Quick Film Snob Focus: Mr. President

If you happened to have your television turned on last night, or looked at a newspaper this morning, you may have heard that the President gave a little speech yesterday, and no, it wasn't about the iPad.

Obama delivered the address in his typical Obama style, and it got me thinking about how the office of the Presidency has been portrayed in film, as any movie featuring POTUS usually has them delivering at least one speech with some serious gravitas. With no further ado:

President: Danny Glover as Thomas Wilson (2012), Bill Pullman as Thomas J. Whitmore (Independence Day).

Movies: Roland Emmerich's disaster pics "2012" and "Independence Day"

Style: Both Presidents are family men that are faced with ridiculous pressure, be it aliens or Mayan prophecies. Pullman responds by rousing the troops and flying a jet, Glover responds by taking one for the team and getting wiped off the face of the earth by the USS John F Kennedy.

Typical Quote: "I'm a combat pilot, Will. I belong in the air."

Most Like: George W Bush likes to think of himself as a combat pilot, but was more likely to be swept away by the proverbial tide in execution of his duties.

President: Alan Alda as an unnamed President

Movie: Michael Moore's foray into scripted comedy and satire, as well as John Candy's last screen performance, "Canadian Bacon".

Style: Comically inept. His aides and generals run the show, and he's better suited for hosting a talk show than running the country - the end credit titles inform us he began hosting "Good Morning, Cleveland" after losing his bid for re-election.

Typical Quote: "It's time to turn off that war machine, and turn on our children."

Most Like: Although there are similarities to 43, Alda's goofy innocence screams Jimmy Carter.

President: Kevin Kline as presidential impersonator-turned-President Bill Mitchell

Movie: Ivan Reitman's 1993 presidential rom-com "Dave".

Style: Practical, smooth-talking, no-nonsense. 'Dave' always is able to cut the tension with some quick wit.

Typical Quote: [when balancing the budget]: "I don't want to tell some eight-year-old kid he's got to sleep in the street so somebody can feel better about their car. Do you want to tell them that?"

Most Like: Last night B.O. had a lot of straight talk and quick wit too.

It's awards season! Why I didn't have a list of picks for the Golden Globes

Ricky Gervais, doing what he does best: making people uncomfortable

It must be January.

The celebrite are rallying around a common cause (Haiti, licking Cameron's balls), wearing designer clothing, and giving Katie Holmes a chance to show her face in public. It's awards season, people, and Hollywood will not stop patting its back until after "Wolfman" has entered and left the theaters.

You may have asked yourself why, oh why, did this internet sage/court jester not weigh in on the Golden Globes with a list of picks prior to the ceremony?

The easy answer is I am fucking lazy.

The other answer is that even though I saw over 30 films released in 2009, I saw only a fraction of the movies that were up for awards last week.

I haven't seen "Precious" and it's vomit-inducing gorging of KFC, I haven't seen Jeff Bridges in his asshole country singer with a heart of gold performance in "Crazy Heart", didn't see the pirouetting madness of "Nine". Didn't see "An Education", "A Simple Man", "It's Complicated", "Julie & Julia", "The Blind Side", "(500) Days of Summer", "Invictus", "The Messenger", "The Last Station", "The Informant!", or "The Fantastic Mr. Fox", to name just a few several.

To make judgments on all the nominees even though I've only seen a fraction of the films up for awards would feel, at the very least, disingenuous.

Therein lies the problem with these awards, specifically the Oscars. Most of the people voting on the awards have likely not seen all the movies in question, and in turn tend to vote on either word of mouth (Marion Cotillard winning for "La Vie en Rose") or marketing (the frustrating Best Picture win of "Crash"). These awards are no more a yardstick of artistic merit than is any middle school student council race a yardstick of sound fiscal policy for the spring dance.

I've long since grown jaded with the awards season in Hollywood, but, not to sound like a broken record, I was still rather surprised and disappointed that James Cameron won the one-two punch over ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow for Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, the former being the visually impressive but largely lackluster sci-fi epic "Avatar", the former being a gritty, intelligent, and visceral tale of a bomb demolition squad in Iraq, "The Hurt Locker". At least Cameron gave props to Bigelow, as he has ever since her film began making the rounds early last year. This was especially surprising inasmuch the Globes often recognize the smaller pictures that walk away empty-handed on Oscar night; the implications of Cameron's win at the Globes could mean a multitude of things I'll try to deconstruct after March 7th.

