"Anything Day" Movie Marathon

Run out of things to do around your house with your kids/yourself that have any semblance of structure?

Well, have you tried nothing? Or, should I say, anything?

Easter Saturday was a day like that for us.

I wanted to call it Do Whatever You Want Day, but my wife, who came up with the idea, insisted on the branding Anything Day. (To be fair, though, I would have come up with the idea myself had I not thought there was a 100% chance she would reject it.)

And on Anything Day, what you did was this: whatever you want.

That went for both the fortysomething adults and the, um, first-decade-of-their-lives-something kids.

No one could tell you to get off your device. No one could tell you to get out of your pajamas. You could raid the pantry, within reason, especially if no one say you doing it, which they weren't likely to do.

The only rules were that you had to eat meals, brush your teeth at the end of the day and go to bed at close to the time you usually did. And that you could not compel anyone else to do anything they did not want to do (we'll see how well that worked out in a minute). Oh, you could ask someone if they wanted to do something, like play a game. But the other person could just say no.

It was a masterstroke, I think, and now that it's happened once, I daresay it'll be likely to happen again sometime during the indefinite duration of this quarantine.

I, of course, chose a movie marathon.

The way it ended up working out was that we basically each resided primarily in one room. Going from the front of our house back, my wife was mostly in our bedroom, my older son was mostly in the kids' room with his various devices, my younger son was mostly in our living room with our TV, and I was mostly in the garage with my movie marathon, as I will explain in more detail in just a moment. The kitchen/dining room was neutral territory for all intents and purposes.

Now, I had three main guiding principles to my marathon, none of which worked out quite the way I'd hoped.

1) The movies would all be kid-friendly in nature, so people could pop in and not be shocked by a beheading, an outrageous sex act or an ill-timed f-bomb.

2) The kids would be expected to watch something with me at some point, if not through actual compulsion than through suggestion, and because #3 would make it so much fun.

3) The movies would be watched on our projector.

Now, if you remember from my birthday trips to the hotel for my hotel movie marathons, I use this projector to project on the wall at the hotel. But it's a cheap projector. It cost me less than $80 on Gumtree, the Australian equivalent of Craigslist, and I knew it would really only serve the purpose of the unique scenario for which I was buying it, and possibly rarely a scenario like the one that arose yesterday.

The image quality is not particularly good, as I think this projector was designed for stationary content at a meeting, and maybe only a meeting at a company that was just barely scraping buy. In truth, I don't really know who is the market for a cheap projector like this. Me, I guess.

But the mere idea of watching something projected on a wall (or in this case, a sheet affixed by thumbtacks to our garage door) sort of gives the act an air of festivity, and that's what I was hoping to create yesterday.

Again, we'll see how well that worked out, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

And just so this post is not too gargantuan in length, maybe I should get to the actual films in my Anything Day Marathon right now.

How much blackface is too much blackface?

I got everything all set up, including my coffee and toast, by about 8:30, missing my 8 a.m. scheduled start time due to sleeping later than I usually do. (Which, in itself, was a good start to Anything Day.)

First up was something decidedly inoffensive as a start to the day -- or so I thought.

The Astaire-Rogers musical/dance-fest Swing Time has gotten a lot of love on Filmspotting, most recently on an episode in which they gave us a top five movies of the 1930s as a "starter pack" on watching movies from that decade. I'd been feeling a distinct lack of classic Hollywood on my viewing schedule lately, so when I struck out on a couple other things I looked up first, I landed on Swing Time, rented from iTunes.

It was inoffensive in that it did not include a beheading, an outrageous sex act or an ill-timed f-bomb. But that's to say nothing about the offense caused by an unexpected blackface scene.

I say "unexpected" not because you ever expect a blackface scene, but there are some pretty famous ones, like the one in The Jazz Singer. In that case, I was expecting it. I wasn't here because it hadn't come up at all in the Filmspotting discussion of Swing Time, nor in any other I had casually heard over the years.

