The Sheila Variations

Best of 2003

I just came across this in Slate now, and thought I would post it for all you movie lovers out there.

It's David Edelstein's Best of 2003. He picks 34 films. Not 35, not 30, but 34. Edelstein is one of my favorite film critics writing today. He wrote the laugh-out-loud funny review of Battlefield Earth which I quote from in this compilation of reviews from that train-wreck. Some of Edelstein's contributions to this compilation were:

Visually, "Battlefield Earth" is a bewildering procession of non sequiturs, held together by the most assaultive soundtrack in cinema history. That is not an overstatement. A horse hitting the ground sounds like a bomb going off. A bomb going off sounds like a planet exploding. A planet exploding sounds like—I'm out of hyperbole. People in the audience dig their fingers into their ears and howl in agony—it's a wonder the roof doesn't come down.

Also:

Only alien DNA could account for instincts so paranormally terrible.

And the piece de resistance:

He zaps Jonnie with a knowledge ray and then, for some reason, lets him read the Declaration of Independence. I'm not sure what happens next because I went out for malted milk balls and then remembered I owed my mom a phone call.

Anyway, Edelstein's "34 best movies of 2003" is quite an enjoyable read, even if you haven't seen many of the films.

ROTK is, of course, on the list - I liked his description of the day-long screening he went to of all of the films:

My movie event of the year was watching all three Rings films (the first two in extended cuts) back to back to back at the Loews 42nd Street E-walk on Dec. 16. I was lucky to be there, beside people who'd stood in line for as long as 16 hours to buy tickets and then again for six hours to get good seats. The atmosphere was electric, and the movies looked better this way, flowing easily into one another. Before the third movie started, three hobbits and Gollum showed up to pay tribute to these fans: Frodo kept saying "F---in' A!" and was very sweet in his enthusiasm, and Gollum sang a verse of "My Way" ("And now, the end is near …"). Somewhere in the last hour of our 14-hour marathon (including intermissions), two outsiders wandered into the theater, looked for seats, and sat down on the stairs next to me. They weren't being obnoxious, but I wanted to kill them anyway: They hadn't been on this odyssey with us and were violating a sacred space. When it was all over, many people were crying, and even though it was 1:30 a.m., a lot of my fellow geeks lingered in the theater and on the sidewalk outside.

I was writing a story on all this for the New York Times and was lucky enough to talk to a young woman named Miriam Kriss, who put down her Tolkien book long enough to explain that she was here in tribute to Jackson, "a fan who understood." Then she delivered a rather stunning testament to the fan aesthetic. "The problem with the last George Lucas Star Wars movies is that he's not a fan of his own work," she told me. "You can't be if it's your work. He doesn't understand anymore why we loved Star Wars; he just sits and stares at special effects on his computers. I'd rather see Star Wars movies by people who grew up with Star Wars. A fan would get it."

I'm not sure I buy as a general rule the idea that fans have more insight than artists who create the work in the first place. But in the case of Star Wars, who can contradict her?

I love that. The "fan" aesthetic. Many times, the "fan" aesthetic leads people down sorry alleyways, where they find themselves discussing Rick Springfield's earlier ouevre in an important manner. But sometimes - with films like Star Wars, or LOTR - which become so much more than just a film - which tap into some ... zeitgeist, shall we say ... the "fan aesthetic" is as wise as the hills, and as deep as the ocean.

Other quotes from this piece:

Altman was a gun-for-hire on The Company (it's Neve Campbell's project, and she's exciting to watch), but my colleague Charles Taylor of Salon has pointed out that the movie is held together by the director's connection to these dancers through his sense of his own mortality. Their bodies are powerful yet fragile: Every time they land, something could snap—and end their careers. We should cherish Altman, my favorite living director, while we have him.

Absolutely agreed.

On ROTK:

From little worms to colossal battlefields, you never lose the human scale, the human pulse. Even with 50 special effects in a shot, the movie feels as alive as any hand-held documentary.

And finally - proving my point - that a good writer can really show his genius when reviewing the bad movies:

The movies I loathed most: The Cat in the Hat, whose makers should be paraded nude down the street and spat on, and 21 Grams, with its pretentious pretzeled syntax and use of the death of children like an art-house striptease. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was not just horrendous, it made me ashamed for having praised the campy charm of the first and encouraging those idiots.

Anyway - I highly recommend Edelstein's list. He's a terrific writer.

Posted by sheila