This list was inspired by the song "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere," which came on at a bar a few weeks ago. It's a country tune sung by Alan Jackson (of South Park's "Ladder to Heaven" fame) with help from Jimmy Buffett. In case you are not familiar, here you go:
I guess I had heard the song before, but until I heard it again just recently, I had never really registered its message. Let me start by saying that I understand the sentiment. The person singing this song is working some unspecified, but presumably gruelling, job. His boss has told him thath he needs to work overtime. He is understandably frustrated and wishes to start drinking immediately. Now, I'm a teacher - which means that I do not have to worry about the hot sun bearing down on me as I work, nor am I paid by the hour. For that matter, at five o'clock I have been officially off work for nearly three hours - so the specific time doesn't mean as much to me as it does to the speaker. But I get the point: sometimes I, too, want to ditch work and responsibility in favor of a local tavern.
So the problem here isn't with the message - it's with the way it's expressed, which displays a fundamental lack of understanding of how the way time zones work. At most times of day - in fact, for fifty-nine minutes of each hour - the title of the song just isn't true. When it is 6:01 here, it is 5:01 in Chicago, 4:01 in Denver, 3:01 in Seattle and 5:00 nowhere.
Surely Alan Jackson knows this, right? Maybe he just means it in the way that people mean when they ask, "Are you twenty-one?" as a stand-in for "Are you able to drink alcohol legally?" I am willing to accept this, and yet even that is a little bit annoying. Every time I'm asked "Are you twenty-one?" - with surprising frequency, given that I am much closer to thirty - I understand the question as a lazy man's version of, "Are you at least twenty-one?" Just like I have to understand that this song should be titled, "It's At Least Five O'Clock Somewhere." This admittedly isn't as catchy - but then who wants to drink with a guy who wants to drink with a guy who thinks that at 11:24 AM there is some weird, alternate world where it's exactly 5:00?
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Weirdest Hot Beverage on the Eastern Seaboard
This has nothing to do with a list - except that it happened to me on my way back from Pittsburgh, where I was checking Primanti Brothers off my "Top 100 Sandwiches of All Time" list. (That's a whole other story, which I'll have to tell another time.)
So two weeks ago, Nick and I were driving back from a rather disappointing day in Pittsburgh. (It was supposed to be a weekend, and we were supposed to see a baseball game, but Mother Nature had other plans. It ended up being a day of wandering around in the rain, and eating everything in sight, which had its merits - but ultimately felt a little lacking without the baseball.)
I tend to get onto weird food kicks when I'm driving long distances. For instance, road trips are, in my book, the only occasions on which it is acceptable to purchase and consume an entire bag of beef jerky. I love the stuff, but I literally won't eat it unless I am driving to a location more than four hours away. Not sure why. On this particular trip, I had developed an odd fixation on cappuccino - specifically, from the ubiquitous cappuccino machines found at rest stops. Nick laughed at me a lot for this, and you might too - but seriously, have you had rest stop machine cappuccino?? It is delicious. And it comes in crazy, but appealing flavors: Southern Texas Pecan, Mexican Chocolate, Pumpkin Spice. (I make it my personal mission to try a different flavor each time, if at all possible.) Honestly, has anyone ever tried this and not liked it? I don't even care that it may or may not be chemicals, instead of real coffee. If your gas station rest stop has machine Cappuccino, and I've been driving a while, I'm drinking it. And chances are, I'm drinking the craziest flavor you have to offer.
And yes, I know I am supposed to be somewhat of an authority on food.
About halfway between Pittsburgh and DC lies Breezewood, Pennsylvania, a trucker's mecca with some of the best rest stops the country has to offer. Of particular note is the largest Sheetz gas station I have ever seen. Needless to say, after a two hour drive in the rain, I had the feeling that this Sheetz probably had the sort of synthetic cappuccino necessary to lift my spirits. After refilling, I entered and sought out the machine. Sure enough - ten flavors of Cappuccino, each crazier than the next. On such an occasion, it just didn't seem right to get something mundane like French Vanilla or Hazelnut or, God Forbid, no flavor at all. Buying regular coffee at this Breezewood Sheetz seemed akin to having a grilled cheese sandwich at Primanti Brothers: a sense of adventure was crucial. So I did what any traveler would have done: I pressed the button for the "Brown Sugar Raisin Oatmeal" Cappuccino. Go ahead and laugh if you must, but ask yourself, does that really sound so bad? You like brown sugar, right? And chances are, you like raisins and oatmeal too. So what's the problem? I paid at the counter and eagerly awaited my first sip.
I had that first sip in the parking lot, which was a good thing. Because I wasn't expecting to find solid chunks floating in my coffee. Big solid chunks, which I spat out onto the pavement. Clearly, the milk must have been curdled. On one level, this was oddly comforting - I hadn't previously been certain that machine cappuccino was actually made with milk. Apparently it was. However, this didn't override the fact that I was now trying my best not to chew on pieces of this milk. I walked back inside to demand an explanation.
"There are chunks in my coffee. The milk is all curdled," I said to the matronly cashier, placing my cup down abruptly on the counter.
"What kind did you try sir?"
"What?"
"Did you buy the Oatmeal flavor?" she asked, in what I took to be a somewhat judgmental tone.
"Yes. Why?"
"It's Brown Sugar Raisin Capp-OAT-ccino. It has oats in it."
"What? Why?"
"Would you like to try another flavor, sir?"
Yes, I would. One sip of Capp-OAT-ccino was quite enough, thank you very much. So there you have it, folks: coffee and oats together at last. It's reminiscent of Homer's line from The Simpsons, "I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are." He says this while holding up a can, whose label says: "Nuts and Gum: Together at Last."
Coffee and oats. Who actually drinks this? Will it catch on? What does it say about our society? I got nothing - except that I think this is the reason I love traveling, and why I sometimes love the weird stops like Breezewood, PA as much as I love the destinations. Everyone knows where to find Pittsburgh - but no GPS will tell you where to find the weirdest hot beverage on the Eastern seaboard.
So two weeks ago, Nick and I were driving back from a rather disappointing day in Pittsburgh. (It was supposed to be a weekend, and we were supposed to see a baseball game, but Mother Nature had other plans. It ended up being a day of wandering around in the rain, and eating everything in sight, which had its merits - but ultimately felt a little lacking without the baseball.)
I tend to get onto weird food kicks when I'm driving long distances. For instance, road trips are, in my book, the only occasions on which it is acceptable to purchase and consume an entire bag of beef jerky. I love the stuff, but I literally won't eat it unless I am driving to a location more than four hours away. Not sure why. On this particular trip, I had developed an odd fixation on cappuccino - specifically, from the ubiquitous cappuccino machines found at rest stops. Nick laughed at me a lot for this, and you might too - but seriously, have you had rest stop machine cappuccino?? It is delicious. And it comes in crazy, but appealing flavors: Southern Texas Pecan, Mexican Chocolate, Pumpkin Spice. (I make it my personal mission to try a different flavor each time, if at all possible.) Honestly, has anyone ever tried this and not liked it? I don't even care that it may or may not be chemicals, instead of real coffee. If your gas station rest stop has machine Cappuccino, and I've been driving a while, I'm drinking it. And chances are, I'm drinking the craziest flavor you have to offer.
And yes, I know I am supposed to be somewhat of an authority on food.
About halfway between Pittsburgh and DC lies Breezewood, Pennsylvania, a trucker's mecca with some of the best rest stops the country has to offer. Of particular note is the largest Sheetz gas station I have ever seen. Needless to say, after a two hour drive in the rain, I had the feeling that this Sheetz probably had the sort of synthetic cappuccino necessary to lift my spirits. After refilling, I entered and sought out the machine. Sure enough - ten flavors of Cappuccino, each crazier than the next. On such an occasion, it just didn't seem right to get something mundane like French Vanilla or Hazelnut or, God Forbid, no flavor at all. Buying regular coffee at this Breezewood Sheetz seemed akin to having a grilled cheese sandwich at Primanti Brothers: a sense of adventure was crucial. So I did what any traveler would have done: I pressed the button for the "Brown Sugar Raisin Oatmeal" Cappuccino. Go ahead and laugh if you must, but ask yourself, does that really sound so bad? You like brown sugar, right? And chances are, you like raisins and oatmeal too. So what's the problem? I paid at the counter and eagerly awaited my first sip.
I had that first sip in the parking lot, which was a good thing. Because I wasn't expecting to find solid chunks floating in my coffee. Big solid chunks, which I spat out onto the pavement. Clearly, the milk must have been curdled. On one level, this was oddly comforting - I hadn't previously been certain that machine cappuccino was actually made with milk. Apparently it was. However, this didn't override the fact that I was now trying my best not to chew on pieces of this milk. I walked back inside to demand an explanation.
