The great unwatched

I've been trying to get my wife to watch Dangerous Liaisons for some time now.

Yesterday, I returned it to Blockbuster unwatched.

And, pursuant to what we were discussing on Tuesday, that's ... okay.

You see, not only had I been dominating the direction of our theatrical viewing experiences, but apparently, our home viewing as well.

And in this arena, I don't blame myself as much. It's the queue's fault. It's relentless, and it must always be fed.

For those of us who use an online rental company -- Netflix and Blockbuster are, of course, the industry leaders -- a fun little way to pass the time is to reorganize our queue of movies we have lined up to see.

It might surprise you to know that I am a somewhat absentee proprietor of my queue. Of the 74 titles I currently have in there, 50 have been in there for as long as two years. Those lingering titles were films I sort of wanted to see at some point, and they have been leapfrogged countless times by more urgent titles. I guess I am using my queue as a warehouse to store these titles, as a reminder that I may someday want to see them.

There's a part of me that wishes the titles would just come up randomly -- that it would be a surprise which title I'm receiving next, all part of the random pastiche that comprises a person's day-to-day movie watching experience. But I do have to control it, and I use three basic methods of determining which titles I move to the top: 1) movies that I need to review, and specifically, movies that are crappy that I need to review, so I can watch them at the gym; 2) movies that I have recently discussed watching with my wife; 3) movies that I haven't recently discussed watching with my wife, but which I have decided to promote to the top of the queue for some reason or the other.

It's that third category that gets me in trouble.

See, once a movie is sent to me, it means that it (by necessity) needs to get prioritized for a viewing sometime in the next week or two. Yet if my wife didn't specifically ask me to get something, it stands to reason that she shouldn't be forced to agree to that timeframe.

And it certainly won't surprise you to know that I get agitated the longer a movie sits around unwatched. The more days a movie sits at home, the less value I am getting from my monthly payment to Blockbuster. And if I have two movies that just can't make it to a viewing -- I get three at any one time -- then the problem compounds. Earlier this year, I held on to The Wages of Fear and Aguirre, the Wrath of God for almost two months each, because we just couldn't find the time to watch them. My wife was more interested in her second viewing of the first than her first viewing of the second, so I eventually watched the second by myself and returned it with a sigh of relief.

By contrast, my wife has a lesser Netflix plan that allows her only one DVD at a time. So my three Blockbuster DVDs gang up on her one Netflix DVD, and bully their way into our DVD player. You might consider that a metaphor for what Blockbuster is trying to do to the (presumably less well-funded) Netflix, which pioneered the concept of DVDs through the mail.

Of course, I make matters worse by also trading in watched DVDs for new releases from the store, which is one of the prime advantages I consider Blockbuster to have over Netflix. Those films take on the online rental terms, which means I don't have to return them by any specific date. But Blockbuster will hold the next film in my queue until I return that movie to the store. So I am motivated to do that as quickly as possible.

One more complicating factor: I double my list of three titles by getting out three movies from the library every couple weeks. We know those won't all get watched, because they are due back two days later. But we usually try to watch at least one of every batch.

The best solution would be if I were to keep my wife apprised of which titles are coming up near the top of my Blockbuster queue. That way, she could tell me which films she had a likelihood of wanting to see relatively soon, and which I should just push lower because she doesn't want to prioritize them. But that seems a little ridiculous, doesn't it? "Warning, honey -- Dangerous Liaisons has risen to third in my queue."

So the other solution is just to return them unwatched, as I did yesterday. Recognize the miscalculation and just cut your losses.

But I have to say, this does kill me a little bit every I do it. "A bird in the hand" becomes my guiding principle with these movies. I wish it could just be "Well, whatever the decision was that caused this movie to get sent to us, it's in the past. The movie is here now, so let's prioritize watching it."

My wife doesn't work that way, and that's fine. In fact, it's probably normal, while my way is probably weird. She has to be in the mood to watch a particular movie, whereas I'm more likely to sacrifice that if it means keeping the titles moving back and forth. As I've discussed other times, we have particular movie nights that we think are suited more appropriately or less appropriately to certain types of movies, as most people probably do. Circumstances and the vicissitudes of life could easily cause a movie to miss its ideal viewing night for several weeks in a row.

And so it's okay to return a movie like Dangerous Liaisons sometimes. It doesn't mean we'll never watch it. It doesn't mean we are disqualified from ever renting it again. It just means we won't watch it right now, and that's ... okay.

I've done it before. I returned (and still have never seen) The Mission in early 2008, when I realized I simply didn't have time before our wedding to give it the kind of viewing it deserved. And earlier this year, I even used my queue with the specific intention of watching a certain movie under a certain set of circumstances only. I rented Step Brothers, which I love and had already seen twice, in order to bring it for a weekend away with friends, in case they hadn't seen it. When it turned out they had seen it, I didn't feel the need to watch it a third time by myself, just to get my "money's worth." I just dropped it back in the mail and got the next movie.

Our queues. We should own them rather than them owning us, right?

We're going to take turns

Last Sunday, as I discussed in this post, we narrowly avoided seeing Disney's A Christmas Carol when my wife confessed that she would only be seeing it to placate me. And since I'd already seen it once, that hardly seemed like a good reason to go.

This past Sunday, I discovered that I've been strong-arming other parts of our film agenda as well. In fact, most parts.

As we were driving out of the parking garage after seeing Up in the Air, my wife turned to me and said "So next weekend we'll see Invictus?"

I hesitated. "I guess so."

This completely took the wind out of her sails. At first I was confused as to why, but let's be honest -- "I guess so" is basically the same as "I really don't want to."

And it's true -- I don't want to see Invictus that much. Clint Eastwood has been pretty spotty for me lately, and I've never been a big fan of sports movies. (Since I'm a big sports fan, that's a paradox that's worth discussing at length another time.) I've also developed an informal bias against movies, any movies, where a character says "This is our destiny!" And yes, Matt Damon's character utters those words in the trailer.

But what I didn't realize when giving that lukewarm reaction was, there's a time and a place to be truthful about your excitement for a particular film. See, as a brazenly, unapologetically honest film fan, I feel like the time to be truthful is always, and the place to be truthful is everywhere. But I realize now the value of a little harmless feigned enthusiasm.

See, for most couples, feigned enthusiasm about seeing movies would be par for the course. It's an old chestnut of gender politics that the woman supposedly drags her husband to romantic comedies he has no interest in seeing, and it's his job to pretend he wants to, or at least, not put up much of a fight. Meanwhile, she makes the sacrifice and goes to see action movies with him. Or, perhaps less charitably to the woman, she doesn't make that sacrifice, but also doesn't stand in the way if he wants to go see the explosions and car chases with his guy friends.

But my wife and I don't have that relationship. We're both huge film nerds. In fact, I am much more likely to have a tolerance for something frivolous, something that is otherwise unworthy of our time. Whereas she loves sports movies. That's right -- she hates most sports but loves inspirational sports movies, where I am the exact opposite. Go figure.

The bottom line is, we both want to see most of the critically acclaimed movies that are coming out, and neither of us expects to see chick flicks. I've got myself quite a good partner here.

So what's the problem? The problem is that I want to see most of these movies in the theater, whereas she is often just as content to see them on DVD. For her, the ideal number of trips to the theater per month would be two or three -- for me, it would be twice that. In fact, even though Up in the Air is a probable Oscar frontrunner, she surprised me on Sunday by saying she would have been just as happy to wait and see it at home.

This is no judgment against her. In fact, it's a judgment against me for not recognizing it earlier. My agenda is to see as many films as I can before I close off my personal rankings of the year's best films in late January. She has no such agenda, so I should understand that she might rather spend that $13 per ticket on something else, and see the movie three months later on DVD.

