"Think peace and and you'll get it. It's up to the people...If we really wanna change it, we can change it." -John Lennon

That quote is copied from the press kit for the Oscar nominated animated short film I Met the Walrus and hits upon a trifecta of my current interests.

The first being that reality is manufactured by the words in our pens and the thoughts in our head. Take responsibility.

Second, the Oscar nominated short films, live action and animated, are top notch. I continue to believe that the French, and French Canadians, are doing the most innovative animation work (Triplets of Belleville, Renaissance, Madame Tutli-Putli and Even Pigeons Go to Heaven all come to mind). Now if they just had the writing of Pixar.

The third is this nonsense about Barack Obama plagiarizing his speeches. Change, or at least the promise of change, has been a major theme of many political leaders. I don't know how Senator Obama could speak about change in a clear and direct way without building on the tradition of leaders before him. A far more dangerous idea is to demand that political leaders constantly dance around their ideas and relinquish any ability to speak plainly and directly.

The Asian Film Festival of Dallas 2007 had its opening night tonight. Justin Lin's new movie Finishing the Game was the opener. It is sort of a fake documentary about an attempt to finish Bruce Lee's last movie Game of Death. You can catch the Fist of Führer spoof from the movie on youtube. Sung Kang and Roger Fan are the stars but it has cameos from Ron Jeremy, George Takei, MC Hammer, and James Franco.

Beyond the reverence they have for Bruce Lee its clear that Eric Byler's movies or James Hou's documentary Masters of the Pillow are part of the subtext. Unlike those filmmakers who focus on subverting Asian stereotypes Lin chooses to leverage them as humor in the subtext. Sung Kang's character being cast in a "European" (porn) movie seems like a light jab at Dr. Darrell Hamamoto making porn movies with an Asian male lead to repair the Asian male's self-image. I had most recently seen Sung Kang in The Motel where he gives an outstanding performance.

I sprung for the VIP pass this year so I plan to hit a lot more movies. As usual the programming really looks top notch.

King of Kong came out this weekend and will be gradually hitting more cities. I saw this movie back in March at the AFI Dallas Film Festival and have been excited about its release ever since. It's about the fight between two guys to be Donkey Kong world champion. I have been trying my hardest to get people to make this one of the five movies they see in the theater this year.

I suppose there is a formula to documentary filmmaking where you find a subculture, look for some kind of competitive angle and then film it to its conclusion. Okie Noodling did this with people who catch catfish using their fists. Pucker Up! did this for competitive whistling. There are a number of them that involve word games: spelling, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, etc. But some of those documentaries ignore the path blazed by earlier subculture documentaries like Crumb. A lot of what makes Crumb work is the interpersonal dynamics, not any competitive drive to be the best underground comic creator. You can even see the same structure at work in a narrative movie like Little Miss Sunshine.

Which is why I so thoroughly enjoyed in King of Kong. It captures the competition and the interpersonal relationships. It covers Billy and Steve's relationships with the people around them, beyond just what they think of their gaming skills. The filmmaker does an excellent job getting these people to talk like the camera isn't there. While that might make a good documentary it wouldn't be half as entertaining without Billy's outsized persona. He wears ties with the US flag on them. He talks about himself in the third person. He frames the passion of competitive gaming in terms of the abortion debate. At times the feud is so big I felt like I was watching the Trojan War unfold. Billy is the unbeatable Achilles and Steve is the reluctant warrior Hector. It's also edited together very well to keep the story twisting and pumping along to the showdown.

Afterwards you can ruminate on the allegorical examination of American culture, aging male nostalgia for childhood, absolute truth and how to find happiness in a culture that says happiness is reserved for children. But while you're watching, and for the 10-15 minutes immediately after its over, you'll feel excited, amused, and charmed in a way that you haven't been most of the year.

I was watching Harakiri tonight when I got my million dollar TV series idea: "So You Think You're a Samurai Warrior?"

I just caught the pre-code Stanwyck film Baby Face (1933). Turner has put out a DVD with both the censored and uncensored versions on it. I am thoroughly impressed. It's a melodrama but with a good story that was hacked up by the Hayes code for the theatrical release. It's fascinating to watch both versions and see what changes the censors wanted.

Stanwyck plays a woman who has been prostituted by her father since she was 14. After her father is killed in an accident she decides to go to New York and use her feminine assets to climb the corporate ladder and exploit weakness in men for her own material gain. If you've seen the recent French film Secret Things you've seen a watered down version of this story that plays up the sexuality, and creates an overt sexual relationship between the two women.

First off I was completely taken by surprise with the Nietzsche quotes. Mention of Nietzsche is absent from the censored version. After her father dies she goes to a German friend of hers to tell him she's got some dead-end job prospects in Erie, PA. He is upset that she would ignore her potential and not go to a big city. He starts telling her about Nietzsche's "Will to Power" (the shot of the book is absent from the censored version). But the dialogue gets butchered even more.

The following lines are cut from the theatrical release

But you must use men, not let them use you.

Look. Here. Nietzsche says: All life, no matter how we idealize it is nothing more, nor less, than exploitation.

They changed this

Use men. Be Strong! Defiant! Use men to get the things you want!

into

Be clean, be strong, defiant and you will be a success.

The censored version completely cuts out the idea that she is the stronger sex and that men can be molded to her needs. In the censored version she's told to be virtuous and clean and that men will reward her as they see fit.

Later on after she has been very successful in New York he sends her another Nietzsche book "Thoughts Out of Season." He's marked the passage

Face life as you find it - defiantly and unafraid. Waste no energy yearning for the moon. Crush out all sentiment.

