“The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places; and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip passing over.”

Up in the Air
Director: Jason Reitman
Release Date: December 23, 2009
***** 5/5

I don’t write about anything twice in my Movie Log unless something profound happens. Look about 8 pages back to #558 and you’ll see Up in the Air–it was the first thing I wrote about in 2010–and you’ll find it resting its weight onto four mostly sure-of-themselves stars. Four out of five–which, in Movie Log terms, means that it’s a keeper. It doesn’t mean, necessarily, that I loved what I saw–although sometimes it can. It’s more that it touched me in some way. And I’d want to experience that touch again, maybe only to figure out exactly why.

Eight pages ago this is what I was thinking, verbatim:

The film’s arc, even its themes, are really nothing too groundbreaking or new, but the way they’re approached & realized is what makes them special. There’s a passion–or better, an acceptance–at the roots here…. In the end, the movie’s not as revolutionary or particularly striking as I maybe would have hoped, but these are themes that never can be explored too deeply or often–the “coming of age” story, ideas about rationalizations and ideals, loneliness and the meaning/power of relationships…. And the ending, w/ its swelling music stopped right before it hits its climax, falling to the solitary but beautiful sound of the void above the clouds, is not only indicative of the contrast this movie strikes over and over, but is flat-out brilliant.

What I love about that blurb, why I’m writing this post, is that after I rewatched Up in the Air a week or so ago, I disagreed with exactly none of what I thought 3 months ago–yet, the qualifiers were gone. What I liked in January, I loved in March. And what then I felt I had to justify, backing words like “brilliant” with neutralizers like “not as revolutionary…groundbreaking…or particularly striking,” I now totally embraced.

This seems to be a theme with me. Almost every one of my favorite Woody Allen movies got the shaft the first time around. It took me 3 watches before 40-Year-Old Virgin clicked. Nosferatu wasn’t Nosferatu until Round 2. And I didn’t lose it for Notorious (Hitchcock’s not Biggie’s) until I already knew how the story ended. I’m suspicious of the 5-star. I circle it but am slow to pounce, as if I’d get burnt if I gave it to away willy nilly only to realize later that it didn’t stand up.

When I watched Up in the Air for the second time, I had one of those revelatory movie experiences, when everything just clicks and everything, the writing, the lighting, the grain, seems warm and soft and perfect. You might even see your first-watch hangups buried deep within the screen in viewings like these, but it’s clear somehow that maybe they’re just that: your hangups, not the movie’s.

Here’s what I was thinking a page ago:

Maybe it’s normal–& expected–to reach a point in your movie-watching life where your expectations for “edgy,” “relentless” or “new” are replaced by things that, last year, would’ve felt somehow modest or subdued. Things like heart, even if it’s hidden behind formula, & feeling–not sentimentality or “emotion,” per se, but feeling, a feeling, a world where things are honest, & sad, & beautiful, & funny. Like life. Things click in this movie. …It’s only been about 3 months since my 1st viewing; my worldview–or filmview–probably hasn’t changed that much in that time. But sometimes it takes a 2nd look, when your guard is distracted & down, to really appreciate what something has, even if, sure, you know how it might end. This is a road movie: it’s not about the destination, it’s about the trip. Also, the destination isn’t clean or totally Oscar-y, either. Clooney is effectively made into this kind of tragi-beautiful self-fulfilling prophecy whose destiny–& I don’t think I’m using that word out of term–is to be in the air, nowhere & everywhere all at once. That last line is so bittersweet & enigmatic–a comparison to the stars; the sparkle off a wingtip overhead, flying to who knows where; the swell and sudden stop of music; the vacuum of silence. I love this movie. It’s as light & fun as it is impressive &, yeah, completely striking.

]]> http://mellotronsounds.com/index.php/2010/04/06/im-from-here-up-in-the-air-2nd-act-revelations/feed/ 0 http://mellotronsounds.com/index.php/2010/03/24/movie-log-2006-2010-a-memoir/ http://mellotronsounds.com/index.php/2010/03/24/movie-log-2006-2010-a-memoir/#comments Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:39:35 +0000 Mike http://mellotronsounds.com/?p=1804

Wrinkled and worn, you know it’s mine because of the stains.

