Getting acquainted with ... Roger Corman

This is the latest in my series called Getting Acquainted, where I, um, make myself acquainted with cinematic icons with whom I wasn't previously familiar. I watch three of their films during the month in question, then write about them here.

"It's like a Roger Corman movie." That's what I knew primarily about Roger Corman before last month, that he's known for making movies with a certain set of key components that makes people compare other movies to them. I'd heard his name most often in connection with films that had some kind of tawdry, exploitation quality to them. But I didn't know, just from that context, what flavor of tawdry they were, if you follow me.

I also didn't know if Corman was primarily a director or primarily a producer. The answer is "Yes." While has an astounding 398 producing credits listed on IMDB (and I'd have to really comb them to see what they constitute), he also has 56 directing credits. So let's just say he's been a busy man and he's done a lot of things. (He also has 34 acting credits and even six writing credits.) And he's still going today.

So I chose to watch two movies he directed and one he produced, all of which seemed to speak to some aspect of this man. And when I saw the following title, I just had to make it my first Corman movie of November ...

The Wasp Woman (1959, Roger Corman). Watched: Monday, November 7th

I wanted to immerse myself in the apparent B-movie glory of Roger Corman, so what better way to do it than a movie called The Wasp Woman?

As it turns out, this movie is pretty damn prescient. It's about the founder/president of a successful cosmetics company who has also been the face of the company throughout its years of success. However, she's getting long in the tooth -- in other words, she's in her early 40s -- and she wants a youth serum that will help keep her the face of the company without having to accept the compromise of her being an "old lady." As luck would have it, she is solicited by a mad scientist who has been working with bees, and has developed a way to reverse the aging process by extracting enzymes from the royal jelly of a queen wasp. Of course, there's a side effect -- from time to time, you develop the physical characteristics of a wasp. Or a sort-of cheap-looking wasp mask, at least. And then you start murdering people.

As I was watching, I was immediately struck by how well this movie might be remade in a Botox-obsessed culture like ours. (Well, we're obsessed with making fun of Botox, at least.) The desire for a fountain of youth has, of course, been an age-old defining characteristic of human beings, but somehow I found this serum -- which, like Botox, gets injected -- to seem a particularly timely form of commentary by the writers and director, even though they couldn't have anticipated the advent of something exactly like Botox. (As it turns out, the movie was remade in 1995, but that was also before Botox -- before we were culturally aware of it, anyway.)

The movie itself is pretty cheesy and is fairly minimalist in most respects. It's a scant 73 minutes in length, and only achieves that running time thanks to a prologue that was added by director Jack Hill when it appeared on TV two years later. (It's come to be part of the official version of the film, and features the scientist getting fired from his job as a beekeeper because he's interested only in experiments and not what he was hired to do.)

But damn it if this movie isn't also fun. As I was watching this movie, an impression of Corman started to form. Namely, that he's capable of giving audiences what they want (B-movie popcorn thrills that don't require too much mental capacity) on an exceedingly low budget (the wasp mask is pretty cheap looking and is only used in small doses). Still, this is not simply a monster movie -- it's got some sly social commentary woven into its fabric, and perfectly fine performances by Susan Cabot in the lead role and a variety of others who try to piece together Janice Starlin's secret, which relates both to her mysterious age reversal and the disappearance/death of several characters who try to get in her way. What isn't entirely clear -- though it probably doesn't need to be -- is how her face transforms into a wasp and back without any signs of the trauma of such a violent conversion.

The only way The Wasp Woman would have been more satisfying to me -- given my realistic expectations of what it was likely to be, that is -- is if it had had a bit more of the outrageousness implied by the poster. However, having watched a month full of Hammer movies in October, I was well aware of the huge gulf between what these pulpy movie posters promise and what the films are actually capable of delivering. (It's also interesting to note that the creature shown in this poster is pretty much the opposite of the wasp woman we see in the movie, who has a human body but a wasp head.)

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961, Roger Corman). Watched: Saturday, November 12th

When I was doing some quick research about Corman, the first thing I learned about him, after having his B-movie reputation confirmed, was that he also had a period of some critical acclaim that was very important to him. This was during the 1960s, when he was adapting Edgar Allan Poe movies. Speaking of Hammer movies, I feel like he should have been working for Hammer during this period.

Choosing The Pit and the Pendulum allowed me to a) familiarize myself a bit more with Poe's story, and b) see Vincent Price back in his heyday. However, I soon learned that the plot of this adaptation has more in common with Poe's The Premature Burial (an actual adaptation of which Corman directed the following year).

The story takes place in 16th Century Spain, where an Englishman named Francis (John Kerr) has come to the home of his brother-in-law Nicholas (Price) to inquire about the circumstances of his sister's recent death. He gets a variety of different stories before learning what appears to be the truth -- that his sister Elizabeth died of fright after becoming obsessed with the torture devices housed in the bowels of the castle, which once belonged to Nicholas' father, a notorious figure in the Spanish Inquisition. However, Nicholas himself has come to believe that his wife was not dead, that she may have been buried alive -- and that her ghosts walks the corridors of the castle at night. The only way a pendulum actually figures into the story is that its climax involves one of the characters (I won't say which, in case you want to see it) tied up underneath a swinging pendulum blade that is getting closer and closer to his torso. (Honestly, I think Corman just ripped this off from one of the Saw movies.)

I was suitably impressed by this movie. Although it too was likely made on the cheap, it seems to have a significantly higher budget than The Wasp Woman, and that presents itself in the form of some creepy atmosphere and decent sets. (In fact, the better comparison for this movie than The Wasp Woman is the Hammer movies, which also featured period stories and had period sets and costumes -- and I think this stacks up very well with those.) I was also impressed by how Corman didn't shy away from making it as scary as he knew how to. There's one corpse discovered in the movie that's frozen in a final primal scream, indicating that a certain character (I won't say if it's Elizabeth) indeed has been buried alive. The movie was made 50 years ago and it still gave me a chill. (Then again, I guess Alfred Hitchcock got there a year earlier with the reveal of the corpse of Norman Bates' mother.)

I found that Price gives a good performance. He has to experience quite a lot of anguish during the course of the narrative, and fears of losing his sanity, and that sort of thing. He goes big but not too big, and it never seems to be hammy. Not having seen much Price, I assumed he was a ham, but he seems here to have had real ability.

I also noticed that Corman had a good eye for detail in this movie. There was this one scene where Price is creeping down a winding stone staircase, and there's a rat standing on one of the stairs. I don't know why that moment stuck with me, but it reminded me positively of the effect created by Tod Browning in Dracula (which was another three decades earlier than this), where Dracula's castle is filled with all kind of odd and unsettling critters around the periphery of the action. It's not that seeing a rat is so odd and unsettling -- it's that someone had to think to put it there. (I can't describe the moment well enough -- you probably think I'm crazy for devoting a whole paragraph to it.)

Death Race 2000 (1975, Paul Bartel). Watched: Monday, November 28th

Now this is what I was thinking of when I thought of Roger Corman.

The idea I had of Corman was more based in the 1970s and more focused on exploitation. And thus begins the producing segment of my new acquaintance with Roger Corman: a science fiction film about a popular game/sport that involves killing people with automobiles, which inspired everything from Mad Max to The Running Man.

If you are currently balking at the notion that a low-budget Roger Corman movie could have been the inspiration for Mad Max (which is also low-budgeted, don't you forget), consider their release dates. Max didn't come out until four years after Death Race 2000. In fact, I finished watching the movie before I was done with my workout at the gym, so I watched an interview between Leonard Maltin and Corman as one of the DVD extras. Corman, sounding proud yet sweetly humble, said that George Miller basically credited Death Race 2000 with helping him create Mad Max.

