Oscars 2008: How Much Have You Seen? And Does It Matter If You Haven't? And If You Have, Who Cares?

Late in January, Jen and I took in a late afternoon showing of Michael Clayton, which completed our yearly goal of seeing all five Best Picture Oscar nominees before the actual Oscar ceremony in February. At the time, we weren't even sure, due to some peasants' strike that seemed to have all of Hollywood in an uproar, that there would even be a ceremony this year, which would have been sad as it would take away a chance for people unused to the superb Jon Stewart to yet again grouse about wanting the much safer Billy Crystal back as host. (Nothing against Billy, but Jon is, currently, the man...)

You would think that seeing all five contenders for Best Picture would also mark us up for most of the other major categories, but you would be wrong in this assumption. Yes, this feat enabled us to see four of the five nominated directors' films, and six (combined with Ratatouille) of the ten nominated screenplays. In conjunction with seeing Sweeney Todd and Eastern Promises, we have seen four of the nominated Best Actor contenders. But we have only gotten to see two each of the Best Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress performances. Overall, I have seen 61 out of the 113 nominated choices -- well over 50% -- but there are the usual goose-egg categories (documentaries, short films), though, in the technical categories, I really clean up big. And yet, only in three categories (Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Picture) have I seen all five nominees. Does this mean I am really only fit to pick decent sound guys?

Ultimately, my question would be, if I have seen so little, what good is my opinion on this matter? Yes, I have seen the really big films, but if someone said, "Hey, who most deserves the Best Actress Oscar?", I couldn't truly answer the question, having only my experiences with Cate Blanchett (who is almost a supporting actor in her Elizabeth sequel, and only workmanlike in her role at that) and Ellen Page on which to fall back. Having seen Javier Bardem in No Country is no excuse to proclaim his victory if the only one of his competitors you have seen is the equally bizarre and excellent Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton. Who am I to not only demand that so-and-so win an Oscar for his work, but to believe that my opinion on this means anything at all?

What do the Oscars mean in the grand scheme of things? Is the Best Picture winner really the best film of the year? Judging from the show's history: no. Generally not. Oscar history is filled with pageantry for films far from truly deserving of it -- like the execrable Forrest Gump -- while Pulp Fiction, a truly culture-changing picture (for better or worse, you decide), humps off with only a screenplay award in tow. Of course, you might think this is wrong of me to say -- you might love Forrest Gump, but then again, you might think that Sally Field actually is a great actress -- but it is merely my opinion. Much like if I told you who I thought was going to win the Oscars, which I am not going to do. And this is because I feel that I don't have a right to, because I haven't seen all of the major contenders in this ceremony for awards that really don't' mean a damn thing.

Except I would be lying to say the Oscars don't mean something to me at all. I may not actually respect the choices, but I still attend the party every goddamned year. I wouldn't miss it for the world. It's really about the celebration of movies, and the history of the movies, and the love of movies in general, and the love of the people who make and made those movies. I will get tearful during the obituary section, and I will well up every time they show a montage of great films -- whether I agree with that status or not -- because I simply love the movies. My real purpose for sitting through the red carpet and the preshow and the ceremony itself and all of the wrap-up shows (let along the announcement of the nominees a month before early on a Tuesday morning) is because, for a real movie fan, this is Christmas. All of the biggest stars in a fabled area of a fabled town sitting around celebrating the supposed best of the industry year. Hollywood is all about lies, and for just one night a year, I am happy to play along with the jest.

Go ahead, I dare you, Oscar. Get all traditional, and tell me that the epically romantic Atonement is the Best Picture of the Year. It's very good, but it's not the best -- No Country for Old Men is, hands down -- but I will accept your decision. It might take me months of ranting and throwing furniture about, but I will abide by your choice -- eventually. After a couple of years, the pain will wear off and I will realize that, while your choice put a statue on the mantle of an undeserving producer, the better picture was still the one that I believed it was. And that's how my personal history will see it, and how it will go down in my history books.

So, throw your party. I will be there, and I will enjoy the host and I will ogle the starlets and I will grouse at many of the choices. Just don't ask to guess who will win, because I really can't say. Nor do I really care.

Huh? What?

I am terrible with excuses this week. What can one say? I had several topics planned to write about this week, and I just simply got lost.

Lost in work, lost in my unending "post-bronchitic" cough (as my doctor in Wisc. termed it, now starring in a throat near me for over three weeks, standing room only), lost in taking care of a recovering from surgery Jen, lost in hanging out with Jen's mom, lost in developing a possible new short film project, lost in the comforting text of a couple of really awesome books, lost in taking care of my newly injured (yet again) sweet, sweet Isabelle...

