You can imagine my surprise when I opened my New Releases email from Redbox this week and saw Zero Dark Thirty at the top of the list.
Is this the same Zero Dark Thirty that didn't even get a wide release until 2013?
Yes indeed. In fact, its wide release was January 11th. Its DVD/BluRay release was March 19th.
That's two months and eight days.
My my. Or, Maya Maya.
I remember first registering my shock three years ago over the quick release of another best picture nominee, Up in the Air. That release at least took 76 days.
ZDT got to home video in only 67 days. I said two months and eight days, but one of those months is the shortest of the year.
I suppose what made it extra shocking is that Redbox usually has to wait an additional 28 days before new releases are available. Not in this case, apparently.
On the one hand, I should not be so shocked. Once the Oscars have passed, people kind of forget about the previous year's movies, so teasing out their release dates has little to no value. Plus, we're also living in a time when many movies, even ones with prominent actors or directors, premiere on VOD on the same day as their theatrical release. Sometimes even before their release.
But 67 days for a best picture nominee and one of the most critically acclaimed films of last year? I still needed to register my shock, even if it's not all that shocking.
Of course, I saw it on video back on December 30th, via a screener borrowed from a friend.
That's big screen to small screen in -13 days, which would definitely be a record.
The most sustained period of dread I've ever experienced in a movie theater was back in the mid-1980s, when I saw Poltergeist during what must have been a re-release. (I was young, but there was no way I was only eight, when the film had its first run in 1982.)
What I remember was of course fear, but more than that was the feeling that I couldn't escape from it -- that it surrounded me. It was not only the current fear, and the fear I'd already had, but the sense of the fear I still had waiting for me. I remember feeling a distinct sense of relief during the sequence in the middle of the night, when nothing is terrorizing the living hell out of the family and they just sit there, bonding in hushed whispers. I knew for at least five or ten minutes, I could relax.
The PG-13 rating did not yet exist when Poltergeist came out, but I really wish it had been there to save me. I was too young to see Poltergeist, even if I now consider it the top horror experience of my long and distinguished career.
Just as today, I think the R rating should have saved some 13-year-olds who weren't much dissuaded by Mama's measly PG-13.
Simply put, this is a scary fucking movie. At times, anyway.
But movies are not rated based on how likely they are to scare you. Movies get an R because of explicit sex, violence or language. (Which means that this post has already done enough to earn an R.) Mama has none of these things, but it can still scare the living shit out of a person.
A person over 17, methinks.
It makes me wonder whether the MPAA follows the letter of its own laws, but not the spirit.
If the point of a rating is to prevent children from being traumatized by things they shouldn't see, then the MPAA needs to give itself the leeway to be more flexible. I didn't think you'd ever see me advocating more stodginess on the part of the MPAA, but here I am.
The MPAA needs to have a sort-of sniff test about what should get an R. Yeah, I know they've got generic descriptors like "intense images" and "graphic images" and "adult content," but do they use them? It would seem like Mama would have been a perfect chance to do so.
You probably want to know at this point why I think Mama is so scary. Why don't I let the short film that Andy (Andres) Muschietti wrote and directed, before expanding it into a feature, speak for itself:
Were you a little chilled by that? Were you a lot chilled by that? Do you think at age 13 you'd want to watch that?
Now imagine a whole movie of that. And imagine feral children who scamper across the ground like spiders.
I suppose that Mama is not nearly the only example of a disturbing horror movie that got the lenient PG-13 rating, which provides almost no obstacle to maximum potential box office grosses, but it's the first movie I've seen that I remember causing me to wonder whether it wouldn't be just too much to handle for the average 13-year-old. And don't forget that those younger than 13 are almost certain to see it. The PG-13 rating is as much a guideline as anything, and I'm sure 10-year-olds are finding their way into this movie.
Let me pause in my prudish stance to assure you of something: I am not in the least critical of Mama itself. In fact, Mama scared me like I haven't been scared in the theater in some time. Even if the film weren't exceptionally crafted and acted, that alone would prompt me to give it a full recommendation.
