Trust Me, This is Relevant

The Prom King finds his purposeOver at the Chicago Sun-Times’ Scanners blog, Jim Emerson asks the key question of the “Watchmen” movie: Is it a good idea to re-read the graphic novel before seeing Zack Snyder’s adaptation?

My standard operating procedure over many years as a movie critic has been to keep the movie experience as separate from the source material as possible — at least on first viewing. Otherwise it can be hard to tell what the movie is doing and what you’re bringing to it from earlier impressions.

If I’ve already encountered a pre-existing version of the “property,” then so be it. I can’t go back and un-experience it. Either way, I can’t judge the adaptation But I usually like to see the movie fresh, and do any research I feel compelled to do afterwards. Then, perhaps, I’ll re-visit the movie, Knowing What I Know Now.

That’s essentially the same way I approach adaptations. If I hear a specific book is being made into a movie, I won’t read that book, no matter how much I may want to. There are no restrictions on catching up to a given book after I see the movie, of course — sometimes it’s essential to writing the review — but for the most part, I want to see how the movie works, or doesn’t work, as a movie.

Now, in this case, Emerson is already familiar with “Watchmen” — though he says he read it so long ago that he “(doesn’t) even remember there was a blue naked guy in it” — so this would be a re-encountering of the text, rather than a new reading. But it’s a good question to pose to those of us who know the book backwards and forwards.

I haven’t read it in several years, myself, but I know it pretty damn well — and I’m still debating whether that was a plus or a minus for the experience of seeing the movie. (For instance: Is it a valid complaint to point out that the movie changes one word in my favorite line of dialogue, when the purpose of the line remains intact?)

Read Emerson’s piece, and think on it. Then tell me what you’d do …

Again with the Oscar Talk

It burns! It burns!The ceremony approaches, and everyone wants me to make predictions: I was on CTV Newsnet Friday morning, and went straight from the studio to the NOW offices to record a podcast with Susan and Glenn, and I’ll be live-blogging the action somewhere at NOW Daily tonight.

Will “Slumdog Millionaire” take the big prize? Will “The Reader” snatch it away at the last minute? Are any of the other three films — “Frost/Nixon”, “Milk” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — still in contention?

Well, I don’t know. But it’ll be fun to find out, right?

The Maple Leaf Forever

Sometimes, one solitude is all you needIt’s all Oscar, all the time this weekend — I’ll be liveblogging Sunday night’s ceremony, along with seemingly everyone else in the media — but over at Sympatico/MSN, we’ve carved out a little space to do something a little different.

With “The Necessities of Life” opening on Toronto screens this weekend (scheduled to capitalize on an Oscar nomination that never happened), we figured we could offer a little love to Canadian movies. So here’s a gallery of eight distinctly Canadian films, for your consideration and your love … and no, “Goin’ Down the Road” did not make the cut. We need to get past that, as a society.

You know I’m right, eh?

You’ll Have to Excuse Me, I’m Not At My Best

'Funk'? 'Fie'? Um ... 'phobia'?This is how fatigued I was when I wrote yesterday’s post about talking to Steven Soderbergh: I didn’t realize I’d written virtually the same exact post a few days earlier, in the service of saluting “The Limey”. Sorry for the redundancy; I hope there was enough new material (like, um, the actual interview) to justify your reading it again.

In other news, it’s Friday and there are movies opening. Shall we?

Cadillac Records“: Darnell Martin compresses perhaps the most contentious period  in the history of American popular music into a Chess Records greatest-hits album, and when Jeffrey Wright’s Muddy Waters and Mos Def’s Chuck Berry are on the screen, it totally swings. (Mixed metaphor, I know. But appropriate to the characters, I think.) The trouble is, when they’re not on-screen, this is one awfully simplistic movie.

Che“: I won’t lie to you: It’s a massive undertaking, and it doesn’t fully work. But it doesn’t not work, either, and it’s a fascinating film to unpack after you’ve had time to digest the experience. Does this mean you should run out and sit through the four-and-a-half-hour roadshow version as soon as possible? Well, no. Unless you want to. In that case, maybe it’s worth it. (Frustrating, isn’t it?)

“Fired Up”: A comedy about guys who join a cheerleader camp to meet hot girls. How could this plan possibly go wrong? And is it bad that I kind of like the trailer, and am curious to see it just because it reunites Eric Christian Olsen and Philip Baker Hall from the short-lived but fondly remembered Fox sitcom “The Loop”? Yeah, probably. Stuart takes it down.

“The Necessities of Life”: Set in 1954, Benoit Pilon’s quiet, powerful drama follows the cultural journey of a tubercular Inuit man (“Atanarjuat” star Natar Ungalaaq) brought to a Quebec City hospital for a cure he can’t even begin to understand. It’s really quite something. Try not to let anyone spoil it for you.

Stone of Destiny“: Yeah, this just sucked. I want to dissect it at length, but it doesn’t merit the effort; sure, the determined Scottish nationalist students who plotted to steal a big rock from Westminster Abbey pulled off something impressive, but the movie that supposedly pays tribute to their venture is predictable, sloppy and utterly inert. So that’s a problem.