Lost... lost... lost...

This week, I even watched three episodes of Lost on top of all this, just to keep the theme going.

And now I have found myself again... until I get lost -- whether by incident, accident or purposefulness -- once more...

What's My Obsession? What's My Line?

Outside of the mega-brainy Jeopardy , old school Match Game larf-fests, the not-really-a-gameshow The Gong Show, the Groucho-rich You Bet Your Life, and the occasional current episode of Lingo (where my chief compulsion is to stare like a drooling idiot at Bush-lovin' ex-Miss USA Shandi Finnessey, who could only get hotter to me if she were actually discovered to be a bush-lovin' ex-Miss USA instead), I am really not a game show guy.

In fact, as a breed, they sort of make me sad to a large degree. This could be because much of my time spent viewing them was when I was either stuck at home sick as a kid, so watching them reminds me of being sick, or when I was stuck inside on summer vacations due to rainstorm or snow blizzard, with no hope of actually doing anything fun. They also remind me of those bygone days when, if you were indeed stuck inside at home due to inclement weather or illness, you only had the four local channels and some fuzzy UHF to rely on for entertainment, and these, along with the horrendous soap operas, were the shows you had at your fingertips. No wonder I quickly developed at an early age a taste for watching any movie matinee show that popped up. But, for the past couple of years, I have become increasingly addicted to a game show. A very, very old game show. Not quite as old as the Groucho show, but nearly as wizened. The Game Show Network (GSN) has, for quite a while now, been airing late-late night (or early-early morning... take your pick) episodes of the classic What's My Line? Until very recently, these episodes only aired Sunday night/Monday morning, and only at the pace of one precious half-hour dose a week. I have been recording these episodes for much of that time, cherishing my Monday morning wake-up time, as I prepared for work, to catch up with old favorite celebrities like Tony Randall and the evil-punning Bennett Cerf (whom I only knew growing up from ancient collections of already then ancient jokes... and as Dr. Seuss' publisher). Then, just a short while ago, GSN, perhaps at the request of impatient viewers, began showing Line? every single night/morning (3 a.m. PST). And now, my every single morning is now filled with the dryly mannered and dulcet tones of John Charles Daly as he wonderfully obfuscates his contestants' lives to the point of driving his panelists crazy.

What's my obsession with this show? Well, I have a certain love for old radio and TV shows, especially variety or panel shows, where there is a revolving door of huge celebrities that just drop by, seemingly out of the blue (though in the case of Line?, like many shows, they were paid to do so). Recent guests were, on separate episodes, Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow, with the twist on Farrow's being that Sinatra was sitting on the panel. Naturally, when Ol' Blue Eyes ended up getting duped by his then-Mrs., he basically implied with a waved, closed fist that he should give her an ol' black eye, a motion not commented upon at all, except by laughter, by an audience then largely used to men being men and women shutting up for the most part. This attitude is also captured by the round of wolf-whistles that emit from the males in the studio audience anytime a female even remotely decent looking steps onto stage. Signs of the times, though there is also much evidence, especially in the current crop of episodes circa-1967, of the changing of those attitudes. Women come on the show in an amazing and surprising, for that time, array of occupations, though it is great fun to watch the generally staid and behind-it celebs struggle with their preconceived notions of pretty girls and elderly women who are doing things that pretty girls and elderly women just weren't supposed to be doing, dammit!

It's also fun to see current celebrities show up early in their careers, such as a pre-film directing Woody Allen, who is introduced on the panel as the playwright of the current Broadway hit Don't Drink the Water (and filming Casino Royale at one point as a guest). Watching Allen struggle to play a celebrity schmoozing game he clearly already thinks is beneath him is a bit uncomfortable but fascinating, though the panelists seem to love his non sequiturs and oddball observations. Also, seeing Raquel Welch appear just before One Million Years B.C. came out was amazing, as was watching Jane Fonda in her Vadim years pushing their latest married couple opus.

But the chief reason I have grown so fascinated with the show is John Charles Daly, the dryly mannered but charming moderator of the show, who verbally spars (and obviously quite lovingly so) with Mr. Cerf each and every introduction, wishing the most evil things to happen to Bennett, usually after Mr. Cerf pops off with yet another devastating pun for which he was so feared in those days. Daly, against what must be his outward demeanor, is really quite humorous. It seems like great, cruel fun as he wonderfully obfuscates his contestants' lives to the point of driving his panelists crazy, and I, watching this time capsule some forty-odd years later, go crazy myself sometimes trying to plot a course through the labyrinth of wit in his explanations, delighting in his twists of logic.

