Top 5 Films: Pennsylvania

Seeing as how well the my last blog series went (the still unfinished "Top Film For Each Year of My Life), I decided to start yet another, more ambitious, series. Taking a page from Sufjan Stevens (though I suspect my task is a bit more attainable than his), I'm going to come up with top 5 lists of films that take place in each state.

I realize that I could cheat a bit and include films that were shot in the state in question (which would allow me to include Robocop and Wet Hot American Summer on this particular list), but the only purpose of that would be to make my home state look even awesomer. I definitely wouldn't have that bias when dealing with any other state.

So, since I just came back from a trip to the Keystone state (home to scrapple, shoofly pie, Philly Cheesesteaks, and the Primanti Brothers), I figured what better place to start? In some particular order...

Groundhog Day
Depending on how I'm feeling towards the Hot Topic crowd, Groundhog Day could easily take the place of my favorite film from 1993. I've never done the Punxsutawney (I didn't come close to spelling that right the first time) thing myself, but some of Phil Connor's (Bill Murray) more cynical reports on the events don't sound far off. I feel as though if I were stuck reliving the same day over and over for decades, I'd start doing nice things then slowly devolve into and agent of chaos. Although, if I had to hear "I Got You Babe" and "The Pennsylvania Polka" everyday, for that long, I don't think the "nice things" period would last too long.

Slap Shot
I have a bit of a man-crush on Paul Newman. It feels good to finally admit it. I think it's something about his blue eyes (or his Newman's Own Orange-Mango Tango). Seeing it at this stage of the game, there's nothing too surprising about a ragtag bunch of minor league athletes making good, but damned if this doesn't do it best! And I don't even like hockey! If you want a great double feature, grab this and Bull Durham. You may never look at minor league sports the same again.

Adventureland
Of the films on this list, I'll probably get the most grief for this choice (especially given some of the obvious films I left out). I know the film isn't perfect, but Adventureland hit me in just the right way. It's like when I watch a film by Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, or David Gordon Green. There work is so much better than the individual scenes and I feel like I've seen something that really meant something. Of course, Adventureland doesn't say a whole lot that is new, but it says it earnestly and in a meaningful way. Plus, Martin Starr!

Dawn of the Dead
I suppose I could just put every George Romero ever on here, but that just wouldn't be fair (and not all of them are, well, good). I went with Dawn of the Dead instead of Night of the Living Dead mostly because of the awesome Tom Savini effects and how much fun the bulk of the film is. Sure, it looks a bit silly now, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. And if anything epitomizes the denizens of rural Pennsylvania better than drinking beer and shooting zombies as they roam the countryside, I don't know what it is. Plus, it's got one hell of a tag line. (We won't mention the awful 2004 remake beyond this parenthetical).

Best In Show
Simply a top notch mockumentary from Christopher Guest and is merry band of improvisers. Definitely his best of the genre (I won't count This Is Spinal Tap since he didn't direct it). Seriously, who doesn't love adorable dogs and comedy's finest? No one I want to know.

Weekly Film Rec: Hoop Dreams

The Weekly Film Rec hasn't been so weekly of late and I apologize for that. I've been missing in action for a few weeks, but now I'm back and armed to the teeth with good stuff!

The prospect of a three hour film is pretty daunting to begin with. The prospect of a three hour documentary can be even moreso (that is, if it's not in a serialized form). It's a lot of time to set aside in a day. Fortunately, I lucked into a significant chunk of free time after my trip back East and utilized Netflix' Instant View for this purpose.
I only knew vagaries about Hoop Dreams: that if followed the lives of two high schoolers hoping to play professional basketball. I don't really care for basketball and I know many people who don't care for sports in general, so there is a certain amount of trepidation regarding the subject matter. However, the Hoop Dreams, like any great documentary, offers so much more than what it's about on the surface.

It follows Willam Gates and Arthur Agee through four years of high school. The former at a revered Catholic powerhouse and the latter at an inner city school (although he was briefly at the powerhouse). There are a lot of ups and downs with each of the boys and their families and Hoop Dreams comments quite a bit on how the system does or does not work for struggling families. The most striking aspect of the film for me, though, is how much luck acts as a driving force in all of our lives.

Hoop Dreams is absolutely enthralling throughout, though oddly, the basketball scenes are generally pretty dull. You can attribute that mostly to the narrator who narrates with a dry monotone, but it actually doesn't harm the action on screen because you are so invested in these kids.

I really want to get the Criterion DVD because it has a commentary featuring Gates and Agee and I would love to hear what they have to say and how their lives panned out. It's not often one gets to relive a huge chunk of one's life like this and it'd be interesting to hear their perspective on their former outlook on life (I suspect not working harder in school is one regret).