The action occurs in the year 2000, when the United States is ruled from foreign shores by a malevolent figured called Mr. President, who is in the midst of a constant campaign to make boogeymen out of the French. (The satirical elements of this movie -- you could say that all its elements are satirical -- hit you from the first moment.) The most popular sport is a cross-continental car race where the drivers get points for killing pedestrians along the way. Oh, the pedestrians are duly aware of the danger -- they actually make games of trying to flirt with death and even take out the cars if they're able. The race is usually fatal for most of the drivers -- there are only five, and each has a navigator as well -- but the one who makes it to the other side (to "New Los Angeles") is richly rewarded and heralded as an international sports hero.

David Carradine plays the lead, a several-time winner and one of the only surviving drivers to win multiple times. He wears a full-body black rubber suit (a bit like The Gimp in Pulp Fiction) and is called Frankenstein, because his body has been pasted back together so many times. And guess who plays one of the other drivers -- Martin Kove! (You know, the evil sensai in The Karate Kid.) Or maybe you'd be more excited about this other driver: a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone! In the piece with Maltin, Corman talks about how this movie catapulted Stallone toward the stardom he has today. Carradine was contractually promised top billing, but since the film's release they've been able to credit Stallone with equal weight in subsequent advertising.

Simply put, this movie was a joy. It's everything you'd want from a great exploitation movie, with fast cars and violence, and a terrific B-movie quality despite its high-concept premise. I hadn't known for sure that this movie would have a sense of humor -- after all, what footage I've seen of the remake from several years ago starring Jason Statham, called simply Death Race (and also produced by Corman), makes that seem like a much more straightforward exercise in brutality and nihilism. There's plenty of violence here, as bodies squish magnificently in bloody messes under the front tires of speeding cars. But the satire comes first and foremost, as right from the start you meet a bunch of ridiculous talking-head media types, whose celebrity has derived entirely from the glee they get over the race and their apparent personal relationships with the drivers. (One awful female analyst refers to every single driver as "a close personal friend of mine.") The bloodlust for this sport is lacquered on thick, and it works terrifically.

And although Carradine and Stallone are both great -- funny to see Sly with such a baby face, and in the role of the villain -- the stars of this movie are the cars. It's the cars that made me feel most sure that George Miller must have been inspired by this film, even before Corman stated that in the interview. (Especially The Road Warrior.) Here, have a look at some of these babies:

(That includes Frankenstein's car twice, because you really had to see that one from the side.)

The speed at which they drive these things is truly phenomenal -- it almost seems like it should be digital -- and gives the film an extra sense of kinetics.

The film has this hell-for-leather attitude from start to finish. It's definitely crass, as most of the drivers are egotistical narcissists who will do anything to win, and there's a fair amount of nudity as well. This is of course in addition to numerous shots of people being run over by cars, with varying degrees of gore. But the great thing is that you don't have to feel guilty about enjoying the movie, because the exploitation is delivered with a brain on its shoulders. This is full-on satire of the thirst for violence inherent in many American sports, and of the logical future totalitarian incarnations of American jingoism. And by making the French the personification of all forces that oppose the United States, the film actually anticipates George W. Bush and Freedom Fries. (Favorite part: When Mr. President lists the crimes allegedly perpetrated by the French, and one of them includes "completely destroying our telephone system." I spat out laughter on that one, even as I was out of breath on the stairmaster at the gym.)

Okay, Roger Corman -- thanks for a fun month.

I was going to end 2011 with a final installment of cheap and tawdry cinema, but it turns out, almost none of the films of Russ Meyer are available on DVD through Netflix. (In fact, I could find none -- not even Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.)

So instead I'm going to end 2011 with a cinematic icon who will help even up the gender balance in the heretofore male-dominated Getting Acquainted series. The lone female thus far has been Elizabeth Taylor in June, but she'll have company after December.

See you back here after New Year's to discuss ...

Coitus interruptus

Ever have someone walk in on you during a sexual act, either with a partner or by yourself? And it's like an immediate splash of cold water on what you had going?

That happened metaphorically last night during my viewing of Shame, which was interrupted by a fire alarm.

Anyone ever had that happen before? It was a first for me.

It was right near the end of one of director Steve McQueen's numerous long takes, when Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is on his date with Marianne (Nicole Beharie) at a Manhattan restaurant. It's a great take that lasts nearly ten minutes of screen time, including up to a half-dozen interruptions by the waiter. And for half a second I thought "A brilliant way to cut the tension, McQueen! A fire alarm goes off in the restaurant!"

Only the fire alarm wasn't going off in the restaurant, it was going off in our movie theater. Followed immediately by a pre-recorded voice asking people to exit the theater and head for the nearest staircase.

What a tease!

My mind immediately began calculating the repercussions of this event. Would they start the movie back up after it was resolved? If not, would I get a pass to come to another movie for free? If so, how long would I have to wait in line for that pass? And even though I was very much enjoying this film, would I want to use a second one of my limited number of opportunities to get to theater to watch this movie again from the beginning -- especially during Oscar season, when there are so many films that demand my attention?

Never mind the fact that there could actually be something wrong -- a fire, or a bomb threat, or some kind of legitimate danger in the theater.

So all the occupants of all the 12? 13? screening rooms filed out into the cold, quickly filling up the sidewalk next to a busy street. (Yes, it does sometimes get cold at night in Los Angeles in December.) Not only was it us theatergoers, but there were also people from the adjoining restaurant and from Barnes & Noble, both of which make up one end of LA's Westside Pavilion, along with the theater.

Pretty soon a staffperson from the theater was telling us that it had been verified as a false alarm, but they still had to wait for the fire department to arrive to shut off the alarm. And a couple minutes later, two fire trucks swooped in, alarms blazing.

Meanwhile, I texted a few people and updated my Facebook status with what had happened. But that wasn't the only thing I was doing. I was also starting to panic.

See, if I had just had to wait it out, that would be one thing. But I had a complicating factor: I had what was rapidly becoming an intestinal emergency.

An hour earlier, I'd worried that my enjoyment of Shame would be tainted by something quite different than a fire alarm. Namely, just moments before the movie was about to start, I felt that gurgle in my stomach that told me that a bowel movement wasn't far off. How far off, at this point, was uncertain. So instead of just taking care of business and entering the movie late (or maybe even at the tail end of the trailers if I was lucky), I just entered the theater and hoped for the best.

Fortunately, you'd be surprised at how becoming engrossed in a well-made movie can take your mind off a thing like an intestinal emergency. In fact, I have this theory that your body can cooperate with you under the right circumstances, and prevent you from having to take a crap when it isn't logistically feasible. The example I've always used as my evidence was that I've never had to go #2 in the middle of a date -- never even had to squelch the need. But on numerous occasions, as soon as I'm out of that situation, my body has immediately forced me to take care of the business it was tactfully putting on hold.

So there was nary a gurgle during the entire first hour of Shame. But once I was out in the street in a stressful situation of uncertain duration, the need came back with a vengeance. And pretty soon I realized I might have to roll the dice.

There was no way back into the building to use those restrooms. But there was a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf across busy Pico Boulevard. I've always considered a coffee shop to be the ideal place to use the bathroom without being an actual patron. There's enough hubbub going on that no one notices you going straight to the bathroom, and even if they do, and even if they did confront you, you could just say you were taking care of business prior to ordering.

However, going this route would mean I wouldn't be able to monitor what was going on across the street. What if they let everyone back in, got everyone organized and had already restarted the movie while I was still waiting in line for the single bathroom in the coffee shop?

On the other hand, how much longer could I deny my biological mandate before I'd have a real disaster on my hands?

I had just started to look for an opening in traffic when the fire alarm came croaking to an end. I looked around and saw people filing back into the building. This new piece of information seemed to shift my body's internal mechanisms into the next gear of urgency. Suddenly I found myself trying to make my way up the stairs past what seemed to be an incredibly large number of old people (this theater has always attracted quite a large number of elderly folks, even though it is designed to appeal to hipsters). Which is extremely challenging, because you can't rush them -- but nor could I deny my body any longer.

When I finally made it back up to the ticket takers, I asked if they were starting the movies back up, and if so, how soon. "Once we think all the people are back in," they said. "Do I have time to go to the bathroom?" I asked. "I think so," they said.

