The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men….

There are few things worse than failure, but here we are.  I said I’d do 25 movies in 25 straight days, but the weather, professional commitments and personal issues will prevent me from doing any this coming week.  So there goes the whole “in consecutive days” thing.  I will fill up all of January with reviews, however, as some sort of way to make face.  I doubt anyone will be too offended by this, except, of course, myself.

To 2011 we go.

Die Hard: The Best Christmas Movie Ever

The worst part about Christmas are the Christmas movies.  What an insufferable sub-genre of “tasteless crap” they are.  Some are too saccharine, littered with little kids learning lessons or using some stupid magic that makes them realize that the REAL gift is blah blah blah.  Others are just incredibly stupid and use the CUH-RAAAAAZINESSSSS of the holiday season as fodder for shots to the dick and dinner-making mishaps.  There are even some movies about Hanukkah, which totally misses the mark.  No one makes movies about what Christmas is truly about.  Jesus, born in a manger to a deserving and loving family, would eventually become the man who would one day sacrifice himself for the good of others.  His message is that love can conquer any obstacle.  And that is why Die Hard is the best Christmas movie ever made.

The Intelligence in Shadow of a Doubt

We have a rather definitive view of what an Alfred Hitchcock film should be:  tense, filled with intrigue, murder, and suspense, probably involving a train, possibly involving a case of mistaken identity, and the very rare battle over a national monument.  Enter Shadow of a Doubt, the 1943 film set in the Californian suburban sprawl.  It’s Hitchcock’s favorite film, which is funny since it contains few of the trappings of a typical “Hitchockian” movie.  Sure, there’s suspense and murder and great camera work and editing.  But he also mines sociology, striking on something that would not be explored in pop culture until Rebel Without A Cause.  Hitchcock gives America a peek into the most covert, intelligent, and dangerous creature roaming the country:  the common teenager.

The Importance of Appearances in The Incredibles

Super heroes deal more with their appearance about as much as they do with criminals.  Without glasses and a suit, Superman would never be able to take some time off.  If Bruce Wayne didn’t have the batsuit, he’d be a good-hearted schmuck with a fresh shotgun wound in the chest.  Walter Kovacs without a trench coat and spotted mask is just a kook walking around New York carrying a placard that announces “The End Is Near.”  Kick-Ass simply doesn’t want to look like a tool.  I would not call them vain, but I also wouldn’t want any of them to rough me up (fictional or not, I like to cover my ass).

The Reality of Knocked Up

Judd Apatow has risen to the top of the comedy writing/directing heap, and it’s not hard to see why.  Many directors of lesser films–and especially of lesser romantic comedies–unfairly stack the cards against a character, and, with it, directs the audience’s sympathy.  Oh, he’s an asshole because he just doesn’t understand how to connect since his father left him as a child!  Why can’t she realize that her job is holding her back from true happiness!?  This sort of “alack!” and “woe!” all around is fairly simple to rectify.  Do this or say that in the rain and you’ll be granted happiness and love and all that happy, sun-shiney bullshit.

Of course, none of this is real.  Actual relationships with actual problems also come with actual complications.  But I guess one doesn’t see When In Rome because you want to grapple with human frailty.  You go because you really like Kristen Bell and hope against hope that things will work out for her, which is great since you know already that she will; it’s written all over the poster.  Knocked Up goes against that idea by constantly  mucking up the black-and-white set-up of most romantic comedies by throwing a big bucket of gray paint at the screen and letting you sort your feelings out.

The All-Or-Nothing Stakes of Black Swan

We always marvel at the pursuit of perfection.  To see someone get a perfect score in gymnastics or to go an entire season without losing is literally a super-human effort.  We believe these sorts of people to be born into this ideal, destined to greatness.  The results are clear, but the way they were attained is muddled.  What we don’t see is how truly insane the drive and commitment of a person must be to achieve a goal that is impossible; to err is what makes us human after all.  This insanity is the focus of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, a cautionary tale tries to remind us how waxen our wings are.

Announcing 25 Moves in 25 Days

Ho ho ho.  To show just how serious I am about this whole “only TV and Movies thing” (outside of memoir-esque essays and podcasts, natch), I’m going to dedicate the next five weeks of programming to a new movie essay every day.  Just so we’re all on the same page, there won’t be any “new” movies; everything will be available on DVD or Blu-Ray and, if you’re lucky!, streaming somewhere on the internets.  Monday through Thursday will be pretty basic, well-known fare.  Friday will delve a bit deeper into my film school vault to hopefully expose you guys to some stuff you’ve never seen before.  Don’t worry, it’ll be more Seven Samurai than Kanal (which is really fucking excellent).

So come on by Monday for the first film in the series.  Should be good.

(Don’t take that as a guarantee)

The banners for the project have been lovingly donated by my pal Matt Lubchansky. Read his great web comic The Adam! and follow him on twitter.

I’d do ’bout anything to get the hell out alive: Rivers Cuomo and Dancing with Who Brought You

Ed. Note:  Remember that whole “I’m only going to write about movies and TV” thing?  Well, that embargo doesn’t account for my friends.  Here is Puck Daddy and The Two-Line Pass‘s own Ryan Lambert’s review of Weezer’s concert in Boston last night, and his thoughts of the Memories tour in whole:

They played the songs in a detached-but-slavishly-faithful sort of way, with one exception. In the middle of the second set’s eighth song, “In the Garage.” In it, Weezer frontman/mastermind/arguable-band-ruiner Rivers Cuomo made one slight shift in inflection, putting a little extra oomph behind the word “stupid.” As in, “I sing these stupid songs.”

And that’s really all you need to know about Weezer’s Memories tour.

Programming Changes

I come to you folks at a crossroads.  No, no, that sounds dire.  Rather, we’ve come to an end of the preliminary round of “I’ll Never Get Tired Of….”  It’s been four months and seventy-five posts since this introductory post, which seems like an ideal time to re-evaluate this space.  The original theory was that I would write every day in an effort to share with you–my dear, loving audience–some of the long-lasting loves of my life.  That has taken the form of movies, trailers, albums, viral videos, how truly shitty Ke$ha is (parts 1 and 2), and the bizarre things one finds at their Grandma’s house.  And it’s been all well and good, I guess.  But the time has come to…focus.

Fiscal Responsibility

It’s hard for us to be rational about Derek Jeter.  By “us” I don’t exclusively mean just Yankee fans, either.  The New York media (coupled with a healthy heaping of ESPN) has gone above and beyond, making Jeter into a paragon of all things good and holy on the diamond and off, while simultaneously driving every Yankee hater to put him in the same category as Stalin (thereby making A-Rod a natural Trotsky).

Opinion on him has become as polarized as a debate on national health care.  The people who defend him go over the top because the detractors are so wildly irrational.  This cycle builds and builds until we can’t separate the legend from the facts.  Somehow, he is “one of the greatest Yankees of all time” and the “most overrated player in the history of baseball” at the same time.  In the middle of that stark dichotomy sits Jeter, the 37-year-old shortstop, a character we seemingly know nothing about.