What I have discovered watching it now is how little I actually knew of Daly's life, and of many of the panelists, such as Arlene Francis, whom I primarily know from Billy Wilder and James Cagney's sublime comedy One, Two, Three. It has prompted me to dig a little more into my television history, a task which, as you know, I have been just dreading terribly. Even just as a catalyst for this alone, What My Line? is invaluable to me. And as a place where I can finally see a public appearance by someone like Jean Shrimpton, who is primarily a Smithereens song lyric to me, it has vast pop cultural value. The show is followed each night/morning by old episodes of I've Got A Secret, which has similar appeal with its panelists (though not as high class), but its host, Garry Moore, is largely more insufferable to me than Daly, without half his smoothness.

Of course, as someone who is usually juggling about four dozen obsessions at any given moment, this Line? fervor will die down within me, and I am interested in seeing what happens in a couple months when they run out of 1967 episodes. '67 was the final year of the original series, before it moved not much later from its 18-year black-and-white prime-time run to a syndicated color version. I am hoping that they don't jump to the later version, and simply start showing much, much older episodes from the 1950s. But my fear is that GSN may have jumped up its Line? output to simply run out the show to make room for new programming.

And that's the danger of obsessions and addictions. The best thing in the world would be to get the monkey off your back. But who really wants the monkey to leave if it feels so good?

Recently Rated Movies #59: "Turtle?" "No... Tuttle!"

The Passionate Plumber
Director: Edward Sedgwick // 1932
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

An interesting thing happened amongst the pillars of reticence in my mind when I was first approaching MGM's initial attempt to turn two comic geniuses, Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante, into a new comedy team in the early 1930s: I started to enjoy it.

I approached The Passionate Plumber with such reticence because I had not only heard and read many disparaging things about this pairing over the years, but had also heard ill tidings about this movie in particular. Also, I had something called silentkeatonitis: an affliction, far more common than one might think, acquired by anyone raised solely on the Great Stoneface's masterpieces. Over the years, except for The Villain Still Pursued Her, Sunset Blvd., Chaplin's Limelight and his '60s work, I have largely avoided most Keaton efforts outside of the silent days, preferring to let that period of excellence go untainted by the lesser efforts.

Naturally, by doing this, I am lying to myself. I am cutting a man's life in twain by refusing to acknowledge that he did anything worthwhile after 1928, even when he continued to work in the movies up until his death almost forty years later. Certainly, he was not happy throughout much of this generally rote work, far from the free-flowing creative atmosphere he had once experienced. And yet, despite how unsatisfying it must have been, he was still working in the movies, something most of us will never really get a chance to do. [Somewhat removed from this piece, and possibly a topic for another time, is an expansion of this theme; I have friends that did extra work in several films, but never really made it in Hollywood, and yet, I am completely jealous of the fact that they at least took their shot at it. And my buddies currently making a go of it, no matter what level they ultimately achieve, are idols of great esteem to me, for simply being in the game as long as they have.]

It is mainly my need to see everything he has done that has driven me to now seek out the middle period Keaton work. TCM was nice enough to put up a viewing of The Passionate Plumber, and as I stated above, I was more than reluctant to watch it. The opening scene with Durante seeking out Keaton's help seemed to signal that thre was not much to be gained by even watching any further, so clunky is the setup. But something I noticed in Keaton's demeanor kept me hanging about, promising me that perhaps I was misreading those initial signals. There seemed to be something of his old resolve about him, even if none of the physical scenes really carry through into that epic realm of sweet silliness which his silent films seemed to attain so effortlessly. The dueling scene never quite achieves its ultimate point; neither does the gambling sequence or the car chase scene. They are promising more than they could possibly deliver, and yet, something -- in fact, just Keaton's amazing charisma itself -- keeps one hanging about waiting for some sort of a payoff, much in the manner that his character doesn't give up on eventually winning the girl.

