We will resume regular life and blogging starting Monday.
But I do have an announcement for UK family – offpat brought to my attention a while back that direct links to my E! online reviews were not working due to international redirects. But while in the UK recently, I figured out what to do.
type “eonline.com” into your browser. You’ll be redirected to the UK version of the site.
Click on “Movies.” Bookmark that page. It’s where all my reviews will show up as they come out.
Spread the word to non-net-savvy family and other Englanders.
Had an interesting discussion on Facebook today that I thought worth sharing. Participants will be referred to only by first initial, lest they not wish to be named.
I kicked it off by writing: “In many sci-fi movies, among them District 9 and Return of the Jedi, a human speaks to an alien in English, while the alien speaks alien-talk, yet both totally understand each other. In real life, with different human languages, when does this EVER HAPPEN?”
and thereafter, followed:
S: babelfish.
W: Family dinners on my mother’s side of the family. My uncles speak to their kids in German… my cousins speak back in English.
LYT: Nope, like the Star Trek universal translator, [babelfish] doesn’t count…as a translator is sourced within the narrative. Biggest offender is the Jabba/Leia-in-disguise/3P0 scene in Jedi…interpreter Threepio translates both alien languages into English, even though neither participant in the conversation ostensibly speaks it.
LYT: W – fascinating. Do they understand each other?
P: I have seen people do this, but in the Scifi world I always just figured alien tounges and soft palates were too different to speak huminoid dialects, but ears are ears.
W: Yeah, they totally understand each other. It’s just that the one is more comfortable speaking one language, and the other… the other. I kinda get it. My aunt speaks in English, too. She’s tired of German. So she’ll carry on a conversation with other Germans entirely in English… which they all understand but prefer not to speak. This is actually… See More common in a lot of immigrant families. I’ve had friends from Korean, Chinese and Armenian households where the exact same thing goes on. Oddly enough, I’ve never seen this happen in a Spanish-speaking household.
M: My previous ex-girlfriends did the same thing with their parents/grandparents and was indeed fascinating. I could still follow the conversation by listening to their responses. I also remember seeing it done in the movie Crazy/Beautiful – It’s quite enjoyable when it’s done. Makes the future seem much more interconnected, diverse and seemless.. nice.
J: In Miami, everyone assumes you speak Spanish. While I do, it annoys me when people assume I do and start talking to me in Spanish. So I respond in English. It pisses them off because they know I understand but I refuse to indulge them. It’s wonderful. It also happens in my family. People talk to me in Spanish but I’ll always respond in English unless they only speak Spanish.
G: I like Paul’s sci-fi explanation, it’s one I can get behind.
W: Actually, come to think of it… I do this myself when I’m in France. I’m the only one of my cousins that does not speak German, so I can’t participate in that game, but I do speak French. And I find it incredibly annoying when I’m in Paris that I walk into a store, speak to them in French… and they speak back in English as if saying, “I need to practice my English and I know you’re American so I’m just going to speak to you in English…” And being stubborn, I reply again in French. So it’s precisely that scenario – but it gets kind of tense because neither of us is willing to yield and start speaking in our native language in order to appease the other. That’s happened in Cannes, too. I hate it. So yes, I’ve lived this very thing as well. But not in a good way.
Firstly, I am thankful that we even have a holiday that inspires us to think about all the good things in our lives. I do find it tiresome when some people argue that it’s a celebration of genocide — you can make that argument about Columbus Day, but Thanksgiving commemorates different races getting along…even if, at a later date, they ceased doing so. The Navajo people, for one, are still extraordinarily hospitable toward strangers, if the time I spent on their Rez is any indication. And that’s a trait worth celebrating…especially since it has burned them in the past and yet they maintain it.
I am thankful that my grandfather had a great 86-year run in this life, and went out more-or-less the way he would have wanted. I’m thankful I got to share him a little bit with all of you. I am also thankful that my grandmother seems to have the spirit, health, and tenacity to still have a productive life even without her one true by her side.
I am thankful that my father still essentially has his health, even though it will never be what it once was.
I am thankful for my brothers, who always bring me joy.
I am thankful for family, and the many wonderful people who have been incorporated into it by marriage (with at least two more to come in the next year, neither of whom I’ve met but am told they are good sorts).
