Forgive me Monty, for I have sinned...

While Watching "Synechdoche, New York"...

I came up with two movie related realizations.
Movie character I'd least like to become:

Movie character I'm most likely to become:

Best Limited Role of 08.

Is anyone else excited about...

"In my country there's a saying...

..if you want to reach the sky fuck a duck and learn to fly."

Pink Champagne and Skyscrapers.

"It's the nearest thing to heaven we have in New York"
- Terry McKay (Irene Dunne) referring to the Empire State

What's the measure of a great movie? Perhaps the fact that after a million viewings it still has a huge effect on the viewer.
If so, then Leo McCarey's "Love Affair" can be counted among the greats. The story is quite known; French playboy Michel (Charles Boyer) meets American singer Terry (Dunne) on a cruise ship. They are both in relationships but end up falling in love.
Before docking in New York City they agree to tie up their affairs and meet six months later atop the Empire State.
They never do.
The film was later remade by McCarey in 1957 starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, by Warren Beatty in 1994 (in what happened to be Katharine Hepburn's last film role) and served as inspiration for 1993's "Sleepless in Seattle". Which is why even if you haven't seen the original one, there's at least some measure in which the story will seem very familiar.
And it's this very element that makes the 1939 version the more vulnerable in terms of believability.
It's easy to see how the film moves contrivedly, working towards a melodramatic crescendo, almost as if the first hour or so had been merely a McGuffin of sorts.
It's also quite clear how McCarey threw in every element that would guarantee the film would move the audience in some way or another (cute little singing orphans, a wise foreign widow living in a French paradise, catchy songs...).
Watching the film it's impossible not to notice these things, especially if you know your film history and genres well.
What isn't as obvious is that regardless of these things, the film's eventual melodramatic finale works; more than that, it will put a lump in your throat you never saw coming.
Much is owed to the charming lead actors. Boyer, who more often than not came off as smarmy and odd (the "Gaslight" effect maybe?) is absolutely enchanting here, his scenes with his grandmother (played by Maria Ouspenskaya who with one scene got herself an Academy Award nomination) are magical and tender.
Dunne, practically steals the show with her poised dignity and seducing pride. As an audience member you'll wonder why her character makes some of the choices she does, but Dunne makes her best effort to make even the craziest decisions seem like the best.
But 70 years after it was made perhaps what makes this film, and its subsequent incarnations classic, is how it subverts stereotypical genre expectations.
"Love Affair" is considered by many to be one of the ultimate chick flicks ever made and it might be so, but as history has proved, "chick flick" is almost a derogative term most of the time.
Upon hearing those words we're expected to see women (both on and off the screen) crying for no reason, going after ridiculous promises of love, suffering out of some sort of pleasure and overall being puppets of a chauvinistic play where they don't make any choices.
A strong headed feminist would say that pictures like this only serve to subjugate the role of woman in society, but if they bothered to look closer they would be in awe of how in fact it's the importance of women that drives the entire film.
Not just in terms of plot twists and turns (although that might be a case as well) but as a more subtle underscore, like some sort of Freudian ghost.
Here we come to realize that Michel's life for example has become absolutely dependant on the place of the women in his life.
He comes to his grandmother after having his heart broken and upon not finding her there goes straight to her chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
It's also the women who give the man a purpose in life. His love for Terry forces him to leave his old ways and look for a real profession to make him worthy of her.
They work like the muses in Greek mythology pushing the hero forward in his journey. It might be that he's the one taking advantage out of them, but once the curtain falls who do we remember the most?

- This begins a series of posts dedicated to celebrating 1939.
I'd decided to start it at the beginning of the year, but then managed to procrastinate and was inspired by Oscar to do so again.

"What seems to be the trouble, Captain?"

Watching "The Trouble With Harry" and the disinterested way Shirley McLaine's character acts towards her deceased husband I wondered if the reason why she acts like that is because there is some sort of homosexual subtext in the whole thing?
She says how he didn't show up for their honeymoon and Hitchcock never stayed shy from gay backgrounds.
Anyone else think the same, or is it my flu making me see weird things?