As I would have suggested for the Globes, I'll likewise suggest for the Oscars. Don't watch it for the winners.

Watch it for the hosts.

"Big Fan": who said sports movies need sports?

Earlier this year, Face of the Alternative Comedy Movement, Patton Oswalt, was a guest on the superlative podcast "I Love Movies" with Doug Benson. The conversation took a brief detour from waxing philosophical about which episodes of MASH suck and whether Pacino has given himself brain damage with hair product to Patton's current projects, which included a highly-anticipated indie venture written and directed by "The Wrestler" scribe Robert Siegel.

The movie was "Big Fan". Reviews were favorable. It had recently been announced that the Academy was expanding the best picture category to ten nominees, in an effort to both call back to the glory days of Hollywood and make the awards ceremony last longer than the NBA playoffs. It was suggested, only half-jokingly, that "Big Fan" might be a dark horse contender for the Academy's biggest prize.

I checked out the trailer. As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm a huge Patton Oswalt fan. I'm a sucker for indie drama/black comedies. I could not wait for this movie to come out.

It was going to play for one night in Chicago, at the Music Box theater. Robert Siegel and Patton Oswalt were going to be there for the screening and a Q&A.

I was out of town.

If ever you want to make a film snob experience heartbreak, this is not a bad way to go.

It seemed as though I would have to wait for the DVD to come out, but as fortune would have it, I received an offer to get a screener thanks to a previous sports-related stomping ground of mine.

If ever you want to make a film snob experience elation, this too is not a bad way to go.

On the eve of the DVD release of "Big Fan", my ISF co-editor and I sat down with a screener. My anticipation for the movie had been building for months, not unlike waiting for the Super Bowl to learn what the Neon was. Unlike that disappointing revelation, however, "Big Fan" delivered the goods.

The movie follows Patton Oswalt as Paul Aufiero, a Staten Island loser with a dead-end job as a parking lot attendant. The only thing that interests him in life is the New York Football Giants, and their star linebacker, Quantrell Bishop. His mother, whom he still lives with, wishes he would take after his sister or lawyer brother instead of spending his evenings calling into the local sports talk radio show to sputter out scripted rants and raves intended to deflate the tauntings of caller Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport).

When Paul and his buddy Sal (Kevin Corrigan, the disgruntled house-party host in "Superbad") spot Bishop outside a local pizza joint, they follow him around New York in the hopes of meeting him and saying 'hi'. The meeting does not go quite as planned - Paul ends up in the hospital, and Bishop is suspended until a police investigation of their meeting is complete. Paul decides he can't remember what happened at the club in the hopes Bishop can retake the field and push the G-Men into the playoffs.

"Big Fan" is a focused character study that is simultaneously heartbreaking and bleakly hysterical. Paul is not only an outsider when it comes to his hero, he's an outcast in his own family, and he even struggles to fit in with his fellow Giants fans. He spends game days awkwardly trolling tailgates at the Meadowlands before watching the game in the parking lot with Sal. He's so ostracized from the only thing he loves, we don't even see a single snap of pigskin the duration of the taught 87-minute runtime; instead, we get to watch Oswalt's expressions as he feels the pain and joy of his team's up and downs.

As a character study, we're able to both sympathize and pity Oswalt's Paul. His single-minded fanaticism is oddly admirable, but also tragically pathetic as he really has nothing else in his life, and doesn't seem capable of much more even if he wanted it (perhaps best illustrated by his grimly amusing efforts to conduct legal research on Google). The lengths Paul goes to for his team, and the passion painted (literally and figuratively) on his face for the Giants' last game of the regular season, questions the dark places frenzied sports fans can sink to, whether it's booing Santa Claus or tearing off the testicles of a rival team's supporter.

