The FilmNerds Blog

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

I begin my odyssey into 1983 with what must have been a surprise box office hit at the time, Lewis Gilbert’s big screen adaptation of Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita. Despite being heavy on dialogue and featuring just one big name star (Michael Caine), this little character drama managed a very respectable $14.6 million at the box office in September of ’83 and landed three Oscar nominations (Caine for Best Actor, Julie Walters for Best Actress and Russell for Screenplay).

Before I get into the specifics of the film, I want to talk about a few things that jumped out at me early on that I expect will be regular features of my 1983 movie-watching experience. First, there’s the score, which is performed entirely on the synthesizer. I imagine that the emergence of the synthesizer and the ease with which a film could be scored using the machine made it an extremely popular option for filmmakers in 1983, but when we look at the history of film music, nothing sounds as dated and non-timeless today as the synthesizer scores of the ’80s.

Second, and some of you cinephiles may be able to shed some light on this, but there is certainly a definable quality to the look and quality of film itself from this era. Even films from previous decades seem to look more lush today. I’m not sure if it was new lighting techniques or perhaps the material used to make 35mm film at the time, but early ’80s films often seem to have a bit of a dirty tinge to them.

While Educating Rita suffers from all of these early ’80s trademarks, the content of the film holds up rather well in 2009. The premise of the film is anything but original, yet another spin on the classic myth Pygmalion. But unlike adaptations like My Fair Lady and Pretty Woman, playwright Willy Russell took this story to an interesting new territory by using it to explore the British class system as well as making the two main characters far more intriguing and complexly motivated.

The film begins with Rita, played by a very young Julie Walters who shows every bit of the working class British sass she would later show in Billy Elliot and the Harry Potter films, entering the office of Dr. Frank Bryant, player by Michael Caine. Rita is a straight-talking, uneducated young married woman looking to take college night classes from Dr. Bryant because she’s tired of having her life options limited to having babies or going down to the pub.

It’s starting to look predictable already – Dr. Bryant is going to try to teach Rita to be a civilized woman but along the way it will be Rita that teaches Dr. Bryant, right? Thankfully, the film doesn’t go that route and Dr. Bryant begins to realize that making Rita into the intellectual she desperately wants to be may actually kill a beautiful and pure intellect. Rita’s completely fresh approach to the material they are studying occasionally leads her to make humorously brilliant observations that could never be made by the finely tuned brains of Dr. Bryant’s other students.

Bryant’s internal conflict brings up a darker portion of his past, the fact that he has become an alcoholic after failing as a poet. There are a number of clever scenes involving Bryant’s girlfriend and the colleague she is cheating on him with but the movie is almost always at a standstill when Bryant and Rita aren’t in the same room.

Meanwhile, we also follow Rita’s struggle to decide whether or not she’ll truly be happier once she’s educated or whether it’s simply “a different song to sing”, as Bryant puts it.

The film never goes the places you expect it to go and gives us truly heart-wrenching emotional moments with both main characters as they desperately try to escape their painful paths through each other. It’s a typically powerful and vulnerable performance from Caine and a surprisingly interesting performance from Walters.

This is definitely a nice gem I wouldn’t have seen or probably even heard of without going through with this project. Every year at the movies there are hidden gems that bring us rich and interesting characters and performances and those are sadly the most likely films to be forgotten as time passes. I highly recommend checking this one out on Netflix if you’re a fan of British character dramas or of Michael Caine, who delivers some of the best work of his career here.

• The Nocturnal Third Production Journal

Ah, editing. The world is at my fingertips, and the world is cutting rather nicely. All that sweat, stress, and concentration already feels like a distant memory. Every shot’s got a little story that runs through my head when I rediscover it. No real news here, other than that I’m about halfway done with the first very rough cut. The story seems to clip along pretty nicely, and all our intentions seem to showing up well. I had an early scare, when I looked at everything laid out before me, without a solid place to start. I was afraid that the whole thing wasn’t going to work, or that it was all a collection of bad decisions made in a stupor, but after a chat with Lee (who could relate) and laying out a game plan, everything started to come together. Just think, only another few shoot days, some sound editing, scoring, animation, more editing, and about a year, and we’ll have another film under our belt!

Dang, there’s that feeling again.

• This Week’s Hypothetical Speculation

So I think I’ve found out what kind of movie-watcher I am. I know, I know- I’m 26, I’m a filmmaker, I’m a Film Nerd, I should know this by now. I’ve always known about these distinctions in storytelling, but it’s never occurred to me that I had a preference.

