Social Media Government

How to Make American Democracy Work For Real Now
By Cole Smithey

The 2012 Presidential election doesn’t matter. Not at all. A social media mechanism that allows every American citizen to propose public policy (foreign and domestic) and vote on such proposals, on the other hand, would effectively put every single politician out of work. Firing American’s political functionaries will necessarily include the office of the President. The new face of American leadership will be an accurate compilation of all of its citizens.

Modern technology is about to allow for an absolutely pure form of Democracy run by and for the people. It couldn’t have happened ten years ago, but it’s on its way now. We don’t need anymore stinking corporate-controlled monkeys pretending that they’re working in the interest of the public good. The public will decide on all policy priorities, big and small.

We’ve already seen the power of social media to effect immediate change in a mathematically democratic way. When Verizon announced it would impose a two-dollar charge upon payments made online, social media enabled the public to effectively vote down Verizon’s decision. The company retracted its would-be surcharge. That’s Democracy in action. It doesn’t matter who identifies as a Democrat, Tea-Partier, Libertarian, or Leftist--voting is an intrinsically independent and egalitarian action. How you vote on each particular proposal—not one of two corporate-backed candidates--will add up to your true political identity.
For all of the chest-beating American politicians do about how well Democracy works, those elected men and women have no clue about how a purely mathematically driven form of pure democracy could put them out of work. The Occupy Movement is already situated to execute the necessary revolution that will send senators, congress people, and White House staff packing once our new social media platform of automated Democracy is in place. It won’t take long.

How will it work?

First of all a group of computer specialists and hackers will need to build the site’s infrastructure. It will need to be absolutely impervious to attack. It will also need to be organized in a thoroughly transparent way so that an ongoing record of all voting is always available for inspection. No more hanging chads or voter fraud. Everyone will be able to see exactly where every single vote came from. No more lobbyists. No more corporate string-pulling. You want Democracy; this is what it will look like very soon.

A group of moderators will need to be hired (I propose a modest annual salary). These moderators will handle the tasks of organizing the proposals that people post. Once a proposal reaches a specific numerical threshold, it will be put up as a bill which citizens will vote upon. If it passes, it goes into effect immediately.

There will be many bugs to be worked out, so it’s important that the system be put into place alongside our current structure of Government. Once Washington begins to be eclipsed by our more automated form of Democracy the Occupy Movement will need to take physical action to take over their offices, which will become completely open to the public. 24-hour voting centers will be opened to accommodate anyone who wants to vote. Assistants will be on hand to assist homeless and elderly people to vote. An open-door public policy will add to a sense of well-being in the country. Unlike revolutions that leave behind a power vacuum, the gaping hole of Democracy will already be filled by the people—all of the people.

If this idea sounds anti-elitist and full of humanitarian social responsibility, that’s because it is. But what we the gathered masses do with such a pure form of Democracy is entirely up to us, the people—not a corporation or a bunch of rich white-guy bankers. Social Media Government is coming.

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Cole Smithey’s Worst & Best Films of 2011

2011 was an incredibly fascinating year in cinema. America’s two finest directors, Martin Scorsese and Stephen Spielberg, elevated children’s cinema with efforts that far outshone Hollywood’s apparent monopoly ruled by Pixar and Disney. Although neither “Hugo” nor “The Adventures of Tintin” made it into my top-10, they each deserve every bit of critical esteem lavished upon them.

Documentaries continued to carve out a significant section of high quality cinematic art. Errol Morris’s “Tabloid” and Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” both deserve honorable mention.

As with any year, 2011 saw a string of cinematic abominations that deserve little more than a roll-call. In the interest of attending to the more significant matter of counting down the 10 finest movies the year had to offer, here are my list of films that bored me nearly to tears.

10. The Rite

9. Skateland

8. Stake Land

7. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

6. Super

5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

4. Meek’s Cutoff

3. Film Socialism

2. Paranormal Activity 3

1: Rubber 

This year’s 10 best films showed an exceptional amount of originality, rigor, and inventiveness. It’s with great pleasure that I share my favorite examples of why I keep returning to the cinema day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

10. The Arbor

Docudrama director Clio Bernard approaches a dead British playwright's life of persecution and abuse via the lens of situations from her autobiographical plays. When Andrea Dunbar died in 1990, at age 29, she was enjoying some theatrical success. The filmmaker obtained candid audio interviews with Dunbar's surviving family members, who still reside in the same impoverished Bradford estate housing where Dunbar lived. Using a technique called "verbatim cinema," Bernard uses professional actors to lip-synch with interview audio so that the spectator receives the information in a strangely organic fashion. "The Arbor" is a groundbreaking cinematic achievement.

 

 

9. Bellflower

The preteen boys of the '70s who played "war" in their backyards and pored over dirty magazines in their clubhouses are transmogrified into a pair of 21st century twentysomething misfits in writer/director/actor Evan Glodell's wild and woolly contemplation of apocalyptic America. Woodrow (Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are a pair of best friends obsessed with building a flamethrower gun and flame-spewing muscle car named Medusa, after the name of their two-man gang "Mother Medusa."

Evan Glodell has invented a bold vision of independent cinema that pisses down throat of the "mumblecore" indie movement. Call it "apocalypticore." Here is a movie that sears itself into your eyeballs and brain.

8. Project Nim

James Marsh examines the 25-year chronicle of Nim Chimpsky, a research chimpanzee who was put through the mill in the service of science. Nim's origins trace back to early 1970s hippie Columbia University professor Herb Terrace. Terrace took the baby chimp away from his mother and attempted to train it to communicate through sign language.

With access to a tremendous amount of archival footage of every stage of Nim's life, Marsh intersperses stylistically staged interview segments with many of the participants. Project Nim is an in-depth documentary with far-reaching implications about modern culture. It's impossible not to be swept up in the fragmented story of a de facto child who is repeatedly abandoned by people who exploit him with both good and bad intentions.

7. Take Shelter

Apocalypse looms large in writer/director Jeff Nichols’s intimate tale of social, mental, and economic duress. Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) is a construction worker living in rural Ohio with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and young hearing-impaired daughter Hannah. Curtis reads a worst-case scenario into foreboding cloud formations he sees. He also suffers from terrifying nightmares, about a coming storm, which cause him to wet the bed. Torn over whether his family's history of mental illness has made its way into his brain—his mother is schizophrenic--Curtis seeks out counseling.

“Take Shelter” captures a macro-micro snapshot of America’s post-9/11 zeitgeist at a moment when a decade of fear fatigue has left the country numb. When everyone is seeking shelter from economic, natural, and human-implemented disaster, no place is safe.

6. The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almodóvar proves himself an apt technician at sustaining suspense in the thriller genre. Returning to work with Pedro Almodóvar for the first time in over 20-years, Antonio Banderas brings his A-game to a deliciously diabolical role. Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Banderas) is a mad scientist with plenty of method to his particular madness of creating an indestructible skin. His wife died in a car fire. His daughter committed suicide. He harbors vengeance. But why?

"The Skin I Live In" is a haunting film that tips its hat to Alfred Hitchcock. There's a goodly dose of Georges Franju's 1960 French horror classic "Eyes Without a Face." Elliptical time shifts tell the story in a disjointed fashion that makes you want to see the film twice even as you're watching it. There's mystery here to savor as you would any great piece of cinematic art. Pedro Almodóvar has created a masterpiece.

5. Moneyball

Director Bennett Miller does the improbable. You don’t have to be a math nerd or a baseball fan to savor every minute of Miller’s cinematic balancing act built on Billy Beane’s ah-ha season with the Oakland Athletics in 2002. Brad Pitt gives the performance of a lifetime as former big league player Billy Beane, who recognizes talent when he sees it even if that talent is for crunching numbers. Only Pitt could make chewing tobacco look sanitary. Jonah Hill establishes himself as a dramatic actor of consequence as Peter Brand, a bean-counter with an unconventional viewpoint amount which baseball stats matter most. Together, Pitt and Hill are exquisite.

If last year's thinking-outside-the-box-movie "The Social Network" gave cynical insight to a social activity platform that is already approaching a crisis of identity, "Moneyball" has a more lasting quality. What’s profoundly interesting is how the romanticism of baseball comes through via sidelong moments of deeply personal experience.

4. The Artist

"The Artist" conjures a bygone era that reminds us why we love Hollywood. Director Michel Hazanavicius's wonderfully nuanced movie made a splash at Cannes and then became the critical darling of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

Hazanavicius meticulously squeezes in an encyclopedic catalog of silent film conventions while staying true to the ideas behind them. The result is a movie that never feels forced or derivative.

