Author Archives: Simon Hardy Butler

Skip’s Quips: Silent Running (of the Mouth)

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Blog Sketch 082813Raise your hand if you thought The Artist would usher in a new era of silent, black-and-white movies.

OK, I didn’t, either. But I can’t say I wasn’t hoping. We need a little dose of the past to get us schlepping toward the future, and a retro attitude toward the cinema wouldn’t hurt. It certainly didn’t for M. Truffaut and other members of la Nouvelle Vague.

True, The Artist was a standout—not perfect, but clever and entertaining … like some of the best silent movies. The worst, however, are akin to any other lousy film: awful. Just because something’s silent doesn’t mean it’s good. Or vice versa.

Still, the film showed that the genre could be revitalized for a new audience, with a novelty value transcended by a smart script and direction. The question is, will a few more irises and wipes make for self-conscious cinema? They’d have to be incorporated organically to avoid affectation, and that’s a tall order. Skilled directors need apply.

I’d suggest starting a dialogue about this, but I think I need a title card.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: The Ugly, Ambiguous Truth About Art

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613Back in the day, when I still thought good taste had nothing to do with opinion, I sat down with a dear friend of mine to watch the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera on video. Ed adored classical music, especially Puccini, and had such elevated sensibilities that he often preferred singers who were just a smidgen flat to more on-pitch, yet less idiosyncratic performers. He was so erudite that I thought he’d go ga-ga over Night, one of my favorite comedies and, in my opinion, an affectionate look at the opera world. If anything, he’d get the joke and, like me, want to see it over again in the future.

Once we got to the scene, however, where Harpo and Chico switch the sheet music for Il Trovatore with that of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” I knew my choice was ill-conceived.

“This is a travesty,” Ed said as the brothers tossed a baseball in the orchestra pit.

The takeaway: Not everyone likes the Marx Brothers. But there’s another takeaway, and it’s less definite. It’s the question of what’s good and what’s not, and how do we know if something’s art or junk?

Tommy Chong answered that hilariously in the movie After Hours as his character steals a statue containing Griffin Dunne’s hapless yuppie: “Art sure is ugly.”

It would be easier to assess if it always were.

The problem is, it’s not always anything. You can’t say: Art has this quality and this quality, so therefore it’s what it is. And it’s not always known at first sight, either; plenty of works are pooh-poohed when they first debut and only obtain recognition years later. The lexicon has no deadline.

To a certain extent, art should affect you greatly, as A Night at the Opera does to me; it makes me laugh, and I never get tired of watching it. Yet what of those who prefer other comedies—or those who like slightly off-pitch singers? Their opinions matter as much as mine … if not more.

I once attended an event where basketball legend Michael Jordan was asked by movie critic Gene Siskel what his favorite film was. “Friday,” Jordan ultimately said, to Siskel’s visible dismay.

I saw Friday. Some of it was amusing. Some of it was junky. Is that personal taste, or can I say with authority that it doesn’t hold a candle to Night? After all, Jordan liked it. Who am I to dispute him?

We live in a world where the word “genius” is applied indiscriminately, where a man can break bottles pointlessly on the street and attract a curious audience—as I observed with bemusement one day during a trip to Paris. Can anything be called art as long as there’s someone backing the claim? Is it just a popularity contest?

I don’t think so. But I can’t figure out why. All I know is that some people love the Marx Brothers, and some people don’t. I don’t understand their perspective, but I’m not them.

If I knew how to sing just a little bit flat, maybe I’d get the idea.

Skip’s Quips: Reflections on ‘The Terminator’

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Blog Sketch 082813I wish The Terminator were an enjoyable film.

Sure, it’s kinetic. Action-packed. Exciting. But enjoyable?

Frankly, I find flat, warm cream soda more appealing.

These ruminations popped up while I was watching the film recently on TV. And yes, I sat through the entire flick … which I hadn’t done in ages. I admired the snappy editing, the fierce car chases. Even the crisp dialogue seems tailored to speed things along. It’s a fast-moving, zippy movie.

But again: not enjoyable. Downbeat. Unpleasant. I guess that’s the point—it does, after all, concern the possibility of a post-apocalyptic future where unstoppable machines roam the earth killing humans. Yet there’s something dreary about the whole thing, even when you factor in the idea that it’s not completely hopeless … that those terminators can be beat. I don’t get that feeling while watching another seminal, dark sci-fi picture, Blade Runner, which has a more positive outlook. In that film, machines have a human side. They seek life, while the construct in The Terminator wants death.

