Nosferatu Pix 2009

2009. Balancing the scale. “Paul Blart: Mall Cop”, “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, “Race to Witch Mountain”, “Fast & Furious”, “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”, “The Taking of Pelham 123”, “Orphan”, “The Time Traveler's Wife”, “Love Happens”, “Amelia”, “Old Dogs” and “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” That’s the crap end of the scale. I wouldn’t even look at the billboards and I didn’t watch the movies either. If it looks like crap, smells like crap and draws flies like crap, you can believe it’s crap. On the other end of the scale: “Gentlemen Broncos”. More on that later.

Unfortunately, even the best movies of 2009 weren’t that great. And then there’s Ordinary Time (January – September) versus Academy Awards Obeisance Time (October – December). It seems to me that roughly HALF of the year’s better films come out at the end of the year, between October and December. They’re hoping to be fresh in the minds of voters when the Oscar winners are determined. That means that for the other nine months we have to live through movie famine. Nine months is basically a year unto itself. It’s not fair to include that spurt of movies that showed up late hoping to win an Academy Award. Therefore - like the Academy Awards, which has started nominating ten movies for best picture (because a movie advertisement featuring “Oscar nominated” will generate more money for Hollywood) – therefore, I say, I’ve nominated five best films for Ordinary Time and five best films for Academy Awards Obeisance Time.

Before we blame the economy for this year’s poor crop of movies, let’s remember that last year’s films were even worse. The very best that 2008 gave us was: “The Bank Job”, “The Dark Knight”, “Iron Man”, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Wrestler”. When will I see new movies that are even as good as “Trainspotting”, “The Name of the Rose” and “No Country For Old Men”?

I’m almost done complaining. In fact I am done, because Hollywood karma has somehow given “Avatar” director James Cameron what he deserves. I’m so pleased that he lost to “The Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow. Besides the fact that “The Hurt Locker” was great and “Avatar” was a politically correct, self-righteous, simpleton’s failure, Kathryn Bigelow is the third of James Cameron’s five ex-wives, she’s three years older than him and she looks twenty years younger than him.

Speaking of “Avatar”, I was especially pleased with “District 9”. This movie was a solid success in expressing a message that “Avatar”/James Cameron’s sledgehammer tried and failed to convey effectively. To illustrate, the underdogs in “Avatar” are ten-foot-tall blue cat people. The humans/Americans/earthlings, whatever - the Military has invaded their world and wants to kill these noble savages in order to mine valuable minerals from underneath the holy tree of the blue cat people. The blue cat people even ride six-legged horses and whoop like Indians. I get it. In “District 9” (one of the funniest movies of 2009) hundreds of working-class aliens (or prawns as they’re called) (“I mean, you can't say they don't look like that, that's what they look like, right? They look like prawns.”), I say, hundreds of working-class aliens stranded in Johannesburg, South Africa, have been relegated to a refugee camp that, after twenty years, has become a slum. A delegation of humans arrives at the slum to get the aliens’ signatures on notices of eviction from their shacks. When an alien answers the door of his shack he is asked if he is the owner, “Christopher Johnson”. This alien character is known throughout the film as Christopher Johnson.

I do like director Lars von Trier, and I like Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, but this year’s “Antichrist” sounded just too harrowing to even try to watch it. You can look into this one if you want, but I don’t recommend it.

Last, and maybe least (but probably not) we had the glorious failure “Gentlemen Broncos”. This is the third or fourth film by Jared Hess who brought us “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre”. Here is a summary of the film provided by ImdB.com:

“Benjamin, home-schooled by his eccentric mother, is a loner whose passion for writing leads him on an journey as his story first gets ripped off by the legendary fantasy novelist, Ronald Chevalier, and then is adapted into a disastrous movie by the small town's most prolific homespun filmmaker.”

The opening credits sequence consists of a series of anonymous, insane-looking, 1970s science fiction paperback novel covers with the book titles replaced by the names of the cast and crew. Over this we hear the 1969 Zager and Evans song “In the Year 2525”. I was overwhelmed with awe and anticipation. Unfortunately, although the film doesn’t exactly go steadily downhill from there, it is, eh, uneven. What this film needed was a stronger leading character or actor that could have done what Ellen Page did for 2007’s “Juno” (and what she didn’t manage to do for this year’s “Whip It”). There was much awkward humor and behavior. Much limp aimlessness that was probably meant to be funny. What “Gentlemen Broncos” did have was Jemaine Clement as Dr. Ronald Chevalier, the author who steals Benjamin's novel. You may know him from the HBO show “The Flight of the Conchords”. If he couldn’t save this movie then no one could, but I was sure that he would. Before seeing the film I watched the Youtube video “Dr. Ronald Chevalier - The Art of Relaxating” (which unfotunately does not appear in the film, but you should check out the link at the end of this post). He introduces himself saying, “I wrote such titles as The Cyborg Harpies, Hagborgs, and the spinoff novella Hagball.” I was expecting much from "Gentlemen Broncos". Something else “Gentlemen Broncos” has going for it is its fantasy depiction of Benjamin’s novel The Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years. The hero, Bronco (Sam Rockwell), flies a jet-powered (stuffed?) "battle stag" shooting rockets at cyclopses. If I need say more than that, then this is definitely not the film for you. I went to see this movie with Dad, he left the choice of the movie to me, trusting my good judgement. It felt like a reckless choice while watching it. Now, however, I honestly believe that we were part of a very small national audience during the extremely limited theatrical release of a future cult classic. The flop scenes in this movie flop badly, and the scenes I laughed at made me laugh very hard. And I’d rather laugh hard just once during a movie rather than watch three hours of “Avatar”.

