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.

As I round out the first five movies of my series, we come to what is without question the first absolute disaster I’ve seen in the 1983 Top 50 and though it cracked the Top 50 in its day, D.C. Cab was most definitely considered a mishandled flop.

Apparently Mr. T, fresh off his breakout appearance in Rocky III, was becoming a bit of an icon among kids and though D.C. Cab is Rated-R (and a hard R at that with ample swearing and one lengthy T&A scene ), Universal decided to market the film with a heavy emphasis on T. His character is most definitely not a major presence in the film – he basically is one of about a dozen minor characters who are all cab drivers with their own subplots that receive probably three scenes each in the movie. Mr. T’s subplot involves Mr. T wanted to make his cab nicer so that kids will see him as the neighborhood hero rather than the local drug dealer who has a much nicer car. This is gritty reality, folks.

The screenplay is so absolutely carelessly thrown together and the film slapped together with such a lack of effort, you’d think it was the first movie any of these people worked on. That’s because it pretty much is. Director Joel Schumacher (yeah, that Joel Schumacher) had only worked on one film prior to this (1981’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman) and co-writer Topper Carew had no previous experience and has only one credit after this on his resume – writing for the show Martin.

The end result of this collaboration of rookies is a nearly unwatchable mess of a film that pulls out just about every trick in the book to try and save itself, including a musical montage, a side plot about two children being kidnapped, an awkward cameo appearance by Irene Cara (”Hey, aren’t you Irene Cara?”) and, I kid you not, a speech about doing the right thing delivered by Mr. T on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

There’s literally only one redeeming quality to the entire film: Gary Busey. This guy is just as out of his mind, bat sh** crazy in 1983 as he is today, and keep in mind that he didn’t have his skull injured in a motorcycle accident until 1988. This is just natural born crazy that we see in D.C. Cab, and in all honesty it is really fun to watch. Busey was clearly a pure ball of chaos from the beginning and what makes his comedic performance legitimately fun in this movie is that it feels real. I highly doubt any of Busey’s lines came from the screenplay or were even rehearsed before they were shot. It’s purely random, unpredictable, absurd nonsense and it does take a special brain to be able to come out with that kind of stuff.

Busey’s performance really only gave me something to hold onto while enduring this atrocious film. It’s fun, but it’s not enough to give you reason to watch this movie. This is the first true stinker of my 1983 journey.

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.

One thing I love about the bottom half of this list I’m slowly working my way through (sorry about that) is the movies that were clearly at least minor hits in their day but that no one remembers today. In a man-on-the-street poll, I’d be willing to bet very few people could tell you anything about Michael Apted’s Gorky Park, a police procedural thriller with a Soviet twist. As a murder mystery, it’s nothing out of the ordinary from what you’d see on any of the fifty primetime crime procedurals on network TV today. Three bodies are found in Moscow’s Gorky Park with any and all forms of identification removed – that includes faces, fingertips and teeth. Soviet police detective Arkady Renko, played by William Hurt, draws the assignment and as you might expect, the more he learns the more complex the case appears to be with connections being drawn to the KGB, a shady NYPD cop (Brian Dennehy in a really fun, broad bit of character acting), and a highly suspicious American business tycoon played by a wonderfully aged Lee Marvin.

26 years removed from 1983, I’m sure a lot of the oomph of certain details and scenes are a little lost on me. For instance, a major plot point involves Lee Marvin’s character attempting to break the Russian monopoly on sable fur. This would, apparently, have struck a tremendous blow to the Soviet economy but I’m not sure today’s audience would appreciate something of this subtlety without an explanation.

One thing that is clear in the film, even to a post-Cold War audience, is that this is most definitely an American-made film about life in Russia in 1983…the KGB is unequivocally evil and obstructive, life is brutal and cold and harsh for everyone other than a small class of government leaders, and most importantly – everyone wants to get out. Now I’m sure there were a lot of people that wanted to get out of the Soviet Union and I’m sure it was a dangerous proposition but I’m not sure it was quite the universal hope of all Russians, as is portrayed in Gorky Park. The film’s closing shot involves caged sables being set free into the woods…subtle.

Regardless of the political undertones, Gorky Park works really well as a taught crime thriller with plenty of fascinating characters popping up in unexpected places. My personal favorite minor performance comes from Ian McDiarmid, whom true FilmNerds will know as the evil and ever-disappointed Emperor Palpatine. In Gorky Park, McDiarmid is wonderful as a super-creepy scientist who has developed a method of recreating a dead person’s face based solely on the shape of their skull (which I’m pretty sure is impossible even today, by the way). He treats the decapitated heads of the murder victim’s as if they were his house pets…in fact, it would even be creepy if they were his house pets. Really nice little treat of a performance.