The movie is full of sweet little surprises. Between brilliantly executed performances, dance numbers, and an exquisitely told romantic story about loss and redemption, this flawlessly crafted film shimmers. Visually, it’s astoundingly gorgeous. Equal parts drama, romance, spectacle, and comedy, "The Artist" is an instant classic.

3. Drive

Playing with a William Friedkin-like level of patient intensity, atmospheric style, and shocks of violence Dutch director Nicolas Winding Refn creates his own 21st century dialectic of cinema. "Drive" is a film-lover's dream. Hossein Amini's adaptation of James Sallis's pulp novel provides Ryan Gosling with the kind of cool-blooded character actors would kill to portray. Known only as Driver, Gosling wears a trademark silver racing jacket with a big gold scorpion embroidered on the back. His curious fashion sense matches his singular motivation to drive...fast.

The moody techno soundtrack by Cliff Martinez is the hippest thing around. Sexy, violent, and stylized like you can’t believe, “Drive” is a big-screen movie that oozes charisma and pops with brutality. Yum.

2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is more than a character study. It is an examination of a highly skilled occupation that demands such complete and utter commitment that all emotional response must be submerged to a point of permanent poker-faced resolve. No one can be trusted and yet loyalty to the group is mandatory. A company party where the agents pretend to let their hair down momentarily arrives as a key sequence for what it says about the way British spies of the period interacted. Every jovial smile conceals suspicion and secrets. Tomas Alfredson’s flawless staging provides a fly-on-the-wall view that allows the audience to peek behind the characters’ well-defended shroud of secrecy to discover yet another one that hides beneath. The story is about how loyalty and integrity are enforced in a spy agency where such values add up to much more than a simple matter of life and death. They represent the safety and viability of an entire system of government.

1. Melancholia

2011 was the year of apocalypse in cinema. "The Tree of Life," "Take Shelter" and "Melancholia" each offer differing visions of Earth's waning days.

Lars von Trier evinces consolation for the end of planet Earth and all its evil inhabitants in the form of a colossal planet named Melancholia, which is travelling on an elliptical collision course.

Von Trier’s infamous Cannes festival publicity stunt wasn’t anymore outrageous than anything that drips nightly from Bill O-Reilly but it got the filmmaker himself thrown out of the festival in a manner befitting an outlaw filmmaker.

Had the jury at Cannes chosen von Trier's superior "Melancholia" over Terrence Malick's cluster-bomb "The Tree of Life" in spite of von Trier's "persona non grata" status, justice would have been served. As with all of von Trier’s films, “Melancholia” will divide audiences. Atheist audiences can take special pleasure in von Trier’s exquisitely uncompromising vision. After all, what’s a beginning without an end?

NYFF 2011 in Perspective

The New York Film Festival 2011
By Cole Smithey

Easily the best New York Film Festival I’ve experienced in the 15 consecutive years I’ve attended it, 2011 was truly an exceptional year. Of the 17 films I saw there was only one disappointment (Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants”) and one unforgivable dog (“Martha Marcy May Marlene” – I compulsively make fun of the title every time I say it). Martin Scorsese personally introduced a surprise screening of his latest film “Hugo” to a packed house.

Documentary filmmaking enjoyed strong entries with Chris Hall’s and Mike Kerry’s “The Ballad of Mott the Hoople” (which sadly will go to DVD), Joe Berlinger’s and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost 3,” and Alex Stapleton’s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.” Martin Scorsese’s named also showed up on the MTV-aired doc “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.”

While overrated festivals like Toronto pretend to compete with Cannes, and unfocused festivals like Tribeca continue to feel around for an identity, the New York Film Festival has proven once again that it knows how to treat filmmakers, celebrities, and its participating journalists. Kudos to Richard Peña, John Wildman, Courtney Ott, and the rest of the staff at Lincoln Center for making 2011 a festival to remember.

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismaki's humanist themed comedy of manners and intentions is a whimsical allegory about the desperate plight of immigrants and the communal actions needed to address the issue. There's an air of magical realism in the film's tone that places shoeshine man Marcel (Andre Wilms) in the unique position of harboring a young illegal immigrant named Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) from West Africa in Marcel’s French hometown of La Havre.

Marcel leads a frugal existence with his loving wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) in a small house on a little back street of the sleepy seaside town. The couple's minimalist lifestyle still allows for simple pleasures. With his wife's approval Marcel slips out to his favorite bar for an aperitif while Arletty prepares their dinner. Arletty doesn't want her husband know she's dying from cancer. So it comes as a shock when she has to be rushed to the hospital for an extended stay. When a dock guard hears the cry of a baby coming from a sealed shipping container, local officials are called in to open the giant London-bound metal box. Inside are a group of immigrants from which Idrissa escapes before running into the sympathetic Marcel who agrees to help the boy get to London to reunite with his mother.

Filmed with a deliberately simplistic regard, Kaurismaki embraces a regional sense of identity that allows supporting characters to flourish. Police Inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) gets wind of Marcel’s complicity in hiding the boy, and makes his position clear to Marcel. Enjoyable scenes between Darroussin and Wilms play out with a suspenseful sense of deadpan humor. As with all of the Finnish auteur’s films, there’s a bitter sweetness at play. When Kaurismaki adds the story’s final grace note it comes as rich reward. Few filmmakers have such delicate command of the poetic potential of cinema.

The Kid With a Bike

The Dardenne brothers tweak slightly their polished neorealist formula of personalized socially consciousness cinema related to their home country of Belgium, and their hometown of Seraing in specific. Composed music plays a role. The Dardennes continue the focus of their oeuvre on the plight of the country's youth. The result is a somewhat less than convincing story about a troubled 11-year-old boy named Cyril (Thomas Doret).

Having been recently abandoned by his single-parent father Guy (Jérémie Renier), Cyril searches desperately for his dad, and for his bicycle which has also gone missing. The manic boy escapes from the boys' home where he has been placed to return to the now empty apartment he once occupied with his father. Chased by his keepers back into the home Cyril throws himself at a visiting woman who sits in a lobby. Hairdresser Samantha (Cecile de France) helps reunite Cyril with his bike and agrees to look after the violence-prone boy on weekends. Samantha is at a loss to understand Cyril's self-destructive impulses that land him in a string of violent altercations. Still, Cyril's good fortune expands when Samantha agrees to keep him with her full time. Cyril’s guardian angel helps him track down his dead-beat dad at the restaurant where he works. Guy gradually makes clear that he wants nothing to do with his needy son. The filmmakers explore too shallowly Guy's reasoning for essentially throwing his son away. This, coupled with a lack of perspective on Samantha's backstory, weighs heavy on the film as a narrative contrivance that is nonetheless buffered by Thomas Doret’s exceptional performance.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

"Work-shopped in a Sundance writing and directing lab" proves to be the kiss of death for an overwrought and underdeveloped psychological thriller that refuses to either poop or get off the pot. Newbie writer/director Sean Durkin wears his obsession with Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke on his snot-covered sleeve. Evidently they don't teach that flashbacks are a bad idea at NYU film school—where Durkin attended--or at Sundance since exactly half of Durkin's story is told using the most common crutch in narrative existence.

Durkin has an ace up his sleeve in newcomer Elizabeth Olsen, whose beguiling nubility and haunting mood shifts the filmmaker milks for all they’re worth. Olsen plays the title character whose name Martha gets transmogrified to Marcy Mae by a creepy cult leader named Patrick (John Hawkes) who feeds on the flesh of his mostly female clan on a remote farm commune in the Catskills. Martha's "Marlene" identity is the least explained, and is left dangling along with every other plot thread the filmmakers bother to create.

Martha runs away from the commune at the beginning of the story. She calls her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), who she hasn't been in touch with for two years, to come pick her up. Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy) take Martha into their spacious riverside home in Connecticut. Martha displays odd behaviors such as skinny dipping in broad daylight and crawling in bed with Ted and Lucy while they're having sex. She doesn’t believe in such capitalist traps as pursuing a career. She holds onto firm but unstated beliefs about “the right way to live.”

