See Vance walk, see Courteney run

One of the hazards of being a professional film critic -- even one with the weird job description I have, which involves submitting new reviews for old movies -- is that you sometimes have to see movies like John Whitesell's See Spot Run (2001).

One of the positives is that it sometimes gives you not one, but two ideas for things to write about on your blog.

See Vance walk

I have not been to the gym since my son was born. It's not that I suddenly hate exercise. Unsurprisingly, it's a question of time and priorities. When you have a new baby in the house, it's not only the time you can devote to leisure activities that takes a hit. It's also any other time out of the house, like at the gym.

But my wife and I discussed it and we both thought we'd rather have me get back into the habit of going to the gym than to cancel my gym membership, which costs me the manageable price of $26 a month, and seems a shame to let go as a result. So for the first time this week I moved a bonafide "gym movie" to the top of my Netflix queue. And by "gym movie" I mean a movie that doesn't necessarily demand to be seen on a nice screen, whose subtle details will not be lost in a setting in which I've strapped my portable DVD player to the top of the stairmaster with a pair of rubber bands. See Spot Run was that gym movie.

Unfortunately, my attempt to get to the gym on Monday night didn't work out. I'd miscommunicated with my wife about my intentions -- she thought I had planned to go in the 6 o'clock range, while I'd actually planned to go in the 9 o'clock range. So I ended up drinking too much white wine and the gym was scrapped. Tuesday seemed complicated because it was election day, and on Wednesday I planned to go to a friend's that night.

But I didn't want to keep See Spot Run for a second longer than I had to, because it was preventing Netflix from shipping me my next disc.

So I had a potentially groundbreaking brainstorm. Whereas I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone while watching a crappy movie I have to review while exercising, there might even be a way to -- get this -- kill three birds with one stone. It's never been done in the history of humankind, but I thought I might be the first one to make it work.

Those three birds being:

1) exercising;
2) giving my wife a break from our son;
3) watching a movie.

How would I do it? Simple: I would attach my portable DVD player to the bar across the top of the handles of the stroller, where you're supposed to put your drink. And using this method, I could get myself some cardio, watch a crappy movie, and get my son out of my wife's hair for a couple hours. I guess it could actually be four birds if you consider the walk to have some intrinsic value to my son, as a way to change up his routine and get him out into the world.

Now I know what you're thinking. Vance, if you're watching a movie while pushing your son in his stroller, you're either not paying very much attention to the movie, or not paying very much attention to your son. That latter being the biggest concern in terms of his safety -- don't want to start pushing him into traffic because I'm caught up in the movie.

Which is why only terrible crap like See Spot Run will get watched in a setting like this. I realize it's a little unfair to the movie I'm watching, especially if I'm reviewing it, to assume that I can consume as much of it as I need while the screen is occasionally blocked out by the sun, and while I have to look away occasionally to make sure I don't run into anybody. But I'd already watched the first 40 minutes of it at home, which was enough to bias me against it in its entirety.

Besides, let's be honest. People have dozens of distractions when they watch movies at home anyway. You could actually say I'm more focused on it because I don't have the internet to tempt me, to steal away half of my ability to concentrate via a mentally intensive form of multi-tasking. At least here I'm only walking, which doesn't require much mental commitment.

Plus, there's a lot of down time when you're waiting for the crosswalk to change, etc. There are only really a couple moments -- crossing streets and blind driveways, for example -- when I can't be keeping at least one eye on the movie.

Parent of the year? Maybe not. But I'll keep my son safe for sure.

And I'll be getting exercise, babysitting and watching movies. The three (four) birds are worth the (very) minor risk.

See Courteney run

One of the first things I thought the other week when I heard that Courteney Cox and David Arquette were separating was: "It's about time."

In fact, I have always been flummoxed about why a cool, funny chick like Courteney Cox would want to align herself with a doofus like David Arquette.

See Spot Run reminded me of just how much of a doofus.