But yes indeed, about two-thirds of the way through, there's a dance number called "Bojangles of Harlem" in which Astaire appears in blackface as a "tribute" to dancer Bill Robinson. And because it's a loving "tribute" and there's no racism implied (though that doesn't mean there wasn't any received), I expect it escapes mention in discussions of infamous blackface scenes. And in truth, it did not offend me particularly either. The greater offense probably had to do with its non-existent story function, which is a problem I have with musicals from that era, that they go off on these long performance-related tangents that don't have anything to do with the story, and come late enough in the story that they delay a conclusion you are already beginning to anticipate.

Still, it was weird to see, and I suspect it helped knock this classic down a notch for me.

Even setting aside "Bojangles of Harlem" entirely, I found the movie a bit scattershot. And even as charming and talented as Astaire and Rogers are, and as breathtaking as their moves are, those factors alone did not elevate the movie to classic status for me. I ended up at 3.5 stars on Letterboxd.

I got a preview of the rest of my day when my six-year-old came out to plop down with me for about ten minutes of the movie, eager for his own part in the experience to start. "Could it be more ... clear?" he asked, referring to the image. I could tell then that the projector might not be sustainable.

The movie I actually rented for $19.99

I told you a couple days ago first that I was shocked to see the movie Never Rarely Sometimes Always available for rent for iTunes for $19.99, and then that I was considering the rental as a way of supporting the film industry on the whole.

Never did I imagine that if I did take the $19.99 rental plunge, it would be for the sequel to the Trolls movie, which I didn't even see.

But that's what happened when my six-year-old came across my computer open to the iTunes store on Friday night, where he saw Trolls World Tour listed under the New & Noteworthy category. "Why are you looking up Trolls?" he asked. I wasn't, of course, but he doesn't understand how things like iTunes work.

I thought my denial in that moment had put the subject to rest, but during his ten-minute cameo in Swing Time, my son said "You know, I might actually be interested in Trolls." I saw where this was going.

The reason I wanted to start the marathon at 8 was that it gave me a shot at watching two movies that I wanted to watch before I had to throw my kids a bone. But the way it worked out, at noon, I was only starting my second movie, not my third. That was due in part to an hour-long trip out of the house that included two separate trips to the grocery store. I won't get into it, but that certainly didn't feel very Anything Day to me.

Nor did watching Trolls World Tour, but that's what happened at 12 o'clock for the next 90 minutes.

At least I'll say this for my six-year-old -- he was willing to go with me on the projector idea. He didn't even mention that the image quality was inferior, at least at the start, and made all the right comments and rejoinders that served as de facto proof that there was nothing insufficient about our viewing experience. Good kid. We cuddled together on our beanbags and watched.

About 30 minutes in, though, he ventured that maybe it was time to try our old TV, which I'd brought out to the garage as a back-up.

At first I reacted with a heavy sigh, but I knew he was right. The projector was just not good enough for an animated movie, especially not one we'd paid an arm and a leg to rent.

So without striking the projector setup, we did a kind of 90 degree rotation to the right to watch the TV, and my was the difference significant. I realized I had had only a vague idea what this Trolls world really looked like, and that there were details in the set and the characters that contributed to both the humor and meaning of the movie. Secretly, I was relieved by the death of my projector dream -- a death so definitive, in fact, that I didn't get back to it even when I was solo again.

Trolls World Tour started to improve for me after we made the switch. Before that, I was thinking it might not be much better than the animated sequel I saw last year without first seeing the original, The Angry Birds Movie 2, which ended up near the bottom of my year-end rankings. But once I was able to appreciate more of the nuance -- a funny statement for a Trolls movie -- I was able to enjoy the movie pretty well. Not enough to reach the minimum three stars for a recommendation, but close enough at 2.5.

My first Dance in three decades

At just after 2 I was on my own again, and after a short nap in the beanbag pile, I started on a very different type of movie indeed.

I didn't see Dances With Wolves in the theater, though having just turned 17 when it came out, I might have. But I was suspicious of it for some reason, which means I was annoyed to see it clean up at the Oscars the following March, especially when it was up against contenders I adored, like Goodfellas and Ghost. Then I rented it soon after it was released on video, and found myself completely swept up in its scope and emotion.

