Unregionable

When we bought our region-free BluRay player about a year ago upon arriving in Australia, we were told that it should work on all regionally incompatible DVDs and almost all BluRays -- even though it wouldn't officially work on any of them. See, the region-busting only officially works on DVDs.

"But 90% of the BluRays should work anyway," the guy told us. "They don't bother to encode them properly."

A year later, I'm proud to call us satisfied customers. In that year I have watched countless movies -- actually, I'll count them up in a moment -- on that BluRay player that originated in other regions (namely Region 1, the American region).

However, I did think it was worth stopping to point out our first failure.

It came in the form of Repo! The Genetic Opera, which my friend who gave it to me as a joke will be only too happy to learn.

I tried to watch Repo! on Saturday night, but was denied. At least it was a polite denial, though. Instead of just some generic ERROR ERROR ERROR or a blunt, no-frills message about the region mismatch, at least it gave a nice little message about the BluRay's incompatibility, written in a font from the movie's advertising materials and against a cityscape from the movie. I'd almost go as far as to say it was pleasant.

Instead I had to watch some little movie called Run Lola Run, which is my #12 movie of all time on Flickchart. Ho-hum.

But the denial gave me occasion to reflect on just how successful the purchase has been. When I packed all the movies I cared about into a Case Logic folder to transport them to Australia, it was with only a vague sense of how many of them would actually work. I knew about region-free DVD players and I knew you could get them in Australia (not something you could wrangle up in the U.S.), but I didn't know if they worked with BluRays and I also didn't know if they would be prohibitively expensive.

I can't remember what we paid for our BluRay player, but it wasn't at all unreasonable, and it's been worth every penny. Here is the list of foreign-region DVDs or BluRays I have played since we first bought that player:

Toy Story (BluRay)
A Prophet (BluRay)
Galaxy Quest (DVD)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (DVD)
Wonder Boys (DVD) (partial)
Tangled (BluRay)
Planet 51 (DVD)
Vanilla Sky (DVD)
Where the Wild Things Are (BluRay)
Donnie Darko (DVD) (partial)
Never Let Me Go (BluRay) (partial)
Kill Bill Vol 1. (DVD)
The Cable Guy (DVD)
Cube (DVD)

and finally

Run Lola Run (DVD)

So that tells me that not only has the purchase been worth it, but so has it been worth it to lug my movies over from the U.S. (But when it's something as near and dear to you as your movie collection, is it really properly described as "lugging?")

And though I do kind of now thirst for a viewing of Repo! even more, it'll give me something to look forward to when we (possibly) return to the U.S. in 2016.

That and Crystal Light. I really miss my Crystal Light. And Trader Joe's. And Altoids. And Lucky Charms.

Okay, I'll stop now.

Justifying my shitty taste

When blogger Mike Lippert of You Talking to Me? announced an interactive event on his blog this week called "Justify Your Shitty Taste," I knew I was in. One of my favorite things as a film lover is to defend movies I think people got wrong.

A film immediately jumped to mind: Repo! The Genetic Opera. Despite having some passionate cult fans, the film was generally lambasted, in part I'm sure because it features Paris Hilton. But my wife and I truly liked it -- a lot, actually -- and I thought it made a great candidate for Mike's project.

But then I decided I should really watch it again in preparation for writing the piece. As luck would have it, I own the movie on BluRay -- a friend gave it to me as what he thought was a joke. But the way my week's shaking out, I wouldn't have an opportunity to watch it until Saturday night, then write the post hurriedly on Sunday morning. Chances are Mike would like to be posting his results by then.

Then I remembered: I did a whole series on my blog last summer called Double Jeopardy, in which I re-watched films that I'd liked, but most other people didn't, to see if I still felt the same about them upon second viewing. I figured, Mike's probably not going to cry in his beer if the shitty tastes I choose to justify were first written on a previous occasion.

I had about ten movies to choose from in my series, but I chose Ivan Reitman's Fathers' Day because it was about the most universally reviled on the list. I figure, if I'm going to participate in Mike's project, I want to go all in.

So without any further blah blah blah, my first-ever re-post on The Audient. Enjoy. Or don't. It's up to you, really.