Siegel's directorial debut is refreshingly focused and restrained, both a taught thriller and dark comedy, driven by Oswalt's bold performance. With the Oscar pool wide open for 10 nods, there's a definite chance it will sneak into the running, and if it does, a Best Actor nomination could be in the works for Patton Oswalt, "Big Fan"'s ironically short and fat star.*

"Big Fan" comes out on DVD this Tuesday.

TOO MUCH: the movie was 87 minutes - unless Andy Warhol is directing, that's not a lot of time for fluff

COULD HAVE USED MORE: one more scene like the one wherein Corrigan tries to wean Oswalt off of Mountain Dew

FILM SNOB NOTE: Jonathan Hamm, who plays Quantrell Bishop, is not to be confused with Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper on "Mad Men". Helen Reddy's "Delta Dawn" and John Prine's "Sweet Revenge" both serve as great black-comedy punchlines.

IHYFM RATING: FOUR AND A HALF out of FIVE MEHS. It's a small-scale story that doesn't try to be more than it is; effective filmmaking that is terrifically entertaining.

IF YOU SAID THIS WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE, I'D THINK: Whatever your team is, that's my team too.

*I almost made it without making that pun. I am a total hack.

Still waiting for the "Avatar" backlash

From AvatarSucks.com

I thought I knew the internet. I thought that it would be only a matter of time before message boards, blogs, and Youtubes were flooded with masses of disgruntled film fans blasting Cameron for the silly "Dances With Wolves" plot, terrible characters and dialogue, and worse-than-high-school-drama-club acting (don't believe me? Go to 2:48).

The internet has, along with the rest of the world, let me down. "Avatar" has grossed almost $400 million to date domestically, and when those numbers are added to the international box office returns, "Avatar" shoots to over $1 billion dollars earned. For the time being, it doesn't show any signs of slowing.

Collectively, we're about as artistically discerning as an infant being taunted with a dangling set of car keys.

What worries me the most about the success of "Avatar" isn't that people are going to see it - in its theatrical run roughly the same amount of domestic viewers saw "Transformers 2" - it's that the movie-going public seems to be hailing it as one of the best movies ever, and that the Hollywood establishment, in their infinite wisdom, will undoubtedly try to recapture financial lightning in the bottle with motion-capture CGI epics that don't pay much attention to story or characters but are still advertised as high art.

As I said in my original review, "Avatar" is pretty to look at, and the 3D experience is impressive, but it is ultimately a very shiny package for an empty box. The characters are of the most simplistic background and motivations, the plot is tired, predictable, and lacking in any substantial depth or emotional relevance.

Compare "Avatar" to Cameron's 1989 underwater epic "The Abyss". There are a lot of similarities - military aggression versus scientific research, alien species under threat of annihilation, and yes, unprecedented computer technology was used to bring the film to the screen. The difference between the two films is that the story and characters of "The Abyss" drive the movie. No, the characters are not richly developed, but they are certainly more fleshed-out than the absolute cookie-cutter stars of "Avatar". So far is the plot is concerned, there's a lot more going on in "The Abyss", especially in the excessively long yet superior director's cut. Even though both films have bleeding-heart messages (and both start with the letter "A"!), "The Abyss" works because it's focused on the two main characters repairing their marriage and in turn saving the world in the manner of Sodom. The story and characters of "Avatar" pale in comparison. Just as infuriatingly, "The Abyss" occasionally has a sense of humor about itself, whereas "Avatar" takes itself more seriously than does a teenage poet.

The other significant worry about the momentum of "Avatar" is this year's Academy Awards, where there will be ten contenders for the prestigious - and meaningless - award for Best Picture. There is a distinct possibility that "Avatar" and Cameron will be up against the fantastic "The Hurt Locker", directed by ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow (Cameron, though, has been a vocal supporter of Bigelow's drama all year). I am afraid there's a real chance that big-budget CGI will triumph over low-budget visceral character-driven action and drama when it comes time for the Oscars. This discussion has been ongoing this week at Slate's Movie Club, and as Roger Ebert stated, "should Avatar snatch that Oscar away, it will be because it grossed zillions of millions, not because it's better".