That one viewing has been enough for me to consistently keep the movie near my top 100 on Flickchart over the years. (It currently sits at #102.) But its massive 181-minute girth has prevented me from ever confirming that high opinion.

Simply put, I needed an Anything Day to correct that.

So from a little after 2 to a little after 5 I did indeed soak in the beautiful cinematography of the Nebraska prairie without watching it late at night and falling asleep. I considered for a moment switching back to the projector, but that would have diminished that beautiful landscape. Plus there was the little issue of the subtitles, which are notoriously hard to read on this projector.

In short, I was pretty much as engaged as I was the first time, though probably inevitably not as moved. I remembered quite well the moment that really got me the first time, when Wind in His Hair shouts down from an elevated perch to the valley below, where Costner's title character is departing at the end. He proclaims their eternal friendship. As this was the Lakota who had most doubted the befriending of John Dunbar at the beginning, it felt like a moving testament to how much Dunbar had become a member of the Lakota family. And though the tear ducts didn't flood like they had the first time, there were damp eyes this time too.

As I was watching Dances With Wolves, I felt conscious of how its white savior narrative might play 30 years later. Fortunately, watching helped convince me that it may not actually be a white savior narrative. Sure, Costner's film pats Dunbar on the back for being an enlightened humanist who was more eager to befriend the Lakota than slaughter them, and he does indeed provide some valuable services to them. But I think in the end, they probably save him more than he saves them.

My older son provided a bit of a distraction during this movie, as he came out once saying "I want to book my movie!," having had enough Fortnite (if that's possible) by then. He was brushed off pretty easily the first time, but on the second one, I knew I'd have to act. Having given him the task of deciding on a movie he wanted, he came up with Scoob!, the new Scooby Doo reboot that as far as I know hadn't been released yet, and sounded like a (gulp!) second $19.99 rental.

When I found (to my relief) that it has, indeed, had a coronavirus-postponed release, he didn't have any other ideas, and was starting to look more glum. He had initially told me he might want to watch two movies with me, and that was now looking seriously in doubt, especially if he didn't have any idea what even the first one would be. (That said, he did reject participating in Trolls, and that was on him.) Fortunately, I decided it was time to switch away from iTunes rentals and actually landed on something that would work for both the kids.

Subtitles on, subtitles off

The original Karate Kid was a beloved childhood classic for me, and I was only a year older than my nine-year-old is now when it hit theaters in 1984. So seeing the 2010 remake, starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, available on Netflix, it gave me the idea that the new one might work for him like the original did for me -- but would probably not do for him, just because it would seem "old." Plus, I thought the six-year-old -- who had started to stagnate in the living room, the only one still in his pajamas -- could probably watch as well.

I had a couple backups -- Next Gen or a Studio Ghibli movie -- but I was relieved to see that my son accepted The Karate Kid. I was a bit bummed, not to mention surprised, that it was two hours and twenty minutes long, but my wife had agreed to make us a macaroni and cheese dinner to supplement our microwave popcorn, so as long as the movie ended sometime in the vicinity of their bedtime, it would work.

And you know what? This is a pretty charming remake. Three-point-five stars.

The 140 minutes passed faster than I thought they would, and I could not even identify any parts that clearly seemed like fat. The action is updated well while keeping the same core narrative details. For example, instead of "wax on, wax off," young Dre learns defensive movies by repeatedly hanging his jacket on a hook. My kids thought Jackie Chan's Mr. Miyagi -- er, Mr. Han -- was crazy, but the reveal of the method to his madness worked for them just as it did for Dre. (Incidentally, the title Karate Kid is kept for brand awareness reasons only; as the movie is set in China, it's really kung fu that he's learning. I felt it was an acceptable sacrifice, and probably necessary in a cinematic environment that was already turning its eyes toward China a decade ago.)

The 140 minutes didn't prove a challenge for my kids either, who both stuck with it. The younger one threatened to fade at one point, but I think this was more an act of rebellion about having to eat his dinner than any loss of interest in the movie.