Three years I’ve kept it–four if you count 2006, the year I started halfway in and only rated in stars, the year I started Netflix. Three years I’ve kept it, decorated its pale inside covers with multicolored stubs, and after every movie I watch, I take it out and we keep each other company in letters. I talk. It listens, lying flat on its back on top of my desk as if it were waiting all night for this.

After so long, precious few of the pages inside are still clean or tight in their binding. Most are crumpled and loud in blotches of spilled drinks that somehow, after being repeatedly patted and blown on and dried, still make the paper look damp and slightly bruised. Smudges of black where things that were once important enough to write down used to be. It’s the kind of character you get when you dip manuscripts into coffee to make them look ancient. Except this is from clumsiness. And time. Words just age faster, I guess.

After four years I’ve seen 583 movies–the proof is right in front of me. And that’s not including ones I’ve rewatched or caught on TV (those don’t count). Every one gets logged, like memories, complete with accompanying ideas and emotions that light the scene of each particular collection of hours, recount the highlights, offer context in a web of barely visible veins creeping underneath the pages like laugh lines.

Soon the next turn will be to cardboard and the final sentence etched may be rushed or end without a punctuation mark; already, a new book is waiting patiently and anonymously in some shadow in the closet. A flimsy, inevitable layer of white–that’s all that’s left before all the words stuffed inside this celluloid diary grow too heavy and spread to the back, infect the spine, until the book can’t hold any more and it collapses into my bookshelf. Not living. Not listening. Just a bunch of snapshots captured in the halflight of projector burn.

This was what we set out for together in 2006, back when “the end” was no more than a metaphor and film device, before it was even set in ink, scrawled to shaky, fragile life–and then gawked at.

WRESTLEFEST I

Know what looks great on a brand new HDTV? You guessed it: professional wrestling. I know, I know, it’s professional wrestling. And honestly, the DVD a friend and I rented for our night of pizza, beer and nostalgia was old and had terrible production value and wasn’t even full widescreen. But…wrestling! Who woulda thought? Back in the day we loved this stuff. Like, seriously loved it. The catchphrases, the betrayals, everything. Even of all the things I love most today, the movies that nail me to the seat and leave me thinking about all these deep ideas and careful camera angles… barely do they ever have the hold on me that wrestling did back in the ’90s. Back then, when a wrestler you loved was talking, you listened. You didn’t dare leave to get a snack or a drink. If you had to pee, you held it. When The Rock was facing Goldberg in a pay-per-view, you gathered your friends together and ponied up 60bucks to watch it. There isn’t a two-hour film in the world I’d throw down $60 to watch today. Never.

Thinking wasn’t encouraged during Raw Is Raw or Monday Night Nitro, and you know what? That’s what made it good. None of it was real, you knew that, and these characters…you didn’t have to feel bad for them when they got pulverized in the ring or Chris Jericho made a nickname out of them (oh, Stinko Malenko!). We turned our backs on our favorites just as quickly as their allies did in the show. It was never personal, it was wrestling.

CHUCK (Mondays at 9pm on NBC)

It isn’t the smartest show in the world, the best written, the best acted or…really the best anything. But dammit, Chuck’s fun. When you get home late on a Monday or Tuesday after spending all day cooped up in an office writing about the subtle variations between the herbivorous green sea turtle and the omnivorous loggerhead, sometimes all you want is to watch good-looking, good-hearted, and often hapless people make jokes, download CIA computers into their heads, reference pop culture and kick ass. On a lazy Monday night, is that really too much to ask?

Side-favorite thing: Hulu. Ok, add this to the list of things that I’m way behind the boat on. But Hulu’s fantastic. Now if I can only get my computer and PS3 to sync…

“Behind the boat” double-side-favorite thing: 30 Rock. Season 1 and Season 2 were good, sometimes great and always funny. But season 3 had me rolling. I love so much about this season, and if I hadn’t just caught up to the latest season and started the when-is-it-supposed-to-get-good? Lost, it would be way more than just a sidenote.