I am thankful that I live in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, beating heart of the entertainment industry with perennially good weather…and NOT in Santa Ana any more.
I am thankful for two great editors, Scott Foundas and Glenn Gaslin, who believe in my ability to deliver.
I am thankful likewise for the filmmakers who believe in my ability to deliver a part of their vision.
I am thankful, perhaps above all, for unemployment benefits.
I am thankful that we finally have an intelligent, thoughtful president…and if you aren’t, consider the alternative, and the predecessor.
I am thankful that I live in perhaps the only major city in the U.S. where life and conversation does not revolve around the local sports team.
I am thankful that gay marriage, while not yet the law of the land, has gained a foothold that is unlikely to be relinquished. Ditto medical marijuana.
I am thankful for all of you.
I am thankful that I am still here, still standing.
I am thankful that I occasionally have hope there will be more to be thankful for by this time next year.
[Like 2Pac, he be dropping new joints even after he dead. Pretty sure this really is the last one, though. -- LYT]
Don’t I know you?
“Of course I know you. We met at a conference 20 odd years ago and I remember you well.” What sort of knowledge is that? The claim to know someone is a big one, and unlikely to be true in anything but the most superficial sense. The trouble, I think, is that it sounds so clumsy to ask, “Are you acquainted with so and so?” Yet it’s surely better that the claim to know someone should at least imply a degree of understanding of the person under discussion.
Fairly often people are actually intending to indicate that they really know what makes the other person tick, and how they will react to other people and situations. “I know you; you’ll be telling me next that I’m a liar” is the sort of phrase I have in mind. It’s bound to be inaccurate and only tells us something about the hostility felt by the speaker. I can say I know some people better than others but I need to remember that I don’t know anybody as they really are. I can’t even say that I know myself. I think I know myself a little better than I did, say, thirty years ago but I can’t even be certain about that.
It was said of Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, that he knew what was in man. The claim is that he and he alone really knew what other people were like, how they felt and how they thought. One of the reasons for his entering our world and our lives was to help us see and live by the truth. Those who love the truth love him, whether they know it or not. Part of the truth is that I don’t really know anyone very well. Let’s rejoice that however little we know God (or anyone else), he knows us and loves us in spite of that.
[written and delivered by Luke Y. Thompson, Nov. 20, 2009, at Sherborne Abbey in Dorset, England]
Not long before he died, Peter Graham started a Facebook page.
Probably not everyone here knows what that is, so let me explain: Facebook is an Internet social networking site originally designed for college and high-school students to network with each other. It’s grown a bit beyond that now…but I’m not sure “86 year-old retired vicar” was ever in the imagined demographic.
Now, let me tell you why that’s significant. I live in Hollywood, and work in the media, and the way older people are so often portrayed is exemplified by Grandpa Abe on The Simpsons: Scared, senile, conservative, stuck in their ways. Now, I’m not saying my grandfather was never stuck in any ways…for example, I don’t think he could ever bring himself to eat a whole banana. But if it ever became clear to him that he was set in a way that was detrimental – he worked to change it. I’m told he used to smoke heavily…but not while I’ve been alive. And far from fearing the new, he embraced it as best it suited his purposes…he was my first ever cinematographer, combining his then-brand-new Betamax camcorder with my youthful, unpolished script attempts. He was one of the first in the family to really embrace email, on which he would often debate me about the awful things “my country” was doing – that’s how he always phrased it, “YOUR country” (It’s not all my fault!). And his personal page is still standing on Facebook.
A few years ago, I remember helping him deliver the local village circular, to approximately 25 houses, at least one of which had a frightening dog. I looked through the circular myself, and in it was a column he had written. I asked him if he had any older ones, and he obliged showing me a binful of back issues, and I said, first to myself and then him, “This is too good to only be read by 25 people.” I asked him then if he’d let me set up a website for him, where people across the ocean who needed to read an intelligent, progressive Christian thinker could interact with him. And he liked the idea…but the fear of spam took hold, and he said he didn’t want that; however, he’d send me the columns each month, and I could do as I pleased with them.
