Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce: Brief Thoughts on Vertigo

Thanks to the Music Box Theater's 70mm Film Festival, I saw Hitchcock's Vertigo for the first time this afternoon.

• Vertigo's appearance in this series is something of a misnomer as it wasn't shot in 70mm but rather VistaVision, and was restored and converted into 70mm in 1996.  This probably matters more to film wonks than it does to me.
• 70mm supposedly adds more clarity and depth to the picture than 35mm; the depth of field in Vertigo is certainly impressive but I don't know if I would especially notice it otherwise.  What's most notable to me is how warm the colors are on the analog images.
• Cursory googling suggests that the Music Box seats 800 and the showing was nearly full, which was a pleasant surprise (the wait to buy tickets excepted).
• I preferred the spunky Barbara Bel Geddes to Kim Novak so I guess I'm crazy or something.
• For some reason, I missed the Hitchcock cameo.  Fail.
• Jimmy Stewart's obsessive behavior towards the end was curiously treated as laugh lines by a good portion of the audience.  This part of the film does dip a bit into melodrama, and I'd imagine that one or two Lifetime movies have borrowed Vertigo's plot.  Nonetheless, I couldn't help but think of Matt Zoller Seitz' recent article about modern audiences at a showing of From Russia With Love.
• I haven't seen a Hitchcock movie in several years so I can't say how it places amongst his filmography, but I enjoyed it.
• I'm not sure if it's at Greatest Film of All Time status either, though I prefer it to the technically proficient but mostly lifeless Citizen Kane, for what it's worth.
• Something something male gaze; something something feminist film theory.

Thoughts on Season 1 of Game of Thrones

Brief thoughts on the first season of HBO's Game of Thrones, from the vantage point of having read the first three books in George RR Martin's series:

It's hard to evaluate, since it's basically the first book verbatim.  Aside from a few scenes between supporting characters, most of Game of Thrones is lifted directly from the novel it's based on.  There's only one new character, for good reason - why would you add more characters to this series?  For a similarly good reason it would be hard to create entirely new plotlines, since the books are so densely plotted.  It makes me interested to read the Walking Dead graphic novels now, since I've heard that the tv show takes several detours from the comics.  I'd like to see what the AMC series chooses to add and ignore, and to what ends.

That said, it's a solid adaptation.  No roles are miscast, the characterizations are superb, the sets and costumes look great, and I never skipped over the opening credits sequence.  If you're going to adapt a book into a tv show without changing anything, you'd better get all the details right.  Aspects such as Peter Dinklage's performance have been (deservedly) exhaustively praised already, so I'll single out the design of the Eyrie (and while I'm at it, Kate Dickey as Lysa Arryn) and the brief appearance of David "Argus Filch" Bradley as Walder Frey.  The slight shuffling of chronology for the season finale works perfectly too: the scenes of Jon Snow heading beyond the wall followed by Dany becoming a true khaleesi are expertly scored and edited.

But it also suffers the faults of the book.  Oh, Theon Greyjoy, nobody cares about you.

I appreciate Starz' Spartacus series even more now.  Game of Thrones features some brief male frontal nudity but most of the naked parts are courtesy of topless prostitutes.  There's also a minor foray into gay male sexuality but it's nothing compared to a rather explicit lesbian prostitute romp.  There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but it's oh-so predictable. Something something gender politics, something something pay cable.  Spartacus is much more egalitarian about its nudity.  There are plenty of boobs, certainly, but there's a fair amount of man-ass and dong, too, if that's your thing.  On one hand, it seems like the show is written by a sexually-depraved bisexual 15-year-old.  On the other hand, that promiscuity welcomes the baser pleasures of both sexes and all persuasions with open arms.

How the hell are they going to film the rest of the books?  There are some ungodly expensive battle scenes in the second and third books.  Who knows how they'll play out on a television budget.

Downton Abbey vs. Revenge

Although PBS is airing the last episode of Downton Abbey's second season (er, "series") tonight, Brits got to watch it in 2011.  Our cousins across the pond were kind enough to inform us Yanks that, with the exception of tonight's Christmas special, the second series as a whole wasn't that good.  And while it hasn't been unwatchable, they've got a point.  Compared to the first series, the second series of Downton is incredibly frustrating to watch.  The show breezed through three years (including most of World War I) in eight episodes - a pacing completely foreign to fans of Lost and The Wire - and hung unfortunate plotlines on beloved characters.  Noble Mr. Bates suffered indignity after indignity thanks to his ex-wife, who was seemingly airlifted in from Melrose Place.  Matthew Crawley's fiancee Lavinia existed solely to fail the Bechdel Test.  And speaking of Mr. Crawley, I wouldn't be surprised if the legions of Matthew/Mary shippers were yelling at the presumptive soulmates by the eighth episode to JUST HUMP EACH OTHER ALREADY.

