I've Got a Problem

Hey everyone. Something unexpected happened with my 2015 Blindspot list and I need some help. Something I had no way of anticipating has come up and it necessitates that I will have to swap out one movie for another. I'd like to get this resolved as soon as possible so any advice you can offer will be appreciated. I think I need to explain first precisely what happened and the unexpected scheduling conflict that forces me to do this. I was really hoping after last year's incident with The Birds that this wouldn't happen again, but right now I'm not sure I have much choice.

I had it all worked out. I had picked 12 movies and by New Years I had all of them on DVD. I was ready to go and even managed to do my first one this month already. The trouble is that I've just started one of my classes, specifically a class on horror movies. That's all well and good, the problem is that among the many horror films they could have picked, they chose Night of the Living Dead. It just so happens I had that one on my Blindspot list was planning to save it for October. I won't be able to stick to that plan, because by October I will have already seen it. It's also being screened in January, so I won't be able to do it for February and I've already seen my movie for this month.


I'm really sorry to anyone who wanted to hear my thoughts on George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and I was really hoping this would not happen again. Still, after the incident that forced me to replace The Birds with Re-Animator I came prepared for worse situations. My backup plan is as follows: in the event that for whatever reason I am unable to watch one of the movies (whether it's because of technical problems or, in this case, because I'll have to watch the movie earlier than I planned), it will be replaced by another option from my preliminary list to be determined based on immediate availability.

This is where I need some advice on the matter. I was saving this for a special feature later in the year (I was considering spending a week in the summer going through some of the films that didn't make the final list), but I might need it now. I have compiled a list of the films on my preliminary list that I have immediate access to (and haven't seen since I made it). I'm going to have to swap out Night of the Living Dead for one of them, and this unfortunately means I probably won't be doing a Halloween-themed movie for October.

I would like you to post recommendations in the comments for which of these films you would like to see me do instead of Night of the Living Dead. Any advice you can offer will be helpful. Again, I'm really sorry about having to take this movie out so abruptly. At least it happened earlier and I haven't gotten very far into the list yet. Thank you so much for any recommendations.

Wasted Potential From A Professional

Back in grade 11, when my high school started its first film class, my teacher had an assistant with whom I would banter a lot about movies (as well a the teacher himself, but that's another matter). Towards the end of the year, we were running low on time to watch movies and still fit in everything my teacher wanted to do.  Instead of watching movies in full, he and the assistant began screening clips from movies they recommended for us to see, and seeing as I had a huge supply of clips available on my computer at the time I made numerous offers to use them but was turned down every time. 

One of the first clips we were shown was a scene from the movie Léon: The Professional, specifically the scene in which Natalie Portman manages to survive the massacre of her family by total chance (she happened to be out buying groceries at the time and got home afterwards). I found myself interested in seeing the whole thing, but initially turned down an offer from the assistant to borrow his copy for the weekend. Three years later I finally got around to picking up a copy on Blu-ray and decided to give it a watch. For three years I had been meaning to watch that movie, and what I got was... okay at the most. It's one of those movies that starts out promising but builds up to a disappointing climax that ruins the whole thing. I'll get into more detail about that later.

Luc Besson's work really seems to be hit or miss. Some of his movies, like The Big Blue, are genuinely good. Others, like The Fifth Element are over-the-top and campy but still fun to watch. Then he has one or two movies that are just bad, the best example being Lucy; one of the only times I have walked out of a theater. (Why did you make an entire science fiction movie out of an idea that has been completely debunked by science?) Léon: The Professional might not be as bad as Lucy, for sure. However, it is hardly Besson's best work either. It has some good ideas but also a mountain of wasted potential.

The story concerns the relationship between an assassin named Léon, played by Jean Reno; and a young girl named Mathilda, played by a teenage Natalie Portman. Mathilda happens to be miserable, living in a dysfunctional family with an abusive father caught up in criminal activity. When corrupt police officer Stansfield played by Gary Oldman gets involved he ends up murdering Mathilda's entire family, including her brother. Mathilda herself survives by total luck simply due to not being present at the time, and takes refuge in Léon's apartment. After spending some time with Léon, she talks him into training her to be an assassin as well so she can get revenge. 

Sounds like a pretty good premise, right? I thought so, too. Unfortunately that doesn't really go the way it should. You have this great setup involving this girl being trained as an assassin... and it's never used. Mathilda gets all these skills and never gets a chance to actually take advantage of them. The most she ever gets to do is shoot a gun blindly through a window (before he begins training her) and use a sniper rifle to shoot a paintball at some random guy jogging. The whole point is supposed to be her quest for revenge... but nope. We can't let her take it on. Better to have Léon do everything while Mathilda just hides.

I mentioned earlier, the climax was what really ruined the movie and pulled me out of it. In this big scene, Stansfield brings a whole team of cops to take out Léon (all because Mathilda was stupid enough to tell him who she was and what she was doing). He explicitly states that there are over 200 of them, seemingly every cop in the city... and not one woman among them. Statistically that seems extremely improbable, and at first I thought it might have just been my feminist side kicking in again. However, thinking about it at length, there was a lot of wasted potential in doing so, and it does raise a few questions about Besson's views on gender, considering all the characters who actually do something are men.

We have an insanely huge army of over 200 male cops who are all taken out by Léon. Where is Mathilda this whole time? She's sneaking out of the building to make sure Léon's potted plant gets out safely. This would have been a great opportunity for her to show off her skills. Instead she is immediately grabbed within moments of leaving the apartment and has to get rescued by Léon who then starts going Rambo on the cops. The whole movie has been about her quest for revenge, but instead it's Léon who dies taking out Stansfield, which was a big disappointment, and Mathilda just runs away. 

Now that alone is annoying, but there is another angle to look at where Besson's treatment of women displays a waste of potential. Throughout the movie, Léon keeps saying that he has this one rule about who he kills: "No women, no children". Okay, sure, he has standards, but I have a question for you Léon, supposing a woman is posing an obvious threat to you? I mean, what are you going to do if Jane Smith comes kicking down your door and has an assault rifle pointed at your forehead? Supposing a bunch of armed cops break into your apartment and one of them happens to be a woman?