So I ran them on my site. The first or second time I did, one of the readers left a comment: “Can we clone your grandfather?” I said I thought he’d been plenty fruitful and multiplied the old-fashioned way, and besides, you’ve got ME… I’m the watered-down version. Later, I got him to take reader questions, and he got quite a following that I’m not sure he entirely knew about, but would have loved. If anyone here follows movie websites based out of Los Angeles, you would recognize some of the bylines of people who read his words…one of the creators of the movie “Snakes on a Plane” sent me his condolences when he heard the news. Peter Graham was larger than life…and judging by the turnout here today, he’s also larger than death.
My grandfather shared many words of wisdom over the years, and while I didn’t always agree with all of them, there are one or two I like very much. The first, is that he said we should always endeavour to act as if there is no such thing as giving of offense, only taking offense…and we won’t do that.
The second is a bit more oblique, but just as significant from a man of the cloth: “There are very few absolutes…and one of them is that there are very few absolutes.”
I don’t know if the love he tried at all times to walk in counts as an absolute; but I can say that it was felt – and is missed – absolutely.
This past August, I passed the ten-year mark as a film critic. My, how times have changed. When I started, it actually seemed like a more pragmatic career move than acting. And I made a good living at it. The paper ran as many as six full-length reviews a week.
I didn’t especially have much desire to do a Best of the Decade list, but every LAFCA member is being asked to do one. And it isn’t quite my full tenure — my very first ten-best list was for 1999, an indisputably great year.
I don’t really know how it’s gonna go, but I know this much – it makes sense to cull my 10 Best of the Decade from the top-ten lists I’ve done every year from 2000-now. But it’s not as simple as just picking all the number ones.
Usually, on my end-of-year list, I put my very clear favorites in the top couple of slots, then try to pick a diverse bunch from the rest of movies I’ve liked, giving preference to projects that have shown me something different, or advanced the artform in some way. So while #1 usually represents my favorite filmgoing experience, it isn’t always a landmark film that can stand for the ages.
And what of something like THE ROOM? Consistently one of my favorite things to watch, yet putting it on the best of ANYTHING list seems truly wrong.
Following the Thursday closing night of AFI Fest in Hollywood – and let me give them major props for keeping the free booze lounge going on that day, when normally one expects it to shut off completely on the final stretch – I stayed home all day Friday, recouping and forgetting what day it was. Besides, most of the movies playing Friday at the 2-day Santa Monica leg of the fest were ones I’d already seen.
But when I told a friend, “Hey, Liam Neeson horror movie Saturday!” he was into it. Then, based on the experience of the Hollywood fest, I also added that I had not seen any regular screening totally sell out. Which was true. But I had reckoned without the fact that the AFM audience would add to the throng in a BIG way.
The American Film Market is a place to buy and sell mostly low-budget movies. Now, I have friends who were there, and I work on this level, so I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush…but I have to be honest, AFM feels a lot like a Douche Convention. So many of the people there actually aspire to be slick Hollywood assholes, and figure that the “Hollywood” part will follow if they get the rest of it down. This can work in the short term, but I don’t think it does for much longer than that. In my experience, the people who get the most work in this town have the right combination of talent and professionalism, i.e. they are EASY TO WORK WITH. Ever wonder why you don’t see many Balthasar Getty movies nowadays? It isn’t because he can’t act. Reliability and lack of obnoxiousness are bigger behind-the-scenes factors than you may have been led to believe. If you are hard to work with, you better have all the charisma in the world, or GUARANTEE a huge cash return…and hey, some people do. But most don’t.
So I think that many of the people attending the screening of AFTER.LIFE may have been potential buyers…and the ban on cameras a bit more lenient (loads o’ flashes) because this was trying to woo people over. It didn’t make things easy for my friend…and because of enthusiasm for a prior movie, it meant that what I had thought would be a 20-minute wait in line turned into an hour wait in line. He has a good story about it, and I hope he’ll give details soon enough. ‘Tisn’t my place to usurp his tale.
Suffice it to say that he literally got the last available ticket. By which point I, inside the auditorium, had given up on saving a seat, in part because the guy two seats away, self-servingly, had told me the entire rush line were sent away. This turned out to be a ploy to get his girlfriend into the seat between us…and she took a fucking text message during the show, as well as whispering to him in a voice they apparently thought I couldn’t hear.
My grandfather hated his deafness. Had he lived in the land of leaf-blowers and movie-talkers, he might have seen the bright side.
