Those darn ellipses

It's the day before the Oscars (two days, but I live in Australia) and I still haven't written much, or maybe anything, related to the upcoming telecast. Today is not going to change that. What can I say, I'll try to crap out some thoughts on them tomorrow.

I can, however, at least talk about one of the nominated films, however superficially. And it's something I've been meaning to get off my chest for some time.

It's this: I hate the stupid ellipses.

I usually try to honor a movie's chosen way of presenting its own title, even finally coming around on Se7en as the preferred way to spell the David Fincher film (as discussed in this post). But for some reason I just haven't been able to adopt the way Quentin Tarantino wants me to write the name of his latest, which also stars Brad Pitt.

I think he wants us to write Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood, because that's how it appears in the movie, but I just can't. The ellipses have got to go.

I say "I think" because the jury is out on the matter, as embodied in the contradictory image above.

Look closely, and you'll see two distinct ways of writing this title, smashed right up next to each other. It's from the iTunes rental page, if you can't tell.

The text has the "right" way, the way I've written above. The poster, though, puts the ellipses one word later: Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood.

Now, I don't know if that's an authorized poster or just some mock-up the guys at Apple threw together without running it by the copy editor. But you'd think that if anything, the poster would get it "right" and the accompanying text would contain the error.

I don't like either of those titles, but the former is definitely preferable. The ellipses have the effect of preparing you for a surprise, something ironic, something unexpected. They also separate the familiar phrase ("Once Upon a Time") from the "punchline" ("in Hollywood.") The latter works well enough in the surprise department, but no better than the former, and the former is the only one that meets the standard of separating the familiar phrase from the punchline. The familiar phrase is not "Once Upon a Time in." So yeah, it's probably just a fuckup by the guys at Apple.

But wouldn't Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just be a lot easier?

IMDB thinks so. I'm glad I can rely on it to be a successful arbiter in this case. It lists Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as the title and Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood only as an "original tile."

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood does a third thing that I think this film is definitely trying to do: It reminds you of a couple of cinematic greats directed by Sergio Leone. That's no coincidence, as the very text of the film grapples with one man's decision to start doing spaghetti westerns. The title should then be faithful to Leone's best spaghetti western (Once Upon a Time in the West) and also to his gangster masterpiece (Once Upon a Time in America). A couple other films have already paid homage to these films, those being Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, and certainly others that I haven't seen or aren't thinking of right now.

And none of those films has a damn ellipses.

Now, I am not opposed to ellipses in titles as a general rule. I somewhat reluctantly will include the ellipses in Say Anything ... or When Harry Met Sally ..., both films that are in my top 50 of all time. I'm not even necessarily opposed to ellipses in the middle of the title, and there's even one film I've seen whose title starts with "Once Upon a Time" and has ellipses in the middle. That's Once Upon a Time ... When We Were Colored. Something tells me, though, that Tarantino is not paying homage to that particular film.

Trying to dissect what I don't like about Tarantino's usage, I'm landing on the fact that it's patting itself on the back for being clever. "Get it? It's a story about a place where they make stories! What could be more meta?" Look man, I don't care. I don't get to the end of that title and feel like congratulating you on how brilliant you are. Just can the ellipses and get on with the show.

And it's a good show, I've decided after my second viewing back in November. It's only the seventh best nominee for best picture in an unusually good year for the Academy with regards to honoring the year's best films, but it's a lot better than the two stars I gave it on first viewing. Pitt should pick up an Oscar for his efforts and there's an outside chance Tarantino will too for his writing, though Parasite oughtta win that category.

But it would be every so slightly better without those superfluous three dots.

Where'd you go, Vance?

Two weeks could be the longest hiatus I've ever taken from this blog, though I'd have to go back and check on that. It's certainly the longest unexplained hiatus; I think there was a Christmas trip to the U.S. a couple years back that might have left you without a new post for longer than that, but at least I told you about it in advance. (I chuckle a little saying "left you without a post," as if I take any more than marginal measures to ensure my ramblings are for you, the reader, rather than just myself.)

I didn't die, you'll be glad to know.

I didn't go to Antarctica either, like the title character in the poster above (that's not a spoiler as they show it in the first few minutes of the movie, which was one of 15 I saw while I was gone, mostly on various flights). But as with that other long hiatus referenced above, I did go to the U.S., somewhat unexpectedly. I won't get into why. Just know that it was a family issue, but that everybody's okay. Something inevitable has arrived faster than we were expecting it to, but even within that context, everyone is okay, and better yet, happy.

I left the morning after my last post, which was exactly two weeks ago, and arrived back on Thursday, jet-lagged after three consecutive flights over a 24-hour period. I'm still fighting the jet lag, though last night's sleep was mostly a normal one.