Flashbacks reveal Martha's rape at the hands of Patrick, and her indoctrination as a "leader and teacher" at the commune. The filmmaker constantly jockeys back and forth between Martha's increasingly problematic situation with Lucy and Ted, and her not so distant past that informs her subconscious and conscious mind. Martha is an unreliable protagonist the audience is tempted to side with in spite of her volatile personality. "Martha Marcy May Marlene" comes across as an extreme right-wing fantasy about the leftist mind. If we take Martha, as the filmmakers seem to intend, to represent the kind of person engaged in the global protests against savage corporate greed then we are forced to admit that they are emotionally disturbed sociopathic human beings. The big problem with the movie is the filmmakers forgot to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

In spite of its all-too-obvious machinations “The Kid with a Bike” touches on social ills in a direct fashion without preaching. When Cyril falls in with a neighborhood thug to perform a violent crime with no reason other than for the approval of an older male figure, we see clearly what the filmmakers are getting at. A kid with a bike is nothing without both a mother and a father figure. The Artist Inspired proof that a black-and-white silent film with a 4:3 aspect ratio can be more entertaining than a 3D anything, "The Artist" conjures a bygone age of Hollywood that reminds us why we love cinema. Director Michel Hazanavicius's wonderful movie made a splash at Cannes before becoming the critical darling of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

The Artist

Jean Dujardin ("OSS 117 - Lost in Rio") combines Errol Flynn and Fred Astaire in his role as silent film superstar George Valentin. The story finds matinee idol Valentin enjoying a glamorous silent film career in Los Angeles near the end of the Roaring Twenties. Flawlessly tailored and groomed, here is a man who can do no wrong. His marriage to a grumpy wife (Penelope Ann Miller) isn't all it's cracked up to be but George has his constant companion, a Jack Russell terrier, to keep his sprits up. Valentin goes along for the ride when Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), an ambitions young starlet, creates a welcome bit of impromptu romantic zing during a public photo op. The kiss she plants on George’s cheek makes front page news. With her infectious smile and adorable dance moves Peppy's silent film career catches fire in the company of the suave and urbane Valentin. The advent of the Talkies doesn't bode well for Valentin, who refuses to participate for a reason that only becomes clear late in the story. Peppy is more adaptable. Cast aside by his producer (John Goodman), Valentin dips into his personal savings to produce, direct, and act in silent movie that necessarily flops on the same day as the release of Peppy's breakout sound role. Our impeccable hero hits the skids.

Apart from a precise use of appropriate music, Michel Hazanavicius teases the audience with sound as a delightful narrative ingredient. Will we ever hear Valentin speak? It is a silent movie after all.

Between brilliantly executed performances, dance numbers, and an exquisitely told romantic story about loss and redemption, is a flawlessly crafted film that shimmers. Visually, it’s astoundingly gorgeous. Equal parts drama, romance, spectacle, and comedy, "The Artist" is an instant classic. There is a line of thinking that states a film has to linger around for a decade before it can have a "classic" status bestowed upon it. To that notion I say, watch "The Artist."

Pina

Like his German compatriot Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders has a knack for the documentary form. Wenders's 1999 Buena Vista Social Club remains one of the best music documentaries ever made. Unlike Herzog however, Wenders may want to consider sticking exclusively to this type of storytelling in light of his recent failing efforts with narrative film. His last film "Palermo Shooting" (2008) is a film better left forgotten.

In discovering the human and artistic impact of his friend, the famed late choreographer Pina Bausch, Wenders takes a unique approach that involves set piece reenactments of Bausch dance routines performed by her fiercely devoted company of dancers, the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Bausch started the company in 1973. Wenders puts state-of-the-art 3D technology to ideal usage in capturing the dynamic vibrancy of transformative dance numbers that reveal the personalities of the individual dancers, as well as the bold vision of their artistic muse. Interspersed between the dances are brief direct-to-camera reminisces from individual dancers about Pina that tell the story of an artistic force of nature who lived and breathed nothing but dance.

Wenders had been in discussions with Bausch for many years about making such a film. Sadly, the visionary choreographer passed away in 2009 just as "Pina" was entering pre-production. Audiences will find much inspiration in the film's many passionate solo, pas de deux, and group dances performed in public spaces and in various theatrical settings. Natural elements such as dirt and water take on mystical qualities in dynamic dance performances that truly take your breath away. There are many aural, visual, and visceral surprises in this sublime film. If you aren’t a fan of dance, you will be after seeing Pina’s magnificent dances performed by dancers who worked with her for decades. "Pina" was one of the highlights of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

One of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema gets his due in a comprehensive love-letter documentary that celebrates Roger Corman's illustrious film career from top to bottom and inside-out. The inspirations, ideologies, and methodologies of Corman’s "one-man-band" of independent filmmaking come through in exhaustive clips from his more than 200 films, and from a plethora of interview segments. Aside from outspoken interview sequences with Corman himself, documentarian Alex Stapleton interviews everyone from the filmmaker's wife and business partner Julie Corman to Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, John Sayles, Peter Fonda, William Shatner, and Pam Grier. The effect is a raucous celebration of Roger Corman's polite demeanor, colorful films, and his stripped-down approach to movie-making that gave so many directors and actors their start.

"Monster From the Ocean Floor," "Apache Woman," The Little Shop of Horrors," "Bucket of Blood," "The Fast and the Furious," "Death Race 2000," "The Intruder," and his psychedelic exploration of LSD "The Trip" are just a handful of Corman's many films examined with more insights than seem possible for such a fast-paced documentary. It would be a daunting task for any filmmaker to even attempt a documentary about such a prolific and influential figure as Roger Corman, but Alex Stapleton lovingly crafts a 95 minute filmic encyclopedia that touches all of the bases. "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" fills an essential chapter of cinema history. It is destined to become an integral addition to the curriculum of more than a few college film courses.

The Descendants

Death and dying play a big part in Cinema's current zeitgeist. From apocalyptic films like "Melancholia" to cancer-themed comedies like "50/50" there is a pressing dialogue of facing up to the reality of certain death with some amount of courage and dignity. So it is that Alexander Payne struggles to make funny the pending death of a comatose adulterous wife whose husband Matt (George Clooney) must facilitate a socially responsible passage for the mother of his two daughters. Perhaps the best thing "The Descendants" has to offer is its depiction of Hawaii as a place like any other that only appears as a tropical paradise on the surface. Payne has mastered a certain style of deadpan humor exemplified in a scene where Clooney's cuckold runs down a suburban street in sandals. He is anxious to question his friends about their knowledge of the man his wife was cheating on him with before she was critically injured in a waterskiing accident. There’s a slapstick air to Clooney’s gawky physicality and the sound of flip-flops hitting asphalt. Still, it’s a scene you feel like you’ve seen a hundred times before. There’s numbness to the humor. Alexander Payne is certainly a competent director. He knows just where to put the camera. But as a writer he remains stuck in a navel-gazing kind of rut. “About Schmidt” (2002) fell prey to Payne’s sluggish sense of ponderous humor. “Sideways” was his best film because he stepped outside the need to gaze upon ugliness. In “The Descendants,” the writer/director takes a brighter disposition in a literal sense. Hawaii’s bright sunlight and natural beauty work some magic. But it’s not enough to resuscitate a script that is as depleted as the comatose character toward which the narrative steers. 

My Week With Marilyn

Michelle Williams delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as Marilyn Monroe in director Simon Curtis's thoughtful adaptation of the legendary actress' diaries by Colin Clark. At 23 Clark served as 3rd assistant director to Laurence Olivier for his 1956 romantic comedy "The Prince and the Showgirl." Here Eddie Redmayne movingly portrays a star-struck young Brit who momentarily wins the heart of the most sensual creature on the planet while working as Marilyn’s hand-picked liaison to the British theatrical world—a culture upon which she is an obvious encroachment. Michelle Williams effortlessly evokes the tragic icon's layers of insecurity and hopeless romanticism, which slip into fits of manic depression. Williams's mesmerizing set-piece performance of songs, such as a climatic rendition of "That Old Black Magic" transports the film into the erotic euphoria that Monroe stirred in the hearts and libidos of men. Equally effective is a charming dance number Williams reenacts from the film within the film. Williams's magical transformation into Marilyn Monroe is uncanny; you never question it for a moment. Although the movie has its weak spots--Julia Ormond turns in a one-note portrayal of Vivian Leigh and Zoe Wanamaker veers toward caricature as Paula Strasberg--Michelle Williams delivers a deft multidimensional character study built on truthfulness and soul. “My Week With Marilyn” isn’t just a gem; it’s a diamond.

