Special #10: Gone With the Wind

It's been a while since I've run an Oscar feature (I know you've missed them), and since the ceremony is this week I thought we'd have a go with 1939's seminal Gone With the Wind. This might actually be interesting for some of you because many of you have seen this, or have at least heard of it. As for me, it is certainly a spectacle, but I'm not totally sure how I feel about it.

The movie is the adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's novel about the fall of the south in the Civil War. It is a passionate romance of characters and place, and the adaptation has become one of the icons of American cinema.

And, truly, every inch of it is iconic. The photography is lush and evocative of the much-romanced south we all think of. Its scope is monumental (the movie comes in at just under 4 hours), a dramatic megalith on the scale of Wagner. It is worth the watch if only to witness the perfection of craft in such a young industry. But then, there is also the rest of it about which I am conflicted.

Most of that "rest of it" is the protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, embodied by Vivien Leigh. The first time I watched the movie several years ago, I HATED it because of one or the both of them. Leigh has always bothered me as an actress (see: A Streetcar Named Desire), but her character in the movie is just as irritating. Of course, that is her arc, falling from spoiled plantation queen to fending for her very existence as the Northern imperialists rape the land she grew up on. Upon second viewing I have become more sympathetic, but only some. The movie is made watchable because of Clark Gable's potrayal of Rhett Butler, Scarlett's lover. By the end I felt to cheer as he finally tells her what I have been wishing to tell her the entire movie.

Is such an irritating character and her portrayal worth so much of your life in exchange for unfiltered cinematic beauty? This is one of the deeper questions pursuers of art must face. Why do you like watching movies? Is it for their aesthetic quality, for stories that resonate with you or challenge you, or some combination of these or other factors? Does a broken and frustrating character make a "bad" movie? I don't know, but this is why we watch anyway.

There are lots of ill feelings on my part, but overall I still think this is one of the more important films of our history. Together with The Wizard of Oz, also from the same year, color film signaled an important, if slow, industry shift. It is one of the rare films that becomes immortal on its own. Many require several adaptations or sequels, but Gone With the Wind sits in a very privileged class. It is appropriately ubiquitous, even if it remains divisive. I recommend it both as an historical artifact and as a worthy film.

Gone With the Wind features Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, and Hattie McDaniel, and is not rated.

Writer: Sydney Howard

Director: Victor Fleming

Also, if you don't feel like four hours, here's the condensed version from Carol Burnett:

The Lego Movie

Well do I remember my days as a carefree lad, playing with my beloved Lego sets. My brother and I would devote hours on end to carefully creating worlds for our tiny Lego figurines to inhabit. We would follow meticulous instructions in order to build the models just right, and a lost piece was something truly lamentable.

Some friends also enjoyed Legos, but they combined all of their sets into one massive pile and drew thence to construct their own crude creations. This was something I never understood, because THAT IS HOW YOU LOSE PIECES. This denominational difference often caused strife when these friends would come over to play.

By now hopefully you've seen The Lego Movie but if you haven't, this conflict provides the central conceit of the movie: what happens when a maniacal overlord is seeking to destroy your world by ensuring that every block remains precisely in place? The Lego Movie is just as much fun as it should be, subversively reveling in everything that made playing with Legos great in the first place.

To be clear, it is not the giant multi-franchise commercial it easily could have been. Here, Lego is the medium, not the product. The animation resembles the stop-motion movies grown up nerds like me might make, but the scale is impossible and enviable for the amateur. Here, Batman, Gandalf, and NBA All-Stars mingle freely (and hilariously). It is an immensely enjoyable adventure.

I said that Lego was the medium, and I would like to explain that. So often, nostalgic properties are turned into movies for only vaguely artistic reasons. Think of disasters like Battleship or successful travesties like Transformers. The only reason for their existence is to mine happy memories for money. Even the upcoming Mr Peabody & Sherman looks more like a cheap base hit than anything else. The Lego Movie felt different because it is at once respectful and cheekily self-aware. On the one hand, it manages to remain true to everybody's own Lego memories and adventures, and on the other it knows that it is a commercial endeavor, and takes delight in not taking that fact very seriously.

The movie is truly funny, and makes brilliant use of established and contemporary pop culture references. My one quibble with that is that it won't become a "classic": much of its humor is too closely grounded in the present for kids a few years from now to really get. Not that it's important, because the best kid's movies are adult-savvy as well.