So the dynamic that's developed is that I have been driving her to the theater to see things that she did indeed want to see -- just not as soon as I wanted to see them. She might even want to see some of them in the theater, just not until the crowds had thinned out a bit. Up in the Air was a shining example of the toxic possibilities of a full house, as we were each profoundly disturbed by the person sitting next to us. If we'd seen Up in the Air three weeks from now, we might have had not only a buffer of several seats, but several rows as well.

So when I had been setting my personal theatrical outlook, knowing that these were films she wanted to see, I thought her desire to see them was enough information to act on. And because she's sweet and loath to make conflict, she's been acquiescing without me even knowing it. She's essentially been placating me for weeks, maybe months, maybe years now.

The difficulty really arises in the fact that going to the movies is considered by most people to be an essentially social experience. It's fair to say that there are many, many people who are not comfortable going to the movies by themselves, any more than they would be comfortable going to an expensive restaurant and eating by themselves.

Neither my wife nor I share this feeling. I do enjoy going with her to the movies more than going by myself, but I'm perfectly happy to go alone, and she is only slightly less so. So my thinking has been, "I want to go to this movie, now. If you come with me, it'll save some logistical awkwardness later on, when you have to watch it by yourself at home on DVD. Plus, I enjoy your company. But if you don't want to come with me, at least let me see it on my own schedule."

While I have constructed these semantics to make it seem like I am being fair and logical, really what I am saying is "I am going to see this movie this weekend regardless of whether you come with me or not." I'm flexible to the extent that I will delay the viewing if I can get her to commit to a later date, like the next weekend. We struggled through this with Paranormal Activity, and in fact, I think the reason she went at all was that I expressed such dismay at having to wait something like three weeks before finally seeing it.

But however you slice it, I am basically getting what I want in this scenario. I want to see the movie. And, come hell or high water, I will see it.

But marriage is about compromise, about not always getting what you want. And just because being a film critic gives me an extra excuse to be pushy, the fact of the matter is, I'm not seeing most of these movies for work. I'm seeing them so I can get as close as possible to a definitive representation of movies released in 2009, so I can rank them from 1 to whatever. And when you come right down to it, this is a personal project that is really useful only to myself. I post it on my blog and I'm sure my readers have a passing interest in my rankings, but I'm the only person who really cares whether I saw 79 or 89 movies that came out in 2009.

So as we discussed all this stuff on the drive home, I came up with a solution. We will alternate being the driving force behind each theatrical screening. I will still be able to sneak off by myself to movies she isn't interested in, but for the ones we're both interested in, we will take turns deciding which title that is. She loved that idea.

This method has its problems, too. I have to figure out how to dis-own certain movies I want to see so that she gets credit for "choosing" them. And since I want to see quite a lot of movies -- and want to discuss my interest in seeing them with my wife -- this will be hard indeed. I think the worst outcome of this would be if I started editing myself in my film discussions with my wife. Then it would become a quality of life issue in a different way.

But I also think that just having had this discussion will help -- letting her know that I get where she's coming from. The system won't be, can't be, perfect. But when she realizes I am no longer playing the role of film dictator, she won't feel quite so oppressed, either.

And I think I've been able to smooth over the Invictus issue somewhat. Originally it appeared that my negative prognosis on Invictus had spoiled it as a possibility for a movie date. She no more wanted to drag me to see Invictus than I wanted to drag her to see A Christmas Carol.

But I've come up with plenty of good reasons why I actually, truthfully, want to see Invictus. Sure, it's a sports movie where people's destinies are being discussed. But it's also a movie about Nelson Mandela, starring Morgan Freeman. I haven't seen a Mandela movie before, and I love Freeman. And while we're at it, I've never seen a rugby movie either. I'm always interested in things I've never seen before.

For good measure, I've also told her I've relented somewhat in my negative stance toward Sherlock Holmes. So she'll get credit when we see that one, too.

And so what if I see a movie in the theater and she sees it later on DVD. That kind of thing happens, too. When I saw The Road the day we were supposed to see A Christmas Carol, she was perfectly understanding. She really wants to see it, too, but she understood that she "didn't want to hold me back." She had made her bed by deciding not to come, and she would lie in it. But just so you know I'm not simply the villain here, I tried to save The Road for her. I only went because Bad Lieutenant was sold out, and had to make a snap decision, with the The Road about to start that very minute.

Give and take. Compromise. It's what marriages -- and, apparently, movies -- are all about.

Didn't anyone else see the trailer?

George Clooney: "You know that moment when you look into somebody's eyes, and you can feel them staring into your soul, and the whole world goes quiet?"

Anna Kendrick: "Yes!!"

George Clooney: "Right, well I don't."

I'd seen/heard this joke about 12 times, which matched the number of times I'd seen the trailer for Up in the Air. Yesterday was the 13th time, when I actually saw the movie. (And aren't you jealous of those of us who live in Los Angeles, who get things a week earlier than you do?)

Needless to say, I don't usually laugh at a joke I've heard 13 times. Even if it's the best joke in the world, you still don't laugh after 13 times. Our repeat viewings of funny movies are not so we can necessarily laugh anew -- it's so we can smile at the cleverness and be reminded of how much we laughed the first time.

At its core, laughter is an expression of surprise. You can only really be surprised by a joke the first time you hear it. If you laugh the second and third time, it's not usually as hard as the first, and usually benefits from hearing it alongside someone else, someone who hasn't heard it before.

This is not a point that needs belaboring. But I am trying to analyze why the audience with whom I watched Up in the Air laughed so hard at the joke above, or at a couple other jokes the trailers have beaten into us.

Didn't anyone else see the same trailer I saw?

I have to think they did. As much as knowing George Clooney is in it can sell a movie, and as much as good buzz can sell a movie, most people who see a movie on opening weekend have seen the trailer at least once. In this day and age of easy access on the internet, it's probably more than once. And it was especially the case with this movie, whose trailer was/is ubiquitous.

So why did they laugh so hard at that joke?

I guess whether you laugh at a joke from the trailer has something to do with how well the movie has caught you in its spell. If you're really loving it, that means you're just waiting for that moment to arrive, so you can expel your giddiness through a hearty guffaw. I even wonder if there's a little subconscious politicking going on here. You laugh because you want to sell the others in the audience on a movie you've already decided is great. You are doing the movie's PR campaign for it so everyone else can realize what it's taken you only a couple minutes to realize: You love this movie.

Because I didn't laugh, does that mean I didn't love Up in the Air?

I won't answer that question directly, but I will say this: Usually when I've seen a trailer too many times, I get burned out on the movie in question. I'm very wary of that happening with Avatar, for example. But I think because the Up in the Air trailer is so charming, I didn't consciously get burned out on it. Instead, I felt a near anxiety developing about needing to see it -- and now I wonder if that was so I didn't have to see the trailer yet one more time beforehand. Perhaps the reason I saw the movie two days after it was released (and five days before it's released in most of the country) is that I was anxious about that burnout, and wanted to head it off at the pass.

Now, with any movie I see, I'm not expecting to laugh at jokes from the trailers. I'm expecting there to be enough other good jokes for me to laugh at. I'm expecting to smile at those jokes and check them off my mental checklist of moments from the trailer -- maybe you keep one of those checklists too. But those jokes played their intended role -- they made me laugh at the trailer and made me want to see the movie.

Okay, so I'm not expecting to laugh again. But I did find my inability to laugh at those jokes more problematic yesterday, in part because the rest of the audience was laughing so much. This isn't the first time I've blogged about laughter disparities, but it's the first time I've tied the phenomenon to my expectations of how much we should be laughing based on trailer burnout.

It's the double-edged sword of trailers, which we all discuss: We want to see some footage of the film, in order to get excited about it, but we want there to be plenty of surprises remaining for the actual theatrical viewing. For a current example of a film whose entire plot, and probably its only funny jokes, appear in the trailer, check out the trailer for Did You Hear About the Morgans? (You won't have to go out of your way -- that one's pretty ubiquitous, too.)

