Finding Your Inner Film Noir

Which French New Wave Actress are you?

You are Jeanne Moreau. Intelligent, confident, well-liked.
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Tapping My Fingers In Gleeful Excitement

I LOVE DANIEL CRAIG! That really had to be said. For months now I have been defending the new Bond, telling haters to give him a chance, and keeping up the faith that he could re-establish the Bond saga. Now is the time that I say, "I TOLD YOU SO!! HAHA! I WIN!" When I saw Casino Royale last night, it officially parked itself as one of my all time favorite Bond films. I can not say for sure that it is my favorite because the competition is just so different. There have been five previous Bond's and twenty other films - how can one choose a favourite amongst all the diversity? BUT let me just say that Craig and Casino Royale take the franchise to a whole new level. Instead of glossing over the realities that would face Bond in his life, they chose to confront them. It seeks to answer how and why Bond is who he is. And in doing so it has engaged the audience on a deeper emotional and intellectual strata. Now, just because I am throwing around words like "emotional" and "intellectual," don't get all scared and think that Craig and Broccoli have turned Bond into Life is Beautiful. (Although that too is an amazing film.) The most inspiring part of the new Bond is that it in no way sacrifices the entertainment and excitement of the journey for these new elements, in fact my argument is that it only heightens them.

It is not the first time the franchise has sought to go this route but perhaps the first time that it has succeeded. Brosnan started out in Goldeneye with a promise of leading Bond in this direction but ultimately sold out for a quasi-Moore approach. In the end, it just turned out to be a disaster with mega-money draw. (Sad, but true.) I mean, I am one of those crazy revisionist Bond fans that is hardcore in favor of Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby. Okay, so I give credit where it is due to Sean Connery and Roger Moore for holding the series for so long. And I can not doubt that Connery is the be-all-end-all of 007 for much of the world. But, honestly, having to watch him virtually rape every Bond girl because "that's just how women like it" is so incredibly disturbing. Yes, obviously Bond isn't exactly the poster boy for Women's Lib but I enjoy him as a character and I take his inherent misogyny with a grain of salt. But both the acting and scripts for Dalton and Lazenby seemed so much more interesting and three dimensional in their approach to Bond than Moore or Connery ever ventured into. Well, the end of the story is: GO SEE CASINO ROYALE! I demand it of you or else we can no longer be friends.

Folgers for the Holidays

Now that the holiday season is approaching I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some beloved clips. Every year I eagerly await the onset of Christmas themed Coke and M&M ads. Who doesn't love those adorable little polar bears? And how about when Red and Santa faint in simultaneous hillarity?? Ahh...that's what the holidays are all about. And then every once in a while you are treated to the sleeper hit...like that FedEx commercial that proved there really on is one fruit cake in the world. But, no commercial satisfies me more than the divinely inspired Christmas classic, Peter comes home for the holidays with Folgers. I am pretty sure that same commercial has been running since 1980, but when you have a winner you should stick with it! While I was searching youtube for my most favoritist holiday commercial ever, I stumbled upon the following advert. I have to say, I think the first nine seconds are really all you need. I just kept stopping it and replaying. Literally, I was laughing so hard I couldn't breath...I think I get that from my mother.




After doing a little scavanging to find the Folgers ad, I discovered that I was not the only person who looks forward to seeing Peter come home to the family. Exibit A:

http://www.adjab.com/2005/11/29/yes-the-folgers-commercial-is-back/

Remember that Folger's Christmas commercial from years ago, the one where the kid hitchhikes home and goes into his parent's house early in the morning, the little girl runs downstairs to greet him and they quietly make Folger's coffee, which wakes up the mom and she comes downstairs and exclaims "Peter!" I saw it last night! [...] But how old is this ad? It's got to be at least from the late 80s, right? And it's funny how we project our own theories into a commercial. I mean, we assume the kid is coming home from college (the hitchhiking, his age, etc), but as far as we know he could have just escaped from prison or returned from a mission in space or something. But it's a great holiday memory for TV viewers, so Folger's made a great decision to keep it going after all this time.

Well, it ends up that I couldn't get ahold of the Folger's Christmas commercial. It was up on youtube at some point, but they took it down because of copyright violation. I just think that's silly! Where's their soul?! Anyway, I just thought I would put up another Folgers ad anyway. This one is pretty creepy, but amazing! Check it out:

Christopher Nolan: The New whiz Kid

If you haven't seen Memento, you should. If you haven't seen Batman Begins, a curse on your house. If you don't see The Prestige, you will miss seeing one of Hollywood's finest up-and-comer ascend to greatness. Spielberg created the modern fairy tales - the triumph of the morality and honor against the corrupt, Lucas pioneered the sci-fi/fantasy adventure, Scorsese ripped open the seedy underbelly of modern American, Coppolla did a lot of drugs, and Christopher Nolan has stamped out his place in the brooding male protagonists dragging forth their dark psychological turmoil. I do not think we should underestimate this man as a future leader and legend of American cinema. This is not to say that his scripts are the finest, they don't have to be, or that ever twist and turn is unexpected, that's not the point. Christopher Nolan is a great director because he pulls the audience into the story through the use of his actors. It is obvious that he, much like Scorsese, views his actors as the best asset of the story. It doesn't matter how campy or ridiculous the scene seems on paper, it always seems believable and palatable on screen.

Last Thursday I walked into the small art house cinema, the first to take my seat at fifteen minutes 'till curtain, and I wondered how many people would actually show up to see a Thursday night preview of The Prestige. Low and behold, every seat in the theater was filled by the fading of the lights. (leaving me crunched up in my seat) As the film began and the audience calmed, I knew the anticipation was high, no audience quiets that quickly unless they have great hopes. I knew I was going to like the film from the beginning because I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Sure, you could guess that there were twists in the first five minutes, but even so you wanted to know how it all unfolded. It wasn't that I was shocked or grasped in suspense, I was mesmerised by good filmmaking. Nolan knows how to put on a show and hold that level of excitement throughout, which is why he is someone to watch. It's not always the story but how it's told. From the level of excited chatter after the film and the number of people who sat through the credits, I would say that most everyone agreed with me.

Of course, I can not slight his actors either. It is unfair to present it as a purely auteurist force, it rarely ever is. The combination of Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, and Michael Caine was absolutely spot on. Not to mention the cameos by David Bowie and Andy Serkis. I think that one of Nolan's best attributes is knowing how to step back and let the actors unleash their performances. This is more than obvious in Memento, where Guy Pierce seduces the audience, propelling every moment. Unfortunately, I don't think that Nolan's understanding of femininity is as thorough. He and his male actors really sink their teeth into the darkness of the male characters' psyche but when it comes to the women, he is pretty much at a loss. Most of the time they play confused bystanders to the tormented protagonist or, as in Memento, the quintessential femme fatal.

The reason I do not discount this against him as much as I wish I could is two fold: one, his experience has been as a male and he probably thinks that women have some sort of mysterious vision of life that he will never understand and two, pretty much all Hollywood films play to this male-centric vision - it is not a problem specific to him, misperseption of the "other" is a social universality. Don't get me wrong, I want there to be change and I deeply dislike the vision of "otherness" especially in terms of gender because it is probably the most widely felt bias - male-centrism suppresses the views of over half the population of the world. But this is an entirely different issue.

Anyway, the point is that Christopher Nolan has what it takes. He's not perfect, he's not revolutionary, but he has that something to make Hollywood happy. Plus, he likes Batman...which automatically makes him great in my book.