Fish Tank, dir. Andrea Arnold (2010)

There are movies I see every once and a while that remind me why I watch in the first place. If that seems clichéd, let me assure you that Andrea Arnold’s second feature, Fish Tank, is not. Here is what we hope for and rarely get: urgency without manipulation, intimacy without bland sentiment, shock without exploitation.

The camera never leaves Mia, our reckless, British, 15-year-old protagonist. She aimlessly wanders her white trash environs, never in school, drinking and getting into fights with anyone she finds. The first thought we have is not that she’s troubled, but, rather, what the hell else is there to do? Her slutty peers are no better, and we sympathize with her further when we’re introduced to her trashy mother Joanne, dancing half-naked in the kitchen, punctuating her steps with slaps to her children.

Mia’s escape, too, is dance, but this isn’t a Lifetime movie, so it doesn’t play out as we fear it might. Her mother’s new boyfriend, Connor, takes an interest in her ambitions, but doesn’t seem to be only interested in that. We root for their friendship with great reservations. Mia gets a boyfriend, too, of sorts, but he’s not the man of her dreams nor is he a bad influence. He gives her attention, and that’s good enough.

This is the kind of movie you expect, because of its intensity, to be a brisk 80 minutes, but it’s over 2 hours. The tone changes rapidly, as aimlessly as Mia herself, and things get heavy at a certain point, out of left field. It begins like a Dardenne picture but develops an arc. I didn’t mind.

It takes risks and succeeds; why not cast a teenager you see at a train station screaming at her boyfriend? And why not end the film with a moving, hiphop dance to Nas’ “Life’s a Bitch”? I wouldn’t expect Fish Tank to work, if I saw it on paper, but it does. Along with Ballast and Wendy and Lucy, this film’s arrival indicates that the Western avant-garde has finally re-awoken. Thank god.

Our company is, also, pleased obliged to report that Warner Brother’s The Blind Side has been nominated for Best Picture. [Insert despairing, snarky remark about the Academy here]

After a record-setting year at the box office, what can we expect in 2010? More of the same. Don’t expect Hollywood to surprise us when things are going so well. Expect more 3D, more talking CGI animals, more lame comedies/soft dramas starring Sandra Bullock.

Not that I’m cynical.

Seriously, there are some really interesting projects set to premiere in 2010. Here is what I’m most excited to see:

Green Zone (March) The Bourne Occupation. Based on the nonfiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Matt Damon searches for WMDs right before the surge of troops in Iraq. Judging from Paul Greengrass’ non-Bourne outings (United 93, Bloody Sunday), expect a meticulously-researched, taut thriller.  Not to be confused with Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, out the same week.

Iron Man 2 (May) The exception to the unfortunate-sequel rule: sequels to superhero movies are generally bigger, badder, and bolder than their originals. The principal cast and crew is back and they’ve nabbed Mickey Rourke. The biggest movie of the year, and for good reason.

Inception (July) How do you follow up after making one of the most successful blockbusters–financially and critically–in history (The Dark Knight)? Use the new, expanded resources the studios are now willing to give you to return to your roots. This sci-fi, potentially time-travelling story (the press and trailers are vague) suggest Memento for Imax. Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page (!) star.

The Green Hornet (December) Michel Gondry, Seth Rogen superhero adaptation, just in time for Christmas, written by the scribes of Superbad and Pineapple Express. Could be all wrong, or just right. I’ll bank on the latter.

The Tree of Life (TBA) Terrence Malick makes films every half decade, if that. This generational epic, originally titled Q, has been in the works for 30 years. Brad Pitt and Sean Penn star. Expect something interesting, if not magnificent, with a pervertedly long running time.

The Beaver (TBA) A year ago, the script of “The Beaver” was number one on an “official” list of best unproduced screenplays. This quirky portrait of a CEO who suffers a mental breakdown and, following, can only communicate through use of a beaver puppet, originally had Steve Carrell attached but now has (gulp) Mel Gibson. I couldn’t think of a more fitting comeback.