So I say that The Lego Movie is enormously fun and more than worth braving the crowds of 10-year-olds to see. I would even claim that your love would probably rather watch it than Endless Love or Winter's Tale this weekend, but maybe that's just me.

The Lego Movie features Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrell, and all kinds of other hilarious people, and is rated PG mostly for an instance of non-graphic Lego nudity.

Writers: Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Directors: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Here we are at the beginning of a new year, hooray and all that. My first cinematic foray of the year was Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, out at Christmas. People have complained that it isn't really "true" to the iconic story by James Thurber, but I will suggest the possibly-heretical idea that this movie does well what most adaptations don't. Isn't that provocative? 

The story centers around Walter (Stiller), a lonely man whose life is only filled with the excitement his imagination creates for him. He makes up for in fantasy what his real life lacks. And, truly, this is the only commonality shared between the film and the story. The rest is totally fabricated. But I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing.

At first, though, this vexed me. The story is considerably more despairing than the film, with Walter's final flight of fancy taking him stoically before a firing squad. It seems a disappointing life will always be there. The movie, though, always optimistic if sometimes cute, never gets that grim. Its premise is certainly sugar-coated, but also pretty valid. A man is not what he does, but really just what he is.

An early scene sees Walter trying to send a "wink" to somebody on an online dating service. The site, though, doesn't let him, because his profile is found wanting. Simply because his life hasn't been glamorous and successful enough means he is disqualified from participation in it. We have created a society built on this, particularly with social media. Remember last month when Facebook kept wanting to show you your biggest moments from the year? Those were the things other people thought were important by "liking" them, and may not have really mattered at all.

This is what Walter Mitty made me think about, and actually led to my enjoyment of it. There is despair in Stiller's Walter, but resolve also, and dedication. These are things he always had: his journey doesn't bring them out in him, but rather helps him respect and like who he already is.

Now, it is a pretty soft-cornered movie that doesn't ask or really give much in the end, or (more frustratingly) fully deliver on a promising premise, but after sleeping on it I think it is a fair adaptation, in the truer sense of that word. Indeed, it is often better than many "truer" adaptations, choosing to be a movie of its own and expressing itself in that medium. It is a fun watch, and certainly better than most of what gets thrown at the comfortably PG adult.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty features Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Adam Scott and Jon Daly, and is rated PG for daydreaming adventures and name-calling.

Writer: Steve Conrad

Director: Ben Stiller

PS: There is another film about Walter, made in 1947 and featuring Danny Kaye as well as dream-dazzling Technicolor that looks slightly (and only slightly) more based in the text, if that is your thing.

5 of My Favorites and 1 I Wish Hadn't Happened

It's the end of the year, and I've put together a list of five of my favorite movies from 2013. This doesn't mean I consider these the best of the year, but these are the ones that have stayed with me. Narrowing down the list was a little tricky, and there are some on the cutting room floor that deserve a little more (sorry, Pacific Rim). But what can you do? Also included at the bottom is my single biggest regret of the year, cinematically speaking. The favorite list is ordered chronologically.

1. Oblivion

The one ray of light at the beginning of the year was this piece of sci-fi from April. This is a movie that I liked then, and has grown on me since. The whole thing feels cohesive, that it is all a part of its own world. The design, the story, the music, all work together to produce a couple of hours of entertaining getaway. It has a peculiar beauty and emotional current running through it that resonated with me. I know there were haters then, and you've probably forgotten about it now, but I'd say to give it a shot one night.

2. Kings of Summer

This one is I think less divisive, but also less circulated. It was a hit at Sundance, but I don't know that much of our local theatre-going public saw much of it. It is on DVD now, so there isn't any excuse. This movie really freshened up the coming-of-age genre for me. It is hilarious and touching and exciting, and it has a distinctive flavor. It is one of those that is as enjoyable watching the second time around as the first, because there is so much to experience. It isn't overwhelmingly dense, but each frame is loaded with summer and adolescence and things to be relived. It is sure to have something that you thought only you and your teenage friends ever did.

3. Blue Jasmine

My favorite character movies of the year came from one of my most idolized directors, Woody Allen. I feel that this is among his strongest movies to date, and much of that is because of Cate Blanchett. She is wonderful. There are so many layers to her character that many actresses might overlook or overexpose, but her precise, delicate touch is at once thrilling and tragic to watch. It is a tragedy for the 21st century. For all its drama and weight there is still some dark humor, but do not look for any comic neuroticism here. Allen writes best when he writes like this, and it is a treat.

