by Ethan Johnson
June 30, 2006

The movies were "at" us, lately, but it looks like there are some theatre-worthy offerings coming out this year so we should be getting out more.

Funny Girl: Believe it or not, I have never sat through a Barbra Streisand movie until now. Or if I did, I have zero recall. Either way, Frank Zappa and the Mothers had a song called "A Small Eternity With Yoko Ono". It was like that, only with Barbra in the lead. It was interesting to hear some of the songs that came out of this (like "People Who Need People") but this was a similar situation to the Jack Black vehicle School of Rock: If you love Jack Black, you'll love it. If you hate Jack Black, you'll hate it. Because there's hardly a minute in either movie that Barbra or Jack Black aren't in the picture.

I asided that this was a necessary component to understanding the Sarah Jessica Parker ethos. I may be wrong, but I doubt it. To hedge, I really think Barbra had an influence on the character of Carrie Bradshaw. (SJP does sing "The Way We Were" in an episode of S&TC, so I'm not completely making this up.)

It doesn't help that I saw the real Fanny Brice in Ziegfeld Girl. Barbra is no Fanny Brice. Now get me some viskey!

Crash: This was a really heavy, powerful movie. My only gripe is that just like Love, Actually this movie has an ensemble cast like rush-hour commuting is "just a few cars on the road". As a result, storylines that really could have been movies unto themselves are distilled into 3 or 4 scenes. I think the point was to get people thinking and talking, and for whatever reason "closure" was necessary for the individual stories but the underlying issues were the real meat and potatoes.

The movie gets its title from the idea that we are so collectively out of touch with each other (or more to the point, residents of Los Angeles are) that we "crash" into each other physically and emotionally to affirm that we can have some sort of impact on real life. Thus overt racism isn't really racism, it's just a way to provoke a response, and in turn interact (albeit harshly) with humanity. Interesting theory, but one I am not sure that I buy. There are many racial themes to this movie, and I found it interesting how situational they were, such as liking blacks but hating Mexicans. Nobody is truly enlightened, they're just tolerant to differing degrees.

Not sure if I agree with the "Best Picture" award. But definitely worth the rental.

Saw: Ah, here's some light-hearted fare. This was an incredibly bad movie on the surface, despite its initial novelty. I thought the mechanics of the story were different, so I was a bit confused but hung in to the bitter end. Afterwards, I looked up the movie on IMDB and gained more respect for the movie mechanically. This is a good movie to reinforce the idea that when you are filming a movie, you are pretending to do something. For example, if you have a road trip from Canada to Mexico, you generally do not actually go on a road trip between those two countries. You find a place that "looks" Canadian, and another one that "looks" Mexican. Ideally they are 5 miles apart. Saw gets this (since it was produced for like $1.87), and allows the viewer to get wrapped up in the story rather than the minute details.

I think the lesson here (besides beware of serial killers) is that if you have a story to tell, tell it. Nobody rehearsed their lines (no time - it was filmed in less than 18 days), the "sets" were actual places that looked spooky enough, and there was lots of multi-tasking on the part of the writer and the director. But they told their story, for better or worse. I respect that kind of gumption, even if the movie was cheesier than Wisconsin.

It didn't help that Smallville did a send-up of Saw this past season. That really dulled the edge when we watched the real thing. Worth catching on cable if only for the mechanics of how to throw a movie together with no money and no time and still make it reasonably watchable.

The Graduate: OK, I can cross that one off the list. It had its moments, and was most notable for being Dustin Hoffman's first movie. But as I expected going in, the material was rather "of its time", and the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack got old. Especially the overuse of "Scarborough Fair". Nice to see Mr. Roper from Three's Company in the role of the cranky landlord. Who saw that coming?

Still, it's worth watching and will tie up some more pop culture loose ends, such as cheeky references on The Simpsons.

The Fountainhead: Gaaaaaah.

It may not be fair of me to trash this movie, being that it is the film adaptation of Ayn Rand's book, but she wrote the fookin' screenplay, so all bets are off. Imagine me doing my Simon Cowell voice as I say simply, "wooden and one-dimensional". I've been getting lots of mileage out of saying (when watching HGTV, usually), "oh, he's an architect? And he built that funky house? Didn't he take popular opinion into account? One must consider the tastes of the public." The love story was straight out of the planet Vulcan, or failing that, Canada. "I love you in a dispassionate, logical. wooden kind of way." "Kiss me, you fool."

Despite the train wreck of the story (my favorite part was the cabal of architects, yes, architects), it did confirm one observation of mine about professional actors: If they're any good, they'll sell the audience on whatever you set in front of them. I posit that Laurence Olivier or Katherine Hepburn could read you the phone book and rake in the awards. Gary Cooper sells the climactic courtroom speech in such a way that I believed that he believed all of it. As it turns out, he found the speech to be rambling and pointless, but Rand made him stick to the script. Say what you will about Gary Cooper, but he was nothing if not professional.

How's that for ending on a low? Incredibly not recommended, unless they spoof it on Mystery Science Theatre. Fat chance, but hey. Actually, strike that. This movie (or book) is a key piece in her Objectivist philosophy, so do see it and judge for yourself whether Objectivism is your cup of tea or not. I suppose this is like volunteering to watch Battlefield Earth. Only with more social acceptance. <EM>