And I did. I got back to my seat, and they resumed Shame about two minutes later.

And though I began this post with a metaphor about being sexually interrupted and losing your arousal, the metaphor doesn't carry through with regards to Shame. I got the groove back right away. Another of the benefits of good filmmaking is that it draws you right back in, no matter where you left off. And Shame is good filmmaking indeed. Perhaps "good" is not strong enough a word.

A funny side note: Near the end of Shame, I felt a sense of deja vu, as Brandon and a handful of others are evacuated from a subway car after an alarm goes off. Fortunately, unlike me, he didn't care about getting back on that same car.

Now I just need to figure out how much shame I'll feel if I end up ranking a movie about a sex addict as one of the year's best films.

That post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas lull

Who would have thought that the quietest release date of the year would be the first one in December?

Conventional wisdom has it that there are really only two times of the year that are considered thoroughly undesirable for releasing new films: The first two weeks of January, and the last week of August through the first week or two of September. But considering this week's new output, maybe we'll have to slap an asterisk on the first week after Thanksgiving and call it "potentially undesirable."

I mean, the new release I'm most aware of this week, Steve McQueen's Shame, is about a sex addict and is rated NC-17, for crying out loud.

I guess it makes a certain amount of sense. At this time of year, you want to capitalize either on Thanksgiving hype or Christmas hype in releasing a new movie. Fall somewhere in between that, and the movie's release seems sort of like a dump.

On the other hand, that's patently crazy to say. I mean, December is the month most closely associated with Oscar bait. But maybe the Oscar bait movies don't start coming out until the second release date. Such as Young Adult -- unlikely to be a nominee, but from a recently nominated director (Jason Reitman) -- which comes out next Friday. If so, I've never noticed that phenomenon in the past.

But this year I started thinking "December 2nd, December 2nd ... haven't seen that date on any billboards around town yet." There was a good reason for that -- it wasn't on any billboards.

The funny thing is, there's at least one other movie releasing today that I should have heard of, but simply hadn't -- not until two days ago, anyway.

Namely, there's a new version of Sleeping Beauty opening today, starring Emily Browning. With that kind of name recognition -- Beauty, not Browning -- it's really saying something that I hadn't heard of it before Wednesday. Reading up on it quickly, I discovered it got mixed to negative reviews at Cannes. Sounds like a dump to me -- even in December.

Then you've got two foreign language films coming out in limited release -- Autoreiji from Japan and Kinyarwanda from France (but set in Rwanda). At least Autoreiji comes with an English translation (Outrage) and is directed by a familiar name ("Beat" Takeshi Kitano). Then again, only cineastes are really familiar with Kitano's work (and I classify myself as "familiar" even though I have not seen a single one of his films -- well, except for Battle Royale, in which he appeared as an actor).

And that's it. Literally.

I guess we'll benefit from a calm before the storm -- it'll be a nice weekend to catch up before we'll be slammed by more new releases than we can possibly handle. I myself plan to see either Shame or The Artist, the latter of which is getting some of the best press of any film this year. I actually feel slightly more inclined to prioritize Shame, since The Artist is not likely to get lost in the shuffle that will descend in a couple weeks, but Shame is. After seeing and respecting a lot about (but not loving) Steve McQueen's Hunger, I'll be curious to see what bracing narrative techniques he can bring to this subject matter. Plus, I've got a man-crush on Michael Fassbender. (Then again, who doesn't.)

However, if you've read this post, you know I have some qualms with the idea of telling my wife "Hey honey, I'm on my way out to see that movie about the sex addict."

The predominant physical delivery method for movies?

There are moments in life when you notice a shift in the way things are done -- in the way people talk about things, in the way people do things. The shift doesn't occur in that moment, of course -- it's gradual. But there's always a moment when you first acknowledge it.

I had one of those moments yesterday.

KCRW, the local NPR station, doesn't have commercials of course -- it's public radio. But it does have little sponsorship interstitials to pimp the underwriters, which are different from commercials, I guess, in the sense that the station produces the promos rather than the underwriters themselves. And it's supposed to be just an acknowledgement, a brief piece that doesn't contain any discussion of the actual quality or benefits of the product in question.

Many of these are for movies. I like hearing them because, you know, I like movies. Sometimes they're for movies currently in theaters. Sometimes they're for movies that are allegedly still in theaters, but really are not. (I just heard one for The Ides of March on my way in to work.) And sometimes they're for movies that are about to arrive on video. As in the one I heard yesterday, which went something like this:

"KCRW is brought to you by The Help, from Dreamworks Pictures. Available on BluRay December 6th."

The first thing I thought was, "Well, what if I want to get it on DVD?"

The second thing I thought was, "Ah, I get it -- DVD is yesterday's news. BluRay is now where it's at."

This interstitial implied two things to me:

1) There are really no new movies anymore that are not being released on BluRay. I kind of knew that, but it took something like this to make me consciously acknowledge it.

2) It is sort of assumed that pretty much everyone has BluRay now. Enough that advertising its arrival on DVD seems outdated.

In the past, I believe KCRW said "available on DVD and BluRay." But DVD has now been dropped. The Help probably wasn't the first time it was dropped -- it was just the first time I noticed it.

I find this kind of fascinating. We only just bought our BluRay player in August of 2010, and we weren't the last among our friends to get one. But by now, since it doesn't cost a king's ransom to invest in one, KCRW is assuming that everyone has one -- everyone who's anyone, anyway. Everyone who's really serious about movies.

Of course, this could just be one random decision made by one random KCRW copywriter. But really, nothing is random when it comes to writing copy. There's an intention behind everything, especially when it's short and it's pre-recorded, meaning it will play multiple times over a couple weeks. It must be efficient and it must default to the greatest level of accessibility for the most listeners.

And for the most listeners, BluRay seems to have become the most relevant medium for them to watch new movies. So says/thinks KCRW, anyway.

Now, not every part of the video industry reflects this. If you walk up to a Redbox kiosk, you will still find many more movies available on DVD than on BluRay -- maybe only half the titles are also available on BluRay, and it may be even fewer when you consider that Redbox also stocks timely old releases (you know, holiday classics around this time of year). And you won't find anything in a Redbox kiosk that's only available on BluRay. They've made the judgment that with a finite amount of physical storage space, they can serve a wider array of customers by skewing the inventory toward DVD. (It also helps that you can play DVDs in BluRay players, but not the reverse.)

But I do think it's reasonable for KCRW to have graduated beyond saying "available on DVD December 6th." When you come right down to it, perhaps it is starting to sound a little quaint.

I suppose one way around it would be to say "available on video December 6th," because the word "video" does still function as a catch-all for movies you no longer have to go to a movie theater to see. (I used it in the fourth paragraph of this piece without even thinking about it, and I bet you didn't blink.) But if we're talking solely about the impression created in the listener, the term "video" could also remind some people of "video tape." And that is certainly quaint, as they haven't made video tapes of new movies for probably six or seven years. (I got my first DVD player in 2003, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't forced into doing so by the total obsolescence of the video tape.)

Or maybe it's just that KCRW wants to sound progressive. It's no secret that many of the people who listen to public radio are liberals who probably have a decent amount of money. Your average joe may not have converted to BluRays -- you never see BluRays positioned as an impulse buy at the checkout stand at the grocery store, for example -- but maybe your average KCRW listener demands the highest quality standards for his/her movie-watching experience.

Well, I'm just glad we still watch movies using physical artifacts at all. If the prices they're charging at Target for BluRays these days -- as low as $5 for some older releases (I just bought Terminator 2: Judgment Day at that price) -- are any indication, movies as physical artifacts are on their way out, too. Of course, that's hardly the only indication of that reality. Just ask the music industry.

And so I'm expecting another day like this to come in, what, three years? Five years? KCRW will have an interstitial that says:

"KCRW is brought to you by The Hunger Games 3, available in Ultraviolet and on the cloud December 6th."

Warning! Falling glass carries dangers of injury or death!

Iron may be harder and more durable, but splintered glass can be pretty darn fatal.