That is what is at the core of my curmudgeonly objections to "Avatar". Film is, as is the case with any art-form, subjective. I have long since come to terms with the fact that I am an unapologetic snob, and not everything that I appreciate will be accepted by the masses, and likewise what pleases the masses will not necessarily impress me. In this case, though, I feel like the case against the film is so clear, so obvious, yet the masses have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the incessant marketing and glimmering visuals, and are hailing this as one of the best movies ever made.

I've seen the emperor's new clothes for what they really are. I hope you do, too.

"Up In The Air": let George Clooney jump-start your existential crisis

Jason Reitman has had a distinct advantage as a young filmmaker. It's likely easier to find your artistic voice and master the art of visual storytelling when your father is Ivan Fucking Reitman.

Jason's first two films, “Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno”, were highly polished works in terms of their characters and storytelling, thanks to source material from TYFS author Christopher Buckley and Stripper With a Thesaurus Made of Gold, Diablo Cody. They were crisp in their presentation as well, as Reitman has a good sense of how to use the camera and editing effectively. Good storytelling and visual aesthetics, I've heard, are mildly important to the overall impact of a film, and Reitman has a handle on both.

“Up In The Air”, loosely based on the novel by Walter Kirn, is no different. From the opening credits, stylishly shot and edited footage of clouds and landscapes from the perspective of an air traveler ironically set to a funky cover of “This Land is Your Land” by Sharon Jones, the film embodies Reitman's playful style of filmmaking.

Our story begins with George Clooney, who plays the worst kind of management consultant. Rather than being brought in to help analyze a company's workflow, he's brought in for the sole purpose of firing employees the bosses are too big of pussies to let go themselves. He spends most of his life on the road, traveling from city to city day by day, and predictably doesn't have any meaningful relationships in his life, even with his immediate family. Trouble starts brewing when a young hotshot, Anna Kendrick, comes in to make Clooney's company more streamlined and economically efficient by making all of the firings take place over webcams. As his company seems poised to lose its personal touch and usefulness for gents like Clooney, he meets a woman, Vera Farmiga, with a similar lifestyle to his, and begins to wonder if his philosophy of living as light as possible, in both your possessions and relationships, is really the best way to go.

What we're left with is an almost-chilling referendum on what we all value in life. What Clooney must discover for himself is whether all the exclusive travel perks and miles are worth it if he doesn't have anyone special to share them with. This hits the hardest for Clooney when he finally caves into attending his sister's wedding and has a glimpse of what he might be missing.

There are no easy answers in “Up In The Air”, though, and Reitman treats his viewers with respect by not taking a Capra-esqe way out of the web he's spun. Although there aren't definitive solutions offered, at the end of the film you will have quite a bit to think about, and the biggest credit to Reitman is that he's made you smile every step of the way.

TOO MUCH: Reitman knows what he's doing – there's not much fat to be trimmed here.

COULD HAVE USED MORE: Small bit roles from Zach Galifianakis, JK Simmons, and Sam Elliott left me wanting more.

FILM SNOB NOTE: The montage of people talking about their experience of losing their jobs were actual people from the St. Louis area who responded to a call for documentary interviewees Reitman placed in the paper.

IHYFM RATING: FIVE out of FIVE MEHS. Will it as be enduring as “The Godfather” or “Lawrence of Arabia”? No. Is it one of the better movies of 2009? Yes. It's definitely worth seeing.

IF YOU SAID THIS WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE, I'D THINK: You appreciate the irony in the fact I would have seen this movie weeks earlier if my consultant friends hadn't been on the road.

"Groundhog Day": ring in the New Year with a movie that takes place in perpetual February

Yes. I am aware Groundhog Day is in February, and New Year's Eve/Day spans December and January. No need to be a wise-ass here, unless we're talking about "2012".

There are important similarities between the two - both holidays are completely arbitrary, they are coupled with unbearable cold north of the Mason-Dixon, and depending what circles you roll with, they are great excuses for excessive drinking.