In the censored version this becomes a book called "Stanley's Christian Institutions" and there is no highlighted passage. Instead it contains a letter to Lilly by her German friend. He is very upset she has chosen the wrong way (exploiting her feminine assets) and calls her a coward. He tells her she needs to regain her self respect and hopes she'll allow the book to guide her.

The movie doesn't point this out but Stanwyck's character is named Lilly. The most famous Lilly I know is Adam's first wife Lilith. The one who was made his equal (Eve is beneath Adam because she is made from his rib), and maybe created before Adam depending on which bible story you read. Lilith gets kicked out of the garden of Eden for not submitting to the patriarchy. From what I remember she goes to the Red Sea and copulates with demons and this is where we get vampires and stuff. I don't think its a stretch to see Stanwyck's Lilly as following a similar path. I suppose it's little details like this that filmmakers used to get things past the censors.

Finally Lilly has a very close African-American friend named Chico. There are two scenes where men tell her Chico needs to go (one her father, the other a VP at the bank she works at) and she is very adamant she and Chico will never part. Considering Stanwyck's membership in "The Sewing Circle" with other lesbians like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Katherine Hepburn I wonder if her character's relationship with Chico was more intimate. The movie doesn't clarify this. But Lilly has a warmth and affection with Chico that is missing from her relationships with men in the movie. Chico is played by Theresa Harris who is great in her small role. She sings Louis Armstrong's "St. Louis Blues" in the background in a few scenes which also forms the basis of the soundtrack. Apparently the Hayes code killed off her chances of getting good roles later in her career.

The movie isn't perfect. Most of the men are kind of stupid. The censored and uncensored versions both have endings that don't make much sense. Well, the censored one makes sense if you look at it through the eyes of the Hayes code. Stanwyck is pretty good at exploiting her sensuality but nowhere near her peak in Double Indemnity.

It also interesting to compare this to critically lauded and Academy Award nominated Mildred Pierce (1945) with Joan Crawford in her Academy Award winning performance. That movie also features a woman with career ambitions who doesn't want to settle for what men are willing to hand to her. Once she transitions from suburban house wife to independent business woman her life is portrayed in a dark light. Her decisions corrupt her daughter and lead her into financial disaster. The Hayes code had their fingerprints all over this one too, and it is clear that they wanted to further their pro-patriarchy ideals even 10 years later.

The first unfinished movie footage from the Golden Compass has been posted. I teared up a little bit with excitement. The scene of Iorek running without his armor looked really good.

The narration in the clip is a mess. It describes the story in only the blandest terms. Chris Weitz's mention of freewill is the only clue into the big journey the story takes. I wonder if they're still not sure how to pitch the story to American audiences.

AFI Dallas has a new website up with all the films, venue and ticket information. I've already got about 10 films on my "to see" list from just a cursory glance.

There is a curious phenomenon running through the DVD market on Amazon these days. At the end of the long tail DVDs with meager popularity demand huge prices.

Matinee, that lovable coming of age story set during the Cuban Missile Crisis and chock full of movie palace nostalgia sells for between $50 and $110 these days.

But even it must bow before the pricing juggernaut that is Cinema Europe - The Other Hollywood a six hour documentary about silent film in Europe. It starts at $289 and only goes up. Of course even this is tiny before the titan of expensive DVDs the Criterion Edition of Salo. It starts around $400 and climbs into the $2500+ stratosphere.

I like to think that these prices reflect their cultural importance. Thus an Oscar nominated crowd pleaser, but culturally insignificant film, like Mannequin starts at $7. However I really don't think that's it. There's something about the passionate audience for these movies that drives up the price. I wonder if theatrical releases might see these kind of price fluctuations some day.

The NY Times has a good story about Netflix and their rental patterns.

Netflix sends and receives 700 million DVDs a year. Out of their 60,000 titles 35,000 to 40,000 are out every day. That number is surprisingly diverse. I would have expected Netflix's 5 million subscribers to be more homogeneous. I guess the movie interests of Netflix subscribers are far more diverse than the mainstream movie theater crowd.

I wonder what the difference is between an average Netflix subscriber and an average theatergoer. My guess is that ticket costs make the theatergoer less likely to take risks. I'd love to see some of the art house theaters offer up a subscription program like Netflix that encourages people to take more chances.

Julie and I made the trek down to Austin for SXSW Film. Small Town Gay Bar, Shadow Company, LOL, Inner Circle Line and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon all stand out. But TV Junkie is the one that I've been thinking about over and over. This guy, Rick Kerkham, kept a regular video diary from the age of 14. He documented his rise from TV news reporter in Wichita Falls, to Las Vegas to Inside Edition, and then his fall as he struggles with drug addiction. Over 3000 hours of footage edited down to 98 minutes. You watch him smoking crack, being arrested by the cops, he and his wife fighting in front of his kids, and even attempting suicide in his truck. He has a journalist's detachment from the situation no matter how horrible it is as he describes what he's going through. This experience, the capturing of a narrative in someone's life is one reason why I go to movies.

During the Q&A the directors revealed that Rick was in the audience. Then Rick revealed that his ex-wife, who is featured prominently in the movie, was also in the audience. I can't begin to describe how odd it was for me to have movie life intrude into my real life. I use the word intrude because Rick wasn't playing a character in the movie, it was him. So it's not like when you ask actors about the character they play. Rick was taping the audience for one of his video diaries. This only compounded the the strangeness of what was happening. I am disappointed the movie didn't garner more buzz. The filmmakers are from Dallas so I'm hoping it gets a screening here because I'd like to see it with an audience again.