Of course, it's difficult to find a balance. You have to include some funny jokes in the trailer, or else how will people know if the movie looks funny?

I don't know why I was so tired of these Up in the Air jokes, and the other people were not. Maybe just because I was tired, period -- I was recovering from a late Christmas party the night before, as well as a hard session of basketball that morning. Or maybe I'm just smarter than they are. Yeah, that's it.

But it distracted me to no end how much the girl on my right was laughing. She covered her mouth with both hands several times during the movie, in fits of hysterics, and several other times said things like "Oh my God!" and "Oh gosh!" My wife and I each had to suffer through a terrible neighbor yesterday -- the woman to her left was crinkling food wrappers for almost the entire movie.

Up in the Air won the National Board of Review's honor as best film of the year last week. The last two Oscar winners, Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men, were also honored by that board. So Up in the Air is going to be seen by a lot of people in the coming weeks.

Therefore, I won't spoil anything by giving you my review. All I'll say is that it is not my #1 of the year -- you'll get a look at which film takes that honor this January after the Oscar nominations are released, per my annual tradition.

In the meantime, I'll just prepare you to laugh -- or not laugh, as the case may be.

The gift of silence

Mum's the word in our house.

And mum's the music, the car crashes, the gun shots, the explosions.

So when I watch a movie like Keeping Mum -- which has no car crashes, gun shots or explosions -- the first thing in the morning on a Saturday, when my wife is still asleep, the only one who hears it is me.

You see, when we moved into our new apartment in March, one of the first differences we recognized from our old place was that the room configuration would leave a lot less separation between the optimal location for the television and our bedroom. In fact, the TV is on the other side of a relatively thin wall, whereas previously, it was not only down the hallway, but you could close doors on each side of that hallway to drown out the sound. Since my wife stays up later than I do, and (logically) I get up earlier than she does, and we both like our television, we needed a solution so we wouldn't keep each other awake/wake each other up.

So my wife made a purchase that I originally thought was a luxury. But it ended up being one of those "luxury" items that gives you a better ROI (return on investment) than almost anything you own. We use it almost every day, so I thought that it was time -- especially with the gift-giving season fully upon us -- to pimp this purchase to you guys, since some of you may have this same configuration in your house.

It's a set of wireless headphones from Radio Shack. I'm sure there are many other makers of wireless headphones, and many other vendors who sell them, but since these are the ones we have, I thought they deserved special recognition. For a mere $60, they've revolutionized the TV and movie watching in our house, so they deserve special recognition indeed.

All you do is plug a cable from the headphones' charging base into your headphone port on the TV, put on the headphones, and presto -- you're listening to the television from anywhere in your house. In fact, far beyond your house if you want. On a nice day, I've actually watched television from the garden through the window. I've even walked all the way out to the car, parked along the street several driveways up, with them on, without losing the signal. Perfect for not missing an at-bat in a baseball game while you run to the bathroom, as well.

Perhaps this doesn't seem revolutionary to you -- in fact, perhaps you would assume something like this existed, but just never considered buying one. Well, I'm here telling you to buy one. I've probably watched 10-15 more movies than I would have otherwise this year, just because of these headphones.

All I can speak for is this model, but as I said, its range is good, and the charge lasts for quite some time. My wife even leaves them on the table overnight sometimes, rather than in their charging station, and I've still been able to use them for an hour or two in the morning without a new charge. You can even adjust the volume in two different places -- on the headphones, or on the TV. Or both.

You can get a lot more sophisticated ones that cost in the hundreds of dollars, but I guess it really depends on what kind of quality you're looking for in your sound. For us, we don't mean for the headphones to take the place of a theatrical viewing experience, or even the experience of watching out loud on our home stereo. We just want to keep watching, or start watching, while our spouse is asleep, and the $60 ones work well enough for us.

So if you want to watch a Michael Bay movie at 3 in the morning -- or if you just want to watch something as relatively quiet as Keeping Mum -- you won't bother your wife, your husband, or perhaps most importantly, your sleeping child.

Sound like a good gift to you?

Matt Dillon's armored truck fetish

Did anyone else see the trailer for Armored, and then later see the trailer for Takers, or vice versa, and think they were same movie, but didn't quite, because you remembered enough about the trailers to think there was something different between them?

And did you think they were the same movie because both movies are about an armored truck heist, and both movies star Matt Dillon?

I had recently decided that Takers never existed, and it was always Armored. After all, some number of months ago, I saw a trailer for a generic action thriller about the plan to rob an armored truck, and then, here came Armored, a generic action thriller about the plan to rob an armored truck. There was nothing more to think about.

Yet when I was at the theater on Wednesday night to see Precious, I saw the Takers trailer again, and realized that was definitely the trailer I saw several months ago. And I thought "Ahhh, these really are two different movies." As the first handful of actors who were introduced -- Idris Elba, T.I., Chris Brown, Michael Ealy -- were all black, I figured Takers was the urban version of Armored. As Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen (wearing a silly hat) were introduced, I started to reconsider.

And as Matt Dillon was introduced, I started to laugh.

We're no strangers to movies with the same subject matter coming out within a couple months of each other -- from asteroid movies to volcano movies to Mars movies to movies about runner Steve Prefontaine. Although it's not yet certain whether Armored and Takers will be prominent enough to take their place alongside these others as famous dueling concept movies, the release dates do line up correctly -- Armored, today; Takers, February 26th.

But the same actor appearing in both films? It's absurd, and quite possibly, unprecedented. I'm going to think about the possibility of a precedent as I write this, and will get back to you a couple paragraphs from now.

Dillon even seems to play the same character in both films. Of course, I haven't read the scripts, nor have I analyzed the trailers side by side. But from what I've gleaned, he may very well play the nefarious inside man in both movies -- the guy who gets the legitimate job working in or around the armored truck in order to case it for its weaknesses.

You have to wonder what went through Matt Dillon's head. Actors accept acting gigs for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is money. But didn't he have to think, at least for a second, "If I do this, they're going to think of me as the 'armored truck guy'?"

Of course, when you broaden the phenomenon outwards, the precedent gets much larger. The very notion of typecasting is based on the idea that certain actors play certain roles very well, so those are the roles they're repeatedly offered.

But typecasting is generally something that occurs over the course of a career, or at least, a several-year period, after which the actor may choose to go in the opposite direction, to prove he or she shouldn't be typecast. Playing basically the same role in two versions of basically the same movie that are released within three months of each other? Well, that's a new one on me.

Okay, so it's a couple paragraphs later, and I didn't think of another example yet. But maybe you did. And if you did, let me know, because not only would I love to hear it, I'm sure Matt Dillon would too. It'd take a little of the heat off him.

Reconsidering Lee Daniels

I didn't know much about Lee Daniels at the time I reviewed his directorial debut, Shadowboxer, in early 2007. But I thought I knew enough to lob a couple merciless barbs in his direction.

You see, Shadowboxer -- a film in which Dame Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. appear as contract killers in an interracial, inter-generational relationship -- was produced by Lee Daniels Entertainment, and written and directed by Lee Daniels.

Uh oh.

So here was one of the lines from my review: "Shadowboxer exists as the perfect example of why checks and balances exist in the film business -- the only way this gets made is with a lot of yes men enabling one deluded egomaniac."

You see, in the interest of reviewing this one little film and moving on, I had formed something of a snap judgment in my head about Lee Daniels. I figured, if the guy was the owner of the production company, and the writer, and the director, then he had to be some kind of clueless rich guy who didn't want anything like money to be an obstacle in bringing his untranslatable vision to the screen. To put it another way, he didn't want anyone to tell him "No." And that's as dangerous a desire when making a film as it would be in running a government. In our government, we have three branches that hold each others' powers in check. On Shadowboxer, however, Daniels was all three branches himself. The only thing more he could have added would have been to appear in the movie and to set up the craft services table. (Oops, I see he did appear in Shadowboxer as "Man in Steam Room.")