Downton had such promise.  You either took to its upstairs/downstairs look at life in a lavish manor house immediately or found out you couldn't care less about the white people problems of the British nobility; I fell into the former category.  Like Mad Men or The Hour, it offered a look of How Different Things Were Back Then, focused on the character arcs of upwardly mobile women struggling to find a voice, and let the viewer see the inner workings of a complex organization.  The first series had some soapier moments, to be sure - Mr. Pamuk, or Lady Grantham's pregnancy - but they were in moderation.  Series two, however, went full soap.

That brings us to the ABC drama Revenge, a very loose modernization of The Count of Monte Cristo in its first series (wait, season).  I am not the first person to point out the similarities between the two shows but it's a convergence that has become increasingly obvious as of late.  Even at its worst, Downton is still twice the show that Revenge is in terms of writing and characterization.  I'd gladly ship Declan and Charlotte off to the WWI trenches, and Ashley is somehow more useless than the lowliest chamber maid.  Some of the dialogue is painfully on the nose (when Charlotte tells Emily "I always wanted a sister" I nearly threw a shoe at my television).

However, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, as both shows currently stand at this moment, Revenge is more satisfying television than Downton Abbey.

Downton doesn't know what it is right now.  It's either a soap gussied up in Masterpiece Theater's clothing, or it's a thoughtful period piece that got drunk on its own fame and decided to slum it.

Revenge, on the other hand, is aware of its own goals, expectations, and limitations.  It's trashy, it's soapy, it's mindless entertainment aimed squarely at a female audience, and it's never denied these charges.  The villains ham it up and the writers give them dialogue to match.  It's a show where a character is actually committed to a Hospital for the Criminally Insane, which I'm pretty sure hasn't happened in any sort of fiction since the 1950's except for Batman comics.   Downton and Revenge both have amnesia plotlines but it's only in the latter where it fits into the larger narrative.  In Revenge the main character has a revenge sensei and it TOTALLY WORKS because, well, why not?  It's Revenge.  I'm fine with the show being purely plot-driven and I couldn't care less about any character besides Nolan and that's just because he's the droll wiseass.  Any emotional heft would serve only to be icing on the cake.

Poor Downton has actors with gravitas and storylines that once upon a time meant something, and now that it's stumbled down a few wrong turns it's struggling to find its bearings again.  Revenge: no meaning, no bearings, no problems.

It's Groundhog Day. Again.

Some films stick out in your memory for certain reasons. You don't just remember when you saw a certain movie but where you were, who you were with, what you did afterwards. You know a movie is special to you when you know the history behind the first time you watched it.

I don't know why I never saw Groundhog Day in the theaters. My mother hates with extreme prejudice parents who bring little kids to movies, so it shouldn't surprise me that I didn't see a movie in a theater until I was 8 or so. My mom wanted to see it, too, but for some reason, when it came out on video, I chose to rent Surf Ninjas instead.

So circa 1994, I'm on Spring Break in Florida, and I'm fairly sure we went to Universal Studios and Sea World that year. The special thing about Spring Break for me back then was that the hotels had cable, which I didn't have growing up, including HBO, which is like, super cable. And, as luck would have it, Groundhog Day was on the first night we were in Florida. So we watched it. I've loved it ever since.

I did a project about it for AP English my junior year of high school where I traced the Jungian principle of the anima and the animus through Bill Murray's character arc. My memory is a tad hazy but I'm pretty sure I got an A because, obviously.

The funny thing is, I've only owned it on DVD for maybe a year, and it's still in the shrinkwrap. I guess I've seen it so many times already I know it by heart, and I'm not in dire need of seeing it again. My family taped it off TBS once. We had to fast forward through the commercials while watching it. Funny how my parents are okay with that but would never torrent anything.

It was filmed in Woodstock, IL, instead of Punxsutawney. If I had a car I'd totally road trip there.

Upon further reflection, Groundhog Day might have even impacted me as a cinephile. The scenes were Bill Murray is trying to save the homeless man from dying are the first where I can remember being strongly moved by a film. I didn't really get hooked on movies until I saw 2001 a few years later, but Groundhog Day likely planted the seeds.

Now that I'm older, I recognize more things. Like Stephen Tobolowsky's performance. When he dies, ten bucks says the obituary headline lists him as "Groundhog Day actor." Or how only a few years ago, I understood what Bill Murray meant when he says a character "makes noises like a chipmunk when she gets *real* excited." Remember, I was young when it first came out.

For a long time, whenever somebody asked me what my favorite movie was, I'd always say Star Wars because I loved the original trilogy when I was growing up. It didn't hit me until college that, purely in terms of the movie on its own merits, it was Groundhog Day. Recently, there have been some pretty good contenders - Wall-E, anyone? But I have to go with my childhood favorite. Don't worry, Groundhog Day. I got you, babe.