For the record I saw The Last Western, Small Town Gay Bar, Reel Shorts 1, Jumping Off Bridges, AMERICANese, TV Junkie, KZ, Shadow Company, Eve and the Fire Horse, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Live Free or Die, Autumn's Eyes, LOL, Heavens Fall, Population/436, Dance Party USA, Inner Circle Line, and Maxed Out

A friend of mine had a print of Michael Winterbottom's new movie, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story so he screened it at the theater after the other movies finished. It was the funniest movie I've seen in a long time.

Steve Coogan plays the actor Steve Coogan who is starring in a movie as Tristram Shandy, as well as Tristram's father Walter, in an adaptation of the novel Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. Rob Brydon is playing the character of uncle Toby, a man obsessed with recreating the battle where he was wounded in the groin. The funniest moments of the film come from Coogan trying to avoid being upstaged by Brydon. (Make sure to sit through the closing credits where Brydon and Coogan do dueling impressions of Al Pacino.)

It's a movie about making a movie of an unfilmable book. One reviewer used this mash-up to describe it: "Think Being John Malkovich meets Adaptation as a period piece, and you're nearly there." It pays homage to the classics that have tread this path before with cues to Fellini's 8 1/2, Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, and Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. It even features a film fanatic, Steve Coogan's assistant, that goes on ad nauseum boring the cast and crew with paeans to German filmmakers like Fassbinder.

There are many other layers in the narrative to explore but I'll have to wait for the movie to be released in theaters in January, and ultimately make it out on DVD. In the movie they promise extra scenes and interviews on the DVD when it comes out. Of course, this could be as empty as the promise that this movie is about the life of Tristram Shandy. Try as it might the story of Tristram Shandy only makes it up to the point shortly before he is born. Although that's probably the point, that one's life is a glorious unplanned mess from beginning to end and no book, or movie could ever capture that. Revel in it while you can.

I've consumed a lot of Asian films since last Friday. I had stopped really caring about movies since I'd been on a steady diet of weak AFI 100 films and lackluster theatrical releases most of this year. Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild, Cavite, Kamikaze Girls, Infernal Affairs II, Kim Ki-Duk's Bad Guy, Last Life in the Universe, Takeshi Kitano's Dolls, Takashi Miike's Gozu, and tonight's documentary about controversial Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki called Arakimentari have all inspired me.

A couple of them, Dolls, and Last Life, required an empathy on my part that I'm not used to. Movie watching had been such a passive thing for me this year, it was difficult at first to engage the movies on their own terms. Both movies have so little dialogue that I really had to throw myself into the characters on the screen and not just watch the film as a neutral third-party.

Seeing Wong Kar Wai on the big screen for the first time helped me to finally connect with him. While I enjoyed Chungking Express I think I lost a lot of it on the small screen because he packs so much visual detail in every frame. I'm very much looking forward to the release of 2046 this weekend.

I'd like to single out Kamikaze Girls as the one movie just about anyone should be able to enjoy. It follows two girls in high school. One is obsessed with 18th century Rococo French fashion, and the other is a tough biker chick. The look of the movie is a mix of reality, surrealism, animation, actor's asides, and uses a color palette I don't think I've ever seen in a movie before. The movie focuses on the friendship between the two girls as they prepare for life after high school, and discover real friendship. If that doesn't clinch the deal then watch it for the Yôko Kanno soundtrack. It's different from her work on Cowboy Bebop and Escaflowne but still full of all the energy and passion she brought to those soundtracks.

Tomorrow the festival ends and I'll see the movie that I picked out earlier this year as one of the ones I wanted to see: Save the Green Planet.

My hats off to the good folks at AFFD because I've enjoyed everything I've seen, and had I more time I would have seen more.

Save the Green Planet looks more inventive and interesting than the vast majority of Hollywood fare coming out this year...What happened to the Hollywood of the 1930s or the early to mid 1970s?

That is except for Universal's Serenity, based on one of the finest gorram Fox shows in the 'verse, Firefly. The trailer has me excited.

I finally got around to seeing Seed of Chucky. While it's no Bride of Chucky it is a worthy addition to the Chucky series. Seed of Chucky fails at exactly what Bride of Chucky did so well. BoC is an examination of the slasher genre using the conventions of the slasher genre to explain itself, while at the same time advancing the Chucky story a great deal. One can watch BoC as a deconstruction of the very genre that it's part of. Seed of Chucky doesn't have the same coherence of purpose and falls back to the more pedestrian slasher/Hollywood satire of say the Scream trilogy.

I'm sure Billy Boyd and Brad Dourif had some nice LOTR reminiscing between scenes. The Academy Award nominated (Supporting Actress for Bullets Over Broadway) Jennifer Tilly is the proverbial glue around which the movie is built since she plays herself and the Tiffany doll and most of the best jokes involve her or Tiffany making fun of Jennifer Tilly's career. This movie and P.S. also co-exist in a short list of movies this year that address addiction and recovery in the main plot. (Tiffany wants to end her addiction to murder)

It's chock full of movie references. The best one is hands down the Shining moment where Chucky breaks through a door with an axe and with the audience waiting for "Heeere's Chucky" after a pause he says "I can't imagine what I could possibly say right now." The new spawn of Tiffany and Chucky is of indeterminate sex and lives through it's own Glen or Glenda complex in the movie. Glen has a hilarious breakdown and captures James Dean's rebel yell "You're tearing me apart!" so accurately I wonder if it was sampled. The Child's Play franchise also had it's first bit of human nudity which the director insists was done as a reference to the Hammer horror films since he chose a British actress with the "Hammer look" to do it.

I couldn't help but laugh at Glen's belief that his family is Japanese because of the "Made in Japan" label the Chucky family bears. He even speaks in Japanese hoping for a deeper family bond. I was reminded of The Eighth Day where Georges thinks he's Mongolian and fantasizes about riding through the countryside on small horses because people referred to him as a mongoloid baby.