The result? A movie that is not what you would describe as incompetent, but is also far from what you would call good.

In this hasty profile I conjured of Daniels, I had him as a white guy in his mid-50s. You know, maybe a guy who had spent his life as a film lover, but didn't have the talent to break into the business in the conventional ways. But what he did have was money, and money will allow you to do anything you want -- within reason, of course. Money will allow you to make a movie that no one but you thinks is a good idea. In this mental framework I'd developed, convincing actors like Mirren, Gooding, Mo'Nique, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Stephen Dorff to appear in Shadowboxer was probably just a coup, unlikely to be repeated.

But then Lee Daniels made a little film called Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, which I saw last night. And now, there's a lot more information available about Lee Daniels. Oh, it was "available" then, but I would have had to dig a lot deeper. And given the quality of Shadowboxer, the unlikelihood that I would ever need to know anything else about Daniels because he would probably never make another film, and the need not to dwell on any particular assignment, I didn't think digging deeper was necessary. I do regret not doing enough shallow digging to realize he was a producer on Monster's Ball, for which Halle Berry won best actress, which would have validated his credibility a bit more.

Turns out, Lee Daniels is not in his mid-50s -- in fact, he'll be 50 on Christmas Eve -- and he is certainly not a white guy. Daniels grew up in Philadelphia and attended Lindenwood College in Missouri. He spent his early years as a production assistant, casting director and manager. He formed his own agency at 21 -- more on personal pluck, it would seem, than financial wherewithal -- and later sold it for $2 million. So it appears he is at least somewhat rich.

But he didn't create Lee Daniels Entertainment with the express purpose of making Shadowboxer, which is what I sort of assumed at the time. In fact, not only did Lee Daniels Entertainment produce Monster's Ball prior to Shadowboxer, but Daniels' company also produced The Woodsman, the drama where Kevin Bacon plays a pedophile struggling to reform, which I quite liked. In fact, it now seems that not only is Shadowboxer not typical of the product turned out by Lee Daniels Entertainment, it's quite the exception. The other three films, including Precious, are gritty, realistic and uncompromising, while Shadowboxer is a genre film with a sort of fantastical premise, though I guess it was somewhat gritty in its own right. In fact, it goes to show you how little I pay attention to producing credits -- which, the joke is, are handed out like candy -- when I review films, because I reviewed both Monster's Ball and The Woodsman, but wasn't aware of a person named Lee Daniels until his directing credit came up on Shadowboxer.

So as you have probably guessed, the reason for this extended mea culpa regarding Daniels is that I absolutely loved Precious. It's as harrowing, searing and devastating as you've heard, but it also contains some wonderful fantasy sequences and some definite sprinkles of optimism. And it's important to note that it shouldn't divide audiences. After all, one person's "harrowing, searing and devastating" is another person's emotional manipulation. And though I certainly do not speak for everyone, from where I sit, Precious does not contain an ounce of emotional manipulation.

What's even more impressive is how Lee Daniels has matured in terms of his core function as a director: to mold the performances of his actors. And as actors go, Daniels is working with the rawest of raw materials. How raw? The lead, Gabourey Sidibe (people are going to butcher this name throughout awards season), has no formal acting training. Yet her performance is absolutely, astonishingly real. But it may not even be the film's best performance. You've probably heard how crazy good Mo'Nique is -- her monologue near the end is one of the most fully realized five minutes of acting I have ever seen -- and Mo'Nique's primary job to this point has been stand-up comedienne. But that may not even be the film's most impressive transformation. In a relatively small role, Mariah Carey is, quite simply, unlike anything you ever thought you knew about Mariah Carey, whose most famous previous role as an actress was the disastrous star vehicle known as Glitter. Not only is she totally deglamorized for this role -- she even has the faint outline of a mustache on her upper lip -- but she is 100% convincing as a Harlem-based social worker. For good measure, you can throw in what amounts to a cameo by another singer, Lenny Kravitz, who is never anything less than totally true in the role of a male nurse. In fact, the only real professional in this film is Paula Patton, who has had only supporting roles in films like Deja Vu, Swing Vote, Idlewild and Hitch. Among all these other great performances, it was a line by her that delivered me over the threshold from incredibly moved to actual tears.

So back to the core point. Was I wrong in calling Lee Daniels a "deluded egomaniac"? Did I besmirch his good name, and that of his family? Did I owe Lee Daniels more than that?

Yes and no. I stand by a critic's right to be witty and lacerating. Witty laceration is fun to read, and if it's not your defining characteristic as a critic, but rather, used only at the appropriate time and place, it appeals to your readers and gains positive attention with your editors. But should I have gotten a more well-rounded picture of Daniels based on his available credits? Absolutely I should have.

And this gets at an essential limitation of the art of film criticism. Because of the amount of content we churn out -- and the relative pittance we are paid -- we can't afford to linger on any particular film, especially one as unworthy as Shadowboxer. We don't have the time, nor often should we even spare that time if we had it, to research the background of the director, the writer, the cinematographer, the gaffer. (Especially if we aren't receiving a press kit that would have this all typed up together in a handy place.) Those of us who consume the film industry like a giant buffet, and therefore know a lot more about random things than the next guy, are always going to write reviews that are more informed than our peers. But the film industry is a big place, and there are always going to be people you're hearing of for the first time. Ultimately, we have to assess a film -- and its writer, and its director, and its stars -- by the final product that appears on screen.

One thing that's for sure: If this awards season plays out like it's looking like it will, and Precious receives Oscar nominations both for best picture and best director, and Sibide and Mo'Nique also get their justly deserved nominations (I would almost argue you could include Carey and Patton as well), it will not just be a matter of me -- of all of us -- having reassessed Lee Daniels.

If Daniels evolves from a clueless shadowboxer to a potential Oscar-winning director in three years' time, it will be more a matter of him blossoming into a fully realized artist.

"Hey, I know that place!"

I usually wouldn't go four days after adding a movie like Paul Blart: Mall Cop to my Most Recently Seen list without hurriedly writing an explanation of why I watched it.

Then again, I'm the only one who knows I'm not scheduled to review it. And besides, I once mentioned that I might have to see it eventually, simply because it had made a staggering $146 million at the box office, so there would be a certain currency for a film critic in having it as a reference point.

Well, I moved up that eventual viewing for a different reason: It was filmed at the local mall where I grew up.

As it turned out, that wasn't nearly enough reason to endure this utter waste of 93 minutes of my life. I guess I haven't been to the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts for quite some time, because it was barely recognizable to me, though the end credits did confirm the location. Part of the reason it seemed foreign is that they must have used two different malls. Some exterior and interior shots were definitely familiar, but some shots were decidedly unfamiliar, leading me to believe they simply couldn't be the Burlington Mall. Like I said, it's been awhile, but I feel pretty sure they don't have a video arcade at the Burlington Mall. For some reason, I feel like I would have learned this had happened -- I always wanted there to be one when I was a kid. I'd be tempted to say that mall schizophrenia was the cause of the film's exceedingly poor quality, but I don't want to let Paul Blart off the hook that easily.

But it got me thinking about other movies I had seen simply because I knew the location where they were shot. And some of them were time-wasters indeed.

The Man Without a Face (1993, Mel Gibson). This is probably my fondest example. A number of scenes in Gibson's directorial debut were filmed at Bowdoin College in Maine, where I was an undergrad. In fact, not only that, but I was actually "in" the movie. I'll explain. My film class was invited to help out on the shoot in very menial ways -- for example, after a graduation scene shot on the outdoor track, I vacuumed up a bunch of confetti. I remember it taking quite a long time. But there was one instance that felt a bit more important, where I was keeping people out of the shot, which meant I was standing behind an arched brick entrance to the track. When I saw the movie later on, I saw that brick wall and started telling people -- not many people, but some -- that I was "in the movie, but you just can't see me." Don't worry, I was only trying to be funny. That same day, I also summoned the courage to approach Gibson and shake his hand, after which he made a funny gesture to the other people around, like my grip was either too strong, or my hand too sweaty. They laughed -- in fact, he had people laughing pretty regularly. Remember, this was long before he was unveiled as a drunken anti-Semite. But, the movie is actually good.