COMMUNITY (Thursdays at 8pm on NBC)

Yeah, I like Chuck. But Community…Community I love. For my money, it’s tied with The Office (which I didn’t include b/c…well, isn’t it obvious?) for best comedy out right now. It’s a treasure.

Apparently from the same guys who produced Arrested Development (which I’m too lazy to fact-check right now), the show definitely isn’t as good as Arrested, but it plays its hand kinda the same way. All the characters here, like in Arrested, are charicatures, but the show knows that they are, it plays off of the fact that they are. This isn’t bad or lazy writing, it’s the best kind of writing, the kind that takes a genre or medium that seems to have little where else to go and explores that very fact. Community is the result of what happens when a show with incredibly talented people behind it don’t try to reinvent the wheel as much as they do just try to make it roll as smoothly as possible…while at the same time making reference to the fact that there’s a wheel at all.

If you’re not watching Community, start. It’s what I look forward to most in the week.

…wow…just realized how pathetic that sounds…

ALL THINGS EBERT

I know I’ve talked about Ebert before so I’ll just say that if the only Roger Ebert is you know is Roger Ebert the Film Critic, you’re truly missing out. One of my favorite things around, Ebert’s blog is consistently fascinating. He talks cinema often–and you can always visit his homepage for full reviews–but it’s the personal pieces that get me. Always an equal mix of personal essay, social (or sometimes self-)criticism, and reflection, reading his blog is like watching a quick-shot slideshow of someone’s thought process, someone who’s constantly taking in and examining new information and art while also taking time to look back, having balls enough to say, “You know what? I’m getting old. So this is my life…candidly.”

The guy can no longer speak; letters are his primary mode of communication now, not sounds. And so reading his letters are almost like reading his thoughts, an ongoing thread etched in elegant prose about what’s going on behind his desk and screen and fingers and eyes. Unable to speak, the great Roger Ebert has never had more to say.

COMICS

Don’t call them funny papers. Comics…they’re misunderstood. Maybe they always have been.

But, this isn’t a “this is why comics are quality” piece. You can find that in a million other places. This is a “I just got back into comics after years away from it and I’m glad I’m back cuz they’re awesome” piece. Which is better, I think.

Y: the Last Man – I followed this series as it was written a few years back, then, for whatever reason, stopped before getting the last trade. What was I thinking! Don’t ask me how but Brian K. Vaughn is able to pull off the most flagrantly conscious “hip” dialogue on the planet, the most consciously conscious around. Which isn’t to say his writing isn’t smart, it is. But the dialogue…in other hands would tank. No doubt about it. Try to talk like Yorick Brown in the real world and just wait for someone to go all 4th-grade throwback and call you a poseur.

Daredevil – I just read Kevin Smith’s “Gaurdian Devil” run and just bought Frank Miller’s “Born Again.” This is me jumping in headlong. After that…Bring on Bendis! It seems the darker the superhero the more I like them. I like a hero who’s just, almost–this close–about to go insane. He knows what he’s doing is crazy but he’s torn. He’s tormented by his power, obsessed with it, in a way. It’s like he knows that if stops fighting crime, not only his city will fall, but people will stop writing about him. And that can’t happen, because like Henry in Goodfellas, then our hero turn into an average nobody like us…he’d have to live the rest of his life like a schnook.

JOHN HUGHES

So I have this list of directors I keep on my computer. The idea is that I write down someone I’m interested in, either from a movie that grabbed me and made me want to check out the oeuvre (what a word) or someone I’ve heard a lot about and feel like I “should” see.  Quentin Tarantino is an example of the first kind. He’s one of the first directors I checked out. Ingmar Bergman’s an example of the second.

Anyway, the idea is that I list these directors and then work down the list, watching each’s entire filmography in chronological order before moving onto the second. This has been a long process, but it’s one I find so rewarding–so much, in fact, that I’ll often put off a movie I want to see because I’d rather catch it in context. There’s so much more to a movie, I’ve found, than the actual movie. There’s the person/people making it, and their story and obsessions, their inclinations toward a certain theme or aesthetic, evolution and experimentation. Sure, you can watch Annie Hall a million times, but it’ll never really hold the same weight, it’ll never be so surprising yet make so much sense until you’ve seen all the “early Allen” slapstick comedies Woody made before it. You can watch The Wrestler, but something about it changes when you know that the same guy who made The Fountain put it together. I’ll say it: sometimes filmmakers are even more interesting than their films.