I just wonder if the nearly 40-year-olds of 2040 won't be wondering whether they should have seen Mama when they did.
Then again, if they loved it as much as I (ultimately) loved Poltergeist, maybe that won't be a bad thing.
Up and running
Mama is the first movie I've seen released in 2013, which means I've just finished creating my two new Microsoft Word documents devoted to the films I see in 2013.
Always a fun moment. Glad to be back on the horse after putting 2012 to bed.
The Chastain Wing
Upon coming out of the theater where I saw Mama last night, I noticed that the only other movie playing in that wing of the theater was Zero Dark Thirty.
Making that the Jessica Chastain Wing of the theater.
And this wing shows you just how much this woman can really do. If you popped back and forth between these two theaters, you'd get the same terrific cheekbones and the same determined chin. But the Chastains you'd see would be entirely different.
In Zero Dark Thirty, you get Maya, an intensely focused CIA officer who is hellbent on finding the world's most wanted terrorist. She's headstrong and she plays with the big boys, but there's something hesitant about her, a softness at her core that leaves her not-so-secretly squeamish at what she and her government have to do to find Osama bin Laden. She's the consummate professional and she dresses the part, her fiery red hair acting as the sole sartorial hint of her rebelliousness.
In Mama, you get Annabel, a tattoed rock chick whose dark brown hair is cropped short with bangs at the front. She plays guitar in a hard rock band that might dabble in metal, though she wears Ramones t-shirts, tipping off her punk influences. She's tough and unsentimental, yet she demonstrates the same seriousness of purpose as Maya -- she won't abandon her boyfriend (boyfriend only!) when he decides to adopt his two nieces, who have spent the last five years living in a cabin in the woods.
Damn, can Chastain act.
Don't read this section if you haven't yet seen Mama
But then come back and read it once you've seen the movie. Don't forget!
It's a pretty common tactic to end a horror or thriller with the wounded survivors huddled together and finally safe, having survived their ordeal, knowing on some level that what lies ahead of them will be comparatively smooth sailing.
Not in Mama.
Oh yeah, the movie ends that way. But the future sailing hardly seems likely to be smooth.
For starters, you've got the minor detail that one of the two sisters dies. Although it's not spelled out in so many words, that's what the ending implies, and you have no good reason not to believe it. So, there's that.
But then what about the other dead bodies?
The therapist who had focused his entire career on the two feral girls has been killed, and so has their aunt, who actually fought their uncle (a brother, not an ex-husband) for their custody. How are you going to explain that to the cops, since there isn't a shred of evidence of the corporeal spirit who actually did the killings?
Add to that the fact that their uncle, who survives the ordeal, is the brother of a man who was wanted for murdering three people five years earlier, and was widely considered to have had a mental breakdown. This guy and his punk rock girlfriend are still going to be able to keep the surviving girl, even though the events that transpired (including the death of one of the girls) would have only confirmed the general suspicion that a judge was wrong to leave the kids in these people's hands in the first place?
So yeah, good luck with rest of your lives, folks.
Here we are, the last day of 2012. And my viewing last night was a fortuitous one, because the title allowed me not one, but two year-end related puns for the title of this post. Don't tell me you aren't impressed.
But if you're looking for my thoughts on this movie, you won't be impressed with this particular post.
Huh, Vance? I want to know if you liked Zero Dark Thirty -- okay, let's be honest, not if you liked it, but how much.After all, you wrote lengthy posts with numerous subheadings for two other recent anticipated holiday releases, The Hobbit and The Impossible. Why not this one?
Well, I'll tell you -- I'm in cone of silence mode. Especially with movies that have the potential to be near the top of my year-end list, which is just 11 days away from being unveiled to the world.