Live Free or Die Hard (2007, Louis Letterier). I probably would have seen the fourth Die Hard regardless, but I was slightly more jazzed because some of it was filmed outside my office. In fact, it was filming on the thoroughfare that leads to my parking lot during my first week on the job. While I never saw Bruce Willis or anything, it was quite inconvenient to get to work. In the movie, they made the road seem about fifty times longer than it actually is -- it's that ridiculous climactic sequence where Willis ends up on the wing of a harrier jet. Terrible True Lies flashbacks. As you know, the movie was sub par.

Breakin' All the Rules (2004, Daniel Taplitz). This highly forgettable Jamie Foxx vehicle was another film shot outside my office -- but it was my old office, and the scenes were shot in the courtyard of the outdoor mall where the office was located. (Malls and offices are a theme here.) I actually did see Foxx and Peter MacNicol, which is the only way I knew what film it was when it came out the following year. Fortunately, I got to review this one, otherwise it would have been an even bigger waste of time than it already was.

The Weight of Water (2000, Kathryn Bigelow). Slightly different circumstance here. The movie was based on a novel about some famous murders that occurred in the 18th century on Smuttynose Island, which is across the harbor from Star Island, where I worked for five summers during and after college. Both islands are part of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. I was hoping for a glimpse of Star Island, but all I got was a quick look at it on a map the characters are holding in one scene. I should have known better -- the movie was shot off of Baja California. And again it was not very memorable.

Ghost Rider (2007, Mark Steven Johnson). Our stated motivation for seeing this movie was that we had friends visiting from out of town, and it would be fun to see whatever was playing in the Dome at the Arclight in Hollywood. But my wife and I secretly wanted to see it anyway, since it was filmed in Melbourne, where my wife grew up, and where I would be visiting for the first time several weeks later. (It's also Nicolas Cage's preferred place to shoot, as he later shot Knowing there.) This is a bit of a stretch, since I actually hadn't seen the Yarra River and other famous Melbourne landmarks in person, but I had sort of an "aha!" moment when I actually did see them later on. Common theme: Not a very good movie.

Amistad (1997, Steven Spielberg). As I start to stretch further, I wrote a number of articles about Amistad when I worked for a weekly newspaper in Rhode Island, since it was shooting in nearby Newport, Providence and Pawtucket. More importantly to my readership, citizens from Barrington, Rhode Island seemed to be getting all sorts of minor roles in the film. I don't remember the locations per se, though I was definitely looking for familiar faces. I don't think Amistad is all that great, but it's the second best I've mentioned so far.

Matchstick Men (2003, Ridley Scott). They shut down my ex-girlfriend's office for an afternoon to shoot there. I'd been to the office, so I was curious. Verdict: Meh.

I'm sure there are many more, but I'm running out of steam here.

So now it's your turn, my readers. Audience participation time. What films have you seen because of the familiar surroundings?

Let the forcible re-rankings begin ... and end

Warning: The following post is long, esoteric and inscrutable. Read at your own risk.

As you know from about four previous posts -- check my labels if you're interested in reading them -- I am involved in ranking all the movies I've ever seen using Flickchart (www.flickchart.com). At least, all the movies I've seen that exist in their database.

I've been stopping every 10,000 rankings to take a snapshot of where the list stands, noting the changes in the rankings since the last time. I do this by recording the rankings in an Excel spreadsheet, a painstaking process that consumed numerous free moments over the last eight days. My wife thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am.

The first time I did it, just after 20,000 rankings, I recorded only the ranking itself, along with the director and year. But at 30,000 and 40,000, which is the milestone I just passed, I also recorded the number of duels for each film, as well as the percent won. This made the recording process significantly more tedious -- to get the additional stats, I had to drill down one further level into each movie.

The number of rankings interested me only as an academic exercise. I wanted to take a random selection of 10,000 rankings and see how many times a film would come up randomly for duel in that selection. I guess in my mind this would help test how successfully the site randomized the duels -- and if any of the organizers of Flickchart are reading this, I don't doubt you, I just like this kind of anal number-crunching exercise. (As for the percent won, I recorded it mainly because I was already on the page, so might as well.)

The results validated the success of Flickchart's algorithm. The most-ranked film in those 10,000 was Saw with 24 duels, while only Ang Lee's The Hulk and Joel Schumacher's Bad Company didn't come up once. Based on the 2,565 films I had ranked, every film should come up an average of 7.79 times per 10,000 duels (which feature 20,000 films). Of course, my own ability to transcribe proved plenty fallible. For example, according to my records, Eyes Wide Shut had two fewer rankings at the end of that 10,000 than at the start, which obviously means I recorded its initial total incorrectly. And when I summed the total, I came up with 20,011 films ranked, when it should have been 20,000. That could explain the high total for Saw, which may have had 69 duels at the start of that period, rather than 59.

But as I said, this is all academic. I'm more interested in the project of getting the films ranked in the correct order, and thought I had a new method of doing this, which I planned to implement starting at duel #40,001.

You see, my great disappointment from the previous 10,000 rankings was that there wasn't a single change in my top 20. Several weeks ago I bemoaned that Cocoon had made it to #20, and taken root. Because none of the 100-200 movies that would beat it have randomly come up against it, it's still there. And because Cocoon should only come up 7.79 times out of every 10,000 -- it actually came up 7 times this period -- the chances of it dueling against one of those 100-200 are fairly remote. Not to mention that those 7.79 times are only good for this period of 10,000. Next time I'll have more movies, which means even fewer ranking opportunities.

By the same logic, films that deserve to be in the top 20 -- Raising Arizona, for example -- also fight only 7.79 other titles per 10,000. For the sake of simplicity, let's round that up to eight. Eight divided by 2,564 -- you have to subtract Raising Arizona because it can't duel itself -- is .003, or less than 1/3 of 1%. So on average, Raising Arizona will duel only .3 % of all my movies over the course of 10,000 rankings. Since the top 20 movies represent two-and-a-half times those eight titles, Raising Arizona has about a .75% chance of even coming up against any movie in the top 20. Then it actually has to beat that movie in order to move up, and perhaps it would only beat half the movies in my top 20. Which gives Raising Arizona roughly a .38% chance of actually moving into my top 20 during the course of 10,000 rankings. This math may be a bit fuzzy, and the films presented for Raising Arizona to duel are probably not entirely random, but you get the idea.

The solution? Make the duels less random.

That's right, Flickchart gives you the ability to forcibly re-rank any film at any time. You simply go to the movie's home page, click the link that says Re-Rank This Movie, and boom -- you are presented with three new duels, each of which features the movie in question. Once you've selected the winner in the first duel, you get the second duel, and so forth. In fact, I'm sure this feature exists precisely to address the Raising Arizona dilemma described above.

This is probably as good a time as any to tell you about a second concern I've had. Namely, when my friend Don and I originally discovered the site, we didn't know how to get more titles eligible for ranking than the original 350 or so presented to us. It took us about 8,000 rankings before we figured it out. That means that about 350 films have significantly more duels than the rest of them, which means they have had significantly more opportunity to entrench themselves in the rankings. Only three films in my top 20 -- Glengarry Glen Ross, Poltergeist and Cocoon -- are from outside that original list of 350, having won the lottery that Raising Arizona could not. Five of my bottom six films are also from that original 350. The more films there are -- and there are more and more all the time -- the fewer opportunities any of them has to move. The main difference is, those 350 films had an advantage at one point, and they used it to build a home in the top 20.