Arquette is in that category of "comic actors" (to use an extremely generous term for them) who seem to have gotten where they are solely on the basis of acting goofy and bugging out their eyes. I know I could be describing Jim Carrey or Robin Williams when I say this, but those guys have shown actual acting chops from time to time. It's morons like Arquette and Jamie Kennedy who have skated by on very minimal accomplishments for a lot longer than they should have. (Or maybe I'm just singling those two out because they both landed attractive babes. Kennedy was dating Jennifer Love Hewitt up until March of this year.)

So it may have taken Courteney Cox 11 years to run away from Arquette, but finally, she's running.

Not fast enough, as it turns out -- now we hear they are separated but not planning to get divorced. Courteney, don't let Arquette's suckiness suck you back in.

Don't get me wrong, See Spot Run would have been one of the worst movies I've ever seen even if someone else were the star. Director John Whitesell is a total hack -- I can't decide which of the three movies he's directed that I've seen, which also include Deck the Halls and Malibu's Most Wanted (which happens to star the aforementioned Jamie Kennedy), is worst, though it's probably this. But there's something about the way that Arquette gets electrocuted by a dog collar, slips repeatedly in dog shit and bounces around a pet store encased in bubble wrap that is especially dreadful.

Run, Courteney. Run.

A good alternative to nothing

It was blowy as hell in my neighborhood last night, and we lost power from around 7:30 until the time I went to sleep. It was the second outage in three weeks, the last one coming about 15 minutes earlier in the evening. But that one lasted only a half-hour, and occurred early enough that it didn't endanger any of our scheduled DVR recordings for the evening. Last night was a different story -- good thing Tuesday nights are a pretty light TV night for us.

When it became clear that this was not going to be a momentary power flicker, the next thing that became clear was that I don't know what the hell to do with myself during a power outage.

Like most people would have been doing, I was technologically multi-tasking at the time of the blackout. I had my laptop in my lap and a basketball game on in the background. Actually, the game I cared about -- the opening night matchup between the Cleveland Cavaliers and my Boston Celtics -- had been over for about ten minutes. But because I was engrossed in my laptop projects, I was willingly subjecting myself to the Lakers being presented their NBA championship trophy. I know, crazy.

When the power cut, and once we'd done the necessary things like finding our flashlights and lighting a dozen candles, I was then so lost for ideas of what to do that I literally lay on the couch staring at the ceiling for five minutes.

Have we fallen this far? Is our dependence on technology so great that we no longer know how to pass an evening without it?

We gave the power about a half-hour to come on before we decided I should forge ahead with making dinner. It was a pretty easy one -- carne asada fried up in a frying pan, one of our standards, and a Greek salad I'd gotten from the salad bar at the fancy Ralphs. I know, carne asada and Greek salad don't go together.

We ate by candlelight -- it was nice -- and then had a whole evening in the dark ahead of us.

We had tossed around the idea of playing Scrabble. Board games were how we passed the time during power outages when I was a kid. But we didn't discuss it too seriously. Now that my wife and I play Lexulous against each other online, we've lost some of our verve for the actual physical version of the game. In fact, I've gotten so much more accustomed to Lexulous than Scrabble that I think I would be confused about having only seven letters rather than eight, and the Q being 10 points instead of 12. Another way technology has defeated our ability (or desire) to do for ourselves.

And so it was that we decided to watch a movie on my portable DVD player.

I should be honest and tell you that this was one of the first ideas that came to me as soon as the lights went out. You know by now that I'm always looking for my next score, and I knew I had a freshly charged battery on my DVD player, a consequence of failing to make it to the gym last Friday afternoon.

My wife agreed, and we popped in The Class, a 2008 French film about an ordinary teacher trying to get through to an unruly group of mostly lower class students in a French public school. To continue the discussion I started here, The Class is not its actual French title, which would literally be La Classe. Rather, in France the movie is called Entre les Murs, which my wife translated for me as Between the Walls. Why that couldn't have been its English title, I may never know.