Besson apparently made this movie completely failing to consider the fact that female cops and female assassins do exist, which doesn't make sense considering the entire plot consists of him training a girl to be an assassin. His "no women, no children" rule is obviously intended to give him some depth by displaying a moral code, but it never really affects the plot in general.You could take out every single scene where he mentions that code and the story would still be pretty much exactly the same. This climactic scene could have been a great opportunity to test how far Léon would go in sticking to that rule. 

There could have been some dramatic potential in Léon being faced with a female cop holding a loaded gun, and him trying to cope with the possibility that he may have to break his one rule. That could even have been his downfall, with him being unable to bring himself to shoot a female cop and getting killed as a result. That would then have forced Mathilda to become more self-reliant and step up as an action heroine, allowing her to finally confront Stansfield and kill him. Instead, we just have a ridiculously large number of men and Léon beating them up before getting killed taking out the guy who should have been killed by Mathilda.

It's a shame, really, because Léon: The Professional could have been a great movie. There was a lot of good ideas and some great actors who try to do their best with their performances. In the end, however, there are too many opportunities missed. Luc Besson had this brilliant idea for an action movie and completely failed to take advantage of it. I know he can make a good movie, but all we have here was a very good premise that has sadly gone to waste.

Blindspot: Strike (1925)

It's time to begin my 2015 Blindspot Challenge and what better place to begin than with the earliest film on my list, Sergei Eisenstein's Strike. This one was something of an unexpected addition, and included for different reasons from the other entries in my blindspot list. I had actually never heard of Strike until we covered Soviet Montage cinema in one of my classes. We spent two weeks looking at how the Russians influenced filmmaking in the 1920's. The first week we watched Vsevolod Pudovkin's Mother, which I can't say I enjoyed. It was boring and tedious. Between that and Solaris, I was starting to wonder if I would ever find a Russian film that I actually liked. Little did I realize that I would... only a week later.

The next film we watched was Battleship Potempkin, a movie that completely won me over and opened my eyes to so many things. A week earlier I had been wondering why Soviet Montage was such a big deal, but after seeing Battleship Potempkin it all seemed to make sense. It was so effective in turning me around I even went an wrote a whole article detailing everything I'd learned about why the Soviet Montage movement was such a crucial part of film history. After that I was starting to wonder if Sergei Eisenstein, was a director I could get into. The following week I told my professor how I felt and asked if he could recommend any other films by the same guy, and he gave me the title of Strike, a film that had been referred to in the readings and the lecture but to which I never gave much thought.

Fast forward a few weeks later, and I actually managed to find a copy. The only way I could get it was as a double feature with Battleship Potempkin (not that I'm complaining) and it cost me just about every bit of money I had on hand at the time, but it was worth it. My professor was amazed that I even managed to find a copy. The trouble is sometimes even when I own these old movies I sometimes tend to put them off for one reason or another (as was arguably the case for five other movies also on my list). My solution was to include Strike as a candidate for my Blindspot List, and I decided to start off the new year with it.

I could definitely see a lot of Eisenstein's directorial style in Strike. A lot of the ideas he experimented with here are developed a lot more in Battleship Potempkin. The most obvious parallel is the use of the proletariat masses as a "collective" protagonist, instead of having one single hero. In this case, the Bourgeoisie and the police also serve as a sort of "collective" antagonist. Focusing on groups of characters instead of including a designated hero and villain allows Eisenstein to directly address the issues of the class system and how it affects the people as a whole. This same idea is revisited on a smaller scale in Battleship Potempkin, where the same division of class and the need for change is presented through an allegory in the form of the divide between a battleship's officers and its crew.

Building off of Kuleshov's experiments that demonstrated how editing could be used to create an emotional response in the viewers, Eisenstein believed that editing could be used to create meaning. His theory was that two contrasting images that each have separate meanings could be combined together to create a new message, one that was not originally present in either shot. This idea would be refined in Battleship Potempkin but it is more obviously present in Strike.

The example that was often cited in my readings was the climactic scene in which the massacre of the workers is cut alongside shots of a bull being slaughtered (incidentally, I do wonder if this inspired Francis Ford Coppola when he was making Apocalypse Now). On their own, these visuals would have nothing to do with each other, but placed together there is a connection to be drawn. They even set it up with shots of an apartment complex that make it look suspiciously like a corral. That's a great example, but it's one of many.

Another instance where Eisenstein applies his theory to great effect is in the way he shows the factory shutting down due to the workers' strike (you may recognize this moment, as it was a still from this scene I used in my Blindspot list). In this case he juxtaposes two separate shots: three workers folding their arms, and a wheel slowing down and finally stopping. Once again, on their own, these shots would not mean much. When placed together, it symbolizes a simple connection: as soon as the workers stop operating the machinery, the factory shuts down.

As you can imagine, this is hardly a conventional story. Much like Battleship Potempkin, Strike is very much an allegory for a much larger issue, that being the luxury of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie are represented by a group of businessmen who respond to the workers' demands not with any serious consideration but instead skim through them, dismiss them all as ridiculous, and then pull out wine and lemons while sitting around smoking huge cigars. They even demonstrate how little these men think of the workers when one of them spills a bit of lemon on his shoe. He seems to be appalled by the idea of picking it up himself, and instead uses the paper containing the workers' demands to wipe it off before calling a valet over to "clean it up". In addition to all that, Eisenstein even cuts the men sitting together with scenes of the police rounding up the workers outside.

Strike is a brilliant film in many ways. After seeing Battleship Potempkin I thought I could get into Sergei Eisenstein and if this film was anything to go on, he doesn't disappoint. I have no idea how I will go about finding any of his other films, or indeed which films of his I would pursue if I did. What I can say is that I have a new director to add to my list of auteurs I admire. There is definitely an interesting quality to his work, and a lot of stuff to be said simply analysing his movies. It is nice to be able to add a foreign name to that list, and one from the silent era at that. If Battleship Potempkin and Strike were anything to go on, I'm open to seeing more of Sergei Eisenstein.

A New Year On Hitchcock's World

Today is New Year's Day and my blog has officially been around for a whole year. I started running this blog last January and I've come a long way since. It makes senses therefore to spend some time looking back on everything I've been through. In the past year I've covered a large variety of topics. I've done reviews, comparisons, and analyses of movies ranging from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Rambo: First Blood Part II. In addition to those I've done historical articles, abridged versions of academic papers, studies of directors, Character Profiles, blogathons, and relays, among other things. I have been at least as far back as the work of the Lumière Brothers and as recent as 2014.