The Skin I Live In 

Pedro Almodóvar proves himself an apt technician at sustaining suspense in the thriller genre. Antonio Banderas returns to work with Almodóvar for the first time in over 20-years, since his memorable performance "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!." The years have been kind to Banderas who brings his A-game to a deliciously diabolical role. Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Banderas) is a mad scientist with plenty of method to his particular madness of creating an indestructible skin. His wife died in a car fire. His daughter committed suicide. He harbors vengeance. But why? The Toledo-based doctor conducts experiments in the privacy of his luxurious mansion laboratory. Not even Dr. Frankenstein had it so good. His mother (Marisa Paredes) serves as his dutiful maid. Almodovar's meticulous attention to detail keeps you hypnotized. Every visual component is exact in color, placement, and scale. Naturally, the evil doctor is using a human being to live inside the hybrid-pig-DNA membrane he has perfected. His comely patient Vera (Elena Anaya) is confined to a large room. She wears a skin-tight body suit and practices yoga for hours on end. Dr. Ledgard secretly observes Vera through a large two-way mirror. Elena Anaya is an exquisite object of fetishistic delight for Almodovar to pour his patient camera over.

Based on Thierry Jonquet's novel "Mygale" "The Skin I Live In" is a haunting film that tips its hat to Alfred Hitchcock. There's a goodly dose of Georges Franju's 1960 French horror classic "Eyes Without a Face." Elliptical time shifts tell the story in a disjointed fashion that makes you want to see the film twice even as you're watching it. There's mystery here to savor as you would any great piece of cinematic art. Pedro Almodóvar has created a masterpiece. Plan on seeing it twice.

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia

Nuri Bilge Ceylon continues his minimalist yet universal exploration of society with a fascinating police procedural that values story over plot and character over prejudice. The mastermind behind such instant classics as "Climates" and "Three Monkeys" uses every detail of atmosphere and human communication to tell a quietly complex story about a murder and the imperfect methods of the men assigned to solve the crime.

At night Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) accompanies a group of police officers and a soldier as they drive around the dark outskirts of the Anatolian steppe. They have with them two incarcerated suspects they hope will lead them to the grave of a missing man. Police Commissar Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) lets his temper flare at his prisoner who leads the three-vehicle caravan on a wild goose chase in search of a "round tree" by one of the road's many fountains that provide water for travelers in the arid region. Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel) reigns in Naci when the Commissar turns violent against his prisoner. The cops joke about food and engage in a bland kind of non-specific repartee that diffuses tension even as it subtlety discloses fragments of personal information. They stop for food at the home of man whose beautiful daughter momentarily entrances them.

"Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" is a film about how detectives communicate. It’s also about how entrused public servants wrangle with overpowering emotions and personal secrets. Anger and sadness are traits to be submersed under rote routines of professional conduct. Their personal sense of justice can be confused and arbitrary. And yet, these men are doing a job that must be done. Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a lover of humanity. His great concern for every one of his characters that goes beyond their innocence or guilt. He recognizes the balance of both qualities in their actions. As a sociological study, the film is edifying on many levels. As a drama it is at turns inscrutable, revealing, and moving. The cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a transformative one. It is unique and honest. Most significantly, it is rare.

Carnage

Roman Polanski's cinematic chamber-piece rendition of Yasmina Reza's celebrated stage play "The God of Carnage" is an outsized comedy contained in the confines of a New York apartment.

Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly play Penelope and Michael Longstreet, a bourgeoisie married couple whose son lost a couple of teeth to a schoolyard bully who hit him in the mouth with stick. Rather than take America's kneejerk legal route, the mostly well-intentioned couple attempt to resolve matters via an afternoon discussion with the parents of the offending bully. Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz play the bully’s parents Nancy and Alan Cowan. Alan is a corporate attorney with a mind like a steel-trap and a constantly ringing cell phone that takes precedence to all other concerns. Nance is an investment broker with a queasy stomach. The Cowans and the Longstreets are equally matched in the area of self-righteousness, but not so much in the realm of what used to be called political correctness. Hiding behind a veneer of politeness, each character digs deeper into their personal bag of tricks to articulate a holier-than-thou brand of intellectual independence. Tempers flare, insults are tossed, vomit flies, and a bottle of scotch is consumed on the way to seeing a myriad of hypocrisy that lurks inside high-minded examples cultured, educated, and civilized society. The laughs come hard and fast.

There's considerable gratification in watching this quartet of great film actors working in Polanski’s deliciously theatrical setting. The film was shot in real time. The director himself makes a cameo appearance as a curious neighbor. Brief, explosively funny, and sardonic as hell “Carnage” is what you might get if you condensed three of Woody Allen’s early films into a 75 minute one-act. This movie is a kick. The Woman WIth Red Hair Japan's Pink Film genre lasted from the early '60 through the mid-'80s. Although Western audiences are most familiar Nagisa Ōshima's 1976 film “In the Realm of the Senses” as the genre’s most representative film, Japan’s Pink Film industry provided several generations of filmmakers with a lucrative outlet for their creativity. One of the country's oldest production studios “Nikkatsu” turned exclusively to making what it termed Roman Porno in the early '70s to compete for audiences distracted by television. Each Roman Porno film had to have four nude or sex scenes per hour. Nikkatsu served as an ideal training ground for Tatsumi Kumashiro, who directed his first film "Front Row Life" in 1968 and went on to be one of the genre's most prolific directors.

The Woman with Red Hair

Kumashiro's 21st film, "The Woman with Red Hair" is a study in social commentary disguised as porn. Construction worker Kozo and his pal have outdoor sex with the boss’s daughter before picking up a red-haired woman eating noodles at a truck stop in the pouring rain. Kozo takes the girl (Junko Miyashita) back to his squalid apartment where the lovers slip into a marathon of love-making interrupted by economic and social pressures that surround them. Character-discovery occurs during ravenous sex acts that extend to kinky expressions of fantasy and revealing post-coital conversations. The woman is on the run from an abusive boyfriend. She has a son she left behind. She might be a recovered heroin addict. One thing is certain; the woman with red hair is insatiable.

In keeping with strict codes of Japanese law that forbade the showing of genitalia or pubic hair, Tatsumi Kumashiro composes the sequences of unbridled love-making with clever angles and purposefully placed foreground objects. There’s a nervousness and honesty in the way the lower class couple express themselves. Anger and violence tempers their efforts at finding fresh paths toward a fleeting pleasure that must be refreshed immediately lest it vanish forever. Incredibly lusty and inflected with a cinéma vérité style “The Woman with Red Hair” aspires to a degree of social realism that features the surroundings of its characters as an influence that causes them to live in a state of constant fear. It compares favorably with Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 film “Red Desert.” The emotionally exposed characters battle against oppression by an industrial world with a confused humanity hungry for release.

A Dangerous Method

Christopher Hampton's stage play "The Talking Cure" provides the basis for David Cronenberg to dive into the largely overlooked story of Sabina Spielrein and her influence on the fathers of modern psychoanalysis--Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Sabina (played with astonishing authority by Keira Knightley) is a Russian Jewish patient brought to Jung's Burgholzli Clinic in Zurich in 1904. Her "hysteria" impedes her speech as she contorts her face, neck, and head in violent spasms. Outwardly, she appears quite insane. Michael Fassbender's Jung is able to calmly look beyond Sabina's off-putting physical demeanor in the interest of curing her. Jung is intent on using Sabina as a premier test patient for Freud's conversational therapy which he mistakenly calls "psychanalysis."

The film glides effortlessly across years as Jung meets Freud (Viggo Mortensen) to discuss psychoanalysis. Cronenberg masterfully controls the soundscape. Music is never allowed to intrude on a scene. Ugliness becomes beautiful; beauty becomes divine. Jung and Freud share a special bond of intellectual endeavor that comes through in their candid conversations about dreams. Jung shares his nighttime reveries for Freud to openly dissect. Privately, Jung questions Freud’s insistence that sex is the crucial element to all mental dysfunction even if his own experience with rehabilitating Justine points to just such a conclusion. Jung assists the perceptive and unguarded Sabina in her pursuit to become a psychoanalyst. He also seeks out a rationalization to ignore his wife and children long enough to enter into an adulterous BDSM affair with the heretofore virginal Sabina.