Probably only worth a rental, and even then only if you're a movie buff or Chucky fan. I'm still trying to figure out what those two families with the eight kids were doing at the showing I was at. They stayed through the whole thing.

I saw a trailer for The Take before P.S.. It's Naomi Klein so I expected a movie with a radical new take on globalization and megacorps. This seems like the latest escalation in leftist documentaries.

I've never seen a trailer beseech action of the audience in such strong terms. Phrases like "Stop Asking", "Take on the System", "Take Over the Machines", "Take Out the Boss" and "Take Back Your Country" filled the screen. The next to last shot is a scene of the Argentinian police shooting into a crowd of protestors.

I wonder what effect these documentaries have on our country. Most of them only play in blue areas (large urban areas) and will never play in red strongholds. They tend to be a powerful call to action for the converted. It's one thing to watch them alone at home on DVD, and something entirely different to sit in a theater of like-minded people and realize you're not alone.

I went up to Nashville tonight and caught a showing of the latest anime, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. As the story lines in anime are not very diverse you can probably guess what the movie is about by imagining a movie with a mix sci-fi/cyberpunk/police/megacorp elements. Like many anime series and movies, most notably Lain, it provides a philosophical look at humanity by building stories and observations around humans replacing body parts with mechanical enhancements. I was not a big fan of the original and was quite surprised by the huge following it developed. While the visual look was a stunning blend of 2D/3D techniques the story was obtuse and full of the overplotting so prevalent in the genre.

I found the sequel to be the rare offspring that outshines it's predecessor. The story is a relatively straightforward investigation of a series of violent murders by broken robots. The dialogue is full of quotes from the Bible, Milton, Confucious, Shakespeare, and other luminaries intermixed with exposition to explain what's happening. It can be tough to keep up with because they'll throw out some pretty complicated concepts in the quotes and race ahead. I congratulate the translators on tackling some of these concepts in a two line sentence. Also I am grateful to Go Fish (Dreamworks anime division) for having the guts to release this with subtitles instead of dubbing. I enojy the Miyazaki stuff but Disney/Miramax manages to always find an actor that makes me cringe when they dub.

Where the movie truly shines is again the visualization and the animation. The world is amazing to behold. The scene with the detectives flying into the northern region gave me goosebumps. It's been the better part of a year since I've had a moment like that in a movie. I was drawn in and felt as though I was gazing at an enormous monument to human ingenuity, both in the city conceived in the movie and the computer effects. The environment, animals, buildings and vehicles were rendered with that special brand of realism that is at once compelling and believable but only in the future world depicted in the movie. I have no doubt that if I lived in that world it would look just like that. The people are mostly 2D and I still find that 2D conveys human emotion better than most 3D attempts I've seen.

Visuals alone don't do it for me. What sold me on the visuals was the animation. In particular the scene where the cyborg, Bateau, is at home playing with his basset hound. It's a remarkably tender, honest scene that could stand on it's own as a short film. It's the little things like the way the dog falls out of the chair when he hears Bateau, or the way Bateau keeps the dog's ears from falling into the food bowl when he's eating. They create a warmth and sincerity that's typically sacrified to cute and funny in most animated features with animals. The use of the dog in the trailer and poster had me cringing going in with the expectation that I was going to be manipulated, but that was not the case at all.

I will have to see it again some time. Also it's made me want to watch the original again, maybe I was too harsh on it. The ideas about human souls, mechanization, dolls and golems, reality vs. illusion were too much to absorb during the movie. It has some really neat ideas about hacking reality that I'd never really thought about. The way viruses could be transmitted wirelessly into people's minds to override perception and alter their actions in the real world is something I'd never really thought about before. Overall, a very enjoyable experience. Also the story represents a maturation that I hope takes hold in the genre. It's about time the story caught up to the visuals.

I was reading the forums for The Wire when I caught this tidbit. Someone else was complaining about the dialogue in the show and the grammar of the phrase "He be late". That garnered this response:

Ok, Let me explain. In Black English, there is a separate tense called "invariant be." This form is only used to express a continuous state of being, as in the following: "He be stupid" means he is stupid now, he always was stupid, and he always will be stupid. "That be the exit" means that is and always was the exit. The "invariant be" does not exist in standard English. This form is never used to express temporary states, like "he be late" unless the person is continuosly late. In BE, a temporary state would be expressed as "he late," because contractions are deleted in BE, as they are in most dialects.

It's details like this about The Wire that continue to impress me.

I still struggle with my relationship with the American South. I was born in Memphis and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. I lived in Birmingham for a few years too. Most of that time has been a mixture of awe and revulsion at what happens here. I've railed against the megachurches hawking their monopoly on the keys to Heaven. I've sung the praises of Southern writers.

I've lamented the lack of a Southern voice in movies. David Gordon Green is the only modern example I can really think of. Although if you have just one voice his is a pretty good one to have. I finally saw a trailer for a movie that actually has me incredibly excited. Searching For the Wrong Eyed Jesus is the first trailer I've seen this year that has me chomping at the bit to see this movie. It looks like it might be something outside the indie/foreign/Hollywood hit parade.

I watched Sherman's March (1986) tonight. I have no idea how this ended up in my queue. I think it was mentioned in a green cine newsletter. A documentary filmmaker sets out to explore William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general who waged total war on the South's civilian population.

Instead he spends a lot more time documenting his ailing love life, talking to a number of Southern women, his fear of nuclear holocaust, and trying to get Burt Reynolds on film. At two and a half hours I was a little concerned that this foray into his mostly trivial and mundane life would be tedious. I quite enjoyed it. Luckily he gets some really good characters like his sister (who's getting plastic surgery), a flirtatious, exercise fanatic wanna-be actor named Pat and an old teacher who desperately wants him to get married. Along the way he takes little breaks to talk about Sherman.