My wife and I watched Iron Man 2 on Sunday night. It's the kind of movie we probably would have seen when it first came out on video, except we trusted the negative buzz. Turns out, we probably enjoyed it better than we thought we would. But I still give it a marginal thumbs down when all is said and done.

One thing I thought was absurd was how cavalier the movie was about the damage that can be done by glass shrapnel.

The first such instance is when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gets drunk at his birthday party. Being kind of a jackass seems to be the trademark of many of these superheroes, Bruce Wayne being one of the more prominent examples. Stark's particular brand of jackassery involves blowing up glass objects with the weapons in his suit. (See, he finds the iron man suit to be more comfortable party attire than a tuxedo.) Sure, the first blast, when he destroys a glass wall, is accidental, and no one is in harm's way. But then he and other people start tossing vases and champagne bottles and other objects into the air, so Stark can skeet shoot them into oblivion.

Instead of running and screaming, blinded or with serious abrasions on their face and throat, the partygoers cheer him on. See, they can't be hurt by the glass objects exploding five feet above their heads, because then that would be really irresponsible of Stark, not just cutely irresponsible. (Oh, and it would appear that neither do any party guests get hurt when the subsequent brawl between Stark and Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle), each wearing their own iron man suit, destroys Tony's whole house.)

At least the second glass danger situation isn't something the hero is directly responsible for.

At the Stark Expo in Flushing, Queens, villain Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) debuts a bunch of drones -- robots that are designed to function more or less like an iron man, but without the pilot. Hammer is told by worse villain Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) that the drones are only far enough along in their development to be able to salute. Turns out, both Hammer and the world get a big surprise when the fully operational drones burst through the glass roof of the Expo building to go off and wreak havoc on the world.

So as they smash through that glass ceiling (so to speak), it would stand to reason that glass is raining down on the hundreds if not thousands of Expo attendees below -- this time from a height of more than a hundred feet, probably more like 200. This time, they do run and scream. But, since it's a movie, no one appears to be getting killed by giant shards of falling glass, or even cut by smaller ones. Of course, people could be shown getting hurt here, because it would be the villain's fault rather than the hero's. But Iron Man 2 pusses out, which is really not so surprising -- to dwell on people getting peppered (so to speak, Ms. Potts) with falling glass is just not that useful in terms of forward narrative momentum.

It's debatable whether a person would be more hurt by glass falling from a greater height, at only the speed of gravity, or from a closer distance, blown outward at explosive speed. But I'm guessing that Stark would have killed/seriously injured more people by blowing up vases just above their heads than would be killed from a glass ceiling falling in. For one thing, those who designed the glass ceiling would probably use the same shatterproof glass that prevents you from impaling yourself on a jagged edge of your car windshield if you're thrown through it. Whereas a glass vase being blown to smithereens has no such safety-conscious engineering.

Realism. If I'm trying to find it in the movies, I'm really looking in the wrong place.

Supply and OnDemand

The pricing of movies -- from their theatrical release through their ultimate arrival in the cheap bin at the drug store -- is like a lesson in Economics 101.

When the demand is highest for a movie, its cost is also going to be highest. This is why a shitty movie that was just released can actually be $19.99 (or more) on DVD, and maybe even ten bucks more than that on BluRay. The perceived novelty of it drives up the price. A year later, that same shitty movie may be worth only five bucks in either format. It's all a matter of waiting it out.

The same is true for catching a movie in rented format. Earlier this fall, Universal played around with the idea of charging customers $60 to rent Tower Heist the same day it hit theaters (or very soon afterward). The idea was that the price would seem reasonable because the demand is so high for a just-released studio film to be available immediately in your own home. Films that are a month old, but haven't hit DVD yet, can be bought in a hotel room for usually $12.99 or so. Then the price goes down once they've hit DVD, usually to either $4.99 to rent it on pay-per-view (OnDemand), or essentially free as a Redbox rental (just over a buck) or part of your monthly Netflix plan.

Theatrical also works this way to some extent. Within the same theater, ticket prices usually stay the same from the time the movie arrives until it leaves. However, you might get to pay a bit less by waiting a couple weeks, if there's a theater that shows second-run movies near your house. (Too far away, and you're sacrificing your savings on the ticket by paying more for gas.)

What I really want to concentrate on today, however, is rentals. Universal may have scrapped its plan to charge $60 for Tower Heist, but the idea may have been right, especially for someone like me, who can only get out to the theater a finite number of times. Especially when I place a premium on watching the movie before the middle of January.

I've been an unusually high customer of VOD (video on demand) for about the past month, and it has everything to do with getting to watch a movie at home now rather than waiting until it comes on DVD (probably in February or March). See, I try to watch all the movies of significance that I can from a given release year before the morning the Oscar nominations are announced -- which will be January 24th in 2012. That's when I finalize my list of rankings from first to worst, and in order for the list to seem complete, I'd like movies from November and December to be (almost) as well represented as movies that came out in March or April.

But that second group has the distinction of being available to watch on DVD whenever I want. The first group does not.

And so it is that I've been like a heat-seeking missile, focusing on movies currently in theaters that are also available at home on my TV right now. It's this mentality that has led me to pay a combined total of $23.97 to watch Melancholia ($9.99), The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence ($6.99), and most recently (this past weekend), Margin Call ($6.99).

I guess it's better than paying $60 for Tower Heist.

Actually, I've liked all three movies to varying degrees. (Yes, even Human Centipede.) And if I'd gone to see them in the theater, those movies might have cost me more like $40 rather than $24.

But only Melancholia is a movie I might have actually seen in the theater. With the others, it was all about trying to make my list of year-end rankings seem more comprehensive.

I guess I should tell you that traditionally, I'm a bit puritanical when it comes to using pay-per-view, or OnDemand, or video on demand, whichever term is really the correct one. I'm generally not willing to pay the extra couple bucks for the convenience of being able to watch a movie on the spur of the moment, rather than waiting for it to arrive through Netflix or going to a Redbox kiosk to pick it up. In fact, I'm the guy who will go to incredible lengths to be sure I don't pay a late fee for a rental, or don't let my Netflix rentals sit around too long collecting dust on the coffee table. I'm always conscious of the margins, if you will.

But with Margin Call and the others, the demand truly did win out. These movies released theatrically in October (or with Melancholia, November) carry an extra value to me in that they contribute slightly more to my certainty that I've surveyed the complete list of available options from a given release year before determining which movie I like best (or worst). And in each case I was able to watch it at a time when a theatrical screening wouldn't have been possible -- with Melancholia and Centipede, it was late at night, and with Margin Call it was during the day while I was watching my son. (See, I didn't think I should subject him to the grotesqueries of Human Centipede, which certainly has me in the running for Father of the Year.)

However, I should say that I'm glad not all movies are made available this way. It could get very expensive for me very quickly.

Then again, isn't part of being a movie fanatic that you can't count your pennies too much? If you're like me, you've probably made the determination that it just costs what it costs to see movies. If you're determined to see a movie in the theater in 3D, and it costs $16.50, well then that's just what it costs. If we were model train lovers, we might spend $20 on a row of bushes to go alongside the tracks. But our hobby is movies, and so we spend that twenty bucks on a movie and a popcorn instead.

If you are counting your pennies, you can always wait until DVD -- but then what would you talk about at cocktail parties?

However, the characters in Margin Call itself probably wouldn't have been too happy with me. I bought their security at an increased price despite seeing it in a compromised format (at home rather than on the big screen), and don't even have any assets to show for it -- not even the toxic asset of a DVD that'll take up space on my shelf.

Guess it's good that I'm a film critic rather than a day trader.

The uncontrollable slippage of time

Warning - this post contains major spoilers about several films. Proceed with caution.

Given the creative talent behind it, it's hard for me to believe it took me three years to finally watch Synecdoche, New York.

I simply love the work of Charlie Kaufman. Two movies he wrote were my favorite movies of the years they were released -- Adaptation in 2002, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004. Being John Malkovich was also in my top ten of its year, and although I didn't see it in time to rank it for the year it was released, I even liked Human Nature pretty well.

