Title [Oh what's the point?]

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou tells the tale of a broken old oceanographer/entertainer whose career has steadily crashed. Steve Zissou is a lot like a washed up Bill Nye. The movie begins with the premiere of Zissou’s new film (which crashed). While filming the movie, Zissou’s best friend was eaten by a “Jaguar Shark”. Zissou vows to avenge his friend by filming one last movie hunting down the Jaguar Shark (which may or may not exist). This movie has been very widely discussed amongst reviewers (it has a score of 56 on Rottentomatoes). There are those that praise it, those that hate it, and then Roger Ebert who refuses to take a stance.

So let me start out by saying that The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is weird. Some of you, those who have suffered far too many auteurs this semester, know exactly what I’m getting out. But I suspect most of you are puzzled because that statement doesn’t really say anything

That’s the key.

Wes Anderson’s movies are explosive, funny, and quirky (or in one word whimsy-seriously this showed up in every review I read) but they do not make a statement. Life Aquatic is the bottom of the pointless crater that is Wes Anderson’s film career which since Bottle Rocket has been progressively less and less relative to our society. This doesn’t mean his movies aren’t enjoyable (far from it!) but at the end of each one this viewer finds himself asking, what was the point?

The common theme in Wes Anderson’s movies is that dramatic events tend to happen, but we don’t know why. I will start with the most puzzling case from Life Aquatic, but really there are more than I can mention. One of the member’s of Zissou’s crew is a woman who appears topless periodically throughout the film. She has some sort of purpose (job) on the boat, but her being topless only serves to give the movie its R rating. Midway through the film she stages a mutiny against Zissou since she perceives him to be a crazy old man leading them on a suicide mission. She leaves Zissou’s company (along with all of his overworked interns) but the rest of the crew stays behind. Sure, one could argue that the mutiny was justifiable, but only one person leaves! What point does this make? Why is it in the film? Anderson does not answer the question. He does not explain why at the beginning of every event in the movie one of Zissou’s crew members sings a David Bowie song in Portuguese (that is not a joke). He does not explain why in Rushmore Max Fischer is compelled to build Ms. Cross an aquarium. He does not explain why in Bottle Rocket Dignan leads a life of crime. Anderson puts these events on the screen and makes the audience perceive the answers to their questions.

Wes Anderson’s movies tend to dazzle, but there is no substance behind the special effects. Most of Life Aquatic takes place on Zissou’s boat, the Belafonte. The set is a cutaway boat which allows the camera to follow the characters from room to room, level by level throughout the ship. These tracking shots are amazing and the ship appears to be a child’s dream boat. It may look rough from the outside, but inside there is a spa, chemistry lab, library, full kitchen, and observatory. The scenes of the ship were probably my favorite in the movie. But it’s just a toy and Anderson is careful to never let it become more than a playhouse. Outside the ship there are wonderfully colored computer-animated sea creatures that blur the lines between imagination and reality. But for the most part they are not referenced (only the Jaguar shark that Zissou is searching for) nor are they really acknowledged. They’re just flashy. The same can be said of Max Fischer’s plays. They’re elaborate, expensive, and very over the top. They help characterize Max, but they don’t enlighten. In Bottle Rocket Dignan creates very fanciful and intricate schemes to rob people, but they blow up each time because he’s such a screw up. There’s an old saying that if you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you land among the stars. But for somebody as highly regarded as Wes Anderson, it sure would have been nice if he delivered more of a social commentary in his films. He’s sure got style, but that can only take you so far.

Chigurh- More Bitter than Sweet 2

Sometimes it’s fun to root for the villain. I think in some movies the bad guy is often cooler than the hero. The same cannot be said about Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. In that movie the Coen’s managed to create one of the most despicable, disconnected characters I’ve ever seen.
The leading reason for this is that Chigurh is a psychopath. Of this I am convinced, and to be honest that is probably the friendliest diagnosis anybody should give him. The character’s lack of emotion makes it impossible to connect in any way with him. What makes the movie frustrating for me is that Chigurh never pays for his crimes. He never gets caught, he doesn’t die, and the two times where he sustained injuries he didn’t really show any pain. But after killing innocent people (some for no reason at all) and generally over-doing his part in making the world a worse place, shouldn’t something bad happen do him?
Perhaps this is a lesson that the world is not fair. I personally (and optimistically) reject this viewpoint that the Coen’s are trying to teach us because nothing is that bad.