Is that a fox-squirrel in your pocket?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine *

Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston
Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, Lynn Collins
will.i.am, Daniel Henney, Kevin Durand, Taylor Kitsch

This prequel to the "X-Men" series commits the cardinal sin of action film/comic book/summer blockbusters: it's terribly un-entertaining.
Wolverine/Logan as played by Hugh Jackman was consistently one of the best elements in the ensemble of the previous trilogy; combining raw power, a dark sense of humor and animalistic sexuality.
Once you leave him on his own though, he's just not that interesting. The film begins in 1845 where we learn about Logan's birthplace and his power to regenerate as well as his relationship with his older brother Victor (played by Schreiber). Through the credits sequence (which perhaps would've made a better film) we follow the siblings through most of the wars in the twentieth century finishing in Vietnam where they are approached by William Stryker (Huston) who asks him to joing a special team he's putting together.
The group is made out of other mutants including the invulnerable Fred Dukes (Durand), teleportating Kestrel (will.i.am), Bolt who manipulates electricity (Monaghan), expert gunsman Agent Zero (Henney) and sword fighter Wade Wilson (Reynolds).
Stryker uses them as mercenaries who commit vicious crimes to get what they want. Logan becomes disgusted by this and leaves the group, retiring peacefully to Canada where he lives with his girlfriend Kayla (Collins).
Years later his brother Victor tracks him down and kills his girlfriend setting Logan on a search for revenge. He is approached by Stryker who offers to help him become invincible in order to fulfill his mission. Logan accepts and undergoes a procedure where his skeleton is reinforced with the indestructible metal adamantium.
Logan later learns that Stryker has been in league with Victor all along and escapes, taking on the name of Wolverine in search of vengeance.
Then there's a rescue mission, more mutant cameos than you can shake a stick at and the eventual finale which neatly ties up events so that the first "X-Men" movie makes more sense.
One would assume that the purpose of a prequel would be to establish things otherwise we wouldn't have way of knowing or that at least in some way influenced the behavior of the characters when we met them.
The people involved in making this film however only saw in it the opportunity to make a buck and Wolverine becomes but a puppet in a constant sequence of events and action sequences trying to top the previous one in terms of grandiosity.
As much as Jackman tries to invest something into his character, the screenplay provides him with some ridiculous scenes (not to mention cringe-worthy one liners, which they probably are using for the tie-in video game) that lack a flashy comic book feel and certainly never achieve some sort of hyperrealism.
In the same way the action sequences often come close to turning into selfparodies (unlike the cheesy glory of Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" series) that make us believe that the characters are actually doing them just because the actors playing them are getting paid.
When the film tries to humanize Logan it does so with the subtlety of a nuclear bomb, throwing in ridiculous flashbacks and an even dumber story his girlfriend tells him straight out of the "chick flick book of mythology".
When "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is over you too will have grown claws from boredom and will wish to tear the screen down.

Fear of Commitment in "Psycho".

While watching the opening scene the other day something became quite obvious to me: Sam Loomis (John Gavin) perhaps doesn't want to be with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh).
As they share a post coital conversation (with sex so good that she didn't even have time to eat as Hitch suggests by showing us a wrapped sandwich) he tells her all the reasons why they can't be together.
Most of them concerning money and his ex-wife. Marion rolls on the bed like a kitten as she confesses she can't be without him and is tired of the secretive life they're leading.
As she gets dressed, and he remains shirtless, the idea that she might break up with him becomes tangible (while they're naked she's still his'?) and he says "I want to see you under any circumstances, even respectability".
Anyone who's seen the film knows that he never will see her again, which led me to question if in fact everything that happens to Marion afterwards isn't in fact a manifestation of Sam's fear of commitment with her.
She steals the money because of him and it's this event that gets her killed (that the money becomes irrelevant to the plot perhaps suggests that this wasn't going to solve their life as a couple as he said).
In the opening scene Marion also mentions that ideally she'd like Sam to eat with her in her family house with her mother's portrait on the mantel.
By specifying the mantel she seems to be putting her mom into a sort of immovable pedestal.
And what scares off a heterosexual male more than meeting his girlfriend's mother or his own in any case? Maybe he isn't as scared of her mom as to the idea of what his own mom would think of the way he's leading his life and the thought of disappointing her.
This piece of dialogue is a sort of premonition of what will happen to Marion later on. She is, technically, killed by someone's mother.
It's as if Sam's fantasy of guilt reversal is realized.
This all might be dismissed by the fact that when Marion disappears Sam helps in the investigation. But this might as well be one part guilt, one part need to fulfill his role in the equation and embrace responsibility (is he making sure she won't come back to have his way with her sister or any other woman?).
Or maybe, just maybe, Sam really did love Marion Crane.