That's the thing about Carl; he has an unfailing ability to destroy the things he loves.

Spoiler Warning: Kind of.

I saw King Kong with my family tonight and we all had slightly different takes on it, but with one unifying theme: it was too long. Peter Jackson got used to making long movies with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but he got away with three hour movies there (or 3:45 in the case of the RotK special edition) because those movies have a lot going on and a very complicated story to tell.

King Kong isn't like that. The story is pretty basic. Scheming guy wants to make a movie on an island. He cons some people into getting him there with his actors. They come upon some natives who grab the pretty girl to offer to a big ape. Ape falls in love with the girl. Ape fights off some nasty beasts to show his love. Movie maker gets the girl back, and captures the ape. He tries to show Kong off in the city. Kong gets loose, reunites with the girl, they have a touching moment, people kill kong. That's pretty much it, and Jackson manages to stretch that out to three hours.

His other key problem is his main character can't talk, and is computer generated, so it's kind of hard to do character development. Instead we get lots of time spent on the secondary characters, in silent emotional scenes between kong and the girl, and action sequences that show development through kongs actions (you know: it's not what you say, it's what you do.) All of these things serve to make the movie longer, without adding a lot of substance.

Now, I don't want you to think this is a bad movie. It's a fine movie, but it's not a great movie. It just doesn't have the focus and feel of a great movie. There are great things about it though.

The action is good, but the amazing thing about the action is it always involves significant amounts of special effects - and you don't even notice. Watching Kong, and dinosours, and old planes fly around a 1930's New York - I never thought it looked fake or wrong. I often thought it was breathtakingly gorgeous. And Naomi Watts does big eyed [fear, awe, love] as good as anyone.

If Jackson had tightened up some of the boat and jungle scenes, and stayed focused around his core story (Kong and the injustice of humanity) this could have been a great movie. As it was, it feels more like a fantastic special effects demo.

You have the freak flag, you just don't fly it.

Spoiler Warning

The Family Stone caught me totally off guard. Everything I knew about this movie led me to expect a fun family oddball comedy. It is that, but it also has a very serious vein.

It turns out that the mother (Diane Keaton) has terminal cancer, and a bit part of the movie is about this being her last Christmas with her family. The movie pulls this off well, and skillfully mixes the comedic and serious themes. And for me, the serious stuff really snuck up on me. That's typically how good dramatic comedies do it (or comedic dramas, depending on the balance.) You're just along for the ride, having fun, and all of a sudden something serious happens and you realize you got attached to the characters and situation without knowing it. For me it was especially strong because the serious themes in this movie hit close to home.

I also thought Luke Wilson is as good as he gets in this movie. There was a lot of opportunity for him to ham it up, or try to hard to get laughs, but he never falls for it. He's always subdued, and hilarious.

I really liked this movie a lot, but be warned, it has some serious tones that the trailers and reviews won't warn you about.

Bill O'Reily: I don't believe most people who aren't Christian are offended by the words "Merry Christmas."
[later]
Interviewer: But saying "Seasons Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" doesn't offend Christians.
Bill O'Reily: Yes it does! Absolutely does!

I try to understand, I really do - but sometimes it's all too much for me. I initially saw those quotes, in that context, on The Daily Show. But you know me, I'm always skeptical of out of context things that seem to make no sense at all.

So I went off and figured out what he really said. It turns out that the quotes above are accurate, but a little less non-sensical, when I listened to the whole thing. What Bill really wants is to not have any of this inclusive dilution. He claims "Happy Holidays" is offensive to Jewish people and "Happy Hanukka" is unoffensive to Christians. The problem for him is in the generalization. That's a theory I can at least follow.

I can rarely listen to something Bill O'Reilly says without rolling my eyes - but I will give him that he's a smart guy and I can typically understand where he's coming from (although I very rarely agree with him.) I'm glad to see this was no exception. He's still innane, but at least I can see where he's coming from. For more, read the transcript (complete with colorful commentary, I couldn't find and official one.)

Just in general though, I'm having a hard time with all this "Christian persecution" stuff...

The Daily Show had one other great gem last night:
Just to reiterate: America is not less progressive than South Africa.

I've memorized about 30,000 seven and eight letter words in the last month, so I'd say I'm well prepared.

Wow! This is how documentaries should be made. Word Wars was fantastic. Unlike Dogtown and Z-Boys this is a movie that knows what its subject is. You may think it's scrabble, or how to play competitive scrabble, or the tournements involved. The movie covers all those things, but really only as background to its real subject: the wacked out guys that are addicted to competitive scrabble as a lifestyle.