Groundhog Day follows Bill Murray as a cynical Pittsburgh weatherman who travels to Punxsutawney with new producer Andie MacDowell to cover the ceremony of Punxsutawney Phil looking for his shadow on February 2nd. Due to inclement weather, they have to spend the night in Pux Punksa the town, and when Bill wakes, it's once again February 2nd. It's not clear why this is happening, or for how long he'll continue to be trapped in the day-long loop. After going through a suicidal spell, a bout of depression, and exploring the material benefits to knowing the exact second when a bag of money will be left unattended, Murray makes it his mission to have the perfect day with MacDowell, as she may be everything he's ever wanted.

Herein lies the moral that made me think of Groundhog Day on the eve of New Year's Eve. Murray has seemingly unlimited chances to get every detail of his day with MacDowell right, from ordering her cocktail of choice to mastering jazz piano. It's a long road for Murray with multiple pitfalls. The most important one is in the following scene, when Murray is just going through the motions of what was, on previous evenings, a spontaneous and romantic rolling of a snowman.

New Year's is as good a time as any to catalog and reflect upon our recent successes and failings, but that reflection is meaningless without action. We have to learn from our shortcomings so we don't commit the same errors again (Murray eventually does), and likewise learn from our successes and make those right decisions again (Murray does this also). And, sometimes, as illustrated by a subplot with a homeless man, we must see that there are some things we simply cannot change. Regardless of the specifics of our own situation, we can't make the mistake Murray did on that one night with MacDowell and just go through the motions. To paraphrase the AA prayer, we must continually find the strength to change the things we can, accept the things we cannot, and seek the wisdom to know the difference. We don't get unlimited mulligans like Murray does, but luckily for us, life is more than two hours long.

Happy New Year, everyone. Here's hoping your next twelve months are filled with success, happiness, wisdom, and quality filmed entertainment.

TOO MUCH: The sequence of Murray perfecting his evening with MacDowell could have been trimmed, as could his "losing-his-mind" montage.

COULD HAVE USED MORE: Dare I say it, Chris Elliott as Murray's camerman could have had a few more quips.

FILM SNOB NOTE: Most of the film, which takes place in western Pennsylvania, was filmed in Woodstock, IL.

IHYFM RATING: THREE AND A HALF out of FIVE MEHS. It's about fifteen minutes too long, but still one of Harold Ramis' better comedies with a warm and fuzzy ending.

IF YOU SAID THIS WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE, I'D THINK: Familiarity is comfort for you. Or you'd rather watch Bill Murray as an asshole romantic comedy lead instead of an asshole sci-fi comedy lead, or an asshole dramedy lead, or a charming mental patient.

"Avatar": "FernGully", "Aliens", and "Dances With Wolves" had a circle-jerk

The internet is buzzing. The masses have spoken. According to the voting members of IMDB, James Cameron's return to the silver screen after a 12-year hiatus, Avatar (#21), is a better movie than Apocalypse Now (#36), Taxi Driver (#40), It's a Wonderful Life (#30), Sunset Blvd (#32), Lawrence of Arabia (#42), and Citizen Kane (#34).

The internet is filled with moronic addicts whose drug of choice is a bunch of tall slender blue women jumping around, making shit explode. Surprise, surprise: the masses are comprised of fucking idiots.

As I promised in my review of everything I had seen and still wanted to see from 2009, I begrudgingly packed my trusty Moleskine and a few cans of contraband soda into my jacket and braved a truly miserable Chicago afternoon to walk up to a ticket booth and say the phrase, "1 for 'Avatar', please".

I unwittingly timed my afternoon to attend a 3D screening, which even for a 3:20 showtime, cost me $14. Don't ever doubt I love my readers, folks.

As I found a seat in the back of the theater and donned my 3D glasses, adding me to the impromptu Rivers Cuomo lookalike convention, I reflected on everything I knew about "Avatar":

1. 20th Century Fox thought advertising a sci-fi action-adventure flick as "FROM THE DIRECTOR OF TITANIC" made sense.

2. Sam Worthington seems to be the go-to action movie hero of the moment, despite the fact his best acting trait seems to be "brood with strong jaw line".

