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The Art of Encouragement

A shameless plug, if you'll indulge me. Amber, over at the run-a-muck is a wonderful lady that I only e-know, but she has managed to make me blush from ear to ear. This is a quote from her most recent post:

Something else: There are these super cool guys who review films, and they L-O-V-E Jesus in that cussy kind of I've-been-in-the-pit sort of way. They're complete strangers to me, though friends of some of my friends, and they're my brothers. Has a movie review ever made you cry? Or has a review made you laugh until you slobbered on your keyboard and made the f stop working for a while? I'm not kidding, more than movies, you get what you feel are pieces of the writers that can only come out when art moves them out - as if a piece of art tangles into the brain near where we keep secrets, so to speak of the art is to tell of ghosts, what we saw as children out of the corner of our eye, or of deep, hard crushes and that wind that caught your breath the first time you realized God, those things that only art could shove out into the seeing/hearing world. Go here: Three Hands in the Popcorn Bag.

How's that for a compliment? Made my month.

The Skinny (In More Ways Than One)

I have this group of friends that sits around and discusses working out. No, they're not super-jocks or meatheads or anything, they just like to stay in shape. So when we all get together, there's always talk of "have you seen this new workout site?" or "I managed 40 reps last night." I, being a superiorly trained doughboy, usually have nothing to add to this conversation. Until now. Behold, the landscapers diet! Push a fertilizer spreader, sling 50 pound bags of granular weedkiller, spread mulch in 90+ degrees (with no AC in the truck), all for 10 or more hours a day! You too will lose weight at an alarming pace!

Yesterday, I stepped on the scale and it read 202. I haven't been this close to a weight with a 1 in the front in many, many years. I think I'll be there by next weekend.

Problem is, after next weekend, the landscaper's diet goes away. Next Sunday, our church votes on me as the new (title to be determined) tech and facilities guy. Assuming that there's no general undercurrent of dislike against me, the vote shouldn't be an issue. So I will be working in an air conditioned office, sitting on my rear all day. Bye bye 100s...

Anyway, back to the job. When we sold our business back in March, I figured it wouldn't take too long to find something new. I was wrong. First, I was supposed to go work for my dad's company. That didn't fly. So I applied and applied. I applied for things that I was eminently qualified for and i applied for long shots. I got exactly one interview in three months. So, my friend Jason had mercy on me and hired me to work for his landscaping company. And it's been a blast, really. It's been totally out of my comfort zone and completely good for me.

Before going to work for Jason, I met with our pastor at Bojangles, just for some career advice. He said he'd pray for us and the direction we were supposed to go. Turns out, unbeknownst to me, later that day or the next, the tech guy at Providence told Chad he would be leaving in a few weeks. A few elder meetings and some prayer later and here we are. It's pretty amazing how God answers prayer by closing door after door. Eventually the right one opens.

Over there -->

Zip over to THREE HANDS IN THE POPCORN BAG. I've got a new review of WALL-E up there...

Be Kind, Check this Out

I don't know if BE KIND, REWIND was screwed over by the marketing department or if director Michael Gondry was making a point about the way we brand movies. What I do know is that a movie with Jack Black, Mos Def, and an extraordinarily wacky premise isn't supposed to turn out as a loving treatise on the importance of community.

Quick summary: Mos Def works in a video store where Jack Black (who becomes magnetized in a great scene involving ingenious camouflage) accidentally erases all of the videotapes. Because no one carries VHS anymore, they can't replace the tapes. So they do the only logical thing: they remake the movies themselves with an ancient camcorder and a process they term "Sweding." They begin with GHOSTBUSTERS and by the end, they have Sweded over 200 movies, including ROBOCOP, KING KONG, THE LION KING, and, DRIVING MISS DAISY. The community comes to like the Sweded films better than the originals and a phenomenon is born.

Everything about this film screams unconcerned about whether people actually come to see it. Jack Black, Mos Def, and all the rest treat the movie as a kind of love letter to both film and to community. They have the aura of artists who so truly love the material that they are doing this for free, and the result is an electric kind of chemistry that shouldn't work, but manages to defy all logic and does anyway. A movie that includes Jack Black's magnetized urine shouldn't be lovely and touching, but is.

Gondry, who also wrote the script, turns Hollywood stereotypes on their heads throughout the picture. When Danny Glover's video store (which only carries VHS) is on the brink of demolition by a developer, every other movie ever made would have portrayed the developer as a money-hungry Texan who has no sympathy for the people and culture he's displacing. Gondry treats the character as a sympathetic man who is truly trying to improve the quality of life of the people of Passaic. Mia Farrow's character, an old lady that is the impetus for their movie-making (she's the one that wanted to watch GHOSTBUSTERS) is a beautiful woman that cares selflessly for the young black men of the community.

Race, although always present in the film - the three main stars of the Sweded movies are white, black, and Hispanic - is never discussed directly, but wonderfully and hilariously shown in context, such as during the filming of DRIVING MISS DAISY where Jack Black is the Jessica Tandy character to Mos Def's Morgan Freeman. When Jack shows up in blackface to play Fats Waller - he figures he's the right man to play him since he too is fat, Danny Glover takes him outside gently to discuss the problem. We don't hear the reprimand, but we do see it in what may be the best scene of the movie.