Top Chef: Texas week 8 power rankings

It's hardly surprising that reality tv editing can fudge facts sometimes, but Top Chef really pulled a switcheroo on everyone tonight. Ads for this season's Restaurant Wars episode focused on the ladies' team butchering service and being catty towards each other, and the episode itself hardly shied away from the internal conflicts. The men's team had a much more successful service (though not perfect, this is Restaurant Wars after all) and the agreement seemed seemed to be that it went well enough and the dishes just needed to be worked on a little more. At Judge's Table, however, the women took home the win for their superior food while Tom seemed ready to send all of the guys home. I don't mind selective editing, but this felt like I was being lied to.

1. Paul At the top by default. As uninspiring as his performance was, there's no reason anyone else is noticeably better.
2. Grayson Cooked some solid dishes without getting involved in drama.
3. Sarah The only reason she didn't torpedo the women's team was because Lindsay was just as bitchy as she was, and both were using Bev as a whipping girl.
4. Beverly Doesn't work well with others (see her earlier clash with Heather). Is this the beginning of a redemption arc or a momentary blip?
5. Lindsay Her cooking isn't attracting anyone's attention but as a Mean Girl... watch out!
6. Edward Meh.
7. Chris Double meh.

PYKAG'd: Ty-Lor. No chef of the night was demonstrably the worst, but he had it coming.

Top Chef: Texas week 7 power rankings

You know how bad things are for the current crop of cheftestants? I had to construct this list from the bottom up.

1. Paul There's a noticeable drop-off in quality between Paul and the other seven chefs. But let's be honest, Paul isn't even as head-and-shoulders above the pack as Angelo was in Top Chef: DC.
2. Sarah Due to the current season's predilection for group/team challenges, there are only two remaining chefs with solo Elimination Challenge wins. Paul is one; Sarah is the other.
3. Grayson Ranks higher than Edward due to a Quickfire win. Otherwise they have identical records.
4. Edward See above.
5. Lindsay Has managed to avoid elimination since the first episode, but this week was the first where she was eligible for an Elimination Challenge win. Not sure what to expect out of her going forward.
6. Beverly Not terrible, just erratic, so it's possible she could become a dark horse condtender a la Carla in Top Chef: New York.
7. Ty-Lor Ty-Lor is certainly a capable chef. However, this week he had immunity, deliberately sought to make amends for his poor performance in the steak challenge (which I believe he would have been PYKAG'd for if he hadn't fallen on his sword sufficiently), and ended up cooking poorly anyway.
8. Chris J. Did you know that Chris works at Moto? Because he works at Moto. He cooks the Moto way. Moto.

PYKAG'd: Chris C. Farewell, Malibu.
Next week: Restaurant Wars, which seems to have lost its original luster in my mind. Judging from the previews, the cheftestants find ample ways to screw up service again despite Restaurant Wars being the one thing other than the finale that they all look forward to. You'd think by know they'd all know going into the competition that they have to know a couple dessert recipes, and how not to screw up Restaurant Wars. Speaking of favorite challenges: when do we get the mise en place relay Quickfire?

The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs week 3 power rankings

I enjoy The Next Iron Chef but it's not without its shortcomings. I've already mentioned how episodes are largely drama-free, since all competitors are extremely talented and not looking to do much trash talking. But there's also the fact that the Secret Ingredient Showdown - the cook-off that takes place between the two chefs whose dishes were the judges' least favorites - is more entertaining than the Chairman's Challenge. There is more at stake, and with fewer competitors there is more focus and a stronger narrative. And Alton Brown's presence as host is almost superfluous. In Iron Chef America, his play-by-play is the glue that holds all the madness together. But here, he adds little value. He'd do better in a head judge role, like Tom Colicchio on Top Chef. The challenges are also growing monotonous. This is the second straight episode where the chefs haven't left Kitchen Stadium (or wherever), and they've only had to cook for the judges, never a cocktail party or wedding reception or other such typical Top Chef rigamarole.

Anyway, on with the power rankings:

OUT: Chuck Hughes. I admit, I fell for the editing, which set up Beau's tofu trilogy to fail from the second he announced he was preparing the tofu three ways.

1. Geoffrey Zakarian - Hasn't erred much so far, and besides, he has the look of a man who knows he's superior to you in every way.
2. Elizabeth Falkner
3. Alex Guarnaschelli
4. Beau MacMillan
5. Anne Burrell
6. Michael Chiarello
7. Marcus Samuelsson

There still aren't any obvious weak links, and there still aren't any runaway favorites. Nobody is pulling away as a sentimental favorite either, since nobody has developed a real personality yet. I don't know whether that's the fault of the editors or if Food Network is banking on the viewer being familiar with the contestants through their other shows. Which is fine if you watch Food Network on a regular basis, but I don't.