"There are chunks in my coffee. The milk is all curdled," I said to the matronly cashier, placing my cup down abruptly on the counter.
"What kind did you try sir?"
"What?"
"Did you buy the Oatmeal flavor?" she asked, in what I took to be a somewhat judgmental tone.
"Yes. Why?"
"It's Brown Sugar Raisin Capp-OAT-ccino. It has oats in it."
"What? Why?"
"Would you like to try another flavor, sir?"
Yes, I would. One sip of Capp-OAT-ccino was quite enough, thank you very much. So there you have it, folks: coffee and oats together at last. It's reminiscent of Homer's line from The Simpsons, "I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are." He says this while holding up a can, whose label says: "Nuts and Gum: Together at Last."
Coffee and oats. Who actually drinks this? Will it catch on? What does it say about our society? I got nothing - except that I think this is the reason I love traveling, and why I sometimes love the weird stops like Breezewood, PA as much as I love the destinations. Everyone knows where to find Pittsburgh - but no GPS will tell you where to find the weirdest hot beverage on the Eastern seaboard.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Animated Music Videos
When I was growing up, my family didn't have MTV. So I was left out when my friends had discussions about the new video for "Buddy Holly" or Stone Temple Pilots' performance on Unplugged. Sometimes I asked my parents if we could visit Grandma's house - to see Grandma, yes, but also because Grandma had cable. Once there, I would allow her to engage me in a five-minute conversation before scampering off into the guest bedroom to see what was on MTV. This led to an immortal exchange between my grandmother's husband and me about the video I happened to be watching on MTV: Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance." This is the video, you'll recall, in which Petty takes home a dead corpse (Kim Basinger) so he can dance with her. I remember being rapt with the combination of catchy melody and quasi-necrophiliac story that seemed more than a little taboo to my twelve-year-old self. So I was a bit uncomfortable when Bob sat down next to me on the couch, apparently for a five-minute glimpse into adolescent pop culture. At the end, when dead Kim Basinger's eyes open, he grumbled, "Now what the hell was all that about??" and stormed out of the room.
I know that videos really came out in the early 80's, but I really think they reached their peak during my generation - specifically during the early 90's. I feel this way even if my lack of MTV left me out of the conversation at the time. One of the greatest perks of Youtube is that it is basically like having classic MTV On Demand. In 1993, I probably would have had to wait through the entire top ten countdown, plus four commercial breaks, in order to see Alicia Silverstone in Aerosmith's video for "Cryin'." (assuming that I was at Grandma's, or somewhere else that had MTV, to begin with.) Now I can just type in a few letters and see it instantly. Twelve year old me would be dumbfounded.
Maybe at some point I'll do a top ten list of my all-time favorite videos. Those would be pretty tough to come up with off the top of my head though. For the time being, I'll narrow it down to my...
Top Ten favorite ANIMATED Music Videos
1.) "My Girls" - Animal Collective
Ok, there is some quasi live action stuff going on here. But mostly it is just psychedelic amoebas and a giant glowing cube, swimming in time with the keyboards and Beach Boy harmonies. This is a song I could listen to for twenty hours on repeat anyway - with the visuals, it's like being in another dimension.
2.) "My Old Ways" - Dr. Dog
Without the video, this is a pretty little Beatles-esque tune with some surprising modulations at the chorus. It's incredibly catchy: "I don't ever wanna go back/To my o-o-o-o-o-o-old ways again." What were the old ways the singer doesn't want to go back to? As it turns out, cartoonish jewel heisting! We get the whole story in this video, in which a gang of lovable jailbirds sing and dance and tap for your entertainment. For some reason, this reminds me of "O Brother Where Art Thou?" Is it because one of them kind of looks like George Clooney?
3.) "King Rat" - Modest Mouse
This is Modest Mouse at their creepiest and dirtiest - a frantic blues shuffle with some rowdy New Orleans horns and banjo played so hard it sounds like it's about to break. Sounds like the perfect vehicle for a profoundly disturbing animation about the evils of the whaling industry - directed by, of all people, Heath Ledger - doesn't it? In the end, I'm not sure what the video means. (Is this depiction of sadistic whales supposed to arouse our sympathy for them?) But I do know that it's rare for a song and a video to simultaneously make you uncomfortable and make you want to dance.
4.) "Paranoid Android" - Radiohead
When I was 16, everyone told me that Radiohead were a bunch of geniuses and that "Paranoid Android" was a masterpiece, so I guess I thought so too. On listening to it again for the first time in many years, it seems that sometimes the crowd is worth listening to. This song moves seamlessly between styles - meditative, rockin' and at the bridge (I guess), downright mournful. It's my generation's "Aqualung" - except that I like it more. The video was done in that sort of crude Beavis and Butthead, Dr. Katz style - which is probably best because if it were any more realistic, those severed limbs would be awfully disturbing.
5.) "Clint Eastwood" - Gorillaz
Gorillaz was The Beatles of the animated music video genre - case closed. Their concerts feature a giant screen of the band members' animated avatars - displayed in front of where the band is actually playing. And these alter egos have so much personality that no one even seems to mind. "Clint Eastwood" wins the award for Song Most Improved by Animated Music Video - not that the song was bad before. But there is just something about the new giant blue version of Deltron, which enters by floating over the band and bears its four teeth as it raps, that cannot be captured in the song by itself.
6.) "Take on Me" - A-Ha
I was born too late to really claim this song and its accompanying video as my own. But let's face it - it probably did for animated videos what "Thriller" did for regular music videos, which means it deserves to be included on this list. I'm guessing you've all seen this video and know the story: A woman sits in a coffee house reading a comic book about some kind of motorcycle race. The winner of this race (incidentally, A-Ha's lead singer) winks at the women through the page of the comic book. His hand comes out of the comic book and pulls the woman into an animated world. Girl and comic motorcyclist dance with each other for a little while, sometimes in comic version and sometimes as real humans. The waitress at the coffee house comes back for the bill, only to find the woman is nowhere to be seen. She crumples up the magazine. Something else happens with some sinister looking guys and motorcycles. Some other things happen. The video ends with the hero escaping from the comic book, running away with the heroine and living, presumably, happily ever after. There is no need to recount all of the details of this little story in order to make the point that it is highly innovative. It is also the perfect marriage of animation to music. I have no idea what the song "Take on Me" is really about and until now, I hadn't bothered to think much about what the music video was truly about either. But I know that this video is bigger than the sum of its parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914
7.) "One More Time" - Daft Punk
I don't really love this song. I think that at some point in my life, it must have been the soundtrack to someone spilling a drink on me in a crowded club. In fact, I think I have been classically conditioned to flinch and guard my beer whenever I hear it - even if I'm not holding a beer. Then again, I never heard this song played by blue aliens at a rock concert on another planet. If I had, I might have been as happy as, say, the little alien girl with no eyes, merrily clapping her hands to the rhythm at 55 seconds in.
8.) "Do the Evolution" - Pearl Jam
Well, it's not Even Flow or Animal or even Corduroy, but the song isn't bad. And this sometimes disturbing, always entertaining four-minute tour of (mostly) human evolution, warfare and eventual apocalypse would be entertaining even without the sound on. Highlights include the whole ape sequence (25 seconds), "Superman" Caveman (40 seconds), and the birth machine and assembly line (3:09).
9.) "Heartless" - Kanye West
Again, I'm giving the video more weight than the song - not that I hate hip-hop or Kanye - just that I prefer to listen see other things (see items 1-5 on this list). Still, an animated rap video is pretty damn innovative. Most rappers want to show how hard they are, how street they are, how much bling the have, how many females they can get. Cartoons are decidedly un-hard and un-street, but somehow Kanye makes himself look like a bad-ass anyway.
10.) "Roller Coaster of Love" - RHCP
This video is just fun. Red Hot Chili Peppers are fun (when Anthony Keidis isn't singing about whatever happened back on "that day" in the City of Angels.) Beavis and Butthead are always fun - unconditionally - and probably even more so now that they aren't on tv regularly. Mostly, this is a fun video because it just reminds me of the 90's and of high school - only the best parts of both. Also, that heart loop-de-loop (2:49) is pretty ridiculous. I'm not sure how that works - unless you're Flea on roller-skates.
