THE INEDIBLE KLUMP

Just what America needs, a crappy remake of a crappy movie that's only 5 years old, THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Just about everything here is a misfire... there's virtually no continuity anywhere in the movie, no motivations or explanations for anything that happens. One of the biggest problems in the first film was the ridiculous nature of the gargantuan animated character; it lacked any believability whatsoever.

The new Hulk is only slightly more believable. At least they TRY to explain his infinitely expandable pants, sparing us from his giant green penis flopping around as he runs (I miss Roger Ebert). But so little in the film makes any sense, it's hard to care about any of the characters. And the acting is universally terrible, even Ed Norton, who probably made the movie even worse with his constant tinkering.

Well, they can always try again in 5 years.

INDY IV

I don't think there was a single moment in the film INDY IV where I felt like I was watching something new. The film has constant reminders of other films, and not just the other Indy films; several times there are homages to CADDY SHACK.

It's a dopey script that's not very well executed. Dialogue scenes seem to exist only to string the action scenes together, and the action scenes are comically unbelievable. Visual effects were weak overall, looking more like a video game than the classic Indy films. Actig ranged from mediocre to terrible.

I'm not quite sure why Sean Connery was not in the film. Perhaps he was the only one smart enough to turn the script, even though it is basically a license to print money.

Reel Geezers

NEWSWEEK mentioned thes two YouTube critics, with whom I have quickly fallen in love.

RECOUNT

For several years after I was critically ill in late 2004 - 2005, I would get sick to my stomach when I was driving down Buena Vista Street in Burbank. The reason was that St Joseph's Hospital is on that street, and the time I spent there was very traumatic.

I may be over most of those demons, but to this day, I still get that same sick feeling when I think about the events in late 2000 surrounding the election. Eight years later, I remember the pendulum of my emotions as they called Florida for Gore, then Bush, then no one... Gore gave up, then he didn't, then it went to court after court.

For that reason, I did not want to see RECOUNT, even though it had a great cast, good reviews, and was directed by one of the nicest guys I knew at film school, Jay Roach. Tonight I finally screwed up my courage and watched it.

It was very, very painful to watch.

But thank you, Jay for making it. The film is very good, and a very good thriller, even though we all know the outcome. But it is an important reminder of the events that shaped our country for the last 8 years.

There is also another tie-in between my illness and the election. If you've read my account of being sick, you'll know that I got sick just after the incredible depression of the 2004 election. And I don't think that's any coincidence. I had never in my wildest dreams imagined that this country could be stupid enough to re-elect a moron who lied to get us into an unnecessary war. But, as George Carlin says, "Imagine how stupid the average American is; then realize that, by definition, 50% of the country is even dumber than that."

There is a weird irony, though. No one could possibly have done more damage to the Republican Party than George himself has done in the last 8 years. At the same time, no one could have done more to help stop global warming than Al Gore, which he almost certainly could not have done if he had been elected.

Mysterious ways.

PLAYTIME

Jacque Tati's brilliant film PLAYTIME screened at the Egyptian Theater tonight. This is a 70mm print of a film shot in 65mm and mixed in 6 channel sound. It's a restored print including a few new minutes of material not seen in almost 30 years. It's a film that is hard to write about because it is so unique. Tati's films have virtually no dialogue, and no plot. They are extremely visual, with a very creative eye. They are comedies, but they are so subtle that if you are not very carefully paying attention, you'll have no idea something funny is happening. Unfortunately, contemporary audiences do not have the patience for this type of movie.

The film is so good that after seeing it you want to watch it again immediately, and when you leave the theater, you will look at the world differently. If I had to pick a favorite film, this would be it.

The film is playing again on May 25th, at the Aero theater in Santa Monica. I
very highly recommend the film. It rarely screens, this may be your only chance to see it where it was intended, on the big screen.

Sex: The Revolution

Sex: The Revolution is a new documentary series on VH1. I expected it to be a little too much like INDIE SEX, which was pretty good. It covers some of the same territory, but instead of being about sex in media, it's about the sexual revolution. The first episode covers the 50s, with an emphasis on Kinsey and Hefner, and is definitely interesting viewing. So far I recommend it.