"It's no Ishtar"

I've never seen the infamous flop Ishtar, but I have a very specific memory of reading a review when it first came out, back in 1987. I was 13 years old and probably just getting into reading film reviews, so this one stuck with me, as such formative experiences often do. I can't remember if it was the Boston Globe critic or someone like Roger Ebert, but it was a two-star capsule review which read, and I may be paraphrasing slightly:

"One star for Dustin Hoffman. One star for Warren Beatty. No stars for anything else."

So when I heard Ivan Reitman's Fathers' Day, which came out a decade later, described as Robin Williams' and Billy Crystal's Ishtar, I was as wary as everyone else who steered clear on the basis of that dour prognosis.

But when I actually did see it, sometime in probably 2001 or 2002, in order to provide the review for the website that employs me, I thought it wasn't half bad. In fact, better than that. I thought it was good.

In the years since then, I've been operating on the assumption that I must have been crazy. Like Bedazzled, which I wrote about in my first Double Jeopardy post, I've owned this movie for over five years, but had yet to re-watch it until yesterday. And like Bedazzled, I didn't actively seek out this movie as part of my collection. In fact, I came into possession of it at a theme party at a friend's house. Her idea was that you brought over crap that you wanted to get rid of, put it on a table, and walked away with someone else's unwanted crap. I can't remember what I purged at this party, but I came home with Fathers' Day. I'd liked it, after all. But I haven't watched it again, and this was so long ago, now, that I'm not even friends with that woman anymore -- haven't been for three or four years.

Well, I'm not crazy. And now I think I probably ought to go watch Ishtar, because if it's anything like this, Ishtar is probably not half bad, either.

The plot basically revolves around a 16-year-old boy who goes missing for two weeks after running away from his heartbroken parents (Nastassja Kinski and Bruce Greenwood). Desperate, Kinski's character visits two of her former lovers, Jack Lawrence (Crystal) and Dale Putley (Williams), who both bedded the woman right around the time her son was conceived. Either could be the father, and she uses this possibility to separately enlist their help in finding young Scott. (In retrospect, it seems like a precursor to Mamma Mia!, as there's actually a third possibility for the boy's male parentage -- Greenwood, who has thought he was the actual father the boy's whole life, and is involved in his own separate search for the boy.) As might be expected, Jack and Dale cross paths and discover each has been told he's the father of the boy. Hijinx ensue.

It's the nature of those hijinx that probably left some viewers and critics displeased. Williams is skittish and eccentric, and when we meet him, he actually has a gun barrel in his mouth, ready to off himself -- in a scene that's played for laughs. Crystal is, well, Crystal -- he's businesslike and sarcastic. Both could do these roles in their sleep, I'm sure, and they're meant to be a zany odd couple.

Well, it works. I'm not a huge Williams fan, and Dale Putley is normally the kind of role in which I like him least. But for some reason, I found him lovable and actually sort of believable here. I like the dynamic that builds up between he and Crystal, whom I've always enjoyed on screen. (And why did he quit acting, anyway?) It's not just a buddy comedy-type situation -- it's almost a bickering lovers-type situation, since Jack so clearly wears the pants in the relationship, and Dale plays the sensitive role that's traditionally ascribed to a woman. As they say in the movie, they really do make a good team in seeking out the wayward boy, and their attempts to navigate the rock 'n roll underground (Scott is following the band Sugar Ray, before they became sellouts) contain some funny fish-out-of-water stuff. (And if you know Sugar Ray only from that song "Fly" that was ubiquitous back in the late 1990s, see this movie -- it reminds you that they were once inaccessible punks, musically speaking.)

And it shouldn't be a huge surprise to us that it works. After all, the film is directed by the reliable Ivan Reitman, he of Ghostbusters and Dave fame. And it was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who also wrote Splash, City Slickers, A League of Their Own and Parenthood. Throw in producer Joel Silver, and you've got a dream team working on this film.