And what a girl she is! I've never heard of the perky blonde Irene Purcell before seeing her name in the credits for this film, but what a doll! It's hard to describe the feeling of suddenly crushing on a girl who was my age twenty years before I was born and dead eight years after that point, but then again, I still have thing for Louise Brooks, Myrna Loy, Lillian Roth (in Animal Crackers) and Simone Simon. (And don't even get me started on Miss Fay Wray...) Ms. Purcell, who apparently did not stay in films for very long, has a marvelous time playing the most conflicted of society girls. She hires Buster to keep her away from the philandering creep (played by Gilbert Roland) with whom she purports to be in love, and then spends most of the film trying to get into the arms of said creep, yelling at poor Buster the entire way, against her own wishes. Purcell has to constantly switch emotions on a dime, and deal with the slapstick and pratfalls occurring about her due to Buster's interference. And that dress! Apparently not held back by anything approaching a support system, her breasts heave about much in the way of the famous John Belushi-Steve Martin grandmother sketch, only Miss Purcell is about 400 times more attractive than Belushi in uni-browed drag. Pre-code never looked so good. Well, she certainly had her more famours competitors, but Ms. Purcell gives it a good run for her money.

Durante comes off less well in his solo bits -- still figuring out his appeal on screen at that early point in his film career, I suppose -- in fact, he's a little annoying, which I found strange since I usually adore him unreservedly. But he actually works well with Keaton, especially when they hand out the many throwaway gags that pepper the film throughout. Keaton running down the stairs, stopping on a rug and sliding flat on his back draws Durante to jump into the frame to give an umpire's call and signal of "Safe!", a bit surely infused with some of the non sequitur attitude that launched a thousand Bug Bunny gags. The image of the odd pair cloaked all in black to duel Roland is amusing simply as an image; the chaos of the duel as they confuse a dozen French swells is merely the icing. And a fun phone call to a Gallic operator by the non-French speaking Buster and the French-mangling Jimmy had me rewinding a couple of times.

It's farce (an acquired taste for many), it's fast (73 minutes) and it's far funnier than I expected. If you are tripping through Keaton's oeuvre film by film, this is not the point to abandon ship. It's no great shakes as comedy, especially given the overall solo record of the pair, but for a dozen or so solid laughs and an extremely energetic cast, you could do a lot worse.

And Buster would eventually...

Reasons for Yesterday's "Reasons... #1"

Perhaps someone wrote me, perhaps not. You will never know for sure. I will not give you that pleasure. Given that about three of my old friends back home even bother to contact me anymore, let alone comment on this blog, it is just as likely that no one sent me a comment or email reaction to yesterday's totally selfish and slathering posting that I titled "Reasons I Am Watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles Even Though I Never Saw the Last Terminator Film and Haven't Given A Rat's Ass in 10 Years #1."

Or maybe they did. I get some strange, random comments from people of whom I have never had any contact before, and if I were to be honest (which I might be, or not. You will never know for sure. That pleasure, too, I am denying you), I might admit that I care even more about these occurrences than I do those that drift in sporadically from my ex-entourage. Maybe one of these random emails mentioned some concern about the brevity of my comments on the picture that I swiped from somewhere else on the internet, given the fact that I am normally so rik-dic-ulously verbose in nature.

The comments (and reason #1) to wit: "Sweet, sweet Summer Glau...//...even if Luis thinks she has a giant forehead..." This statement, in every possible facet, is completely true in nature. Summer Glau is the first of two major reasons that I am watching the new Fox Terminator series The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In fact, she is the main reason, due to my swearing a lifelong devotion to all four of the main female actors from the late, lamented Firefly series. (I have also sworn the same oath regarding the male actors on the show, but there is nothing latently sexual connected to that particular oath. Or is there...?) And Luis, one of my co-workers at my daytime gig, did mention his considered opinion that her forehead is kind of a turn-off to him. Not me; ample forehead space has always been good enough for me when discussing Christina Ricci, so why should it bother me on the tasty Ms. Glau? Answer: it doesn't, not even for a second. Maybe I like girls that look like they stepped out of a casting call for a remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men.

The title, too, did not lie at all. I have not seen Terminator 3, having pretty much given up on the Governator's movie career by the time of its release. And, except for coming about a foot away from running smackdab into Robert Patrick's chest at Disney's California Adventure two Novembers ago while darting off the Grizzly River Rapids completely soaking wet (I bowed my head and said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Patrick" and he said "Hello" and smiled quizzically), I truly did not give a rat's ass about the franchise anymore. I loved the first film, of course, and still do; I barely remember, except for a few exceptional sequences, the second film at all, even though I purchased it on DVD (I still have not watched that disc). In no way, either in concept, title or execution, was my post of last night a lie in any way. Unless Summer Glau is not doubly sweet, and there is no way I can prove or disprove that without going to prison... or gettin' very, very lucky.