The First Gun (TBA) The director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers remakes the Coen Bros’ Blood Simple for the Mandarin-speaking crowd. Hey, we do it all the time to them. Here is some sweet vengeance.

Black Swan (TBA) Darren Aronofsky’s psychological ballet thriller. Yeah, I know. I can’t wait either.

Life During Wartime (TBA) Todd Solondz’s sequel to 1998’s great dark comedy Happiness has already made the festival circuit to generally positive reviews. Apparently, it’s more talk-heavy and politically overt than his previous films. Suitably, it’s named after a Talking Heads song.

Rabbit Hole (TBA) John Cameron Mitchell has proven he’s capable of stage-to-screen adaptations. In this one, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart star as a couple dealing with the death of their 4-year-old. Decidedly less wacky than Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Looking through our top films of 2009, I’m a little disappointed with the range of films.

Admittedly, in recent years, many big-studio films have become more sophisticated (”The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” “Star Trek,” and anything Pixar–”Up” is the unanimous 2009 Company choice), and there’s plenty of eager filmgoers looking for escapism. In fact, despite the recession, Hollywood just had it’s biggest year ever (10 billion+). These are good things.

Let me explain myself: I just tried to going to an evening showing of The Blind Side with my mother. Neither of us really wanted to see it. Neither of us like football, Sandra Bullock especially, or “based on a true story” shit. We just felt like seeing something. But when we got to the front of the line, this crowd-pleaser, that had been out for 44 days, was sold out. Everything was. Everything out right now–Sherlock Holmes, Avatar, Alvin 2, It’s Complicated–is a hit. People just want to see something.

But there’s excellent stuff out there, as always, that nobody sees. Some only come to New York City for a week or two and then vanish. If it comes to Chicago, Roger Ebert sees it and raves or maybe he doesn’t see it at all. He does better than me, as I live 2 hours from any major city. I try to go out of my way to see films, but there’s an excruciating long list of top-reviewed fare that never came my way but which I was dying to see in 2009:

Summer Hours, Tulpan, Il Divo, Lorna’s Silence, Seraphine, Revanche, Forbidden Lie$, Still Walking, The Beaches of Agnes, 35 Shots of Rhum, The Damned United, The Sun, Crazy Heart, Broken Embraces, Police, Adjective.

Giampaolo saw a few of these. None of us saw the best-reviewed film of the year, 35 Shots of Rhum, superb French director Claire Denis’ latest.

And we should have.

Like I was saying, it’s not entirely our fault. Independent movie theaters are quite often hardly that. Around Amherst, MA, where I live, we have two, Amherst Cinema and Pleasant Street Theatre, with 5 screens in total. These are non-profit theaters that are owned by the same people. Starting next week, however, three of the five screens will be taken up by Invictus, Up in the Air, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. These films are fine, maybe great (?), and helmed by some of the most talented directors in the game. So what’s the problem? They’re already playing at the multiplex down the street! One time they even played Shrek 3.

Still, we owe it to ourselves and you to seek out and promote the films not getting screened anywhere. In the same spirit that the Blind Side couple adopted that black kid and gave him footballs for Christmas, etc., we need to do something about these orphaned films.

This is our resolution for 2010.

Yesterday, Alvin 2 grossed 18.8 million dollars.

A few days before, Obama denied ever promising a public option.

I don’t know which is more troubling.

This is the time of the year when the big passion-projects come out–films that either soar (Lord of the Rings, Million Dollar Baby) or sorely disappoint (All the Pretty Horses, Ali, Alexander). It’s Oscar season, but you wouldn’t know it from the year-end mainstream releases, many of which hope to be THE hit Christmas movie. Don’t believe the hype: Sherlock Holmes will be mostly air, It’s Complicated won’t work out (just stop, Nancy Meyers) and were you actually going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel? There won’t be much to see for a while besides Avatar, unless you live in a town with an independent cinema, until some of the indies start to expand.