That, in my opinion, is a big reason why I enjoy watching Blade Runner. The characters are more complex, and the antagonist isn’t evil. He, like Pinocchio, has humanity. The terminator doesn’t.

It’s easier, I think, to create film villains without nuance. You can drop sneering, classical music and other standard ingredients into the blender and mix. A three-dimensional villain, however, is a lot more difficult … but can add more flavor. Yes, that’s beside the point in The Terminator, but this missing ingredient makes it less entertaining.

And I just think of replicant Roy Batty’s final speech in Blade Runner to prove it.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: You’ll Know It When You Don’t See It

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613The  best scene, I think, in Whit Stillman’s arch but amusing movie Metropolitan is when the youthful, Marxist-leaning protagonist assuredly tells the girl he’s interested in that he only reads criticism—not the actual works being criticized.

What a kohlrabihead, right? The film even suggests he’s misguided … and, if I remember correctly, he goes against his own mantra later on in the movie to read a classic, non-criticism book.

We can learn something from this character. Though it’s not that great literature’s more important than great criticism (which we already know it is).

It’s that we have the freedom and ability to talk about works of art without experiencing them—just based on commentary, hearsay or whatever’s in the air. Expert criticism can prevent you from wasting time at a bad movie. Or from reading a horrible book. It’s preemptive … and you don’t have to feel guilty about not taking in something you know you’ll dislike.

Is there a chance you’ll miss something you would’ve enjoyed because the review indicated it’s bad? Sure. All reviewers have different perspectives, varying tastes. Yet our capacity to evaluate criticism means we can gravitate toward the ones who fit our own sensibilities best, giving us a framework for opinions without the burden of assessing the experiences in person.

Laziness? Nope. It’s a necessity–especially when it could prevent you from spending 15 bucks on a lousy film … and get you instead to drop that amount on a great one.

And yes, we can still think for ourselves. Critics aren’t mirror images. They are, however, useful when you want to familiarize yourself with something before you try it. It’s like a background check for entertainment. I don’t think we could do without it.

Perhaps the young protagonist in Metropolitan learned the error of his ways. We do need art in our lives, and criticism alone can’t fulfill that requirement. But it can help you avoid stuff that isn’t entertainment, and if that comes with the price of being opinionated about works you don’t see, I’m not gonna quibble. There’s so much in the world to experience these days, it’s helpful to pare things down to the necessities.

And I give props to the critics for that.

Skip’s Quips: Bad Lines in Good Movies

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Blog Sketch 082813No film is perfect, and even great movies have scenes or lines that could be better.

I was thinking about this recently while watching Ghostbusters on TV. It’s hardly a masterpiece, yet it remains a terrific comedy and has held up well nearly 30 years after its debut. Still, despite a sharp, hilarious script, it contains a line toward the end that disappoints me to this day: “I love this town,” shouted by Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddmore after the ‘busters save New York City from a supernatural catastrophe.

Blah. Surely there was a funnier way to express triumph than a maudlin acknowledgement of Gotham’s greatness.

Of course, it’s not a movie-breaker, but it brings to mind other frustrating lines from the cinema’s greatest flicks. For instance: the immortal “leave me alone” in Lawrence of Arabia, spoken with great self-pity by Peter O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence in a dialogue with Jack Hawkins’ General Allenby—who, as if in recognition of this pathetic order, notes that it’s a “feeble thing to say.” I guess it’s hard to count this in the annals of bad lines completely, as it’s followed up in an organic way, though it still rings overdone. So does a much-revered scene in the otherwise extraordinary film The Seven Samurai where Toshiro Mifune’s Kikuchiyo, charged by a dying woman with saving her baby, collapses into the stream surrounding the village and cries along with the infant, lamenting how the same thing happened to him. It’s just a bit too much in a movie noted for its tight script, though it does give some insight into the reckless character’s origins.

These are just a few examples. They don’t ruin the films overall. Yet it’s interesting to see how high our estimation is of them … if we can carp about lesser lines within. Further proof of the merits of these justly praised pictures.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: Why We Are the Makers of Manners

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613It’s now been a quarter-century since I last saw someone scream in the movie theater.