Film Music Article

I'm quoted several times in this Arizona Republic article about film music. It's pretty introductory for anyone who knows anything about film music.

ROLE MODEL: GENE WILDER

TCM had an excellent one-hour interview with actor Gene Wilder this week. Tivo had recorded it as a suggestion and I almost deleted it after reading a mediocre review in Variety, but I'm very glad I didn't. Alec Baldwin hosts an excellent discussion. Wilder is clearly a very intelligent man and committed actor. Actors in particular should see it.

Very highly recommended.

Sampling Rates

I've frequently mentioned in classes the lack of double-blind testing on sampling rates, which has led many people to assume "the higher the number, the better it must sound."

Paul Lehrman has written an excellent article on sampling rates, including the results of the first extensive study I've seen. It can be read at Mix Magazine's web site.

NAB

Not really a lot new at NAB that I had not seen already. The new Digidesign Icon looks really hip. they've integrated three PT systems into one controller surface, so you can control any system from any part of the surface. The controller is expensive, $100k for just the controller and not including the PT HD hardware, but it's definitely a huge step forward in controller surfaces.

Congratulations to ME!

At 7:22 PM last night, an American Idol fan from Wichita, Kansas became the 10,000th visitor to my blog. His visit may have lasted less than a second, but it still counts!

I started this blog a year and a half ago as a way to communicate with students. It didn't work; instead I get baseball fans. Oh, well, it still works out to about 20 visits a day, and even excluding immediate family, that means I'm popular. Not enough to sell ads, but popular enough that I continue to write baseball updates.

Wordless Wonders

With the success of THERE WILL BE BLOOD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, CNN's Showbiz blog has an excellent article about scenes which do not use dialogue. It's interesting that so many readers immediately respond with their favorite scenes, yet writers continually use the crutch of wall-to-wall dialogue to explain everything. Cinema is so much more powerful when showing, rather than telling, but insecure filmmakers are afraid audiences will run for the door the minute people stop talking.

AMERICAN IDOL 9

We're at the point in American Idol where all of the contestants are pretty good... except one. Kristy Lee Cook should go home. Alas, DialIdol has Ramiele "Lullaby" Malubay at the bottom, which is to bad. She's a good singer and very marketable.

PETER & THE WOLF

PETER & THE WOLF won the Oscar for Animated Short this year. It was run on PBS's GREAT PERFORMANCES last week. I hope it reruns, because it is a fantastic piece of stop-motion animation. Needless to say, the music is wonderful. Prokofiev wrote a brilliant piece of music that just happens to explain the concepts of orchestration to children (and, in passing, also explains leitmotivic development).

Unfortunately, the narration is written for the youngest of children, and not only gets in the way of the music, it talks down to the audience. On top of that, the original story isn't very good. This film quite smartly dumped the narration and used the visuals of the animation to tell the story instead. The character animation is absolutely astounding, perhaps some of the best I've seen in stop-motion. They completely rewrote the ending to make the story much more intelligent and involving. It's a little more scary for the young children, but (MILD SPOILER) I think kids need to know that something that's dead STAYS dead.

In order to fill out the hour, there is a "making of" video that is almost as interesting as the film itself. It took them 5 years to make the film, and they used a lot of seamless visual effects to smooth out the problems with animation, while remaining true to the look of the stop-motion animation.

I don't think this is scheduled to run again soon, but if you get the chance, check it out. It's well worth it.

Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends

AMERICAN MASTERS on PBS recently presented "Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends," produced by and featuring Clint Eastwood. It's pretty good. Bennett is not my favorite singer, stylistically, his bel canto is a bit old-fashioned, and he never could swing the way Sinatra did. But he's pretty much the last of his generation now.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in the doc is seeing Alec Baldwin doing Tony on SNL. His impression is frigging amazing. They did the hair and nose makeup perfectly, and Baldwin does his voice and moves perfectly. It's eerie.

