the release, the suckier the movie. Comparing it to last year, where even the Oscars showed more taste than usual, it was pretty depressing, and I make no apologies for the fact that you probably haven’t heard of half the films in the list, never mind seeing them.
The sad fact is, the odds are that I probably won’t get to see a number of them again either. Five of the ten were seen at film festivals, and only one has actually managed to acquire any kind of distribution since. The advent of digital video has only added weight to the argument which says that anyone can make a movie – but getting it seen by the rest of the population remains a nightmare. It’s possible that with the Internet, distribution will become possible, but the slow growth of broadband, and the problems of getting paid, remain tricky curves on that road. However, for one film on the list, the Internet is the main source of income and sales, pending a general distribution agreement, and this might point the way forward.
The Internet also allowed us to see films I didn’t want to actually pay to see, and it was refreshing to discover that my critical faculties were as sharp as ever. The worst movie of the year goes to Rush Hour 2, for being not just dull, but actively aggravating, with Chris Tucker a fabulous poster child for the KKK. The most over-rated film of the year also reached us down the cable modem: Shrek, a painfully obvious and startlingly unoriginal (oh, look – a Matrix parody) mish-mash of fairy tales and political correctness. Can anyone explain its appeal?
Disappointments came in the form of the two computer game films, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy. Spots for both were being polished up in the top 10, but neither of them remembered that no matter how good you look, you still need a storyline to hang your imagery off. I still like both films, but neither came up to my expectations and hopes.
Onto the brighter side. It was a delight to see both Iron Monkey and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust on the big screen – if the former was really a 2001 movie, it would have been in the top 10, and we can only hope for more of the same in 2002. The re-release of Holy Grail was just what was needed after the events of Sept.11, while Ben Kingsley (or Sir Ben as we must now call him) provided perhaps the most memorable performance of the year in Sexy Beast.
Things also perked up considerably towards the end of the year, with a couple of reasons to make you want to go back to the cinema and eat popcorn. Say what you like, Harry Potter proved you don’t need big American stars to make an engaging film, when you’ve got a good source…and the author hovering over you a hawk! And so, without further ado, here are the top 10 in reverse order, based on the ratings given at the time (more or less!):
#10 – Ginger Snaps. This one just scraped in, displacing Snatch after a watch-off determined it to be the best lycanthrope film since American Werewolf, combining black humour and a good old-fashioned monster movie to great effect.
#9 – 90 Miles. A genuinely touching documentary depicting the life of one man, and his return to his native land. We liked it so much, Chris subsequently worked tirelessly to bring the film and its director to Phoenix – and its impact on me was not much less.
#8 – Revolution #9. An excellent recreation of one man’s descent into paranoia and madness, highlighted by an amazing performance from Michael Risley. He manages to make you feel both sympathetic for, and scared of him, at the same time.
#7 – Cradle of Fear. You’ll be hearing more about this one shortly, but in a year when the peak of horror was Anthony Hopkins eating brains, this was a fabulous breath of foul, blood-spattered and morally upstanding air which made me proud to be British. Pass the six-pack!
#6 – Memento. Undoubted winner of any best script award, this demanded more attention when watching it than any other movie. Beautifully precise, this demands immediate repeat viewing, and will hopefully be just as solid next time.
#5 – Boys From Madrid. A road-movie that gradually slides into a quest for redemption, before an ultimate revelation that makes for the most disturbing viewing of the year. I need a shower just remembering it.
#4 – Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (left). Who’d have thought that the man would go from splatter movies to the most beloved book of the century? And do so almost faultlessly, too, recreating Middle Earth and all its inhabitants to perfection. $300m well spent.
#3 – Versus. Possessing more raw energy and invention than any other movie, this one kept a smile on our faces for two solid hours. We laughed, we cheered, we said, “Fuck me! Rewind that!” A tiny budget, yet full of vim and vigour; this is what cinema is about.
#2 – Monsters Inc.. Call me a softie. Call me a sap. But you know what – I don’t care. This was the only film we paid to see twice at the cinema, and we loved every minute of it on both occasions. Fabulous story, fabulous characters, flawless execution, and perfect timing, both comedic and dramatic.
#1 – Ever Since the World Ended. You know a film is obscure when a Google search for the title has the TC review as the first entry. Regardless, it’s a great twist on the pseudo-documentary entry, and is both spooky and eerily plausible. If ever a movie deserved broader circulation, this is it – ‘cos if nothing else, I want to see it for a second time…
As well as a time for giving and receiving presents, Christmas is also about thinking of those less fortunate, who might not be able to take part in the whole gift-exchange thing. But personally, I can’t help thinking how lucky they are, because they avoid the worst thing about Christmas – having to wrap the goddamn things.