Chigurh- More Bitter than Sweet

Sometimes it’s fun to root for the villain. I think in some movies the bad guy is often cooler than the hero. The same cannot be said about Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. In that movie the Coen’s managed to create one of the most despicable, disconnected characters I’ve ever seen.
The leading reason for this is that Chigurh is a psychopath. Of this I am convinced, and to be honest that is probably the friendliest diagnosis anybody should give him. The character’s lack of emotion makes it impossible to connect in any way with him. What makes the movie frustrating for me is that Chigurh never pays for his crimes. He never gets caught, he doesn’t die, and the two times where he sustained injuries he didn’t really show any pain. But after killing innocent people (some for no reason at all) and generally over-doing his part in making the world a worse place, shouldn’t something bad happen do him?
Perhaps this is a lesson that the world is not fair. I personally (and optimistically) reject this viewpoint that the Coen’s are trying to teach us because nothing is that bad.

Hollywood Altman-Style Does Not Paint a Pretty Picture

So I've decided to take this blog in a totally new direction: one that is completely superficial and lacking in intellectual depth.

Just kidding.

But now that I've gotten the worst out of the way hopefully it won't sting as bad when I tell you what I'm ACTUALLY going to write about. The truth is this constant theme throughout Altman's movies continually distracted me from enjoying any of them. It bothered me so much, that I cannot come up with anything else to write about (assuming that even that would be worthy of a place on this well-established blog). What I'm getting at is,

Did anybody else notice how damn UGLY each of Altman's leading actors were??

I don't know what Robert Altman did to make Elliot Gould look as bad as he did in The Long Goodbye. He looked like the actor that plays the Geico cavemen. I hardly recognized him because he looked like a pit-bull. There's a picture in my health class that shows what happens to the inside of your body when you smoke and the poster recreates that image on somebody's face. In Elliot Gould's case, the chain smoking clearly killed his face.

I can forgive Altman for all the uggos in Nashville considering the time and place the movie was shot. I wouldn't expect him to hire male models for a movie in which the main setting is the Southern United States (no offense to the hicks). But the thick seventies glasses combined with mullets just don't do anything for me.

Altman tried too hard to create realism in The Player by casting greasy movie executives. Tim Robbins is probably the best-looking man in any of these movies (I mean that in the straighest way possible) and that says a lot for the early 90's. But it bothered me for the entire movie that his eyes seem waaaay too close together and his forehead appears to be plotting the conquest of his rest of Robbins' face (the ratio at the time of the Player seemed to be 1:1 forehead to face).

So maybe I left the superficial part in, but I truly did come up with this while analyzing the films. People will argue that Hollywood is obsessed with pretty movie stars, but clearly Altman is not part of that.

Its to bad he wasnt born today!

Who ever pushed Kurosawa to make color films is amazing!! in Ran every shot was one amazing picture the color in everything was phenomenal and over the top beautiful. i hope he didn't play with the coloring in the camera because the scenery in Ran makes me want to travel to Japan so bad! I want to take the roll of film and take the individual frames and urn some of them into amazing photographs. I wonder if his previous films would have been just as amazing if they were in color as well, if they would have helped his film to be as visually enjoying as Ran was.
I feel that the ending scene when the blind man is alone on top of this huge cliff with this almost angry/ strangely peaceful sky in the background. I think this scene is visually interesting and visually different in that we start out at only seeing his shadow. Where as in other shots looking that away from the subject we can still see details and faces. But in this scene we only see shape and body form. It is almost emphasizing that we too are just as blind as the man on the cliff. That like the blind man our vision is also restricted. Also supporting the dismantling of everything of a hero losing everything even the human senses.

- Jennifer K

It’s raining cats and dogs! Oh wait, it’s a Kurosawa movie…

Kurosawa’s movies are deep in how they portray a hero, but one of their most obnoxious pitfalls is Kurosawa’s choice to over-dramatize weather effects. Throughout the whole entire Kurosawa unit I was reminded of a humorous quote from Wikipedia. When Kurosawa met John Ford , Ford commented that Kurosawa likes to use rain. K responded saying that, “you’re paying a lot of attention to my films.” Well Kurosawa, you’re wrong. Anybody who watches one of your films will have picked up by the end of it that the weather is completely ridiculous. Kurosawa over dramatizes a lot of things in his movies often for artistic effect (like when Lady Kaede had her head chopped off and her blood literally painted the walls). But the weather effects to me do not always serve an artistic purpose. In Yojimbo I think they seriously had to have lined up the entire street with fans and blowers in order to get the wind that powerful. These types of thought crept up on my while I was watching the movies and actually prevented me from enjoying parts of the films. And absolutely nobody wants to see an old Japanese man’s upper thighs. Just nobody. Keep the wind to yourself Kurosawa.