I know that videos really came out in the early 80's, but I really think they reached their peak during my generation - specifically during the early 90's. I feel this way even if my lack of MTV left me out of the conversation at the time. One of the greatest perks of Youtube is that it is basically like having classic MTV On Demand. In 1993, I probably would have had to wait through the entire top ten countdown, plus four commercial breaks, in order to see Alicia Silverstone in Aerosmith's video for "Cryin'." (assuming that I was at Grandma's, or somewhere else that had MTV, to begin with.) Now I can just type in a few letters and see it instantly. Twelve year old me would be dumbfounded.
Maybe at some point I'll do a top ten list of my all-time favorite videos. Those would be pretty tough to come up with off the top of my head though. For the time being, I'll narrow it down to my...
Top Ten favorite ANIMATED Music Videos
1.) "My Girls" - Animal Collective
Ok, there is some quasi live action stuff going on here. But mostly it is just psychedelic amoebas and a giant glowing cube, swimming in time with the keyboards and Beach Boy harmonies. This is a song I could listen to for twenty hours on repeat anyway - with the visuals, it's like being in another dimension.
2.) "My Old Ways" - Dr. Dog
Without the video, this is a pretty little Beatles-esque tune with some surprising modulations at the chorus. It's incredibly catchy: "I don't ever wanna go back/To my o-o-o-o-o-o-old ways again." What were the old ways the singer doesn't want to go back to? As it turns out, cartoonish jewel heisting! We get the whole story in this video, in which a gang of lovable jailbirds sing and dance and tap for your entertainment. For some reason, this reminds me of "O Brother Where Art Thou?" Is it because one of them kind of looks like George Clooney?
3.) "King Rat" - Modest Mouse
This is Modest Mouse at their creepiest and dirtiest - a frantic blues shuffle with some rowdy New Orleans horns and banjo played so hard it sounds like it's about to break. Sounds like the perfect vehicle for a profoundly disturbing animation about the evils of the whaling industry - directed by, of all people, Heath Ledger - doesn't it? In the end, I'm not sure what the video means. (Is this depiction of sadistic whales supposed to arouse our sympathy for them?) But I do know that it's rare for a song and a video to simultaneously make you uncomfortable and make you want to dance.
4.) "Paranoid Android" - Radiohead
When I was 16, everyone told me that Radiohead were a bunch of geniuses and that "Paranoid Android" was a masterpiece, so I guess I thought so too. On listening to it again for the first time in many years, it seems that sometimes the crowd is worth listening to. This song moves seamlessly between styles - meditative, rockin' and at the bridge (I guess), downright mournful. It's my generation's "Aqualung" - except that I like it more. The video was done in that sort of crude Beavis and Butthead, Dr. Katz style - which is probably best because if it were any more realistic, those severed limbs would be awfully disturbing.
5.) "Clint Eastwood" - Gorillaz
Gorillaz was The Beatles of the animated music video genre - case closed. Their concerts feature a giant screen of the band members' animated avatars - displayed in front of where the band is actually playing. And these alter egos have so much personality that no one even seems to mind. "Clint Eastwood" wins the award for Song Most Improved by Animated Music Video - not that the song was bad before. But there is just something about the new giant blue version of Deltron, which enters by floating over the band and bears its four teeth as it raps, that cannot be captured in the song by itself.
6.) "Take on Me" - A-Ha
I was born too late to really claim this song and its accompanying video as my own. But let's face it - it probably did for animated videos what "Thriller" did for regular music videos, which means it deserves to be included on this list. I'm guessing you've all seen this video and know the story: A woman sits in a coffee house reading a comic book about some kind of motorcycle race. The winner of this race (incidentally, A-Ha's lead singer) winks at the women through the page of the comic book. His hand comes out of the comic book and pulls the woman into an animated world. Girl and comic motorcyclist dance with each other for a little while, sometimes in comic version and sometimes as real humans. The waitress at the coffee house comes back for the bill, only to find the woman is nowhere to be seen. She crumples up the magazine. Something else happens with some sinister looking guys and motorcycles. Some other things happen. The video ends with the hero escaping from the comic book, running away with the heroine and living, presumably, happily ever after. There is no need to recount all of the details of this little story in order to make the point that it is highly innovative. It is also the perfect marriage of animation to music. I have no idea what the song "Take on Me" is really about and until now, I hadn't bothered to think much about what the music video was truly about either. But I know that this video is bigger than the sum of its parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914
7.) "One More Time" - Daft Punk
I don't really love this song. I think that at some point in my life, it must have been the soundtrack to someone spilling a drink on me in a crowded club. In fact, I think I have been classically conditioned to flinch and guard my beer whenever I hear it - even if I'm not holding a beer. Then again, I never heard this song played by blue aliens at a rock concert on another planet. If I had, I might have been as happy as, say, the little alien girl with no eyes, merrily clapping her hands to the rhythm at 55 seconds in.
8.) "Do the Evolution" - Pearl Jam
Well, it's not Even Flow or Animal or even Corduroy, but the song isn't bad. And this sometimes disturbing, always entertaining four-minute tour of (mostly) human evolution, warfare and eventual apocalypse would be entertaining even without the sound on. Highlights include the whole ape sequence (25 seconds), "Superman" Caveman (40 seconds), and the birth machine and assembly line (3:09).
9.) "Heartless" - Kanye West
Again, I'm giving the video more weight than the song - not that I hate hip-hop or Kanye - just that I prefer to listen see other things (see items 1-5 on this list). Still, an animated rap video is pretty damn innovative. Most rappers want to show how hard they are, how street they are, how much bling the have, how many females they can get. Cartoons are decidedly un-hard and un-street, but somehow Kanye makes himself look like a bad-ass anyway.
10.) "Roller Coaster of Love" - RHCP
This video is just fun. Red Hot Chili Peppers are fun (when Anthony Keidis isn't singing about whatever happened back on "that day" in the City of Angels.) Beavis and Butthead are always fun - unconditionally - and probably even more so now that they aren't on tv regularly. Mostly, this is a fun video because it just reminds me of the 90's and of high school - only the best parts of both. Also, that heart loop-de-loop (2:49) is pretty ridiculous. I'm not sure how that works - unless you're Flea on roller-skates.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Final Shots Pt. 2
Last time, I made a list of my favorite final shots from movies. My rule was that the shots I chose had to be literally the final shots, not just the final scenes, of their respective movies. (See previous post for a full explanation.) In re-reading that list just now, I think I made the mistake of putting all of the best final shots in the first half of the list. Those weren't really numbers six through ten on my master list; they were just the first ones that happened to come to mind. By the time I finish this next installment, I may decide that those original five really deserve to be numbers one through five. At any rate...
5.) The 400 Blows (1959)
Roger Ebert is in on the short list of my favorite writers of all time. People know him as a film critic, and of course, he probably earned most of his fame from rating movies on tv, but I consider him more of a film expert than a critic, and I can't read his writing without thinking that I'd love to have him as a professor in my own personal film class. He isn't widely known for his wit, but he should be, because it is incredibly sharp. Your Movie Sucks, a collection of his bad reviews of the last ten years is currently on my night table and is, without exaggeration, one of the funniest books I have ever read. I bring up Ebert here because I feel that if he were to make this list, the final shot from 400 Blows would have to be his Number One. In a 1999 article marking the film's 40th anniversary, he says of the film's young protagonist, "He has just run away from a house of detention, and is on the beach, caught between land and water, between past and future. It is the first time he has seen the sea."
The boy, Antoine Doinel, is a kid who can't catch a break. He is bullied by his fascist teacher and ignored by his aloof mother. He steals a typewriter towards the end of the film, and is sent to a house of detention. We watch from above as Antoine plays soccer with his classmates. He throws the ball in from the sidelines and then, in the middle of the game, he makes a break for it. He sneaks under the barbed wire, and then he runs, and he keeps running - Forrest Gump style - for what seems like an eternity on the screen, until he reaches the beach. He is the only person on the beach. It looks cold out. He seems almost surprised when his feet hit the water, but he eventually slows to a halt. He turns back to the camera, and - freeze frame on Antoine's uncertain expression. It's an unexpected shot, and it's just a little bit puzzling, but I think it works because I doesn't tell us what to feel. A big triumphant smile wouldn't have worked because it would have hit us over the head with "happy ending." At the end of this film, I have the feeling that this kid is going to turn out just fine. That detention center is just one tiny place in a big country. He still has plenty left to explore. Also, that pizzicato viola (I think?) is haunting.
