Here Come the Planes

Today is Laurie Anderson's birthday. Her "O Superman" remains an old favorite that's worth repeating in this context.

Links roundup: Iron Man 2, Toy Story, and Vanilla Ice

Having undergone the mirthless, witless, and generally worthless Iron Man 2 recently, I attempted to write short pieces on it a few times. But I found myself overwhelmed by the staggering pointlessness of the film, and moreover somewhat disinclined to contribute to the inevitable 'debate' on its values (or conspicuous lack thereof). Suffice to say therefore that IM2 is typical of the very worst kind of contradictory, redundant Hollywood franchise, with Mickey Rourke's effortless charisma the only thing even approximating a redeeming feature.

This post however is less about my obviously pointless criticism of the summer's biggest superhero film, and more about a roundup of recent links to clever images and mash-up clips. The niftiest superhero-related post I came across in a while is Chris Sims' Periodic Table of Superhero Elements, which cleverly sums up the generic powers and origin stories into an elegant overview of elements. (Just for the record: Superman breaks down as OAFSISpVxVhSn...)



In the ongoing series of witty mash-up videos, Iron Man has been by far the most-repeated figure, as a quick look at the most recent posts on this blog will attest. But although they all play up the hilariously inappropriate homoerotic subtext the films work so hard to avoid, none managed to be quite as ridiculous (and weirdly fitting) as the latest one, which pits Tony Stark against Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and that manages to throw in Jim Carrey, James Brown, Apollo Creed, Vanilla Ice, and -so help me- the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for good measure.



Meanwhile, the upcoming reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise gave occasion to a fast-paced short that puts Spidey on the operating table, with his surgeon calling for a 'gritty reboot.' To illustrate the success rate of the proposed procedure, an image on the wall briefly flashes by with stills from Batman Begins, Hulk, Casino Royale and Star Trek.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Finally, the Joker may no longer be the ubiquitous video mash-up figure he was two years ago, but that didn't keep one person from getting creative with the trailer for The Dark Knight. In this mash-up, images from the two first Toy Story movies are edited together with the audio from that intensely familiar to amazing effect.

The Iron Man Mash-Up Meme

We're now just days away from the much-hyped international premiere of Iron Man 2, the sequel that appears to offer more of the same, but -as per the logic of franchises- bigger, louder, and with more colorful celebrity bad guys. And as 'fanticipation' reaches fever pitch, the video mash-up meme that incorporates Iron Man's CG exoskeleton (along with his signature AC/DC riff) into an iconic movie scene continues to proliferate. Following the well-done appropriation of Hugh Grant getting his ass kicked in Bridget Jones's Diary, the man in red has now also appeared in similarly skillful mash-ups of wonderfully inappropriate scenes from Titanic and Dirty Dancing. What's next, you ask? Hopefully, at some point, Iron Man vs. Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire...

Ryan Reynolds: professional superhero

While Green Lantern fans hold their breath in anticipation of Ryan Reynolds' much-hyped turn in next year's major superhero blockbuster, the double-R heart-throb has meanwhile appeared as another goofy superhero character: Kieran and Michele Mulroney's Paper Man has been making the rounds at film festivals for a while, without apparently making much of an impact. It stars Jeff Daniels as a troubled, friendless writer whose loneliness is compounded by the fact that he has an imaginary superhero friend, played by Reynolds as a goofy send-up of Superman. The whole thing looks like it suffers from the usual list of indie clichés, but Jeff Daniels may be game enough to pull it off, and despite the obviousness of the ploy, Reynolds looks like fun.

Deconstructing the Star Wars Prequels

Red Letter Media's epic seven-part video essay on Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace has been making the internet rounds for quite a while now, and seemed like a bizarro one-off tour de force that somehow combined genuine film criticism with a deconstruction of the kind of sociopathic nerd culture associated with this kind of obsessive fandom. But just as George Lucas succeeded in confounding fans' lowered expectations with Attack of the Clones by writing and directing a film that managed to be somehow worse than the first prequel, the second epic YouTube take-down is longer, more coherent, and at least as funny as the its predecessor.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Master of the Snappy One-Liner

For funny stuff on April 1, I say you can't go wrong with this great collection of patented one-liners and come-backs from the Austrian Oak. All the classics are there, from the orgasmic satisfaction of The Pump in Pumping Iron to the hysterical hijinks from Jingle All the Way, peppered throughout with his infamous nonstop punning as Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin.

Best of the 1990s

The only remaining film decade from recent memory is a tricky one, because it's the ten-year period in which I 'came of age' as a film student, and where my film-watching habit seriously got out of hand. My relationship with the films of that decade is therefore perhaps the most mercurial, as I began to develop a perspective on film (and film criticism) that I soon started to call my own, and my response to new films became all the more opinionated. With cinema established as more than a somewhat obsessive hobby, I approached it with something resembling religious zeal, often either enraptured by some films on the basis of expectations inflated to the point of hysteria, and dismissive of others because I thought I knew it all and developed a sense of arrogance toward the unfamiliar.