It should have been awful, a tedious exercise by a self-indulgent documentarian. A Michael Moore without any grand ambition or humor but I was pleasantly entertained the whole time. I think part of it is laughing at trends from the late 70s and early 80s. Another part is how things are the same now as they were in the movie, or even during Sherman's time.

Had great fun in the 2004 24 Hour Video Race. We got our short in 9 minutes before the midnight deadline. We had to build a 5 minute or less short film around the following four things: (1) Location: Playground (2) Prop: Ladder (3) Theme: Easy Money and (4) Line of Dialogue: "You can have it."

I found out last night our video made the finals.

You can download the video [15MB] or the outtakes [15MB]. You may need the 3ivx codec to view it.

Keep in mind that none of us do this for a living, and that 24 hours is not very much time. :)

Today David and I head to Dallas for the 24 Hour Video Race. I am very much looking forward to seeing old friends. While I'm there I'm adding a new server to my co-located servers.

Have fun graduating this weekend .

I must be getting soft since my favorite movies this year have been love stories: Show Me Love, Mansfield Park and now Millennium Actress directed by Satoshi Kon.

I had enjoyed his previous film Perfect Blue with it's clever story about celebrity and obsession but it lapsed into silly thriller cliches far too often. It was sort of Se7en meets Being John Malkovich inside Internet chat rooms. Then nothing from him for five or six years till Millennium Actress. Again he is tackling the simulacrum of celebrity and the physical world to say it's all part of the same story of human endeavor. Film it or live it but the story that lives on after you is even bigger. Like the cult classic "The Stunt Man" this movie is full of trap-doors between the movie within a movie and the reality within a movie. The film deftly weaves between Chiyoko's movie roles, her real past and her present to tell a great story about her search for one love. Along the way you get a sort of Cliff's Notes of Japanese history, lovingly animated as apparently only the Japanese and Pixar still remember how to do.

It has an emotional heft to it that I had been missing from animated films since the Iron Giant said "Superman."

I saw Dawn of the Dead tonight. Not quite the fun ride I got from 28 Days Later, and in fact many shots in Dawn of the Dead felt copied from that film. Still it had some funny moments. Sort of a Canadian version of 28 Days Later.

Afterwards David and I went to Krystals since I hadn't eaten and they were open. I finally brought up Kathy. I'd wanted to from the first time I saw him but I was afraid of his reaction. Nothing bad happened. I'm glad I didn't cry. I kinda feel he'd look down on me for that.

I was surprised to hear him say that things happened the only way they could, that it had a certain inevitability to it. I hope I didn't infect him with my guilt or frustration. We both agreed that she set the bar very high as far as personal relationships go.

If I've gotten one thing right in my life it is that I have surrounded myself with people better than me.

Today finds me in a much better mood and that's due to some late movie catch-up. I saw Bad Santa and Peter Pan today. Enjoyed both. More on Bad Santa later...

I grew up watching the J.M. Barrie derived "Peter Pan and the Pirates" on Fox. Tim Curry was firmly implanted in my head as the best Captain Hook. What was great was the balance they brought to the story of Peter Pan. The fact that Hook and Pan are two sides of the same coin was an important rule that the series followed. It also had some of the best dialogue of any show on television. At times it could hold it's own against today's cop dramas with the amount of jargon and colloquialisms the pirates and the lost boys bandied about. The show succeeded in creating a new world and following the rules of that world. A trait that has not always been appreciated in other Peter Pan adaptations. I was cautiously thrilled when I heard P.J. Hogan was making a new Peter Pan movie, hoping it wouldn't be more Hook dreck.

In retrospect, I realize Hogan's film Muriel's Wedding has many of the aspects of Peter Pan. Muriel didn't want to grow up and is prone to storytelling. The storytelling has grown quite a bit from Muriel's Wedding and is elaborately built out in Peter Pan. The sets were a joy to watch on screen, even if they could be a bit overdone at times. One thing I particularly appreciated is that London has some of the same fanciful embellishments that Neverland has. This helps to make clear that the whole movie is Wendy's telling of the story from beginning to end. Also I'd forgotten how important Peter Pan is to popular culture. It is the standard all "coming of age" films are judged against in some way or another. It's full of spoken gems like Pan's declaration "To die would be a great adventure", "Second to the right and then straight on till morning" (both lines that have found a second life in Star Trek), "Oh the cleverness of me" and the line that reached the exalted bumper sticker status "I do believe in fairies." Olivia Williams seems a bit typecast as of late as she's been opposite Peter Pans in Rushmore and Heart of Me.

Which brings me back to the telling of the story. The movie is narrated by Mrs. Darling, Olivia Williams. This brings about a nice sense of symmetry since it's Wendy's story. Clearly Mrs. Darling is who Wendy will grow up to be and Mrs. Darling probably told the story of Peter Pan to Wendy, who is repeating/living the story on her own. That same balance exists throughout the movie. Peter Pan needs Hook who needs Peter Pan. Wendy is growing up and that means giving up certain things and gaining others. Also we are finally treated to a real menace in Hook, not the toothless whiner of previous attempts. He kills people left and right without the slightest provocation. His menace adds emotional heft to the moments that Peter Pan confronts him, and the dangerous world of adulthood that may lay ahead for Wendy and anyone else who ever grows up. He's not just an evil caricature as Hook's humanity is on display more than before adding a bittersweet level for adults who can all find a bit of him inside them.