6.) Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
The ending of this film, in which Robert De Niro plays a Jewish gangster coming to terms with his betrayal of his best friend played by James Woods, is baffling. And now that I think about it, it's not all that different from the final shot of 400 Blows. In both, we have a freeze frame of a character's face, fixed in an uncertain expression. (And both are set to beautiful scores - this Morricone melody is one of my favorite pieces of movie music.) Here, we have De Niro's character Noodles, doped out of his mind in a Chinese opium house, with a big goofy smile fixed on his face. At this point in the film, we have seen Noodles do nothing but brood for the past 227 minutes, so needless to say, this expression is a little alarming. SPOILER ALERT (Seriously, if you haven't seen this film yet, don't read this part. See the movie first and form your own impressions so we can talk about it. I'll even lend you my copy.) Why is Noodles so happy? What is the significance of this final shot? After thinking about these questions, listening to the DVD commentary, reading what other people had to see, etc. I think the only conclusion is that one third of the movie has been an opium dream. The sequences in which De Niro is an old man provide his character with some measure of redemption, at least in his mind. Woods' character has survived an ill-advised heist on a federal building and has now changed his identity to Secretary Bailey. How did he survive? This and other key questions are purposely left unanswered. There are no answer expect that this entire situation has been spawned by Noodles' drug-addled brain.
Whether or not you buy this theory, this is a haunting final scene in which a tortured character tries to relieve himself of a heavy burden. Just watched this clip again and yup, movie music doesn't get much better.
Note - Much has been made of the fact that this film appeared in two different iterations: the normal 227 minute version, and a shorter one, which is apparently unwatchable. I don't know if you can even get your hands on the so-called director's cut any more, but even if you can, don't.
3.) The Truman Show (1998)
I'm pretty sure everyone I know has already seen this. Truman finally makes it by boat, through the artificial tempest, to the sky, which is really the wall of the giant bubble. He has just realized that his whole life is a lie and now, with the whole rest of his life in front of him, he wishes his viewers a cheerful goodbye - "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!" - and disappears through a door in the "sky." If you haven't seen the movie in a while, you may remember this being the final shot. It almost is, but not quite. The movie shifts to the viewers, whom we have seen intermittently throughout, emotionally processing what they have just watched. What they have just watched is, of course, the most important moment in the life of a real man. Truman's great triumph is followed by a shot of two night workers watching the show. One offers the other a slice of pizza. The other asks, "What else is on?" The first asks, "Where's the tv guide?" And that's it.
I think about this little moment a lot - after the Superbowl, after American Idol, even to some degree after the presidential inauguration. I think the point is, it's just entertainment - and people who are being entertained, especially those who watch tv, have short memories. The nature of entertainment is that what seems groundbreaking one minute, is destined to quickly become yesterday's news.
2.) A Clockwork Orange (1972)
The full version of the novel doesn't end this way - it ends with Little Alex actually being cured of his violent impulses, and some editions include a foreward by Anthony Burgess, explaining why this was his original intent. Screw original intent. To me the story makes more sense with this ending: the doctors congratulate themselves on a job well done, they pose with Alex for photographs, the camera closes in on Alex's demented smile, and then we get a shot of his demented mind. Sure enough, at this moment, when he is supposed to be "cured," Alex can think of nothing but a little of the old in-out, and ultra-violence. "I was cured alright" is chillingly ironic.
If Alex were really to be cured at the end, I ask you, what would be the point of this movie? That our basest human instincts really can be conditioned out of us, just by prying our eyelids open and forcing us to watch horrible films? Anthony Burgess, the author, was a smart guy. In writing the novel, he created "Nadsat," a new language for Alex and his droogs. I'm sure he had his reasons for actually curing Alex at the end, but I'm glad Kubrick didn't listen to him. Thanks to him, we have a creepy final shot, a creepy final line, and an inability to ever think about the song "Singin' in the Rain" the same way again.
1.) The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
"Get busy living, or get busy dying." I watched this again recently, and had to admit it was just slightly corny. I think it hasn't helped that it is guaranteed to be on cable exactly one in two times you turn on the tv - and somehow always at the last fifteen minutes. Regardless, this is an unforgettable montage: the warden offs himself, Andy takes his money and gets away, Red gets out of prison and doesn't succumb to depression like Brooks. He finds the box underneath the stone wall, right in the spot where Andy said it would be. (Implausible, but whatever.) He takes the bus down to Fort Hancock, Texas. Cut to some beautiful beach in Mexico where Andy is working on his boat. The camera pulls out just as the two approach each other to commence what promises to be a long friendship.
I'm usually not entertained by movies where everything I want to happen actually happens. I need some death or some suffering or some tragedy. I'll make an exception for this movie though; you just can't go against its power of optimism. (The King's Speech, which I saw a few days ago, is another movie that falls into the same category.)
Here's my final order, since this is a top ten list after all:
10 - The Shawshank Redemption
9 - Primal Fear
8 - A Clockwork Orange
7 - The Godfather
6 - Once Upon a Time in America
5 - The Truman Show
4 - The Wrestler
3 - The Bicycle Thief
2 - 400 Blows
1 - Babel
Honorable Mentions: The Last Picture Show (desolate town), The Departed (Old State House), The Hurt Locker (Sgt. James reports for duty), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (snowy beach)
5.) The 400 Blows (1959)
Roger Ebert is in on the short list of my favorite writers of all time. People know him as a film critic, and of course, he probably earned most of his fame from rating movies on tv, but I consider him more of a film expert than a critic, and I can't read his writing without thinking that I'd love to have him as a professor in my own personal film class. He isn't widely known for his wit, but he should be, because it is incredibly sharp. Your Movie Sucks, a collection of his bad reviews of the last ten years is currently on my night table and is, without exaggeration, one of the funniest books I have ever read. I bring up Ebert here because I feel that if he were to make this list, the final shot from 400 Blows would have to be his Number One. In a 1999 article marking the film's 40th anniversary, he says of the film's young protagonist, "He has just run away from a house of detention, and is on the beach, caught between land and water, between past and future. It is the first time he has seen the sea."
The boy, Antoine Doinel, is a kid who can't catch a break. He is bullied by his fascist teacher and ignored by his aloof mother. He steals a typewriter towards the end of the film, and is sent to a house of detention. We watch from above as Antoine plays soccer with his classmates. He throws the ball in from the sidelines and then, in the middle of the game, he makes a break for it. He sneaks under the barbed wire, and then he runs, and he keeps running - Forrest Gump style - for what seems like an eternity on the screen, until he reaches the beach. He is the only person on the beach. It looks cold out. He seems almost surprised when his feet hit the water, but he eventually slows to a halt. He turns back to the camera, and - freeze frame on Antoine's uncertain expression. It's an unexpected shot, and it's just a little bit puzzling, but I think it works because I doesn't tell us what to feel. A big triumphant smile wouldn't have worked because it would have hit us over the head with "happy ending." At the end of this film, I have the feeling that this kid is going to turn out just fine. That detention center is just one tiny place in a big country. He still has plenty left to explore. Also, that pizzicato viola (I think?) is haunting.
6.) Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
The ending of this film, in which Robert De Niro plays a Jewish gangster coming to terms with his betrayal of his best friend played by James Woods, is baffling. And now that I think about it, it's not all that different from the final shot of 400 Blows. In both, we have a freeze frame of a character's face, fixed in an uncertain expression. (And both are set to beautiful scores - this Morricone melody is one of my favorite pieces of movie music.) Here, we have De Niro's character Noodles, doped out of his mind in a Chinese opium house, with a big goofy smile fixed on his face. At this point in the film, we have seen Noodles do nothing but brood for the past 227 minutes, so needless to say, this expression is a little alarming. SPOILER ALERT (Seriously, if you haven't seen this film yet, don't read this part. See the movie first and form your own impressions so we can talk about it. I'll even lend you my copy.) Why is Noodles so happy? What is the significance of this final shot? After thinking about these questions, listening to the DVD commentary, reading what other people had to see, etc. I think the only conclusion is that one third of the movie has been an opium dream. The sequences in which De Niro is an old man provide his character with some measure of redemption, at least in his mind. Woods' character has survived an ill-advised heist on a federal building and has now changed his identity to Secretary Bailey. How did he survive? This and other key questions are purposely left unanswered. There are no answer expect that this entire situation has been spawned by Noodles' drug-addled brain.
Whether or not you buy this theory, this is a haunting final scene in which a tortured character tries to relieve himself of a heavy burden. Just watched this clip again and yup, movie music doesn't get much better.
Note - Much has been made of the fact that this film appeared in two different iterations: the normal 227 minute version, and a shorter one, which is apparently unwatchable. I don't know if you can even get your hands on the so-called director's cut any more, but even if you can, don't.