The rebel yell occurred in Manhattan during a showing of Kenneth Branagh’s intense, glorious Henry V, which had recently debuted. Crowded, hot and uncomfortable was the interior as a host of New Yorkers, squished together in narrow seats, silently watched the actor perform with the utmost passion. When it came to the famed St. Crispin’s Day speech, one of Shakespeare’s finest, the music went into crescendo mode. The theater listened. Branagh reached a climactic point.

And one man sitting in front of me pumped his fist high, like a champion weightlifter.

“Yeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” he screamed, louder than any Patrick Doyle melody.

We stared at him, surprised. Some of us laughed. Me, I smiled. I knew how he felt. He, like the rest of us, wanted to join Henry’s band of brothers. The speech was so well-acted that the guy forgot he wasn’t part of the English army at Agincourt.

I’ve never heard anything as raucous in a movie theater since. I’m proud—it was a unique cinematic experience. Yet it also tells us something about great art: that it’s able, at its best, to transform us, inspire us. That there’s nothing else as immersive … and we can happily disappear into the canvases we embrace.

Sometimes I wish I had done the same thing at that time. I certainly felt like doing it. I realize, however, that the moment belonged to the fellow in front of me, as well as Branagh, whose speech made the reaction possible.

And it’s better that way, I think. Movie magic couldn’t, in my opinion, have been better expressed.

Skip’s Quips: Nitpicking the Hearts of ‘Coronets’

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Blog Sketch 082813There’s a scene in the film Kind Hearts and Coronets that has troubled me for a while, and I’m not sure how to address it.

The bit occurs toward the end in a dialogue between debonair serial killer Louis Mazzini, who has murdered all of the members of his estranged D’Ascoyne family in line to inherit the dukedom before him, and Sibella, his conniving mistress, who has framed him for the supposed killing of her husband. Mazzini (played by Dennis Price), now behind bars, is asked by Sibella (Joan Greenwood) if he remembers the nursery rhyme “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,” which—in the form depicted in the movie—features an atrocious, offensive term used pejoratively to describe someone who is black. Both characters say the word, equating it with the people Mazzini has dispatched … something Sibella insinuates as part of her realization that his rapid rise to nobility isn’t natural.

So this is an issue. It’s a crucial scene, and the two protagonists, whom we’ve followed throughout the film, make these remarks in the casual way reserved for people lacking even a cursory understanding of racial sensitivity. Yet these are protagonists, not villains, and despite their despicable actions, also have likable qualities—ones that are essential to the film’s watchability.

Can we separate these traits from each other? Must we view them as either good or bad? I’m reminded of the mobster in The Godfather who is repulsed by the idea of selling drugs near schools but has no compunction about doing so to African-Americans and letting them “lose their souls.” He was a cut-and-dry villain, and the movie points that out. But Mazzini and Sibella are textured, flawed; their traits are mixed. Racism is one of their worst ones. Does that preclude us from enjoying their adventures as a whole?

One alternative is rooting for the characters such as the movie’s callous duke, who’s much worse, so that’s out. Another, however, is the affable, photography-mad nobleman who has done nothing wrong and is blown up in his lab by Mazzini. We’re forced to disagree with this decision and laugh at the incredible villainy, so perhaps we don’t have a choice.

And maybe that’s what bothers me so much—not being free to decide for myself whom to like or dislike. The movie makes the choice for us and does so ingeniously. One can make the argument that the offensive dialogue is in character and in keeping with the era in which the film takes place, but I wonder if that’s enough. Does that legitimize its use?

It’s a question I’ll need to continue asking as long as I watch and rewatch the film. Only great pictures deserve that kind of inquiry.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: Stop All the Clocks—’About Time’ Lags Behind

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613Time-travel movies are risky. Repeated situations and scenes can go nowhere unless they’re tweaked enough to convey something new. And you need an urgency informing the proceedings; if you’re going on a temporal journey of any length with a character—main or otherwise—it’s got to matter.

Richard Curtis’ latest flick About Time misses on all of those fronts.

The story of Tim, a young man (played by Domhnall Gleeson) who uses his ability to travel backward in time to foster romantic adventures and generally change things for the better in his life, this insufferably dull, mawkish film makes Rashomon look cursory in its depiction of the same story told in various ways. Yet temporal adjustments can’t explain the duration of a scene in which Tim’s wife (Rachel McAdams) asks for his opinion on an endless stream of outfits, nor can it shed light on the woefully underwritten characters peppering the film in an attempt to infuse it with charm and humor. (Tim’s obnoxiously free-spirited sister Kit Kat and bitter playwright landlord are two such examples, providing full servings of eccentricity without definition or context.)