I’m firmly with Dave Barry on this. He pointed out that the Bible wrote about gold, frankincense and myrrh, without mentioning wrapping paper anywhere. This tells us two things about the people giving the gift: a) they were wise, and b) they were men. The desire to wrap seems an almost entirely feminine trait, and the point of it largely escapes me; an extra few seconds delay before you know what it is is hardly going to make a difference. And no matter how nicely tied up with ribbon they are, handkerchiefs are still handkerchiefs.
Present-wrapping is thus one of the things I do out of a sense of traditional obligation and, to be honest, it shows. My parcels tend, like The Force, to have a light side and a dark side. From the front, all appears calm and smooth, but turn them over to reveal a nightmarish mess of multiple applications of sticky tape, gobbets of wrapping paper and blood-spatters (I can never work those sticky-tape dispensers at the best of times, no matter while one hand is holding down two recalcitrant flaps of spring-propelled festive greetings).
And that’s a best case scenario, where the present in question is relatively Euclidean. Books, DVDs and CDs are fine, but step outside those and you enter a topological nightmare of n-Space where it’ll take longer to wrap an object than it did to find it, buy it and bring it home in the first place. Just as many objects can be deformed into the same basic shape, so all presents will end up looking like a burst football run over by a Chieftain tank, if you apply enough wrapping paper. Mind you, we men do consider things like Klingon battle daggers fine presents to give and receive, if not perhaps to wrap. We only have ourselves to blame in such cases.
This is where gift-wrapping services come in, and it’s no surprise that the only present of mine which looks half-decent is the one that was wrapped in store. A younger, more innocent version of me once walked into a shop that offered such a perk, only to be sadly disappointed when told that, no, you actually had to buy the item there. This seemed terribly unfair, and ever since, it has been my dream to find a store in the mall that doesn’t just sell wrapping paper and Sellotape, they also install it for you. If it’s good enough for household appliances and car parts, it should be good enough for Christmas presents.
Alternatively, there’s an awful lot of money to be made out of duct tape with a festive theme – just wrap it around the present until it’s completely covered, and there you are, all ready to place under the tree. But failing that, I guess I’ll just have to wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to men, like everyone else. May you all have a happy festive season, and get whatever you want – nicely wrapped or not!
There’s a website, Jump the Shark, which is devoted to trying to pinpoint the moment when once-great TV shows “lost it” e.g. the musical episode in Buffy, the arrival of Joxer in Xena. It’s not, however, a concept limited to television. We’re all familiar with film-makers, on both side of the camera, who appear on the scene in a blaze of glory early in their careers, a shooting-star soaring across the firmament, only to crash and burn in an equally meteoric way, reduced to churning out a steadily-decreasing standard of dreck.
But why is the horror genre so particularly blessed with these? It seems to suck the very life out of directors, to the extent that I can think of only one who has maintained genuine quality in his work for more than a few years: David Cronenberg. Let’s take a look at a few particularly fallen angels, and see if we can find when they jumped their sharks. For assistance, we call on the surveys in the Internet Movie Database, whose users are able to rate movies on a scale from one to ten…
Exhibit A in any such discussion must be John Carpenter. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, he showed near-genius level talent, first with Halloween and then The Thing, which both remain classics even now – rarely has the slasher movie or alien invasion pic respectively been done to such good effect.
My hypothesis is this: at some point on the set of Christine, Carpenter was kidnapped by aliens and replaced by an almost-identical double. The only way to tell them apart, is that the clone lacks any artistic talent – the theme of extra-terrestrials which look just like us is a familiar one in his work, perhaps a subtle clue to those viewers able to pick up on it. The real Carpenter is probably making TV commercials on Alpha Centauri.
Next up is Tobe Hooper – you know your career is a bust, when you’ve made ten films, and Lifeforce gets a place on the podium (hey, I like it, but it’s not one of those I could defend to anyone else). If Hooper ever possessed any ability, it appears to have evaporated completely in the past decade – the last movie Hooper directed whose score reached the dizzy heights of, say, 4.0, was way back in 1989.
There is one bump on the steady road towards TVMs and video-premierdom: Poltergeist, the highest-rated film of Hooper’s career. Or it would be, if the authorship of Poltergeist wasn’t severely in doubt. Much evidence points towards Steven Spielberg, who conceived, co-wrote and produced it, as well as allegedly taking over all post-production. Producer Frank Marshall has said Spielberg was on set constantly and would step in when Hooper was indecisive, and it seems likely Hooper was hired to act as an ‘Alan Smithee’, allowing Spielberg to sidestep around a clause in his E.T. contract.