When I first started this blog, I was a nobody. I was a washed-up Unterganger (basically a person who finds absurd ways to piss off Hitler), and I used to be a  pretty good one as well. I made a lot of crazy videos and even created two spin-off series: The U-Boat Parodies and Revolution Parodies. As a writer I go even further back. I think what really got me going as a writer was when I started playing in text-based role-playing games on this website Bzpower. It used to be all I'd really do. On a good day I'd sometimes be posting in four or five at once.

I have a lot of memories of those days. I made some friends, and a few enemies. I remember one guy I developed a rather harsh rivalry with mainly due to our different views on how an RPG should be run, and it reached its peak when he excluded me from his RPG (one of the most popular at the time) because I got excited and before he'd officially approved my character's profile I went onto the board asking what was going on and if there was any way to get in on the action. Admittedly my reaction wasn't the best, but when I tried to point out how extreme he was being he got a few moderators cracking down on me.

I also remember another instance when I was in an RPG in which the co-host forced me to let him kill off one of my characters. I spent hours fighting with him, trying to reason with him. I explained that he had no right to kill off the character without my approval but he wouldn't listen, constantly telling me that "somebody has to die" (never mind that he had several people of his own and I didn't see him killing any of them). I tried messaging the host, politely explaining the situation, and asking if perhaps we could talk it over and come to an agreement; he responded by ignoring my plea and siding with his co-host. I even resorted to offering up other characters to be killed instead, one of whom was taken and they still were not satisfied. The last one I tried out, I almost had my character forcibly written out against my will on multiple occasions (though I had some interesting ideas with her, I need to find a way to reuse those).

Fast forward a few years later and I'm only in one RPG now, and getting near the end of High School. This was arguably where my film-based writing got started. I was in Grade 11 at the time, and my school had just started running film classes. My teacher, who was well-versed in the subject but still experimenting with different ideas on exactly how to run a class, decided to try setting up a film blog for us. We shared a joint account and were free to contribute content. I wrote a few articles that impressed him, some of which took hours. I once spent a whole evening on an article about Stanley Kubrick. I later did articles about other things, including one on The Room and one about the history of westerns.

Unfortunately, that line of work didn't last long. I got a few articles written, and my teacher was impressed by my content. He commented a few times to tell me how much he liked what I was writing. The problem was that after I had posted a few articles, I realized that nobody was actually reading them. None of my classmates were even bothering to check the site, let alone reading my content or contributing anything of their own. I'd spent hours putting together these articles only to find out nobody was reading them. When I finally realized that, I stopped providing content altogether, as it seemed pointless to keep doing so.

Around this time, I finally realized that film was the area in which I belonged, though at the time I thought I wanted to be a director. I also began a few early writing projects, which included an attempt at a sequel to John Carpenter's The Thing. It was also around this time I attempted to direct a movie of my own, In the Line of Duty, for Remembrance Day. That film allowed me to experience first-hand the hardships of filmmaking, and I have a lot of stories about its frustrating production.

I had actors with very little experience who never bothered to read the scripts I sent them, and failed to even show up when I asked them to. We only had an hour to shoot each day (during lunchtime) and everybody would be taking their time to eat lunch when I specifically told them to show up at exactly 12:45. Also everybody who showed up said they were interested in acting (I had hoped for some other people behind the camera as well, and found that I had to do everything myself). As if that wasn't frustrating enough, there was also that one actor who got so uncooperative I had to "fire" him, which resulted in him actively trying to sabotage the shooting of the film. It got so bad it took having the Vice Principal on standby just to keep him off the set.

The result was a disaster. I'd hoped to make a solid emotional war film and instead it was an incoherent mess with acting that makes Tommy Wiseau look like Humphrey Bogart. People were laughing at moments that were meant to be serious, lots of little things broke the illusion because actors refused to cooperate. The actress cast as the doctor wore pink boots on set, one guy refused to cover his long hair. The part everybody remembered was one scene that was supposed to be depressing but ended up being humorous because a teachers got into the background by accident.

Ironically, it inspired my first major screenplay. After the disastrous premier I got to thinking about remaking it. One thing led to another, I began making notes, next thing I knew I had a draft. Since I was no longer bound by time constraints I was able to flesh out the story, expanding on the characters and introducing some new ones. I changed up the setting to a forest instead of an urban environment (which was done out of necessity, since we could only shoot in and around the school) By the time it got to its current state there was very little of the original high school short still recognizably present.

Then I ended up in college. I thought I'd found the perfect place but it was another disaster. I had trouble keeping up with my classes, and almost failed in two of them (I dropped out just in time). I had a few friends of sorts, but I never found much of a connection to anybody. I remember trying on numerous occasions to connect with people through movie screenings. I tried everything, of every genre and period I thought of. I invited people to the lounge to watch movies and no matter what I tried not a single person would ever show up, or if they did it was briefly and for some entirely unrelated purpose.

There was some good that came out of those experiences, though. It was while I was living in residence I first starting reading the work of H.P. Lovecraft and began work on my second major screenplay, an adaptation of his story At the Mountains of Madness. What I finally learned was that I was not cut out for handling the technical aspects of filmmaking. In theory I could understand how to set up three-point lighting or place a camera but in practice not so much. In the end I finished the semester to salvage what marks I could before dropping the program entirely.

I finally realized I was a writer, and far more suited to looking at film from the theoretical side. I began writing short stories, beginning with an entry of my own to the Cthulhu Mythos and gradually expanding. I eventually switched out to an entirely different program, one that focused more on theory, and found myself fitting in a lot more. I started getting involved with clubs and actually connecting with people. I've even gotten to know some of my professors, and received a personal request from one of them to continue in the program.

Around the end that first semester, I started getting to thinking about writing essays for fun. My parents were recommending that I start a blog, but I was initially reluctant. Eventually I decided to give it a shot late in January. I was told that Blogger was a good venue for it so I decided to use that. Then it was a matter of coming up with a name. After going through a few generic ideas such as "Cinema Journal" I came up with the idea of exploiting the fact that I share my last name with legendary movie director Alfred Hitchcock. That finally led me to the title of "Hitckcock's World".