“A Dangerous Method” is a lush character study and history lesson that tenaciously explores the personal conflicts of ego and id between Jung and Freud. The film also pays generous homage to the woman whose outré sexual desires enabled her to turn Freud’s theories around. Freud entrusted her with several of his patients for her to treat. As an actors’ showcase the film is stunning. Vincent Cassel gives a memorable portrayal as the nihilistic psychiatrist Otto Gross, who encourages Jung to take sexual advantage of his patient. David Cronenberg has matured into a director of immeasurable confidence and gracefulness. He maintains his trademark fearlessness toward sexual obsessions and their potentially cataclysmic effects. Like Otto Gross he is incapable of “passing by an oasis without stopping to drink.”

Melancholia

Melancholia 2011 is the year of apocalypse in cinema. "The Tree of Life," "Take Shelter" and "Melancholia" each offer differing visions of Earth's waning days. Lars von Trier evinces consolation for the end of planet Earth and all its evil inhabitants in the form of a colossal planet named Melancholia, which is travelling on an elliptical collision course. Von Trier opens the film with one of the most haunting and lushly composed sequences ever captured on film. Kirsten Dunst's Justine placidly observes in hyper slow motion as electricity flows between an overcast sky and her fingertips. Black birds fall around her like harbingers of a funeral procession. Dunst’s delicate features are filled with stern ambivalence. As she reveals through her actions during the night of her wedding party, Justine’s atheism has prepared her bettern than believers to live out the final hours of human existence with a composure calculated to allow for whatever choices she might make. Telling off her demanding boss, and cheating on her doting husband (Alexander Skarsgård) of just a few hours, are obligatory actions. Justine is an anti-heroine without a trace of superficiality. She's a lying, cheating hypocrite just like everyone else. The difference is she admits it to herself. If Justine sounds like an alter-ego of the filmmaker who shook the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, getting himself thrown out of the festival for his incendiary comments during a press conference; she most certainly is.

Had the jury at Cannes chosen von Trier's superior "Melancholia" over Terrence Malick's cluster-bomb "The Tree of Life" in spite of von Trier's "persona non grata" status, justice would have been served. As with all of von Trier’s films, “Melancholia” will divide audiences. Atheist audiences can take special pleasure in von Trier’s exquisitely uncompromising vision. After all, what’s a beginning without an end?

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The Death of Fanboy Culture

By Cole Smithey

Punk rock has been dead for thirty years. Feminism died around the same time. Although both cultural movements took their respective dives for different reasons, neither had the lasting fortitude of jazz. That great musical movement, although it stretched across more than four decades, also dried up. Now hip hop is on the way out. Fads and social movements come and go, regardless of their nature or genesis.

The term fanboy began as a term to describe a lower class of pimply- geeky males, and less frequently females, caught in a stage of arrested development signified by their choice of logo-scripted T-shirts. They were proselytizers for an underground kitsch culture--dilettante hobbyists who didn't know the meaning of the D-word.

Anything from a love of gory horror movies to a passion for a particular video gaming console to gloating over old episodes of Star Trek served as acceptable credentials to be a member of the fanboy club.

Although they weren't called "fanboys" when I was a teenager in the ''70s, they were the kids who endlessly recited lines from Monty Python, listened to Jethro Tull, and played Dungeons and Dragons. They were boring to be around.

There is a consumerist bent to fanboy culture. Some Mac computer users fall under the fanboy title. "Apple fanboys" are defined in the Urban Dictionary as "single-layered" drones. Mac store employees who line up to applaud customers who purchase Mac products engage in a form of faux fanboy prostitution. At least they have jobs.

Like Teabaggers, fanboys like to complain. It's what they do. They are a strident minority who likes to obsess and nitpick over minutiae. The filmic rendering of a superhero's costume as it differs from the original comic book is food for endless fodder. Fanboys are famous for wielding their opinion over others in a bullying manner.

In the early Oughts some fanboys took on identities as Internet "trolls" in order to bully fellow fanboys and straight people alike. They had their heroes. Fanboy cartoonist Danny Hellman gained notoriety for an underhanded attack against editorial cartoonist/author Ted Rall. Hellman was an Art Spiegelman fanboy who took umbrage at a Village Voice cover story Rall wrote about the creator of "Maus." In the piece, Rall took Spiegelman down more than a few pegs. In response Hellman galvanized a group of fellow fanboys around himself based on an e-mail flame attack wherein he impersonated Rall in a rant about his [Rall's] testicles. Needless to say, these fanboys were developing an identity as a gang intent on harassment.

When I became the first film critic to post a negative review of "Toy Story 3," Pixar franchise fanboy Josh Tyler attacked me for criticizing "one of the most universally loved movies of all time." Forget that the movie had been playing for less than a day when I posted my review. "All time" had been reduced to fewer than 24 hours. Chalk it up to pack mentality exploitation. Tyler will never be able to leave the corner he painted himself into.

Before the economic collapse in 2008 Hollywood studios latched on to fanboys as a group it perceived as a stronger threat than al-Qaeda. The big studios were catering almost exclusively to petulant fanboys famous for their fever-pitch zealotry over cartoon-based anything. Summer-movie blockbusters became an easy ploy for Hollywood to exploit what it still views as the largest audience base from which to extract cinema dollars. Now that equation is changing. "Thor" and "Green Lantern" aren't exactly capturing the imagination.

Many fanboys have film-related blogs dedicated to whatever crappy horror or comic book movie that comes down the pike. They do it to curry favor with publicists who invite them to advance screenings for guaranteed positive press. The problem with this dead-end mentality is the same as with the Danny Hellmans and Josh Tylers of the world. You can't be an arbiter of taste unless you exert some yourself. And if you don't have it to begin with, no amount of pretense can cover your tracks.

These days the end of cultural movements typically comes with a shark-jumping signifier. For the fanboy movement, that instant came in 2009 with the release of the helpfully-titled movie "Fanboys." In this film the year is 1998--a telling marker. A group of aging fanboys reunites and go on a road trip to infiltrate George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch to filch a copy of the latest Star Wars movie "Episode I: The Phantom Menace." If you haven't seen "Fanboy," don't bother. If you have, then we have something in common. We'll never get back those 90 minutes. The same goes for "Episode I: The Phantom Menace."

Coincidentally, in 2009 Nickelodeon began running "Fanboy & Chum Chum!," a cartoon series about a pair of "superfans" who wear underwear on the outsides of their costumes. By infantilizing the term "fanboy," the show's writers sent a shot across the bow of anyone over the age of nine who considered themselves to be a member of the f-boy club.

The Internet was once a great facilitator for fanboy culture. It was also the very thing that hung it out to dry. The economic depression that has put nearly 25% of Americans out of work has turned millions of underemployed people into bloggers who share their opinions about every minute detail of human existence. Sites such as Yelp allow people to post reviews of restaurants, entertainment, and services. Everyone is a fanboy; nobody is a fanboy. No one is looking to old-school fanboys for critical advice.

From a comic book movie point of view, Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 2" set the high watermark in 2004. When Peter Jackson's final installment of the "Lord of the Rings" arrived, fanboy culture was already over and done with.

It's taken a few years longer than you might expect for fanboy culture to be snuffed out. Like the grunge movement of the early '90s, it hung around longer than it had any right to. America's next generation of awkward impoverished misfits are children of endless wars. Gloating over comic book fetishism won't be their style. Bullying people for having different opinions won't fly. They'll have a completely different take on how to mask their anxieties. One thing's for sure, their problems will be much bigger than the petty crap over which fanboy culture feigned indignation.

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Lars von Trier - Persona non Grata

Danish Lars von Trier is a great filmmaker. He's also as inept a masochist as he is a humorist. Von Trier's snarky comment "Okay, I'm a Nazi," made during his press conference in Cannes in support of his competing movie "Melancholia," was delivered with a heavy dose of grandstanding irony that doesn't translate well on paper. It was as if he was saying, yeah, and I'm a mass murderer too, as a way of putting a cherry on a fallen cake. It wasn't a smart way to wrap up his attempt at being entertaining. He fed himself to the hungry wolves—i.e. and international press itching for something incendiary to write about. To watch Kirsten Dunst sitting next to him at the press conference trying to stop him with harsh looks and even a whispered request, as he digs himself into pit of idiocy, was as squirm-inducing as von Trier's outlandish comments. His statements about empathizing with Hitler as he sat in his bunker proved a self-fulfilling prophecy. More interesting than von Trier's Johnny Rotten-styled attempt at giving the press what they wanted was their response. Von Trier succeeded in shocking them to their fragile core. The Cannes Festival board of directors took quick steps to extract an apology from von Trier before kicking him out of the festival as a persona non grata. Von Trier blamed his "stupid" behavior on his recent return to sobriety and a "perverse need to please." Masochism is a tough business."