So why didn't people like it? Eh, who knows. Dale and Jack are likable, Scott gets swept up in a relatable predicament with his feelings for a girl (even if it involves a sort-of unrelatable theft from drug dealers), and even the notably serious actor Bruce Greenwood moonlights successfully into comedy, notably a scene where he gets pushed down a hill in a port-o-potty. If that just sounds silly, listen to Greenwood's hilarious line readings while he's trapped inside the overturned john: "Oh, it's horrible! Get me out of here!" Playing against type in the other direction is Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Jack's wife -- she's probably the most straight-faced person in the whole movie, and apparently, it didn't go over well, as she was nominated for a Razzie as worst supporting actress.

A couple other things to look for: an uncredited cameo by Mel Gibson as a guy with a face full of piercings, and the director's son, Jason, a future director himself, as "wrong kid in alley."

Double Jeopardy Verdict, Fathers' Day: It's not going to revolutionize the comedy world, but this is a nice little movie that didn't deserve to be bashed like it was. Fans of Williams and Crystal in particular should give it a shot. These two comedy icons give the fans what they came for, and isn't that one of the primary reasons people make movies?

$3.99 DVD smackdown

Yesterday was my birthday, but on my lunch break, I found myself buying a card for someone else. It was a thank you card, and it was for my dad and his wife, who have been in town since Saturday meeting their grandson and step-grandson. They're leaving today.

The part of this story that's germane to movies is that the Walgreens where I was buying the card was having a sale on DVDs. A pretty good sale, I thought: $3.99 apiece.

Movies that make it into these sale bins are usually nothing you'd want to see. If you've even heard of the titles, they're things that are 15 to 20 years old, and were considered some of the biggest flops of those actors' or directors' careers. But not yesterday. Yesterday, there were some good pickins. In fact, so good, that when I decided to limit myself to just one, it was a tough choice. I was feeling celebratory enough to treat myself to a $3.99 movie on my birthday, but too fiscally conservative to treat myself to a second.

So, here were the contenders:

1) Shattered Glass (2003, Billy Ray)

For it: A fascinating study of the desperate measures a man will take while trying to cover his tracks. Shattered Glass is the true story of Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen, at his career best), a former wunderkind writer for The New Republic who blatantly fabricated some or all of the details of stories he wrote for the magazine. When rival journalists pick holes in one of his stories, he goes to great lengths to try to retroactively support the existence of sources, events, even entire companies that never existed. It's thrilling and extremely well done.

Against it: Just watched it again about six months ago. When I buy a DVD, I like for it to be something I haven't seen in awhile, so there's at least the possibility that I'll watch it soon after buying it, even if I probably won't.

2) Away from Her (2006, Sarah Polley)

For it: A wrenching and heartbreaking story of a woman (the excellent Julie Christie) whose life radically changes after the sudden onset of Alzheimer's. Not only are the performances great (Gordon Pinsent is also terrific as the husband who is no longer recognizable to his wife), but it's an extremely impressive and mature debut for its director, Polley, who was only 27 at the time of the film's release, and is known to us primarily as an actress (Go, Splice).

Against it: Too depressing. Movies with heavy subject matter fall into that category of films that I may really love, but may also not feel the need to own. I consider Schindler's List one of the greatest films of all time, but I don't really want to own it.

3) The Lives of Others (2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

For it: An exquisite and moving portrait of East Germany under the Stasi, the secret police who monitored artists and other liberal thinkers for signs of political dissidence, told through the eyes of one of the most fervent pro-government surveillance experts (played by the terrific Ulrich Muhe, rest in peace). The ways in which his own world view crumbles are fascinating as this Stasi captain becomes moved by the lives of a playwright and his girlfriend. But even more impressive is his own cat-and-mouse game to avoid being suspected of losing his resolve by his own superiors and former ideological comrades.

Against it: Both copies of the DVD were emblazoned with a sticker that read "Previously Enjoyed," even though it was shrink-wrapped and in all other respects looked new. Even if I'm buying DVDs cheaply, I sometimes think they seem tainted if they're used, although it's a good way not to waste a perfectly good DVD.

So who came out on top?

Winner: The Lives of Others

Even though I have similar levels of affection for all three films, I decided that The Lives of Others was the one I most felt I needed to own. I've seen it only once, which gives it an advantage over Shattered Glass, and even though it's sad in parts, that's not the dominant mode of the film, which gives it an advantage over Away from Her. And at least the DVD looked new, so I felt I could ignore its pre-owned status.