So John Hughes is next, and maybe after him Jim Jarmusch, or Billy Wilder, or the rest of Stanley Kubrick (finally). Tonight I’ll watch Sixteen Candles and next will be the (I fear, over-)hyped The Breakfast Club. I haven’t seen either of these movies, and I call myself a cinephile. Psh…

But me, I wasn’t able to get that excited. I didn’t see the clips, or any video for that matter; I wasn’t familiar with Millar’s series. All I had to go off of were some screenshots–which were interesting, but still. It wasn’t until last week that official video was released, a teaser, and I was able to get an actual taste. And, well, it does look like a lot of fun. But I think for now I’m still holding off on going all giddy bananas. Check it out embedded below.

The idea gets me more than anything else: this young, geeky guy gets bored and decides to play superhero, get in costume, give himself a name, fight crime–all without any kind of powers. Then his friends join in. It all sounds right up my alley. And now with the trickle of advanced screenings started, a whole new wave of hype is building. Peter at /Film says a friend of his saw it and called it “one of the best movies” he’d “ever seen,” and another declared it the “best superhero movie ever made,” and a third likened it to a cross between The Matrix and Shaun of the Dead.

To echo the insightful musings of a young Joey Lawrence circa NBC’s Blossom: “Whoa.”

Here’s the first official trailer below, but it’s a Green Band and apparently patchy, bereft of some of the more bloody, hardcore elements that were shown at the Con. So maybe reserve final judgment till the R-rated Red is released. I know I am. I love the style here and I love the promise of seeing brutal violence being doled out (specifically, it sounds) at the hands of innocent little Hit Girl in a story about fake superheros. But still, I still need some convincing.

Kick-Ass is expected April 16th of next year.

Check out the preview attached at the foot.

A ’60s period piece, A Single Man has the same production designer on staff that AMC’s Mad Men has had for all 3 of its seasons, Dan Bishop. And it shows. The trailer has Mad Men’s same sleek but not necessarily glamorized aesthetic. Word has gotten out too, that, also like Mad Men, A Single Man will feature certain time-specific events–like the Cuban Missle Crisis and Psycho’s theatrical run–which I think adds a nice depth, especially considering the film’s main thread follows the conflict of Colin Firth’s character’s sexual preference. If the time period is relevant, why not flesh it out and make it a character?

As for the film’s visuals, it’s really no wonder they look so good. For 10 years Tom Ford was the creative designer for Gucci and was apparently the guy who built the brand back up when it was on the fringe of bankruptcy. Personally, I don’t really care too much about that, but it’s interesting, to see a guy so visually-oriented make the switch from fashion to film. And I’ve always been a sucker for style. Give me even a bad film that looks amazing and I’d probably err close to a 3star.

Oh, and get this: rumor has it that Harvey Weinstein guaranteed Tom Ford an Oscar for either Best Picture or Best Director when he bought the rights to his film–which to me seems like a pretty stupid thing to guarantee but, again, interesting. Especially that Firth already won Best Actor at Venice.

The picture also stars Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult (The Weather Man) and Matthew Goode (Watchmen, Match Point). And just take another look at that poster. Something about it. I could stare at it all day.

A Single Man will hit limited markets December 11th.

Van Diemen’s Land

Moody, extremely well photographed and about cannibals, Van Diemen’s Land can’t help but remind me of 1999’s Ravenous–only, you know, good.

Where Ravenous was hokey and sensationalized–a “bad guy,” double-crosses, boppy music behind life-and-death chase scenes–Van Diemen’s Land looks spooky and subtle, so much so that you might not even catch after one viewing of the preview what the movie is actually about. Which is awesome.

Out now in Australia, no date is set for a US release, and I’m not expecting one. But definitely something to look out for on DVD. Any movie about eating people where I can use the word “subtle” is more than okay in my book.