3.) The Truman Show (1998)
I'm pretty sure everyone I know has already seen this. Truman finally makes it by boat, through the artificial tempest, to the sky, which is really the wall of the giant bubble. He has just realized that his whole life is a lie and now, with the whole rest of his life in front of him, he wishes his viewers a cheerful goodbye - "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!" - and disappears through a door in the "sky." If you haven't seen the movie in a while, you may remember this being the final shot. It almost is, but not quite. The movie shifts to the viewers, whom we have seen intermittently throughout, emotionally processing what they have just watched. What they have just watched is, of course, the most important moment in the life of a real man. Truman's great triumph is followed by a shot of two night workers watching the show. One offers the other a slice of pizza. The other asks, "What else is on?" The first asks, "Where's the tv guide?" And that's it.
I think about this little moment a lot - after the Superbowl, after American Idol, even to some degree after the presidential inauguration. I think the point is, it's just entertainment - and people who are being entertained, especially those who watch tv, have short memories. The nature of entertainment is that what seems groundbreaking one minute, is destined to quickly become yesterday's news.
2.) A Clockwork Orange (1972)
The full version of the novel doesn't end this way - it ends with Little Alex actually being cured of his violent impulses, and some editions include a foreward by Anthony Burgess, explaining why this was his original intent. Screw original intent. To me the story makes more sense with this ending: the doctors congratulate themselves on a job well done, they pose with Alex for photographs, the camera closes in on Alex's demented smile, and then we get a shot of his demented mind. Sure enough, at this moment, when he is supposed to be "cured," Alex can think of nothing but a little of the old in-out, and ultra-violence. "I was cured alright" is chillingly ironic.
If Alex were really to be cured at the end, I ask you, what would be the point of this movie? That our basest human instincts really can be conditioned out of us, just by prying our eyelids open and forcing us to watch horrible films? Anthony Burgess, the author, was a smart guy. In writing the novel, he created "Nadsat," a new language for Alex and his droogs. I'm sure he had his reasons for actually curing Alex at the end, but I'm glad Kubrick didn't listen to him. Thanks to him, we have a creepy final shot, a creepy final line, and an inability to ever think about the song "Singin' in the Rain" the same way again.
1.) The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
"Get busy living, or get busy dying." I watched this again recently, and had to admit it was just slightly corny. I think it hasn't helped that it is guaranteed to be on cable exactly one in two times you turn on the tv - and somehow always at the last fifteen minutes. Regardless, this is an unforgettable montage: the warden offs himself, Andy takes his money and gets away, Red gets out of prison and doesn't succumb to depression like Brooks. He finds the box underneath the stone wall, right in the spot where Andy said it would be. (Implausible, but whatever.) He takes the bus down to Fort Hancock, Texas. Cut to some beautiful beach in Mexico where Andy is working on his boat. The camera pulls out just as the two approach each other to commence what promises to be a long friendship.
I'm usually not entertained by movies where everything I want to happen actually happens. I need some death or some suffering or some tragedy. I'll make an exception for this movie though; you just can't go against its power of optimism. (The King's Speech, which I saw a few days ago, is another movie that falls into the same category.)
Here's my final order, since this is a top ten list after all:
10 - The Shawshank Redemption
9 - Primal Fear
8 - A Clockwork Orange
7 - The Godfather
6 - Once Upon a Time in America
5 - The Truman Show
4 - The Wrestler
3 - The Bicycle Thief
2 - 400 Blows
1 - Babel
Honorable Mentions: The Last Picture Show (desolate town), The Departed (Old State House), The Hurt Locker (Sgt. James reports for duty), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (snowy beach)
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Final Shots Pt. I
The camera focuses on Mark Zuckerburg's Facebook page, close enough so that we can read the words. He searches for his ex-girlfriend, Erica Albright (who dumped him - with good reason - in the movie's first scene). He hesitates for a moment before clicking the "Add as Friend" button, and then another moment before confirming with the "Send Request" button. Then he hits "Refresh," to see if she's accepted him. He hits it again. And then again. The camera focuses on his sad, pensive, yet hopeful face. Cue The Beatles' "Baby You're a Rich Man." (How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?) Cue the epilogue titles - and cue credits.
The end of The Social Network, which I saw about a month ago, reminded me just how important the final shot of a film can be. Crafting a poignant final shot is, I would imagine, a balancing act; it has the power to provide the film with its ultimate moral, but it has to do so in a subtle way that doesn't hit the viewer over the head. Would The Social Network still have been a meangingful film prior to the final shot? Yes - without a doubt it was the best movie I've seen so far this year. But that shot, which concisely and subtly bespoke Mark Zuckerburg's spiritual emptiness and regret, and his desire for redemption, hammered home my impression of the character and the film. It was a good film before the final minute or two, but afterward, it was a great one.
I can't always remember precisely how my favorite movies begin, but I can invariably remember how they end. As I left the theater, I started thinking about other similarly cathartic final shots. One thing led to another and before long I was crafting my...
List of Top Ten Final Shots (Part I)
10.) Primal Fear (1996)
(This cuts off the final thirty seconds, which makes the whole scene. Oh well...)
This is chronically underrated movie, if for no other reason than that it was most people introduction to Edward Norton. Subsequent performances and Oscar Nominations have proven that the man has some acting chops. And in portraying Aaron, a (possibly) schizophrenic suspect in a murder case, he gets to show off both extremes of his substantial range: sweet and naive (which we would see later in Keeping the Faith) and sociopathic (which we would see later in American History X). The final scene is a meeting between client and lawyer (played by Richard Gere). Gere's character has just gotten Aaron off the hook on a successful insanity defense. As Aaron thanks his lawyer for the counsel, he drops a bombshell - which I won't reveal even though the statute of limitations has long since run out on the ending of this movie. Final Shot: Richard Gere's character, a hot-shot lawyer who is never at a loss for words, and who believes in the fundamental decency of his fellow man, stands outside the prison, dazed with the shattering information he's just learned. "There never was an Aaron, counselor." (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Cue mournful saxophone - and cue goosebumps.
9.) The Bicycle Thief (1948)
If I ever do a list of the saddest movies I've ever scene, this Neo-Realist Italian classic, which I saw for the first time in college, just might be at the top. Antonio Ricci, a kind, decent man and a good father, has spent the entire movie searching for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to support his family. At wit's end, he spots another abandoned bicycle in an alley and we are allowed to read his mind: "Should I, or shouldn't I?" The moment is drawn out agonizingly, until Antonio finally decides to take the plunge (crossing a tall phone pole - a threshold - in so doing). Just his luck: he is stopped immediately by everyone in sight, and is thus humiliated in front of his little son, who has been tagging along on the whole adventure. The bicycle's rightful owner pardons him by declining to file a complaint, but he doesn't leave without slinging a barb in Antonio's direction: "A fine example you set for your son." Antonio walks away like a zombie. The camera cuts to his son, looking just as forlorn. Son looks up at Dad, Dad looks down at Son, Dad - an emotional rock until this point - bursts into tears, Son - not knowing what else to do - takes his hand, the two of them are swallowed into the crowd as they walk away, the music swells, and - FINE. What is he going to do to support his son and pregnant wife now? We don't know - but at least he has the support of his son. Just the thought of those soaring violins is enough to send me over the edge. Better move on to the next one...
8.) The Wrestler (2008)
(This clip is in Italian, but it hardly matters.)
"Don't do it, Randy! It's not too late to resurrect your life and your relationship with your daughter. You are a kind and decent human being. Wrestling doesn't have to define you." I try to tell him this every time I see the movie (which quickly rose to the short list of my all-time favorites after it came out in 2008). But every time, he defies doctor's orders by wrestling the Ayatollah in Wilmington, Delaware. (Is there any more appropriate location for an ignominious end to a human life?) And every time, he jumps from the top rope to do his patented Ram Jam. And every time he jumps, the screen fades to black and the Boss starts singing. I'm not sure what happens next, but how can it be anything other than horrible? As the most famous man ever to be buried in Rockville once said, "There are no second acts in American lives."
7.) The Godfather (1972)
(Link is in Spanish, but you own the DVD anyway, don't you?)
It has been well established that nineteen of the greatest twenty scenes ever filmed come from The Godfather, and why should the final scene be any different? You know this by now, I'm sure: Michael Corleone's lackeys kiss his hand and call him "Godfather," in the office where his father used to hold court, the office where the film began. Kay (Diane Keaton), Michael's desperate fiance looks into the room, one of the lackeys shuts the door on her, and on us. Cue credits. Is this ice-cold mercenary really the same principled army hero who saw at the wedding in the first scene? The final scene invites to look back through the entire film - and Michael's entire progression - to answer this question. A story that has taken us across generations and continents, ends in the most intimate of places: in a room shared by a dad and his son.