Finally, Hoop Dreams gave me a much greater appreciation for the following Mr. Show sketch:

You're So Vain

I've never much cared for Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" (which is why you won't see it embedded anywhere on this page. I'd always found it kind of dull, pretty much like most of Simon's catalogue that I've heard. The song has been the subject of much mythologizing (which you can catch up on here) and were I more cynical, I'd label it as one big publicity ploy to keep Simon from falling completely out of the cultural lexicon. Not initially, of course, but over the past ten to fifteen years. That's not really what I want to write about here, though. What bugs me most is that "You're So Vain" tries so hard to be clever but undermines itself and winds up just being stupid.

The song states, as everyone knows, "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you," which it is! So if the song is about him, then he's not so vain after all.

"Now just a minute!" you might argue. "There are several people this song could be about. Therefore, they are vain because they think a song not about them is about them. That's the point!"

In this case, yes, there are some vain characters hanging around the periphery, but one of those people is correct. The song is about him.

Simon has indicated that it's a composite of three men, but in recent years she has been dropping letters that appear in the man's name. Unless she is being particularly coy and is eventually planning on spelling out the names of all three men, we can only assume that there is one main male acting as the subject of the song. And this man is not vain. He is correct.

In my mind, you can't right a song about someone and call him vain for thinking the song is about him. That's some sort of crazy cognitive dissonance. And just plain stupid.

Weekly Film Rec: Hell in the Pacific

I haven't seen much in the past week that really jumped out at me, so my recommendation isn't based so much on how much I loved or even liked the film, but on how the film gets more interesting the more I think about it.

About two weeks ago, I was digging through a box of VHS at the Hollywood Theatre (where we have oodles of VHS for sale). The box contained a considerable amount of appalling dreck (and all of the Amy Grant video collections you could ask for!), but one film stood out. Aside from a colorful title, the film starred Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. Two of the bad-assed-est bad-asses to ever walk the earth (or at least appear in movies). Add to that the recommendation of a co-worker and onto the Netflix queue it went!

The film takes place during WWII and Marvin and Mifune play soldiers washed up on a deserted island. Neither understands the other's language and tension is high from the start. While Marvin and Mifune are great (Marvin has some wonderfully bizarre mannerisms), for me, it fails to live up to the premise. There's a lot of area to be explored, which the film does, but it breezes through most of it and ultimately loses the thread.

However, the film has been sitting well with me. Partially because it is entertaining, but mostly because, much like Marvin, I don't speak Japanese and there are no subtitles. I'm as lost as he is and have to work to put together what Mifune is trying to communicate. The opposite holds true for those that only speak Japanese. There are two different experiences going on at the same time! It's a very cool idea. Perhaps most impressive, though, is that even if you didn't understand a single word either of them were saying, you would know exactly what is going on in the film. The dialogue is essentially inessential. Everything can be garnered from tone and action.

On top of that, the film is directed by John Boorman (Deliverance) and shot by the great Conrad Hall (Hall + tropical island = gorgeous). Definitely worth checking out.

Netflix

I generally have a love-love relationship with Netflix. Their deliveries are prompt. The Instant View is getting better all the time and has loads of TV shows so I don't have to take up valuable queue space with oodles of non-movie discs. Earlier this year, they finally got the Nintendo Wii hooked up with streaming capability. In the end, I pay just over a dollar a rental and that's not taking into account the unlimited Instant View.

I've gotten so used to singing Netflix' praises (I'm going to get my parents subscribed one of these days), that I was quite surprised at how angry Netflix made me recently. Right on the heels of Starz' cancellation of Party Down, Netflix indicated that Party Down would only be screening until July 9th (I forget the date, but that seems reasonable and I'm going to stick with it for the sake of this post). It didn't make sense to me since so many other shows were on Instant View, but I went with it believing I still had time to watch it (I'd already seen the entire series, but was rewatching it with my girlfriend, who hadn't).

We only had a few episodes left, so it didn't seem like such a big deal. Half hour shows are easy to blow through. However, we didn't have time on Wednesday night to watch since I work until late. Thursday was taken over by Goldeneye on N64 (!) and a new episode of Futurama (I'm a huge nerd, apparently), so we only watched one episode. Then, Friday came. The 9th. I went to check Netflix on what I thought was the last day of possible viewing, but Party Down was gone!

Perhaps there was an error in my interpretation, but when I read, "available until July 9th," I assume that the phrase is inclusive. It will be available on that day and at the end of said day, it will be gone. If they really wanted to be clear, they should have said, "unavailable July 9th." Then I'd have gotten the picture.