In the past, it's been my tradition to stop sharing my thoughts on movies as the calendar rolls around to the next year. Whether you think of it this way or not, I tend to think of it as a very climactic day on the schedule when I publish my final rankings of that year's films, all the way from the best I saw to the worst. I don't want you to read that list for the first time and say "Ho hum, there's the predictable #1 that I knew Vance would choose."
Actually, this year I've been a bit more forthcoming in telling you about movies I love and hate than in previous years. And that probably corresponds to my telling you what I think of the movies I see more than I used to, in general. Talking about the success or failure of movies only makes sense on a film blog, except that in my case, this blog has never been about reviews. It's more about observations and trends, and only about the quality of the films when I'm specifically inspired to give a film love or hate.
The difference as I look back on 2012 is that this is the first year since 2004 when I didn't get paid for a single film review. I was a working critic from 2000 to 2003, and then again from 2005 until last year. Last November I wrote my final review for All Movie Guide. I guess I shouldn't say it's definitely the last one, because I thought I'd written my last review for them in 2003 before they re-upped for another six years of my writing in early 2005. But starting up with them again seems less likely this time. The big difference between 2005 and now? Anyone in the world who wants to write about film can do so, and have their thoughts broadcast to as many eyeballs as they can hustle to their blog. Consequently, there's no longer a premium on paying someone to provide that kind of content.
You'd think that no longer getting paid to write film reviews would have left me depressed, but 2012 didn't have that kind of a feel for me. Instead, I found that the creative juices I used to expend on reviews have found their way to my blog. I've been possessed by that intangible mystery known as inspiration, and it's made me a lot more prolific. In fact, I'm just finishing a month in which I only failed to post on two different days: Christmas Day, for obvious reasons, and yesterday, because at long last I wasn't so inspired to write that I simply had to. Frankly, I probably needed the rest. But going back into November, that means I updated my blog every day for 26 straight days. That's an unprecedented streak on this blog, likely doubling my longest previous streak.
So that has me feeling quite hopeful for 2013. Ah, but hope is not enough. And remember, this is the time of year for New Year's resolutions, isn't it?
I'm sure there are plenty of other things I'd like to accomplish in my life in 2013, but since this is a film blog, let's concentrate on five film-related resolutions. And try to ignore the fact that resolutions are known for how rarely they are actually accomplished.
1) Promote The Audient more. Don't be content with the current group of loyal readers I have, but try to find more of those aforementioned eyeballs. I do almost nothing to advertise new posts, and am doing the bare minimum in terms of reciprocity with other film blogs. I can do better on both of these things in 2013. You can consider 1a to be "read more of other good film blogs," rather than just the half-dozen staples I've had for several years now.
2) Write for other film blogs. Nathan at Flickchart is particularly interested in me writing regularly again for the Flickchart blog. Not that you could ever describe my previous contributions as "regular," but they became highly irregular in 2012, when I posted only a single time. And that blog definitely has more readers than I do, so I'll get the eyeballs there even if I don't get them on The Audient.
3) Write for other (non-blog) websites. A woman contacted me last summer to try to get me to write for a site called The Artifice, which is more of an entertainment news site than an actual blog. She can't pay me, but there could be swag in it for me, as well as additional exposure and possibly money down the road. It's a nice-looking site. I shouldn't have kept her waiting for an answer for this long.
4) Write that script. Yes, really. A couple weeks ago I got a terrific idea for a script that I know I can write, and unlike with most ideas I get, I already know the complete structure as well as how it ends. To be clear, I don't have an actual ambition to be a screenwriter. However, I do know that screenwriting is probably the only type of "hit the jackpot" writing I might possibly do, my only way to make significant money if I do it correctly. As for this idea, I'm not going to share it with you right now, and probably not for quite awhile.
5) Get paid to write about movies again. It's possible. I know it is. I just have to figure out how.
Here's hoping you have a great New Year's Eve, and beyond that, a productive 2013, in which you don't blow off your resolutions either.
And if tonight's countdown to midnight isn't exciting enough, the countdown to hear what I think of ZDT is T-minus 11.
