Fletch's Film Review: Outrage

It's hard not to, ahem, get behind Kirby Dick's Outrage. If there's one thing Americans love more than schadenfreude and the building up/tearing down of our public figures, it's exposing hypocrites for what they are. On the heels of the Larry Craig/airport bathroom scandal, Dick set out to do just that; with an arsenal of journalists, bloggers, radio personalities, and even disgraced former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey behind him, Dick goes on the offensive for the GLBT demo, firing back at politicians that fight against gay rights in public, only to (perhaps) be living lies when it comes to their private lives.

Dick and Co. know it's a slippery slope they're playing on. For each politician they go after, from Craig to Florida governor Charlie Crist to former New York City mayor Ed Koch, there are a number of sources that claim behind-the-scenes knowledge of the lives of these men that goes beyond the public eye. The film steers away from the more opinionated style of documentaries from their liberal counterpart Michael Moore and stays the course with facts and hard data backing it up. Unlike Dick's last doc, 2006's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Dick is nowhere to be seen; instead, he leaves the talking to sources like McGreevey, former Tempe (Arizona) mayor Neil Giuliano and Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, all current or former politicians and all out gay men.

The filmmaking is sound if not particularly noteworthy; it's less of a story being told here than a series of case studies each delving into the lies and voting records of a singular politician. That being the case, your enjoyment of the movie is likely tied to your socio-political leanings going in. That being said, even though I'm pro-Outrage and Dick's goal, a small part of me can't help but worry that maybe, just maybe, the film is a mistake. If even one of Outrage's targets is not, in fact, homosexual, then the whole affair becomes a well-meaning, slanderous waste that helps no one and hurts the movement entirely. It's easy to point fingers, but you had better be aiming them in the right direction.

Oh, and the Harvey Milk tie-in at the last second felt sappy and forced. The connection is credible - Milk was a force in the gay community and a leading proponent of gays outing themselves, but coming on the heels of Milk's success, his inclusion lessens Outrage's own impact and makes it seem as though it's merely a docu-epilogue to last year's biopic.

Fletch's Film Rating:

"Darn tootin!"

Counting Down the Zeroes: Code 46 (2003)

[Editor's note: this post is part of Ibetolis' excellent, ambitious Counting Down the Zeroes project, in which he's asking bloggers high and low to write about their favorite films from 2000-2009. It also features yearly top tens from a number of bloggers, and in-depth looks at the awards ceremonies from the various years. Comprehensive as hell. I chose to write about the underseen, underrated Code 46.]

For the past 20 years, I've lived in the Phoenix metro area. It's no New York City in terms of the variety of our diversity, but it's certainly a place where you notice the lack of an official language. The Spanish language is everywhere. This type of experience may or may not be common to you; if you reside in California or Washington, you might be learning Japanese without trying; if you're in Toronto, your proximity to Montreal might be enhancing your mastery of French. And if you live in New Orleans, well hell - you might be picking up French, Spanish and Creole.

It's funny - for the sake of simplicity, I'm all for America adopting English as it's official language, but the melting pot of languages as seen in Code 46 appeals to me more than anything else. In the global community depicted, people from all over the world are not just bi- or tri-lingual, they're simultaneously multi-lingual, peppering their speech with a palabra from Español here, a bon huit from Français there, along with Chinese, Arabic and other languages as well. It might be a bit 'pixies and fairy dust,' but to me it represents a hopeful future in which the world gets small as we embrace other tongues and other cultures. After all, it's harder to have miscommunication problems with the world at-large when you're all speaking the same language.

Roger Ebert, in his two-and-a-half star review of one of my favorite films of the Noughties, said:

"The problem with Code 46 is that the movie, filled with ideas and imagination, is murky in its rules and intentions. I cannot say I understand the hows and whys of this future world, nor do I much care, since it's mostly a clever backdrop to a love affair that would easily teleport to many other genres: Investigator falls in love with mystery woman, helps her commit crime, risks being left hanging out to dry. Double Indemnity."

I can't argue much with his basic premise - taken to its basest level, the storyline of this Michael Winterbottom drama is not earthshatteringly original. But what film's plot could survive being narrowed down to 18 words and come out feeling fresh anyhow?

Similarly, while I'm loathe to boil down my appreciation of Code 46 to a substance vs. style argument, I must admit that the style is where my love for it comes from most. It's set, a la the similarly genetically-enhanced Gattaca, in a vague near-future, in a time where the ozone has eroded to such a level that day has become night and night day, turning the world's population into vampires in their attempts to escape the harsh effects of the sun. Those with means, and with "papelles" (similar to visas), live in megalopolises while the unlucky huddled masses are forced to live a nomadic life in the vast deserted spaces in between.

Samantha Morton's Maria works for the Sphinx, a Customs-like corporation that deems who is and isn't allowed to travel and live within the confines of the cities. "The Sphinx knows all," say the characters. Specifically, Maria works with the papelles themselves, and having grown up "outside" prior to gaining entry, is sympathetic to those wishing to travel to places the Sphinx won't allow. So she cheats the system, and in time, an investigator (Tim Robbins) is sent to determine which of the workers is illegally smuggling papelles. Given an "empathy virus" prior to his arrival that allows him intuition into people's minds, Robbins' William Geld is put in a position to quickly identify the culprit. But, for reasons tied to the title and prologue, William feels a connection to Maria and, despite his best intentions does not turn her in, instead falling in love with her.

So yeah, the story's rote. Only it's not. Like the literal talk soup going on, this simple love story is sprinkled by writer Frank Cottrell Boyce with a great twist that adds a heaviness to the proceedings that most love stories can't touch. At the same time, Winterbottom tosses in subtle futuristic technologies that are not only ingenious but believable for a near future (for example, when William enters his Shanghai hotel room with the bright morning sunshine blaring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, a simple touch of a remote button tints them all by many shades; later, we see that the television he's watching is not a stand-alone set, but embedded into one of the windows. Brilliant.).

I'll take my chances with the Sphinx - perfect or not, this is a world I want to live in.

Tuesday's Twelve Tags #28

Last week's winner: Jason Soto, with 9 points.
The theme: Each film starred a former and/or current famous stand-up comedian. (Jason Soto)

Early!

Here's the new dozen. The rules are simple: I'm going to give you a dozen taglines, all you have to do is name as many flicks that they belong to as you can. Try to resist the Google. Get the most and you win. There will always be a theme, though it's worth will vary according to how difficult I think it is. This week, it's worth 4 points.

1. The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.
2. They only met once, but it changed their lives forever
3. Strangers shouldn't talk to little girls.
4. Things fall down. People look up. And when it rains, it pours.
5. How far would you go for a friend?
6. May the best hitman win.
7. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story
8. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the fright.
9. Just Because They Serve You... Doesn't Mean They Like You.
10. The world's greatest leader is a hostage in the most dangerous place on Earth. Now only the deadliest man alive can save him.
11. The hardest thing in life is sell
12. They're selling music but not selling out.

As you get them right, I'll mark them as gotten and stuff. Good luck.

Standings
Justin - 8
Nick - 5.5
Jess - 4
J.D. - 2.5
Shane, Jason Soto - 2
Sea_of_Green, Kyle - 1
Dead Pan, BD79 - .5

Correct answers so far:
1. Falling Down (BD79)
2. The Breakfast Club (Justin)
3. Hard Candy (Justin)
4. Magnolia (Justin)
5. 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 day (BD79)
6. Smokin' Aces (Justin)
7. The Paper (Justin)
8. Snakes on a Plane (Justin)
9. Clerks (Justin)
10. Escape from New York (BD79)
11. Glengarry Glen Ross (BD79)
12. Empire Records (Rick "The Hat" BMan)
Theme - Each film takes place over the span of a single day (or less). (BD79)

Who's ready for some movie blogging?

Not me.

Sorry. Blame the holiday. It's only gonna get worse, too. On Saturday, Mrs. Fletch and I are packing our bags for the East Coast. There will be no laptop accompanying us, and though I'm sure I'll encounter an internet connection somewhere along the way, I don't plan on doing much writing. Perhaps I'll schedule some posts in advance, but I anticipate this place being a bit of a ghost town for a week or so after this Friday.

Until then, I do have things I've been meaning to post, I just need to gather the stamina and desire to do so. Your patience and understanding are appreciated. Woe is me and stuff.

Stained Glass Cinema Sunday (#47)

J.D.'s back, and extending his already impressive lead. Time for a harder one...




















Standings:
J.D. - 11
Fletch - 7
Wendymoon - 5
Jason/Daniel, Nick - 3
Evan Derrick, Jason Soto, David Bishop - 2
Steel11Kane, TonyD, Luke Harrington, Rachel, Adam Ross, Justin, Anders, Dreamrot, Dave, BD79, Clive Dangerously - 1

Here are the altered/actual posters from last time:

TGITDNMAR (7/3/09)

It's that time again for TGITDNMAR, which (obviously) stands for Thank God It's The Day New Movies Are Released.

This 4th of July, I will be declaring my independence from movie theaters. I feel so empowered.

Public Enemies
Michael Mann's Butt Score notwithstanding (see next post below), many are saying what I've been thinking about this movie for some time: oh look, Mann made Heat: 1930s Style. And while that shouldn't be a slight against it - after all, Heat is a great flick - for some reason, it's a major turnoff here.
Fletch's Chance of Viewing (in the theater): 29%


Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
And yet, we were desperate enough to see this a few days ago. So much for talking bad about Public Enemies. I'll pin this tail on Mrs. Fletch - we'd seen the prior two installments, and she's smitten with talking animals, extinct or otherwise. Sure, let's go with that excuse...
Fletch's Chance of Viewing: 100%

Happy 4th of July (Americans)! To the rest of you, happy Saturday.

Bang for Your Butt

Tangent One
I'm a bit of amateur stat geek. I pay close attention to the weekend box office results, as evidenced by the summer box office games I've devised and such. I play (and win!) fantasy football every year, much to the disdain of a certain Mrs. Fletch, and I dive into analyzing the prior year's stats every July/August in preparation for the upcoming draft(s). I'm a baseball fan and am familiar, if not an expert, with terms like OPS and VORP. I spend all day in Excel and/or Access.

You get the picture.

Tangent Two
If you've read reviews here for some time, you've probably seen me rant a time or twelve about the length of some films these days. Sam Raimi's insufferable 139-minute Spider-Man 3. Gore Verbinski's 169-minute (!!!) third Pirates of the Carribean movie. Even great films like Paul Thomas Anderson's 158-minute masterpiece There Will Be Blood could stand to have a little fat lopped off the top. In my world, movies should not be shorter than 85 minutes and should not be longer than 120 unless there's a really good reason; if you can't tell your story in two hours (give or take a few minutes), then I just might have a problem with you, and my butt most certainly does.

Tangential Combination
So anyway, sometime over the last few days, someone asked me if I was going to see Public Enemies. "I dunno, probably" was probably my answer; the trailer looks ok and all, but I just had this bad feeling about the Johnny Depp-starring, Michael Mann-directed crime saga.

And then I realized what the problem was. Mann doesn't make bad movies - after all, his 11 features have an average IMDb rating of 7.3, just below Steven Spielberg's 7.4. But damned if his movies aren't long as sh*t, and they seem to have been getting longer as his career's gone on. Have a look:

Movie	Rating	Length
The Jericho Mile	7.5	97
Thief	7.2	122
The Keep	5.7	96
Manhunter	7.2	119
The Last of the Mohicans	7.7	112
Heat	8.2	171
The Insider	8.0	157
Collateral	7.8	120
Ali	6.5	157
Miami Vice	6.0	134
Public Enemies	8.7	140

It should be noted that the score for Public Enemies is artificially high (as most new releases on IMDb are) and will likely be below 8.0 by Monday.

