Those Duplass brothers make movies with heart

Jeff, Who Lives at Home opens with Jason Segel talking into a tape recorder.

At first, you think it's supposed to mean that Segel's character, Jeff, is an idiot. He's talking about the M. Night Shyamalan movie Signs. Particularly about the perfect synergy of coincidences in its final scene -- you know, the scene where Joaquin Phoenix uses a baseball bat to smash a bunch of unfinished glasses of water, thereby killing a bunch of aliens. Sorry if I just ruined Signs for you.

The most obvious and snarkiest way to play this scene is to use Jeff's love for the movie Signs -- which he admits to watching at least a half-dozen times -- as proof that he is someone to pity or laugh at. (Never mind that I'm with Jeff, not to the extent that he is, and notwithstanding that last scene in particular.)

But if you think Jay and Mark Duplass would go that way, you don't know Jay and Mark Duplass.

They love their character Jeff, and they love that he loves Signs. In fact, I'm not even sure they disagree with him. Maybe they love Signs too.

In both of their last two films, the previous being Cyrus, the Duplass brothers have managed a pretty nifty balancing act. They are adhering to the modern-day Apatow-infused comedy sensibilities enough to provide good material for the trailers, but secretly taking the movie itself in their own direction, one with an unexpected amount of heart. (This is not to imply that Apatow's movies don't have heart, but they don't have the raw, genuine, unfiltered heart that Duplass movies do.)

The Signs bit is a good example. If any part of that bit appeared in the trailer, though I believe it does not, it would be used to demonstrate that Jeff is a geek or a loser -- not very cool, someone who loves a director as played out as M. Night Shyamalan. In fact, you could take that one step further and say that the entire title Jeff, Who Lives at Home is intended to give you this impression, that Jeff is a man child who has never matured, who loves getting stoned and watching movies appreciated by geeks in his mother's basement.

Some of this is true. But the reasons he's never matured are not part of the realm of comedy. And Jeff's home? He's barely there at all.

I love this about the Duplass brothers, that they are kind of baiting and switching us for our own benefit. Cyrus did not play like many people thought it would play, as kind of a Step Brothers lite. (Though I might not have minded that, because I love Step Brothers.) Many people surely thought that John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill would spend the running time of Cyrus playing cruel pranks on each other in their desperate attempts to win Marisa Tomei's love. That stuff is in play, but not nearly to the extent you'd think it would be. And the supposed big set piece, in which Reilly and Hill come out the door of a wedding reception fighting, is a deadly serious, tragic moment -- as it would be in real life.

Mixing tragedy in with their comedy is what earns the Duplass brothers their heart. And without these difficult moments of real pain, the heart that fills the stretch run of Cyrus wouldn't be so satisfying. But don't be confused -- when I say "heart," I don't mean "shmaltz." I mean a genuine affection for the characters and a genuine, honest approach to a truly satisfying catharsis.

I won't say if Jeff, Who Lives at Home ends that way, because it just came out and you should see it. However, you can guess from my tone that I'm very satisfied with how it ends -- and with the movie in general.

And if something about the structure of this movie ends up resembling a little M. Night Shyamalan movie about aliens allergic to water, it's all the more proof of the Duplass brothers' refreshing disdain for cynicism.

Bridesmaids 2, or The NBC Comedy Mafia

While I was watching Friends With Kids on Saturday, I couldn't help thinking:

Writer-director-star Jennifer Westfeldt might have just run onto the set of Bridesmaids and said "Okay, you, you, you and you. Come with me. We're making another movie together."

Maybe the reason Kristen Wiig doesn't want to make another Bridesmaids is that she's sick of the principle cast?

Then again, hardly -- we're living in an era where ensembles of actors, especially comedic actors, simply love working together. Making it not that much different, I guess, from other eras.

Bridesmaids veterans Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Chris O'Dowd and Jon Hamm all appear in Westfeldt's directorial debut. Hamm's appearance makes a certain sense, as he's been in a relationship with Westfeldt for the past 15 years.

The rest? Well, because they're part of the NBC Comedy Mafia.

I don't know why I want to use "mafia" here, except that a group of people who regularly associate with one another is sometimes referred to as a mafia, even if their intentions are not malicious. If we wanted to, for example, we could call Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd part of the Judd Apatow Mafia.

So let's take a closer look at the cast of Friends With Kids and suss out the connections.

Hamm is a regular Saturday Night Live host and maker of cameo guest appearances, and has appeared on 30 Rock. Rudolph was an SNL cast member and currently appears on NBC's Up All Night. Wiig is a current SNL member and one of Rudolph's best friends. (And I think has guested on at least one of the NBC Thursday night shows.) And Adam Scott, who is the male lead in this movie alongside Westfeldt, is currently on NBC's Parks and Recreation.

The system breaks down after that, since none of O'Dowd, Westfeldt, Ed Burns or Megan Fox have appeared on any NBC programs, to my knowledge. (On further inspection, Burns actually appeared in three episodes of Will & Grace and produced a short-lived NBC show called The Fighting Fitzgeralds.)

But I have to say this is a pretty appealing group of people to watch together in a movie. One of the great strengths of Friends With Benefits is its ensemble cast -- even if Rudolph and Wiig don't really have enough to do. Since these two were the stars of Bridesmaids, it's kind of funny to see them play such second fiddles here -- both Westfeldt, a funny and charming actress who does not work regularly (though I loved her in Kissing Jessica Stein), and Fox, a bombshell who is generally unlikable, get more screen time. It's also funny to see who they're matched up with, as Wiig is with Hamm, who played her obnoxious boy toy in Bridesmaids, and Rudolph is with O'Dowd, who played Wiig's nice-guy love interest, the Irish cop. I almost expected Wiig to have a cat fight with Rudolph in this movie -- "Keep your hands off my man!" (And I'm just realizing, I don't think Rudolph's and O'Dowd's characters even meet in Bridesmaids.)

Okay, this post is turning into total stream-of-consciousness.

I'll conclude with something concrete: See Friends With Kids for its great ensemble, who I will be excited to see work together again. (It's also got some smart observations about life and relationships, even if it does kind of whimper out in the third act.)

And given their fast friendships and many connections, it seems likely that they will work together again.

But probably not in Bridesmaids 2, if Wiig gets her way.

Maybe they should have their own NBC sitcom instead?

21 Jump Street opens today

Here it is, the ultimate placeholder blog post.

I'll let you imagine some kind of rant about whether it's good for us, either creatively or commercially, that a TV show from the late 80s/early 90s is being made as a feature-length action comedy/buddy movie in the year 2012.

Instead, I've got to turn my attention to March Madness, preparing for my fantasy baseball draft (next Thursday), and getting ready for my sister's arrival in town (this afternoon).

Cheers. Happy St. Patrick's Day. All that good stuff.

Be back with something useful to say real soon.

Lady's choice: Choix de la dame

It was my wife's turn to pick the movie again last night, as part of our bi-weekly Lady's Choice Movie Night series. (I'll probably have to keep explaining this every post, but "lady's choice" is not gender specific. It's an inside joke I explained in detail here.)

Although it's fun if the movie can be a surprise to the off-week person right up until we watch it, sometimes that's just not possible. Like, for most of my weeks, I'll probably be scheduling a DVD to arrive from Netflix. Since she gets those emails from Netflix, she'll know what's coming. She, on the other hand, will choose from our instant queue most weeks, meaning I can be totally fooled. After she floated the idea of watching Gomorrah a couple nights ago, I was expecting that might be the choice. But she decided that the 2 hour and 17 minute running time might kill us last night, so her ultimate choice was indeed a surprise after all.

In fact, I had her press play on the movie without me knowing what it was, so I could see how quickly I could guess. I'm proud to say I got The Visitors (or Les Visiteurs) within the first five seconds. (It helps that I've grown pretty familiar with the 150 titles we have in our instant queue.)

Well, I'm certainly glad we didn't watch a 2 hour and 17 minute foreign film, because a 1 hour and 47 minute foreign film proved long enough for me. See, my son had given me another miserable night the night before, and even though we started watching around 8:15, I was ready to pack it in for the night at the half-hour mark. Fortunately, I struggled through, because it's against the very spirit of this film series to cop out of a movie for any reason. Pleading exhaustion is just not cool. (So if I'm fuzzy on the details of the last 20 minutes of the film, forgive me.)

Actually, The Visitors was an interesting choice for me because I had already seen its Hollywood remake, the 2001 film Just Visiting. Which also stars Jean Reno and Christian Clavier as 11th century knights who are transported to the present day by a sorcerer, but features such American-friendly presences as Christina Applegate and Tara Reid. And I actually had a limited affection for that widely reviled film, so seeing its source material seemed like a natural fit for me.

And it was -- to a point. The exhaustion was definitely a factor, but I also assumed I was missing some of the finer wordplay due to the fact that the knights are actually speaking in old French, which was not necessarily being translated very well in the subtitles. Both of us -- my wife is basically fluent in French, and I'm actually pretty good -- were picking out mistranslations that didn't even seem like they needed to be translated incorrectly for American audiences to understand.

But overall I found it funny enough, considering. The woman who played Applegate's role, Valerie Lemercier, had terrifically snappy comic delivery that just made her a joy to watch. (Interesting, though, how relatively plain-looking Lemercier is -- you would never see that in a Hollywood movie.) She also has a put-upon husband (Christian Bujeau) whose annoyance with the visitors is pretty comical. (But he has to tolerate them on some level -- since his wife is Reno's descendant, the physical similarity causes them to conclude he's a long lost uncle with amnesia.) Unfortunately, much of the humor put forth specifically by Clavier as Reno's manservant is pretty broad and physical, and didn't work as well for me.

When I wasn't sure how well the whole movie was working for me overall, it occurred to me to wonder whether there was a ceiling for how funny you could find a comedy that's not in your native tongue. I quickly surveyed my favorite foreign films, and few if any of them are comedies. Then I thought about the converse, about whether the French and other foreigners find American comedies to be particularly funny. Which got me thinking about Jerry Lewis, whose films I am watching this month as part of my Getting Acquainted series. The fact that the French love Jerry Lewis could have something to do with the fact that very little of his comedy is linguistic in nature -- the physical stuff translates much better.

This thought momentarily disappointed me -- it made me question the idea that cinema can be a universal language. But then I quickly remembered that I have seen an absolutely hilarious foreign film -- in fact, a French film -- just within the past month. Having enjoyed Jean Dujardin so much in The Artist, we watched his second collaboration with director Michel Hazanavicius, the spy spoof OSS 117: Lost in Rio, streaming off Netflix about three weeks ago. (The first OSS 117 movie -- subtitled Cairo, Nest of Spies -- had temporarily disappeared from Netflix instant, though it is back now.) We were in fits during Lost in Rio, and not just because of Dujardin's undeniable gifts with physical comedy. In fact, the wordplay was some of that movie's funniest bits.

Okay, so maybe The Visitors just doesn't scale the heights of what a French comedy can offer.

Or, maybe I was just on the verge of slipping into a coma the entire time.

Anime I can get behind

A couple weeks ago in this space I wrote that anime doesn't have a huge amount to offer me.

And then I saw Grave of the Fireflies.

I'd heard the movie discussed in film circles with the highest levels of praise, and I'd also heard how it was supposed to be very, very sad. But a part of me didn't trust that this praise wasn't coming from people whose other favorite movies are Akira and Princess Mononoke.

Still, after hearing another breathless mention of it about a week ago, I decided to promote it to the top of my queue. I watched it on Saturday night.

Wow.

In case you don't know the plot, Grave of the Fireflies is about two Japanese children who become homeless orphans in the waning days of World War II after their house burns and their mother is killed during Allied bombing strikes. The boy, 14-year-old Seita, serves as a de facto parent to the girl, 4-year-old Setsuko. They try to forge their way through an uncaring world dominated by individuals, even family members, who are forced to look out for themselves first. Making matters more melancholy, we know from the very beginning that things don't turn out well for at least one of the kids. The film starts with narration from Seita in which he gives the date September 21st, 1945, and says "This is the day I died."

Yikes.

As I sat there, gobsmacked, watching this movie, I naturally considered why it worked so well for me, while other anime movies generally do not. Here is some of what I came up with:

1) The animation is simple yet beautiful. One of my complaints in my February 17th post was that anime seems to be technologically stunted; anime released today does not look significantly better than anime released 25 years ago. Grave of the Fireflies was actually released 24 years ago, and it looks great. Some of the backdrops are rich and beautiful, and some of the imagery is perfectly elegiac in its simplicity. (I'm thinking of this one shot of a burst water pipe that kind of transfixed me.) But I think the age of the movie freed me up from worrying about perceived technical deficiencies and allowed me to just get lost in the story. Which I did.

2) The emotions are generally muted. A standard complaint I have about anime is that the line readings are incredibly unsubtle, either for melodramatic or comic effect. You'd think a movie about children starving as they steer clear of bombs and corpses would have a high melodrama factor, but Grave of the Fireflies does not. In fact, pretty much everything is underplayed and understated, making it all the more effective. When real emotion does creep in, it's totally earned.

3) It's grounded in reality. One thing I realized as I was watching this movie is that most anime involves some sort of fantastical element. This is not always a bad thing, and can in fact be a very good thing. But it definitely sets certain expectations and can strain narrative logic if not done well. Grave of the Fireflies is totally and utterly realistic. It's about human beings in real-world conditions, and could have easily been shot live action. Except then I don't think the effect would be quite as powerful.

4) It's not intended for kids. I've already told you that the kids' mother dies, so I'm not really spoiling anything more if I tell you how. You don't see how she initially becomes injured, but you do see her in a makeshift hospital, covered from head to toe in bandages with blood seeping through in various spots. From the first time you see her in this state, you know there's no way she's surviving. And in fact, the next time you see her, her bandaged body is being trucked out to be burned, covered in maggots. That's hardcore. As an aside, there's a great red herring related to her character. In the opening scene before the bombing, when they're all headed off to a bomb shelter, Seita asks her if she has her heart medication. She says she does. You expect this to come into play later in the story, but the nature of her injuries entirely removes her heart from the realm of her concerns.

Anyway, yeah. You should see it.

Celebrating the mundane

This image has been sitting on my coffee table for about a week, and I decided it was finally time to write about it.

It's the back cover of the February/March issue of Written By magazine, which my wife receives as part of her job as executive director of a non-profit screenwriting competition. As you can tell, it's a promotional ad intended to get eligible voters to select The Descendants when voting on a couple prominent screenwriting awards. (It obviously worked, as the movie won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.)

What interests me about this image is how captivating it is -- even though there's nothing going on. In fact, because there's nothing going on.

During the life of a movie's advertising campaign, we become familiar with about a half-dozen of its prominent images, which pop up regularly in conjunction with the movie. That's because they're part of the press materials. I may be explaining the obvious here, but a number of stills are made available to the press to allow critics to write reviews, and to allow publications to write about the movie (and hopefully promote it) in other ways.

For The Descendants, these half-dozen prominent images include this:

And this:

And this:

And this:


What do these four images have in common? They all remind you of something specific that's happening in the plot. They all serve as a single-image encapsulation of what a certain scene is all about. In each image there is either kinetic or potential energy -- actions either in process or about to be in process. Implied movement, if you will.

The image in the "for your consideration" ad is quite the opposite. It is almost defined by its lack of movement. George Clooney's arms are at his side, and Robert Forster's are crossed. There's definitely a memorable scene between these two characters, but it's not this scene. Their memorable scene takes place at Forster's residence earlier in the movie, whereas this shot seems to be from later in the movie at the hospital.

But why I like it so much is what it says about screenwriting. It gets at the idea that when you strip everything else about a movie away, all the stars and all the glitz, what you have left is its nuts and bolts: the script. A good script is not all about big comedy bits or dramatic twists or explosions or memorable deaths. It may have some of those things. But this image reminds us that at its essence, screenwriting is a blue collar craft. Just like life, a good script contains its share of quiet moments, moments when nothing is really "happening." A good script makes getting from point A to point B as important and as interesting as those big moments.

If you've read my blog consistently, you know that The Descendants was not my favorite film from last year. In fact, I ranked it 66th out of the 121 movies I saw in time for my ranking deadline.

But this ad, and the contemplation on the art of screenwriting it has inspired, makes me like the movie just a little bit more than I did before the latest issue of Written By magazine spent the past week on my coffee table.

Shutting Eddie Murphy up

No hidden commentary here. I just think this is a good idea for a movie.

Will it be a good movie? That's another question.

Due mostly to the divorce between Dreamworks and Paramount/Viacom, this film has been caught in limbo for the better part of four years, as most of the principal photography occurred in 2008. The fact that there were reshoots last year makes things seem worse for A Thousand Words. The fact that its release date bounced around within 2012 makes them seem even worse. And the fact that it was not screened for critics is kind of like the death knell.

But the idea is good. Make a comic known for his motormouth linguistic skills shut his trap for most of the movie and see how funny he can be without relying on verbal gymnastics. The timing is perfect, coming right off the first silent film winning best picture since Wings. Who knows if the audience would have been in this same frame of mind back in 2009, when it was supposed to be released.

However, it seems legitimate to worry whether Eddie Murphy's latest public relations troubles will have an impact on his box office drawing power. Although your average joe is not necessarily privy to the behind-the-scenes goings on of awards shows, the fact that Murphy was supposed to host this year's Oscars, but stepped down, became pretty big news. Of course, even fewer of your average joes know who Brett Ratner is, so the fact that Murphy stepped down in deference to the firing of Ratner for making homophobic slurs (always the class act, that Brett Ratner) is probably not generally known. All that's known by most people is that Murphy was supposed to host, but didn't. In a way, I guess he shut himself up.

Well, I won't be seeing A Thousands Words in the theater of course. While I said I like the idea, I haven't trusted Murphy enough to see a movie of his in the theater since -- well, since Shrek I guess. That was 11 years ago. Neither do collaborations with director Brian Robbins give me much hope, if their previous two -- Norbit and Meet Dave -- are any indication.

But I will be seeing my third movie of the 2012 release year this afternoon after work, reviving an old post-clockout tradition that has pretty much subsided since my son was born. My wife is going away for the night tomorrow night, so as my reward for extra parenting duty this weekend, I'm heading straight to the theater after work and getting home in time for bath and story time. (Incidentally, these trips may become more regular in the future -- my wife told me I didn't need a special occasion to do them. Score!)

I'll be watching Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. Most likely in 3D.

One of my readers in particular will warn me away from this, but I have enough reason to think it might be good that I'm willing to venture it. Besides, I've got a gift card to one of the local movie theaters, so there'll be no money leaving my pocket.

At first I was planning to choose between The Lorax and John Carter, and I had an interesting way to determine which it would be. I decided that whichever movie had the higher Metascore would get my gift card dollars this afternoon, since I knew the Lorax Metascore, but the John Carter Metascore would be new to me as of today. Since both were movies I'd wanted to see originally, before being scared off by them, I thought this was a perfect way to break the deadlock.

But then I saw that John Carter was a full 40 minutes longer than The Lorax, and that just tipped the scales too much. The shorter movie would prevail.

Just to see what would have happened, though:

The Lorax - 47
John Carter - 52

For my wife's sake, I'm glad I made this decision in advance.

Keeping the Weitz brothers straight

You know, because they were thinking of going gay.

As discussed in this post, there are lots of brothers out there making films together. However, there are not quite as many brothers out there making films separately.

There are a few prominent examples (Ridley and Tony Scott), and a few not-as-prominent examples (Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron). But in both cases it's not hard for me to keep them straight. Ridley directed Alien and Blade Runner, Tony directed Domino and Man on Fire. That one's not hard. Alfonso directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men, Carlos directed (the quite likeable but not epic) Rudo y Cursi and something called The Second Bakery Attack. One has an established career, one is fledgling.

Ridley > Tony and Alfonso > Carlos.