Now I just have to figure out when I'll get to carve out the two hours and 18 minutes needed to watch it again.

So which would you have picked?

The Lives of Others ended up being only the first of three movies I received on my birthday. Here are the other two:

1) Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter). I currently have this classic film ranked #2 on Flickchart, meaning that I should at least own a DVD copy of it already. I owned it on VHS, but never quite found myself in a situation to upgrade to DVD. So yesterday's gift skipped the DVD step and went straight to BluRay, making this the official third BluRay in our new collection.

2) Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008, Darren Lynn Bousman). And then this became our fourth. Even though the friend who sent me this one sent it as kind of a joke, because he hated it, I didn't receive it in that way -- I actually really liked this film (which he knew), and watched it twice when I first rented it two Januarys ago. That means it's just about time for a third viewing.

Unfortunately, I didn't get my other birthday wish as stated in yesterday's post, the Texas Rangers beating the New York Yankees. But that's for me to whine about on a sports blog, not a movie blog.

Repossessing ... your movie idea

Miguel Sapochnik's Repo Men, due out tomorrow, may remind many film fans of Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984), and rightly so, given that there's only a one-letter difference in their titles.

But to me it's a lot more closely a ripoff of a movie I was in the minority about loving two years ago: Darren Lynn Bousman's Repo! The Genetic Opera. Whereas Repo Men nearly shares a title with Repo Man, it actually does share subject matter with Repo! The Genetic Opera. Both films involve a future society in which people buy artificial organs on credit, and the repo men come to take these organs back -- quite violently and mercilessly -- if they can't make their payments.

I'm not saying Repo Men actually stole the idea from Repo!, but it certainly could have. You really have to look at the origins of both stories to decide what you think about that. According to wikipedia, Repo Men has actually been in the works since 2003, when screenwriters Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner began collaborating with the film's director on a script, based on a novel Garcia was writing, which was published last year. Since this was all a good five years before Bousman's Repo! hit theaters, that would seem to rule out the possibility of a copycat, wouldn't it? Except that Repo! existed as a rock opera many years before it came to life as a movie. Though I'm having a hard time finding the dates of its stage life on wikipedia, the site traces the origins of the idea all the way back to 1996, when Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich began pooling their ideas for a story that was originally called The Necromancer's Debt. Their eventual Repo! musical must have hit the stage sometime in the next couple years, because a seven-track album of songs from it was released in 2002 -- a year before Garcia "got his idea."

Or it could just be the reality that I struggle with when I think about the cinematic universe -- namely, that different people are very capable of coming up with the same idea. Whenever I briefly toy with the idea of writing a script, I always have a moment when I become paranoid that someone else has already made, and possibly produced, a similar story. And that I'd go to the trouble of spending many hours working on numerous drafts, only to later discover that a movie like this already exists, and they will surely accuse me of plagiarism. If only I'd known everything that was in existence, I could have seen it and saved myself the trouble. It's reasonable to assume that both Eric Garcia and Darren Smith could have come up with an idea for a story in which organs are repossessed, because really, that's not such a hard idea to come up with.

Whatever the truth of the matter is, I hope that the release of Repo Men shines some light on Repo! The Genetic Opera. Yeah, it's true, every reputable critic you've ever read thought it was a piece of garbage, and yeah, it's true, Paris Hilton was not only in it, but she won the Golden Raspberry for worst supporting actress. But who are you going to believe, them or me? :-)

Seriously, though, it's easy to identify Repo! as a potential future cult classic -- those who liked it, and there was a small but vocal minority who did, have already labeled it an "instant cult classic." If the idea of a gothic rock opera, set in a dystopian future in which plastic surgery has gotten way out of control, and a street version of the plastic surgery drug is extracted from rotting corpses, holds any interest for you, do me a favor and check out Repo! Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head is excellent in the lead, and Alexa Vega is similarly strong playing his daughter. I think the songs are great, and there's real emotion to the tragedy that unfolds in this twisted future world. And those who can't appreciate it on a literal level will almost certainly be able to view it ironically, since it intentionally embraces its own trashiness in ways as well.

At the very least, you'll probably consider Repo! an interesting failure. Whereas Repo Men just looks like it will be a boring failure.