Best Film (2009 Ordinary Time: January – September):

District 9
The Hurt Locker
I Love You, Man
Inglourious Basterds
The Stoning of Soraya M.

Best Film (2009 Academy Awards Obeisance Time: October – December):

Crazy Heart
Gentlemen Broncos
The Lovely Bones
The Road
Up in the Air

2009 Nosferatu Pix:

Crazy Heart
District 9
The Hurt Locker
The Road
Up in the Air

Honorable mention:

I Love You, Man
Inglourious Basterds
It Might Get Loud
The Lovely Bones
The Stoning of Soraya M.

Best Actor:

Jeff Bridges (“Crazy Heart”)
George Clooney (“Up in the Air”)
Sharlto Copley (“District 9”)
Viggo Mortensen (“The Road”)
Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Locker”)

Best Actress:

Amy Adams (“Sunshine Cleaning”)
Shohreh Aghdashloo (“The Stoning of Soraya M.”)
Helen Mirren (“The Last Station”)
Saoirse Ronan (“The Lovely Bones”)
Meryl Streep (“Julie & Julia”)

Best Supporting Actor:

Jemaine Clement (“Gentlemen Broncos”)
Jason Segel (“I Love You, Man”)
Stanley Tucci (“Julie & Julia”)
Stanley Tucci (“The Lovely Bones”)
Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”)

Honorable mention:

James Caviezel (“The Stoning of Soraya M.”)
Clifton Collins Jr. (“Sunshine Cleaning”)
August Diehl (“Inglourious Basterds”)
Robert Duvall (“Crazy Heart”)
Michael Fassbender (“Inglourious Basterds”)
Jon Favreau (“I Love You, Man”)
Paul Giamatti (“The Last Station”)
Jackie Earle Haley (“Watchmen”)
Rob Huebel (“I Love You, Man”)
Thomas Lennon (“I Love You, Man”)
Brad Pitt (“Inglourious Basterds”)

Best Supporting Actress:

Vera Farmiga (“Up in the Air”)
Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”)
Diane Kruger (“Inglourious Basterds”)
Mélanie Laurent (“Inglourious Basterds”)
Theresa Russell (“He’s Just Not That Into You” deleted scenes on DVD)

Honorable mention:

Emily Blunt (“The Great Buck Howard”)
Emily Blunt (“Sunshine Cleaning”)
Kathryn Hahn (“The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard”)

Favorite Cameos:

Aziz Ansari (“Observe and Report”)
Hank Azaria (“Year One”)
Sam Elliott (“Up in the Air”)
Arsenio Hall (“Black Dynamite”)
Bill Murray (“Zombieland”)
Leonard Nimoy (“Star Trek”)
Cedric Yarbrough (“Black Dynamite”)
Young MC (“Up in the Air”)

Most disappointing:

All About Steve
Avatar
Cold Souls
Gentlemen Broncos
Land of the Lost
New In Town

Guilty Pleasures:

Black Dynamite
Brüno
Drag Me to Hell
Gentlemen Broncos
Zombieland

Glad to see them working:

Mary Birdsong (“Adventureland”)
Jim Gaffigan (“Away We Go”)
Juliette Lewis (“Whip It”)
Melanie Lynskey (“The Informant!”, “Up in the Air”)

Slumming:

John Turturro “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”
Christopher Eccleston “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”
John Malkovich “The Great Buck Howard”

Quotes:

“Can I give you guys a word of advice? Lose the beards, because your King Osama looks like a kind of dirty wizard... or a homeless Santa.” - Sacha Baron Cohen, “Brüno”.

“If I have to eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day to live, I don't wanna live.” – Larry David, “Whatever Works”

“We are the Hebrews. Righteous people - not very good at sports.” – Hank Azaria (as Abraham), “Year One”

“In those moments where you're not quite sure if the undead are really dead, dead, don't get all stingy with your bullets. I mean, one more clean shot to the head, and this lady could have avoided becoming a human Happy Meal. Woulda... coulda... shoulda.” - Jesse Eisenberg “Zombieland”

Movies that I was interested in but didn’t see:

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
The Blind Side
The Hangover
Precious
The White Ribbon

Youtube:

Dr. Ronald Chevalier - The Art of Relaxating

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NtdCq0-Qn8&feature=related

Dr. Ronald Chevalier - The Art of Inspiring Oneself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVoD1804bkc&feature=related

"Black Dynamite" - Pimp Counsel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mvp-nOz9Gk&feature=related

So you like flavored coffee creamer

Time to move on. I made the mistake of trying to understand what I was dealing with in the staff lounge refrigerator situation. There is no refrigerator monitor, there is no method or reason, there’s only mob rule. A mob of dull, furtive, hopeless, unattractive peasants with no aspirations and a limited vocabulary. And they like flavored coffee creamer. “Taking other people’s things at work is okay - I deserve them because I will never have the nice things I see on the TV. Or if I can get away with not coming to work at all today, that’s even better.” God help the patients in this hospital.