I actually thought I might keep this blog updated while I was gone, as I began composing a post based on movies I watched on my first flight, in Microsoft Word on the plane since I had no internet access. If I'd finished that post, I suppose I would have posted it and possibly written others. But once I hit the ground, I had a lot to do, and typing up my free associations about movies did not seem like the most urgent use of my time. Plus, I didn't actually tell anyone on social media I was going on this trip, since it made sense to use all my available time for the purpose of my trip rather than seeing friends. Posting to my blog would have defeated that purpose, or at least given me excess guilt.

Instead of landing back here with a regular post, though, I figured I would give you a little grab bag of some of those thoughts I had while I was gone, in little chapter subheadings. I'll get back into the flow of regular writing over the coming week.

So without any further you know what ...

Having the time to take the time

On my August trip to Los Angeles, I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, cramming it into a busy schedule and starting it too late at night to fully appreciate it. After that viewing I placed myself squarely in the "I do not like Tarantino's latest" camp, defending that stance with scattered thoughts about there being a lack of "Tarantino scenes" (clever set pieces with surprising payoffs) and about the film ending with an explosion of violence that could be interpreted as misogynistic.

But I suspected I hadn't really given the movie its best chance to succeed, and over time, these arguments lost some of their vigor. Seeing the movie among my first flight's options, I decided I'd spend the proper time with it this time. Not only did I like it much better, I understood the connections between certain scenes that had evaded me when I watched it too late that one night. Just as one example, the scene with Brad Pitt's character and Bruce Lee was an extended flashback, something I hadn't properly understood when I first saw it, which therefore threw off my understanding of the continuity of the scenes. As I said, I was too tired to watch this movie back in August.

I could probably go into detail, but as this post is a collection of multiple thoughts, I'll just report that I doubled my original two-star rating to four. And am looking forward to my eventual third viewing.

Los Angeles plays itself

I didn't actually start the flight with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but rather, an episode of the Bill Hader-led HBO show Barry, which is also set in, and establishes a satirical perspective toward, Los Angeles. But it wasn't until my second movie, Stuber, was also set in LA -- and also tried to poke fun at the city's most risible traits -- that I realized I had a theme going. (I say "tried" because Stuber was awful, hands down the worst of the 15 I saw while I was gone.)

So to keep it going, I continued buttressing my various viewings with episodes of Barry (which had been my plan anyway) and made a hopeful choice of a third film on the docket, Yesterday. That's Danny Boyle's latest about a young musician who awakens from a head trauma in a world without the Beatles, and becomes famous by "writing" their songs into existence. (I never expected to be watching this movie on the plane, by the way; I missed it in the theater due to a busy viewing schedule at that time, but also because I thought it would be a good candidate to watch on video with my wife. When she turned her nose up at the suggestion a couple weeks back, I knew I was in the clear to watch it on my own.)

Sure enough, the largely British-set film does contain scenes in Los Angeles, and what's more, includes quite the parody of a Los Angeles type, in this case a record label executive played by Kate McKinnon, who lives in a fantastic beach house.

As I specifically allowed this flight to breathe -- doing some reading and other activities as well -- I didn't cram in a fourth viewing, so the entire flight consisted of LA-themed viewings. Which I thought was fun, even though this was my first trip to the U.S. where I didn't so much as leave the airport in Los Angeles on my way to the east coast.

A good get, gotten easily

Even though this trip was all business, I have to admit I had an eye toward catching a movie that had already been released in the U.S. but wouldn't be so before the end of the year in Australia, meaning I'd miss it for my year-end list. Could this time have been spent seeing friends? Shut up.

At least I reduced my guilt by catching this movie on my first full day in Boston, when my sleep was all screwed up and I would not have been a presentable social animal. And at least it was available at the movie theater in Burlington, the town right next to the one where I was staying, at the multiplex. Meaning I didn't have to drive in to an arthouse theater in Boston, and therefore take up an unjustifiable amount of my precious time in town, to see it.

What The Lighthouse -- which still does not have a release date in Australia that I can see -- was doing at the multiplexes is beyond me. I suppose Robert Eggers' previous film, The Witch, was enough of a crossover hit to have earned buzz and convinced some distributors of the commercial viability of its follow-up. But even that was a movie where much of the dialogue was hard to understand (I used the subtitles on my second viewing), so a follow-up about two lighthouse keepers, in black and white, with dialogue that's only marginally more intelligible, didn't seem like an automatic win. Who knows, maybe they just saw that it starred the former Edward Cullen and just rolled the dice. There were a decent number of people in my Tuesday night screening, in any case.

The movie has similar strengths and weaknesses to The Witch, ending in a similarly unsatisfying place for me. But I'm really glad I did indeed get it in before the end of the year.

How to watch a 135-minute movie on a one-hour flight

One of my top contenders on the aforementioned year-end list is Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, and to shore up exactly how much I liked it, I thought a second viewing was in order before the end of the year. Only problem is, it may not get released to U.S. iTunes before then, so I didn't know the likeliest way for me to get my hands on it, even with an Australian release date back in June.