To start, let’s assume that there are 3 different types of cinematic stories:

1. Plot-Based. Good examples would be Jaws, No Country for Old Men, or Die Hard. The important thing here is “what happens next”, a logical progression of events, usually with a physical or external impact.

2. Character-Based. Examples might include Raging Bull, The 400 Blows, or There Will Be Blood. Here, the stakes, rather than “what happens next”, ask “how will they react”. A character study explores the behavior of an individual or group of individuals, with most of the major events happening internally (with definite external consequences – we’re still watching movies here).

3. Mood or Environment-Based. My examples would be Mulholland Drive, Edward Scissorhands, or Nosferatu der Vampyr. Here, much of the film’s tension lies entirely in atmosphere and environment, often invading plot and character.

You could also argue that a fourth type of cinematic story has evolved, based in Emotion. Without showing my hand too much, this could be a film that seeks to do not much more than engage an emotion, whether it be horror (Hostel), adrenal glee (300, Transformers) or just plain weepiness (pick the generalized Lifetime movie).

Now, certainly there will be crossover. Every great movie will have a forward-moving plot with strong characters, consistent and defined mood, and emotional involvement. One of the reasons Citizen Kane is so great is because it makes a character study into a plot-driven mystery story.

Maybe this discussion should be limited to screenplays, because I am presuming here that crafts such as performance, cinematography, editing, music, and design are all being performed competently. Regardless, it seems that these three or four categorizations are what I most often react to when I realize a movie is or is not working for me. So, my revelation.

I’ve discovered myself to be a plot junkie. If a movie pushes from A to B to C effectively, I tend to overlook a lack of characterization or environment or even emotion. This explains why The Departed is my favorite Scorsese movie, or why The Life Aquatic is my favorite Wes Anderson movie, and why I naturally gravitate towards science fiction or thriller or comedy films rather than dramas or horror movies, or even documentaries, which are almost by necessity character studies. I just have a hard time watching behavior without somewhat immediate consequences.

In my defense, I’m also of the mind that cinema is tailor-made for plot. Novels, in which you can explore every fiber of a character’s consciousness in minute detail, are perfect for character studies. They also allow a reader to follow a character through vast expanses of time, something that film stories always struggle with. Music or painting or comics are an excellent form of exploring mood, not just because of the lack of budgetary restraint, but because their abstract nature allows the audience to fill in gaps with their own imagination, to ride the wave of mood to whatever their own personal emotional destination. Speaking of emotion, I’ve said before that I think music is the most inherently emotional art form, without the boundaries set by accompanied images.

In addition, as film is a visual art, it’s imperative that we’re shown behavior and reaction, and in those things, lies character. If a plot is working, chances are, characterization has been effectively established, as has a believable environment. You know a character well if you’ve seen them behave. We’re getting into very subjective waters now, but I’m also convinced that it takes more skill as a writer or director to convey subtle character information into heavy plot. It feels, to me, like a bit of a cheat to allow oneself, as a storyteller, large margins of time for character to develop. Without action, reaction, behavior, character is nothing.

So what do you think? Am I wrong? Am I stating the obvious? Or, am I just defending a life spent being indoctrinated by American studio filmmaking?

One of my favorite things about movies is the way they can capture a moment in time in a way that no other art form can. It’s not just the sights, not just the sounds that make a memory. There’s an intangible quality to a human memory and nothing captures that intangible quality like a film.

It’s in that spirit that I embark on a new project here at the FilmNerds Blog, something I’m calling Back to the Movies. It’s a horribly unoriginal and cheesy title but in a way that’s what I’m going for. Much like Doc Brown’s DeLorean transported Marty McFly to another time, what I’m going to attempt with this project is to truly give myself the experience of living in another era, at least for a few hours at a time.

Here’s the deal: I’ve chosen 1983 as my destination. Each week I’ll be watching one of the Top 50 highest grossing films from 1983, counting down from 50 to 1. My hope is that after fully experiencing all of the year’s most significant box office releases, my hope is that I’ll have a better understanding of what life was like back in ’83.

Why 1983? Well, for one it’s the year I was born. I also found in looking through the history of the Academy Awards and the American box office, the early ’80s is really an area of weakness in my film knowledge base. For whatever reason, the films of that era have never attracted my attention and I hope that through this project I’ll start to get a greater appreciation of the overall evolution of American film.