The music was a bit much at times with it's obvious heart tugging. The sexuality of the movie that has been talked up in reviews is a bit much, it's not The Swimming Pool. Ludivine Sagnier was disappointing as Tink. Since she doesn't have any dialogue she fell back to the classic silent film method of over exaggerating. The movie has its moments where it becomes a tad manipulative, the "I do believe in fairies" scene comes to mind. It's a good scene without stretching it out as much as they do. Overall, I found the flaws acceptable since it's a story told by a child who's inventing this new universe as they go along. The experience of seeing it in the theater is one I plan on recalling frequently as I watch the DVD. One little girl was so caught up in the "I do believe.." scene she stomped around in front of her seat chanting along. Any movie that connects with it's audience like that is something special and unique.

Surely one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen this year, well that came out in 2003. It's this years The Iron Giant. A movie aimed at kids which has a magic and story that will grow with them into adulthood.

I suppose when I look at something long enough the whole recedes and all I see is the parts. I keep looking. The process repeats itself over and over till the machinery not the machine is all I see. I saw Cold Mountain tonight and all I could see was the machinery. Insert T-Bone Burnett song score so we can cash in on the soundtrack like O' Brother. Add a dash of Jack White because some of those White Stripes songs evoke Americana and it brings in the kids. That "other" artsy Civil War movie, Ride With the Devil, had a music star too. (I wonder if Jack's movie career will dead-end the way Jewel's did) I've never seen so many clothing continuity errors in a major motion picture. Is the shirt on or off, torn or whole? The characters all are Oscar movie clich�s. It's got a bad guy, a good guy, the woman they want and comic relief. Does Nicole have to wear that much makeup when hiding out in the woods? Won't Jude Law still love her, she's a movie star after all?

When it first opens with the big battle sequence...now that that was new. I'd never seen the Civil War that brutal before. In so many ways I'm reminded of Saving Private Ryan, great beginning with the story losing momentum as the quest takes over. Thankfully Cold Mountain isn't quite so earnest as Saving Private Ryan.

It's not just Cold Mountain though. This year I've seen three theatrical releases I cared about: City of God, Northfork and All the Real Girls (A much more powerful love story in North Carolina than Cold Mountain will ever be). They're all flawed too. But they took more risks. I'd rather sit through "Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?" than most of the movies I've seen this year. It took chances and told a new story. My ire is not spared from indie releases. They've spawned the same mediocrity this year as well: The Station Agent, Lost in Translation, Shattered Glass, Pieces of April. All fine films, like the major Hollywood fare I've seen, that I care nothing about because they all come from the same machinery. Why don't we have a Takashi Miike making stuff like Visitor Q or Happiness of the Katakuris? How about an Abbas Kiarostami equivalent putting out things like Close-Up and Taste of Cherry? I guess we've got Gus Van Sant who did surprise me with Gerry this year. Tomorrow I see Elephant so maybe he can redeem American cinema.

From http://www.nytimes.com/ref/readersopinions/questions-scott.html

Dec. 15

Q. I find it's impossible for me to criticize movies I loved when I was child, even the ones I know are bad. Last summer on TV, for example, I watched "Smokey and the Bandit" for the first time in 20 years and I enjoyed it far more than I should have. Do you have movies from your childhood that you know and admit are bad but are unable to criticize because you liked them when you were young? — Antoine Lahaie

A. Recently, I took my son to see "The Haunted Mansion," which was one of the worst things (I hesitate even to call it a movie) that I have ever seen. He thought it was better than "Finding Nemo" and we had a fruitless argument which I'm sure made him acutely aware of the disadvantages of having a film critic for a dad. I gave up when I remembered my own youthful delight in just about every live-action G-rated Disney picture of my own childhood — "Son of Flubber," "The Shaggy D.A.," "Follow Me Boys," "Herbie the Love Bug" — movies I would probably have a hard time sitting through, much less reviewing, today.

When we're young, we take so much delight in the sheer adventure of going to the movies that we don't bother to discriminate much, which is as it should be. The indiscriminate love of movies is the first step in the development of taste. When I was young, "The Great Waldo Pepper" looked as good as "The Sting," and "Midway," the "Pearl Harbor" of its day, looked like an out-and-out masterpiece.

Like you, I loved "Smokey and the Bandit," which I don't think is such a bad movie ("Smokey and the Bandit II" is another matter entirely), and also a lot of other Burt Reynolds good-old-boy pictures from that era ("White Lightning," "WW and the Dixie Dance Kings," "Gator). I saw every Mel Brooks movie, and all of the Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor buddy comedies. Some of these — "Smokey," "Young Frankenstein," "Silver Streak"— I'm always happy to watch again, partly to affirm my youthful good taste and partly because they bring me back to a time before I had, or cared about having, any taste at all. Others don't hold up as well, but judging them too harshly would feel like a bit of a betrayal.

My head hurts today. When will this flu season end? Finally saw The Station Agent last night. Nicely done. Typically those "outsider heals group" movies become sentimental but this did not go there. I think it's because Peter Dinklage's performance anchors the film. Whenever I saw Patricia Clarkson on screen I couldn't help but think of her role in this years All the Real Girls. She's having a great year especially once you add Dogville and Pieces of April to the list.

This week it's Shattered Glass.

The MoMA is hosting a series on The Hidden God: Film and Faith about hidden spirituality in movies. Of course they are showing Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, Andrei Rublev, Bergman's Winter Light and Carl Dreyer's The Word. However, the movie that gets the focus in a NY Times article is Groundhog Day. Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Wiccans, Falun Gong members and so forth all find meaning in the film.

I bought tickets for Casablanca this morning. I'm looking forward to getting away from all the noise for a little bit while I'm in the Sahara. I'm so lost here.