If this movie is remembered by anyone for anything today, it seems to be for the performance of Joanna Pacula, the tragic and tortured friend of the murder victims who of course becomes Hurt’s love interest. Premiere called her performance one of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time as recently as 2006, a fact I was aware of going into my screening of the film. Frankly, I never saw a scene that I felt really warranted that honor but it’s certainly on par with the rest of the very solid work by the entire cast. Her thick Russian accent was a bit distracting at first, particularly since the filmmakers made a choice to make all the Russian characters in the film speak with a British accent, which helps us distinguish them from the American characters that show up later. Pacula’s face and accent do seem to highlight her desperation as an oppressed Soviet citizen but it seems odd at times, particularly in scenes where she and Hurt are meant to be identifying with one another as fellow oppressed Russians.

This one is definitely worth renting if you’re a fan of William Hurt, human taxidermy, WAY better than average crime procedurals or Cold War propaganda. Or, once again, synthesizer-heavy scores.

Still Smokin’

Still Smokin’ obviously isn’t their first film. Cheech and Chong had already created a formidable comedy franchise with their first four films, helping establish a new genre (stoner comedy) along the way. The guys were already running out of steam a little bit by the time Still Smokin’ was released, which is probably why they decided to shake up their formula a bit.

Unlike the four films before it, Still Smokin’ is less about creating its own story and wacky situations and more about finding a thing framework for what is essentially a concert film.

That thin premise is that Cheech and Chong are invited to Amsterdam for a Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton film festival. Outside of Cheech being mistaken by all the Dutch as Burt Reynolds because of his mustache, there aren’t many laughs early in the movie. It plays like a bad B-movie with a few subpar filmed sketches thrown in disguised as dream sequences.

What strikes me about some of the sketches is how far these prominent comedians were allowed to go in 1983…frankly, they touch on some areas that would get 99% of comedians in major trouble today. In one scene, Tommy Chong appears in full blackface as a blues character named Blind Melon Chitlin. Another scene called “Queer Wars” features both men playing outrageously gay drag queens. Both scenes feel incredibly dated today, probably only because no paid entertainer would even attempt them.

I was beginning to get exasperated right around the time the two men take the stage in an effort to save the film festival or something like that. What follows is actual footage of a Cheech and Chong standup show in Amsterdam. I say this without having seen any of their earlier, more successful movies but I find these guys to be really brilliant live sketch performers. Their energy and their commitment to a character or a premise is infectious to watch.

The perfect example would be a sketch called “Ralph and Herbie” in which both men enter the stage on all fours portraying two dogs who are best friends. I’ve got a little bit of a bias against most stoner comedy because I think a lot of it is based on trying to make the stoner look cool. It’s typically all about how the stoners are really the ones who have it all figured out and the straight tightwads just need to chill out. Cheech and Chong might be stoner comedians by reputation but their stage presence is anything but laid back. They aren’t afraid to give every sketch their all and they aren’t afraid to be physical and tense.

I don’t know that I can completely recommend this movie to anyone back in 2009 because the fact remains that as a movie, it stinks. The non-standup material in the film is almost unbearably dumb and hard to sit through. But if you’re into watching great standup comedians in action, this is worth devoting some time to. The final half-hour is an opportunity to see two of the best of their time at work.

But did the future ever actually happen?

It kind of feels like the machine gobbled up the rage, doesn’t it? I suppose artistic revolutions usually tend to yield a lot less interesting and cohesive work than the boring standards of discipline and consistency, but really, what came out of the indie pillaging of Hollywood? The information age trend of viral marketing, popularized by Blair Witch, sure came in handy, but what about the stories themselves? They got bigger and bigger, that’s for sure. It feels like the independent spirit has just been relegated to a market niche at this point. Throw enough dysfunction and awkward framing together, and you’ve got the modern American indie.

I suppose there’s an inherent flaw in looking at content, though. Maybe storytelling in the cinematic medium peaked by the 80’s? Even if that’s true, I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with it… arguably, the novel form peaked with Moby Dick, and we still get great novels. I think what’s important to most revolutionaries is less the what, and more the how. That’s where the indie spirit resides, anyway: thriftiness. It’s the part of the 90’s indie movement that the machine has failed to consume.

A special case is this year’s District 9. When Peter Jackson’s pet producing project Halo fell through, he promised the refugee director of that project, Neil Blomkamp, $30 million to make whatever he wanted. So, utilizing the (relatively) inexpensive RED camera system, and the backing of the (2nd) hottest director on the planet, Blomkamp made an extremely profitable summer blockbuster. Say what you will about the WHAT of District 9, an okay sci-fi action movie, but what’s important to me is the HOW.

The question is, why didn’t this happen sooner, and will it happen again? Low cost digital cinema has been available for at least 5 years. The star system has been declared dead for as long. Yet, bloated productions have only accrued more and more overhead, necessitating safer decision-making, and increased branding. Does a Spider-Man movie need to cost $300 million? Maybe… Let’s go with a more down to earth example? Does a sequel to the $50 million* Raiders of the Lost Ark need to cost $150 million? What about a sequel to Die Hard? $110 million? Really? $230 million for Quantum of Solace? No aliens, no supernatural elements… and it costs more than two Lord of the Rings movies?