4. Gravity

Of the movies I've seen this year, Gravity was the most unexpected and surprising. I do not remember such an engrossing, pervasive experience at a theatre. Fun-killers will say that its science is dubious, but since when are we watching a documentary? The elements that make it such a great movie are all sterling: the visual effects, the story being told, its sheer experiential quality. It is movies like this, not flashy action hoedowns and gaudy studio look-at-me's, that make going to the movies the special event it can be, and I'm glad that can still happen in our skeptical age.

5. 12 Years a Slave

I'm the first to be wary when people call a movie "important". It's a movie, not a movement. It is first a piece of art; anything else comes later and is often fleeting. I think the title "important" can only be bestowed decades later, when history has given it a more objective scrutinization. But, 12 Years a Slave is a movie that feels momentous once it is over. Its narrative is vital, and its delivery is flawless. It is respectful, but truthful, and will eventually become a part of our canon of art and literature devoted to the story of slavery. It is still playing, and I urge you to go.

.....

We have come to the real reason you are reading this, to discover what I was hating on enough to decry it in writing. There were disappointments this year, as there are every year. After Earth and Man of Steel come to mind. The one has suffered its anonymous death already, but the other has spawned offspring bred to combat Marvel's unstoppable box-office force. However the movie I speak of here was one that perhaps promised more, and has greater expectations trailing it. And that movie is Star Trek Into Darkness.

To be brief, I will say that its sins are many and grievous, but the chiefest of these is the central conceit itself. The character of Khan and his consequences for our heroes mean nothing more to uninitiated fans, and ruin the greatest entry of the franchise for everybody else. I am not worried about the rest of the Star Trek franchise, because nothing worse can be done to it, but I am most concerned about a certain other intergalactic property to which JJ Abrams is attached. I know not all of a film's problems can be pinned to the director (I look now at writer Damon Lindelof, who almost ruined the Alien world with his Prometheus meddlings in addition to killing Star Trek) but he most certainly signed off on their being given life. Star Wars: Episode VII has a LOT of convincing to do.

Those are my year-end thoughts, so what about yours? What were your favorite discoveries and hurtful let-downs?   

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Here we are again, back in Middle Earth for the second chapter of the rip-roaringest dwarf-filledest adventure ever filmed! Last week the only thing on anybody's mind was The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and of course this writer was there with the rest of you to partake in the spectacle. Although I was a titch skeptical going in, I feel that these movies have found an appropriate place within the canon, and it was enjoyable besides.

We pick up here where we left off before, following our intrepid dwarf band to the Lonely Mountain. They of course have some jolly adventures along the way (LEGOLAS!), culminating in their confrontation with the titular dragon.

I said I had reservations going in, and they were these: that there would be enough story for three full movies, and that the lighter tone would become cartoony. Concerning both of these I had an epiphany in Lake Town. This trilogy is a prequel series in a kind of legendary sense. In incorporating extra material into The Hobbit, Peter Jackson and company have crafted a sort of mythological backstory to The Lord of the Rings. Hence, its lighter tone and exaggerated action are appropriate, because that is what you do with legends. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is more "realistic" and grounded, and deals with much deeper themes. The Hobbit trilogy is Bilbo's account of things that influence those later events, but they are fairly distant by the time he records them. In the world of Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings can therefore be considered more of a "true" record, and The Hobbit more of a fictionalized account of things that few living people remember.

Obviously it is a little silly to talk about two equally-fantastical stories in such journalistic terms. I know neither story is real, in case you were worried.

To shift gears, I thought the confrontation with Smaug was fairly-nearly worth the wait. Benedict Cumberbatch is an excellent casting choice, and he relishes every line. Many have spoken about the addition of Tauriel, so I will only add that I do not think it is necessarily heretical since she adds an emotional element to the story previously absent, but also signals a new concern brewing in me. That is, is this story still Tolkien's story? Many adaptations are substantial departures from the source, but Jackson's gang has done so well remaining true to Tolkien's work that to move away from it at this point could be a foolish thing. Also, the location tag at the beginning and especially the barrel-mounted camera took me out of the world pretty jarringly.

So overall, I will say that The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was fun, exciting, and a perfect way to escape into everybody's favorite fantasy world. I have concerns going into the finale next year, but I am also confident now in the trilogy's role.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug features Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Ian McKellen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando Bloom, and Evangeline Lilly, and is rated PG-13 for the creative dispatch of many many orcs.

Director: Peter Jackson

Writers: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro