A. O. Scott - The New York Times

7/18/06 - Critic’s Notebook

Avast, Me Critics! Ye Kill the Fun: Critics and the Masses Disagree About Film Choices - By A. O. SCOTT - Published: July 18, 2006

Let’s start with a few numbers. At Rottentomatoes.com, a Web site that quantifies movie reviews on a 100-point scale, the aggregate score for “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” stands at a sodden 54. Metacritic.com, a similar site, crunches the critical prose of the nation’s reviewers and comes up with a numerical grade of 52 out of 100. Even in an era of rampant grade inflation, that’s a solid F.

Meanwhile, over at boxofficemojo.com, where the daily grosses are tabulated, the second installment in the “Pirates” series, which opened on July 7, plunders onward, trailing broken records in its wake. Its $136 million first-weekend take was the highest three-day tally in history, building on a best-ever $55 million on that Friday, and it is cruising into blockbuster territory at a furious clip. As of this writing, a mere 10 days into its run, the movie has brought in $258.2 million, a hit by any measure.

All of which makes “Dead Man’s Chest” a fascinating sequel — not to “Curse of the Black Pearl,” which inaugurated the franchise three years ago, but to “The Da Vinci Code.” Way back in the early days of the Hollywood summer — the third week in May, to be precise — America’s finest critics trooped into screening rooms in Cannes, Los Angeles, New York and points between, saw Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s best seller, and emerged in a fit of collective grouchiness. The movie promptly pocketed some of the biggest opening-weekend grosses in the history of its studio, Sony.

For the second time this summer, then, my colleagues and I must face a frequently — and not always politely — asked question: What is wrong with you people? I will, for now, suppress the impulse to turn the question on the moviegoing public, which persists in paying good money to see bad movies that I see free. I don’t for a minute believe that financial success contradicts negative critical judgment; $500 million from now, “Dead Man’s Chest” will still be, in my estimation, occasionally amusing, frequently tedious and entirely too long. But the discrepancy between what critics think and how the public behaves is of perennial interest because it throws into relief some basic questions about taste, economics and the nature of popular entertainment, as well as the more vexing issue of what, exactly, critics are for.

Are we out of touch with the audience? Why do we go sniffing after art where everyone else is looking for fun, and spoiling everybody’s fun when it doesn’t live up to our notion or art? What gives us the right to yell “bomb” outside a crowded theater? Variations on these questions arrive regularly in our e-mail in-boxes, and also constitute a major theme in the comments sections of film blogs and Web sites. Online, everyone is a critic, which is as it should be: professional prerogatives aside, a critic is really just anyone who thinks out loud about something he or she cares about, and gets into arguments with fellow enthusiasts. But it would be silly to pretend that those professional prerogatives don’t exist, and that they don’t foster a degree of resentment. Entitled elites, self-regarding experts, bearers of intellectual or institutional authority, misfits who get to see a movie before anybody else and then take it upon themselves to give away the ending: such people are easy targets of populist anger.

Just who do we think we are?

There is no easy answer to this question. Film criticism — at least as practiced in the general-interest daily and weekly press — has never been a specialist pursuit. Movies, more than any other art form, are understood to be common cultural property, something everyone can enjoy, which makes any claim of expertise suspect. Therefore, a certain estrangement between us and them — or me and you, to put it plainly — has been built into the enterprise from the start.

The current schism is in some ways nothing new: go back and read reviews in The New York Times of “Top Gun,” “Crocodile Dundee” and “The Karate Kid Part II” to see how some of my predecessors dealt with three of the top-earning movies 20 years ago. (The Australian with the big knife was treated more kindly than the flyboy or the high-kicker, by the way.) And the divide between critic and public may also be temporary. Last year, during the Great Box-Office Slump of 2005, we all seemed happy to shrug together at the mediocrity of the big studio offerings.

No more. Whatever the slump might have portended for the movie industry, it appears to be over for the moment, and the critics have resumed their customary role of scapegoat. The modern blockbuster — the movie that millions of people line up to see more or less simultaneously, on the first convenient showing on the opening weekend — can be seen as the fulfillment of the democratic ideal the movies were born to fulfill. To stand outside that happy communal experience and, worse, to regard it with skepticism or with scorn, is to be a crank, a malcontent, a snob.

So we’re damned if we don’t. And sometimes, also, if we do. When our breathless praise garlands advertisements for movies the public greets with a shrug, we look like suckers or shills. But these accusations would stick only if the job of the critic were to reflect, predict or influence the public taste.

That, however, is the job of the Hollywood studios, in particular of their marketing and publicity departments, and it is the professional duty of critics to be out of touch with — to be independent of — their concerns. These companies spend tens of millions of dollars to persuade you that the opening of a movie is a public event, a cultural experience you will want to be part of. The campaign of persuasion starts weeks or months — or, in the case of multisequel cash cows, years — before the tickets go on sale, with the goal of making their purchase a foregone conclusion by the time the first reviews appear. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but the judgment of critics almost never makes the difference between failure and success, at least for mass-release, big-budget movies like “Dead Man’s Chest” or “The Da Vinci Code.”

So why review them? Why not let the market do its work, let the audience have its fun and occupy ourselves with the arcana — the art — we critics ostensibly prefer? The obvious answer is that art, or at least the kind of pleasure, wonder and surprise we associate with art, often pops out of commerce, and we want to be around to celebrate when it does and to complain when it doesn’t. But the deeper answer is that our love of movies is sometimes expressed as a mistrust of the people who make and sell them, and even of the people who see them. We take entertainment very seriously, which is to say that we don’t go to the movies for fun. Or for money. We do it for you.

And David Thomson on Pirates and Johnny Depp

I'd like to meet that guy in the white suit.....

Dave Poland - World Trade Center

Poland gives a rave review to Oliver Stone's version of 9/11. Just reading it brings it all back for me. We lost 9 people in our New Jersey town that day.

Joe Morgenstern - The Wall Street Journal

From Isis:

Morgenstern on Movies: Unmistakable Voices; How some signature inflections cut through the clutter at the multiplex

Joe Morgenstern. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Jul 8, 2006. pg. P.3

DURING "PIRATES of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" I kept trying to figure out who was playing Davy Jones. (I don't read the production notes before a screening, because I'd rather know nothing of the plot, so I sometimes end up not knowing other things as well.) The actor's face was unrecognizable, thanks to the digital overlay of tentacles, but his voice was tantalizingly familiar, even with Davy's salty accent. Then I realized who it was -- Bill Nighy, a marvelous English performer with a singular vocal quality -- forceful though droll, with a dollop of wry. As the movie rolled on, providing ample time amidst the fun to ponder other things, I found myself thinking about the mystery of unmistakable voices: Who's got them, who doesn't and how come?

Take Johnny Depp. He's an extraordinary actor, and, in the role of Captain Jack Sparrow, doing an accent that's become instantly recognizable. In another role, though, would his voice be unmistakable in its own right? I don't think so. It's a fine voice, an admirably flexible instrument, but I'm talking about vocal instruments that identify themselves in one or two syllables -- voices that could belong to no one else in the world. Exhibit one is James Earl Jones: anyone who's ever heard him, whether in "Star Wars" or on CNN, can hear him at will in what radio buffs like to call the theater of the mind. Or, from a different era, Humphrey Bogart, whose one-of-a-kind vocal quality gained even more distinction from his odd sibilants (which, come to think of it, was also the case with Boris Karloff.)

Radio gave the movies what was arguably -- no, inarguably -- its most seductive voice, that of Orson Welles. (Joseph Cotten, Welles's colleague in The Mercury Theater On the Air, was no slouch at seductiveness either.) This isn't hard to understand. Radio actors have nothing but their voices with which to summon up worlds. That's what Garrison Keillor has been doing for three decades on "A Prairie Home Companion," and his voice is, for better or worse, the indelible signature of Robert Altman's film version.

Geography plays a role here. England, especially Wales, plus Ireland and Scotland seem to confer unfair advantages in the vocal department -- just listen to Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, Alec Guinness, Richard Harris, Joan Greenwood, Michael Caine, Margaret Rutherford, Rex Harrison, Ralph Richardson, Peter O'Toole or Glynis Johns. Or Sean Connery, as opposed to Roger Moore, though less opposed to Pierce Brosnan, who is almost up there in the instant-recognition division. Peter Sellers doesn't make the cut, only because he was a vocal chameleon. Olivier was, too, to a degree, but I can hear Archie Rice and Heathcliff as I write this sentence. (And since I'm confining this piece to those speaking English as a first language, the cut must also exclude such unforgettable actors as Peter Lorre or Bela Lugosi.)

Unmistakable voices aren't confined to earlier generations. Jeff Goldblum's cachet comes from eccentric rhythms, as well as a rich tone. Tone, rather than rhythm, makes Peter Coyote's voice almost unique -- almost, because he has an identical vocal twin in government, Paul Wolfowitz. Russell Crowe can announce his presence with one syllable, not two. So can Jennifer Tilly, and Joey Lauren Adams, who is quoted on the Internet Movie Database as saying of her own throat music: "It's not a normal voice. It doesn't fit into people's preconceptions about what a woman's voice should sound like." No, it doesn't, but it's intriguing all the same.

We get a sense of continuity, along with pleasure, from hearing the signature voices of such older but still contemporary actors as Nicholson, Pacino, Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep (though she's also something of a chameleon), Piper Laurie, Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Clint Eastwood (his specialty has always been breathy masculinity) and Morgan Freeman (his is susurrant reassurance).

STILL, MOVIE lovers who are old enough to remember the medium's golden age, or passionate enough to have explored it through repertory screenings and DVD's, have a special place in their hearts, by way of their ears, for the medium's golden (if often eccentric) voices -- those of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, to start a list that begs to be added to; of Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, of John Wayne, Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Lemmon, Sydney Greenstreet, Lauren Bacall, Hoagy Carmichael, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Jason Robards, Bob Hope, George Burns, John Huston (and his father Walter), Henry Fonda, Helen Kane, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Patricia Neal, Paul Newman, Veronica Lake, Cary Grant, Julie Harris, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Carole Lombard and Margaret Sullavan, whose voice was characterized by Louise Brooks as "strange, fey, mysterious -- like a voice singing in the snow."