I was driving the five minutes it takes to get home and listening to All Things Considered today when this great interview came on. It was about a woman, Liz Yuan, who saw a movie at the Toronto Film Festival that she loved. Sadly it's a small Greek film that did not find a distributor at the film festival. But she loved this movie so much, and wanted others to feel what she felt, that she created a distribution company to get the movie shown in the US. She is a film buff, not someone in the business.

I couldn't stop smiling and crying as I listened to Liz Yuan talk about how much she loved the movie and why people should see it. Her love for the film is immediately evident from the interview. She talks sort of fast at points. You can hear her admiration for the film bursting from inside her. I thought it was cute when she said "When I say 'we' that's my habit. I say 'we' because I don't like to advertise how small my company is...It's like me, myself and I and then some friends." I felt silly because my eyes teared up I was so excited. How many times I've thought "Oh this is so good. How can I get more people to see it." I never decided "Welp I'm gonna distribute this film in the United States and setup Oscar and Golden Globe screenings." I was moved, and for a moment the world seemed like a perfect place.

I immediately went inside and emailed her through the movie's website offering up a few ideas and pledging my support. Even reading her email in response to my queries she has that same unbridled enthusiasm. I made an mp3 [1.04MB] of the interview from the Real Audio of the NPR interview. Listen to it and help get this movie in theaters.

An Incomplete Education has an essay comparing and contrasting River's Edge and George Washington. Perhaps Donald Holden will become the next Keanu Reeves.

Oh me, nobody should have this much fun with a 1MB application. I downloaded iStopMotion tonight.

Useless, pointless, FUN exercise number one. I call it Haunted Chair. I plan to get Eddie Murphy to star in Haunted Chair II.

That wasn't enough so I stayed up past my bed time doing a documentary on true love in the aquatic kingdom. I call it Fun with Felt.

Somebody's got the giggle-snorts. I can't wait to explain why I'm coming in late to work tomorrow. If I had more time I'd add titles, music, sound effects and dialogue.

The Guardian seem to be quite prolific and talented at making lists. They have lists of all sorts. The latest list to impress me is the 40 best directors. The list only takes into account working directors so don't get mad that it doesn't have Ford, Welles, Wilder, Hitchcock, Godard, Fellini, etc.

The list is sorted by importance so I'd knock Lynne Ramsay and Gaspar No� down a few notches, and elevate Michael Haneke and Michael Winterbottom. Where's Sofia Coppola and David Gordon Green? If they put Lynne Ramsay and Gaspar No� on the list, who also have only two features to their credit, I don't understand how they can ignore DGG. I have a feeling he's overlooked because he has focused on Southern stories, and grew up in the South. His fellow "two feature" compadres hail from the much trendier Scotland and France. Heck Gaspar doesn't even have a Criterion release under his belt.

I'm enjoying the commentary on the All the Real Girls DVD. In many ways I think it's better than what they did on the Criterion DVD of George Washington. As the writer/director, David Gordon Green, and the writer/actor, Paul Schneider, talk about their process for making the movie they remind me of my own approach to life.

When David is talking about how he, Zooey, and Paul sat in the tub listening to Sigur Ros and talking about the scene while the crew setup I understood. When David said he put Neil Young's and Built to Spill's version of Cortez the Killer on repeat as he wrote the last draft of the movie that made complete sense to me. Paul talks about listening to Mastodon, Michael Nyman and Afghan Whigs to inform his performance. It's not just their music selections but the role music plays in their lives.

I feel excited. It's like I've met someone new and I've got that feeling they are going to be friends that I understand on an intuitive level.

Ten movies that played at the Angelika in the past two years but were missed by most folks.

• The Believer
• Bully
• City of God
• George Washington
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch
• The Devil's Backbone
• L.I.E.
• Maelstr�m
• No Man's Land
• 24 Hour Party People

The Believer won the 2001 Sundance Jury Prize but they seem to be the only folks who saw it. Even people who don't like Larry Clark thought Bully was outstanding. (Based on a book written by Dallas Observer writer Jim Schutze). Ebert compared City of God to Good Fellas and said first time director, Fernando Meirelles, is a name to remember. George Washington was David Gordon Green's freshman effort and was snatched up by Criterion, a rare honor for an indie American film maker. The Devil's Backbone was overshadowed by Guillermo del Toro's other movie that year the inferior Blade II. Despite directing an episode of Six Feet Under, Michael Cuesta remains an unknown even after L.I.E. Marie-Jos�e Croze just won at Best Actress at Cannes but those who saw her Genie award winning performance in Maelstr�m were already won over. No Man's Land beat out the amazing Amelie for Best Foreign Language picture at the Oscars but I don't know many people who have seen it. Michael Winterbottom and Michael Haneke are the most provocative and exciting directors in movies today. So I had to check out Michael Winterbottom's latest 24 Hour Party People when it came out and it was one of my favorites for last year.

I just got back from a preview of 28 Days Later, the new Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave) movie. I went in with few expectations other than "low budget zombie movie." I really enjoyed it. I'd like to see it again when it comes out.

What I found particularly stunning is the look of the film. While The Beach was full of color and the clich�d view of paradise 28 Days Later goes in practically the opposite direction. The colors are frequently washed out, and the picture feels like television enlarged for the big screen. A conceit that seems to tie the movie together with the opening sequence. There are a handful of scenes where the scenery is clearly digitally manipulated, For example a patch of flowers look like they've been rendered as oil pantings in photoshop. Thankfully it's sparingly used which is why I think it worked so well to help create a different world. In particular I liked the way fire was shown. The fires seem too vivid for the camera at times so they pixelate in neat ways. For me, all these things really added to the sensation that I was a roving reporter with a cheap digital video camera capturing the last moments of human civilization.