*And the award for Unbridled Tagline Awesomeness goes to: “Hunger is a strange silence.” Ughhh, poetic and simple like a shiver.

Broken Embraces

I haven’t seen enough of Almodovar’s work. “Almodovar.” Some might say that giving yourself the 1-word name self-branding treatment is unspeakably pretentious (I might agree), but with the kind of respect the artist formerly known as “Pedro” garners from his movies, I’m pretty sure he can do just about whatever the hell he pleases.

What I love about Almodovar’s stuff is how color-oriented it is, the bold reds and blues, always easy to look at. You can even see it in the poster. And there seems to be a duality going on in Broken Embraces that celebrates that, one between reality and fantasy, or maybe memory and present day, where each side warrants its own style, one light and fresh and grounded, pretty, and the other broken and disjointed, cold steely hues and a steady cam.

But it’s not only that; I haven’t seen enough of Penelope Cruz‘ work, either. She’s an absolute monster in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and seems to really be reestablishing herself lately, becoming a regular with Almodovar, working with Woody Allen, playing next to Ben Kingsley in Elegy. There’s something about powerful female leads. I can’t put my finger on it but they almost seem to have some kind of extra layer that men don’t have, something more surprising, maybe. Am I alone on this?

Broken Embraces has already made rounds (to rave reviews) at festivals and will be in US theaters (in NY and LA) later this year. If you don’t live there, well, besides being square, you should probably make it a Netflix.

The Attic Door

Child actors are so hit or miss with me. The little girl in The Fall? Brilliant. Anikan in Episode I? Well…that’s too easy. But you get what I mean.

Kids are rarely great performers and almost never seem like actual kids. And that’s what I worry about in The Attic Door. But besides their two iffy lines of dialogue, the atmosphere coming off this thing is killer and leaves me literally aching to see what in the name of all things holy is up in that attic.

What the filmmakers call on their blog a “haunting and romantic story about growing up,” the teaser for The Attic Door is deliciously vague–carnivorously vague. What we get are these disjointed tidbits of information: 1) the kids are alone, by themselves in an empty house tucked away in a sandy, golden, empty part of the world, and 2) there’s something they’re afraid of. A ghost, maybe. Or whatever’s in the attic. Or whatever.

I honestly can’t find a date to expect The Attic Door, even in limited theaters. This is a tiny, tiny movie and it seems from the creators’ site that they’re scraping whatever money they can together to get it distributed. So keep an eye out.

Until then, you’ll just have to get your jollies from the puffy shirt that kid’s rocking in the still above. Pretty sure that makes him the first pirate.

Runner Ups (click the titles for trailers):
Pirate Radio
Not that this looks bad, but biopicish-type films just usually aren’t my cup of tea. That being said, Phillip Seymore Hoffman stars, and in my book, he’s hands down one of the best working actors today and maybe the most intense living actor of our time. I’ll at least consider anything he’s a part of. And plus, it’s a cool story. The very idea a ship full of people infected with a case of stickittotheman neosis sailing off to rock feels more like a righteous fable in today’s age of factory-line pop than anything else. In theaters this Friday.

Antichrist
The only reason I’m not including this in the main list is because it’s already out in limited markets. Nowhere near me, of course, but I’m sure in Chicago and NY it’s available. Starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg (The Science of Sleep, I’m Not There) as “He” and “She,” Antichrist is about, well…it’s hard to say: a psychiatrist, a patient, nature, religion, sex. The trailer is surreal and darkly beautiful, telling of a woman’s imagined (or maybe not) journey toward the Garden of Eden. Before the Garden, though, are the woods, and “Nature is Satan’s church.” This movie looks trippy and bodacious.

One of the craziest scenes in Chan-wook Park’s 2003 crazyfest Oldboy is one where the main character is fighting a line of thugs down a hallway. If memory serves, the shot is a static side-view, and he’s just raking them all down, one by one. Then he picks up a hammer and when he raises it, the screen freezes, and a dotted line is drawn from the metal in his hand to the skull of some hapless goon who’s about the meet its business end. It’s awesome. And grotesque. …And awesome. …But grotesque.