My number one film for the decade right now is a film I liked from the start, but that kept growing on me as I returned to it again and again. Linklater's film has become a cult object for many others, perhaps due in part to the fact that it captures a vaguely optimistic sense of aimlessness that sets out to capture the 1970s (which it does better than any other 'period' film about that decade), but which seems equally appropriate to the disembodied fin-de-siècle of the Clinton years.



1. Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
2. Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)
3. The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999)
4. Miller's Crossing (Coen Brothers, 1990)
5. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
6. Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)
7. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
8. The Big Lebowski (Coen Brothers, 1998)
9. Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Werner Herzog, 1997)
10. Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992)
11. Fargo (Coen Brothers, 1996)
12. Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994)
13. Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993)
14. Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996)
15. Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
16. Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, 1999)
17. Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995)
18. The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
19. Barton Fink (Coen Brothers, 1991)
20. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992)
21. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
22. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)
23. Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)
24. The Player (Robert Altman, 1992)
25. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
26. Riget I (Lars von Trier, 1994)
27. Quiz Show (Robert Redford, 1994)
28. Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
29. 12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995)
30. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1996)
31. Sling Blade (Billy Bob Thornton, 1996)
32. Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
33. Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)
34. The Insider (Michael Mann, 1999)
35. Howards End (James Ivory, 1992)
36. The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993)
37. L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)
38. The Iron Giant (Brad Bird, 1999)
39. L.A. Story (Mick Jackson, 1991)
40. Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)
41. Donnie Brasco (Mike Newell, 1997)
42. Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992)
43. Nixon (Oliver Stone, 1995)
44. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998)
45. Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
46. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
47. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
48. Election (Alexander Payne, 1999)
49. Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
50. True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993)

Saturday Morning Watchmen

Teaching Watchmen alongside Jamesonian theory again this week prompts me to revisit this appropriately bizarre take on Alan Moore's classic text.

1% Inspiration, 99% Cliché

A pretty seamless montage of 'inspirational' moments from Hollywood history.

"Eponymous: The Movie"

A surprisingly amusing montage of characters saying the name of the movie they're in.

Visual Effects in Film History

The Dialectics of Do the Right Thing

Another brilliant video essay courtesy of Matt Zoller Seitz, this one on the dialectical nature of Spike Lee's classic Do the Right Thing, which is indeed about 'more than race.'

"There's not many happy superheroes, are there?"

Finally, an amusing superhero-related YouTube clip -this one from The Ricky Gervais Show- spurs me back to long-delayed blogging. My habit of posting every link of interest that I come across to Facebook and/or Twitter is meanwhile making me re-think my blogging habits, as it's becoming increasingly frustrating to retrieve those links a few months down the line. Perhaps it's time to start relaxing my 'superhero material only' policy for this blog and start using it as a public archive for more general stuff of interest.

Tarantino and Food

Revisiting a whole bunch of Tarantino films in the last few weeks in tandem with the home video release of Inglourious Basterds, I was struck once again by the crucial role food has played in his movies throughout his career. The diverse ways in which he has been able to incorporate rituals of eating, ordering and preparing food got me thinking about putting together a selection of clips from his body of work that mirror each other in interesting ways. So I spent an afternoon going through his movies, hunting down moments that seemed to fit together, sometimes in very obvious ways, and sometimes (hopefully) in less obvious ones. Anyway, here's the result.

Best of the 1970s

Now that those list-making juices are flowing, why not move ahead (or rather: backward) and release my rankings for another movie decade. I guess we can describe this as a perverse form of procrastination, as the endless but somehow more manageable task of putting together Top 10 lists for earlier decades should ultimately serve as some kind of preparation for the inevitable '00s list. Simultaneously, it's an easy way out, as I labored over lists like these as part of a larger project I participated in at an online film forum I frequent.

While looking over this list for publication here, I started having second thoughts on my unconventional choice for number one, and was momentarily tempted to move the more widely established classic The Godfather Part II up to the top spot. But then I revisited the "logic scene" from Kaspar Hauser, and immediately concluded that director Werner Herzog's genius in casting the extraordinary Bruno S. as the film's lead and the heartbreaking tenderness with which his character is presented simply transcends the usual criteria for film criticism, and deserves all the recognition it can get.



1. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974)
2. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
3. Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)
4. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
5. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
6. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
7. Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
8. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
9. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
10. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
11. Le Fantome de la Liberté (Luis Buñuel, 1974)
12. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
13. The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
14. Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
15. Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972)
16. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
17. Gimme Shelter (David Maysles, 1970)
18. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
19. All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
20. Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
21. The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
22. Cet Obscur Objet du Désir (Luis Buñuel, 1977)
23. Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
24. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
25. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
26. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970)
27. Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974)
28. The Day of the Locust (John Schlesinger, 1974)
29. The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974)
30. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
31. Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974)
32. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
33. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
34. The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
35. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
36. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
37. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
38. The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978)
39. Images (Robert Altman, 1972)
40. Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1979)
41. Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
42. Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1976)
43. Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)
44. Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
45. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
46. Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977)
47. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
48. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
49. The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976)
50. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)

Lists, lists, lists...