6.) Babel (2006)
(The person who made this link decided that one of the most haunting pieces of music of ever heard in a film wasn't good enough, and has replaced it with something else. Youtube is a weird place.)
I think some people were scared away from Babel because it is a movie that is about everyone, and takes place everywhere. And I guess I understand that; it's easy to be overwhelmed by a movie whose first shot focuses on one decrepit old man walking through a Moroccan desert and whose last shot focuses on Tokyo's endless skyline at night. But to me, this movie works because its core it is about something so much smaller: the relationships between the members of four different families. The last family the film focuses on consists of a Japanese father and daughter. That is all - the mother, we learn, took her own life some time before the start of the film. As the father rushes upstairs - he has left his unstable, deaf, nymphomaniac daughter home for the evening - we sense (for various reasons) that this will be her fate too. Instead, the father finds his daughter standing naked on the balcony of their high-rise apartment. He puts a blanket over her, stands behind her, and the two share a moment of unspoken understanding - all to an understated score of piano and strings. It is physiologically impossible to listen to this piece without getting chills, whether or not you are watching the film while listening. The first line of the credits - "For my children" - is just the icing on the cake.
Top five to follow...
The end of The Social Network, which I saw about a month ago, reminded me just how important the final shot of a film can be. Crafting a poignant final shot is, I would imagine, a balancing act; it has the power to provide the film with its ultimate moral, but it has to do so in a subtle way that doesn't hit the viewer over the head. Would The Social Network still have been a meangingful film prior to the final shot? Yes - without a doubt it was the best movie I've seen so far this year. But that shot, which concisely and subtly bespoke Mark Zuckerburg's spiritual emptiness and regret, and his desire for redemption, hammered home my impression of the character and the film. It was a good film before the final minute or two, but afterward, it was a great one.
If you accept my friend request, I'll never diss B.U. again.
I can't always remember precisely how my favorite movies begin, but I can invariably remember how they end. As I left the theater, I started thinking about other similarly cathartic final shots. One thing led to another and before long I was crafting my...
List of Top Ten Final Shots (Part I)
10.) Primal Fear (1996)
(This cuts off the final thirty seconds, which makes the whole scene. Oh well...)
This is chronically underrated movie, if for no other reason than that it was most people introduction to Edward Norton. Subsequent performances and Oscar Nominations have proven that the man has some acting chops. And in portraying Aaron, a (possibly) schizophrenic suspect in a murder case, he gets to show off both extremes of his substantial range: sweet and naive (which we would see later in Keeping the Faith) and sociopathic (which we would see later in American History X). The final scene is a meeting between client and lawyer (played by Richard Gere). Gere's character has just gotten Aaron off the hook on a successful insanity defense. As Aaron thanks his lawyer for the counsel, he drops a bombshell - which I won't reveal even though the statute of limitations has long since run out on the ending of this movie. Final Shot: Richard Gere's character, a hot-shot lawyer who is never at a loss for words, and who believes in the fundamental decency of his fellow man, stands outside the prison, dazed with the shattering information he's just learned. "There never was an Aaron, counselor." (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Cue mournful saxophone - and cue goosebumps.
Joke's on you, Richard Gere...
9.) The Bicycle Thief (1948)
If I ever do a list of the saddest movies I've ever scene, this Neo-Realist Italian classic, which I saw for the first time in college, just might be at the top. Antonio Ricci, a kind, decent man and a good father, has spent the entire movie searching for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to support his family. At wit's end, he spots another abandoned bicycle in an alley and we are allowed to read his mind: "Should I, or shouldn't I?" The moment is drawn out agonizingly, until Antonio finally decides to take the plunge (crossing a tall phone pole - a threshold - in so doing). Just his luck: he is stopped immediately by everyone in sight, and is thus humiliated in front of his little son, who has been tagging along on the whole adventure. The bicycle's rightful owner pardons him by declining to file a complaint, but he doesn't leave without slinging a barb in Antonio's direction: "A fine example you set for your son." Antonio walks away like a zombie. The camera cuts to his son, looking just as forlorn. Son looks up at Dad, Dad looks down at Son, Dad - an emotional rock until this point - bursts into tears, Son - not knowing what else to do - takes his hand, the two of them are swallowed into the crowd as they walk away, the music swells, and - FINE. What is he going to do to support his son and pregnant wife now? We don't know - but at least he has the support of his son. Just the thought of those soaring violins is enough to send me over the edge. Better move on to the next one...
8.) The Wrestler (2008)
(This clip is in Italian, but it hardly matters.)
"Don't do it, Randy! It's not too late to resurrect your life and your relationship with your daughter. You are a kind and decent human being. Wrestling doesn't have to define you." I try to tell him this every time I see the movie (which quickly rose to the short list of my all-time favorites after it came out in 2008). But every time, he defies doctor's orders by wrestling the Ayatollah in Wilmington, Delaware. (Is there any more appropriate location for an ignominious end to a human life?) And every time, he jumps from the top rope to do his patented Ram Jam. And every time he jumps, the screen fades to black and the Boss starts singing. I'm not sure what happens next, but how can it be anything other than horrible? As the most famous man ever to be buried in Rockville once said, "There are no second acts in American lives."
The Final Ram Jam
7.) The Godfather (1972)
(Link is in Spanish, but you own the DVD anyway, don't you?)
It has been well established that nineteen of the greatest twenty scenes ever filmed come from The Godfather, and why should the final scene be any different? You know this by now, I'm sure: Michael Corleone's lackeys kiss his hand and call him "Godfather," in the office where his father used to hold court, the office where the film began. Kay (Diane Keaton), Michael's desperate fiance looks into the room, one of the lackeys shuts the door on her, and on us. Cue credits. Is this ice-cold mercenary really the same principled army hero who saw at the wedding in the first scene? The final scene invites to look back through the entire film - and Michael's entire progression - to answer this question. A story that has taken us across generations and continents, ends in the most intimate of places: in a room shared by a dad and his son.
6.) Babel (2006)
(The person who made this link decided that one of the most haunting pieces of music of ever heard in a film wasn't good enough, and has replaced it with something else. Youtube is a weird place.)
I think some people were scared away from Babel because it is a movie that is about everyone, and takes place everywhere. And I guess I understand that; it's easy to be overwhelmed by a movie whose first shot focuses on one decrepit old man walking through a Moroccan desert and whose last shot focuses on Tokyo's endless skyline at night. But to me, this movie works because its core it is about something so much smaller: the relationships between the members of four different families. The last family the film focuses on consists of a Japanese father and daughter. That is all - the mother, we learn, took her own life some time before the start of the film. As the father rushes upstairs - he has left his unstable, deaf, nymphomaniac daughter home for the evening - we sense (for various reasons) that this will be her fate too. Instead, the father finds his daughter standing naked on the balcony of their high-rise apartment. He puts a blanket over her, stands behind her, and the two share a moment of unspoken understanding - all to an understated score of piano and strings. It is physiologically impossible to listen to this piece without getting chills, whether or not you are watching the film while listening. The first line of the credits - "For my children" - is just the icing on the cake.
Top five to follow...
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The Sixth Sense
Note: I think I might know a few people who haven't seen The Sixth Sense, but there can't be many. As few as they are, I think I know fewer people who don't know the "secret" to The Sixth Sense. If I do, they are certainly under the age of 18, and I probably have them in class. If you have read this far and realize suddenly that you have both never seen the film and don't know the secret, well, then I'm amazed. I urge you to stop reading this film and see it immediately, and I urge you to talk to other human beings more often. The statute of limitations has long since run out on the secret to The Sixth Sense, so frankly I think I am doing you a favor by advising you that this article contains massive spoilers (to the extent that this movie can still be spoiled), and not just revealing the ending outright.
And with that:
Comcast has a habit of showing crappy movies in its "Free On Demand" section. Some of its current titles include, The Bobby's World Movie starring Howie Mandel and Jack, one of Robin Williams' worst ever films - and that is truly saying something - and something called Zombie Strippers, which now that I think about it actually sounds kind of awesome. Every once in a while though, there is a diamond in the rough, and this month it was The Sixth Sense. This was a movie I loved in high school but honestly haven't thought about much since. It doesn't quite some relevant in the way that some other movies from around the same time never stop seeming relevant. By comparison, American Beauty beat it out for the best picture Oscar that year (1999), and I am sure that some aspect of this movie have come up in casual conversation, oh, five or so times during the past year. While it certainly has the more enduring catch phrase - "I see dead people" - I doubt The Sixth Sense matches that. But seeing it on my Comcast free on-demand list, I started to think about it - and inevitably, I decided to watch it for the first time in ten years.