Future Machines: Real Life Future

I must be a machine or I have a ‘bittersweet’ heart. I watched this movie with some other girls and they got all sappy for the way the ending turned out I liked it but nothing worth getting emotional over. I really enjoyed this movie considering the reputation I hear of Woody Allen and how much of a creep human he was. I do like his combination of comedy, drama, and fiction I thought it was put together well and really made the movie ‘pop’. It is a love story, real world vs. the world of Hollywood / screen. I was thinking about this story idea, the bigger basic story concept… how a man leaves his world to be with this woman. Sounds a bit familiar! The story line of stereotypical forming relationship in most of today’s romantic female viewpoint sitcoms but kind of true to what women want (a man to come to change to their tastes or location i.e. less work/change for the woman)

Rita: Go with Tom! He's got no flaws!

Its ironic how if he had no flaws then how is him not being real not a flaw. I don’t know where these other characters minds were but they mostly seem a bit for the moment and not so much for the long term future. Kind of this go for it attempt. I live for the moment but I also don’t like to look at relationships with people as a life moment thing to have. I guess it depends where you place what is important to you. what's life all about anyway?

- Jennifer K

Annie Hall

One of the funniest movies i have seen in a long time! The humor is so different then the humor in movies today. Is it because I am Jewish and the character is also Jewish, and his character i actually see his whinny sense of character as amusing because I have grown up to humor this. OR... is this another genre of comedy in itself? Annie Hall I do not think was necessarily written as a documentary of her life but of Alvy's life looking at hers. I liked seeing Annie Hall from this point of view because the story did not turn into her complaining or her frustration with her relationship but a point of view from Alvy's eye on what she was feeling.

Favorite scene and perfect representation of the kind of humor (I enjoyed) in Annie Hall:

The scene where Alvy and Annie are in the movie theatre line and this annoying guy is behind him spitting down his neck talking about his opinions of movies. And there Alvy is getting rained on and he gets so fed up that he walks to the camera and yells at the audience in frustration. This is awesome! Out of no where he breaks the story line and talks to the audience. The the best thing still come when he pulls out the director the spitting guy was analyzing out from the right side of the screen and proves the spitting guy wrong to get him to shut up. And there Alvy goes, "Don't you just wish life was like this," so honest and blunt.

- Jennifer K

Purple Rose of Cairo is a Treasure for All

“Life’s too short to waste time thinking about life. Let’s just live it.”

Truer words have never been spoken. These are the words Tom Baxter used to try to woo his fan Cecilia in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo. Tom Baxter is a movie character who leaves his film partway through a movie (crazy, I know) to learn about the real world. He falls in love with a down on her luck woman who’s come to see his film five times. The quote above was from when Tom tried to persuade Cecilia that it’s ok to love him even though he’s imaginary. In the context of the movie it’s a bit of a stretch, but in the real world the quote is quite applicable. Too often do we get caught up in what we’re doing that we forget to enjoy ourselves while we’re doing it. It’s easy in life to stop paying attention to the little things that make life such a joy. In the Purple Rose of Cairo Allen makes you think. This is just one quote of many from a very thought provoking movie. It’s the type of movie that after the credits roll you wonder just how much was real and just how much was imaginary. To me I think it’s certainly worth a second viewing.

Alfred Hitchcock

Over dramatized characters? ... Ah who isn’t in that business?

If it weren’t for the TIMELY stunning BLONDE women in these films I don’t know how else Hitchcock would have gotten away with such portrayal of a woman. Kidding (Sorta!), Alfred had some pretty interesting ideas of what role women played in a relationship but just a curious question? What did Alfred really see or expect from women…Did he have bad obsessive women all over him or did he just fantasize about women who would change for the man or were these his ideals of the perfect woman? Maybe not intended, but, the characters in Rear Window and Vertigo were a bit pathetic! Not that they were perfectly pathetic (not in the bad way entirely). I believe these films would not be as enjoyable today if it weren’t for lines like:

Judy: If I let you change me, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love me?
Scottie: Yes. Yes.
Judy: All right. All right then, I'll do it. I don't care anymore about me.

I mean is she not on her knees or what! But I guess I’m not from times like those so who am I to talk about the norms and expectations/pressures women were under then.

I also have another suspicion… what kind of drug influence did Alfred Hitchcock experience while/prior to making Vertigo. Seriously! I mean my best guess- he was apart of the California crowd (considering Vertigo did premiere in San Francisco). We are entering the early 60’s where marijuana hasn’t quiet yet hit the masses like they did during Woodstock. And cocaine, heroin was very popular during the break of the 60’s. When you look at other famous people in California, during that time, you will notice a definite drug influence. For instance look at Ray Charles: definite drug community. Just my thought that possibly Vertigo was ‘another’ little experiment that Alfred had that influenced his visual presentation in this specific film! No disrespect, just maybe this is the origin of some of the scenes from Vertigo.