But what happens when you really can't discern a difference between the two in terms of the quality of their films, and the genres they work in don't make things any clearer?

That's the scenario with Chris and Paul Weitz, who gained fame as the creative duo behind American Pie, then directed two more films together before forging separate careers.

I started thinking about Chris and Paul yesterday when I was listening to The Treatment, Elvis Mitchell's half-hour weekly radio program in which he sits down with a creative type, usually a writer or director but sometimes an actor or other industry type. Paul was yesterday's guest, and he was discussing his new film Being Flynn, starring Robert DeNiro and Paul Dano. It opened last Friday.

I thought, "That's funny, so soon on the heels of A Better Life." Which came out last summer, and netted an Oscar nomination for lead actor Damien Bichir.

Of course, I should have realized that it was probably Chris who directed A Better Life, not Paul. And that is in fact the case.

So I decided then and there I needed to figure out the difference between Chris and Paul Weitz. What better way to do it than a post about them? Maybe writing about it will help it sink in. For a guy who's anal about knowing who directed, wrote, produced or appeared in what, this suddenly seemed very important.

So what I'm going to do is run down each career, and conclude at the end which man belongs on the right side of the >, and which one belongs on the wrong.

But let me start by saying that I've realized something else about the two brothers in the course of researching this post: They were a legitimate directing team for three features, not just American Pie (1999) as I'd originally thought. I had always thought that only one of them directed About a Boy (2002) (I thought it was Paul), but checking several sources on these here interwebs, I see them both listed as directors. And then there's the Chris Rock vehicle Down to Earth (2001), with which I didn't know either of them was affiliated. I didn't see that, but I heard not good things. If that's the case, we can blame them both.

But then it was separate ways for the pair, though clearly they did not have a falling out, as they continue to serve as producers on each other's movies. Hey, I don't blame them. If I had a brother, I wouldn't want to always share the spotlight with him either.

So:

Chris Weitz
Age: 42
Films he directed solo: The Golden Compass (2007), Twilight: New Moon (2009), A Better Life (2011)
Best film: A Better Life
Worst film: Can I say Twilight: New Moon even though I haven't seen it?
Summary: Looking at two of Chris' solo directing efforts, I guess you'd describe the younger Weitz brother as the high-concept guy, the guy who's given the big budgets and high expectations. Then of course, he confounds your expectations by going on to direct a little movie about an illegal alien trying to prosper in Los Angeles and provide for his son. I'm always interested by creative minds who can shift gears so totally and so successfully. I say "successfully" because I was actually a big fan of The Golden Compass -- and not only because it pissed off fundamentalist Christians.

Paul Weitz
Age: 46
Films he directed solo: In Good Company (2004), American Dreamz (2006), Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009), Little Fockers (2010), Being Flynn (2012)
Best film: In Good Company
Worst film: Little Fockers
Summary: The x-factor here is Being Flynn, which I guess could be either his best or his worst film. (The 54 Metascore is somewhat inconclusive.) And see, this is why these Weitz brothers are so tricky -- given that Chris directed Golden Compass and Twilight, I would totally expect that he'd be the one who directed Cirque du Freak (except that it came out the same year as Twilight: New Moon, so that would have been a lot of work). Maybe the studio was as confused as I am, and offered Cirque du Freak to Paul by accident. I have a huge affection for In Good Company, which was mostly developed on my semi-accidental second viewing last year. However, the other three I've seen are only mild successes (Cirque du Freak) to mild failures (American Dreamz) to massive failures (Little Fockers). Paul gains points back through greater output and greater variety of choices. He would have gained even more points if he'd been the sole director of About a Boy, as I once assumed.

Conclusion:

This is sort of a tough one. Each has a big success to his credit, but each also has a big failure (critical if not commercial). And then each has some films that got a lukewarm critical response. Hmm.

Okay ...

Chris Weitz > Paul Weitz

Agree? Disagree? Leave it in the comments.

One thing that's for certain: I'm always going to be interested in what both are doing next.

One thing that's not certain: Whether writing this post will actually help me remember which is which the next time this comes up.

Projecting again, posting about it again

So is this impressive collection of films a shelf at the local video store? With that many films lined up so impressively and so neatly, it could only be, right?

Nope. That's just what I brought with me to the hotel on Friday night.

Yep, I made another trip to a dumpy hotel near my work, armed with clothes, snacks, a laptop and a projector. Oh, and lots of movies. Twenty-one physical DVD cases, one of which contained three separate DVDs. So that's 23 movies total.

You may recall that I first did this last fall, the day after my birthday. It was designed as a birthday present, to get a night off from parenting at a hotel. My wife had done such things previously, and I followed suit. Projecting movies on the wall was my own personal innovation, my idea how to get the most out of time that I could spend exactly as I wanted.

Well, since my wife went out of town for three nights for her own birthday a couple weeks back, she insisted that I take another one of these nights for myself. Initially I was not all that pumped for it, because this would be my third time borrowing the projector from work, and I was already feeling sheepish about the prospect of asking my boss. In fact, I even devised various plans to steal it (he probably wouldn't notice), or rent or even buy my own (some people were selling them really cheaply on craigslist). Ultimately I just asked him again, and again he had no problem loaning it out to me.

That's when I started getting excited.

My goal this time was to watch six movies, which would be a one-movie improvement on my previous total. Having done this once already, I figured to lose less time to the logistics of making it work. For example, this time I didn't have to go to the store to buy a box of pushpins, so I could put a sheet up on the wall to cover the patterned wallpaper. But I did forget to bring the power strip I brought last time, so I watched my first movie with the laptop running on batteries. After that finished, I headed back to the office just after the last person left for the day, and corrected that situation. Time lost: 13 minutes.

And yep, I did get in those six movies - just barely.

I didn't want to write a massive post about my experiences watching these movies, but then as I was watching them, ideas of things to write about came up for each movie. So it will in fact be a sort of massive post, but it'll be broken up by subheadings, so you can pick through it that way if it makes it easier for you.

Laurie Holden's twin sister

My first movie up was Ron Underwood's Tremors, which made its way to the top of my Netflix queue without a specific plan for me to watch it. This seemed as good a time as any. When the sunlight is still coming in the hotel window (I checked in just before 3 p.m.), it's nice to have a movie that has lots of exterior shots. Otherwise it's difficult to see anything.

One of the first things I noticed was that Laurie Holden, of X-Files and Walking Dead fame, was in it. But this struck me as very strange. The movie is 22 years old, which would mean that Holden is now in her mid-40s -- at the very youngest. And the woman in this movie didn't seem to be only in her early 20s, in part because she is playing a seismologist doing research on plate tectonics.