Given that I had not posted since this past Monday morning -- just before I spent a full four hours in the Minneapolis Airport, caught an hour and a half flight to Cleveland, spent four hours there sneezing, 'acking and coughing like a more human version of Bill the Cat and wondering why the rock n' roll gift shop there sucked so badly (especially in a city laying claim to the genre for mostly specious reasons), and then slowly drifted back to L.A. on a five-hour flight, still 'acking all the way and causing many of my neighbors to look at me with much concern -- some might look at my Summer Glau post late last night as a total act of desperation. Especially after going right back to work from my trip, and then diving straight into taking care of someone close following a medical procedure; time to myself has been very constricted. It's understandable, if you don't know the other person's schedule, that one might perceive another person, especially a constant blogger, to be "coasting" a bit. And maybe I received an email declaring this opinion; maybe not. Perhaps there then was posited the "brevity" concern, and perhaps it was this very brevity that stuck the notion in the possible mailer's brain that I was, for the sake of filling underused blog space, doing this "coasting" via a picture of a very pretty girl.

Perhaps they even felt I was acting out on a aching need to be publicly perverse in some mostly clothed fashion. The purpose of my blog is purely as a writing exercise, but every once in a while, I am struck by the urge to post a photo and yell at the world, "Look at this!" I get totally misogynistic, objectify a female not even remotely of my acquaintance (she would be soooo lucky if she were...), and paste her image into my blog just so I can show the world where my interests, or where I would like to, lie. For the concerned (if indeed there are truly those that are possessed of such concerns), as of posting Summer Glau's photo late last night, this has now happened a grand total of two times on the Cinema 4 Pylon. The first time was for a post I titled "Purely Prurient Reasons Why I Watched This Stuff As A Teenager #1: Star Trek," and, indeed, I had seen a particular episode of the original series late one night and felt the need to post a picture of the ravishing creature flitting about throughout the story, a girl whose image cause me much in the way of fantasy longing as a wee lad. Now, she doesn't do much for me. I loathe false eyelashes, and this girl looks like she is hanging a pair of giant multiple-furrow ploughs from her lids. Since when did the future look like the mid-'60s? Yes, thanks to that wardrobe deficiency, she doesn't do a thing for middle-aged me... outside of the deeply exposed bare midriff and her incredible body. And the posting of her photo was primarily instigated by me fervent need to have a couple days off from this writing exercise. And because I was being a bit pervy.

So, perhaps I received an email regarding this, perhaps not. Or perhaps it was really my need to find out just how many letters I needed to max out the title box in a Blogger entry. I assure you, I did max it out with the Glau post. I won't tell you, as with the truth regarding the existence of questioning emails in this text, how many letters it takes to fill the title box; if you need to know, you can count them. It is a truth you will have to divine for yourself. And it is the only truth you are going to drag out of this post. This truth is surrounded by many other truths, for not once have I outright lied within the borders of these paragraphs.

But, neither have I admitted to anything at all. Or perhaps I have...

Reasons I Am Watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles Even Though I Never Saw the Last Terminator Film and Haven't Given A Rat's Ass in 10 Years #1

Sweet, sweet Summer Glau...


...even if Luis thinks she has a giant forehead...

Technically, doesn't a "preview" still count as a "view"? (Pt. III - The Conclusion)

[Continued from yesterday... really...]

So, how would it feel to my unrelaxed and reluctant self seeing the upcoming, brand-new, animated Dreamworks comedy Kung-Fu Panda five months before its release?

Animated films are done on a much longer though tighter schedule, and it is rare for extraneous scenes to get beyond the storyboard or animatix stage (unless they are purposefully done that way to cash in on the current vogue for Easter eggs and DVD bonus features). Like most films, and especially films with large doses of special effects, they are tweaked practically up until the moment of release, so it left me wondering just what form this film would be in for this January preview. How complete would this film be? Surely, the voicework -- usually the first completed element following the script -- would be intact, but how advanced would the animation be at what felt to me to be a relatively late date? Would I finally see an advance screening which truly felt in a full manner to be an advance screening?

Happily, especially for this animation nut, the answer turned out to be a resounding YES! While "Vicki" told us that 70 percent of the animation was completed, and detailed the various stages of the artwork that we would be seeing -- storyboards, animatix, roughs and completed scenes -- I never imagined how completely engrossing the experience would be, getting to see a major animated film in such an incomplete form. I wished partway though the show that even more of the film were incomplete, as I was so fascinated to see the process writ large on a big screen. Certain scenes would begin with an already completed establishing shot and a few seconds of action, then would drop into animatix form and then devolve even further into mere storyboards (my favorite part of the process), the voices of the actors all the while carrying the story along. It often felt like I was drifting through a storybook, and my imagination were triggering certain images to come to life more fully than others, though all the while I was still moving unimpeded through the story itself.