A couple of notes: there are, as of now, three films from 1983′s Top 50 that are not available as rental options on Netflix, either because they are long out of print or because they have not yet been released on DVD. I will continue to search for these three films but the plan for now is to instead review another significant 1983 release outside the Top 50 in its place. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

The project will begin next week with No. 50 on the list (the Michael Caine comedy Educating Rita) but before I leave you, I wanted to mention a few of the notable films from 1983 that won’t be appearing on this project (except as possible replacements) since they did not finish in the box office Top 50 for the year.

Lone Wolf McQuade – The film that would ultimately inspire the television masterpiece that is Walker, Texas Ranger.

Deal of the Century – Chevy Chase and Sigourney Weaver in a comedy about South American arms dealers. Can’t believe that wasn’t a slam dunk at the box office.

Bill Cosby: Himself - Classic standup routine released theatrically. The film’s success was a huge factor in Cosby landing his own television series a year later.

The Dresser – Nominated for Best Picture and dual Best Actor nominations for Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney. Nominating two lead actors from the same film was a trend from the early ’80s I wouldn’t mind seeing again for a deserving film.

Eddie and the Cruisers - Box office flop that later gained a cult following thanks to a hit soundtrack.

The House on Sorority Row – People didn’t like it back then either.

The Hunger – Tony Scott’s directorial debut. It’s about a love triangle between a vampire couple (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) and a scientist (Susan Sarandon).

The Keep – An early directorial effort from Michael Mann, this critically and commercial failure was a World War II-themed horror film.

Losin’ It – Despite being eclipsed in ’83 by several other similar films, this Tom Cruise vehicle has prevailed over time as one of the best known sex comedies of the ’80s.

The Man with Two Brains – More than solid Steve Martin comedy directed by Carl Reiner.

Rumble Fish – Francis Ford Coppola wrote this gang drama while he was making his more successful 1983 hit, The Outsiders.

Sahara – Regarded as one of the biggest bombs of all time, this Brook Shields hit would later inspire the 2005 film by the same name that is now considered an even bigger box office bomb. No more movies named Sahara, people.

Strange Brew – Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas took their SCTV characters to the big screen in what has since become a cult comedy classic.

Tender Mercies – Robert Duvall won Best Actor in 1983 for his role as an alcoholic country singer. The film was also nominated for Best Picture.

Videodrome – David Cronenberg’s horrific commentary on…the media? Science? I have no idea…there’s a lot of blood.

Zelig – Woody Allen and Gordon Willis’ most impressive technical feat. Allen stars as a historical icon famous for his chameleon-like ability to change his appearance depending on who he’s around.

As usual, I’m a little behind on picking up the latest movie news. I read earlier this week about two very strange upcoming projects. The writing team of Bill Collage and Adam Cooper (New York Minute, Accepted) have been hired by 20th Century Fox to write a retelling of the story of Moses, on the heels of their finishing a popular script for a re-imagining of Moby Dick. From the first article: “‘Moby Dick’ was pitched as a “300″-like reimagining of the Melville story as a visually stunning action piece, and the story of Moses is conceived similarly.”

This reminds me an awful lot of the apparently Snyderized version of Sherlock Holmes that will hit theaters this winter.

This is all conjecture, but it seems like the latest branding trend has finally come to the point of studios pursuing classical “properties” to sell to familiarity-hunting audiences. Now- I, for one, like branding. It can produce some great, epic continuities (Harry Potter, Star Wars), shoehorn interesting discussion into mass appeal storytelling (Nolan’s Batman, the Jason Bourne films), and it can force new and interesting brainstorming into still-profitable veterans (Star Trek, Casino Royale). Brand recognition is our bizarre, corporate-oriented version of nostalgia and comfort. It sounds cold and alien to accept it this way, but hey, I’m an optimist.

What’s not so sunny, however, is the fear that new interpretations of established classic stories will taint the legacy of said classics. Does a generation really need to see Sherlock Holmes as a Jack Sparrow-esque party animal? Does Ahab need to be redefined as “a charismatic leader”? Isn’t this just taking established icons of literature and – at the risk of sounding reductive – making them stupid? Does everything need to happen in slow motion or with visual garnish to be worth paying attention to? At this rate, how will the legacy of these characters continue? If more people watch Timur Bekmambetov’s AvD than read “Moby Dick”, will the story survive? Will our grandchildren laugh at the crazy, free-wheeling Sherlock Holmes of their culture?