But Kaufman's directorial debut was bad-mouthed by enough people that I just didn't prioritize seeing it. I'd heard it was ponderous, and I didn't necessarily like the footage I'd seen, nor what I knew about the plot. If it weren't for how ponderous I heard it was, though, I surely would have seen it. In essence, I allowed other people to turn me against a man whose entire body of work had spoken to me. Maybe I just wasn't in a ponderous place at that time in my life.

I don't know what came along in the last two weeks that finally changed my mind -- I'm not feeling particularly ponderous now, either -- but I impulsively promoted Synecdoche, New York to the top of my Netflix queue. I guess I imagined it might be fun to watch over Thanksgiving. I quickly learned that my wife was still carrying the same prejudices against Synecdoche that I'd carried, so it was pretty clear I'd be watching it by myself. Which I did on Sunday night after she went to bed.

Oh man. Simply put, I loved this film. It started a bit slow for me, but once it got going, it was bursting with just as many ideas as his previous films. I'm not going to say it was better than Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine, which are both in my top 100 films of all time. But there's a good chance I like it better than Malkovich, which I have not revisited since I saw it in the theater.

I'm not going to go into too many of the particulars of Synecdoche right now, or try to explicate the many fruitful ideas about the creative process, introspection, fear, intimacy, alienation, artistic paralysis and mortality that get bandied about in this movie. However, I do want to talk a little bit about what I've identified in the subject of this post as "the uncontrollable slippage of time."

See, the main thrust of Synecdoche is a playwright (Philip Seymour Hoffman) using his genius grant to write and execute a massive play about his life. His goal is to make a brutally honest piece of art, but in doing that, he loses his filter about what to include and what not to include. The project becomes so big that the set grows to the size of several football fields, actors are rehearsing numerous scenes simultaneously (with no audience anywhere in sight), and the playwright regularly writes scenes based on things that happened in his real life only hours beforehand. It's a clear metaphor for Kaufman's renowned affliction of wanting to cram his entire experience of the world into his work, which was a main theme in Adaptation.

So what ends up happening is that he works on this project for decades, as the lives of he and everyone involved become hopelessly intertwined, and eventually, nothing exists for him (and even them) except this play. What I found fascinating was how Kaufman portrays the passage of time. The characters don't just get older -- they get older in fits and starts, without any of the cues filmmakers typically use to indicate time passing. Hoffman's Caden Cotard struggles with his own skewed perception of time quite prominently, especially when it relates to his estranged daughter, who moved to Germany with his ex-wife (Kaufman regular Catherine Keener). When learning that she has become an exotic dancer whose body is covered with tattoos of flowers, Caden screams "But she's only four years old!" Later, on her death bed, she has become so estranged from him that they literally do not understand each other. They have to wear headsets to communicate, as his headset translates her words from German to English and hers translates his from English to German. This from a girl who had developed a full vocabulary in English before moving to Germany, and has American parents. Clearly, that's not "realistic" -- it's just a metaphor for their estrangement. But it's quite an effective one.

Numerous passages in this film show the march of time as an element Caden can't control. The movie makes evident that Caden was "supposed to" end up with Hazel (Samantha Morton), who seems to be his soul mate. In fact, so clearly were they intended for each other that Hazel ends up getting involved with the actor who plays Caden in the play, and Caden ends up getting involved with the actress who plays Hazel. Yet their relationship is defined by botching these key moments, these opportunities, and then watching helplessly as time hurries them away into other entanglements that keep them separated.

All of this is underscored by the fact that it's becoming the actual future, making everything seem a bit more alien and spartan, mirroring the character's inner life. Not only are there those headsets that serve as translators for Caden and his daughter, but the sky starts to fill with dirigibles -- as though dirigibles are going to be the favored method of transportation of the 2020s and 2030s. (Interestingly, the TV show Fringe offers the same prevalence of blimps in its alternate version of Earth.)

I found the ending of Synecdoche to be chilling. Caden is an old man, and the set is finally empty of people. All these characters in his life have died or disappeared, leaving only an empty set and one actress who came on board late in the process for a very fringe role in his life. (She plays a character from a dream experienced by a character who is, herself, imaginary. Yep, that gets at how much Caden has crawled inside himself.) In the film's final shot, he sits next to her on a bench and rests his head on her shoulder, as the last ounces of life seem to be on the verge of trickling out of him. "Okay, I've figured out how I want to do the play ..." he says as the screen fades to white.

This particular combination of elements really affected me, and made me realize how movies that deal with similar topics of lost time and regret have a special claim on me. After this long preamble, here are a couple others:

Vanilla Sky (2001, Cameron Crowe). I think there's a lot of brilliant material in Vanilla Sky, but the end was the part that really drove it home for me. When Tom Cruise's David Aames finally realizes that he's been cryogenically frozen for 150 years, and his apparent waking life has just been an extended lucid dream, it's devastating. As he's riding up in a glass elevator toward the top of a skyscraper, the future world visible in the background at too great a distance to know it's even the future, the full weight of what's happened to him sinks in -- the idea that all the events he thought were current in his life actually played themselves out a century-and-a-half ago, and everyone he knows has been dead for a century. There's something about that moment I find exquisitely melancholic.

Click (2006, Frank Coraci). I discussed this a little bit in my Double Jeopardy series in the summer of 2010, when I revisited films that I thought I might have liked too much. If you think Click is just a regular old lowest common denominator Adam Sandler movie, think again. The remote control that takes over Michael Newman's life makes literal this idea of "the uncontrollable slippage of time." Early on, Michael figures out the remote control that allows him to pause and fast-forward his life will also save his preferences (against his will) and apply them automatically. So when Michael wants to fast-forward through the mundane elements of life to get to his next promotion -- which he expects to be just a couple months off -- he actually loses years of his life when the promotion doesn't come as soon as he expected. And then again when other saved fast-forwarding scenarios arise. Before long Michael is an old man at the wedding of his grown son, having lost his wife (Kate Beckinsale) to divorce at some time between then and now -- a time Michael can't remember because he never mentally experienced those moments, living through them unconsciously as an emotionally disengaged automaton. These future scenes all take place in the 2020s or 2030s, just as in Synecdoche, lending an additional sense of sadness and loss to them.

Bicentennial Man (1999, Chris Columbus). If you thought I was crazy when I just waxed poetic about an Adam Sandler vehicle, you might think me more so when discussing a Chris Columbus movie that was Robin Williams' follow-up to the much-reviled Patch Adams (and aims similarly at a viewer's soft and squishy parts). Well, let me relieve you a little bit by telling you that I don't think Bicentennial Man is a great movie. However, it sticks with me more than it should because of how the robot servant named Andrew, played by Williams, tries over the course of two centuries to become a real human being. He is the property of one family during this time, handed down from generation to generation, as young children become old men and die, and the future steadily becomes more futuristic around them. Something about Andrew's status as a robot -- essentially immortal as long as he is maintained -- makes the issues of the perception of the passage of time more interesting. For example, how does a robot mark time, if he cannot think or feel precisely as a human does? I suppose, now that I think about it, that A.I.: Artificial Intelligence shares a lot of common story elements with Bicentennial Man -- in fact, when Haley Joel Osment's robot sinks to the bottom of the ocean, I seem to remember him being down there for decades if not centuries. But I actually sort of don't like A.I., so I'm not going to include it here.

You know, when I first had the idea to write about this, I thought I'd be including a) more titles, and b) more titles that I truly love. I've listed these movies in the order that I like them, and by the time you get to Bicentennial Man, it's only a mild and hesitant thumbs up. I'm sure there are a half-dozen other movies that fit this bill that I'm just not thinking of, where a character or characters age into a future world, without being able to stop their progression toward the inevitable long enough to prevent themselves from making life-altering mistakes. They are at the tip of my tongue, but will come no further.