And the story itself? No great shakes, but true to the mythic and twisted tradition of most live-action martial arts epics, somewhat tied initially to a historical tradition, but more than willing to jet off into wild flights of fancy, if only to make the action larger and more frenzied than that which preceded it. If it plays off stereotyped caricatures of martial arts forms, it does so lovingly, and even twists many of them to hilarious effect. My chief vocal concern -- that of Jack Black as the lead panda, Po -- was left shattered on the floor of the theatre, so perfectly was he married to the material and to the character. There is no one that is a bigger Black fanatic -- ask any of my friends, who have been tormented with repeated viewings of Tenacious D's late HBO show for numerous years -- but I readily admit to a great reluctance on my part regarding this film, especially after seeing the largely unfunny "silence your cell phones" teaser that is currently running in theatres (why do they have Po pointing to a part of the theatre where NO ONE EVER SITS??!!)

The action grows ever larger throughout the film, until it explodes into a glorious climax that I am sure will be astounding in its completed form. At no point does Po become an all-encompassing master of all martial arts forms, where I feared he would become this unbeatable force in every situation; instead, his actions flow smoothly off the natural movements of his character, that of a fat, lazy panda, and much of his fighting style owes much to the comical styles of Hong Kong stars like Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung -- less forceful violence than accidental defense methods, where many of their moves still end up giving them lumps in a slapstick manner. When he does attain revelation and assume the style of a master, it feels like he has earned it. (Is this a spoiler? What? Are you nine years old? Did you expect him NOT to become a master?) A bonus is the relationship between Po and his dad, voiced to hilarious effect by David Lo-Pan himself, James Hong. (Perfect, perfect casting, this...) It is a delightfully played tandem, and this I will not spoil at all, except to say that it is wonderful how it is resolved so ambiguously.

The other voices? A mixed lot. Ian McShane is good as the rival, jealous snow leopard master, but for the second time this year (The Golden Compass), I thought Malcolm McDowell was doing the honors instead. Jackie Chan, Lucy Lui and Angelina Jolie are largely wasted in roles that should have been much bigger (Jolie might be miscast, as there is an attempt to give her character an emotional complexity that never carries itself off) -- my chief complaint on the opinion sheet was that the supporting roles should have been more defined -- but David Cross as Master Crane is afforded some amusing room to move about the dojo, though this might be because he was able to bring comic timing to his role in a way that the others weren't, thus the flexibility in screen time. Dustin Hoffman, though, is hands-down terrific as Po's reluctant master Shifu, though I am still not sure what the hell type of animal he was. Seth Rogen, though... was he even in there? And why didn't they switch his voice with Michael Clarke Duncan, so that for once Duncan wasn't voicing a big, lumbering beast, but a small, surprisingly adept insect instead? Apparently, you can get typecast even in animation. (Ask Patrick Warburton...)

Ultimately, the feeling left to me is that I will not hesitate to see this in its completed form upon its eventual release on June 6th. I am certain that the great majority of my friends will find enjoyment in it -- never necessarily a sign that I also did, but it should ring true this once -- and even seeing it in so rough a form, I was left with a sense of wanting even more. The final battle sequences were quite engaging, and the main thing that I feared outside of Black meeting up with the material -- a surge of anachronistic references and humor -- did not come to the fore here. Such use is prevalent and increasingly annoying in the Shrek series from the same producers, and it was pleasant that it was tamped down to a large degree here. This fear also rose in me regarding the music, as I was worried that this film would simply be Jack Black grunting and groaning over the annoyingly overused strains of Kung Fu Fighting (need proof? check that annoying teaser again...) or other modern music; thankfully, there was only a score to be heard, though it may not have been the actual score (Jen thought it sounded awfully close to the music from Mulan).

I got to see an advance that was truly an advance. I was able to see an upcoming animated film in a very rough, unfinished form. And I came out of the advance experience actually enjoying a film, and wanting much more from my viewing, even as I left the theatre with a smile on my face. I had been proven wrong in more ways than one, and I loved the feeling, though that may have been due to the total experience.

As long as they don't sneak Kung Fu Fighting back in, I should be happy this summer.

Technically, doesn't a "preview" still count as a "view"? (Pt. II)

[Continued from last Thursday, Jan. 31st, waaaay past the time I said it would...]