Short story long, what I longed for was a metric that told me whether a movie was worth the toll it took on my butt. Not to say that any movie literally bothers my butt to sit through, but you know what I mean - even during a movie like the aforementioned There Will Be Blood, you'll probably find yourself stealing more than a few glances at your watch, wondering just how close to the end this thing is. Or maybe you're sick of 3-hour movies that all but guarantee a trip to the restroom and some missed plot points.

A large factor in deciding what movies I want to see is who is directing, so I figured this metric would work better if we could look at a director's body of work and assign a figure, in the end deciding whether or not they are a Friend of Your Butt (FYB) or an Enemy of Your Butt (EYB). (Before we proceed, please head over to the gutter, lean over, and pick up your mind from it. Thanks. Jerk.) Then, when director X has a new film that comes out, we can look at his/her Butt Score to help determine whether or not it's worth it to see their film in the theater or to maybe wait for a time when a pause button and/or restroom is but a few paces away. But how to quantify that accurately...

In the end, the best solution is sometimes the simplest. To determine a single film's Butt Score, all you do is take the length (in minutes) and divide it by the IMDb rating. I realize IMDb rating's might not be the best judge of a film's value, but a) it's close enough and b) so long as the same scale is used across the board, the results should keep their integrity (integrity, ha ha). Again, let's use Mann as an example:

Movie	Rating	Length	Butt Score
The Jericho Mile	7.5	97	12.93
Thief	7.2	122	16.94
The Keep	5.7	96	16.84
Manhunter	7.2	119	16.53
The Last of the Mohicans	7.7	112	14.55
Heat	8.2	171	20.85
The Insider	8.0	157	19.63
Collateral	7.8	120	15.38
Ali	6.5	157	24.15
Miami Vice	6.0	134	22.33
Public Enemies	8.7	140	16.09

The lower the Butt Score, the better. A great example of this can be seen with The Jericho Mile and The Keep. They clock in at 97 and 96 minutes, respectively (identical), but thanks to a much better rating, Jericho has an impressive 12.93 Butt Score. Of the 69 films I've looked at thus far, the average is 17.37, and only nine were lower than 12.93. Here in the infancy of this metric, the determination of a director's FYB/EYB rating will depend on where their body of work falls in relation to that average score; to do this, I'm taking tossing out their highest and lowest Butt Scores and averaging the rest. Michael Mann, as is turns out, isn't as bad as I might have thought, thanks to the high quality of his work, but the survey says that he is still an Enemy of Your Butt, with a Combined Butt Score of 17.88.

So that's the crux of it. I figure I'll use this brilliant/awful new metric as the springboard for a new feature where I occasionally inform you on the Enemy/Friend status of a topical director. In the meantime, here are a few other bodies of work:

Quentin Tarantino

Movie	Rating	Length	Butt Score
Reservoir Dogs	8.4	99	11.79
Death Proof	7.3	90	12.33
Kill Bill, Vol. 1	8.2	111	13.54
Kill Bill, Vol. 2	8.0	136	17.00
Pulp Fiction	8.9	154	17.30
Inglorious Basterds	8.3	148	17.83
Jackie Brown	7.6	154	20.26

Combined Butt Score: 15.66
Quentin Tarantino is a Friend of Your Butt

Michael Bay

Movie	Rating	Length	Butt Score
Bad Boys	6.5	118	18.15
The Rock	7.2	136	18.89
Transformers	7.4	144	19.46
The Island	6.9	136	19.71
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	6.6	150	22.73
Bad Boys II	6.2	147	23.71
Armageddon	6.0	150	25.00
Pearl Harbor	5.4	183	33.89

Combined Butt Score: 21.58
Michael Bay is a Enemy of Your Butt (which is the least surprising news I've heard all day; Pearl Harbor had the highest Butt Score of any film I looked at...by far. 2nd worst was Armageddon...)