Oh well. You probably don't need a thousand more words from me today anyway. You are either shopping for deals or recovering from yesterday's over-indulgence, and just because I'm at work having a really slow day, it doesn't mean you are. (But if you think of any obvious ones that fit the theme that I missed, I'd love to hear about them in my comments section.)

Today at least, spend your precious time on something other than my blog, before it slips away and is gone forever ...

Holiday family movie scrum

It's no secret I like talking about release dates on this blog. I speculate on the reasons why films are released the dates they are, and either second-guess or applaud the studios for their decisions. I also tend to notice the dates where there are too many movies coming out, or too few, or whether several movies releasing on the same date cater to the same demographic and will therefore divide the available box office to their own detriment.

Today, the day before Thanksgiving, it's this last scenario that's in play: an all-out scrum between movies intended for the young (and the young at heart).

Which has encouraged me to take my first amateurish (very amateurish) stabs at doctoring images in Microsoft Paint. Hey, what do you want, I can't afford Photoshop. Be gentle. (A childlike attempt at playing around with images for a post about children's movies? I see the thematic relevance.)

Can you ever remember three family movies releasing on the same date? Two, maybe, but three?

As The Muppets, Hugo and Arthur Christmas all hit theaters in time for your Thanksgiving box office dollars, one of them is sure to be the loser. The best bet for a hit is The Muppets; the worst, Arthur Christmas. But my guess is that The Muppets will do such business that both the others will noticeably suffer.

Needless to say, I also have a take on each film. So let's get right to it ...

Just another Muppet movie?

I was as excited as the next guy to hear that the Muppets were being revived for a new movie starring Jason Segel and Amy Adams, both of whom I like very much. (A post for another time: Amy Adams may be the most inherently sympathetic actress in decades.)

But then I got to thinking of my excitement as just another byproduct of the reboot trend.

See, there's something about a movie called The Muppets that makes you think they're going back to some essential roots, shifting the Muppet paradigm in some way, or making a be-all end-all Muppet movie whose self-reflexivity is in some way key to what it will be.

Really, though, it may be just another Muppet movie in a series that already includes a half-dozen films over 30 years.

The plot of this movie, as I understand it, has to do with the discovery of oil under the Muppet Theater, and an evil oil tycoon's attempt to raze the theater to get to the oil. But if this movie were called The Muppets Take the Oil Field or Save the Muppets or There Will Be Muppets, it really would seem like just another Muppet movie.

Instead, we've got our hopes raised by the prospect of something shiny and new yet also consummately classic. I don't really know what big difference we're expecting -- the movie is not in 3D, and the format is not changing so that the Muppets will be digital. (God forbid -- the key to their charm is their tactility, and the knowledge that an actual puppeteer is just out of the shot. I remember when the CG movie Flushed Away was made in the style of Aardman's claymation, and it was a disaster.) But admit it, we're definitely expecting something that's extra "big" about this movie, not just another installment disguised as something special because the title is going back to the basics.

In case you've forgotten, the last couple Muppet movies were not received particularly well. And in case you think I'm some kind of Muppet grump, let me tell you that I absolutely love Muppets from Space from 1999. But there's a reason that was the last theatrically released Muppet feature. Even those of you who profess to worship Jim Henson stopped being enamored with the movies sometime around The Great Muppet Caper or The Muppets Take Manhattan. I bet you didn't even see Muppets from Space.

I just think it's convenient that we're all forgetting how we dismissed the later Muppet movies, while telling everyone how excited we are to see this one. We think that it reflects positively on our character that we cherish the Muppets, but really, most of us are fair weather friends. And smartly, The Muppets has convinced us that the weather is fair again. Here's hoping that's true.

It may just be a sign of the times. We seem to be craving nostalgia more than we have at any other time in cinematic history, if you are judging only by the large number of reboots. But it's not like we're so hard up for quality family entertainment. In fact, you could argue that Pixar's run of success, coupled with some beloved films by worthy Pixar imitators, means that our current era is one of the best eras ever for movies aimed at children -- certainly better than the Disney doldrums of the 1970s and 1980s.

So are we really starved for the Muppets, or are we just tricked into thinking we are? Either way, this weekend's box office should prove that the psychology worked on us.

And as a guy who loved Kermit the Frog from my early childhood all the way until I was a 25-year-old when Muppets from Space came out, I'm glad for it.

To the tune of the Kinks' "Father Christmas"

When I was young I believed in Christmas flicks
Though I knew they're mostly bad
I'd stand in line at the movie theater
Give me some cheer and I'd be glad

But the last time I saw a Christmas movie
I found it trite and cheap and lame
I felt like the studio had mugged me
I don't want them to do the same

But they say "Arthur Christmas! Give it some money!
Don't mess around with those other flicks
It'll bomb if you don't hand it over
We want your bread so we don't take our licks
And end up unemployed pricks."

I hope Hugo doesn't get whacked

I actually don't have much of a take on Hugo, except the obvious observation that it's such a departure for Martin Scorsese.

But the "whacking" joke actually has some extra meaning beyond just being a wink at Scorsese's more familiar cinematic milieu. This film really could get whacked at the box office. Not only is the story unfamiliar (I assume) to many kids, but the running time is prohibitively long, a very Scorsese-like 127 minutes. That's a lot of squirming for a lot of parents to have to endure.

In fact, I'd say that the presence of Scorsese's name on this project has everything to do with why many people are interested in seeing it. Without that, it could be just another story nobody's heard of.

I've also heard that the 3D should be great. Seeing as how I can't actually remember the last movie I saw in the theater in 3D -- could it really have been The Green Hornet all the way back in January? -- I'm really looking forward to my 1:40 screening of Hugo this afternoon, after our early release from work.

That's right, I'm carrying on the tradition of seeing a movie on my Thanksgiving Wednesday early release for at least one more year. Ordinarily, my wife might love my help with our son if I were getting out early. But today, he'll be at daycare, since his normal Friday session was rescheduled for the holiday. That'll mean I can see a movie, guilt-free, and then just pick him up afterward.

Hugo has pretty big shoes to fill, if you consider the huge success my Thanksgiving Wednesday screening was last year. Last year on this date I saw Tangled, and it went on to be my #2 ranked film for the whole year.

If I don't post tomorrow -- and please, don't let me -- have a happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Fox, you wily bastard

It's really funny to me how the word "Fox" means different things in different contexts -- and all when we're talking about the same corporate entity.

If you're talking about Fox News, you're talking about an ultraconservative news outlet that basically makes no bones about bashing liberal ideas. This, by extension, includes Rupert Murdoch and everything he stands for, which most recently includes the phone hacking scandals in England.

However, if you're talking about Fox as the regular broadcasting network, you tend not to think about those same political affiliations. It's just one of the four big broadcasting networks that has had some of TV's most iconic programs of the last 20 years, and has consistently pushed the envelope in terms of content. In fact, you might describe it as the boldest of the major networks. That philosophy kind of extends over to FX, whose original programming has included hits like The Shield and Rescue Me.

Then if you shift to the movies, you've got 20th Century Fox, which was made famous to us as younguns as the home of the Star Wars movies, as well as Fox Searchlight, present-day provider of some of our more beloved independent films.

But when something related to Fox comes up and annoys me, I always think of the ultraconservative political aspects of the company ... even if they are not particularly relevant to thing that's bothering me.

A few weeks ago I was watching Win Win, released by Fox Searchlight, on my portable DVD player at the gym. I'd rented Win Win from Redbox, which meant I had only a short timeframe in which to return it (unless I wanted to pay an additional dollar). That meant that every minute was crucial.

So it was especially annoying that I was not allowed to skip the trailers. In fact, I wasn't even allowed to fast forward through them. Both the fast forward button and the menu button were disabled for this particular DVD. I'd press those buttons, and only a red circle with a line through it would show up on the screen -- you know, like the Ghostbusters symbol sans ghost. I eventually got to watch the movie (which I really liked), but only after seven or eight minutes worth of trailers and other bits of business finally ushered me to the title menu.