Interesting film -- very French. While I was expecting a French Stand and Deliver with an inspirational ending, instead, the film is very ambiguous, and quite bleak. The protagonist is kind of a dick, and suffice it to say there is no moment when his efforts with the students bear fruit in some obvious way. I'm still processing, but I think I'm going to ultimately say that I really liked the film. It's brave and uncompromising, I'll give it that.

There's also little doubt that it eventually took a toll on me that The Class was 128 minutes, subtitled, deliberately paced, and on a small screen in the dark. I found myself fighting off sleep for the last 30 minutes.

But that's really just as well. It left me without another tough decision of what to spend my time doing without power. Like watching a movie, sleep is definitely also a better alternative to doing nothing.

However, it's pretty telling what my wife's next decision was: to put in another movie. When I got up this morning, I saw the DVD cover for Election sitting out on the coffee table. I'm assuming she watched it until the battery was juiced, at which point, she joined me in the bed as well. And at some point after that, the power finally came back on.

Ah, technology -- our crutch, our drug.

Trying to impress the locals?

Two of the three gyms I regularly attend are predominantly African-American. This is neither intentional nor unintentional. It's just a matter of geography.

Which gym depends entirely on my circumstances. Lately, it's most common for me to hit the gym on my way home from work, in which case, the 24 Hour Fitness on Slauson is the best one, as it involves only a slight detour. If I'm going before work, I'll hit the one in Hawthorne, which requires a short drive east on the 105. But I do that less often these days, for two reasons: 1) It involves factoring in all the extra time to shower after my workout, and making sure I don't forget a key part of my workday wardrobe (say, underpants or a belt, both of which have happened before); 2) They've set the stairmasters at this gym for a 20-minute maximum workout, which just won't cut it. The third gym I attend is the one in Santa Monica off Ocean Park, which is where I go when I'm planning to both leave from my house and return there. This is the one that's actually closest to home, but it's the wrong direction from work. It's also the only time I don't need a locker, because I arrive and leave in the same outfit.

The first two I've listed are predominantly African-American. Why does this matter, and why am I even mentioning it?

Well, for one, let's be honest -- it pumps up my sense of liberal self-esteem to attend a gym where I'm a minority. I haven't been fortunate enough to have many black friends in my life -- it just hasn't worked out that way -- so a liberal like me wants to prove (to the world, to himself) that he's as color blind as he fancies himself to be. I'm not saying that going to a black gym proves a person is not racist, but I do think people who are racist might choose the geographically inconvenient gym, to avoid those they don't like.

Like most people, I'm conscious of how my behavior is perceived, especially in situations where I'm interacting with other races. I don't think this makes me unusual in the supposedly post-racial world we've lived in since we elected Obama -- being conscious of how you may be representing yourself is just a prudent thing to do. Yeah, it would be wonderful if we could behave exactly the same way around everyone, but I'm conscious of things like seeming aloof or looking annoyed. I don't want it to be misinterpreted, to unintentionally perpetrate someone's idea that he or she is being disrespected. So I like to smile and nod at people at the gym whenever I get the chance. (I am also neurotic by nature, which I'm sure has something to do with it.)

And so it is that I also wonder what people think when they see me watching a movie like Crossover on my portable DVD player at the gym.

Now, I'm not going to say I'm as white as they come. They come much whiter. But my ancestors do date back to when the Angles met the Saxons, and a person probably wouldn't know my politics just by looking at me. (Though I do often have the crazy hair and bushy sideburns you might associate with a liberal.)

Most of the time, the movie I watch at the gym is just some dumb comedy or action movie, something I have to review that I know my wife won't want to watch with me. But I do also watch my fair share of movies intended for black audiences.