M. Night Shyamalan reminds me a little bit of Nomar Garciaparra. And I don't think it's that they both have ridiculous names, although that may be a small part of it. A bigger part is that both of them peaked at around the same time, were insanely popular for relatively brief stretches, and then anti-climatically plunged into the depths of semi-obscurity. Of the two, Shyamalan was by far the bigger one-hit wonder. By 2000 he had already put out the follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, which seemed awesome to me when I was eighteen but which I realized some time later, was actually kind of stupid. He released the modestly successful and exciting Signs in 2002, followed by The Village in 2004, a movie that Roger Ebert called "a colossal miscalculation." I saw The Village in theaters on the same day Nomar was traded from the Red Sox to the Cubs. I am not making this up. Nomar had enjoyed a longer shelf life than M. Night - including an unreal stretch from 1997 to 2000 that included one Rookie of the Year and two batting titles, but by 2004 he seemed curiously irrelevant to the Red Sox' fortunes, overshadowed by larger stars Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. Just as I don't think about The Sixth Sense much - or hadn't, before my most recent viewing - I don't spend much time thinking about Nomar's glory days any more. At least not in the way I still replay Pedro Martinez' and David Ortiz' brightest moments in my head.
Baseball fans forget how good Nomar was in his heyday - and movie buffs forget how good The Sixth Sense was. Bruce Willis, whom we may have been used to hearing scream "Yippie-ki-yay!" and "Geronimo!" prior to this movie, conveys a deep and unwavering sadness through, and Shyamalan is willing to take his time showing as how deeply troubled he is - we suspect by the traumatic event that takes place at the very beginning of the movie. Everyone raved about Haley Joel Osment's performance when this movie came out - and with good reason. Through no fault of his own, Cole Sear is a profoundly creepy kid a normal kid buried inside. Why do these ghosts pick him, of all people, as a confidant? We don't know, and it's never explained, but spend the entire movie hoping that they will leave him alone for god's sake.
Willis' character acts as though he's dead for the entire film (and at the end, we find out there is a very good reason for his behavior), but so does almost everyone else. Take the mother at the party who has never heard of Chuck E. Cheese, or the kid who after watching Cole perform a lame magic trick says stoically, "I want my penny back," or the sober doctor at the hospital, played by M. Night himself. When Willis' character watches an emotional guest on his old wedding video, the effect is almost jarring. It is to the movie's great credit that it maintains its emotional focus, while presenting to us character after character who is either literally or figuratively dead
It's hard for me to think about a time when I didn't know what happened at the end of The Sixth Sense. I think I was blind-sided when everything came together in a swell of music and flashback from throughout the film. I remember that my first thought originally was, "How can he be dead? Didn't I see him talk to people?" No, I didn't - I just saw him in the same scene as people, not really interacting with them. The anniversary scene is one of the keys to the film. Dr. Crowe, Willis' character, comes to dinner at a fancy restaurant and sits down at a table in a restaurant, where his wife is waiting for him. He is already apologizing for being late. The bill comes, she takes it, and she walks off in a huff. Of course, our interpretation of this scene completely changes at the end when we realize she is beside herself with grief - not anger or impatience.
Like any work with a great twist ending, The Sixth Sense forces us to go back through the entire movie and ask ourselves how we could have missed what seem like obvious clues. When people read Of Mice and Men, they wonder how they didn't pick up on the foreshadowing of Carlson euthanisizing Candy's dog. When people see The Crying Game, they wonder how they could have assumed that that short-haired androgynous person was female. When people watch The Sixth Sense they are bound to ask how they could have possibly assumed Dr. Crow survived the fatal shooting at the beginning of the film. But good foreshadowing gives us hints about what is going to happen - it doesn't tell us outright. And it works at its highest level when we can only recognize it as foreshadowing after the fact. We are tempted to slap ourselves on the forehead and curse our own obliviousness. But they point isn't that we are stupid - it's that the authors are smart.
[Why am I writing about The Sixth Sense, you may ask. One of the lists that inspired me to start this blog was the AFI's Top 100 Films list, which was published in 1998. Ten years later, the AFI updated the list. At #89, off came Patton and on came The Sixth Sense. Is The Sixth Sense the 89th greatest film of all time? I'm not sure about this, but I'm willing to call it one of the most memorable movies of the 90's - and I saw a lot of movies during the 90's. Love or hate the movie - and I've never met anyone who hated it - you have to concede that "I see dead people" is right up there in the pantheon of Great Movie Catchphrases from the 90's - right up there with "Show me the money!" and "Life is like a box of chocolates."]
Comcast has a habit of showing crappy movies in its "Free On Demand" section. Some of its current titles include, The Bobby's World Movie starring Howie Mandel and Jack, one of Robin Williams' worst ever films - and that is truly saying something - and something called Zombie Strippers, which now that I think about it actually sounds kind of awesome. Every once in a while though, there is a diamond in the rough, and this month it was The Sixth Sense. This was a movie I loved in high school but honestly haven't thought about much since. It doesn't quite some relevant in the way that some other movies from around the same time never stop seeming relevant. By comparison, American Beauty beat it out for the best picture Oscar that year (1999), and I am sure that some aspect of this movie have come up in casual conversation, oh, five or so times during the past year. While it certainly has the more enduring catch phrase - "I see dead people" - I doubt The Sixth Sense matches that. But seeing it on my Comcast free on-demand list, I started to think about it - and inevitably, I decided to watch it for the first time in ten years.
M. Night Shyamalan reminds me a little bit of Nomar Garciaparra. And I don't think it's that they both have ridiculous names, although that may be a small part of it. A bigger part is that both of them peaked at around the same time, were insanely popular for relatively brief stretches, and then anti-climatically plunged into the depths of semi-obscurity. Of the two, Shyamalan was by far the bigger one-hit wonder. By 2000 he had already put out the follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, which seemed awesome to me when I was eighteen but which I realized some time later, was actually kind of stupid. He released the modestly successful and exciting Signs in 2002, followed by The Village in 2004, a movie that Roger Ebert called "a colossal miscalculation." I saw The Village in theaters on the same day Nomar was traded from the Red Sox to the Cubs. I am not making this up. Nomar had enjoyed a longer shelf life than M. Night - including an unreal stretch from 1997 to 2000 that included one Rookie of the Year and two batting titles, but by 2004 he seemed curiously irrelevant to the Red Sox' fortunes, overshadowed by larger stars Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. Just as I don't think about The Sixth Sense much - or hadn't, before my most recent viewing - I don't spend much time thinking about Nomar's glory days any more. At least not in the way I still replay Pedro Martinez' and David Ortiz' brightest moments in my head.
See the resemblance?
Baseball fans forget how good Nomar was in his heyday - and movie buffs forget how good The Sixth Sense was. Bruce Willis, whom we may have been used to hearing scream "Yippie-ki-yay!" and "Geronimo!" prior to this movie, conveys a deep and unwavering sadness through, and Shyamalan is willing to take his time showing as how deeply troubled he is - we suspect by the traumatic event that takes place at the very beginning of the movie. Everyone raved about Haley Joel Osment's performance when this movie came out - and with good reason. Through no fault of his own, Cole Sear is a profoundly creepy kid a normal kid buried inside. Why do these ghosts pick him, of all people, as a confidant? We don't know, and it's never explained, but spend the entire movie hoping that they will leave him alone for god's sake.
Willis' character acts as though he's dead for the entire film (and at the end, we find out there is a very good reason for his behavior), but so does almost everyone else. Take the mother at the party who has never heard of Chuck E. Cheese, or the kid who after watching Cole perform a lame magic trick says stoically, "I want my penny back," or the sober doctor at the hospital, played by M. Night himself. When Willis' character watches an emotional guest on his old wedding video, the effect is almost jarring. It is to the movie's great credit that it maintains its emotional focus, while presenting to us character after character who is either literally or figuratively dead
Holy crap... this is him?
It's hard for me to think about a time when I didn't know what happened at the end of The Sixth Sense. I think I was blind-sided when everything came together in a swell of music and flashback from throughout the film. I remember that my first thought originally was, "How can he be dead? Didn't I see him talk to people?" No, I didn't - I just saw him in the same scene as people, not really interacting with them. The anniversary scene is one of the keys to the film. Dr. Crowe, Willis' character, comes to dinner at a fancy restaurant and sits down at a table in a restaurant, where his wife is waiting for him. He is already apologizing for being late. The bill comes, she takes it, and she walks off in a huff. Of course, our interpretation of this scene completely changes at the end when we realize she is beside herself with grief - not anger or impatience.