The movie follows four of them, and they really have fallen off the deep end. Three of them don't have jobs, they just study and play scrabble - travelling to tournaments where they hope to make back their travel expenses. Their big dream is to win the intensely competitive national championships - where they would pocked the monstrous sum of 25 grand. There's really no way to describe these guys except to say they've become addicted to scrabble.

It was totally mesmerizing to watch. The determination these guys have, working after a goal most of us don't understand. Just the single minded focus they have. It's tragic and odd all at the same time.

I don't think you need to know scrabble to enjoy this movie (I'm certainly no expert) but I think you do need to have a certain affection for and understanding of geeks. This makes sense, since scrabble isn't the focus of the movie - it's the players the movie pays attention to. And while I'm often called a geek (I admit it, it's true) these guys are more than out of my league - we're not even playing the same game.

China's economy is growing, but not as fast as it could because they can't get all the oil they need - I'm proud of that fact.

Caution: I sort of wave my hands at spoilers.

Syriana is one of these movies that shows us many different storylines without actually cluing us in on how they're related. Eventually we mostly figure it out, but it's all kind of a tenuous thing.

This is a strnge movie to watch. It's not that I couldn't figure out what was happening, that was always clear. A few times I got confused, but mostly it was clear who the characters were, who they worked for, what their job was, what they were trying to do, and what they were saying to each other. The problem was I typically had no idea what it meant in the scheme of the movie or the other events I'd seen in the other storylines.

The storylines are, roughly: a CIA agent, his bosses at the CIA, an energy consultant, the royal family of a small oil rich but otherwise poor nation, a corporate attorney investigating a questionable oil related business deal, and some migrant workers who work at an oil installation in the mideast. That's a lot of stories, and a lot of characters to keep track of, and as you'd expect they don't overlap much.

By the end I'd sort of gotten it, but this movie isn't the kind of movie that has a clear thesis statement or message. It's there, but I didn't feel like it was forced on me at all. When I go out looking for it, the message I see is that there are lots of interests and forces invovled in big money issues (like oil) and decisions aren't always made by who we think they're made by and in the way we hope they would be made. All kinds of interests and groups can intervene in unexpected and unorthodox ways.

Vagueness about what goes on in the movie aside, it was great to watch. Part of that was trying to figure out why all the things that are happening will prove to be important (one of my favorite pasttimes in watching movies like this is trying to figure out what clever gimmick the writers have for connecting up the stories) but most of it was the skill the movie was made with. It doesn't linger on one thing too long, and each storyline is always interesting. I don't remember being disappointed when leaving the "cool" storyline to spend more time with the "boring" one - a typically problem with movies of this structure.

This movie isn't for everyone. It has lots of vagueness in it, and sort of waves its hands at what's happening. But if you can deal with that, I think it's a very interesting thing to watch unfold.

Style was everything

My first impression of Dogtown and Z-Boys wasn't very good, and I think that may have tainted the rest of the movie for me. I started out watching it on the big screen, but the movie doesn't really sit still. It has lots of fast camera moves and cuts - and wasn't any fun to watch on a big screen. After I switched over to the small screen it was better, but I think I was already on the path to not liking it.

Although, I don't think I would have liked it without the bad first impression either.

This is a documentary about a competition skateboarding team from the 70's who helped revolutionize skateboarding. That's great, it's a fine subject. I just think they made two key mistakes. The first is the choppy edits that made me switch to a smaller screen. The subject of this movie is a 30 year old counter culture movement. This means their source material was mostly grainy home movies, still pictures, and interviews with the people now - when they're firmly in middle age. There's lots of documentaries that have less to work with, but they don't typically try to be edgy. This movie tried to be edgy. Instead of just showing a still picture, it would quickly pan around that picture and cut to other still pictures. Instead of showing some grainy video, they'd cut in other bits of video, or quickly cut back to an interview or other stills. It's as if the movie wanted to embody the edgy feeling that the skate crew had back in the day.

But when you're dealing with limited source material it's already hard enough to convey visuals to the viewer, when cutting around like that it just totally hoses it.

This is closely related to the other key problem - the attitude of the movie. While watching, I mostly felt like I was a fly on the wall of a reunion of this crew, listening to them tell stories and relive the glory days. This could be good too, but they weren't really telling stories as much as they were saying "wow, that was cool - those were the days." What the movie lacked was some perspective, some more insight into why this was an interesting group. Sure, we have a casual understanding of this. We know that skateboarding used to look very different than it does today and these kids were a big part in changing that. But I didn't feel like the movie took a step back and let that sink it. It was too busy being edgy and letting these guys relive the glory days.

I think one of the key faults is the filmmaker was one of the guys. For him he didn't need perspective, he remembers how cool it was. I think a more neutral filmmaker would have brought in more outside perspective, or at least would have focused on them more.

That's not to say that this format can't work. I just think if it's going to be about the guys then it has to make the guys into more interesting characters then they were here. This movie didn't appear to be about the skating, or about the guys, it seemed to be about the time. And it's hard to get strangers to care about the glory days as a time.

Side note: The cutting between different sources did work amazingly well in one instance. They were talking about how their skating style was tying to mimic top surfers and they did fade cuts between clips of guys surfing and clips of kids skateboarding. That was beautiful.

Sometimes, Jake, style can get you killed.

Confidence is one of those nice, tidy, self contained movies about criminals running a scam. It doesn't really have a lot to say about anything or anyone outside of the sandbox it plays in. It doesn't attempt to have any lasting impact at all. The only thing it tries to be is smart and a fun ride.

I thought it succeded admirably at those goals. It was smart. The characters are smart - all of them. Sure, the protagonists are smarter, that's kind of the whole point. (Side note: it's kind of hard to call them protagonists, since they are crooks and all, but the movie treats them like protagonists.) It ends up being very much like Heist or The Score - smart, well acted, and self contained.

There's a litte bit of stuff about how you can or can't trust people you do crimes with - especially as it relates to a tightnit crew. But the whole concept of smart, talented, tight-knit crews of professional criminals just seems like it lives too much in movie fantasy land. The risks are too high for people with that much talent - and they could get similar rewards without crime. (Note: anyone who can point me to real life stories of criminal groups like this, I'd be very interested to be proven wrong.)

That said, it's a fun ride, for those of us that like this kind of ride.

She's not my wife Warden. I keep asking, but she keeps saying no.

Disclaimer: I knew absolutely nothing about Johnny Cash before I saw this movie.

Walk the Line is a lot of fun. But I'm going to take a pass on really talking about the movie much. I'll just point you towards Roger Ebert's review, which I wholeheartedly agree with. The only thing I'll add is: why does it always have to be the drugs? They've sabotaged so many brilliant people, it's almost cliche to see more stories with the same themes. But it's also true, so I can get over the cliche.

What I really want to talk about is a great moment early on in the movie. Johnny Cash has convinced a record producer to let him audition. He gets his band in there and they start playing a bad, tired gospel song. It only takes about two verses for the producer to cut Johnny off and send him on his way.

Johnny doesn't take this, and presses the guy for what's wrong. After a little back and forth the record guy delivers a great monolog. I don't remember it exactly, but it went something like this:

What's wrong is I don't believe it. Imagine that you only have one song to sing. You're beat up, in the gutter, about to die, and you have one song to sing for the world to remember you by. Do you really want to sing this tired old gospel song? Or is there something else, something that comes from you. That's what people want to hear, something you believe in your core. That's how you can save people.

Johnny then sings a song he believes, and in the process discovers the sound that would make him famous. It was my favorite moment of the movie.

And like most great moments in great movies, that one has stuck with me. I've been thinking about it all week, and about how that same concept applies to lots of things. It clearly works in music - a concept best displayed in covers. When Stevie Nicks sings Landslide it just sounds different then when the Dixie Chicks do. But it's not always the original artist. DHT recently covered the 80's Roxette hit Listen to your Heart. In listening to each of those side by side, for my money the DHT version is stronger - for no other reason than I believe it more.

This is also what makes for excellent live acts. Bands that I really enjoy seeing live all have a common theme - they really believe in their music and the live experience. Listening to them it doesn't feel like they're just going through the motions, that they're just playing the music. Most music out there isn't too difficult to reproduce, just look at all the cover bands floating around. What separates the stars is they believe, they're committed, they're engaged.

This isn't just the case in music though. Last week I had a really hard time explainging why Harry Potter didn't really grip me. I think this does that explanation for me. It's more diluted, since the movie is the product of many, many people as opposed to the small number of people in a band (Ozomatli being a notable exception...) but the key was that I don't think they really believed. And in tandem, I didn't belive.

Contrast that with The Lord of the Rings, movies which I consider the most aamazing cinematic achievement of my lifetime. Watching the documentaries on the special edition DVDs shows very clearly that everyone on that project was consumed by a singular vision and it showed on the screen. They believed in a very real way and that caused me, in the audience, to also believe.

This concept is that magical thing that separates good from great. When creators really care about what they're making, when they believe, they imbue it with a special quality. That power goes with the creation, transcending the time and space gap beteen the creator and the observers. The creation interacts with us on a different level, we connect with and are touched by the emotion of the artist.

Or, as they said in Chasing Amy:
I finally had something personal to say.

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