3. I just paid $14 to watch what would happen if "Halo" and "FernGully" had a crack baby they beat mercilessly.

"Avatar" follows a paraplegic ex-Marine who travels to the planet Pandora to be a part of a private mining company. There's a very special mineral underneath Pandora's toxic atmosphere, "unobtainium", which, due to the protective native species of the Na'vi, is unobtainable. I hope you caught that subtlety, there.

Worthington's ex-Marine had a twin brother that was a pilot in the avatar program, which combines the DNA of a human and Na'vi into a remote-control humanoid. After his brother's untimely death, Worthington steps up to the plate to use the DNA-matched avatar, mainly so he can feel the sensation of running again. His mission is to gather information for the military contractors and try to embed himself with the natives, and see if he can convince them to allow their sacred lands to be mined.

The next two hours are essentially "Dances With Wolves" in space - Worthington falls in love with a tall blue lady (Zoe Saldana), and has a military-versus-science conflict straight out of "The Abyss" with Sigourney Weaver as Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Giovanni Ribisi plays Paul Reiser's role from "Aliens" as a mining exec that doesn't care about overrunning the natives to get his unobtanium, and Stephen Lang plays the hot-headed jarhead from any of Cameron's movies that just wants to kill. Worthington predictably grows to appreciate the native culture and vows to fight for its preservation.

The plot is as thin as the movie is long and the Na'vi are blue. The beats are predictable, and a few cheap screenwriting plants pay off in a way that will fool your average filmgoer into thinking there is a story beyond "boy turns into blue boy, falls for blue girl, fights with blue people against mean greedy white people".

How crass of me to desire an actual story and some characters to go along with my computer-generated wizardry. Call me old-fashioned.

The real star and draw of Avatar, namely, the CGI, is impressive. Using an incredibly detailed system of motion capture, from the actor's bodies to the movements of their facial muscles, Cameron has created the most expressive animated characters ever put on film.

Aside from the details of the facial movements and morphing the actor's facial features into their digital characters (Sigourney Weaver's avatar is the most striking in this regard), the graphics do not seem so ground-breaking. It's a video-game movie, albeit a very-well rendered one, but had I not been bombarded by news stories about the revolutionary graphics at play, I honestly do not think I would have been able to tell the difference. It's not a far cry from what we've seen in the latest "Star Wars" movies, "300", "The Lord of The Rings" trilogy, or any other effects-heavy film we've seen in the past decade, the main difference is that there is just so much of it.

Unintentionally seeing the film in 3D, I must admit, was a treat. Even though the plot was next to non-existent and the graphics mostly looked slightly better than a PS3 title, the gimmick of three dimensions made the viewing experience interesting inasmuch it was different. I didn't notice at first, but I found that throughout the movie I was periodically taking my glasses off momentarily to determine whether the film would be as stimulating without them. Aside from the obvious issue of double-vision, the answer was "no": without the extra "wow" factor from seeing the CGI rendered in 3D, the film would have seemed like just another CGI-heavy picture.

Watching "Avatar" was the cinematic version of eating a can of cake frosting: there's some guilty pleasure to be derived, but no nutritional value.

TOO MUCH: dependence on the graphics; hype; placing the subtitles at weird depths just because they could with 3D

COULD HAVE USED MORE: character development, plot... you know, those things that make movies interesting

FILM SNOB NOTE: I realize I sound as though I'm contradicting myself when I praise the rendered facial expressions of the avatars and Na'vi but pan the overall effect of the graphics. This is because I was always aware I was looking at CGI. One of the best CGI movies of the past few years - "Zodiac". You didn't even know that entire scenes were shot blue screen, for example:

Yes, I get that a period piece police procedural is not the same as a sci-fi popcorn flick, but to paraphrase Peter Griffin on "The Godfather", the CGI in "Avatar" insisted on itself. That pissed me off, because there was basically nothing beyond the imaging. Did you notice how I couldn't really hone in on anything to talk about when reviewing this movie? That's a problem if you can't say anything about something you spent two and a half hours watching.

IHYFM RATING: TWO out of FIVE MEHS. The amount of CGI in the film and the lengths Cameron went to get it is impressive, but there's nothing compelling about the story. All that glitters is not gold.

IF YOU SAID THIS WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE, I'D THINK: Either you're being ironic, or you're just an idiot.