Then there’s the scene where someone gets a tooth pried from their head with a hammer’s end. Oh, and the one where some dude gets his tongue cut off. Oh yeah, then there’s the whole *premise* of the movie and its gruesome payoff (which I won’t spoil if you haven’t seen it).

Point is, Oldboy is hardcore, the kind of hardcore you mostly only see in foreign films. It’s brutal, the violent portrait of a man who’s driven insane by a 15-year state of forced solitude with no explanation, and how he’s one day set free to seek answers and revenge. The character is desperate and tragic, locked for the better part of his life in a hotel room where gas is pumped in every night to put him to sleep and the the words: “Smile and the world smiles with you. Cry and you cry alone.” are written on the wall. So he smiles, by himself in an empty room with long unkempt hair and a worn and tired face. I’m telling you, it’s hard to watch.

Now I ask you: Does that sound like a prime vehicle for Steven Spielberg?

In case you haven’t heard about this atrocity, ad-wizards over at Dreamworks hatched up a plan awhile ago to Americanize Park’s film. Okay, no surprise there. But what made it insane was who they had lined up to do it: none other than long-time blockbuster tycoon Steven Spielberg–and Will Smith, who’d be wielding the hammer.

First, let’s get the platitudes out of the way. Yes, Spielberg is a more than capable director. He’s a legend. And Will Smith? I love the guy. Fresh Prince, in my oh so humble book of convictions, is one of the few, few sitcoms that was able to totally get away with having one of those random serious episodes about loneliness or social injustice without it seeming random or cheesy–and I credit not just the writing but Smith’s performances (I’m thinking specifically of the episode where Will’s father abandons him for the last time and Will loses it, screams to Uncle Phil, breaks down and the episode fades out in silence). Ali or Hitch–I’ve got nothing but respect for the guy.

That being said, he’s still Will Smith. And sure, I like to fancy myself an open-minded guy, but I’m sorry, the original Oldboy isn’t even a full 7 years old yet and this combination just seems so off-the-wall and out-there and…(what’s another cliche for “random”?)…oh: from left-field that you have to wonder who the first jackass was to pitch it.

To lighten the blow, Spielberg’s version wasn’t to be a straight remake of Park’s Oldboy but a adaptation of the Oldboy manga series. So it wouldn’t have *technically* been a “remake.” But still. There’s no way you’re watching this thing and not comparing it to the Korean original.

Keep in mind, it is still possible for the project to be picked up by another studio and completed, but let’s just enjoy this while we have it, shall we? What’s that old saying? ““Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift—that’s why it’s called the present”? Well, today consider me a proverb-spouting optimist.

Celebratory Carlton dance!

Here’s the trailer for Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy. If you haven’t seen it–such a definite must:

You know how when you discover a word you’ve never heard before and all of a sudden you hear it everywhere–in class, at the bank, carved on doors in bathroom stalls? That’s how it was with me and We Live in Public. Apparently Josh Harris was the “Worhol of the Web” in the ’90s with his creation of “living in public,” living for over a decade in an apartment rigged with dozens of webcams filming his and his girlfriend’s every move. But I only first heard of him through an episode of Errol Morris’ First Person I caught just last month. After that, some friends were talking about him. Then I heard about this documentary.

From Ondi Timoner (DIG!), We Live in Public won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, making Timoner the only director in history to win the award twice. And it’s not just about Harris and the 5,000 hours of footage he recorded in his apartment; it’s also about the 100 people he got to live together in an underground bunker for a month in front of cameras. It’s about virtual reality, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, human behavior–the very notion of identity. Or, is “persona” a better word?

“Everything is free except the video we capture of you,” Harris says of those in his bunker–”that we own.”

We Live in Public’s distribution has been spotty, shown in museums and brought around from city to city one at a time. So if you get the chance to catch this on a big screen, jump at it. This one seems like it very well could define a generation–or at least a generation that might have been.

Youth in Revolt

What happens when “Mr Nice Guy” Michael Cera falls in love with a girl who only loves bad boys? He turns his life–and himself–upside down to win her affection. Talk about comedic hi jinx!