Again, it looks like the discussion is veering towards the inevitable counter-argument: through providence or the strength of the human intellect, great stories survive. Really, what’s the difference between the Snyderization of bible stories and, let’s say, the Muppetization of Dickens? What about “Classics Illustrated”, or other demographic-targeted “reimaginings”? I suppose a bigger audience will see these mega-high-budget reinterpretations (in fact, they HAVE to for the studios’ high stakes gambles to pay off), so that would be one argument… Never before have the powers of classic-twisting been so motivated or powerful. But again, it seems like no one remembers King Kong ’76. No one cares about Crystal Skull a year after it was released. We still all sit there and ogle Empire Strikes Back when it comes on TV. But these aren’t tried and true literary icons, either… What do we accept as Dracula, the character in Bram Stoker’s novel, or Bela Lugosi? Who do you see when you read “Frankenstein”?

What are your thoughts on these Classics Snyderized? Is it as harmless as a Mickey’s Christmas Carol or is it a corporate conspiracy to make us all dumber? Are you anticipating these movies?

Like Shredder in a trash heap, Film Nerds grasps to the heavens with a spiked hand, and with it drags out of the ash…

When YouTube hit the mainstream in 2005, the big question was, “When will YouTube be a legitimate threat to DVD or theatrical film distribution?” I found the definitive answer this week: Never! Late, I know.

A few days ago, I received a message from YouTube that a dorky video I created in college with primitive After Effects skills has gotten over 500,000 views. Apparently, that makes my account eligible for “partner” status, and available for ad revenue profit sharing. I talked to a good friend that happens to be very e-commerce savvy, and he told me that if I can generate content that will attract YouTube viewership, I could make decent amounts of money. I wondered if posting trailers or other Wonder Mill Films content would be a good way for our films to get YouTube exposure, and he answered that it would really have to cater to YouTube audience demands… that is to say, “No.”

Since Wonder Mill creates relatively mainstream narrative work, it wouldn’t fit into the YouTube menagerie of absurdist sketch comedy, celebrity gossip, shocking videos of humiliation and/or failure, or political rabbit trails. And so, like Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, I stare into the creeping abyss. Do I put my soul at hazard? Do I say, “Okay, I’ll be part of this world”? Or, like YouTube success story Andy Samberg, do I throw my keyboard to the GROUND and scream “I’M NOT A PART OF YOUR SYSTEM”?

I’m sure there’s some preaching to be done about the lost potential of YouTube, like the entire internet before it. The sermon would go, YouTube had the opportunity to become a unifying source for positivity in the world, but instead humanity has soiled it to become a spawning ground for new ways to hate, spy on, and ogle other people. I’m not going to preach that sermon, however, for fear I’ll discover some dark stuff I don’t really want to confront on a Wednesday.

I will say, though, that while I don’t think YouTube will ever become a legitimate home for real filmed storytelling, it has emerged as a solid alternate news source and educational tool. Where else would I find, for free, documentaries on transhumanism, or the terrors of the World Bank, outside of intra-library exchange? It could also be commended for opening the door for real internet-based film distribution, like Hulu or Netflix’s Instant Watch.

So, for now, I still need to make my decision. Sure, Wonder Mill will ultimately find a suitably visible internet home for its feature films. But what if my crummy college tornado video does generate market demand? Like I said, it’s got 500,000 views, 1,339 ratings (1.5 stars, baby!), and 840 terrifying, vitriolic comments (see the end of the entry for some of my favorites).

What if I’ve got a gold mine of a channel on my hands? Anyone want to get together to make an absurd skit about Kanye West, or badly imitate Lonely Island? Aw, forget it, I’ll just hire this guy.

• Disparate Movie Thoughts

-Since principal photography has wrapped, I’ve allowed myself to watch movies again. In addition to working my way through Justice League, I also recently watched the new Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. Check it out for big, crazy superhero fights, but for cohesive and well-paced storytelling, stick to the serialized DCAU. I should start Justice League Season 2 soon, in hopes that the second season gives Superman more to do. That’s barely a complaint, though, as the first season worked hard to set up the Green Lantern and J’onn J’onzz. Highlights include the introduction of Jack Kirby’s Demon, Gorilla Grodd, Mongul, and the Injustice League.