I considered writing about it on the blog at the time, and was going to call the post, simply, "Prisoner." But other writing priorities eclipsed it and it was forgotten.

Until yesterday, when I went to watch Cedar Rapids under similar circumstances. Cedar Rapids was also released by Fox Searchlight, but I might not have made that connection if it hadn't been for the disabled buttons on my DVD player. And if the Cedar Rapids DVD hadn't included a trailer for Win Win, a trailer I was therefore forced to watch in its entirety. (If you're reading this before Cedar Rapids appears in my Most Recently Watched section on the right, it's because I haven't finished it yet. I've got until Redbox demands it back at 9 p.m. tonight, and should manage to knock out the rest of it on my lunch hour.)

So what gives, Fox?

I googled some relevant search terms and could not find anyone talking about it.

Granted, the purpose of the trailers is to interest you in other offerings from the same studio/production company/what have you. We can't skip through them in the theater, so why should we be able to skip through them here?

But many studios do let you skip the ads. In fact, I think you kind of expect it when watching something in your own home. There are plenty of things you can do in your house that you can't do in the theater, like pause, rewind, talk over it and text. Why shouldn't skipping the trailers be one of those things?

I guess it could be the difference between the rental version of the disc and the version you would purchase. I've written before about how there are special rental-only versions of various movies, and in that instance, the purpose of the special version was to deny you the ability to watch the extras unless you bought the DVD. So one of the differences between the rental version and the purchase version could be the ability to skip straight to the title menu. I'd buy that as an explanation (as opposed to renting it, ha ha).

The thing is, though this pisses me off, Fox has got me by the balls. What am I going to do, stop seeing Fox Searchlight movies? If you're a film fanatic, you can't just boycott a whole film division like Fox Searchlight. And if you could, you wouldn't want it to be Fox Searchlight anyway, since it consistently releases interesting films -- two of which have been mentioned in this post.

Okay, so stop renting Fox Searchlight movies? I can't just vow to see all Fox Searchlight movies in the theater, because that works out even better for them.

Win win, indeed.

Wily, indeed.

And so, when I rent Fox Searchlight movies, if I even notice that they're Fox Searchlight movies, I've just got to factor in an extra few minutes for all those trailers.

And then just grumble impotently about it here.

Going outside the marriage for ... movies

I sometimes feel like I'm cheating on my wife.

With the movies.

Oh, it's not the rivalry for my affection you might think I'd be positing in a scenario like this. Like, I'd rather spend time watching movies than with my wife.

Rather, I'm cheating on her in the sense that I'm watching movies she might want to see, without waiting for her to be ready to see them.

Unless you are married to an equally passionate film fan -- and how many of us are lucky enough to have that -- there's probably a disparity between the amount of movies you want to watch and the amount of movies your partner wants to watch. Actually, my wife loves the movies, and has written a number of screenplays. But on any given night, given the choice of watching a movie or watching a TV show, she will choose a TV show almost every time. (And before you think my wife is some kind of philistine who prefers television to the movies, I should let you know that she also likes to keep things clean, and gets worried any time our DVR gets too close to its capacity -- which is pretty much always.)

To continue this analogy between relationships and watching movies, I sometimes feel like asking her to watch a movie is like a hard-up husband asking his wife for sex. The experience is replete with fears of rejection, which would naturally be followed by deep shame.

So I watch as many movies as I can on the sly. You know, after she's gone to bed. When I'm home alone babysitting. When I'm at the gym (on the stairmaster, in case you're wondering about the logistics of that). And I don't necessarily keep her apprised of what I'm watching. I just do my best not to watch things that I'm pretty sure she wants to watch with me. Keeping with the analogy, watching movies by myself, secretly, is the movie equivalent of masturbation. You don't want anyone to know when you're doing it and how often you're doing it, and you don't want to get caught. What's more, the whole experience can involve plenty of shame.

In order to not get caught, I try not to telegraph to my wife what I'm up to. If it's clear she's going to bed and I've already stated I'm going to stay up a little longer, the most practical thing for me to do, to ensure that I'll watch a significant chunk of the movie before I fall asleep, is to get going on it right away, while she's still futzing around on her computer. But then it's clear that I'm trying to "have a little time alone with myself" (still doing the analogy). Because of the corresponding shame, I like to make pretty sure she's off to bed before I start things up. I'm not so concerned about it that I'll hurriedly shut off the TV if she has a surprise return to the living room, but let's just say I like to stack the deck in my favor as often as possible.

Sometimes, however, I do get caught -- not even in the middle of it, but days or weeks later. Any longer than that, and it becomes unclear how recently I saw a given movie -- it could have been any old time. But there was no faking it with a movie like Melancholia, which is only just now in theaters, following a limited pay-per-view run that preceded its North American theatrical release. I had to have recently cheated on my wife on that one ... and if I'd thought about it, I probably would have known it was cheating, which I'll explain in a moment.

"You know what I also want to see is the new Lars von Trier film," my wife said to me on Sunday morning.

Caught. If I pretend I didn't see it, it's a lie. Have to fess up. Only choice.

"Oh, I saw it already."

"You did? When?"

"I saw it on pay-per-view."

This was like double cheating. Not only had I seen it without her, but I'd added extra money to our cable bill in order to do it. Good thing she didn't know that the cost of this movie was $9.99, about double the normal pay-per-view price -- a fee they were able to get away with because the movie hadn't yet hit theaters.

This was a particularly bad movie to see without her, because my wife counts Lars von Trier as one of her favorite directors. She had never said that to me in so many words until Sunday, but I might have inferred it. After all, she was the inspiration behind us watching both seasons of von Trier's Danish TV show The Kingdom, starting last Christmas. Perhaps I didn't make the conscious connection because she and I had never actually seen a von Trier movie together.

So why did I risk her "wrath" and prioritize seeing Melancholia by myself a couple Friday nights ago?

1) I'm a big fan of watching movies on pay-per-view that are currently in theaters, especially at the end of the calendar year. It's around this time that I'm beginning the home stretch toward my year-end ranking of 2011 movies, from first to last, which I finalize in January on the morning Oscar nominations are announced. Movies released late in the year are always at a premium, because you usually have to go to the theater to see them, and there are only so many trips to theater a person can make in November, December and January. The ones available at home, even for the steep sum of $9.99, are like slam dunks for inclusion on the list. Besides, $9.99 is a couple bucks less than I would expect to pay if I actually went to the theater to see it. And I had only a limited window, because the pay-per-view engagement ended on November 10th.

2) I'd watched von Trier's most recent film, Antichrist, by myself under similar circumstances (watched it on PPV, didn't tell the wife right away -- in fact, maybe didn't even tell her until our conversation on Sunday). I knew that Antichrist contained disturbing images you can't unsee, though I didn't know exactly what those images were until I saw it myself. So I didn't think my wife would necessarily ever be interested in seeing it, and certainly not under some artificial time constraints I imposed in order to qualify the movie on my year-end list. Besides, a baby falls out an open window right at the start of that film, and that topic would have made her squeamish right around the time we were trying to conceive for the first time.

3) I just didn't think of it. That's the big secret of being a husband, either a real husband or a metaphorical husband in a metaphor that equates secretly watching movies with cheating -- we're dopey about a lot of things. Sometimes it just doesn't occur to us.

The thing is, if I kept my wife apprised of all the movies I saw, it might exhaust her. She might think that I truly had a problem -- that I'm the movie equivalent of a sex addict. (Just saying "movie addict" doesn't describe the obsession well enough.) Also, she might deduce that I watch a fair number of movies when I'm acting as sole caretaker for our son. While I think this is perfectly fine -- it doesn't distract me from checking out what he's doing, and I'm ready to pause at any moment -- she might view it as me putting my needs before the needs of our child. Also, we're still unclear on exactly how soon we plan to expose him to television that's actually intended for him. Basically encouraging him to watch whatever movie I'm watching in the background could have some nebulous negative impact on him -- an impact that might become more concrete if the movie had images of sex or violence. (So, I wouldn't watch either Antichrist or Melancholia with him there. The indie dramedy Terri, which I saw while watching him yesterday afternoon, is perfectly fine.) He doesn't usually watch for more than a minute or two, but he'd have the option of sitting there and watching if he wanted.