Worth watching.

SOUND AWARDS

Last Saturday were the Cinema Audio Society Awards. The CAS award for Feature Sound Mixing went to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.
Production Mixer: Peter Kurland, CAS
Re-recording Mixers: Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, CAS

This was what I predicted, and was my choice as well. I was on hand to present one of the Technical Achievement Awards, to Digidesign for their ICON controller surface.

Last night were the Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards. The big winner in Television was BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, which sounded fantastic and won both the Dialogue/ADR Editing and Sound Effects/Foley Editing. I was also very happy to see my former student Becca Borawski win as Music Editor for the great musical episode of SCRUBS.

There were upsets in several feature categories at the MPSE.

In Music Editing for a Musical Feature, HAIRSPRAY upset the much higher profile SWEENEY TODD. In Music Editing for a Feature, INTO THE WILD beat several higher-profile films.

In Sound Editing on a Foreign Film, L'ORFANATO (THE ORPHANAGE) upset a number of other films with much bigger budgets. This one I am very happy to see, it was one of my favorite films of the year, and it had outstanding sound design.

And in the two big categories, Dialogue/ADR Editing and Sound Effects/Foley Editing, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM upset NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and several other big films.

Perhaps the only expected win in features was RATATOUILLE winning for animation.

I was on hand to present the Verna Fields Student Award to Cameron Grant of the AUSTRALIAN FILM, TELEVISION & RADIO SCHOOL for SHOT OPEN.

The award also comes with the Ethel Crutcher Scholarship, which was presented by Charlie Crutcher. Ethel was the backbone of the organization for several decades. She was the office manager when I was nominated as a student 20 years ago and her welcome to the evening really made me feel for the first time that sound editors were a respected part of the filmmaking community. It's because of her that I joined the MPSE, and because of her that joined the board of directors. Ethel gave the MPSE its firm start upon which we have been able to build over the years.

EASTERN PROMISES

EASTERN PROMISES is a good film with some great acting. It's not as good as some of David Cronenberg's other films (I was a big fan of last year's HISTORY OF VIOLENCE), in fact, it's more restrained than his other films, although there are still very explicit moments of violence, inlcuding a naked knife fight. Viggo Mortensen deserves his nomination for his performance as a Russian mobster. Naomi Watts and Armin Mueller-Stahl are also excellent.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in the film is that it is a little on the predictable side. Otherwise, it's worth seeing.

ATONEMENT

I don't get the big deal about ATONEMENT. It's not one of the best films of the year. It's extremely predictable. The structure is weak, and the story is not involving. The first third is pretty good, it's a British drama about a love affair. But then the movie suddenly jumps four years forward to WWII, and it falls apart completely.

There are some nice elements. The score is beautiful, as is the cinematography. The acting is split; some is great, some is not. The sound design is interesting; the music incorporates some of the sound effects from the film, most notably the typewriter. Unfortunately this is a very obvious use of sound, and reminded me of Leroy Anderson's orchestral piece "The Typerwriter," which has a percussionist playing the typewriter. Anderson is the "genius" who gave us "Sleigh Ride" (with a trumpet as a whinnying horse) and "Syncopated Clock" which sounds like... a clock. So that says a lot about this "creative" use of sound.

I'd say skip this one.

MY MILKSHAKE'S BETTER THAN YOURS

I can't for the life of me imagine why people think THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a good film. What I understand even less is how people think Daniel Day-Lewis is good in this film. He's not. He is, in fact, stunningly awful.

Here's the famous "milkshake" scene. Watch this and explain to me why he is anything but atrocious:





If you actually think he's good in that scene, watch this other actor's version of the scene, and explain to me why this kid is just as good and maybe even much better:

3:10 TO YUMA

3:10 TO YUMA is pretty good. It's not exactly original, but then again, it's a remake. And the pacing is a little too slow. The climactic ending shootout goes on so long it's impossible to believe so many shots are fired that miss their targets. But the acting is pretty good. Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster, and Peter Fonda are all very good.