Christina Ricci, the live-action Bratz doll, showing up in a limo might have had something to do with the large turnout. I’ve talked to her exactly one time in my life, at the Sunset 5 box office, where she agreed with me and my coworker that people shouldn’t be able to get refunds just because they don’t like the movie. I always liked her, and that affirmed it.
I don’t know why AFTER.LIFE has a period in the middle of its title. There is no plot-point that involves the Internet. Maybe to avoid confusion with the Japanese film. I did like how the director’s company is called Llajoo, which when pronounced as if Mexican, is “yahoo.” Clever, but maybe too much so for marketing to the dumb masses.
The director’s name is Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, but her hubbie is apparently not G.I. Joe Zartan actor Arnold, but rather her cowriter, Paul Vosloo. Hooray for inter-cultural unions. But let me get straight to the very important point:
AFTER.LIFE features Christina Ricci walking around naked. A lot.
I posted this on Twitter (http://twitter.com/LYTrules), and followers wanted more details. So okay, here you go…her hips are always conveniently pivoted away from camera, so there is no bush here. But ass? Absolutely. Am I crass for saying that? Listen, I probably just helped guarantee this movie a sale.
The story opens with Christina getting fucked by Justin Long…and I probably just guaranteed a few more female sales. I don’t get it, exactly, but I do know that Justin is considered the sex bomb by many female friends. This may be an outgrowth of the insane devotion people with Mac computers have, since he represents them in commercials. Me, I say John Hodgman is more awesome. But I will never want to fuck either one, so what do I know. Get Christina to pimp for Macs and you might sell me.
Here’s a funny thing: according to IMDB, Kate Bosworth was originally offered this role. It’s funny because she never does nudity. Ricci has already leaped that barrier with PROZAC NATION and BITCH ON A CHAIN (otherwise known as Black Snake Moan, but I call it what it should have been called). Funnily enough, who has more acting cred, still? Ricci. Drop them drawers, Kate.
Alfred Molina was originally offered Liam Neeson’s role, too. He coulda done it…but Neeson is creepier.
Back to movie plot: Ricci is Anna, a crazy chick taking psychoactive drugs for her hallucinations. Long is Paul, her wanna-be fiancé. After he gets a promotion and she argues with him about the possible move that might ensue, she drives away in the midst of a rainstorm, playing angry music. Bad idea. Crash happens. And not the good kind of crash where you realize you’re racist and need reconciliation, plus Oscars. The bad kind, where you might be dead.
And this is the crux of the thing. She wakes up on a slab in a funeral home, with mortician Deacon (Liam Neeson) telling her she’s dead. But she doesn’t feel dead, and can still talk to him. This, he claims, is because he has a gift that enables him to talk to souls that are not yet reconciled to their fate. Is he for real, or just a crazy dude that prematurely kills people?
Let me just say that as a critic for ten years, I have seen my share of cheapie horror flicks that don’t screen for press, have no big names, and invariably end with the CARNIVAL OF SOULS “Surprise! She’s been dead the whole time!” twist. Agnieszka even nods to the most notable successor of that film, by giving us a kid who…SEES DEAD PEOPLE! But what works here that fails in so many others, is that she knows you know this stuff, and offers it up as a possibility right off the bat. Maybe Anna is dead all along. Or maybe the hallucinatory drugs she’s been taking are distorting her perception. Is Deacon an evil premature murderer suffering from obvious delusions, or is he truly trying to help lost ghosts?
Since the film is a bit long, you may find yourself saying, “Get on with it, I just want the debate to be resolved!” If a distributor picks this up and asks for a narrative trim or two, I will not be unsympathetic. But it also winds up potentially going into SAW territory…like, IF Deacon is bad, it’s only because he gets rid of people who don’t appreciate life. At the same time, IF Anna isn’t dead, why does she have visions of hell? Just the pills? Or something greater?
On the other hand, you could just say that she has awesome boobs and butt. And you see them a lot.
There’s also some good stuff with the aforementioned kid, but best you experience that for yourself.
At the Q&A afterwards, Ricci joked that she took the role because she hates wearing clothes. At least, I think it was a joke.
To see my friend’s photo of her for UberCine.com, go here
And that’s a wrap on AFI Fest, folks. More fast food and the usual musings coming as we transition back to non-fest mode.