One minor annoyance, though, was that the movie didn't have an effective default subtitle setting. There is not a lot of Chinese spoken in this movie, but there's enough that you feel like you're missing something if you don't have the subtitles on. Sometimes the context is enough, but there was a scene about halfway through where Chan and the evil sensei (not really a sensei) have a conversation of a minute or so where you just don't know what they're saying.

So we turned the subtitles on for that, but we quickly realized that with the subtitles on, that meant that everything would be subtitled -- even the English. I thought this could actually help the one of the two of my kids who could read the subtitles, since I don't suspect he understood everything Chan was saying, even when he was speaking English. But he quickly became annoyed by it, so we had to turn them off again, only to turn them back on again twice more during the rest of the movie to understand certain scenes better. So instead of wax on, wax off, it was subtitles on, subtitles off.

He got annoyed when I wanted to read the subtitles to my younger son, so he too would understand what was going on, but we got through it.

By the end, the kids were so pumped up that the nine-year-old was throwing actual punches in our hallway while getting ready for bed. A couple landed on my leg, and one hit my six-year-old in the solar plexus, prompting tears.

No good idea/deed goes unpunished I guess.

Subtitles off

The final movie of the night was supposed to be Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch, which I bought some four years ago when trying to prevent a local used video store from going out of business. Now that the kids were packed away for the night, I could relax my earlier content standards.

But here we had a subtitle problem again.

I don't know if you've seen Night Watch, or if you did, whether you saw the version of this vampire movie that I did. But in the version I saw -- twice, in fact, within a couple years of its release -- the subtitles themselves were these great pictorial interpretations of the movie's themes. Like, the English words might drip blood or get blown off the screen. I daresay it was a significant factor in my enjoyment of the film.

This DVD did not have that.

In fact, the language settings were all screwed up. First of all the languages themselves. There were two languages, both of which were English, except both of which were actually Russian. There was no dubbing, as I'd feared when the opening narration was in English, but both language options seemed to be exactly the same, with English narration and Russian dialogue.

This would have been fine except for the subtitles. Again, there were two subtitle options, one of which simply contained no subtitles at all, even though it said it was supposed to have them. The other subtitle option? Just plain text written out on the screen. The stylized subtitles have not been preserved on this DVD, and maybe have just vanished into history.

So instead I watched Event Horizon.

This was a random choice from perusing Netflix. I'd remembered really disliking it, but had also questioned that dislike over the years, as I know this movie disturbs some people. So I decided to give it another shot to disturb me.

It did, a little bit, in that it gave me chills a couple times. I do think there are parts of the execution that are just too broad by half, which I think is what I latched onto when I first saw it back in 2007 and gave it, I was surprised to see, only 1.5 stars. (Though I should say this was a retroactive star rating given in 2012 or 2013, when I added all my previous viewings to Letterboxd.)

Although there's some indelible imagery in this movie and some cool ideas, I guess I don't respond that much to space horror in which the images people see are of things from their own past/memory. Though my own thoughts on that are inconsistent, as this is what happens in Tarkovsky's Solaris, which I love.

Anyway, Event Horizon is better than I remembered, and that was good enough to end the night.

Some funny coincidences

Any time I do a marathon I like to note some funny coincidences between the movies, and there were some here too. So, to finish off this post, here they are.

1) The first two movies both feature a character named Penny.

2) Dances With Wolves and The Karate Kid both feature people trying to learn each others' languages.

3) Karate Kid and Trolls World Tour both have characters who do a "pinky swear."

4) Subtitles were a consideration in the way I watched, or whether I watched, three of the candidates for this marathon.

5) Kevin Costner is the director and star of Dances With Wolves. He also appeared in the movie Swing Vote, which is, along with Swing Time, one of only three movies I've seen that start with the word Swing. (Okay, that's pretty flimsy.)

6) Both Event Horizon and Swing Time feature characters who gouge out their own eyes after travelling to another dimension.

Okay, I think that's about enough for today.