BE KIND REWIND ends with a scene out of a Frank Capra film, a scene just short of sappy, but so lovely that both Janna and I had the beginnings of tears in our eyes. Overall, the movie is a paean to interconnectedness. It's a simple film with a small budget that is more than the sum of its parts. It's a sort of anti-HAPPENING for me. Rather than liking it less and less the more I think about it, I like and admire BE KIND REWIND more and more.

4 and a half magnetized drops of urine out of 5.

What's the news from your bed?

A few updates for you:

1. I use ellipses way too much.
2. This is completely self-indulgent. I mean, this is totally, wholly, egotistical on our part. I know this. But it's so much darn fun. The hamster, Myles, and I have started a new blog where we do nothing but review movies. Check it out - it's boss.
3. Benjamin loves him some Blue's Clues. Amazing. Steve (and Joe, I reckon) have helped raise all three of my kids.
4. There is some big news on the horizon. We hope. Should be happening in the next week or two. Cross your fingers for us. And say a prayer or ten.
5. Do you have to be married for, like, 30 years to renew your vows? Cause I love my wife a whole lot. She's groooovy. And she puts up with me getting tired and going to bed at ten o'clock.
6. The new Ben Shive record is jawdroppingly gorgeous. Go to The Rabbit Room and buy it. It's worth the ten bucks - seriously, what's ten bucks anymore, an extra value meal from McDonald's? Go buy "The Ill Tempered Klavier."
7. I bought this great book from the used bookstore this week. It's called Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who by Frederick Buechner. Awesome.
8. I am officially a Tennessee state certified commercial C3(turf grass and ornamentals) pesticide applicator. As my mom says - "Every mother's dream."
9. I really want to go see WALL-E this weekend. Have you seen the reviews?
10. This one's from Laney, "I love you, world."

It's All (not) Happening!

Eberto the Pirate says "Arr, there be spoilers ahead. These be dangerous waters. Mind your spinnakers!"

THE HAPPENING - A Tale of Trite Shite

"Class, welcome to Great Directing 101. This week, we're discussing the concept of denouement. Now who can tell me what denouement means? Steven? Marty? Wilder? Clint? Oh fine, Alfred."

(class groans, murmurs of "teacher's pet" abound)

"Professor Kubrick, it means the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel."

"Good, good, Alfred. Now, let's discuss examples. M Night, can you give me an example of the proper use of denouement? M Night? Has anybody seen M Night? Dang it. This'll come back to bite him one day. Ok, let's move on. Joel, Ethan, can you give me an example?"

-------------------------------

Oh, THE HAPPENING. How I wish thee had not been a bad movie. How I wish that you had lived up to thine wonderful opening scenes. Those bodies falling like raindrops,the calm of shoving a knitting needle through a jugular, the idyllic, foreboding images of nature. The first five minutes or so were excellent. Then Marky Mark opened his mouth and everything began to fall apart.

I wonder if Marky Mark was thrust upon M Night, or if M Night chose Marky Mark. Either way, it turned out bad. He simply can't carry a movie. He has one emotion - incredulity. Fortunately for him, it helped in some scenes - that was the required emotion. But incredulity can only carry you so far. The unfortunate part is that Jon Leguizamo was excellent, if wasted. His role is far too limited, as if M Night didn't want him stealing scenes from Marky Mark. Zooey Deschanel is wonderful, of course, and her bright blue eyes dominate the screen.

I do think, though, that THE HAPPENING could have survived Marky Mark. But the story is really the low point of the film, and not even Zooey's eyes can save that. It's almost as if M Night (who my boss at work calls "Midnight" as if the M stands for Mid) came up with the concept and figured that the kinks would just get worked out along the way - "An ending? Don't bother me with details!"

Here's the plot in a nutshell: People start committing suicide en masse, and no one knows why. Marky Mark, his wife Zooey, and their buddy's young daughter attempt to flee from New England to escape what's HAPPENING. They progress in smaller and smaller groups until they are alone and assured that they too, will die. (SPOILER) They don't. Everyone lives happily ever after. What was killing everybody? You guessed it, the plants. The plants are mad that people are mistreating the earth, so they start killing folks (actually, getting people to kill themselves). We find all of this out in a third act that lasts all of four minutes - very reminiscent of Speilberg's crappy WAR OF THE WORLDS. In fact, the whole of THE HAPPENING is reminiscent of WoTW. So much so that Stevie might want to check out some plagiarism lawyers.

Oh, M Night can still build suspense. There are some excellent, tense scenes. They effects are nice - a guy gets run over buy a riding lawnmower, etc. There's a really great scene involving three individual suicides with the same gun.

M Night's strength has always been that he's an excellent storyteller, but I'm afraid he's lost his mojo. The movie really feels like a student assignment - "Do a film about global warning. Make it a metaphor." 2 Marky Marks out of five.

(Sorry Kevin)