Von Trier says he's proud to be persona non grata and that he won't be doing anymore press conferences in the future. That’s too bad. He certainly has a great headstone epitaph now. As von Trier did with the self-imposed limitations of his influential "Dogma 95" film theory, he has placed himself in a kind of exile. One thing you can bet on is that his films will be as interesting and controversial as ever.

2011 is the year of apocalypse in cinema. "The Tree of Life," "Take Shelter" and "Melancholia" each offer differing visions of Earth's fast waning days. Lars von Trier evinces consolation for the end of planet Earth and all its evil inhabitants in the form of a colossal planet named Melancholia, which is travelling on an elliptical collision course.

Von Trier opens the film with one of the most haunting and lushly composed sequences ever captured on film. Kirsten Dunst's Justine placidly observes in hyper slow motion electricity that flows between an overcast sky and her fingertips. Black magic is upon her. Black birds fall around her like harbingers of a funeral procession. Dunst’s delicate features are filled with stern ambivalence. As she reveals through her actions during the night of her wedding party, Justine’s atheism has prepared her better than believers to live out the final hours of human existence with a composure calculated to allow for whatever impulsive choices she might make. Telling off her demanding boss, and cheating on her doting husband (Alexander Skarsgård) of just a few hours during the wedding party, are obligatory actions. Justine is an anti-heroine without a trace of superficiality. She's a lying, cheating hypocrite just like everyone else. The difference is she admits it to herself. If Justine sounds like an alter-ego of the filmmaker who shook the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, she most certainly is.

If von Trier’s more deserving "Melancholia" had won the Palme d'or over Terrence Malick's winning "Tree of Life," in spite of von Trier's "persona non grata" status, there would have been a hurricane of journalists going wild. Justice would have been served. Having seen both films, I can say with certainty that "Melancholia" is the far better of the two. No contest. It's interesting to see what makes the media go ballistic in an era when there's 25% unemployment in America and Mother Nature is demolishing wide swaths of the planet every other week.

As with all of von Trier’s films, “Melancholia” will divide audiences. Atheist viewers can take special pleasure in von Trier’s exquisitely uncompromising vision. After all, what’s a beginning without an end?

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Breaking the Window

What You're Not Supposed to Know About 3D
By Cole Smithey

To listen to Variety's 3D-guru David Cohen talk you'd think we'll all be wearing 3D glasses for every movie we see in the coming years. He compares the advent of 3D to the arrival of sound in cinema. You'd never hear Cohen say that only 70% of the population can properly see 3D due to a variety of ocular anomalies that include things such as color blindness. Naturally, that means only seven out of every ten people can actually see 3D. You won't read anything in Entertainment Weekly about 3D audiences who suffer from constant eye-watering or debilitating migraine headaches during or after watching a 3D movie. You certainly won't read about audience members who crashed their cars after seeing a 3D film. That's because the most important aspect of Hollywood's current force-feeding trend of stereoscopic "immersion" has more to do with raising ticket prices across the board on all movies than it does in delivering a quality 3D experience.

At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, Panasonic was giving away DVD copies of "Avatar" with their latest 3D televisions as if it were the best example of a 3D film to show off their product. Little do they realize that the convergence level set on the cameras used for "Avatar" were set to keep its 3D effects behind the proscenium. It's the same conservative approach being used by the current flood of 3D filmmakers who are either too timid to put the technology through its paces, or simply aren't skilled in the complex practice of planning, setting up, and lighting the shots for the off-the-screen effects that we go to 3D movies for in the first place. Such before-your-eyes tricks are referred to in the industry as "breaking the window." It gives 3D films their kick. The only 3D movie of 2010 to take advantage of the practice was "My Bloody Valentine."

Hollywood is attempting to blur the line between "High Definition" and "3D" to acclimate audiences to spending more for an "immersive" experience that may be pretty but has little to do with the very thing 3D is supposed to accomplish, namely put the audience inside the fourth wall. The best way to judge the current barrage of crummy 3D movies is to compare a high-watermark standard bearer like "Avatar" with the far more "immersive" experience you'll have watching "Hubble 3D" on a real IMAX screen--beware the mini IMAXs. Then seek out a rare screening of "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein" in 3D--be sure to sit middle/center for this one. What you will come away with is a sense of how inferior "Avatar" is against "Hubble 3D"--for the obvious reasons that the audience experiences "Avatar's" effects only in depth behind the screen, whereas the IMAX 3-D process used in "Hubble" brings the action in front of the viewer's face. "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein 3D" (also titled "Flesh for Frankenstein") illustrates the suitability of 3D to embellish a campy horror movie filled with gross-out gore that flies off the screen. When I think of the thrill of 3D, I think of films like Warhol's "Frankenstein" or "Journey to the Center of the Earth," not "Avatar."

True IMAX cinemas (with their 76' x 97' screens) can get away with charging a premium because of the screen size and pricey specialized glasses. But the mini-IMAX cinemas have screens that are only 28' x 58' in size. As well, most IMAX 3D pictures run considerably shorter than an hour, which keeps them out of feature film range. 

Hollywood has succeeded in giving audiences two reasons to boycott 3D movies--cost and quality. Making movies is expensive regardless of whether they are 2D or 3D, so it doesn't make sense to charge any more for a 3D feature. Retrofitting cinemas with projectors that can handle 3D should be absorbed by the big studios as the cost of doing business, or in this case conducting a large scale experiment with filmgoers as the guinea pigs.

James Cameron believes that audiences should require 3D because, "We see in 3D." But what he doesn't admit is that we don't have to wear special glasses to watch 2D movies. I like 3D if it's done well. 3D defenders will argue to the death that the process is not a gimmick, but we all know it is. Personally, I don't want to put a pair of 3D glasses over my own glasses for every movie I watch. I've never seen a 3D film that comes close to the best 2D films I've seen, and they are many.

Out of work Americans won't find any solace in the current 3D explosion that's creating thousands of post production jobs in India. The systemic greed at the heart of Hollywood's 3D craze is intrinsic. If 3D is to attain any lasting stronghold with audiences it must be used aptly to embellish stories whose dramatic effect will gain something from it. Last year's "Piranha" was a terrible disappointment because it was an ideal opportunity for the filmmakers to put the audience in the water with the schools of demonic fishes. But rather than hiring a cinematographer versed in 3D, the production used a director of photography who had never made a 3D movie before. Sadly, this is a standard practice in Hollywood where 3D filmmaking experience is seen as an obstacle rather than an advantage. To direct  "Tron Legacy," Disney hired Joseph Kosinski, a television director with no previous 3D experience. The result is a nice-looking stylized adventure movie with some visual depth but no "pop" in its art. With a $170,000,000 budget you would expect the filmmakers to go all out with the 3D effects. But that's not the case.

Health issues will always surround 3D. Regarding their 3D televisions, Samsung recently issued warnings to pregnant women, elderly people, kids, people suffering from serious medical conditions, and people who are sleep-deprived or drunk that they could suffer confusion, nausea, convulsions, altered vision, or dizziness. Nintendo has warned that kids under six should not use its 3D mode because it could permanently damage their undeveloped eyes.

The first 3D films in America ("Rural America" and "Niagara Falls") were shown in 1915 in Manhattan. There were 3D films made in the '20s and '30s before hitting a boom in the '50s with 3D films like Arch Oboler's seminal "Bwana Devil." 3D hit another streak in the '80s with sequel films like "Jaws 3D" and "Amityville 3-D." In the 21st century, the technology is going through another reintroduction, albeit during an economic depression that challenges Hollywood to improve the quality of its 3D films, and to stop charging more than normal ticket prices for the experience. Personally, I think audiences should boycott 3D films until Hollywood gets the message that they can't charge extra, and that 3D means breaking the fourth wall in a big way.

Companies like Cannon, Fuji, and JVC are delivering consumer 3D cameras so that anyone can experiment with 3D. It's only a matter of time before independent filmmakers are creating 3D films that compete with Hollywood's monopoly. But it still doesn't mean that all movies should or will be made in 3D. It's simply not equal to the advent of sound or color in cinema. As for the James Camerons of the world, I suggest they take a look at "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein," and see what they're missing.