Look, I don't really want to do this. I want to be completely above board about everything. I would love nothing more than to keep her apprised of most if not all the movies I see, and give her the opportunity to be involved in the viewing of each one.

But that's simply impossible. Yesterday I offered to her that I probably watch five movies for every one movie she watches, which means I have to watch a lot of things without her, some of which she may want to see. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't given her a 5:1 ratio like that -- not only does it basically tell her that I'm "sneaking out" to see these other movies more often than she might have thought, but it's also probably an exaggeration -- thereby inadvertently making a bigger deal out of my secret movie watching when I should be trying to make less of a big deal.

On the other hand, the meaning behind my statement is something I feel pretty strongly about. She and I probably watch one or two movies together at home per week, and then we each probably see one more movie in the theater. But while she's comfortable with seeing only three movies I week, I usually have ambitions for six or seven. That leaves three or four movies I have to see without her, and they can't all be movies she's not interested in seeing. Even if there were film genres she consistently avoids, which there aren't, I'm not ready to confine myself to just those genres in the films I see by myself.

So yeah, every once in awhile, a great opportunity to see a movie together -- say, Melancholia -- gets botched. It happens.

The good thing is, the little friction that arises over a situation like this, as it did on Sunday, never lasts long. She knows that I have to see movies on my own to "fulfill my needs," and she's perfectly okay with that. She also knows that if we don't see one movie together, there will always be plenty of others neither of us has seen. It's the price she pays in order to prevent the kind of logistical traffic jam that tends to stress her out. If I always got her approval of the order in which I'm sorting the Netflix queue, or if I mentioned every single time I was planning to stream a movie or watch something I'd borrowed from the library, she wouldn't love that. She wouldn't love it at all.

So we have kind of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- she doesn't ask what movies I'm seeing, and I don't tell her. She knows I go outside the marriage for movies, but she just doesn't want to have to hear about it.

Is it rational for me to feel shame about watching movies without my wife? Not really. But when you're a parent, there are other factors involved. For example, if it's clear I stayed up past midnight watching a movie, I've kind of forfeited my right to be tired the next day. If I fail to live up to my full parenting responsibilities, it might be clear that I traded sleep for watching movies. And since I made that choice to sacrifice my own sleep, it could be interpreted as another instance where I'm putting my own needs before the needs of my family.

If this all sounds funny and perhaps a bit alarming to you, I should remind you that I'm really only demonstrating a point through an extended marital/sexual metaphor. And I may be stretching certain points in order to fit the metaphorical scheme.

Look, it's a way to make things work in a "mixed marriage." See, there are some couples who don't watch many movies -- they have movie night together every Friday night, but that's all either of them sees in a whole week. And then there are some couples who don't care much for TV but obsessively watch movies together every occasion they get. And then there are relationships like ours, where I'm an obsessive and she's only an enthusiast. She's excited to see most new acclaimed movies coming out, and she's also excited to see classics and other movies she's heard good things about. Me, I want to see all those, as well as acclaimed movies she hasn't heard of, and then also a bunch of other mediocre crap.

So you have to have a system to make it work. And our system will be to watch movies together where a mutual interest has been established, and leave everything else for me to watch at my leisure.

The semantic key in interpreting this system is when a mutual interest has been established, and when it hasn't, and when a mutual interest should safely be assumed. That, I can get better at.

It's if we stop talking -- about movies, mind you -- that we'll know we really have a problem. If I start saying "I better not talk about this movie with her so I can see it by myself in good conscience," that's when an addiction actually starts to have a demonstrable negative impact.

Fortunately, I don't think that's going to happen. Because one of the reasons our marriage -- both our literal marriage and our movie-watching partnership -- works so well is that we both love talking about movies, and we're both happier if the other has seen the movies we've seen, so we can do just that.

Also, there's a lot less shame and sneaking around.

Seen but not heard

No spoilers ahead!

Ever get the feeling, when watching a movie, that a character doesn't have any dialogue because the filmmakers didn't want to pay the actor more?

It can be distracting.

Got that feeling yesterday, quite distinctly, during a key climactic scene of The Descendants.

See, one of the rules regarding actors in movies/TV/what have you is that the moment they open their mouth, you have to pay them a considerably higher chunk of change for their appearance. You know how I don't like looking things up -- I just did some quick googling but didn't come up with the exact parameters of the rule. In fact, I found one rule that mentions the actor's status changing to that of "day player" after five lines of dialogue. But I know there's also a big difference between zero and one line.

Anyway, I most often notice this phenomenon in television. It often seems to be the "pretty girl syndrome." Let's say, oh, Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) from How I Met Your Mother has a scene demonstrating his fitness with the ladies. He'll have a beautiful woman on each arm, and they may be in the shot for as long as a minute or two. But you'll never see them open their mouths, because even a throwaway line of dialogue will send those actresses' pay through the roof. Essentially, the show can't afford a "casual" line of dialogue that would contribute to the naturalism of the scene and make their presence seem less awkward. So, the use of these actresses is allowed to be slightly awkward -- and in this case, probably slightly objectifying -- in order to save money.

But why did The Descendants need to save money on Cousin Milo?

To establish what I'm talking about here, I need to give you a brief bit of the plot of The Descendants, though it's not anything that wouldn't be available in any synopsis of the movie. George Clooney plays Matt King, the descendant of Hawaii land barons, who is the trustee on a choice parcel of land that his family could sell in order to make millions for himself and about a dozen cousins. Most of those cousins are played by unknown actors; one is played by Beau Bridges. And one falls somewhere in between, a guy I recognized but couldn't quite place. This guy:

When I first saw him, I thought "Is that Art Garfunkel?" Nope. Too young. I then went on to Willie Aames. Rejected that one too. I determined to wait for the closing credits to see who he was, and I recognized the name right away: Michael Ontkean! As in, the guy who played Sheriff Harry S. Truman on Twin Peaks. He plays Matt's cousin Milo here.

So Cousin Milo appears in one scene at the beginning, in a board room, where there's no dialogue at all because Clooney narrates over it. He then appears, quite prominently, in a scene near the end, and this is where the problem came up.

Matt and Bridges' character, Cousin Hugh, are together at a family meeting -- the family meeting where the family is scheduled to decide on one of several buyers, and Matt, as trustee, is scheduled to sign the paperwork allowing the sale to go through. The two get into an intense discussion stemming from a difference of opinion on what to do with the land. Yet there is a third man at the table: Ontkean's Cousin Milo.

Who just sits there.

That's right, even though he is as directly impacted by the decision as Cousin Hugh, and appears in every reverse shot alongside the arguing Bridges, Ontkean is not permitted to open his mouth.

And because his other possible reactions would seem like overacting -- you know, pantomiming shock and disbelief without saying anything -- Ontkean really does just sit there, this look of mild bemusement on his face. I likely noticed it more because this was a person who has achieved a limited amount of fame, not just some no-name extra off the street. But I think even a no-name extra would have been distracting to me if used like this.

Now, I can't say for sure that this decision was motivated by financial considerations. But if not, it represents some really poor decision-making by director Alexander Payne. If you're going to include this guy in the scene, give him some dialogue, even just a random line or two of protest -- something to indicate his emotional investment in the proceedings. And if he really can't have dialogue, at least direct him in some way so he doesn't just sit there like a bemused bird.

Remember when I said I wouldn't give any spoilers in this post? Well, that includes telling you what I thought about the film, whether I liked it and if so, to what extent. Not enough of you have seen it yet, and I'd like you to go in unbiased.

If you think you know the answer to that question based on the fact that I'm choosing to poke fun at it in this post, well, you shouldn't jump to that conclusion. I never know where the minutia I write about in The Audient will come from -- I just know that once I think of it, I have to express it.

Unlike certain actors, who are obligated to stay mum.