Qantas took care of that problem for me by having it among its list of movies. But in part because I was following that LA movie theme, I decided to hold my second Parasite viewing for my return trip.

Only problem? My return flight was only a Qantas code share, meaning I took the domestic cross country flight and subsequent LA to Sydney leg on American Airlines. Which had quite the good movie selection, just not Parasite.

I did have one more Qantas flight, though, which was the hour-long Sydney to Melbourne final leg of my trip. It seemed foolish to start this viewing, knowing there was almost zero chance I could finish it, but already on this return trip I had spent an unexpected hour on the ground before leaving Boston (which fortunately did not cause me to miss my transfer in LA). With a handful of well-placed little delays that are part and parcel to the airline industry, I might get in close to an entire viewing.

Which is exactly what happened. I started Parasite the moment I got to my seat, and since I was one of the first groups to board, this was nearly a half-hour before the flight actually took off. With another hour in the air and delays on the ground in Melbourne due to needing to be towed to align with the air bridge, plus with me seated near the back of the plane anyway, I saw the entirety of the film's climactic scene, leaving only the postscript portion of the film unwatched. It was enough to confirm that indeed, with two months to go before my ranking deadline, Parasite will factor in very seriously to the top of my year-end rankings.

                                                               * * * * * * * *

Okay, there's a couple thousand words for my "starving" blog audience (ha). Back this week with shorter and more regular posts.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in Hollywood

I actually had a real opportunity to see Quentin Tarantino's latest in Hollywood, in the heart of Hollywood Boulevard, at the world-famous Mann's Chinese Theater. We took our kids by there on Wednesday to see all the handprints and footprints, while picking out a surprising number of people they knew from the Hollywood Walk of Fame (including, unfortunately, Donald Trump). The movie was of course playing at the theater.

But the reality of travel is that it's not worth making the long trip into Hollywood from Marina del Rey (where we're staying) for a 2.5 hour movie when you have a dine-in movie theater just down the street from you. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in Marina del Rey" does not have quite the same ring to it, so we'll go with this.

In the end, I wished I hadn't spent 2.5 hours of my vacation watching it at all.

Not a fan of Quentin Tarantino's latest. I suppose it demands a second viewing, but I don't know that it would change my perspective on it too much. I won't go point by point on what I didn't like, but maybe I'll share a take a friend of my wife gave when she met him for drinks on Tuesday night. He said he found the first two hours to be tedious (!) but they were redeemed by the way it all comes together in the final act. I agree with the first half of the statement but not the second.

However, maybe this demands a second viewing more than most. I was falling asleep during the movie, which started at the reasonable hour of 8:30 -- reasonable when you are in your normal routines, anyway. I most certainly am not right now, and exhaustion takes any foothold it can and turns that into sleep. For example, that afternoon I fell asleep during a 30-minute movie at the La Brea Tar Pits. Give sleep an inch, it takes a mile.

I did have the dine-in option to save me. I had already determined to order a little brownie ice cream sundae thing they make, which was really good, but which I had consumed before the movie was a third over. The Coke and a half-dozen Oreo cookies I'd smuggled in didn't last much longer. I did order another Coke later on, but by then I'd already fallen asleep for ten seconds at a time about ten times. I probably didn't miss much, but you can never really tell how long you've been asleep.

Ordinarily the segmented, set piece-heavy nature of a Tarantino movie would keep you glued and charged, but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is not that kind of movie. Some people seem to be fine with this, but I am not one of them. It may represent growth as a filmmaker that he doesn't lean into his typical Tarantino-isms, but if they're not there, they need to be replaced by something equally compelling. I didn't find much of the content of this movie compelling at all. And I didn't get any joy/laughs out of his return to his usual preoccupations in the third act. In fact, as I'm sure has been discussed extensively online, I found that portion to deepen some of his already documented problems with gender politics. But I'm sure that's a topic for an entire post.

In this post, I'll just say that I have now definitely scratched my "see a movie on vacation" itch as I took the kids to The Lion King the day before as well. Who would have thought that I might actually like the latest half-baked Disney reboot better than the latest film from Quentin Tarantino.

I'd say Cinema Nova is excited for the new QT

This wall of posters at Cinema Nova, my local arthouse theater, usually advertises all of the movies coming out in the next couple months, ordered by their release date. It's a good way to get excited about what tempting cinematic treats you have to look forward to.

On Wednesday night, they only wanted me to look forward to one thing.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actually opens today, but I don't know when I'm actually going to see it. Tonight I finish up MIFF, and I can't go tomorrow night because, well, I'll be packing. See, we're leaving for the U.S. on Saturday.

It'll of course be playing there, has been for several weeks. But time will again be the issue there, as there are people we need to see and things we need to do.

Of course, some of the people I need to see are Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCpario and Margot Robbie, so you better bet I'll make it happen, if at all possible, somehow.