 

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Cole Smithey's Top Ten Films of 2010

 

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2010 was a year of surprises at the cinema, not all of them good. Hollywood's vulgar attempts at leveraging 50% more from box office ticket prices with marginal 3D effects only exposed the lacking storylines they hoped to bolster. Even the staunchest fans of the overrated "Toy Story 3" had to concede that its 3D effects were less than inspiring. Movie abominations were in plentiful supply. The M. Night Shyama-ding-dong string of train wrecks rolled on with "The Last Airbender," while "Sex in the City 2" had something to offend audiences in every social strata. Julia Roberts crashed and burned in "Eat Pray Love." Sofia Coppola's unredeemable "Somewhere" had critics like Roger Ebert fawning over what is in effect a black hole of self-indulgence and narrative indolence.

However, an unprecedented February introduced gutsy thrillers from Polanski and Scorsese during the same week. It was too early in the year for audiences to grasp the significance of "Shutter Island"--a far better psychological thriller than "Inception"--but Scorsese's film easily made it into my top ten. It's more than I can say for David Fincher's entertaining "Social Network," but Olivier Assayas's abbreviated version of his three-part mini series "Carlos" would have filled my imaginary eleventh spot anyway. Choosing my top ten films of 2010 was easier than in recent years based on the undeniable strength of movies that audiences will discover, savor, and return to for many years to come. Here are the ten best films of 2010:

TEN - Winter's Bone: Relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence delivers an unforgettable performance as Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old Ozark girl who cares for her mentally disabled mother and two younger siblings. Ree's hardscrabble rural existence is threatened by legal machinations which threaten to repossess her home and wooded land if her outlaw father Jessup fails to appear for a court date. Desperate to track down her crystal-meth-producing dad Ree must request the assistance of coldhearted relatives who treat her with more than passing contempt. Co-writer/director Debra Granik takes full advantage of the harsh Missouri landscape in order to examine the cruel mindset of some of the meanest people you'll ever encounter on or off the big screen. Gothic in tone and unapologetically downbeat, "Winter's Bone" is a film that turns over a rock of backwoods American reality and studies the beautiful and ugly things that crawl there with equal interest.  

NINE - The Kids Are Alright: The mid-life parenting crisis of a lesbian couple is the narrative cornerstone for a memorable comedic family drama by writer/director Lisa Cholodenko. Together for 20 years, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) raise their teenage children Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and Joni (Mia Wasilkowska) in the comfort of their Los Angeles home. Nic is a doctor; Jules is starting her own landscaping business. Laser hangs out with a juvenile bully while 18-year-old Joni tracks down the man who anonymously donated his sperm that gave her and her brother life. Groovy Paul (Mark Ruffalo) is a motorcycle-riding restaurateur with a passion for locally grown vegetables and a bevy of attractive women who rotate around him. When fireworks ignite between Jules and Paul, the story turns into an exploration of desire, honesty, and loyalty in an unconventional familial setting.

EIGHT - 127 Hours: "127 Hours" is based on mountain climber Aron Ralston's memoir about his misadventure in Utah's Canyonlands National Park where he became trapped by a boulder and was forced to cut off his own arm in order to save his life. Director Danny Boyle is a master of movement. He understands how stagnate objects can come to life. Boyle reaches an expressive moment of such physicality when James Franco's Aron Ralston runs through a snaking rock crevasse in the Moab desert. He runs his hand--ostensibly the one he will lose--along a smooth contiunous wall of ancient rock. Watching how the director uses a full arsenal of visual and sonic cinematic devices at the service of a terrifying situation is deeply engrossing. You won't soon forget the experience.
 

SEVEN - Blue Valentine: Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams credibly play a young married couple--Dean and Cindy--whose relationship is falling apart in director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance's heavyweight romantic drama. Housepainter Dean (Gosling) is a caring father to the couple's young daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka). The pressures of working as a nurse constantly on call have made Cindy deeply unsatisfied with her marriage and role as a mother. The filmmakers use a flashback motif to show a series of events and adventures that led the couple to marry under less-than-ideal circumstances. The emotional and sexual vibrancy between Gosling and Williams is unavoidable. Sex is a significant ingredient in the film. The emotionally honest scenes of lovemaking are exquisitely executed to give depth and meaning to the relationship. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are two of the finest young American actors working in film today.

SIX - The Fighter: Part biopic and part untraditional character study, "The Fighter" is an immaculately executed film about two lower-class brothers whose common ground unites them through personal struggles. Based on real-life sibling boxers Mickey Ward and Dicky Eklund, the movie, set in Lowell, Massachusetts, examines problematic familial loyalties. Mickey (Mark Wahlberg) is a junior welterweight contender in a family boxing business run by his busy-body mother Alice (Melissa Leo). Micky's older half-brother and personal trainer Dicky (amazingly played by the estimable Christian Bale) is a crack addict and former fighter who carries around his reputation for knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard during a 1978 match as an eternal badge of honor. Following a break from boxing, the nearly over-the-hill Mickey attempts to stage a last-chance comeback. There's a gritty rawness in the portrayal of marginalized people used to fighting for everything they have.

FIVE - Black Swan: Darren Aronofsky's voyeuristic psychological thriller about a prima ballerina's descent into madness employs the same subjective dancer's-point-of-view that gave "The Red Shoes" its sense of frenetic authenticity. Natalie Portman delivers the most dazzling performance of her career as Nina, a ballet dancer determined to prove to her manipulative choreographer that she possesses the duality of the Swan Queen role in his version of Swan Lake. To do so she must possess dueling identities as the innocent "White Swan" and the erotically-if-demon-possessed "Black Swan." The ubiquitous Vincent Cassel dominates in his role as New York City Ballet choreographer Thomas Leroy. Leroy bullies, neglects, and seduces Nina into expanding mental and physical boundaries set by her neurotic mother Erica (Barbara Hershey). Nina still lives at home with mom in their Manhattan apartment. In this dysfunctional home setting, echoes of "Carrie" reverberate along with abstract corporeal elements that tip toward Cronenberg's cinema-of-the-body surrealism.

FOUR - Vincere: "Vincere" means "victory," and its import becomes apparent during the young Benito Mussolini's passionate affair with a woman named Ida Dalser. Ida sells all of her property and possessions to finance the propaganda-driven newspaper that Mussolini (Filippo Timi) dreams of starting in 1914. In spite of birthing Mussolini's first-born child in 1915--a boy bearing his father's name--Ida is rejected by the would-be dictator after he marries another woman. When she publicly demands to be recognized as his first wife and mother to his heir, Mussolini exiles Ida and their son to her sister's guarded house from which she continually writes begging letters to public officials. The filmmaker makes fantastic use of historic archive footage of Mussolini, along with brilliantly stylized sequences of tragic beauty, to give the film an epic scope that mints itself in the viewers mind. The terrible suffering that Ida endures becomes a kind of totem upon which the hopes and dreams of Italy are set asunder by its maniacal leader.  

THREE - Shutter Island: For his forty-fifth film Martin Scorsese crafts a gorgeously stylized psychological thriller full of darkly lush horror that torments its obsessed protagonist. As former World War II vet turned U.S. Marshal "Teddy" Daniels, Leonardo DiCaprio hits every psychological mark that Scorsese dynamically orchestrates against a vast metaphorical natural and unnatural setting. "Shutter Island," a Boston Harbor land mass, circa 1954, contains a private prison hospital for the criminally insane. There, a female inmate named Rachel Solondo has escaped from her unbroken cell. Teddy and his first-time partner U.S. Marshall Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) arrive on the fog-shrouded isle to investigate the patient's disappearance. "Shutter Island" is a complex mystery that exponentially folds back on itself during its shocking third act. America's most accomplished and inspired director makes yet another truly absorbing picture. 

TWO - True Grit: Ethan and Joel Coen adapt Charles Portis's novel with so much humorous panache and deathly reason that you can't help but give yourself over completely to the movie. More than just filling John Wayne's shoes in what was his greatest performance, in Henry Hathaway's 1969 original "True Grit," Jeff Bridges creates a more believable character as U.S. Marshal Ruben Cogburn a.k.a. "Rooster Cockburn." With a leather eye-patch covering his blind right-eye Rooster is a man with "grit." It's an elusive quality of calculated confidence in everything he does that draws 14-year-old Mattie Ross (brilliantly played by newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) to him. As with "Fargo," there's a steely spine of feminist thought at play. "True Grit" is one damned fine western that's better than the original. 