Here are a half dozen movies I GUARANTEE are worth seeking out:

UP IN THE AIR:  Jason Reitman, it seems, was not destined to be a one-film wonder. Ironically, George Clooney flying around on planes and firing people seems like this year’s perfect Christmas movie.  (http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/upintheair)

PRECIOUS:  Okay, so it’s actually been out for a while in urban areas but I live in the middle of nowhere. We’re always drawn to great performances we didn’t see coming and this delivers two–by Mo’Nique and Mariah Carey. If a film about teen pregnancy can be uplifting (Juno), can a teen incest rape be too?   (http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/precious)

BROKEN EMBRACES:  Minor Almodovar is still better than 95% of films out there.   (http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/brokenembraces)

NINE:  Rob Marshall is flashy and mediocre but Daniel-Day Lewis is always worth watching. I suspect they’ll average each other out. With 9 nominations, it topped the Press Academy’s nominations earlier this week.    (http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/nine)

AVATAR:  Let’s say that the naysayers are right and that it doesn’t deliver, that it isn’t the most sensational movie since Titanic, or that it’s not even close. I think this will be interesting to sit through. And if it’s not for the right reasons, go wasted.   (http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar)

THE WHITE RIBBON:  Haneke’s masterpiece. This is a film people will be watching in film school decades later.    (http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/thewhiteribbon/)

NOTA BENE: I had the exclusive pleasure of seeing a post-production lab work on Alvin and Chipmunks: The Squeakuel over the summer. This place had at least 150 workers dedicating their time to animating chipmunks in live-action scenes. “It takes a long time because we wanted to simulate the movement of real chipmunks,” the guide told us. No one bothered to tell him that chipmunks don’t hop around on on their hind legs. I signed a form promising not to disseminate details about the story of the film. Needless to say, a bunch of chipmunks scurry around, sing and play dodgeball. Watching the dodgeball scene, where Theodore and Simon battle real human children, I recall remarking: “I noticed some existential elements in the first film, but the squeakuel really takes it to the next level.”

(a few spoilers here)

Yesterday Curb Your Enthusiasm wrapped its season-long Seinfeld reunion arc. We hadn’t seen any of the characters since May of 1998, when the much despised finale aired, but I’ll be surprised if any Seinfeld fan was let down this time (I’m not, however, surprised Giampaolo was displeased by 2012–I advised not to go!)

I was hesitant about the reunion considering Curb Your Enthusiasm had refrained from ever getting too Seinfeld-meta over its 7 seasons, effectively making the show its own thing instead of feeling like a spin-off (remember Joey?) At its best, it is edgier, rawer, and funnier than Seinfeld ever was, thanks to HBO’s creative freedom. In previous seasons, Seinfeld was a topic of consternation to “Larry David” and we believed it was the same for the real Larry David. The Seinfeld arc felt like a sell-out.

It wasn’t. Here were the 5 biggest surprises:

(1) JERRY CAN ACT. Although Seinfeld was the lead in the most successful show of all time, his acting had always been viewed as endearingly inept. He lights up every scene he’s in here. The camaraderie between Larry and Jerry was genuinely moving. He’s the closest thing Larry David has to a soulmate yet he seems able to fit in with polite society.

(2) NBC DIDN’T CAUSE A FUSS. Thank God. This was the only way we could get something so wonderfully honest and fun.

(3) THE REUNION SHOW WORKED. Deconstructing Seinfeld into table reads and rehearsals added a level, but the snippets of the show-within-a-show were funny on their own terms. Despite having aged 11 years, the actors slipped right back into their characters with little discomfort (Michael Richards is 60!). We learn Jerry had donated the sperm for Elaine’s baby and George had gotten rich inventing the i-Toliet application but lost it all to Bernie Madoff. “It’s tough to find work these days, Jerry” Seinfeld’s unfunny rival comedian Kenny Bania notes, in a cameo. Jerry replies, “Yeah, but you weren’t working BEFORE.”