And that is how Jen and I found ourselves sitting at a five-months-in-advance screening of the upcoming, brand-new, animated Dreamworks comedy... Kung Fu Panda.

It is exceedingly hard to enjoy oneself at an advance preview. Let me qualify that as a more personal concern: it is exceedingly hard to me to enjoy myself at an advance preview. For the bulk of the people sitting about me, they carried on like it was just any other movie on any other afternoon, chatting, joking, kicking seats, purchasing far more popcorn than they can possibly eat and far more soda than is good for them at far too hefty a price, both monetarily and physically... the usual nonsense. What mattered most was the affordability of the situation (i.e. FREE -- which I must admit appeals to me greatly as well, especially at this economically tight moment) and the exceedingly selfish and wonderful sense that you were part of an exclusive group that was allowed to see something others didn't. It's hard-wired into us to wish to gloat over that which one has done at the expense or distraction of others. It's also, on the outside of the myriad reasons, why class distinctions will never go away.

Up to this point, Jen and I had been invited to three other previews, only two of which we were able to attend. The first turned out to be a screening for Lucky You, the Curtis Hanson film about Las Vegas poker denizens fatally miscast with Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore. Actually, any movie with those two, separate or together, I would be apt to describe as "fatally miscast". Not a fan of either. Out of deference to the system, and not wishing to rip apart a film well before its eventual release (which turned out to be far, far away from the point at which we viewed, by over a year), I chose not to write about it, at least by name. It should be obvious that I did not enjoy the film, though it did have some good moments in it, though most of it was undermined by Barrymore being cast as a singer (why does this happen?) and Bana being cast as someone who is supposed to convey some slight sense of humor. Also, Robert Downey, Jr. shows up in one scene, and then his character commits suicide, but offscreen. Such a waste. In a noble attempt at adult behavior, I proclaimed I would withhold judgment until I saw the completed product... but I really have no impulse to rent the damn thing now or ever.

The second screening, just a couple of months later, was Sarah Michelle Gellar's The Return, an attempt to continue her success with The Grudge, and the sort of modern horror film to which I am completely inurred, as it pushes every overused button for cliches that I have been sick to death of since the early '90s. Gellar is decent though, and attractive as usual (especially for this Buffy fanatic), but its overall effect was one of "why are we wandering through this washed-out movie terrain once more?" Oh, and "Thanks for telegraphing every scare in the film!" I was chiefly confused by the form of the screening copy itself. Unlike Lucky You, which clearly had about half an hour of excess material wedged into its screening, The Return felt complete. They warn you at the beginning of these previews that often the editing isn't done, the proper music may not have been synced in yet, and that some scenes might feel rough or incomplete. This was true to a large extent with Lucky You, where they could have excised Bana and Barrymore altogether, and they would have been left with a decent twenty-minute short subject with all of the cameos by famous poker bigwigs like Doyle Brunson. Of course, then it would have felt like just another episode of the World Poker Tour television show.

The Return was a different matter. Where Lucky You was cut from about 2:20 (without credits) in time down to 2:04 (with credits), thereby seeming to actually use the screening process to tighten and edit the film, the Gellar creep-fest barely seems shorter in its released form than it did in the theatre. I can't really attest to any changes that may have been made, as I really don't feel a compulsion to check it out again, but its current 85-minute running length (with credits) is roughly approximate to the relatively short amount of time we sat in the theatre watching it. Also, Lucky You felt rough in spots, as they proclaimed it might, but The Return already felt as if it were any finished crappy horror film that I might have somehow talked Jen into attending simply because there was nothing else to see at the time, and I had a serious Buffy jones going. If there were any unfinished scenes, they were largely unnoticeable due to the (on purpose) herky-jerky dreamlike quality of the filmmaking. In fact, if they were unfinished in some manner, it probably actually served to enhance the effect.

As for the enjoyment factor, I just can't settle in at a preview. I am too caught up in seeing the film in its (supposed) pre-release form, which I must admit is a very cool thing to see, but I can't simply sit back and relax like I would for a normal film. Because I am going to be tested on what I see, I feel a need to remain constantly focused on the screening. I feel a compulsion to make sure that I have not been invited by mistake, to really make a difference to the film, and to help out the filmmakers in fixing it for its eventual audience (myself included). I take these responsibilities personally, and I take them seriously, even if no one else in the audience really does. I'm sure there are other movie fanatics in each crowd that feel the same way that I do about these responsibilities, but judging from the attitudes of most of the people that have surrounded us at these things, it is simply just another movie to them, albeit a free one in which they are asked of their opinion. Therefore, I do not relax (Jen says I never do anyway), and I keep my critical faculties fully charged in the name of service to my theatrical benefactors for that screening.