The solution, part II? Forcibly re-rank all the films that were not part of the original 350, until they have reached approximately the same number of duels as those 350. To figure out what that benchmark should be, I took the average number of duels of those 350 films, which came out to 67. And decided that any film that did not have at least 67 duels would be re-ranked until it did.

Here was my logic: Although the films with more than 67 duels would still have more, and would inevitably increase their own totals as part of the re-ranking process, they would ultimately gain little ground relative to the films that were being re-ranked dozens of times. And once all the films had reached that threshold, tens of thousands of rankings from now, the advantage of the original 350 would be nullified. Only then would the playing surface be leveled, and would I truly be able to tell which films belonged in the hallowed top 20. If I went alphabetically, it would take quite some time for Raising Arizona to come up, but eventually, it too would have its day in the sun. And by doing all the films rather than just select ones, I'd be preserving the element of randomness/fairness that I consider to be a defining and indispensable part of the Flickchart process.

So yesterday after work, I sped through the last 600 titles of my snapshot in a flurry of blurry vision, alphabetized my titles, and got started. The numbered titles came up first.

Robert Luketic's 21 had plenty of rankings, so the first one up for re-ranking was Mark Christopher's 54. And here was where Don, a veteran of the forcible re-ranking system, had warned me I would run into trouble. He described a fluke in Flickchart whereby you'd get the same titles over and over if you tried multiple re-rankings in a row. As each session of re-ranking involves three duels, and as 54 needed 43 more duels to reach 67, that meant I'd need either 14 or 15 consecutive sessions of re-ranking to reach the threshold. (I apologize if all these numbers are killing your brain).

At first, it seemed I was having the same experience Don had. 54 came up against Basquiat, lost to it, and then won two lesser duels. When I refreshed the page and submitted it for re-ranking again, Basquiat was again its first opponent. The cracks in my seemingly perfect system became clear. But on the third time through, Basquiat was not the first opponent, nor any opponent at all. In the dozen more rounds, it came up again once. I decided I could live with that.

300 and 1408 each had enough duels, so next up for ranking was 2012. And here a different kind of disturbing thing happened. As I drove it upwards from four times ranked to 67, it jumped in the rankings from #1495 to #389. Now, I already feel a bit of shame for liking this movie more than most people whose opinions of film I trust. Having it land in my top 400 of all time was just too much. Nonetheless, I felt satisfied that the process had worked correctly. Flickchart had spoken, with me as its medium, and who was I to contest the results?

So I moved onward: (500) Days of Summer, 10,000 B.C., 10 Items or Less, 101 Dalmations. It wasn't until after I'd finished 13 Conversations About One Thing this morning that I found a problem that did stop me in my tracks. And it related to something I'd only done originally as a curiosity.

Namely, the winning percentage of these films was getting artificially inflated.

You see, the way the re-ranking works, the film does not get put up against totally random opponents. Flickchart assumes that if you want to re-rank a film, it's because you are unsatisfied with its position in the standings. Therefore, it uses a goal-oriented approach to the three duels it presents. From what I can gather, the first is a film that is higher than it in the standings -- not significantly higher, but higher. If your film beats that film, you get another film that is again higher in the standings. If it wins there, you get a third higher film. Either it beats that film and lands one ahead of it, or it loses and stays one ahead of the film in the second duel.

But if the film loses its first duel, there is no reason to make the second duel against a film that is even higher. It's the transitive property: If Film A is better than Film B, and Film B is better than Film C, then there is no way that Film C is better than Film A. So when 54 lost to Basquiat, it got to fight something much easier. And it probably beat that film, and may have beaten the next one as well. (I may be anal, but I can't remember every little detail.) Every time this happens, 54 loses to one good film and then either beats or loses to two films that are not as good. End result: 54 is "randomly" dueling against a majority of not very good films.

And the new stats didn't lie. After 30,000 rankings, 54 had won 18.75% of its duels. After 40,000, it was down to 16.67%. But after 40,043 rankings -- the last 43 of which were duels in which it competed -- 54 had gone all the way up to a 39.39% winning percentage, not only reversing the trend, but more than doubling its peak winning percentage. Reason? Duels against crappy films.

But why should the winning percentage matter, right? It's "all academic," right?

I may have thought so, but now I don't. And it goes back to the randomness/fairness that I think is essential to Flickchart. There was something pure about the 16.67% victory rate of 54, a movie that is probably in the bottom 20% of movies I've seen. It's a victory rate that could only have seemed so perfectly accurate because it was up against a random assortment of movies, rather than a purpose-driven selection chosen to help re-rank it.

And suddenly I felt that my forcible re-rankings of about ten films had somehow diluted the purity of this wonderful process. For this same reason, I'm especially reluctant to just cherry-pick the films I'm rooting for. Forcibly re-ranking only select films would blacken Flickchart's eye even more.

As much as I would like to steer this resource in a particular direction, and as much as I would like to see Raising Arizona carve out its rightful place in the top 20 sooner rather than later, I now think that I may just have to be patient. It may not be a perfect ranking system, but it's the best one I've got, and even describing it in this way is vastly underselling it. More correctly, the very existence of Flickchart is a revelation for a list-obsessed film lover like me. It's just that patience is a hard virtue for someone who's obsessed.

I do still have the nagging desire to level the playing field. I do still regret the inequity between those original 350 films and all the ones that have followed. But the only way I can think of to truly make things equal would be to start over again. To wipe all my Flickchart rankings, and to enter all the titles at the same time. To make them duel with equal footing from the start. But even this would only be a temporary solution. With each new film I see, and each new film I add, a gulf is created between the films that have been ranked more, and those that have been ranked less.

Besides, to consider starting over, after all this work ... well, that might just put an obsessive like me in his grave.

All hail Flickchart. Thy will be done.

About face

Just over three weeks ago in this space, I was issuing dire predictions about the quality of Disney's A Christmas Carol.

Yesterday afternoon, I felt disappointed not to be seeing it a second time.

Amazing how actually seeing a movie can change your impression of it.

I caught A Christmas Carol a week before Thanksgiving, when a friend of mine was in the neighborhood and had some time to kill between an afternoon engagement and an evening engagement. This was earlier than I planned to see it, being one of those old-fashioned guys who doesn't acknowledge the beginning of the Christmas season until after Thanksgiving. I also thought I'd be seeing it with my wife, since she'd expressed some interest, and Dickens' tale plays a history in the formation of our relationship.

Yet I convinced myself of my own logic, that A Christmas Carol looked like a garish abomination, and that the only thing we could expect to get out of it was the hollow sensory enjoyment of some good 3-D on the IMAX screen. (Plus, it was the only thing playing at a convenient time that both my friend and I wanted to see, but hadn't already seen.) On these grounds I decided I'd probably be saving my wife the trouble of having to witness it herself -- keeping in the back of my mind the possibility that if it were really good, maybe I'd go with her a second time.

Well, it was really good. And yesterday was supposed to be that second time.

Yet on our walk home from brunch, my wife confessed that she didn't really want to see it -- even with my glowing review. I was glad she asserted her opinion in no uncertain terms, rather than letting me steamroll her into going against her will. You see, I had just steamrolled her into changing tables at brunch, mistakenly believing that we would both consider the new table an upgrade, when in fact it removed us from the direct sunlight that would have helped make sitting outside more palatable for her. I get that way sometimes, and a person who just wants to be agreeable can pay the price for my inadvertent headstrong behavior.

Still, I felt a sinking feeling inside me when she told me this. I accepted her decision, but thought it would be worth mentioning that the experience of A Christmas Carol would not be the same at home on DVD, without the astounding 3-D. She then took it one step further and said she might not ever want to see it. And to that there was no retort.