One is reminded of Tugg Speedman, in Tropic Thunder: Looking up after performing an emotional scene (armless), to see a director huddled over him, with about 500 crew members watching. Film production, like regular life, necessitates moderation and a proper handling of waste and over-expenditure. If not, fear of failure becomes a crippling motivation, no?

So what do you all think? Should we be optimistic that, instead of running for foreign money and sacrificing autonomy, Hollywood executives will sacrifice luxury, and shoot digital, write economically, and second-guess in pre-production rather than post? I think we can be more hopeful now, since we have a smash hit “real” movie (not a one-camera mockumentary) made with fiscal responsibility. It would seem that there, the independent artists can teach us all a lesson: Do what you can, with what you have, to create good work… rather than what you must, with what you lack, to impress the establishment. Will this next decade see the fruition of that idea? Will this recent  “recession” play a part?

Maybe so. Then again, I hear a new Spider-Man is on the horizon. And boy, those giant Transformers movies keep making money… and you know how people still love playing Battleship…

(*Budget adjusted for inflation)

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.

Like most nerdy kids, I discovered Monty Python and the Holy Grail just before high school and wrote its punchlines upon my dorky heart. Silly French accents, random violent rabbit attacks, musical numbers…it was all a weird prepubescent boy could hope for. Then in college, I discovered the Python troupe’s less famous but perhaps more respected film effort, The Life of Brian, a stunningly irreverent but achingly brilliant religious satire.

I had certainly heard mention of the other Python movie, The Meaning of Life, but not being a particularly rapid fan of the group beyond their film work, I never bothered to check it out…until I decided to embark on this little project.

There appear to be conflicting accounts about the origin of the film but at least one member of the group, John Cleese, seems to have suggested in interviews that after the smashing critical success of Life of Brian, the group was offered a much larger budget from Universal than they’d ever seen before. Basically, they did it for a paycheck.

Watching the film, that production history would explain a lot, not because it’s a film that feels lazy but a film that is without real inspiration. The boys were out to prove themselves and their style of humor in Holy Grail. They were out to make a brilliant and inflammatory comedic statement in Brian. In The Meaning of Life, they gave it their all and never cease to push the envelope in nearly every sketch, but there’s no aspirations beyond that.

As a part of this project, I’ve been reviewing film writing and criticism from 1983 as well to try and get a gauge of what critics thought of these films at the time and compare it to how these films are thought of today. Roger Ebert, who in 1983 seemed a great deal harsher than than he is today, said of The Meaning of Life, “This movie is so far beyond good taste, and so cheerfully beyond, that we almost feel we’re being one-upped if we allow ourselves to be offended.” Ebert’s suggestion that the Pythons were simply playing an old fashioned game of British one-upmanship seems to be right on. With nothing left to prove and money in their pockets, these masters of English comedy were simply trying to defy the expectations of even their own fans.

Even those who aren’t offended are likely going to be surprised at the lengths to which the Pythons take their jokes. In one segment (the film is divided into different, unrelated episodes meant to represent the different stages of life), an enormous fat man vomits all over a restaurant and all the people in it. Another scene shows a man having his internal organs being forcibly removed as he screams. Neither of these scenes offended me but neither of them worked for me as jokes either. A lot of this may have to do with the time that has passed since 1983 and the redefining of what is shocking in those 26 years. What we see in the film could easily make it onto network television today, possibly in primetime. At the time, it was enough to get the film banned in several countries.

Shock comedy appears to come in waves, losing its effectiveness after audiences become immune and numb to its power. I think today, audiences seem to be gravitating toward a gentler, more subtle form of comedy, brought on by the influence of comedians like Ricky Gervais and Larry David. This season’s biggest family sitcom hit Modern Family has a lot more in common with Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run than it does with I Love Lucy (which itself was a bit of shock comedy).

The film does contain at least one real gem, a short film that precedes the feature titled The Crimson Permanent Assurance. The short was originally intended to be yet another segment of the film, specifically a five minute segment to be directed by Terry Gilliam with his own cast and crew. Left unsupervised by the production company, Gilliam finished with a film that was three times as long with twice the budget than was originally intended.

The result is a magnificent live-action fantasy trip in which a group of elderly insurance clerks stage a mutiny in their corporate headquarters and then unfurl a set of sails that take their skyscraper sailing away out of the city. The film plays like an Errol Flynn swashbuckler set in modern corporate London, with file cabinets being fired through the window like cannons. It’s a truly entertaining piece of whimsical filmmaking by an ambitious, young Gilliam who was still trying to establish himself as a separate voice from the Pythons.

This is certainly not a light comedy to pop in on a Sunday afternoon (particularly right after you’ve been to church) and to be honest, it was pretty disappointing to me as a Monty Python fan. While there are some individual moments in the film that work, like the extremely irreverent musical number “Every Sperm is Sacred” or the rugby match between a team of 12-year-olds and a team of full-grown adults teachers, most of the scenes are very difficult to watch and fall flat as comedic premises. This is probably rightfully the least-known of the three Monty Python films and will likely remain so simply because there aren’t enough memorable laughs for the audience to hold onto.

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?

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”

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Have a great week!