While continuing to resist the ubiquitous urge to compile my own Best Films of the '00s List, I find myself somehow both drawn to and repelled by other people's lists as they are published all over the place, with more of them showing up literally every day. I remember major Best of the Decade lists being published in 1990 and 2000, and the feeling they gave me that the results were somehow official: Raging Bull was the best film of the 1980s, and Pulp Fiction was the best film of the 1990s.

But now, with the radical proliferation of media, news outlets, and opinions in general, the fundamentally historiographical exercise of list-making seems to have become little more than a social act that emphasizes its own discursive character: the multitude of lists seem to be responding to each other in acts of continuous one-upmanship. As ever, the exercise is more telling about our present than it is about the past decade, our lists of favorite movies revealing more about who we are as we are writing them down than about those movies we're ranking.

So while I continue to ponder my own choices from the past ten years, here are my own choices from the small screen, which in many ways eclipsed the cinema as a complex, artistically articulate and versatile medium in the '00s.



1. The Wire (best season: IV)
2. Curb Your Enthusiasm (best season: VII)
3. The Sopranos (best season: VI)
4. Freaks and Geeks
5. Deadwood (best season: III)
6. The Office (US) (best season: II)
7. Breaking Bad (best season: II)
8. Extras (best season: II)
9. The Shield (best season: V)
10. Mad Men (best season: I)

More Dark Knight parody: "Key of Awesome"

Somebody up there clearly wants me to keep updating my blog: now that I recently indicated that my update-finger starts a-twitchin' as soon as I come across a fresh Dark Knight analysis and/or parody, they seem to be popping up all over the place. This one is a spot-on music video parody that combines some astutely observed critical points on the film with the usual kind of silly parody (discovered via Jim Emerson).

Best of the 1980s

With all the 'best-of-the-'00s' lists going around, I find myself woefully ill-equipped to compare recent favorites like Synecdoche, New York or Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans to what are to my mind well-established masterpieces such as Mulholland Dr. or Adaptation. Even the question which Tarantino film I would consider his best of the past decade seems to me all but unanswerable.

But since it's fun to waste one's time on the relative merits of individual films within fairly arbitrary limitations, I did put together a Top 50 for a decade that gets a bad rap, but that actually yielded a large number of fantastic films. So here's my list for the decade that was the 80s, headed up by what I consider not only the sharpest, most brilliantly observed film of the decade, but also the one that seems to me the most enduringly relevant to us today.



1. The King of Comedy (Scorsese, 1983)
2. Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)
3. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
4. Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)
5. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981)
6. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
7. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982)
8. My Dinner with André (Malle, 1981)
9. The Elephant Man (Lynch, 1980)
10. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (Reiner, 1984)
12. RoboCop (Verhoeven, 1987)
13. Fitzcarraldo (Herzog, 1982)
14. Fanny & Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
15. The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
16. Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984)
17. The Verdict (Lumet, 1982)
18. The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)
19. Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
20. Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
21. Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)
22. Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen, 1986)
23. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg, 1984)
24. Stranger Than Paradise (Jarmusch, 1984)
25. The Terminator (Cameron, 1984)
26. Do The Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
27. Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense (Demme, 1984)
28. Matewan (Sayles, 1987)
29. Day of the Dead (Romero, 1985)
30. After Hours (Scorsese, 1985)
31. Jean de Florette (Berri, 1987)
32. Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
33. Pee-wee's Big Adventure (Burton, 1985)
34. The Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen, 1985)
35. Commando (Lester, 1985)
36. Runaway Train (Konchalovsky, 1986)
37. Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
38. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Hughes, 1986)
39. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
40. Little Shop of Horrors (Oz, 1986)
41. Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter, 1986)
42. Tin Men (Levinson, 1987)
43. Cobra Verde (Herzog, 1987)
44. Repo Man (Cox, 1984)
45. Broadcast News (Brooks, 1987)
46. Evil Dead II (Raimi, 1987)
47. Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, 1987)
48. Midnight Run (Brest, 1988)
49. When Harry Met Sally... (Reiner, 1989)
50. Road House (Herrington, 1989)

Agents of Chaos

Once again, a Dark Knight-related YouTube clip pushes me towards an eternally-overdue blog update. This time it's a new video essay by Film Freak Central reviewer Jefferson Robins, whose Agents of Chaos brings an entirely new perspective to the film characters that came closest to capturing a particular contemporary Zeitgeist.

You're The Voice

A fabulous peek-a-boo moment last week on NBC's Community, a new comedy that is continuing to pick up steam as it moves through its first season. In the Halloween episode, Abed comes dressed as Batman, entering an early scene with a flawless imitation of Christian Bale's increasingly irritating Batman whisper/growl. But what brings the episode home at several levels is his climactic reappearance at the end of the episode, which currently stands as the finest parody/homage/reappropriation of Nolan's Batman universe.