Then I needed some content, so I started by writing a little piece that touched on some issues I was dealing with at the time. More specifically, I had been through a few experiences in which I found myself not liking a popular movie and decided to write about the issue. It is something I have revisited several times over the previous year. A big part of running this blog was my openness to challenge popular ideas, and I had several of those things. For my second article I decided to rework a failed Newspaper article. That was when I realized I could put pictures into my articles. From there I simply began writing whatever I felt like.

I didn't have many readers outside of my immediate family. Around the time I posted my controversial article Why Do People Like James Bond? I tried sharing a link on IMDB. I had a few trolls respond with hate comments, and one guy who accused me of being ignorant for saying the things I did about the James Bond franchise. He even tried to break down the scene I brought up from Goldfinger in a desperate attempt to convince me Bond didn't rape Pussy Galore. However, I also managed to encounter another movie blogger: a fellow by the name of Johnny who ran a movie review blog called Cinema: Johnny's Critique.

Later on I managed to encounter a few other bloggers. I managed to get the attention of a two other lesser-known blogs, namely Little Worlds and Radiator Heaven, when they commented on some of my posts. Eventually I also managed to find another blogger, Katy Rochelle at Girl Meets Cinema. I began reading some of her posts and commenting on them. Eventually I left her a friendly link to my blog and invited her to check it out, which she did. Katy would arguably become the key to me entering the blogging community at large, because if it was not for her, I would never had established myself as I did.

At the time, my blog list was pretty short, with only three or four blogs included, mostly the ones I've already mentioned. What got me going was somewhere around May, when Katy posted an entry to a blogathon hosted by one Brittani Burnham of Rambling Film, specifically the A-Z movie titles blogathon. In addition to giving me one more blogger to add to the list, I decided to write a contribution of my own and began looking at other people's entries. That led me to thinking about starting one of my own, which led to the success of my Favorite Movie Scenes Blogathon and the even more successful Women in Film Blogathon.

Those two just exploded with popularity, attracting a wide variety of attention. I encountered a whole range of other bloggers simply through those two, but that was hardly the end of it either. I also participated in a few other blogathons, some of which also introduced me to a few new people. All of a sudden people were actually coming to my blog. I'd often get at least one comment within a day of posting an article on any given topic. I've actually got readership now, from all over the world. I'd even made it onto a few other bloglists. My initial bloglist had maybe four other people on it, now it's somewhere closer to fifty and still growing.

Over the course of a single year, I have gone from running an obscure blog in the middle of nowhere to becoming an active member of the film blogging community. The range of topics I have covered is incredible, and I have every intention of continuing to find new material to cover in 2015. I would like to thank everybody who has supported my efforts. It has been a pleasure to know all of you.

Voyage to the Stars Blogathon: Links

Back in November I started the Voyage to the Stars Blogathon to coincide with the release of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. The twist was that this time you, the player, got to be part of the adventure by putting together your own interstellar expedition. I tried to make it a challenge but unfortunately I think I might have been a bit too successful in that area, so I did not get as many entries as I originally hoped, but I did get a few submissions from other bloggers who assembled their own crews. Also fortunately people stuck to the rules and I did not have to resort to disqualifying anyone for putting together an all-white, all-male crew. I'm keeping that rule in mind for any cast-a-thons I might run in the future so you'd better stick to it.

Anyway, here are the entries I have received for the Voyage to the Stars Blogathon.

• Over at Little worlds, our good friend Hohakey assembled an impressive team of astronauts and came up with the odd method of literally turning the ship and crew into beams of light. The fact that he figured out how to do that is sure to win him a Nobel Prize.
• Over at A Space Blogysey, Mariah M. assembled a team that included a real-life astronaut, an android, a little recognized character from Interstellar, and Jeff Goldblum. She also brought some actual science in and determined that an interplanetary voyage would be far more feasible instead.
• Over at Dell on Movies, Wendell Ottley assembled a team that included not one but two Starfleet officers (without breaking the rules) along with an animated character for a pilot along with a navigator and a doctor ready for anything.
• Finally, here at Hitchcock's World, I assembled a team that included a real-life hero at Mission Control, a science officer from an obscure 1955 science fiction film, and a medic that knows how to perform a c-section on herself (certainly a skill that could be valuable). They travelled to Alpha Centurai and discovered an extra-terrestrial micro-organism.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Perhaps if there's another big science fiction movie coming out sometime next year I can use it as an excuse to have another go at this. At the moment I've got one Cast-A-Thon I'm looking at starting in April that I think you'll enjoy. I don't have anything else planned right at the moment, but I am open to starting some other blogathons later in the year. If you have any ideas or are interested in doing a collaboration, feel free to drop me an e-mail and we can discuss it further. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this banner for my upcoming summer-themed Cast-A-Thon as a sneak preview to get you excited for what I have in store next.

The One Michael Bay Movie People Didn't Hate but Maybe Should

I've recently spent some time watching some of these "Die Hard on an X" films. to put it simply I've been developing a screenplay for my own "Die Hard on an X" film and I've been looking at some of the major ones from the 90's for inspiration. After re-watching Air Force One and the amazingly awesome Con Air I decided to take a look at The Rock. Aside from being Die Hard in Alcatraz, it has a 7.4 rating on IMDB despite being directed by Michael Bay. One of the most often-criticized directors in contemporary Hollywood made a movie that people didn't universally hate? How could I resist that?

I didn't exactly go in with the highest expectations, but about forty minutes in I had to stop, both due to the overall plot not being very good and certain elements that rubbed me the wrong way. I'll get into those in a moment. Let's just start by saying that this movie gave me no way of getting into it. I found nothing interesting in any of the characters, the story didn't keep me going. At best it was dull, and at worst it was outright confusing.

From what I gathered, the bad guy played by Ed Harris was resorting to drastic measures because he was upset with the government failing to appropriately compensate the families of fallen soldiers, but it wasn't very well explained. Neither was the plan put forward by the supposed good guys which apparently involved sending a dangerous convict into Alcatraz to do... something. Um... yeah, are you sure Ed Harris is supposed to be the bad guy? He seems to me to be a far more relatable character than the ones we're supposed to be rooting for. At least he has some sort of motivation, if a sadly underdeveloped one. Ed Harris can be a great actor, but here he's not so good.

Now I'd better address the concerns I had about the implications of The Rock. To be more specific, I think it's necessary to address the role of gender here. The "Die Hard on an X" formula has hardly been perfect about the roles of women, and indeed I have criticized it in the past for a general lack of female protagonists. However, while it is generally a man who gets to beat up the terrorists, most films in the trend try to do something on the front of gender.

Con Air had the female prison guard Sally Bishop, and while her role was greatly overshadowed by a huge number of men she did get her moments to show how tough she was (bonus points for being tough while spending most of the film in handcuffs). Air Force One had a male protagonist in James Marshall, most of his allies on the plane were male, and there is an all-male terrorist group. However, it was the female vice president played by Glenn Close who was taking charge on the ground and calls a lot of the shots, not to mention that the Marshal's wife also manages to rescue herself from a hostage situation during the climax. Even in the original Die Hard, John McClane's wife is the person who becomes the spokesperson for the hostages and does everything she can to help them under the circumstances. The Rock, on the other hand, is outright sexist.

This was a film that I swear was going out of its way to avoid giving its female characters the slightest bit of depth and value to the plot. They add in female extras here and there in a desperate attempt to hide it but I wasn't fooled. One could argue that the U.S. army still has restrictions on where women can and can't join so that might justify the lack of female soldiers. However, in general women are given very little in the way of roles. The only female character I saw who offered the slightest contribution to the plot was an unnamed extra who provided some minor exposition.

The only female character who actually seems to have any significance is Nicolas Cage's girlfriend, who seemed to be more interested in sex and marriage than anything else. She didn't even seem to be a motivation for him. She is literally just there to look pretty and nothing more. At least in Con Air we got a bit of depth in Cage's relationship with his wife so that there is an emotional connection. He also has a clear motive for staying on the plane that ties back to his experience as a U.S. Army Ranger. Here, it doesn't really work. Cage has no personality and his wife is just interested in marriage. They don't even try to make her compelling, Bay apparently thought that just making physically attractive would keep the audience invested.

What finally drew the line for me was a scene when the movie is (finally) starting to actually get somewhere. We finally meet with Sean Connery (took him long enough) and he makes a deal to have a hotel suite. He has a few people come in to clean him up and we have a stylist, and did they really have to make him such an offensive character? We've got a male hair stylist showing up for a couple of scenes, and apparently the filmmakers thought that was funny, because they decided that it was necessary to make him a camp gay. Really? Are you kidding me? I thought we were past all that nonsense and trying to get rid of those awful stereotypes of homosexuals. Why was it even necessary for the character to be presented that way? The apparent sexism was bad enough, but now we're bringing in homosexual stereotypes? This was when I finally realized there was no way this movie was going to be getting any better; best case scenario would be that it would continue to be dull, assuming of course it doesn't get even worse.

We got a lot of Die Hard imitators in the 90's. Some of them, like Air Force One and Con Air, were actually pretty good. This is not one of those movies. It isn't even enjoyably bad or campy fun. What we have here is a poorly written, poorly executed, sexist, and homophobic mess of a film (and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some racism at some point as well). It is a waste of talent from great actors like Ed Harris and in general a huge waste of time. I don't know why out of all the films Michael Bay has directed this is the one that isn't universally hated, because I don't see anything good about it. If you want to look at "Die Hard on an X" films, you can skip The Rock.

Best Movies of 2014 (That I Saw)

We're getting close to New Years and it's about time I did some retrospective work. Two days from now I'll have been running this blog for a year, and what a year it has been. Now everybody's doing their lists of the best and worst movies they saw in 2014 and I've naturally got to get to work on mine. I'll have to see about whether I can get a solid list of the worst movies (right now I can only think of two) but I can list the good ones I managed to see.

I'll be honest and say that I've never managed to do one of these lists before, usually because I'm really bad at ranking things, but this year I'm going to give it a go. It is difficult because I am working completely from memory here. I can only speak for the movies I did see, and I have no solid record of every film I saw this year.

For some reason I have this tendency to always end up missing the one film that becomes the smash hit at the Academy Awards, and I end up having to watch it afterwards because it won best picture. So far that's happened with The Hurt Locker, The King's Speech, The Help (hey, I can't help it if the posters made it look like a generic and forgettable romantic comedy), The Artist, Argo, and 12 Years a Slave (which I still need to see). That's literally six years in a row I missed out on the Best Picture winner for one reason or another and only watched them afterwards because of their acclaim.

I suspect that same thing will happen this year. Whatever film wins Best Picture will probably once again be the one movie I never got around to actually seeing if only because it's subject matter didn't initially appeal to me. I also can't remember every movie I saw this year, and I probably missed a lot as well. One of the funny things about being a film student is that it becomes very hard to find time to watch any movies, letalone keep up with everything that is coming out. Still, I did manage to see some good ones, and here is my ranking of what I can remember seeing at the theatre in 2014.

13. Godzilla

 This was really my first exposure to the whole Godzilla franchise unless you count watching two of the Gamera films, or that weird Creepypasta with the haunted Godzilla video game (it's actually a lot better than it sounds), and I enjoyed it. I know a lot of people criticized the movie but I liked that it actually had a plot and characters instead of just being two giant monsters beating each other up for two hours. At the same time, they still make Godzilla a character and give him some depth, though, which was also a nice touch. I also didn't mind that it took a while to build up to Godzilla, and it seemed worthwhile when he finally did show up.

12. Sabotage

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back in action in his third film since stepping down as the Governor of California. This one is a bit more intense than one might usually expect from his films, with betrayal and mayhem all over, but that does add a layer of suspense to it. The ending is also one I did not see coming, but it made perfect sense. I don't know if I would say this was Schwarzenegger's greatest film, but it was enjoyable enough.

11. Doc of the Dead

Alexandre O. Philippe's documentary about the role of zombies in modern popular culture provided a lot of interesting insight. Bringing out a huge number of zombie-associated names ranging from George A. Romero to Robert Kirkman, it looked at the origins of what we now call "zombies", the history and development of zombies on film, and the influence that malevolent reanimated human cadavers have had on our society as a whole. It also had a bit of fun with its subject matter, taking time to parody zombie movie conventions (it helps they managed to get some of the people from Shaun of the Dead involved)

10. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Out of Peter Jackson's entire The Hobbit trilogy, I would argue that The Desolation of Smaug was the best, but The Battle of the Five Armies still worked. Admittedly it makes a lot more sense if you watch it right after seeing The Desolation of Smaug (since otherwise you may lose track of the characters, particularly the dwarves) and it is a bit jarring to see so much focus on a small part of the book. On the other hand fans of The Hobbit often cite the Battle of the Five Armies as a crucial part of the story, so it makes sense to explore it in more detail rather than have Bilbo knocked out just before it starts and then only see the aftermath.

9. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

A suitable follow-up to Captain America: The First Avenger which follows our hero through the disorienting world of the present-day. I've enjoyed Mavel's recent line of action films and this one is no exception. Now it does help to watch this one alongside Agents of SHIELD as they both look at the same major developments (those of you who have seen both know what I'm talking about, I won't spoil it for those who haven't) but that's not essential to having a good time with it.

8. Guardians of the Galaxy

This was certainly an interesting film that took the Marvel franchise in some new directions. With an interesting group of characters, some good humour, and plenty of action, it was a fun experience to be sure. The ending left me a bit curious as it suggests that Marvel is taking a huge chance by having another go at Howard the Duck (the last attempt is widely considered one of the worst movies ever made). Considering the success they've had so far there is a faint chance they could just pull it off.

7. Edge of Tomorrow

This was a fascinating movie in its approach. It is hardly the first movie to put a sci-fi twist on a Groundhog Day-esque premise (Source Code only came out a four years earlier) but it runs with it in interesting ways. Edge of Tomorrow took full advantage of its time-travelling concept, but also has some interesting characters to it as well. Tom Cruise actually does manage to give his character some depth and his co-star Emily Blunt gets to play a tough-as-nails action girl so what's not to love? 

6. X-Men: Days of Future Past

After X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: First Class, I had pretty much given up on the X-Men franchise. Then I got talked into going to see X-Men: Days of Future Past and it won me back. It helped that the film undid a lot of the questionable choices of X-Men: The Last Stand and brought back all the characters who got needlessly killed off. There isn't really an explanation for why Charles Xavier is still alive or why Kitty Pryde suddenly has time-travel powers but if it undoes the worst instalment of the series who cares? The time-travel stuff was pretty cool as well, and while I wasn't the biggest fan of X-Men: First Class I actually enjoyed seeing the mixture of actors.

5. The Fault in Our Stars

This was not a film I was originally planning to see, but when it came out everybody was talking about it so when I had some time to myself and needed to get out of the house for a while I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I'm glad I did, because it turned out to be a very emotional movie. The two leads both do a fantastic job in their roles and play off of each other splendidly, but there is also a great supporting cast (Laura Dern was also great) and it really makes you think about what it must be like to have cancer at such a young age. Even disregarding the general themes of mortality, it was still a very touching romance with a solid balance of humour, drama, triumph, and tragedy.

4. The Grand Budapest Hotel

This vaguely Fawlty Towers-inspired comedy was a lot of fun in just how many weird directions it could go. It starts as a story about a hotel concierge bonding with a lobby boy as he trains him and escalates into a convoluted political conspiracy involving murder and stolen property, all set against the beginning of World War II. Of course the heart of the film is the relationship between its two main characters, and that part has just the right balance of humor and drama. Some of the weird ways in which the film messes around with your perceptions of who is telling the story (which is literally a framing device within a framing device) were also interesting.

3. Boyhood

This film is irrefutable proof of my theory that Richard Linklater is the most patient man in the world. The fact that he managed to stay committed to making this movie over twelve years is remarkable, carefully timing each session of shooting to ensure the main character ages authentically. Even more impressive is that the whole cast managed to stay on board the whole way through, and Linlater even managed to find time on the side to make Before Sunrise and Before Midnight. The fact that he managed to remain dedicated is impressive enough, but that he still managed to pull off something wonderful is even better. It's a simple movie about the mundane difficulties of growing up. Most of us have been through something the protagonist has had to endure, and in that sense he is a very relatable character,

2. Under the Skin

This was an interesting little piece of work. When I heard about how strange this movie got I had to see it. I thought it was interesting how it actually managed to make its alien protagonist seem... well... alien. She was a character whose mind you can't really understand. She does these things we consider horrible not because of any active malevolence, but because she honestly does not understand how we see it. We also see her difficulty in understanding basic human activities that in any other movie (such as E.T. or Starman) would be used for comedic effect, with things like ordering cake as a main course and then struggling to use a fork. At the same time, what made the experience even more peculiar was that the human characters seemed even more alien, making the alien protagonist seem more human by contrast and keeping her as the one person we can relate to.

1. Interstellar

If I had my way, this  is the movie that would be winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Sadly, I know from experience they would sooner give a belated award to The Garbage Pail Kids Movie than allow a science fiction film the dignity of being recognized by them. Interstellar was a movie that I was so hyped up about I even went and started a whole blogathon to celebrate its release. The visuals were amazing, and I loved the cast. Jessica Chastain is always great, and here Anne Hathaway gets a chance to try something new. I also liked the fact that this one included some actual science (it was nice to see a film that understood the difference between a black hole and a wormhole for once).

So there is my list. What were some of your favourite films of the year?

Action Heroines Before the Rise of Action Films

I was looking through my blog feed when I stumbled across a Gif posted by my friend Fritzi Kramer of Movies Silently, another movie blog that specializes almost exclusively in silent films. This may not be my strongest area of expertise, but I was interested in what she had to say. It seems a lot of people were led to her blog through search tags referring to women being tied to railroad tracks. This is something of an infamous cliche, though I had always understood it to be something more common in serials.

It turns out even then it was extremely rare, and nowhere near as sexist as people make it out to be. Fritzi herself did a whole video in which she explained in detail the origins of the misconception that women were often tied to railroad tracks in silent movies. To put it simply, critics who make this claim are usually citing one of two films, Teddy At the Throttle or Barry Oakfield's Race for Life. Both films were actually comedies that were intended as a parody of an old idea that was considered a tired cliché even then. In fact, as far as women are to be concerned, the silent era is actually a lot more progressive than people give it credit for.

For one thing, it seems that for the few cases of the "tied to the railroad track" cliché actually happening, it was not exclusively women waiting to be rescued by men. In fact, the play from which this cliché is believed to originate, Under the Gaslight, actually had a male victim who needed to be rescued by a woman. Adding to that is that Teddy At the Throttle has a female victim who ultimately has to save herself. So in actuality there are very few instances of people being tied to the tracks actually happened, and the few cases that do exist have not in fact been gender-exclusive, nor do the female victims always require rescuing by a man.

To be fair, I'm not even sure how practical a method it would be to dispose of someone. In order to do it, you would first have to find an isolated bit of track somewhere nobody would see you, plus you would have to get the rope or chains under the railroad ties (if you just tie the person up, they can simply roll off the track as soon as you leave). On top of that, trains are fast, so you wouldn't be able to predict when a train is coming. Supposing a train approaches before you have finished tying your victim down? You would have very little time to get out of the way plus it would give your victim an opportunity to escape. Even for the diabolical masterminds that did not in fact do this kind of thing, it would not be a very effective method.

Action heroines were actually a lot more common in the silent period than one would expect. Fritzi herself has cited several. The original Perils of Pauline cast the title character as a free-spirited adventurer, and to be fair the old serials liked to put everyone in danger regardless of gender. It was all part of the strategy to keep viewers coming back, the idea being to end each instalment with the hero or heroine in some sort of dangerous situation that seems impossible to survive. Audiences would have to come back to see the next part to find out how they get out of their current predicament. This is actually where the term "cliffhanger" originated, as a popular choice for ending serial instalments was to have the hero literally hanging over a cliff.

In that film, it is a woman who takes over as the telegraph operator when her father is ill, and then takes action when two outlaws arrive at her station. We do see the male lead rushing to the rescue, but the heroine has to think on her own long before he arrives. Instead of sitting around waiting to be rescued, she does everything she can to call for help and then proceeds to hold the two outlaws at gunpoint (or so it seems). By the time her lover finally arrives to rescue her, she has everything under control, and all he has to do is take them away.

So why is this idea of the woman tied to the tracks so popular? It is likely a combination of different things, but I have a theory of my own. You see, there were very few movies at the time that actually had a person getting tied down to the tracks, but there were plenty of movies that prominently featured trains. Many of these films about trains involved chases and a series of dangerous situations experienced by the main characters. It became a popular genre at the time, known as the Train-Chase film. Many will not recognise such a genre, as it faded out of popularity near the end of the silent era. While it has re-emerged on occasion, with movies such as Tony Scott's Unstoppable presenting a modern interpretation, the train-chase movie never experienced a full revival.

Train-chase movies were a huge part of silent era-Hollywood. In many ways they were an early precedent for the modern action film. The genre goes back as early as Edwin S. Porter with The Great Train Robbery and continues through the 20's. The Lonedale Operator also followed the pattern of a train-chase movie that puts the heroine into peril. To get a good look at the role of the train-chase movies, we should look at one of Buster Keaton's most famous features, The General.

The General was a movie that took place almost entirely on a single locomotive (well, technically two, but the focus is on one at a time), and had no shortage of dangerous situations for its main character. Scenes like the moment when Keaton tries to fire a cannon at the train he is chasing only for it to fall and almost hit him create tension, as well as a comedic effect when Keaton runs into trouble evading the unexpected threat and survives by accident (his train happens to run around a bend, allowing the cannon to hit the enemy he originally intended to fire at).

Buster Keaton was not alone in his perils during this adventure. There was also a romantic sub-plot involving his lover Annabelle Lee, and it is her being kidnapped by the Union that sets the story in motion. Buster Keaton's objective is of course to rescue his girlfriend and his engine. However, it is worth noting that the "rescue the kidnapped girlfriend" plot only makes up half the movie. In the first act, Annabelle is indeed a distressed damsel in need of rescuing, but then we get to the second half which inverts the setup of the first.

While The General begins with the male lead, Johnny Clay pursuing his stolen lover, he manages to rescue her around the middle point, during which time he also overhears the Union's attack plans. The rest of the movie turns everything around, with both now running away from the Union and trying to get back to their own lines and relay the information they have obtained. At this point, Annabelle stops being the damsel in distress, and instead the dynamic becomes one of co-operation. Both  Johnny and Annabelle face their share of perils in this second half, and have to work together in order to solve each problem.

Looking at the information available, it quickly becomes clear that while there were not a lot of films or serials that actually had women being tied to railroad tracks, there were plenty that put characters both male and female into dangerous situations that often involved trains. There was indeed a great deal of variety in precisely what situations were faced in each film, and being tied to the tracks seems to fit right into the many possibilities.

I suspect this is in large part where the misconception that silent movies often did it comes from. Audiences who may have been influenced by the train-chase movies but who do not understand the silent era enough to understand how they worked associate situations like a woman being tied to the tracks with the types of dangers that were actually faced by many silent heroes and heroines. Men and women were both victims of these situations, and in fact women rescued men just as much as the other way around.

Fritzi had a pretty suitable analogy for people who make the misconception that all silent films involved women being tied to railroad tracks, but I'll present my own, It is very much like a modern critic watching Dirty Harry and using it to claim that all 70's action movies were about rogue cops. While urban vigilante films were popular in the 1970's, many of them centred on civilians, and they were not the only form of action movie that was known at the time. For instance, some filmmakers were also making big-budget disaster movies like The Towering Inferno.

I will not pretend I wasn't surprised to find out how rare the "women tied to the railroad track" cliché actually was in silent film, and I also won't claim to be an expert in the field. Out of the two of us Fritzi is definitely far more qualified to be discussing silent film than I am (she would have to be, otherwise her blog dedicated to silent cinema would not have gotten very far), but I thought it was worth sharing my thoughts on the matter. One would expect that due to the social standards of the time silent film would have been very predominantly male, and at first glance it seems to make sense that there would be a lot of "damsel in distress" movies, but it turns out that is not the case. Perhaps the silent era was a lot more progressive in its treatment of women than modern viewers realise.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Well, it's Christmas Eve and it seems to make sense that I finally fill out my obligatory quota of holiday-themed articles. I've already gotten away with a review/analysis of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, but let's look at a less sexual holiday classic, something a bit out of my usual comfort zone. About two years ago now (three including this year), I was still in college and encountered a man was selling low-priced DVDs. Seeing as that is something of a secret weakness of mine, I couldn't resist buying a whole bunch, and one of the ones I found was White Christmas, featuring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. Now after two years of failing to get around to watching it, I finally managed to see this classic, and it's great.

I knew its two leading actors to an extant already. Danny Kaye was a comedian who did a lot of funny movies, though the two I best know him from are The Inspector General and The Court Jester. Both films are a lot of fun if you get the chance, with Danny Kaye playing a bumbling everyman who gets caught up in extraordinary situations but ultimately proves to be the one person that can save the day (so basically an early predecessor to the "Die Hard on an X film", at least in the case of The Court Jester). I was a bit more limited in my exposure to Bing Crosby. The one thing I'd really seen him in was the wonderful special he did in which he performed with David Bowie.

During World War II, Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) are soldiers who like to provide entertainment for the men in their division. On Christmas Eve, they perform a fantastic show only to learn that their commanding officer, General Waverly (Dean Jagger), is being relieved of command. After saying goodbye in the form of an elaborate musical number, the division is attacked. Bob is nearly killed when a break wall is destroyed, but he is saved by Phil. To repay Phil for saving his life, Wallace agrees to try out a duet son his friend wrote. Fast forward a few years later and the two men are now a successful singing duo. They receive a (forged) invitation from an old army buddy to see a performance by his sisters, Betty and Judy (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen). 

These two turn out to be very attractive, with Judy quickly attracting Phil's attention. Both are also hugely successful performers despite the fact that they apparently only know one song. A series of convoluted mix-ups and situations that includes Bob and Phil donning partial drag and lip-synching to the sisters' music leads to all four of them ending up in a hotel at Vermont where there doesn't seem to be as much snow as they expected. Said hotel turns out to be owned by Waverly, and is not doing very good financially. Our four performers naturally conclude there is only one logical solution: bring Bob and Phil's entire show from New York to the hotel and invite as many old army buddies as possible. In the vein of a Shakespearean comedy, misunderstandings and romances ensue.

As you can see, there are some odd things about the story, like the fact that Betty and Judy are somehow as successful as they are even though they only seem to know how to perform one song, that happens to be about the fact that they are sisters. I also won't pretend that White Christmas is not a product of its time. As far as movies displaying 1950's standards goes, there are far worse, but it does have its moments that might be jarring to a modern viewer, usually in the form of specific lines that may have made sense at the time but can easily be taken the wrong way now.

For instance, there is an early scene where Danny Kaye remarks about a female performer wanting to settle down being "refreshing" (or for that matter, even the notion that either of the women getting married means they will have to give up their musical careers). It's meant to refer to an earlier conversation between them about how female singers are more interested in their careers, but can easily come off as sexist today. Later on we also have Vera-Ellen deciding to stage an engagement with somebody, and concluding it "has to be a man" (this was of course during the production code, so her even considering the possibility of being engaged to a woman would have been seen as unacceptable). After pressuring Kaye into pretending to be her fiancée, he tries to announce their fake engagement at a party, but it is played as embarrassing when he accidentally says that it was the girl who proposed to him (a radical idea for 1954). The all-male military may also be jarring to any modern viewer used to female soldiers being permitted in combat roles.

Fortunately, these moments are few and far between, so they are a lot easier to forgive. I've seen far worse. It helps that the two female leads are given some actual depth beyond simply having a pretty face, and that there is one other memorable female character in the form of Mary Wickes as the housekeeper Emma Allen, who is hinted to have some prior experience in espionage. Among other things she has a habit of listening in on phone calls, and gets plenty of great lines. My one criticism would be that there is one female character, Susan Waverly, who is a bit underdeveloped, but that is more of a story issue than anything to do when the movie was made.

In spite of the offhanded moments of... period-appropriate dialogue, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are still very good together and make a great duo. I'm not normally a fan of musicals; in many cases the way the characters spontaneously break out into elaborate musical numbers takes me out of it, but here it worked. The songs fit right in (it probably helps that the central characters are established as musical performers), and in general fit the tone of the scenes in which they are played. The film also spaces out the numbers, allowing room for character development and advancement of the plot.

White Christmas is a fun movie and one I would recommend as a film to get into the holiday spirit. It's flawed, there are the weird story problems and moments that remind you of how people at the time saw the world, but it is still an enjoyable film with some good songs and likeable characters. Definitely worth a watch if you get the chance. You won't regret it, unless of course you can't stand the song "White Christmas". In that case, you might want to pass on this film since that song is guaranteed to get stuck in your head after you watch it.

Thursday Movie Picks Meme: Movies Driven Entirely by People Talking

This week, the theme for Wanderer's Thursday Movie Picks Meme is movies driven entirely by people talking. This one was a harder one to find choices for on the grounds that many of the best examples I know of (i.e. Twelve Angry Men, My Dinner With Andre, Reservoir Dogs, and Before Sunrise) were all listed as examples to give people an idea of what that category entailed. Since I suggested it, it only makes sense that I should contribute something, but I've tried to find a few less obvious choices.

The Odd Couple (1968)

Two middle-aged men with opposing personalities decide to share an apartment. One is extremely neat and the other is messy. That's basically the entire movie, the plot consists of the increasing tension between these two men as one is a neat freak and the other is a slob who keeps rotten food in his fridge (in one scene he offers "brown or green" sandwhiches, claiming the brown is "either really old cheese or really new meat"). Trouble ensues as you can expect from such a pairing.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

For a teen movie, this is pretty minimalist. The cast consists of five people (seven if you include the principal and the janitor), and the majority of the film is set in a single room. More specifically, it centres around five people of very different backgrounds who fill out archetypal highs school roles: the jock, the nerd, the outcast, the popular girl, and the bully. What makes this film interesting is that it deconstructs each of these archetypes, showing the difficulties faced by each person and how they are affected by their circumstances. For instance we get a glimpse into what makes the bully so rough, and how being the popular girl or jock is not as glamorous as one might think. The whole film is the interactions between these five characters while they are in detention, and the unlikely friendship that develops as a result.

Tonight You're Mine (2011)

This is a bit of an odd but enjoyable independent film. It's a romance set at a rock and roll event that results from a rather unlikely source: two rock starts get into a fight only to end up being handcuffed together by some crazy guy as an exercise to get them to put aside their differences. It works, as the two have develop a romance that comes from trying to make the best of their circumstances, which includes having to work as a team simply to use the lavatory; all while both desperately try to find the guy who put them into this mess and get the keys to the handcuffs. There's also some relationships that develop among their friends along the way.