So I took a break from the movie to satisfy my curiosity on the internet, and in fact, the woman in the movie is Finn Carter, who I saw last fall in How I Got Into College. I didn't mistake her for Holden then. But here, look at them side by side and tell me what you think:



Uncanny, right?

Well, maybe it would seem more so if I'd been able to find better pictures to use as my examples ...

(For the record, Holden is 39 and Carter is 51.)

That strange subplot with the Japanese guy

When I got back with the power strip, I excitedly put on Fargo. The movie is one of my top ten films of all time, but I have not seen it in at least five years. This needed to be remedied.

As I was watching it, I was marveling over the perfection of the script. It's such a tight script. Except ...

... there's an otherwise totally unnecessary subplot about a former classmate of Marge Gunderson's who is trying to romantically woo her, despite the fact that she's married and seven months pregnant.

I got to wondering what the purpose of this subplot is. It never dovetails into the main plot. I was talking about it with my wife later on, and we determined that the primary function of the subplot is to show that even in a contented marriage on the verge of motherhood, Marge has doubts about her place in the world. After all, she dresses up nicely to meet her former classmate while out of town in the big city, and even chooses a fancy restaurant for their meeting -- before eventually seeing how weird the guy has become and realizing how good she has it back at home with Norm. I guess the doubting of contented marriage is a theme in this movie, as Jerry Lundegaard is also shaking up a seemingly stable family life through the choices he makes.

Still, Fargo could easily exist without the Mike Yanagita subplot. Especially if you go by the basic screenwriting guideline that every scene in a movie should move the story forward in some identifiable way.

So why did the Coens include it? Especially when the movie otherwise exists as a master class in screenwriting?

My ultimate conclusion: It was a deliberate imperfection introduced to showcase how brilliant the rest of the script was. I admit that this is something of a stretch, and basically accuses the Coens of patting themselves on the back. (But let's be honest, it wouldn't be the first or last time they had patted themselves on the back.) But it got me thinking about how Muslims are supposedly known for leaving deliberate imperfections in their work, because only Allah is capable of perfection. Not that the Coens are Muslims, but that there's something about an imperfection that tends to accentuate how great everything else is.

And since Fargo is perfect as it is, I would definitely miss Mike Yanagita if he weren't there.

The unintended benefits of Heath Ledger's death

At around 8 o'clock I started what I guess you would call the main course. Anyway, I'll call it the main course because my pizza arrived about 20 minutes in.

The most famous thing about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is, of course, the fact that Heath Ledger was working on it when he died. Since he had not completed all his scenes, Terry Gilliam pulled the unorthodox trick of recruiting three other actors -- Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell -- to complete the parts Ledger had not completed.

To me, this sounded like a doomed decision that would just add confusion to what was probably already a very confusing movie, it being from the mind of Gilliam.

Then I saw the movie.

It was amazing to me how cleanly Gilliam incorporated these other actors. If Ledger had to die while making this movie, it seems he chose an opportune time to do it. He seems to have filmed all of his real-world scenes before dying, leaving those within the fantasy word of the imaginarium unfilmed. It's in this fantasy world where those other actors take over, and it makes perfect sense in terms of the logic of that fantasy world. And it's not at all confusing.

In fact, I think I liked the movie better with these other three taking on the roles they did than if Ledger had done those roles himself.

You can't make an assessment like that in a vacuum, of course. We'll never see the movie as it would have been if Ledger hadn't died. But the work Ledger did contribute to this film is not some of his best. Which may have something to do with his physical condition in the weeks before he died -- I mean, he was taking all those medications that resulted in the cocktail that killed him for a reason. It's just like when I was watching Brad Renfro's last movie, The Informers, last weekend, and he seemed to be physically struggling to complete his scenes.

And so it was that Depp, Law and Farrell injected a much-needed playfulness into both this film and the character.

Anyway, the film does not entirely work on all levels, but it does enough right to have been well worth the watch.

Cybill Shepherd as [some character you don't know]

My second viewing of Taxi Driver, which began at about 10:45, was long overdue. I saw the movie for the first time probably in the mid 1990s, and not again since. It was also the one movie of the 23 that I knew I would watch, because my boss loaned it to me. In fact, as if I'd needed to lubricate my request to borrow the projector, I told my boss about my plan to watch Taxi Driver so as to snare him in a wave of enthusiasm. (It's one of his favorite films.) I'd actually been intending to pick it up at the library, but he brought in his copy on Friday to loan to me. That meant I was committed to watching it, even if I felt like passing on it at the 11th hour. (And it literally was almost the 11th hour when I started the nearly two hour movie.)

My main and only comment on Taxi Driver, beyond the fact that I really like but don't love the movie, has little to do with Taxi Driver itself, but a phenomenon that occurred to me while watching its opening credits.

Namely, that movies used to -- and some still do -- give the name of the character such-and-such actor is playing in the opening credits.

Taxi Driver did this twice. It says "Peter Boyle as Wizard" and "Cybill Shepherd as Betsy."

While I have a certain affection for this convention because it has a long history in cinema, I did wonder what it really gains you to know the name of the character an actor is playing. You don't know the names of any of the characters at this point, so knowing which actor plays which character is of limited value. These credits are basically asking you to store that name as information in your short-term memory, and then when the character appears on screen, you can say "Oh, that character is played by Cybill Shepherd."

But in a way, isn't that kind of "breaking the spell"? Don't you just want to concentrate on the character as a character, not as an actress playing that character? That's what the closing credits are for.

I think it's slightly different if it's a character that you might know before the movie even starts. Like, if Santa Claus were a character in Taxi Driver (which would be a pretty weird version of the movie), you might say "And Harvey Keitel as Santa Claus." But who is this "Betsy," anyway? Why is she singled out from the other characters?

The beauty of Derek Smalls

This is Spinal Tap is another of my all-time favorites, and another film I hadn't seen in at least five years. In fact, I can't even remember when I bought the DVD, and the packaging was still on it. (It was one of those DVDs that's taped shut along three edges, and the tape rips off in chunks. It took about five minutes for me to free the disc.) Anyway, since I know it so well, it made a perfect accompaniment to my morning coffee. The light streaming past the closed curtains wouldn't matter, because I didn't technically need to see everything that was happening.

This post is getting long, so I don't need to go on at length about This is Spinal Tap. You probably already know everything a person could say about it. But a couple quick comments nonetheless:

- I consciously noticed for the first time that Anjelica Huston is in this movie. She plays the woman who designed the 18-inch Stonehenge model. But what I found really interesting about her appearance is that her name appears twice in the closing credits, spelled two different ways. The first time they spell her first name wrong (Angelica), and the second time they spell it with the J. Funny.