Wes Anderson

Movie	Rating	Length	Butt Score
Rushmore	7.8	93	11.92
The Darjeeling Limited	7.3	91	12.47
Bottle Rocket	7.2	91	12.64
The Royal Tenenbaums	7.6	110	14.47
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou	7.2	119	16.53

Combined Butt Score: 13.19
Wes Anderson is a Friend of Your Butt (of the six directors I looked at, Anderson had the best CBS. Rushmore placed 4th overall, with Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap the clubhouse leader with a scant 10.25 Butt Score. Kudos, Rob Reiner...and irony.)


So...I'm insane, aren't I? Be honest.

Working on something big...

Sit tight. Have patience. Don't move your butt. Stay there. It's coming soon. It's sofa king we todd ed that it's genius. You're guaranteed to love/hate it.

Tuesday's Twelve Tags #27

Last week's winner: Justin yet again, with 10 points.
The theme: Each film featured actor Tom Wilkinson. (Justin)

Here's the new dozen. The rules are simple: I'm going to give you a dozen taglines, all you have to do is name as many flicks that they belong to as you can. Try to resist the Google. Get the most and you win. There will always be a theme, though it's worth will vary according to how difficult I think it is. This week, it might be difficult. It's specific yet general. I'm making it worth 8 points.

1. Check your pulse at the door... if you have one.
2. He's taken them hostage. They're driving him nuts.
3. The only thing white is the house.
4. They'll do anything to save their best bud.
5. Brian's about to discover the woman he loves isn't the woman he loves.
6. A comedy with a language all its own.
7. An American excess story.
8. "Hello, my name is Andy and this is my poster."
9. After life there is more. The end is just the beginning.
10. A comedy of incredible proportions.
11. The show has been cancelled...but the adventure is just beginning.
12. He sees dead people... and they annoy him.

As you get them right, I'll mark them as gotten and stuff. Good luck.

Standings
Justin - 8
Nick - 5.5
Jess - 4
J.D. - 2.5
Shane - 2
Sea_of_Green, Jason, Kyle - 1
Dead Pan, BD79 - .5

Correct answers so far:
1. The Haunted Mansion (Clive Dangerously)
2. The Ref (Jason Soto)
3. Head of State (Clive Dangerously)
4. Half Baked (Clive Dangerously)
5. The Truth About Cats and Dogs (Alex)
6. Spanglish (Alex)
7. Brewster's Millions (Alex)
8. Man on the Moon (Clive Dangerously)
9. What Dreams May Come (Clive Dangerously)
10.
11. Galaxy Quest (Clive Dangerously)
12. Ghost Town (Clive Dangerously)
Theme - Each film stars a former/current famous stand-up comedian.

Public Service Announcement: You go to Big Lots! now

If you're a fan of buying DVDs, especially ones at low low closeout prices (!!), you should head to Big Lots! soon. I happened to go there yesterday looking for some random thing made out of plastic (they have lots of those there) whence I happened upon a large cardboard utopia filled with terrible movies from days gone by.

Spent a good 15-20 minutes perusing the likes of Hooper, New York Minute, and 2-packs with Cobra and Tango & Cash (which I really should have gotten, based off the Brion James post). Alas, I did not get any of those movies. However, I did pick up the threesome below (note: shockingly, I did not see the movie Threesome amongst the choices) for a grand whopping total of $8.00. The first two were three dollars apiece and the third was but two. As a bonus, all were widescreen; keep an eye out for evil Full Frame DVDs lurking out there, like the one they had for Dave Chappelle's Block Party.



Awesomeness. If you have a Big Lots! in your metropolis or village, get there fast. Well, maybe you don't have to go that fast - after all, I think much of your competition is old people and/or other people with bad knees.