The music worked in quite nicely. First Mogwai Fear Satan made it into a movie, and now g!ybe's East Hastings has shown up. East Hastings starts up in the first 10 minutes when he's wandering around an empty London. The movie nicely avoids the generic post-apocalypse clich� of the rag-tag group finding a scientist who explains why the world ended. The closest you get to that kind of exposition is when Selena explains to Jim that the candy (the main "food" that has lasted 28 days) he's been eating is what caused his headache. In general it's details like that (what kind of food would still be around) which make the movie a bit more thoughtful and interesting than the usual zombie gorefest.

I can't believe they just used Canon XL-1 cameras to shoot it. Dave has one of those. Movie making really is getting cheaper.

Finished the 24 hour video race today at 11:41pm. The goal for the race was to make a 5 minute or less movie that used the stranger as a theme, had a location involving a body of water, had an umbrella for a prop and had the line "We must be nuts!" between midnght Friday and midnight Saturday. I was up with team tapioca till about 5am saturday morning working on a story and then up again at 8am to start shooting it. Thomas finished editing, rendering and printing to tape around 11:20pm and we had it at the finish line 21 minutes later. Out of 90 teams competing 69 finished the race. We had made a movie the weekend before to prep with school as a location and duct tape as the prop. Both of them were a lot of fun. I certainly learned a lot.

One of the many sponsors is Red Bull. You get a plastic card which has information on how to contact their roving Red Bull vehicle. Each team gets one free delivery of however much Red Bull you need. We got ours around 3pm. I can only imagine what a society would be like if you had free energy on demand like this all the time.

I saw "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" today. Let me add a small warning. Seeing this on opening day was probably not the best idea. The 99% adolescent male audience had dull, insipid comments to make throughout. They were only mediocre fanboys at best as true fans would have sat in shock and awe. I really don't care if they have a crush on Edward, but every time she shows up on screen I heard "Ed is awesome."

Let me get this out of the way. I had high hopes for Yako Kanno's score. What she did with the TV series is great. She has a thorough understanding of musical styles and rearranges them together in clever and inventive ways. Unfortunately the movie soundtrack is mostly perfunctory with little of the vigor and excitement of the TV series score.

Ordinarily foreign language movies are poorly dubbed leaving me with a preference for subtitles. That is not the case with this one. The voice acting is really good. Even when reading slightly corny spirituality dialogue it isn't over the top. A problem that even some good actors have as they try to overcompensate for their lack of physical presence by channeling as much as "acting" as possible through their mouth.

The animation is every bit as good as the TV series, and is a blend of 2d and 3d techniques. Anime "production design" exceeds just about anything you see in a live action movie. I suppose this is one of the ways in which animation can trounce live action since they don't have the same budget constraints. In the TV series and the movie the details about the world of Cowboy Bebop are rich and full of nuance.

If you never watched the TV series you should still enjoy the movie. A couple of scenes are enhanced if you know the back-story: the shaman who helps Spike and the three old guys playing cards. Also the movie clearly didn't feel the need to explain the relationship between the four main characters as the story settles in right away. I was disappointed to see Jet get so little screen time. His methodical, Sun Tzu quoting ways provide a nice counterbalance to Spike's action.

The French are at it again. After recent shockers like "Romance", "Rape Me" and "Fat Girl" Gaspar Noé has taken up the challenge to assault his audience in a whole new way. In a NY Times interview he cites inspiration from such subtle and nuanced classics as "Straw Dogs", "Deliverance" and "Salo." Funny how all three feature vivid rape scenes of a woman, men and children respectively. Aside from graphic visuals, because what doesn't have those nowadays, Mr. Noé has found something new to add:

Throughout the film's first half, there is also a droning soundtrack, augmented by a low-frequency, 27-hertz vibration of the sort, Mr. Noé said, that police use to induce nausea in rioting crowds. (This, as much as the film's difficult subject matter, may explain why some viewers have become ill.)

I'm waiting patiently for David Cronenberg's Spider to come to Dallas. Last year I went and read the book it's based on and was not really that impressed. The fact that the author wrote the screenplay concerns me as well. (I just saw "The Fountainhead" where Ayn Rand adapted her own novel and it doesn't make a very good movie, it's more like propaganda. Gorgeous art direction though.) However, review after review keeps praising "Spider". I keep trying to lower my expectations but then I read stuff like this from Stephen Holden in the NY Times:

'Spider' is as harrowing a portrait of one man's tormented isolation as the commercial cinema has produced.

This has got to be hype. Every year I get really excited about one movie and it blows. I don't want that to happen this year but I can't seem to stop it.

In what has to be a first Huntsville, Alabama is getting a small independent film during its theatrical release. On 5/9/03 the Madison Square 12 is going to be showing it. Has it become the new art house theater in town? The movie is All the Real Girls, written and directed by David Gordon Green. He has an authentic modern Southern voice that I haven't seen in film before. One that I hope is copied and expanded upon by dozens of like-minded writer/directors.

Christian films, specifically the apocalypse features, have never hit it big in the mainstream. The biggest hit in the genre has been The Omega Code at $12 million. Salon has a neat article about Christian apocalypse films. It focuses on why Christian movies haven't crossed over the way Christian music and books have.

One line that surprised me from the article was this:

The recent Time cover story about apocalypse fever quotes a Boeing employee who decided against upgrading to Windows XP for fear the antichrist might use Microsoft security features to track e-mails sent between Christians.

If you substitute "government" for "antichrist" and "friends" for "Christians" you could describe another segment of the population.

Is this a good sign that as a country that we have so much prosperity and wealth that we can worry about operating system security features when people in other countries worry about just staying alive another day? Maybe the government should have yet another economic index that evaluates success based on the number of asinine complaints people have from day to day.