The fact is, the movie lags. I didn’t care about the protagonists. And despite the addition of some by-the-book weeper ingredients—a devastating illness for Tim’s father (Bill Nighy) and alcoholism for his sister—the picture comes off as disingenuous, with manipulation being the takeaway. That it’s derivative is a lesser issue, though films such as Run Lola Run and Groundhog Day, which used the same idea more judiciously, can’t be blamed for AT‘s faults. This movie made all its miscues on its own.

Curtis, who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, has done sparkling work before, and every director produces a dud once in a while. But flicks such as About Time get me worried about the cinema. They suggest, in my opinion, that a touch of unreality can make up for other issues—script, direction, performances and the like—yet it’s not an effective substitute. The best time-travel (or any) movies take you back with them and make you want to come along. They move quickly and economically … like time itself.

And you don’t check your watch while viewing them. About Time, sadly, waits for everyone.

Skip’s Quips: In the Wake of Sacred Samurai

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Blog Sketch 082813The last thing we need is another movie based on the story of the 47 ronin.

But now we have one … starring Keanu Reeves, no less. And seemingly reimagined, with all sorts of supernatural goings-on.

I think we should reimagine the Declaration of Independence, while we’re at it. And maybe the signing of the Magna Carta.

Yes, it’s a famous story, and famous stories deserve to be retold. But we’ve already had perfectly good movies made of this tale, helmed by directors ranging from Kenji Mizoguchi to Hiroshi Inagaki. Do we really need another version—especially one that appears to meld the stylized grotesquerie of 300 with the tiresome posturing of The Matrix?

Someone please give me a nice Zeami Noh play to immerse my brain in.

Hollywood has always tweaked history to make it more cinematically palatable. Movies have to be entertainment, and that sometimes means the events transpiring onscreen don’t quite match those in real life. Yet there’s a distressing trend nowadays to completely overhaul venerated stories from our past while adding extraneous details—such as over-the-top violence—to get the desired audience.

The point is being missed. And as that’s happening, the films lose their value.

A strong director can help make this bitter medicine go down. Quentin Tarantino certainly worked wonders with Inglourious Basterds, as flawed as that movie was. But these films are cinematic fantasies, merely “inspired by” rather than “informed by,” and any attention to historical detail, I feel, is irrelevant. They’re to authenticity as reality TV shows are to life.

Hopefully, one day, we’ll have a based-on-true-events film come out without the trappings of revisionism. Perhaps we need a story so hallowed that any adjustments would be taboo.

I can’t think of any, however. I already know nothing’s sacred.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: Ah, Yes, I Remember It Poorly

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613Why is it that some not-so-great movies stay in the memory and other, much better ones often don’t?

For example: The Omega Man. Sloppy, mediocre science fiction. Yet I recall the images from this Charlton Heston zombies-on-the-loose gloomfest more than anything from a seminal sci-fier I enjoyed more, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

It ain’t easy to forget a giant robot named Gort. Or the famous mantra “Klaatu barada nikto.” And I certainly haven’t forgotten them. But for some reason, they’re not as defined as all of the unpleasantness pervading TOM.

That includes the script, by the way … which could’ve been a lot better, given the source material (Richard Matheson’s book I Am Legend).

Perhaps that’s the root of the issue—that memory often focuses on “what ifs” over “done right,” deserting the positives for second guesses. At least, in my case. The idea of something close to quality may trump actual quality in the mind, presenting a puzzle that continues to disturb at the cost of remembering more important works.

TOM isn’t the only flick that does this. Nixon, Turnabout, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane—all of these horrid films I remember all too well, though I don’t want to do so. And they all could’ve been watchable, though each would’ve needed something more than a touch-up. (In Fairlane‘s case, a full cinematic makeover would’ve sufficed.)

So how do I clear my mind of these film fiascos and replace them with memories of David Lean, Satyajit Ray, François Truffaut and the like? I know of only one way.

Watch more of their movies. Put Gort in the DVD player. And maybe repeat the words “Klaatu barada nikto” in my brain until I get it.

A mind’s a terrible thing to waste … on bad movies. No reason, then, to keep them stored with all of those good memories.