I've mentioned before that I can review any movie that doesn't currently have a review, and since movies for black audiences aren't the most hotly sought-after by the site's regular staffers, many of them are available. This serves a dual purpose for me. Not only does it pay me, but it also satisfies my democratic need to have all movies reviewed, not just the ones that the predominantly white society of film critics would naturally gravitate toward. I'm not going to assume that all the site's readers are white hipsters. Movies for minorities need to be reviewed, too. I'm not delusional in my liberalism, so I'm not going to tell you that I would watch most of these movies anyway -- I probably wouldn't. But I can tell you that I've had my share of nice surprises over the years, and am the better film fan for having seen so many movies that are clearly aimed toward a different demographic than my own.

But like I said, I wonder what message it sends to the guy on the stairmaster next to me when he sees me fire up Crossover, a movie about street basketball with literally an all-black cast. Does he smile and think I have good taste in movies? Or does he think I'm pandering to him, like those whitest of whites, who break into ebonics to show the person they're talking to how much they can relate? Does he even notice what I'm watching? Or that I'm watching a movie?

I know the answer to this last one. I know because it's difficult to miss me at the gym. Not only am I one of the few whites, but I'm also the only one who straps a portable DVD player to the top of the stairmaster using two thick rubber bands. Plus, if you're working out next to me, you have little choice but to be occasionally distracted by what's on my screen, even though I'm listening to it on headphones. Which is precisely why I try to keep everything I watch at the gym to a PG-13 rating, and why I get occasionally paranoid if nudity or graphic violence slips in, especially when I'm working out next to a woman.

But I also know because someone commented to me once about the movie I was watching. A nice woman in her late 20s noticed that I was watching Chris Robinson's ATL. In fact, when I reached the end of my time on the machine, she chided me that I couldn't turn the DVD player off because she was still watching. She then told me that ATL was her favorite movie. A sense of belonging ran down my spine in the form of a chill.

But most times, I don't get this kind of feedback, so I have no idea. And the answer is, what the person thinks -- if he or she thinks anything at all -- is probably a function of what biases he or she carries around. Which, when you think about it, is the basis for all racism anyway. If he or she is mostly untouched by racism, perhaps he or she just thinks "Right on, man." But if he or she deals with some dude who's always "blacking up his language" every time he talks to the person in question, perhaps this just seems like another instance of that.

Of course, there's also a third possibility -- that this person doesn't like Crossover or ATL at all. Just because a person is black does not mean he or she is interested in movies aimed at black audiences. And shame on me for suggesting it.

Aren't racial politics grand? To even have an academic discussion about it, as I try to do from time to time on this blog, is to make generalizations, even if just for the purposes of argument. Generalizations whose very nature tends to support what the proponents of racial equality are fighting against. Generalizations that I am in some way trying to attack, and root out, by discussing them here, in a public forum.

So I have no idea what the guy who was working out next to me yesterday thought. I didn't even throw him a surreptitious glance to see if he was watching my screen. And for the second half of my 45 minutes of huffing and puffing, my neighbor was a Latino guy.

Maybe I should have saved my screening of Sleep Dealer for him. ;-)

R.I.P. Portable DVD Player (2005-2009)

My Polaroid personal DVD player is no more.

Ever since the summer of 2005, it's played an indispensable role in my movie viewing habits, accompanying me to the gym, on airplanes, even on our honeymoon last April. (We watched two terrible movies: The Brothers Solomon and Death at a Funeral.)

But when I went to fire it up Thursday at lunch, trying to watch the final 15 minutes of a movie in order to drop it in that day's mail, the silence was deafening. The usual blue screen came up, but the disc clamped inside wouldn't spin to life. And no amount of turning it on, and off, and on again, or pushing random combinations of buttons, would change that fact.

I tried to play surgeon today. I tried to open the thing up to see if I could poke around and find some obvious problem causing the symptom. But my screwdriver set proved unequal to the task. When I tried to turn the miniscule screws on the bottom of the player, they only damaged the heads of the screwdrivers.

And my wife tended to agree -- it wasn't worth it. The patient was dead.