The main thing to be said of these voices is that they emanate from stars we've cared about over long periods of time; it's as if we've been hearing them all our lives. Yet other factors shaped their distinctiveness. Most of those stars grew up in an America of strong regional accents. Some learned their craft in the theater, without the help of amplification. Others came to Hollywood as fully formed adults through circuitous routes -- via vaudeville, odd jobs, humble jobs. Contrast that with the career path so common today, one in which young actors who've been raised in a homogeneous culture make their way through the TV ranks, learn the fluent, slightly flat sounds that constitute the lingua franca of TV shows as well as feature films made for kids, and end up, through no fault of their own, with speech impediments.

Morgenstern's Picks

Big Talkers

In Hollywood's golden age, filmmakers gave their audiences credit for being able to follow the rat-tat-tat of quick-witted conversations (as well as, in Warner Bros. gangster flicks, the rat-tat-tat of machine guns during mob hits). Thus did actors with distinctive vocal qualities deploy their voices at breathtaking speed -- though they never seemed to lack for breath.

His Girl Friday, Sony (1940)

The quickest of the quick can be found in this film, the best newspaper movie ever made. Rosalind Russell is the ace reporter Hildy Johnson, hugely likable and super-competent. Cary Grant is her ruthless editor, and ex-husband, Walter Burns, who's trying to win her back before she marries another man. In the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play that spawned a 1931 movie and then this remake, Hildy was a man, Hildebrand Johnson, but the director of the 1940 film, Howard Hawks, had the brilliant idea to turn Hildebrand into Hildegarde. Beware of murky transfers on DVD. The best one is part of "The Cary Grant Box Set," which includes "Holiday," another great movie of the 1930s that's otherwise unavailable in the digital medium.

California Split, Sony (1974)

Starting with "M*A*S*H" in 1970, Robert Altman took advantage of the new clarity offered by Dolby sound systems to use overlapping dialogue, not merely fast talk by good talkers. His 1974 comedy "California Split" may be the best gambling movie ever made (sorry if this reads like a Hammacher Schlemmer best-this-and-that catalog) and one of Elliott Gould's best performances as a lucky card player who hooks up with George Segal's less lucky gambler.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Warner (2004)

Robert Downey Jr. talks fast, in his inimitably droll voice, as Harry Lockhart, a petty thief turned Hollywood actor in Shane Black's terrifically entertaining film, which has recently been released on DVD. Val Kilmer is an emotionally elusive detective, and Michelle Monaghan gives a lovely comic performance as Harry's dream girl from high school.

Variety

7/7/06 - MONTREAL -- "All the King's Men," the star-studded remake of the 1949 Oscar-winning pic, will world preem at the Toronto Film Festival.

Canuck fest, which runs Sept. 7-16, will also host the world preems of thesp-helmer Bob Balaban's "Bernard and Doris," Jason Biggs starrer "The Pleasure of Your Company" and helmer Agnieszka Holland's "Copying Beethoven."

Written and directed by Steven Zaillian, the adaptation of Robert Penn Warren novel "All the King's Men" stars Sean Penn as corrupt Southern politician Willie Stark. Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Hopkins also star.

Pic, produced by Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Ken Lemberger and Zaillian, will be released by Sony Pictures. At Toronto, it will be presented in the fest's Gala premiere section.

"Bernard and Doris" is based on the life of billionaire tobacco baroness Doris Duke, with Susan Sarandon playing Duke and Ralph Fiennes portraying her gay Irish butler, Bernard. When she died in 1993, Duke left her entire estate to the butler, causing much controversy. Pic is a special presentation at Toronto.

Writer, thesp and founder of the Stella comedy troupe Michael Ian Black makes his feature directorial debut with "The Pleasure of Your Company," about a man (Biggs) whose life is changed when he meets a quirky waitress (Isla Fisher). Pic is also a special presentation screening.

Diane Kruger stars in "Copying Beethoven" as a music student who helps legendary composer Ludwig van Beethoven (Ed Harris) publish the score for his Ninth Symphony. This British-Hungarian co-production will screen as part of the Contemporary World Cinema sidebar.

The Edge of Outside

I also highly recommend the docu on independent filmmakers at Turner Classic Movies, The Edge of Outside

Academy Invites 120 to Membership

120 new names added to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Cache

We rented "Cache" to watch last night.

It is a strangely filmed movie - lots of long shots of houses and streets with nothing supposedly happening, but the tension built well as it progressed. Now -- about that ending!!!

I just read this at the IMdb:

The ending was perhaps much too subtle. Everyone around me as we left the theater here in Los Angeles was expressing confusion.

It was indeed subtle. If anyone else has seen it, will you tell me what we were looking for under the credits and just before them?

Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche were great, as was Maurice Bénichou as the heartbreaking Majid. Be prepared for one scene with him that will knock you off your chair.