Like any work with a great twist ending, The Sixth Sense forces us to go back through the entire movie and ask ourselves how we could have missed what seem like obvious clues. When people read Of Mice and Men, they wonder how they didn't pick up on the foreshadowing of Carlson euthanisizing Candy's dog. When people see The Crying Game, they wonder how they could have assumed that that short-haired androgynous person was female. When people watch The Sixth Sense they are bound to ask how they could have possibly assumed Dr. Crow survived the fatal shooting at the beginning of the film. But good foreshadowing gives us hints about what is going to happen - it doesn't tell us outright. And it works at its highest level when we can only recognize it as foreshadowing after the fact. We are tempted to slap ourselves on the forehead and curse our own obliviousness. But they point isn't that we are stupid - it's that the authors are smart.
[Why am I writing about The Sixth Sense, you may ask. One of the lists that inspired me to start this blog was the AFI's Top 100 Films list, which was published in 1998. Ten years later, the AFI updated the list. At #89, off came Patton and on came The Sixth Sense. Is The Sixth Sense the 89th greatest film of all time? I'm not sure about this, but I'm willing to call it one of the most memorable movies of the 90's - and I saw a lot of movies during the 90's. Love or hate the movie - and I've never met anyone who hated it - you have to concede that "I see dead people" is right up there in the pantheon of Great Movie Catchphrases from the 90's - right up there with "Show me the money!" and "Life is like a box of chocolates."]
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Roadside America
Anyone who has to drive from DC to anywhere north of Philadelphia knows that traffic on 95 north tends to be brutal. After sitting in traffic around the Delware Memorial Bridge for the seventeenth consecutive time, I finally decided I had had it - and that I would be boycotting 95 for the rest of my life. Since that point, about two years ago, I have taken to using the interstate highways that go through Pennsylvania. And it was in this way that Roadside America first piqued my interest. The signs for Roadside America begin just before the exit to the town of Shartlesville, a small village whose name suggests that it couldn't possibly be anything but. Prior to my stop at Roadside America, I hadn't spent much time in Shartlesville - but if the billboards in the surrounding area are any indication, the town is known for Pennsylvania Dutch food and gifts, sheepskin jackets, produce stands, and Roadside America.
It's rare that I feel like stopping to look at roadside attraction during a trip between NJ and DC; my plan is usually to hurry home as quickly as possible. But when I saw the entry for Roadside America in 1000 Places to See Before You Die in the USA and Canada, I knew that I wouldn't be able to resist much longer. The temptation to check off the entry in my book was simply too great. So this past Sunday, during my drive back to DC, I decided to make the long-awaited stop. Housed in a building with windows looking only into a gift shop, Roadside America immediately presents an air of mystery. I knew from the entry in 1000 Things that I was about to see "The World's Greatest Indoor Miniature Village," but in a way, I wish I hadn't known. There is just something oddly exciting about a building with an ambiguous name, that promises only "More Than You Expect." After paying a grizzled old woman more than I expected ($6.75 for adults), I was permitted to enter the door leading to the main event. This was less a "Miniature Village" than a "Miniature Metropolis." To look at the landscape in front of you is something akin to looking at all of Berks County, Pennsylvania on Google Earth. It is a mish-mash of trains, mountains, trees and buildings - and people and animals. I've been describing the whole scene to people as a "toy train village," but this is about as inadequate as calling Philadelphia a "train city." Yes, there are trains. There are also many other interesting things that have nothing to do with trains. In fairness, the exhibit cheats a little bit by using mirrors to make it look roughly four times its actual size - but its actual size is still significant. As 1000 Things notes, the village is richly detailed, containing "10,000 trees and countless other tiny touches." A complimentary pamphlet identifies many of these details, but as it turns out, this is mostly just for the diehards. After politely looking up each of the points on the pamphlet, I decided it was probably a better idea to admire the work as a whole, and to find my own details. One of my favorites that wasn't in the pamphlet: the men and women in the Luray Caverns section of the exhibit (in its own special corridor) are dressed in their formal attire.
Roadside America is an anthropological artifact from a culture that did things like wearing suits and dresses on a voyage into an underground cavern. But the beginning of the exhibit, which suggests that the village is going to a recreation of Pleasantville, is just the tip of the iceberg. The village is in effect a pageant of the most romanticized pieces of American culture. Around the bend from Pleasantville we come to the old frontier, where by pressing a little button, you can make the old blacksmith hammer away at the old anvil, or make a line of cows trot one by one into some sort of building with no windows (What could it be?). Only here do we find an airstrip on one side of the town, and a covered wagon on the other.
The cynic in me wants to find something in Roadside America to mock - but I'm not sure it's possible. This is an irony-free zone. The entire village is unabashedly patriotic and god-fearing (a picture of J.C. himself, spreading his arms in blessing, is projected onto the wall once every half hour.) People who mock It's a Wonderful Life aren't funny - they are jaded, bitter individuals and I feel sorry for them. The same goes for anyone who would dare say a discouraging word about Roadside America.
Signs on walls of R.A. politely discourage running. And yet during my entire trip to the village, three kids - two girls and a boy, all red-headed - were running amok as their ineffectual father screamed, "Stop it!" (Do parents in the greater Shartlesville area just spend every weekend taking their kids to Roadside America? "Come on kids! We're going to see the fake zoo again!") I'll grant that this was annoying - but only until I looked back at the people of the village, doing good work, reading their bibles, minding their mothers and fathers. Children here were incapable of disobeying - just as parents were incapable of yelling.
It's rare that I feel like stopping to look at roadside attraction during a trip between NJ and DC; my plan is usually to hurry home as quickly as possible. But when I saw the entry for Roadside America in 1000 Places to See Before You Die in the USA and Canada, I knew that I wouldn't be able to resist much longer. The temptation to check off the entry in my book was simply too great. So this past Sunday, during my drive back to DC, I decided to make the long-awaited stop. Housed in a building with windows looking only into a gift shop, Roadside America immediately presents an air of mystery. I knew from the entry in 1000 Things that I was about to see "The World's Greatest Indoor Miniature Village," but in a way, I wish I hadn't known. There is just something oddly exciting about a building with an ambiguous name, that promises only "More Than You Expect." After paying a grizzled old woman more than I expected ($6.75 for adults), I was permitted to enter the door leading to the main event. This was less a "Miniature Village" than a "Miniature Metropolis." To look at the landscape in front of you is something akin to looking at all of Berks County, Pennsylvania on Google Earth. It is a mish-mash of trains, mountains, trees and buildings - and people and animals. I've been describing the whole scene to people as a "toy train village," but this is about as inadequate as calling Philadelphia a "train city." Yes, there are trains. There are also many other interesting things that have nothing to do with trains. In fairness, the exhibit cheats a little bit by using mirrors to make it look roughly four times its actual size - but its actual size is still significant. As 1000 Things notes, the village is richly detailed, containing "10,000 trees and countless other tiny touches." A complimentary pamphlet identifies many of these details, but as it turns out, this is mostly just for the diehards. After politely looking up each of the points on the pamphlet, I decided it was probably a better idea to admire the work as a whole, and to find my own details. One of my favorites that wasn't in the pamphlet: the men and women in the Luray Caverns section of the exhibit (in its own special corridor) are dressed in their formal attire.
Roadside America is an anthropological artifact from a culture that did things like wearing suits and dresses on a voyage into an underground cavern. But the beginning of the exhibit, which suggests that the village is going to a recreation of Pleasantville, is just the tip of the iceberg. The village is in effect a pageant of the most romanticized pieces of American culture. Around the bend from Pleasantville we come to the old frontier, where by pressing a little button, you can make the old blacksmith hammer away at the old anvil, or make a line of cows trot one by one into some sort of building with no windows (What could it be?). Only here do we find an airstrip on one side of the town, and a covered wagon on the other.
The cynic in me wants to find something in Roadside America to mock - but I'm not sure it's possible. This is an irony-free zone. The entire village is unabashedly patriotic and god-fearing (a picture of J.C. himself, spreading his arms in blessing, is projected onto the wall once every half hour.) People who mock It's a Wonderful Life aren't funny - they are jaded, bitter individuals and I feel sorry for them. The same goes for anyone who would dare say a discouraging word about Roadside America.
Signs on walls of R.A. politely discourage running. And yet during my entire trip to the village, three kids - two girls and a boy, all red-headed - were running amok as their ineffectual father screamed, "Stop it!" (Do parents in the greater Shartlesville area just spend every weekend taking their kids to Roadside America? "Come on kids! We're going to see the fake zoo again!") I'll grant that this was annoying - but only until I looked back at the people of the village, doing good work, reading their bibles, minding their mothers and fathers. Children here were incapable of disobeying - just as parents were incapable of yelling.
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