Actually, I'm surprised it lasted this long. It survived some pretty good tumbles. Surprisingly, only once did it actually fall off a stairmaster at the gym -- a blow that broke some of the contacts on the battery, necessitating the purchase of a replacement battery off ebay. But even outside these several significant traumas, it just got generally banged around, a consequence of plenty of regular use. It paid for itself ages ago.

When I first bought it in July of 2005, it was with a little bit of trepidation. I'm rare to allow myself technological "luxuries" -- I didn't even own a DVD player of any kind until 2003 (although I was making use of a roommate's for awhile before that). I wondered if this made me a "high roller" of some sort, a person who damns the financial consequences of his actions. Maybe it was a $140 indulgence that should only be made by someone from the Sharper Image set.

But just consider how much use I got out of it -- and how many times it provided the crucial extra oomph I needed to get to the gym. One of the lists I keep is the order in which I've seen every movie I've seen, and the date I saw it, since I started keeping the list in March of 2002. And here we see the value of such a list: After review, I've determined that I watched all or part of approximately 144 movies on that DVD player, never mind the handful of TV shows and other pre-recorded material that crossed its heads. That's a gross of movies in 3 1/2 years, and less than $1 per movie.

Granted, I don't have a lot of fond memories of the movies I watched on that DVD player. In general, what I took to the gym were movies I either a) suspected of being bad, or b) knew I didn't need to watch on a good screen. And so it was that the absolute dregs of my to-view list were experienced there -- movies I'd requested to review because I knew I could say something funny about them. But killing two birds with one stone always made it worth it. And at times I was pleasantly surprised by a film I'd deemed worthy of no greater than a 3-by-5 inch screen, such as watching one of 2007's most underrated films, Alpha Dog, on a plane trip back from Boston.

The first movie I watched on there? Joel Schumacher's The Phantom of the Opera, whose first half was the player's inaugural run on July 16, 2005. (It probably also helped cement my notion that certain films have good enough art direction to demand a big screen, paving the way for a string of brainless comedies during workouts). The last movie watched? Appropriately enough, Gus Van Sant's Last Days, the deathly boring and tedious recap of the last few days of Kurt Cobain's life, though the main character was technically only based on Cobain. This viewing occurred on November 12 of last year -- hey, who gets to the gym during the holidays? -- so I guess the player could have technically died anytime within the last two months. (Though I'm secretly blaming its tight packing in my backpack over Christmas, where it may have been exposed to the goo inside a novelty Hulk head that broke in my bag.)

It's tempting to blame Last Days for killing my DVD player, as we blamed M. Night Shyamalan's The Village for killing our last TV. (I can definitely blame it in part for why I haven't returned to the gym since then.) But in reality, it's a lot more likely that Mr. Polaroid just died of old age, having lived a full life.

So what now? It's a good question. I mean, I can't just stop going to the gym. Needless to say -- and you are probably saying it to yourself right now -- I should probably take another good look at the video options presented by my ipod. But I don't want to go buying all these bad movies that I previously felt guilty even renting. I know the Apple store lets you rent movies these days, but I already went down that road about a year ago. I wanted to dip my toe into this possibility, but ended up finding that my rental of the execrable Flightplan could only be watched on my computer. Some kind of forced incompatibility of my ipod, despite its capacity to play videos. Boo to Apple.

I suppose I will probably just buy another one. Not only am I a hugely satisfied customer from my first experience -- I can't remember a $140 so well spent -- but I can probably get something even cheaper these days. (It's just a bummer in this economy to be forced to spend money on anything.) In fact, I can probably get something more compact and better designed as well.

Though it's certainly hard to fault the design prowess of the people at Polaroid. For 3 1/2 years, they provided me countless hours of (semi-)enjoyment.

Thanks, DVD player. I hope you've gone on to a better place, where after a lifetime of Little Man and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, you can relax with an eternity of cinema's classics.