Realizing we were not going to A Christmas Carol made me realize that I had no excuse for a second chance to absorb that 3-D experience, and also made me recognize just how much value that experience itself has. I rarely see movies twice in the theater, yet with A Christmas Carol, I realized I was worried I wouldn't be seeing it twice. The last time I saw a movie twice in the theater was There Will Be Blood, when I arrived at the theater too late for the start of Semi-Pro. And though I love There Will Be Blood -- more than A Christmas Carol, to be sure -- I ended up feeling somewhat disappointed by the decision to revisit it on the big screen. Not that it wasn't still a great movie, just that if you're going to spend theater prices on something, might as well make it something new.

But that's where the 3-D is a real game changer. It's not just the same to wait and see it at home on DVD. Once you miss that 3-D experience, you won't ever get it again, barring some kind of extremely unusual theatrical re-release, which hasn't really been fashionable since before the days of video stores.

I've been split on 3-D in the past. I've complained that it affected my enjoyment of Up; since the 3-D was done somewhat indifferently in that movie, I found myself clawing at the glasses with no clear benefit. Yet I found it riveting in Monsters vs. Aliens and Beowulf, the latter of which was Robert Zemeckis' most recent use of the same kind of motion capture technology used in A Christmas Carol. I might have felt the same desire to see Beowulf again if there was a reasonable excuse to go again, but my wife saw it with me the first time. My second experience of Beowulf was at home on DVD, where I still liked it, but didn't feel that same sense of being engulfed by the action that IMAX 3-D had given me. While we're on the topic of 3-D, I'll also mention that the 3-D component was a factor for me in prioritizing seeing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in the theater, rather than waiting for DVD.

A Christmas Carol left little doubt of just how wonderful 3-D can be, if done correctly. As interpreted by Zemeckis and Jim Carrey, A Christmas Carol didn't move me, per se -- the familiar story hit the usual beats, but didn't really warm the cockles of my holiday heart. And so I'd have to say that the visuals themselves -- starting with the animation and expanding outward, literally, with the 3-D -- were what put A Christmas Carol over the top. As I suggested earlier, I felt surrounded by 19th century London in all its splendid detail, swooping through the city with the camera, and wondering if this landscape was really, truly sharing the same theater with me. Not to mention the fact that there are some wonderfully scary, trippy details in that movie.

But that kind of sensory experience doesn't hold the same currency with my wife, who really does need the cockles of her holiday heart to be warmed. That's something I just have to accept. In fact, I also have to accept that urging someone to see a movie isn't always going to yield positive results. As critics, we probably believe that our recommendation, made strongly enough, will hold enough weight to push someone off the fence, to be the crucial endorsement necessary to make even a skeptic see the film in question. But there are just some movies that some people are never going to want to see. Not only is my wife never going to want to see A Christmas Carol, but neither is another of my friends with whom I discussed the film, who also rejected my endorsement of Beowulf. It is what it is.

But I'm not really sad for them. They're adults, and they've made up their minds. I can only put so much heft into my guarantee of enjoyment, and then I just have to let it be. After all, they really may not enjoy it. Movies are extremely subjective experiences, and it's a mistake to assume someone will love something just because you did.

No, the person I'm really sad for is me. I realized yesterday afternoon how much I really wanted to see A Christmas Carol again, but how much I also needed a legitimate excuse to pony up another $16 for the ticket. On Thanksgiving I learned that my friend had gone a second time, having taken his wife the night before. That only whetted my appetite more.

Well, I'm an adult too. If I want to see A Christmas Carol a second time, then dammit, maybe I should just go. It seems absurd to consider such a thing during what is sure to become a very busy viewing season, very soon. Especially with my upcoming trip to Australia, which will knock out two weeks of prime year-end viewing.

But most of those other movies will probably be just as good on DVD.

If I'm ever going to see A Christmas Carol again, now is the time. They're going to need that IMAX screen for something else soon enough.

Stay tuned, dear readers, stay tuned ...

Breaking with tradition

In the past six years, I've developed a little Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving tradition that was broken this year.

As a special start to what in some years was a four-day weekend, and some years (like this year) was not, I'd go see a movie after work on Wednesday afternoon. Since I was usually getting dismissed early -- as early as 11:30 at my last job, more like 2 o'clock at this one -- it meant I could see a movie and still have plenty of time to get whatever I needed for the next day organized.

I guess saying it was "broken" this year is somewhat misleading, considering that during that six-year period, I failed to do it twice -- 2005 (reason unknown) and 2007 (leaving that night to fly to Chicago). But every other year I came through: The Station Agent in 2003, Sideways in 2004, The Queen in 2006 and Religulous last year.

I was looking forward to it this year, with Precious as a possible target. But soon after I got in to work on Wednesday, I could tell it wasn't shaping up to be the kind of easy day I'd penciled in. In fact, I didn't even slow down all day, juggling ridiculously timed requests when I wasn't doing short work-related errands around town. I left at the normal time, 3:30, and never even got to figure out if there was a conveniently timed showing of Precious or any other movie.

I figured we'd at least watch a movie at home that night, since my wife and I had both stocked up at the library with the maximum three titles apiece, in addition to the couple other movies we each had sitting around from Netflix and Blockbuster. (Yes, our household has one account of each. Silly, I know.) But my wife wanted to starting clearing stuff off the DVR as early preparation for her three weeks out of the country at Christmastime -- I'll be in Australia, where she grew up, for a week less than that, as she both leaves before me and returns after me. So I acquiesced. I have to admit, it would have been hard for me to summon any sympathy for my movie cause -- I'd seen at least one movie a day for about week running.

But I did hope to outlast her that night and start something after she went to sleep, and I had the perfect candidate in mind: David Lynch's Eraserhead, which I'd never seen, which was one of my three library pickups. I knew my wife had already seen it, so I could watch it solo. And this kind of movie demands to be seen late at night anyway.

But she showed surprising stamina for a person who had slept fitfully the night before -- in fact, according to her, had not fully gotten to sleep until close to 5 a.m. When it was 10:30 and she said she still had another hour-long program in her, I feared I'd see no pre-Thanksgiving movie, either in the theater or at home.

I guess my own stamina was reasonably impressive as well, for a guy who started working at 7 a.m. that day. I did outlast her starting at about 11:30, which was enough to watch the first 30 minutes of Eraserhead. It was a bit of a gamble, as I didn't see any way I was supposed to get through a 100-minute movie starting this late at night. And true enough, as my eyes began closing despite the wild images that were penetrating them, I soon realized I'd either need to call it a night, or try a "nap." I love those "naps" we try to take at 12:15 a.m., somehow sure that we'll be able to close our eyes for just 20 minutes, and then be rejuvenated for two more hours of nighttime activities. But I did really hope to succeed this time out -- I was convinced that Eraserhead couldn't be nearly this eerie with my Thanksgiving morning coffee. The enthrallingly disturbing imagery and sound design just couldn't spook me as much in the bright morning light, could it?

But that's what happened -- I watched the rest of the movie before my wife awoke the following morning. And was still chilled as hell by it. So, another tradition broken: having to watch a creepy movie at night, because I didn't trust it to have the physiological impact I desired in the cold light of morning. Apparently, this shouldn't be a worry. I'm sure it helped that the shades were still drawn in the living room, and there was nothing else going on in the house to distract me or provide a semblance of daytime normalcy.

While we're add it, I guess I broke with another tradition as well: distrusting David Lynch. Ever since I saw Mulholland Drive, which most people liked, I have felt frustrated with the way Lynch doesn't feel obligated to providing catharsis or accountable to making sense. And even though I've seen Inland Empire since then, and inexplicably liked it a lot more even though it is arguably less accessible, I've still held that skeptical view toward Lynch. (I've also seen The Elephant Man since seeing Mulholland Drive, but that's a pretty straightforward movie.)

Eraserhead reminded me that you don't have to make perfect sense, or much sense at all, as long as the way you're not making sense is this visceral and gratifying. And I won't soon forget any of the images of this movie, each twisted and nightmarish metaphors -- the weird alien baby, the clumps of dirt and grass around Henry's apartment, the radiator lady with the jowly cheeks, the weird alien embryos that look like brains with tails, the pencil factory, the attempt to eat a chicken dinner with the in-laws. It's all etched in there, a disturbingly wonderful new part of my brain.