- I love the "lukewarm water" that is Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer). I love how even-keeled this guy is. He's always using logic to interpret every situation in the most optimistic possible way, and nothing can really throw him. On this viewing, I especially appreciated the fact that he smokes a pipe. That seems to make him all the more wise. It also makes the scene where he goes through airport security with an aluminum foil-wrapped cucumber in his pants all the more funny, because you get the prankster side of the character there as well.

Watching Raising Arizona as a father

My personal favorite among the classics I rewatched is Raising Arizona, the final movie of the visit, which I finished just 15 minutes before checking out. I have it ranked as my third favorite movie of all time on Flickchart, yet I hadn't watched it since June of 2007.

I know this movie like the back of my hand, which made for a good movie to watch as I was cleaning up the room and dealing with a stronger quality of light coming through the window. What I'd never done previously, though, was watch it as a father.

And I found myself getting emotional several times.

Some of that was just the emotion I've owned up to feeling when I love a movie so much that it touches me on a deeper level. Like, when the opening credits finally kick in at something like the 11-minute mark, with the movie's classic theme song, I think I had a bit more than just the chills I'm getting even know as I write about it.

But the ending, always sentimental and poignant, really got me this time. HI and Ed having to return the baby. Nathan Arizona realizing that it was them who took Nathan Jr. Ed explaining that they can't have one of their own. Nathan describing how lost he would be if Florence left him -- "I do love her so." And finally, HI's dream where you see him from behind, an old man at a future family reunion, and a grown woman comes to touch him on his cheek, speaking to him a single, loving word:

"Dad."

Yep. Waterworks.

Getting acquainted with ... Preston Sturges

PLEASE READ THE BEGINNING OF THIS POST, EVEN IF YOU USUALLY SKIP THIS SERIES. It contains some new information that may cause you to reconsider, which you'll need to know about for next time.

Welcome to year two of Getting Acquainted.

Didn't realize there was a whole year one? Or more accurately, realized it, but generally skipped these posts, either because they were too long or because they were about movies you hadn't seen?

I understand. Believe me, I do.

In fact, I eventually considered it a chore to write about these three featured movies each month. Not a chore to see them, though my schedule did sometimes make it difficult to watch the third before the end of the month. No, the chore was simply in the writing. It's because I'd gotten myself into the habit of feeling like I needed to expound on each film at length, almost like I were giving a full review including plot summary. See, the plot summary became more necessary because the films were older, meaning there was a greater likelihood you didn't know what they were about. Plus, writing about these films sometimes four weeks after I saw them, I often forgot what I really wanted to say, but felt pressure to devote an equal number of words to them as I devoted to the ones I saw more recently.

In fact, the reason I'm continuing this blog series into a second year -- by far the longest duration of any of my previous series -- is because I have really enjoyed watching these movies. That was the whole point of the exercise to begin with -- to watch more older movies, and familiarize myself with titans of the movie industry whose work had thus far eluded me. The point wasn't to write a particularly compelling or exhaustive blog post at the end of each month -- that was just a logical side product of watching the movies. But then I placed too much emphasis on the writing of the post, making me resent the series on the whole. It was poorly spent consternation, since fewer people are likely to even read a post about movies and talents they can't relate to from their own watching experiences.

So: Format change!

For year two, I'm going to do the following:

1) Start with a little introduction to the person and tell you why I chose him/her. This does not need to be very long and it does need to tell you everything you might want to know about this person. It just needs to establish a few reasons why he/she interested me. This I have already been doing.

2) I will write about each movie, but the format will be designed to present certain necessary information, followed by a single paragraph on my general impressions of the film. I don't care if it's the greatest film I've ever seen -- I'm not going to go on about it for ten paragraphs. Neither you nor I have the time.

3) At the end of each post, I'm going to tell you who I'm watching the following month. I didn't do this previously because I thought there was some value in surprising you. I've decided that's stupid. The real value, if there is any, is allowing you to watch along with me, if you are so inclined. Then you'll definitely be interested in reading the next month's post. In order for you to be able to do that, I'll also tell you which films I expect to watch, with the caveat that these are subject to change.

So. I better stop now or this post will be even longer than the ones I wrote last year.

Preston Sturges! He was someone I wanted to watch for a number of reasons, one of which was that I always confuse him with W.C. Fields. There is no real reason for this. Sturges was a playwright, screenwriter and director who lived between 1898 and 1959. Fields was a comedian, writer and juggler (!) who lived between 1880 and 1946. Their lives overlapped, and they both worked in the medium of comedy, but otherwise it's unclear why I associate them in my mind. In fact, if you google their names together, you only get mentions of them together in longer lists that include other people.

But more recently I'd heard some of his films mentioned on Filmspotting, my weekly film podcast bible. In fact, two of the films I watched came up for discussion on the podcast in the past year. The third was a recommendation from someone in the Flickcharters group on Facebook. If I didn't have my choices already curated for me by these various recommendations, I might have chosen differently, if only because these films represent only a small sliver of his career, all coming out in either 1940 or 1941. I usually like to sample from different time periods. However, it seems this period does represent Sturges at the peak of his talents, so that's a good approach to choosing titles as well.

Generally I knew that Sturges' films were marked by smart dialogue, possibly by fast line deliveries (the kind you get in a movie like His Girl Friday), and maybe some good physical comedy. What else characterized them? I was about to find out ...

The Great McGinty (1940, Preston Sturges)
Watched: Friday, February 3rd
One sentence plot synopsis: A homeless grifter (Brian Donlevy), recruited to participate in a voting fraud scheme, catches the eye of organized criminals and rises through the rigged political ranks to become governor of the state.
My thoughts on the film: The Great McGinty was a wonderful introduction to Sturges. The humor in this political satire felt fresh, sharp and not the least bit dated, and I caught myself laughing aloud more frequently than I usually do with older films. Credit for much of the laughter goes to Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, who plays the political boss with whom McGinty is always bickering. Aside from just being funny, though, the film shrewdly presents the ways in which a total fraud can be marketed and publicized into a figurehead capable of winning elections -- either rigged elections or legitimate ones. Given what I thought I knew about Sturges -- that he might really tell it like it is, without offering up any redemption for his characters -- I was surprised to see the film grow a conscience at the end, something that did not take away in the slightest from the scathing indictment of human nature presented earlier. Well played!

The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
Watched: Saturday, February 18th
One sentence plot synopsis: A father-and-daughter pair of card sharps (Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn) set their sights on an heir to a beer fortune (Henry Fonda) returning via ship from a year on the Amazon ... until she unexpectedly falls for her target.
My thoughts on the film: This film is a lot more like a straight screwball comedy. The Lady Eve of the title doesn't even appear until the second half, when the exposed card sharp played by Stanwyck tries to pass herself off as a different person in her attempt to win Fonda's character a second time -- part for sport, part for revenge at being spurned by him after he discovers her treacherous past. It takes the certain suspension of disbelief that's always necessary in a screwball comedy to believe that he would really be duped a second time -- that he wouldn't know it was the card sharp dressed up as a member of the British royal class. But the scenario works because the actors sell it, especially Stanwyck, whom I did not consciously know previously but fell in love with during this deft performance. Fonda makes a great straight-man dufus alongside her truly skillful and hilarious work. I'd say the story gets a bit silly near the end, but there are some pretty sharp observations about the behaviors of the male and female human being, not to mention enough physical comedy to just make the whole thing feel like a hoot.