So, not only did the take Party Down from me, but they took it away a day early (in my interpretation)! Those bastards! To follow that up, I just got a disc that wouldn't play! Normally, I'm OK with that since it's understandable that the mail will knock DVDs around and people don't take the best care of them. But since I'm already miffed with Netflix, this is just piling on.

Damn it, Netflix! Shape up!

Weekly Film Rec: The Staircase

If I'm not more diligent about writing, this blog may just turn into the "Weekly Film Rec" blog.

Anyway, I'm cheating a little on this one as my recommendation isn't a film, per se, but a documentary mini-series, The Staircase (enough commas for you?). I wasn't sure if I'd like The Staircase, so I only put the first disc high on my Netflix queue, and once I got hooked, I had to wait the entire holiday weekend to finish it. Curse my wariness! The cause of this care is that not long ago I watched Capturing the Friedman's and was greatly underwhelmed. While the crimes of these films are different, they both deal with the effectiveness of the judicial system. Are the men on trial innocent or guilty?

Capturing the Friedman's fails to paint its' subjects as anything but an obnoxious bickering family so the audience is predisposed to not care what happens to the father, if not wants him to be convicted. The Staircase, however, does a masterful job of letting the viewer into the lives of not only Michael Peterson (suspected of murdering his wife), but of his entire family. The access to these people could severely bias the viewer on the side of the defense. Sure Michael Peterson is kind of pompous and seems somewhat less than honest, but he has a lot of intelligent things to say. Not unexpected from a successful novelist, I suppose.

All of this is balanced out with the trial, which is fully covered by the filmmakers (I can't imagine how much footage was shot for this documentary). The evidence creates a roller coaster ride for the viewer (and, I'd imagine, the family). There are many surprises along the way that might seem contrived were this a TV show, but end up being truly shocking.

Throughout the entire 6-hour running time, I never felt the filmmaker's hand, which is rare for me. It doesn't feel manipulated, though after the fact, I had to question whether my opinion was influenced by the editing.

I don't want to give too much away as it's far more interesting to be an active viewer making one's own deductions, so just enjoy the drama unfold.

One last note: I find it incredibly interesting that The Staircase is produced by a French company (Canal +) and directed by a Frenchman. Perhaps the outsider perspective on the judicial system helped them create such an interesting document of the process.

Weekly Film Rec: Phantom of the Paradise

A few weeks ago, I was at my girlfriend's parents house for dinner (with my girlfriend, of course) and her dad asked if I'd ever seen this film, Phantom of the Paradise. Not only had I never seen it, but I'd never heard of it. He explained that it was Phantom of the Opera sort of thing but his strongest memory was that of a man having his face smooshed in a record press. That sounded like it would be exactly the sort of thing I'd enjoy, so a week later, I added it to my Netflix queue (a week later because I'd forgotten the name of the film and had to ask at the next dinner).

My expectation for the film based upon the brief and fortuitously vague was some combination of William Castle meets Hammer horror. My first surprise came in adding it to my queue. Brian de Palma directed this!? Between Sisters and Carrie no less? How had I not heard of this film? With this knowledge, everything I thought to expect from Phantom of the Paradise flew out the window (except I still knew someone's head got smooshed in the record press, but even that defied my expectation).

I'm not going to give up too much information here except to say the film blew me away. It's nothing what I expected for de Palma (for whom I have mixed feelings) and everything I expected. There are the obvious film homages (or blatant recreations) and split-screens one comes to expect from him, but also a bizarre sense of humor and a general sense of "What the hell am I watching?" It would make a great companion with either Forbidden Zone or The Rocky Horror Picture Show (though I find the former infinitely more tolerable at this point).

Perhaps most surprising is how great the music is! You see this dumpy-looking puffball of a man with atrocious, long hair in the film known as Swan. He really is quite ridiculous. Well... he's played by Paul Williams, with whom many of the older readers are probably familiar, but I was not. It turns out this absurd munchkin of a man is an incredibly talented songwriter. It was only after the film that I discovered he wrote "(Just an) Old Fashioned Love Song," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "We've Only Just Begun," the theme to Loveboat, and "The Rainbow Connection' ("THE RAINBOW CONNECTION!"). On top of that... on TOP of that... he did the music for The Muppet Christmas Carol! Clearly, this man should have been on my radar years earlier for his association with The Muppets alone!

So anyway, this man wrote an absolutely fantastic and diverse collection of songs for Phantom of the Paradise that was rightfully nominated for an Oscar. All-in-all, this film just has to be seen. No amount of talking can do it justice. I didn't know it at the time, but my girlfriend's dad sold it perfectly. Get the audience sucked in with the head-smooshing and surprise them with the rest.