Some Guy’s Canon – An Intro

I hated L’Avventura.

Sight & Sound released their once-a-decade Top 10 Movies of All Time poll recently, and it inspired me to sit down and come up with a Top 10 of my own. I ended up having 148 nominees for those 10 slots, so I figured I would talk about them some on my bloggity-blog. I hope to get to them all over time, and I’m sure I’ll add more as I go. Hopefully, I’ll inspire you to seek out some flicks you should have already seen,  and who knows? Maybe we can discuss that here.

Here’s my list, which will be updated with links as I post new blogs. Please note that I came up with this list in about 30 minutes, so I reserve to add and remove films at my leisure:

1. 8 1/2
2. 2001
3. A.I.
4. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
5. Adventures of Robin Hood
6. After Hours
7. The Age of Innocence
8. Aguirre, The Wrath of God
9. Airplane
10. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
11. Alien
12. All About Eve
13. All The President’s Men
14. Anchorman
15. Annie Hall
16. Apocalypse Now
17. The Aviator
18. Barry Lyndon
19. Barton Fink
20. The Best Years Of Our Lives
21. Bicycle Thieves
22. Big Lebowski
23. Black Swan
24. Blade Runner
25. Blazing Saddles
26. Blow Out
27. Blue Velvet
28. Boogie Nights
29. Bridge Over The River Kwai
30. Bug
31. Burn After Reading
32. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
33. Cache
34. Carrie
35. Casablanca
36. Casino
37. Children of Men
38. Chinatown
39. Citizen Kane
40. City Lights
41. The Conversation
42. Cool Hand Luke
43. Crimes and Misdemeanors
44. Dawn of the Dead (original)
45. The Departed
46. Die Hard
47. Dr. Strangelove
48. Duck Soup
49. E.T.
50. Ed Wood
51. Exorcist
52. Fargo
53. Fight Club
54. Finding Nemo
55. For All Mankind
56. The General
57. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
58. Godfather Part 1/2
59. The Gold Rush
60. Goodfellas
61. Gosford Park
62. Halloween
63. Hausu
64. Heat
65. Hoop Dreams
66. I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang
67. Inception
68. The Incredibles
69. Inglourious Basterds
70. Jackie Brown
71. Jaws
72. Kill Bill 1/2
73. The Killing
74. The King of Comedy
75. The Last Emperor
76. The Last Picture Show
77. The Last Waltz
78. Lawrence of Arabia
79. Let The Right One In
80. The Lion King
81. The Long Goodbye
82. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
83. M
84. Magnolia
85. Manhattan
86. Martha Marcy May Marlene
87. MASH
88. Master & Commander
89. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
90. Melancholia
91. Metropolis
92. Midnight Run
93. Miller’s Crossing
94. Mulholland Dr
95. Mystery Train
96. Nashville
97. No Country For Old Men
98. Paper Moon
99. Paris, Texas
100. The Passion of Joan of Arc
101. Paths of Glory
102. Persona
103. Planes, Trains and Automobiles
104. Pulp Fiction
105. Raging Bull
106. Ran
107. Rashomon
108. Rear Window
109. The Red Shoes
110. The Royal Tenenbaums
111. Schindler’s List
112. School of Rock
113. A Serious Man
114. Seven Samurai
115. The Seventh Seal
116. Sherlock Jr
117. The Shining
118. Shock Corridor
119. Shoot The Piano Player
120. Short Cuts
121. Sideways
122. Singing in the Rain
123. Speed Racer
124. The Sting
125. Stranger Than Paradise
126. Strozek
127. Sunshine
128. Targets
129. Taxi Driver
130. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
131. There Will be Blood
132. The Thing
133. Three Colors: Blue
134. Three Colors: White
135. Three Colors: Red
136. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
137. Touch of Evil
138. Toy Story 1/2/3
139. Traffic
140. Up
141. Vampyr
142. The Verdict
143. Vertigo
144. Wall-E
145. A Woman Under The Influence
146. The Wrestler
147. Young Frankenstein
148. Zodiac

Some brief notes about my choices:

1. I tried to think of films throughout movie history, and not just, say, the best films since 1980. I know several people who roll their eyes and get bored by older films. To those people I say, “You’re terrible, your lack of curiosity is terrible, and your opinions are terrible, too.” So nyah.

2. This is definitely an incomplete list. I’m guessing the bulk of films I choose will be ones that most people have heard of. There may be a few surprises, but even those you’ve probably heard of.

3. The list will be alphabetical. So, for example if I post about “Vertigo” and I have #143 beside it, it just means it’s #143 alphabetically, so don’t get all testy.

4. I have lots of blind spots in my cinema-watching experience, and there are several filmmakers left out that a more advanced cinephile would consider sacrilege: Ozu (haven’t seen), Antonioni (I struggled through L’Avventura during my first semester of film school. It was brutal, in part because I was a young, impatient goober. I also don’t really like Blow-Up that much), Satyajit Ray (haven’t seen) and Tarkovsky (haven’t seen). I have Bergman on my list with Persona and The Seventh Seal, but would you believe those are the only Bergman films I’ve seen? I’m lame.

5. I’ve seen several Godard films. The guy’s a genius, and I respect his advancement of the form. I also don’t want to see any of his movies twice. If there’s one thing all of the films on my list have in common, it’s that I’m eager to see them twice. Yes, even Schindler’s List.