Sullivan's Travels (1941, Preston Sturges)
Watched: Friday, February 24th
One sentence plot synopsis: When a successful Hollywood director (Joel McCrea) wants to leave behind frivolous studio comedies and direct something serious about the poor, his bosses tell him he doesn't have the hard upbringing necessary to make such a movie -- so he decides to live among drifters to gain the necessary perspective.
My thoughts on the film: I was in love with this film for about its first two-thirds. Sullivan's heartfelt attempts to live a hardscrabble existence are repeatedly frustrated by his overbearing bosses and other handlers, who are all hilarious, and he keeps ending up back in Los Angeles through no fault of his own -- he just can't escape. When he picks up a failed starlet (Veronica Lake), things just get more juicy. But I was a bit thrown by the third act shift in focus, when Sullivan gets knocked unconscious by a vagrant and loses his memory, proceeding to commit a crime and receive a jail sentence. It was a tonal shift as well, and although the final five minutes of the movie redeem the choice, it still left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. But I really enjoyed the film overall, and was especially glad to be exposed to Veronica Lake for what I believe is the first time -- I know Lake primarily from the joke about her in L.A. Confidential. Maybe I'll have to get "better acquainted" with her sometime ...

Conclusion: I really enjoyed my Sturges month and am ready for more. After a couple-month break.

Favorite of the three: The Great McGinty

Next month: It's Jerry Lewis time. I'll be watching the erstwhile muscular dystrophy spokesman in At War With the Army, The Nutty Professor and The King of Comedy. I think.

Hope you enjoy the new format and I hope to see you here next month ...

The one that got it right

Especially in the last 10-15 years, when an ever greater number of the available properties have been turned into movies, screenwriters have had to deal with the unenviable problem of turning beloved short-form content into feature-length films. As is probably the case in any subsection of the movie world, few of them have gotten it right.

It's a big problem. When you have a 30-page storybook and are being asked to produce an 80-minute film, or possibly longer, how do fill up those extra minutes beyond what we know from the page? How do you flesh out that world?

The failures have been easy to remember. Several Christmas movies have failed in this regard (The Polar Express and Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas), and then you also have your run-of-the-mill failures (Curious George, Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat). Then there are the movies that weren't quite failures, but don't leave much of a lasting impression (Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!).

Not surprisingly, you see Dr. Seuss' name all over that admittedly small sampling of movies. This is not because Dr. Seuss had anything to do with any of these movies (he's been dead since 1991, so of course he didn't), nor because his material is intrinsically difficult to expand to feature length. It's because all material is difficult to expand to feature length, and he just happens to have a lot of beloved material that's worth attempting to expand.

The latest attempt hits theaters today, and it's an adaptation of my favorite Dr. Seuss story. The Lorax has always appealed to me for not only its themes -- I consider myself a very low-level environmentalist -- but also for the maturity it asked of me as a young child. Not that any of Dr. Seuss' works are presented in a purely uncomplicated way, but this one was especially not-uncomplicated. Despite all the colors of the Truffala trees and the Brown Barbaloots, this is a sober, somber story, something that would be at home among the oeuvre of Shel Silverstein. It ends with a wonderful bit of optimism, but you can't exactly call it a happy ending, either. It's a "wait and see" ending, and points the finger of responsibility directly out of the book at you, the reader. Even when I was very young, I instinctively got this.

And because I wanted to expose my own son to this book at a very young age, I've already been reading it to him for almost a year. The first time, I just borrowed it from the library and we read it only once. Then I bought it for him for Christmas, and we've read it a half-dozen times. He's only 18 months old, so he's not gleaning anything from it yet. But there will be a day when it all clicks, when I can see the understanding in his eyes. I bought a half-dozen Dr. Seuss books for him for Christmas, but only presented him The Lorax and The Cat and the Hat, figuring (once I saw all the other gifts he'd gotten) that I'd save the other books for other occasions. I chose those two because The Cat and the Hat is kind of like Dr. Seuss 101, and, well, The Lorax is the best.

So it's with even greater fears of disappointment that I greet the feature-length Lorax, which is (like his other movies) properly referred to as Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. Seeing only the poster you see above in a movie theater, some six months ago, I was filled with hope for its potential. Seeing the TV ads, however, reminded me that they have to add a lot of meat to the bones of Seuss' story.

And I'm not sure what I think of the quality of that meat.

I've intentionally limited my exposure to moving images of The Lorax, but I do have one moment in mind from the trailer that seems to speak volumes about what kind of movie this might be. The Lorax is confronted by some kind of objectionable woman whose appearance leaves some doubt about her gender. So the Lorax whispers to someone "That's a woman?" Except he says it in this kind of Borscht Belt Jackie Mason accent, like he's on a stage somewhere in the Catskills. (Looking it up just now, I see the character is voiced by the size-appropriate Danny DeVito.)

Sober and somber, this will not be.

I don't want to trash the writers of The Lorax, or Universal, the studio that created it. All I want to say, right now, is that I'm worried. And this is even before I've checked Metacritic to see what other critics are saying. (Better that way, or a high Metascore could blow this whole post out of the water.)

Perhaps the part that really worries me: "From the creators of Despicable Me." I did not like Despicable Me.

To add a greater sense of weight to the whole thing, Universal has made the clever decision to release The Lorax on Dr. Seuss' birthday. He would have been 108 today. Will this movie honor the essence of what we love about the man and his work? My fear is that it will not.

But ah, just like The Lorax, there is a glimmer of hope at the end of my tale. Because there's one movie that's gotten it right, giving all the others hope:


I had a similar wariness before I saw Spike Jonze' Where the Wild Things Are. In this case, I wasn't worried that they'd dumbed it down for kiddies. But I was worried that the creative decisions -- ironically, decisions that seemed to make it more adult-oriented -- wouldn't pay off. (I'd also heard stories of great dysfunction from the set.)

But wow. Did it ever pay off.

Where the Wild Things Are, the book, was at the extreme far end in terms of scarcity of content -- a mere 338 words. Yet this movie simply sings. It's warm in all the right places and cold in all the right places. It's fun in all the right places and scary in all the right places. It's simple in all the right places and it's deliriously complex when it needs to be. In all aspects it's visionary.