ONE - The American: Anton Corbijn crafts a sexy and taught European thriller about an assassin on a mission in the remote Abruzzo region of Italy. George Clooney is Jack, an aging hit man on the run from a group of dangerous Swedes who inexplicably want to kill him. Clooney plays his character of walking contradictions with an alternating intensity and sensitivity that registers with a rigor that's a delight to savor. His mercurial performance represents his finest work in an already accomplished career. Anton Corbijn's intuitive sense of scale and composition create an unforgettable regard for a unique region of Italian culture where, in this case, earthy romance and unseen danger collide. "The American" is a perfect espionage thriller.

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Posted by Cole Smithey on January 4, 2011 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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September 24th Episode

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Posted by Cole Smithey on September 30, 2010 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Watch First Run Movies Anywhere Now

Why Video-On-Demand is Inevitable 
By Cole Smithey

During an average week, approximately eight films are released theatrically in America. Of those eight, only two will open at your local cineplex regardless of which podunk suburb you're trapped in. Three will open in "limited release," which means they'll get shown only in the top five to fifteen "major markets" (ie. big cities like Chicago and San Francisco), before gradually "rolling out" to exponentially smaller markets if it does well enough at the box office. The remaining three movie titles will only open in New York or Los Angeles, or both. This out of date distribution model excludes millions of potential audiences from seeing 75% of available films in the market. If you live in somewhere like Las Vegas and want to see Nicholas Winding Refn's latest film "Valhalla Rising," you'll have to put it in your Netflix que, or wait to purchase it on DVD.

 
The industry is full of bellowing Casandras who believe that streaming video-on-demand distribution will bring down cinema chains regardless of the fact that movie attendance is up over last year, even with this year's significant downturn in overall movie quality. EpixHD, (a company jointly owned by Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM) is an online premium movie channel that delivers stockpiled films over the internet as HD quality video-on-demand to subscribers. Viewers can even "share" movies with fellow subscribers to watch the same film from as many as four different locations. When I spoke to the company's Chief Digital Officer Emil Rensing, he paradoxically defended the aggressive stance that theater chain owners are taking against studios delivering day-of-release VOD (video-on-demand) movies into people's homes. Theater companies have threatened to cease releasing a specific studio's films if they ever dare to deliver titles through VOD on the same day a film opens in their cinema. Still, Magnolia's "Magnet" division took advantage of the FCC's April, 2010 ruling, allowing studios to stream films in advance of theatrical release. Magnet ran George A. Romero's "Survival of the Dead" at a premium price on VOD Amazon and XBOX LIVE a month before it hit the cinemas. Blood is in the water.

Earlier this year, Europe's top cinema chain Odeon boycotted Disney's "Alice In Wonderland" due to the studio's plan to release the DVD twelve weeks after the film's theatrical premier. Ten years ago the typical lag time on DVDs was six months after release. Odeon ended up losing out on their boycott decision when two other theater chains took over screening "Alice in Wonderland."

Now, "twelve-weeks" is a standard lag time for a DVD title release after a theatrical premier, and "28-days" is the lag time for a title to be rented or streamed through companies like Netflix and Redbox. I predict by the end of the year, that timeline will shrink even more. Blu-ray discs have momentarily juiced up flagging DVD sales but the market is steadily slipping. Disney is now looking ahead to online distribution, but they're already behind multi-platform production and distribution companies like IFC, Magnolia, Relativity Media, and Variance Films.

Variance Films President Dylan Marchetti (THINKFilm's former director of distribution and marketing) was forthcoming about sharing his thoughts on the subject of video-on-demand releasing as a distribution method that Variance is employing for its indie films.

When I asked how soon he thought simultaneous day-of-theatrical-release and VOD would become an industry-wide practice, Dylan Marchetti responded, "I don't think it'll ever be the standard for all of them. I think it works in the indie world, and we've seen hard figures that show theatrical box office isn't hurt by VOD availability most of the time on independent/arthouse films. But for big Hollywood films? I have a hard time believing the major theater chains are going to let that happen--that's a mighty risk. What if "Twilight" were available on VOD [on the same] day and date--would you see millions of people hitting the theater at 12:01 on Tuesday? No chance, and everyone knows it. The recent FCC ruling that allows for those $30 VOD day and date films is a fine ruling and all, but who's going to take the first chance on a blockbuster? In the end, I can't see anyone dying to risk making the first $150 million direct-to-video film."

Marchetti went on to say, "Personally, I think VOD [is] a powerful tool for independent filmmakers seeking a national audience. My films are indie releases, and no matter how big the budget or how well the film does, there's always people who want to see it who live hundreds of miles away from a theater playing it--VOD can fix that."

To my mind VOD is already poised serve the full spectrum of Hollywood, foreign, and independent films. Hollywood is dying, and charging audiences 50% more to see a movie in mediocre 3D isn't going to save it. I proffer that someone traveling on an airplane is just as likely to take a chance on Lisa Cholodenko's film on the day it comes out as they are to watch "Date Night," weeks after it premiered. iPad users in Las Vegas might want to watch J. Blakeson's "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" on their device the day it opens in New York and Los Angeles, even though it's not playing at a local cinema. I also believe that just as many hormone-raging girls would plan a "Twilight" slumber party on the day the movie comes out as will nevertheless fill cinema seat capacities. It all comes down to creating an additional income stream for an out-of-balance industry. In the early '80s MTV's slogan was, "I want my MTV." For the next generation of movie audiences it's, "I want my VOD!"

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Posted by Cole Smithey on July 10, 2010 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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How "Toy Story 3" Blew Up in My Face

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By Cole Smithey

Last Friday I did what I usually do on Friday mornings, I walked down to my local cineplex to pay to see a movie (in this case "Toy Story 3"). After lunch I wrote up my capsule review. At the end I gave it a "C+" grade. Between B- and C+ is where I draw the line amid good and bad to fit to Rottentomatoes' "fresh" or "rotten" rating system.

I posted the review on my website (ColeSmithey.com), and on Rottentomatoes. By Saturday morning I had a message from a website asking for a phone interview and the kind of hate-mail and death threats you'd expect for Joran Van der Sloot. The world wide web had turned into a tsunami of negative attention directed at myself and Armond White, the 146th and 147th critics to weigh in on "Toy Story 3." The problem was that I had dared to tarnish the film's sternly guarded "100%" rating on Rottentomatoes, which would have given the trilogy three perfect scores. White redoubled the insult by posting his even less favorable review 15-miniutes later.

Sites like Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and AOL's PopEater were quick to lump White's and my reviews together as critics who "hated 'Toy Story 3'." How my C+ grade equaled "hate" mattered not for the frothing complicit public protectors of Disney•Pixar. As with everything else in the American media there's no room for nuance in today's court of public opinion; it's all or nothing. My review was being sniffed at like it was a box of Cracker Jacks with no prize. Although I'd made fifteen points about specific problems I had with the film, some readers seemed unable to grasp a single criticism. Did they even bother to read it, I wondered. The answer was painfully clear. All they needed to know was that I didn't like a movie that most of them hadn't even seen.

There isn't a film I can think of that doesn't have detractors, so why should "Toy Story 3" be any different? Yet the media's framing of me as an attention-hungry film critic, gaming the system at the expense of a movie franchise's place in history is a stretch editors were happy to make. On the face of it, you could surmise that hate-mongers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have effectively opened the floodgates for a pervasive conscience-free mob mentality to breed like gangrene. Now it's on the menu at Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

As the Staff Film Editor for "Kidsville News!," where I deal exclusively with G and PG-rated movies, I'm aware of ratings for children's films. I have young nieces and nephews with responsible parents who are sensitive to what their kids see. I could not in good conscience endorse "Toy Story 3" as a G-rated film that meets their criteria. As well, Hollywood is currently changing the game on what audiences can expect from a "3-D" movie so they can charge higher ticket prices for an inferior product. "Toy Story 3" is a poster child of this unsavory business practice.

By definition, being a critic means it is my job to "critique." I wrote my "Toy Story 3" review just as I write any piece of criticism--with honesty, sincerity, and a singular mission to express my ideas as clearly and briefly as possible. For the media and members of the public to feign indignation over such a trivial issue as an aggregate website's critical rating of a movie, as an excuse to unify groupthink at the cost of all independent thought, is a bellwether of where America is at these days. It's not a safe place for kids, but don't say it out loud.

Posted by Cole Smithey on June 22, 2010 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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