-Jennifer

Hitchcock: the beginning of the end of an original idea

As I watched through the three Hitchcock films and the various clips from his other movies, I couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of déjà vu. I felt as though I had seen many of the same story lines and plot devices used before. Lady stabbed in the shower…that one looks familiar. Birds attack… I’ve seen that one before in cartoons. Then it occurred to me that my timeline was incorrect and Hitchcock was the one who came up with these ideas in the first place. I never made the connection before, but now that I’ve seen some of his movies, I’m starting to notice how great an influence Alfred Hitchcock had on the film world. His mark can be seen in many modern day cartoons, TV shows, and movies (some of which are just remakes of his films). Hitchcock was the master of suspense and those techniques he invented to tell his stories are still being used today.

So how do you like your eggs?

I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist
and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the
doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I
need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about
relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and...
but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the
eggs.

These are the parting thoughts from Alvy Singer, the main character in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Alvy is a New York comedian who falls in love with a girl named Annie Hall. The movie works as a narrative to all of Alvy’s relationships and his feelings towards love in general. If the quote above is any indication, he’s witty, funny, but a bit of a pessimist.

After having not really enjoyed watching Allen in Mighty Aphrodite, I must concede that I now can understand how great an actor he truly was/is. Annie Hall won best picture at the Oscars in 1977 (note: this is a Woody Allen about 20 years younger than his character in Mighty Aphrodite) and it’s easy to see why when you have such believable characters. Allen knows what kind of characters he is and he casts himself perfectly in Annie Hall (short, angry, witty, and Jewish).

But the thing that’s best about Annie Hall is how Allen depicts modern relationships and the crazy, memorable events we take out of them. The film ends with a montage of all the greatest scenes from Alvy and Annie’s life together. We see the first time the met at the tennis court, we see them struggle to make lobster for dinner after the lobsters break out of the bag, we see them try cocaine (which Alvy sneezes everywhere), and many other memories. Allen makes a valid point that relationships are irrational, crazy, and absurd, but he forgets that they’re also exciting, adventurous, and happy. And that’s why we need the eggs.

Mighty Aprhodite

Where in science is human intelligence connected with family genes? Lenny, the father of a brilliant adopted son Max, is out on a search for his assumed ‘brilliant’ mother. Lenny meets the mother finding that she is a not so bright prostate. Now I don’t mean to be awful and say this for all adopted children, but, if the parents were genesis just like Max wouldn’t you think that such brilliant parents wouldn’t put their child up for adoption. And now that I look into this topic, it says on a couple adoption information websites that most children who are put up for adoption come from a troubled and/or unplanned parent/s. So what I am wondering is… Was Lenny really expecting to find these brilliant parents at the other end of the rope? Because I know how much we all like the saying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree but that doesn’t mean the tree isn’t sitting on a hill and the apple did fall near the tree and thus rolled far down the hill away from that tree.
Though this movie is quiet uplifting and I would agree that Woody Allen made this subject very interesting on many levels. The character choice is much in my favor. Generally Woody Allen hires his characters to be played by people who can become or are that part, that he isn’t just hiring another actor/ actress. I believe movies are much more enjoyable when characters are

cast by talent rather then by name.

-Jennifer

Now I ain't sayin' she's a golddigger, but that dude's really old!

Sex sells. Romance is what drives many of our favorite movies and TV shows. It’s the story that every writer and director can turn to because we the viewers like to see our own romantic troubles mirrored on the silver screen. Mighty Aphrodite (1995), directed by Woody Allen, is a film about a New York sportswriter, Lenny, and his search for the birth parents of his adopted son Max. But the movie takes a dramatic turn when we learn that Max’s birth mom is a prostitute/porn star (whose lack of intelligence begs the question why is Max so brilliant?).
Up to this point I think anybody can see the comedy in this film and find it humorous, but the drawback that makes this movie a pinch too disgusting for my taste is that the leading actor is PLAYED BY Woody Allen himself. The film introduces the viewer to a romance between the 60-something year old Woody Allen and the less-than-half-that age Mira Sorvino. Perhaps what makes this more distasteful is that any informed viewer can see how Allen might have thought up this storyline from his own life and the publicized relationship he had with his “stepdaughter”. Even without the back story, these types of relationships are not things people pay to see at the movies. Kenneth Turan sums this up in his review perfectly saying,

And though Allen's fascination with older men/younger women relationships has
yielded successes like "Manhattan" and "Husbands and Wives," the older he gets
the more uncomfortable these liaisons are to watch. And throwing in the
venerable male fantasy of getting involved with an attractive prostitute adds to
the off-putting taste that not even a finely tuned sense of humor can totally
erase.

Woody Allen straddles a fine line in this movie and unfortunately the film is slightly more vulgar than it is funny.