With a big warning * beside Poltergeist, it really leaves only Texas Chainsaw Massacre worthy of note. The presence of much actual directorial talent here is also questionable: looking at the subsequent filmographies of pretty much everyone involved, it seems like one of those happy coincidences, where the resulting product exceeded the talents of most of those involved. [See also Miracle Mile, Enter the Dragon and Heathers] Hooper was simply in the right place at the right time, and has been living off those pickings for more than 25 years.
Finally, a trickier example: Dario Argento. Looking at his graph, we first see an increase, through his early 80’s work, and only then a drop off. As you’d expect from a man who illustrates well the thin line between genius and lunacy (often managing both in the same movie), it’s harder to pinpoint one specific production when he lost it. At first glance, after Deep Red would appear to be the obvious choice, but you’d be hard pushed to justify calling his ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy, whose average sits above 7.0, as the work of someone past his prime.
Personally, I would pin-point the moment, not just to a film, but to the end of Opera, which is so utterly laughable and ludicrous (yes, policemen routinely mistake tailor’s dummies for corpses), it was clear that Argento had blown his talent. Once we get past that film, however, it’s clear that something happened – too much drugs, according to some reports. Being fair, we can’t blame him entirely for The Dark Half, since there’s no way for IMDB voters to separate his portion from Romero’s. But Trauma, his subsequent solo project, was hardly any better, and after a brief upshot for Stendhal, he was back down, almost to Tobe Hooper levels, for Phantom of the Opera.
However, a miracle would appear to have occurred this year, with Sleepless bucking the trend to rate a full two points higher than his previous movie – a turnaround not seen for Carpenter or Hooper. However, caution would be urged, not least because the film hasn’t had an American release, so as far as IMDB voters go, I suspect it has been seen largely by (the few remaining) sad Argento fanboys. The jury will therefore remain out on that one, and a final staking of a former great talent is on hold pending the TC review…
Does this “prove” anything? Not really. But it seems that the point at which directors jump the shark is likely to be around the time that their movies are worse than their debuts. This makes sense, in that you would expect someone to get better with experience – and also, budgets will probably also be bigger, improving the technical aspects. If later movies are no improvement over your first, than clearly something pretty questionable is going on with your career.
The pre-festive rush is in full swing, dammit. If I used to be jaundiced before about the whole “Spirit of Christmas” thing before I leapt over the counter, as it were, I’m much worse now. Among our customers, the score is roughly ten to one in favour of “Can you ship this yesterday?” over “Merry Christmas!” or any other expression involving peace on earth, goodwill to men, and other topics unconnected to express delivery.
There is also supposed to be a recession on, but I can’t say that Chris and I have noticed. In three days after Thanksgiving, we did more business than in the whole month of March, which is gratifying, but leads to much collapsing into bed at 11pm, groaning slightly at the prospect of the same again tomorrow. It’s probably safe to say that our level of customer service has suffered a little; we now insist that people use the online site to order, except in special circumstances (“I don’t have a computer” is no longer deemed special enough), and briefly toyed with the idea of replacing our voice mail message with 30 seconds of Chris laughing hysterically.
While on the subject of online shopping, I’ve been avoiding the hassles of stores and malls this year. Or at least, exchanging those hassles for the different ones provided by the Internet. Rather too many companies have realised that while a million monkeys banging away at typewriters may take some millenia to produce Shakespeare, they’ll create an online shopping experience in no time at all. Certain large, three-letter acronymed companies (names kept secret until December 25th, for obvious reasons) prompt for input of data, then three screens later, gleefully inform you that you missed a field out. It’s less shopping, than an online game of Snakes and Ladders.
Back at Trash City, we finally abandoned the late afternoon rush to the Post Office, in favour of an early-morning one. There are several benefits to this: not only is it quieter, you also get the advantage of Post Office employees who may occasionally smile, since they have not had their heads bitten off for eight hours straight. It always struck me as odd that those who “went postal” tended to shoot other employees rather than customers… [This week’s useless fact: the term “going postal” originated after Patrick Sherrill, a part-time postman in Oklahoma, killed 14 people in the post office before taking his own life.]
On the other hand, you miss the 5pm lock-in; it was always amusing to be there when they lock the doors, and watch the 5:01 pm customers bouncing off like frustrated lemmings. They’d plead with the guardian to let them in, but he was relentless – awesome to watch, he could have become a bouncer at any swanky nightclub. “Sorry, mate, you’re not coming in.” Those of us inside chortle merrily away to ourselves, even though it is surely only a matter of time before a bad set of traffic lights condemns us to the same fate. Another reason to go early, perhaps.
But we cope, and meanwhile continue in the ceaseless battle to stop our icicle lights from falling off the roof, sending our offspring up there to apply ever more adhesive tape. For, after all, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