6. Only about 15 percent of my list consists of foreign films. Hopefully that number will grow as my list grows.

So there you have it. Look for my reviews to start appearing Monday. How fun!

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“We Still Be Doomed” By Bizrq Is The Album Of The Millennium

A man, a plan, a canal….A MASTERPIECE.

Bizrq’s “We Still Be Doomed” is the long-awaited sequel to their landmark debut “We Be Doomed”, which posited that the gadgets with which we’ve become dependent on in our daily lives will one day turn on us, starting a revolution that makes the La Paz Revolution of 1809 seem like a jaunty picnic. In this amazing follow-up, Bizrq takes the vital ideas found in WBD and expands on them with a swagger acquired from years of perfecting their craft.

Bizrq’s love/hate relationship with the machines in our lives is illustrated in the push-pull dynamics of their compositions, with analog and digital modes swirling in a miasmic stew. This may be the rare concept album in which the concept is illustrated *within the music itself.* “We Still Be Doomed” makes “Pet Sounds” sound as hasty and poorly thought-out as the latest Ke$ha single.

If I were to compare this to any other work of art, I would not choose music but rather David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest”. Both are sprawling tomes bursting with ideas and a deep sense of morality vis a vis man’s place in the universal firmament. The only difference is that Bizrq will make you dance.

And the humor! Walter Cornish, Anundson’s beloved creation last heard on the late, lamented Mangy Dog Radio Hour Whoopdee-Doo (which you can find at comedypodcast.com) provides a warm, soothing presence. Cornish’s gentle good humor adds a significant layer of depth to the already-proven Bizrq formula, leading to a moving climax that left this reviewer devastated. Yes, Dear Reader, I learned that I, in fact, can cry.

Witty, fun, exuberant, thrilling, smart, joyous and funky as all hell, “We Still Be Doomed” by Bizrq has swooped in on the last week of the year to be, easily, the best CD of 2012. Buy 4 copies and hand them out to strangers. YOU WILL BE CHANGING LIVES.

You can buy “We Still Be Doomed” at Bizrq.bandcamp.com

Looper is … Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Supposedly, Rian Johnson’s Looper has a lot of plotholes related to time travel that caused a lot of people to not like the movie. I don’t really care about that crap. Complaining about the implausibility of something that’s impossible seems a little goofy to me. It’s like complaining about the magic rules in Harry Potter or nitpicking about whatever the hell it is that Hobbits do. Looper is flawed, but its refusal to play by “proper time travel rules” is the flaw that interests me the least. No, the biggest flaw in Looper is a second act that’s deadly.

Looper is about Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character Joe, who’s a hitman in the future that kills people with a blunderbuss. He’s also apparently a drug addict, I’m presuming because of the horrible plastic surgery that was done on his nose. (More on that later.) Jeff Daniels also plays a crime overlord from the future who blahblahblah, and also telekinesis is involved for plot-motivated reasons. Anyway, the narration in the film will get you up to speed on the ins and outs, but this is all building to a showdown between JGL and Bruce Willis. At least, it seems that way, and that’s kind of what happens, but…hm.

Which brings us to the back half of the film, which is primarily set on Emily Blunt’s farm. There are several shots of Blunt chopping on the same tree stump with an ax that made me laugh for some reason. (Does the entire farm run on tiny splinters?) Emily Blunt’s kid has telekinesis, and is going to be Jeff Daniels in the future (I think?), so Bruce Willis goes back in time to try and find the kid and kill the kid before he grows up to be eeeeeeeevil and so Bruce Willis can preserve his fond memories of the pretty Chinese lady he was married to after he “closed his loop” back in the day. (Just see the movie for further explanation on all this stuff.) Is Emily Blunt’s kid the one that Bruce is looking for? I don’t want to give anything away but of course he is.

This all leads to a surprising, clever ending that maybe doesn’t have the emotional resonance it’s meant to. I think that’s my issue with the work of Rian Johnson. I love all of his films as ideas, but I run hot and cold on their quality as movies. I’m reminded of Johnson’s second film, The Brothers Bloom, another intriguing, well-made film that seems to wander for a bit before it closes. Johnson uses these moments to try and add an emotional layer, but in both these films, the wonky structure stops the movie in its tracks. On a scene-by-scene basis, Johnson’s work is outstanding, but I’m not sure he’s made a film yet where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There’s some interesting world building going on here. This is one of those movies set in the future where things aren’t TOO futuristic save for  the occasional flying motorcycle. I liked all of that very much. However, I was somewhat distracted by Levitt’s makeup. I get that they wanted him to resemble Willis, but that’s what the acting is for. Putting Levitt in a crude version of WillisFace was an odd decision that didn’t quite work for me.  When watching actors play older/younger versions of each other, I’ve managed to suspend my disbelief for decades now. Why bother?

There’s much to like in Looper, and it’s impossible to deny Rian Johnson’s ambition and ability. His films are easy to like, but difficult to love, and pacing seems to be his constant downfall. I flat-out blanked for 10 minutes during the second act. For me, his best work has still been the two episodes of Breaking Bad that he’s directed.

UPDATE: Jeff Daniels was playing a different character, not the evil Rainmaker guy. I think.

SHILL: Looper (+ UltraViolet Digital Copy)