Oh, and the World’s Best Commercials program returns to the Bloor Cinema today to delight anyone yearning for several dozen quick hits of high-energy storytelling (and, yes, salesmanship) for an Oscar-weekend distraction. Admit it: A great big movie-theater screen beats click-and-stutter YouTube viewings any day of the week.

Okay, so sometimes the online presentation is a little better than YouTube. But still. Big screen! Happy audience! Go on, you know you want to.

The Revolutionary Artist

I'm saying the motorcycle is just a metaphor at this pointMy latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column went up yesterday, but I was away from the interwebs for most of the day — I know, I’m still shaking a bit — so I wasn’t able to post the link. But if you’re at all curious about the failings of “Body of Lies” and “Flash of Genius”, click away.

Also online now, and possibly of interest, is my interview with Steven Soderbergh, whose epic “Che” finally opens in Toronto tomorrow. I’ve interviewed Soderbergh a few times now, and he’s one of my favorite directors to talk to — he’s generous with his time and enthusiastic about his interests, and he’s as much of a gearhead as I am. Well, more so, really, since he actually gets to muck with the stuff I only passively consume.

Anyway, the text version is barely a sliver of the content of our 45-minute conversation — which touched on everything from the high-def format war to the “trojan horse” qualities of his “Ocean’s” trilogy to watching “Chinatown” on HDNet — so I advise you to play the audio clips at the bottom of the page for extra goodness.

And no, Universal has no immediate plans to release catch-up BD editions of “Out of Sight”, “Erin Brockovich” or “Traffic”, so cherish your HD DVDs if you’ve got ’em.

And Speaking of Oscar Bait

Remember back in the days? When we did the things?“The Reader” wasn’t last year’s only expensive, exacting and utterly hollow awards-season title; Sam Mendes’ “Reservation Road” is equally guilty of that weird combination of prestigiously buffed shell and needy, grabby interior.

It’s got top-flight actors — Kate, Leo and Kathy, together again! It’s based on a key American novel of the 1950s! No expense was spared in re-creating the prefab suburbia in which their characters are inescapably trapped! It’s no more incisive or moving than a weak episode of “Mad Men”, but — damn, check out the period detail on the appliances!

Over at Slate (which is putting out some of this year’s best Oscar coverage, if anyone’s keeping score), Willing Davidson explores the disconnect between great novels and their unworthy big-screen adaptations. Bottom line: Books can be about emotions; movies are usually about plot.

Truer words, baby. Truer words.

The Obligations of History

Mein Oskar KlipWith the Oscars just a few days away, all manner of odd things are happening in the magical world of Hollywood buzz.

Just this weekend, Kate and I witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Larry King interviewing Danny Boyle, Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto on his show; the increasingly disconnected King clearly had no idea who any of these people were, and spent most of the interview making goo-goo eyes at Pinto. Seriously, he’s old enough to be her grandfather … well, her great-grandfather … how old is Larry King, anyway?

What’s not happening, much to my barely disguised joy, is a lot of love for “The Reader”. And with good reason: It’s crap. But don’t just take my word for it; take a hop over to Slate, where Ron Rosenbaum takes the film apart conceit by repugnant conceit, putting it firmly in its place alongside the manipulative Holocaust tripe men call “Life is Beautiful”.

(I do think he misreads “Downfall”, though; that film doesn’t present ordinary Germans as innocents, because there are no ordinary Germans in that film; there are outsiders to Hitler’s bunker, certainly, but they’re still Nazis. Traudl Junge may have her illusions shattered about the Thousand Year Reich, but she’s still a true believer.)

Yeah, Kate Winslet’s still the front-runner for the Best Actress prize. But that’s an issue of attrition; everybody likes her, it’s her year, yadda yadda yadda. Me, I’m hoping Streep pulls ahead at the last minute. Everybody likes her, too, you know.

A Quiet Monday Morning

It's more impressive in 1080i, obviouslyPresident’s Day in the U.S., Family Day in Ontario … wow, ain’t nothing going on today. Oh, but “The Simpsons” went high-def last night, and it was pretty splendiferous.

The Onion AV Club has the revamped 16:9 credit sequence available for viewing in this post, if you missed it. Also lots of commenters complaining about the show sucking for the last five to ten years, but that’ll happen any time someone mentions “The Simpsons” on the internet.

(Yeah, I know. Go to it.)

Jason Lives

Amber notices something strange about the towel boyJust as there will always be stupid, horny teenagers, there will always be people who flock to the megaplex to watch those stupid, horny teenagers be brutally murdered: The “Friday the 13th” remake owned the weekend with a gross of $42.2 million, the best-ever opening for a horror film. Expect to see a lot of hockey masks this Halloween.

Surprisingly, the Clive Owen-Naomi Watts thriller “The International” opened at a distant seventh — below “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, even — with just $10 million. I guess that’s what happens when your evil bank doesn’t turn out to be run by an evil computer.

When will they learn? You can never have enough evil computers behind things. It’s the only way to explain Facebook … obviously, social data-mining is how Skynet keeps finding John Connor. Seriously, see if it doesn’t turn up as a plot point in “Terminator: Salvation”.

My other other gig.