The disgusting, probably expired “Dulce de Leche” coffee creamer that I planted in the refrigerator remained there for two days. But after the first day, someone removed my identification label and about half of the contents were gone. On the third day I noticed the empty container in the garbage can.

Then earlier this week I left a can of soda (I found it in a conference room) in the refrigerator with my actual initials and a date on the label. The next day I found the soda gone and the label left behind.

My initial reaction is to fill a coffee creamer bottle with watered-down mayonnaise and leave it in one of those refrigerators. This may happen, but I won’t honor this wretched staff lounge with any more blog posts. For now I merely left a “holiday cookie”-flavored air-freshener hidden in a nook behind one of the staff lounge microwaves. It smells awful, like cinnamon-flavored Play-Doh. The innocent will suffer with the guilty, but, like Clint Eastwood tells us, “We all got it coming, kid.” (-“Unforgiven”)

A Chance to Begin Again

I’ve neglected to mention that there are two refrigerators in the staff lounge.

I’m realizing that my original “Spiced Rum” seasonal coffee creamer, though properly identified and dated, disappeared from the refrigerator on the left. I have been abandoning food items with ridiculous notes in the refrigerator on the right. Poorly identified, undated food items left in the refrigerator on the right have enjoyed far more tolerance than my original coffee creamer received in the refrigerator on the left.

Is it possible that different entities are responsible for each refrigerator? Is that heart magnet a signal to identify the casual refrigerator of lax standards?

The disgusting, probably expired “Dulce de Leche” coffee creamer went into the refrigerator on the left this morning. For now I’m tired of hassling with the Iliad-themed names on the identification notes. Went with the tried and true Jasper alias today. That name originates from my college dorm refrigerator, I’d label food I didn’t want to share, but I used that name so that I wouldn’t be associated with stinginess.

As long as the “Dulce de Leche” receives the 72 hours of unmolested tenancy in Refrigerator on the Left, this can all end in 72 hours. Otherwise, Hector Griego is still as forgetful of his food, as neglectful to label it with a date, and as uncomprehending of staff lounge refrigerator standards as the day he was born.

“I’m a monster again!” – Cinefamily and the Silent Movie Theatre

Thank you to Nicholas Klemek for reacquainting me with L.A.’s Silent Movie Theater and for introducing me to Cinefamily which now runs the place. The theater is now a cinematheque and presents movies similar to those at the Egyptian’s American Cinematheque and at The New Beverly revival theater. Great news because in addition it still shows silent movies with organ accompaniment.

My first movie there was Saturday’s Czech film “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders” (1970). It was the last film in the theater’s recent series “Czech Your Head” (which apparently included one of my favorites, the not-available-on-video Dark Ages epic “Marketa Lazarova” [1967, 162 minutes!]). “Valerie” is a surreal, horror-themed fairytale featuring 13-year-old Valerie in a series of inappropriate settings and circumstances:

“…a haunting psychoactive period piece which plunges the beautiful heroine Valerie into a phantasmagorical world of thirsty vampires, the dark arts and dreamy free love -- all set to one of the great film scores of the era, a cocktail of psych-folk and avant-garde classical by the great Luboš Fišer. The film opens with 13-year-old Valerie's first menstruation and subsequent sexual awakening, the unsteady discovery of which lets loose a torrent of quixotic, hallucinatory experiences both terrifying and beautiful; amongst a haze of shifting tones and a flurry of role reversals and Gothic nightmares in broad daylight, Valerie floats along, buoyed by the fears and fantasies that come with nascent sexuality and teenage fantasy...” – Cinefamily.

There’s almost no one I could recommend this one to, but I laughed and laughed.

One of the most prominent characters in the movie is a bald, Nosferatu-like, white-faced vampire monster in possibly multiple roles. He is the Bishop, Grandmother’s boyfriend Richard, and possibly Valerie’s father as well as the father of Valerie’s boyfriend (an adult bespectacled Euro-geek named Eagle). My favorite moment occurs after Valerie attempts to restore the monster to his true self by passing a mouthful of chicken blood into the vampire’s mouth. The vampire transforms into a 1970 Czech-handsome man (wide-set eyes and caterpillar mustaches) and Valerie embraces her “father”. Suddenly he transforms back into the vampire, still embracing the now terrified girl, and informs her with glee, “I’m a monster again!”