Two things excite me about this preview:

One, it’s great to see Michael Cera trying something new, breaking for awhile from the George-Michael/Paulie Bleeker/Evan from Superbad awkward shy guy thing. He’s great at it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s good to see him stray from the formula, see what else he’s capable of. And here we get both sides of him, some old and some new. So score.

And two, despite my bad impersonation of a Rob Shneider-esque movie pitch at the beginning, Youth in Revolt’s premise actually does ring pretty true, depressingly enough. I think it’s something every “nice guy” has dreamed of at least once: giving in and turning himself into the asshole, if for nothing else than to see what would happen. Start wearing shades inside, smoking cigarettes, acting all distant and unaffected. Hey, it works for Don Draper.

The cast lined up here is pretty interesting, as well: Justin Long, Steve Buscemi, Zach Galifinakis, Ray Liotta. I’m expecting a pretty good time out of this one.

Youth in Revolt will hit theaters early next year on January 8th.

Precious

Here’s one I’m not sure I’d have included on my list right-off because of the elements in it that feel Oscar bait-y. The underdog story, the inspirational figure, lines like, “People do love you, Precious. Your baby loves you. I love you!”–all those things are definitely here. But so is this great tragedy to the character that I really don’t see being too easy to wrap in a neat pre-credits sweater of warm fuzzies. Which I like.

When I was little, playing in the family room of my grandmother’s house, there was usually 1 of 5 movies on in the background: My Girl, Sister Act, Curly Sue, Ghost Dad or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. After so many years though, movies you watched when you were little start lumping together into a kind of sub-category. They actually start to become their own nostalgia and you maybe take for granted that anything you used to watch back when you were a kid was just that–a kid’s movie, corny and classic but never actually any good.

That’s how it went with me, anyway. Until I came across Roger Rabbit on TV one night years later and kept it on for the memories. I was shocked to find it different than I remembered, different than I left it. This wasn’t just a simple nostalgia pick, this movie was awesome! This weird and incredible stylistic mix of film noir and colored pencil. Heavy shadows and cigar-smoking babies. Weasles in double-breasted trench coats and a hard-boiled private eye. Fedoras and gin together with a “bad guy” who’d kill cartoons–literally kill them–by lowering their bodies into toxic vats of what he called “dip.” And this would disintegrate them, wisps of steam from their dematerialized carcasses wafting from the bubbling green slime.

Even at 22 it scared the hell out of me.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit to me is one of those true pieces of rare movie magic, capturing a sense of everything that cinema is capable of similar to ways The Wizard of Oz did or Willy Wonka, of stealing you, just for an hour or two, showing you something unbelievable but making you believe it. And there’s a grown-up quality about all of it, too. So much of what they get away with would never fly in a more modern animated film geared at least in part toward children.

So a sequel. The great innovator Robert Zemeckis, with titles like Back to the Future, Beowulf and the upcoming A Christmas Carol to his credit, has announced that recent advancements in animation have given him a good idea for a second installment of RR, one that doesn’t rule out the use of 3D motion capture. The characters from the original won’t be dimensionalized, he says (thank God), but maybe others will, or maybe the 2D models will be animated through motion capture? For a fuller look at Zemeckis’ hinting go HERE.

The point is, it’s in the works, with original writers Peter Seaman and Jeffrey Price working on a script even as we speak. And there’s definitely a lot to be excited about. A sequel like this could very well set another standard for what’s possible in animation, incorporating these new elements. But lightning…it usually doesn’t strike twice. Back to the Future II is kind of barely passable, so is Ghostbusters II and so many other second attempts at real, inspired life. And if the edge is taken away from something like this to make it more PC, if the bad guy stops melting toons and starts just locking them up, if you take away the drinking and the smoking and the sex jokes, then all you’d have is annoying Roger Rabbit and some cutesie CG talking animals. And that would be bad, the dead returning to life but with bolts in its neck, loose stitching barely keeping it all from falling apart.

But hey, as long as the sultry Jessica Rabbit’s in the picture I’m on board. What a fox. That she would ever waste her time with that Roger character is simply laughable, I’m sorry. Talk about unrealistic.

Enjoy the trailer for the original embedded below and keep your fingers crossed for #2. Here’s to novelty.