And then I went to slow-cook a bunch of yams for Thanksgiving dinner.

Sometimes, a tweaked tradition is an unexpected blessing.

A dearth of turkey movies

If you're a film fan, chances are you've seen plenty of turkeys. But you probably haven't seen plenty of films about turkeys.

That's because, as holidays go, Thanksgiving is less well represented in Hollywood filmmaking than Flag Day.

As I was thinking of ideas for something to write related to Thanksgiving, I decided on a top 10 list of films in which the Thanksgiving dinner is a central part of the plot. As it turns out, I could only find five that I'd seen.

See, the website I write for has labels for each movie, related to plots and themes, in order to help you find similar movies. So I hopped on the page for Planes, Trains and Automobiles and followed its Thanksgiving label to see what other Thanksgiving films hadn't occurred to me in my initial brainstorm. I found only two that I'd seen beyond the initial three that I'd thought of, and one of them isn't even a movie I remember having anything to do with Thanksgiving.

At first, this Thanksgiving blackout surprised me a bit. After all, Thanksgiving is the second most hyped holiday in the United States, and carries with it the most vacation days as well. Whereas most people get only a single day off for Christmas, most get two for Thanksgiving. (Not me -- I'll be here on Friday, but figure to have plenty of time to update my blog while doing almost zero actual work.)

But then it occurred to me why this is. Thanksgiving's aforementioned big brother, Christmas, is one heckuva bully, and doesn't want to give Thanksgiving any of its own time in the spotlight.

Quite simply, a Thanksgiving-themed movie is not a great commercial bet for a movie studio -- especially if that same studio has already had its Christmas movie out for three weeks. If you're trying to hype up Christmas, hyping up Thanksgiving at the same time doesn't really work. You could release the Thanksgiving movie a few weeks earlier than the Christmas movie if you really wanted. But given that most Christmas movies come out within two weeks after Halloween, you'd have to release the Thanksgiving movie sometime in mid-October. And Thanksgiving just isn't on people's radars at that point. Nor can you rely on Thanksgiving weekend itself as a good time for people to see Thanksgiving movies. Once you've hit the shopping frenzy known as Black Friday, Thanksgiving is forgotten, remembered only in the form of the Tums you're popping to quell your indigestion.

But in case you are interested in seeking out a Thanksgiving movie this year, here are my thoughts on and rankings of the five I've seen:

1) Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987, John Hughes). Release date: November 25, 1987. The best Thanksgiving movie isn't even about the social dynamics at a Thanksgiving table, but rather, about the quest to actually get to that table. Perhaps that explains its release date, just one day before Thanksgiving that year. Whenever I catch a few minutes of this wonderful film on TV, it always reminds me fondly of John Candy. This year that fondness will be doubled, as this is our first Thanksgiving without John Hughes. My guess is that it'll be playing around the clock.

2) Pieces of April (2003, Peter Hedges). Release date: October 17, 2003. This indie features Katie Holmes as a flighty hipster trying to cobble together a Thanksgiving meal for her diverse, dysfunctional family. They went with that mid-October release date here, but since it received only a limited release, commercial factors were probably not a huge consideration. It's a flawed film, but has a lot of heart and some nice touches. This is what #5 on this list was probably going for when it failed so massively.

3) Scent of a Woman (1992, Martin Brest). Release date: December 23, 1992. This is the one I forgot had anything to do with Thanksgiving. Turns out, Chris O'Donnell's character is accompanying Al Pacino's blind colonel as a job over Thanksgiving to pay for his Christmas airfare home, and they travel to the colonel's brother's for Thanksgiving, with awkward and comic results. I liked this film fine at the time, but over the years have come to see it as a bit emotionally manipulative. Not to mention that Pacino's character, with his fondness for saying "Hoo-ah!," has become a cartoonish caricature of a cinematic icon. Seems a shame that this should be the only Oscar win for the formerly excellent Pacino.

4) What's Cooking? (2000, Gurinder Chadha). Release date: November 17, 2000. This is the Indian director's multi-cultural take on an American Thanksgiving (what other kind of Thanksgiving is there?), featuring a black family, a Jewish family, a Latino family and an Asian family. It shows the predictable strain of too many characters and too many plot points, plus hits high levels of melodrama at times, but has some nice moments as well. The film wouldn't have been on my radar at all except that it briefly features an actress I was sort of obsessed with at the time, who resembled my most recent ex-girlfriend.

5) Home for the Holidays (1995, Jodie Foster). Release date: November 3, 1995. With the talent that was gathered -- Foster directing, Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. among the stars -- this should have been a good movie. Then why did I find it to be a train wreck of wacky behavior and dysfunctional cliches? This movie can't be as bad as I remember it being, but I really hated it -- I found it loud, shrill, and consistently unbelievable. Especially surprising given that I figured Foster would have a soft touch, rather than wielding a sledgehammer of tired tropes.

Thanksgiving-themed movies I'm aware of but haven't seen: The Myth of Fingerprints, Four Brothers.

Did I miss any? Let me know.

And have a great Thanksgiving.

A busy movie year

It's become clear to me that in 2009, I have committed to my love of cinema more than ever before. Starting this blog is just one example. Others include attending six different critic screenings, and embarking on a major ranking project through the wonderful resource known as Flickchart.

The latest example: As of last night, I have now seen more new movies in the calendar year 2009 than in any previous calendar year.

And it happened on November 22nd, with 39 days still remaining on the calendar.

That's right, A Home at the End of the World, which my wife picked up from the library but which happened to be on my list of films to review, was the 212th previously unseen movie that I've seen in 2009. Couple that with the 37 films I've seen for at least the second time this year, and that's 249 movies on the 326th day of the year. That's an average of .76 movies a day, or just over three-quarters of a movie each day.

The old record for new movies was set on December 31, 2005, when Good Night, and Good Luck. was my 211th and final movie of 2005. I don't know how many repeat viewings I had that year, since I didn't keep track of that at the time, but it probably wasn't more than a dozen. That's another thing about my 2009: I have also made a special effort to revisit films that I've loved, leading to what is probably also a calendar year high for movies revisited.

The next closest year to 2005 was 2006, when I saw 205 movies. In no other year have I broken 200. Wedding planning knocked me out of contention for 2007 and 2008. (I got married in April 2008).

Now, I only started keeping track of my running movie order, which has produced this information, in the spring of 2002. That means there could have been some earlier year when I saw more than 211 movies. But given the way I'd been busy with various schooling (high school, then college 91-95, then grad school 98-99), and other complicating factors in my life (moving, not having my own TV, etc.), the only year that would have had a chance would have been 2001. That year, I was trying to make my living exclusively on being a freelance film critic, so I saw a lot of movies. However, I didn't really get started on that until May, having spent the first four months of the year wrapping up business in New York, then driving out to California over the course of a week. Given that busy schedule, I may not have watched more than a dozen movies in the first quarter of 2001, which pretty much puts that year out of contention.

So what does it all mean? I don't know. What does anything I write about on this blog mean?

But one thing is clear: I am a movie lover through and through, and in a way, 2009 has also helped reconfirm that watching movies can be a purpose in life. Some things that may have defined me in the past have taken a clear back seat in terms of their position in my daily life. I am always looking for my next score, and if I use the language of a drug addict in this metaphor, it's because movies are an addictive drug for me -- happily, one with no side effects.

And for me, this addiction is a positive thing. It drives me onward and fuels me in my pursuit toward greatness. I feel like the more I see, the more I consider, the more I compare and the more I write, the closer I get to a full-time career as a "film scholar," if I dare use such highfalutin language. I don't have to be employed at an institution of higher learning to be a film scholar, though that might be something I'd like to consider at some point. I just need to watch a whole lot of movies, and think intelligently about them.

And damn is that fun.