-I’m also doing the required Halloween viewing with my wife, having finished the original 1941 Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney. Good stuff. We started Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man last night, and I’m itching to get back to it after a great opening.

-I still haven’t been able to venture back to a movie theater since wrapping, and I think I might be saving the experience for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I anticipate more and more. Check out this awesome featurette for a glimpse at their in-field voice recording method.

• And now, the Dark Pit of Hopelessness brings you Wacky YouTube User Comments!

From osky5, translated via Yahoo Babelfish:
“so that your you are so *sshole and nonbeams a good work I am sees bie excrement… you are mamao. cabron sucks tiny beast *sshole son of puta… if you are going to remove to me from my time to see something that are good, pendejooo”

From pasm837:
“The Tornado is very realistic, the weird house spoilt it however. But I must say a lot of work went into making it, have you got any video’s of a sesible realistic Tornado”

From LajonSmit:
“r u an rtard?”

From billycorn54:
“Whoever made this is a f*ggot.”

From wxfreak101:
“I lost… 40 seconds of my life… I could have…texted someone… or something… ahhhh!!!”

From fatcar1:
“i thought the simplicity of it was quite funny. i wish that would hapen to the house this d*ck head i know lives in, his name is dayno. Pray that his house is destroyed in this manner.”

From MDHmodder:
“this is the worst video I have ever seen.”

From themangodess:
“God d*mnit you f*ggoty JewTube users stop using misleading titles or else you’re going to get hit by a bunch of complaints”

From thewhoissuperb24:
“Could the author of this video be any more retarded? If you wanna see a house get picked up by a tornado, then go into a town that has a tornado in it! Then watch a house go up.”

From scubasteve0225:
“i hope your daughter gets raped”

-

Have a great week!

So…sorry about that! FilmNerds has been away for a while for a number of complicated and technical reasons, all of which are my fault. Thanks to the constant prodding and encouragement from my wife and the FilmNerds contributors, I finally did what I needed to do and rebuilt the site. As of today (Monday, October 5th), the FilmNerds Blog and the FilmNerds Forum are both back up and fully operational with the podcast and the rest of the site to follow later this week (I’ll keep you updated).

In the meantime, do yourself a favor and register for the Forum (it’s free) and join our Facebook Fan Page (also free) to stay updated on new blog entries and podcasts from FilmNerds. Again, thanks to everyone for their patience and I hope that with the newly rebuilt site we can bring you more nerdy movie discussion than ever before. On with the show…

Weekend Box Office Results

1. Zombieland – $25M
2. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs – $16.7M ($82M total)
3. Toy Story/Toy Story 2 (3D) – $12.5M
4. The Invention of Lying – $7.3M
5. Surrogates – $7.3M ($26.3M total)

Breakdown: As much as we at FilmNerds love our zombie movies, we can readily admit that they aren’t usually known for being box office gold. Zombieland picked up strong buzz early in the year and ran a slick, funny ad campaign that all resulted in the second-best opening weekend for any zombie movie EVER, falling just short of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake. The kiddie market ruled the weekend in most theaters with Sony’s Meatballs and Disney’s 3D double-feature re-release of the first two Toy Story movies holding down the second and third spots. Ricky Gervais’ feature directorial debut The Invention of Lying drew very middling numbers but could actually benefit from the controversy it’s beginning to receive from the ill-informed rabble rousers. Don’t give up on it just yet. Majorly disappointing weekends for Drew Barrymore’s Whip It and Michael Moore’s latest documentary Capitalism: A Love Story. I don’t guess that really bothers Moore though, since he hates money so much anyway…

News Item of the Week

I’ve been reading about Paranormal Activity for a while now, the latest gimmick-driven, low-budget horror flick to make waves in mainstream circuit (and by mainstream, I mean people who weren’t excited about seeing Midnight Meat Train). According to a blog post this week from Deadline Hollywood Daily, the $11,000 horror flick will be getting a wide release this coming weekend after blowing the doors off a limited release in 12 college towns last weekend. When it comes to horror, my standards for being impressed are probably a little too low, if only because the genre is so filled to the brim with terrible films made by unskilled filmmakers. Horror films don’t need to be brilliantly written (though it’s nice when they are). They just need to be scary. Sometimes, a creative and well-executed gimmick is all you need to make a movie really scary (as I’ll discuss in my DVD review of [REC] later this week.