(4) LARRY IS DEFENSIVE ABOUT THE FINALE. It’s unclear whether the season’s running joke that all of the gang felt the Seinfeld finale was weak except for Larry was based on reality, but, since the series is consistently close-to-home, you can almost bet on it. Larry is in denial. “It was a good ending!”

(5) THEY ADDRESS THE MICHAEL RICHARDS INCIDENT. Against all odds, Michael Richards is redeemed after leaving a bad taste in our mouths in November 2006. Larry sends his black housemate Leon over to Richard’s pretending to be a victim of Groat’s Disease (don’t ask just watch). “Oh, don’t kill me,” Richards pleads, answering the door, “I made a MISTAKE 3 years ago!” Later, he almosts re-creates the incident. The witnesses instinctively pull out their cellphones and blackberries. Thank you, Curb. Thank you.

I’m 1.5 months into the post-production of a faux-documentary I shot this summer called Make Them Cry (a sort of vestigial title) and I am lost. It’s one of those films that walks the line between fact and fiction and has a collage-like structure, which I thought would be easier to edit than a straightforward narrative. However, at this point, I’m not sure what it’s about.

When people ask about it, I tell them that it’s about a teenager who rapes an older women over the internet, in Second Life. The older women has such a connection with her virtual avatar that she is traumatized by the incident and can no longer log on, and, in effect, her life loses meaning. Cool, huh? The people who I tell this to seem to think so.

The thing is it’s not really about this at all.

In writing a 20-minute film, I tried to include such a multitude of themes that I unknowingly risked its losing focus. Moreover, some of the themes that interested me back in May no longer do. There are a lot of good ideas (sad Craigslist personal ads are read over depressing mall shots; a landlord comes to evict a tenant while the documentary film crew is in the middle of interviewing him), but taken together, I find it incoherent, leaving viewers scratching their heads.

Rather than dealing with this head-on, I began to avoid it. My friend invited me earlier this month to Farmville and, as a then ironic gesture, I accepted. At first, I played when I remembered to, planting a couple eggplant crops here and harvesting them a few days later. Then I became more advanced, expanded my farm, and began to feel something of a rush whenever I jumped up a level (I’m now at level 21; fellow poster Adam Hirsch is at level 12). Not only does one gain experience from planting crops and trees and milking animals, but also from collecting ribbons, which are rewarded when you adopt a certain number of pathetic, wandering animals or when you pour a certain amount of magic fertilizer on your neighbor’s soil. Certain real-world rules do not apply to Farmville–there are no “bad” seasons, things run like clockwork and climate doesn’t ever come into the picture (one can plant date trees and blueberries AND raise baby elephants in the same field).

The internet is ubiquitous (another THEME of my movie!) and it taunts especially when you are in the middle of editing on final cut. Something isn’t working so you check on your crops–and, oh shit–200 grape bushes (the most profitable plant time-wise) are ready to be harvested. There goes 20 minutes.

In a way, through my own escapism, I’m better able to understand my fictional character. Second Life, while not goal-oriented, has so much more complexity to it than Farmville, and yet there are days where I’ve spent perhaps 1.5 hours “farming.” I consider myself (on my good days) healthy, vigorous, and in the prime of my life. Yet this has happened. What if you were confined to a wheelchair, never had to work for a living, and had problems socializing? Glowing computer light can absorb all your energy and leave you in a zombie-like state. Second Life, as stupid as it is, could become an addiction.

As a final irony, one of the things I am procrastinating by virtual farming is playing Second Life. One of the last things I have to “film” is interactions inside this virtual world. Here’s to hoping I can bear playing it enough to get the footage but not enough where it becomes rewarding in and of itself.