I think part of what made the movie so great is that the book that inspired it is really more like an idea than a story. Yes, there's a clear journey in Where the Wild Things Are, but there are really only a few iconic beats, and nothing like complexity of character or a detailed plot. I know that's kind of a silly thing to say about a children's storybook. Most storybooks are not high on depth, and in this case, Where the Wild Things Are is like most storybooks.

But I think what Maurice Sendak's material allowed Jonze and co-adapter Dave Eggars was a freedom to take this world and run with it. To create real characters out of creatures that never spoke. To start with a visual scheme and to imagine where it might logically go. And to create a framing story with real human depth and emotion.

But is Where the Wild Things Are the last Truffala tree? The movie seems like a real anomaly, a huge risk on the part of the studio. And although many critics lavished it with praise, there were some who just felt the decision didn't work. And the truth is, it probably would have been more popular with audiences if it had gotten the animation treatment, and if all the wild things engaged in rapid-fire exchanges of pop culture references.

Which is why I expect The Lorax -- a terrific candidate to be made smartly, for adults as well as kids -- to wimp out and do the same. It's why I expect all these adaptations to do the same ...

... UNLESS.

Leap Day Schlocktacularfest

Is two times enough for a tradition?

When we watched The Wicker Man four years ago, I happened to notice that it was on February 29th. I thought that this day, which only comes along once every four years, demanded a special movie, and The Wicker Man certainly qualified.

If you haven't seen The Wicker Man, well, I invite you to keep it that way. Unless you're like me and have a perverse desire to endure utter crap for 100 minutes. If you merely want to know what makes The Wicker Man so crappy, I invite you to check out this instead:



There! Now you know why it was so special.

So in the last few weeks, when I knew that February 29th was approaching, I wondered what movie might be worthy enough to carry on the torch of Leap Day craptacularity that began with The Wicker Man in 2008. It would have to be something epically bad to truly be eligible to recognize the rarity of a February 29th.

Enter Howard the Duck.

Howard the Duck has been on our Netflix instant queue for over a year, and I'd say a half-dozen times I was on the verge of starting to watch it. But each of those times, it was late at night, and I needed something that was more like an hour and twenty minutes, rather than an hour fifty-one.

I had to try to sneak it in late at night, because my wife wanted no part of it. For good reason -- no person who values their time should.

Fortunately, I do not value my time.

So when my wife told me a couple days ago that she was going out to a free seminar for web producers on Wednesday night, I quickly realized that Wednesday was February 29th, and I quickly realized that Howard the Duck's time had finally come.

Over the 25 years since it hit theaters, I've had plenty of time to wonder how bad it could truly be. The rumors were that its quality was legendarily bad, but don't go rush right out and see it -- it's the bad kind of bad, not the good kind of bad. Aside from the few moving images I saw of it in commercials advertising its release, though, I didn't know precisely what was so bad about it.

Well, now I know.

If there were one word I could use to describe Howard the Duck, it would be "wrong-headed." (If you'll allow the hyphen in making it one word.) For how much the movie seems like it probably cost -- it boasts a few visual effects and makeup effects that would have been state-of-the-art at the time -- there was so little thought put into whether it would appeal to anybody.

The movie is basically about a duck living in a world very much like our own, except instead of monkeys being the progenitors of the planet's dominant species, ducks are. (This stolen almost verbatim from the movie's most clear-headed passage.) They've evolved to about exactly the spot that humans on Earth had evolved by the mid-1980s -- the posters on the wall of Howard's shabby apartment say Breeders of the Lost Stork and Splashdance, with ducks filling the iconic poses that Harrison Ford and Jennifer Beals made famous on Earth. Very soon after we meet Howard, however, he is sucked through a wormhole into another dimension as a voiceover explains that in the universe, all possible realities exist. Naturally, the reality Howard now finds himself in has a striking similarity to his own -- the people even speak the same language as he does. Only, this is the mean streets of Cleveland on planet Earth, not the very similar looking place he came from.

What follows is a series of misadventures involving Howard, a daffy rock star played by Lea Thompson, a daffy lab assistant played by Tim Robbins, and a daffy scientist played by Jeffrey Jones. In fact, the only character who really isn't all that daffy is the duck. He talks and acts kind of like an acerbic Jewish accountant, one who is generally pretty horny. The mission is ostensibly to return Howard to his own dimension using the same scientific equipment that brought him here, but in the process of that, Jones' character's body is taken over by that of a dark overlord who is trying to bring more dark overlords down to Earth. It's up to Howard to save the Earth. Naturally, he and Thompson's character also fall in love along the way.

This description may sound pretty bad, but it's the details of this movie that really make it so odd. For starters, I thought it was very strange that this movie received a PG rating, especially since the PG-13 rating had already been introduced into the rating system. In fact, this movie has numerous moments that would never fly in a PG movie today, and might not even make it into a PG-13 movie. For example, there are two instances of duck tits. That's right, duck tits. Naked tits on ducks -- one a photograph in a magazine (called Playduck, natch), one on a live topless duck in a bathtub. In fact, I wanted to call this post "Duck tits and other disasters." Hmm, maybe that would have been more attention-grabbing.

Just a select few more moments that pushed the PG rating:

- Inexplicably, while looking through Howard's wallet, Thompson's character finds a condom in it. Not only are we invited to think of sex in general, we are invited to think of duck sex.
- When Howard gets a job in Cleveland through an employment agency, it's at some kind of erotic pleasure palace where half-naked customers are going at each other and constantly running off into private rooms.
- The movie lingers on a scene of Thompson wearing only pink lingerie. She almost takes her top off and appears on the verge of having sex with Howard.
- Howard is always talking about how he's going to kill somebody.
- There are several scenes of semi-intense violence, including a brawl in and alley and a brawl in a bar where Howard smashes a bottle of liquor over someone's head. During this scene he also uses an ice pick to threaten a punk with ripping out his earring.
- The monster Jones transforms into is too scary for today's PG, and is just unpleasant in general.
- When the monster shoots rays at people, they convulse in a seizure. One person even disappears, presumably to his death.

It was stuff like this that caused them to invent the PG-13 rating in the first place. Yet I suspect they thought kids would be one of the biggest audiences for this movie. If you've watched this movie, you know how absurd that conclusion was.

Really, this movie is for no one. It's odd and disjointed and unfunny and poorly acted.

I can't say that I had a bad time watching it, but I did start to fall asleep at the end.

There are probably plenty of other things I could tell you about Howard the Duck, but let's just leave it at that. I've suffered enough watching it, and you've suffered enough reading about it. Besides, if you're like me and do want to subject yourself to Howard the Duck, you'll want a couple surprises still to discover yourself.

Now that I've got this tradition going, I can't wait for Sunday, February 29th, 2016.

I've got nearly four years to figure out the next worthy entrant into this series.