So, how would it feel to my unrelaxed and reluctant self seeing the upcoming, brand-new, animated Dreamworks comedy Kung-Fu Panda five months before its release?

[No procastinating this time. To be concluded sometime in the future, though possibly tomorrow... :b]

Isn't this the way?

Isn't this the way?

You get sick, you don't go to the doctor, you start to feel better after a few days, then you get hit with a recurring cough. After a week of this, you get tired of coughing, and you finally go to a doctor.

And they tell you that they want you to tough it out.

No medicine. No anti-biotics. You have what the doc terms a "post-bronchitic cough" (she actually used the qualifier, "Well, I'm going to call it a--" when imparting this to me). And then you get shuffled out the door to face the 15-degree Wisconsin winter alone. Well, not alone. You've got that cough at your side. Or in your lungs.

So, I am coughing, coughing, coughing. My stepmother is up in arms and worried about me, my grandmother is worried about me, and I now have to greet every long-distant relation and neighbor with a hand over my mouth trying to block the cacophonous rasp that shoots out anytime I even think of breathing. Not to mention that I lose my voice every three sentences. My uncle Brian probably thinks I have lost my usual sense of humor, so quiet was I at our extended lunch on Thursday.

It is the quietest I have ever been, either in Wisconsin or anywhere.

Maybe everyone secretly likes it. Hell, I won't be surprised if they openly like it.

On Wisconsin! (...and a bit off-kilter...)

Yes, thank you. I know... I know, I haven't finished the promised conclusion regarding my test screening visit to Kung Fu Panda. I said on Thursday last week, "To be continued tomorrow..."

Tomorrow was Friday, and I got some sort of monkey pox-like thing in my system. When I got home from work, I was coughing every 3.2 milliseconds and unable to even see straight. This in itself would not have been enough to keep me from writing into the weekend, perhaps even concluding the piece on Saturday.

And then our cable cut out on us. And with it, the internet.

We had paid our bill. The next installment wasn't even due for a couple of weeks, but I made doubly sure and paid that as well. Nothing. No signal in any of the three rooms where Time Warner's service held entertainment control within our abode. A call to technical support found a very helpful rep trying to ping and ping and re-ping our modem, DVR and cable box to no avail, though I did have a very pleasant discussion with her about how much better baseball and basketball are than football. (The usual "too bad this is happening around the time of the Super Bowl" statement from her was what brought this topic to the fore. I did not watch the Stupid Bowl -- "stupid" only because the Packers blew their shot -- even on regular television.) No matter what the topic, the end result was that I had no cable signal whatsoever. A service rep would come out on Tuesday afternoon (at the earliest) to set things aright.

So, no internet, and thus, no posting. I received a message on the post asking what I thought of the movie, but not being one to blog from work, I was unable to respond. Finally, Tuesday rolled around, and the internet/cable dilemma was solved. Our connection was marked as another apartment in the box, and our apartment number was nowhere to be found; it seems, therefore, someone else was to be disconnected and the deed was done to us instead. Jen's theory was that since the apartment number which did have our connection is that of the loser stoner people downstairs (we found one of their party's wallets out on the sidewalk the other day, and they were afraid to open their door when we brought it to them; they thanked us later), she thinks that they panicked come Super Bowl time, having spent all of their green on some other form of green, and broke into the box, switching the connections, so that someone else got cut off. Hard to confirm, especially now that there is a new padlock on the box, but intriguing.

But we are now back to normal, except that, five days later, I am still friggin' sick. In fact, my throat is worse than ever, and I have the vague sense that I will be seeking out a doctor's advice once I get to Wisconsin tomorrow. Oh, yes... I forgot to mention, I now have to go to a family reunion/birthday party for my dear grandmother (her 90th), and I am going to hacking and coughing every step of the 12 degrees above zero way. My hope is that the Wisconsin cold will take one peek at my bred-in-Cali virus and smack it down like a bad little puppy. My fear is that I will end up with what my boss recently caught: pneumonia.

So, no conclusion to the Panda thing until I get back, or at least until I find a computer I can bash it out on in Cheezehaid Country. I head out for LAX in about half an hour, and there is just no time to do it justice for now.

[Hack, cough, wheeze, kersplat!] I wish this on no one... except those cable-stealing stoner fiends...