Only serious flaw is that without Katniss’ internal monologue, the moments where Katniss is acting badly will come across as Jennifer Lawrence acting badly to those unfamiliar to the source material.

It’s not going to make any end-of-year best-of lists (certainly not mine), but despite a plot that is achingly predictable this is still an entertaining enough way to pass two hours because, despite its predictability, the best word to describe every single aspect of this movie’s craft is “competent,” and there are worse things, and also the Martian dog is hilarious.

The other day, I was reading a book called “A Galaxy Not So Far Away”, a book of essays about ‘Star Wars’. The essays varied wildly in quality from “kind of mediocre” to “crimes against the English language”, but one of the things that stuck out about them was the way that they all talked about the meanings that the author projected onto what they ‘knew’ to be ‘escapist fiction’. Normally, I’d chalk this up to a failing of the author, much in the same way I’d ding them for not realizing that a Boba Fett vs. Predator website might not be entirely serious, but this view isn’t unique to this book. Critics as diverse as Roger Ebert, Nathan Rabin, Tom Shone and Peter Biskind have all called ‘Star Wars’ a piece of pure escapism, with varying degrees of respect and appreciation. It has come to be the fundamental received wisdom about the original film. No allegory, no message, just a classic Boy Becomes Man story set so far away from anything we know that everyone can enjoy it.

Which is totally wrong. ‘Star Wars’ is actually an intensely political story, with a scathing and vicious statement to make about modern American politics cloaked in an allegorical “space opera”. The reasons that nobody appreciates this are twofold: One, the political landscape changed so much during the film’s lengthy journey from script to screen that much of its impact was neutered, and two, Americans have an amazing ability to assume that they’re the “good guys” in any allegorical story. This, combined with Reagan’s later appropriation of the imagery and terminology of the film, made it seem like an all-purpose battle of good and evil, but it wasn’t always intended this way.

It’s important, when looking at the political elements of ‘Star Wars’, to look at the era in which it was written. When Lucas first envisioned his follow-up to ‘American Graffiti’, Nixon had just been re-elected in an astonishing landslide. The Vietnam War had outlasted both the President who started it and the President who championed it, and was now continuing into the second term of a President who had promised to end it…and had instead escalated both its intensity and its scope. Watergate, the scandal that would eventually grow to consume the Nixon presidency, was at this point merely seen as a couple of muck-rakers trying to stir up trouble for a man as unpopular with liberals as he was popular with conservatives. And George Lucas? He was hanging out with radical, political film-makers like Francis Ford Coppola and his then-wife, Marcia Lou Griffin. He was potentially tapped as the director of ‘Apocalypse Now’, before ‘Star Wars’ came along to occupy his attention at the time. He was consumed with the idea of a political film about what he saw as the end of American democracy as we knew it.

This is actually worth repeating, because we’re at this point so far removed from the era that many people have forgotten the most troubling aspect of Watergate. It wasn’t that the President had bugged, burglarized, and “ratfucked” his opponents on the way to his victory. It wasn’t even that he’d paid hush money to his co-conspirators to make it all go away. It wasn’t even that he’d discouraged the FBI from pursuing the case. It was what people saw as the very real possibility that Nixon might simply tell the United States Congress to shove their investigation up their collective ass sideways, and to tell the Supreme Court exactly what they could do with their 8-0 ruling that he turn over the tapes. It was the idea that we had a President who genuinely saw himself as not subject to the rule of law. “Imperialist Presidency” gets bandied around a lot by both sides of the political spectrum, but everyone was worried that Nixon was setting one up.

And what did Lucas write against this backdrop? He wrote a story about a democracy that had become an Empire, with a ruler who (all together now) “dissolved the council permanently”. The Empire is now constantly on a war footing, using technology they perfected in the wars against its enemies on its own citizens to stifle dissent. Only a group of anti-establishment rebels who remember The Way Things Used To Be can possibly restore the Republic. In case the symbolism isn’t blatant enough, should I mention that the ending of ‘Jedi’ (in which a bunch of foreigners/aliens with primitive weapons overwhelm a technologically and numerically superior force through use of cunning, ambushes and a superior knowledge of the local area) was originally planned to be the ending of ‘Star Wars’ before budgetary constraints forced him to move it? Even the costume design for the Rebel pilots evokes early Russian cosmonauts. (If you don’t believe me, just drop by the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum sometime.)

In ‘Star Wars’, the Empire is America. The Emperor is Nixon. The oppressor is us, and the call in the air everywhere is “Revolution!” George Lucas, the supposedly escapist film-maker who wanted nothing more than to entertain, was advocating for the armed overthrow of the United States government. By the time his film hit theaters, of course, it was already dated; nobody could look at “the sanctimonious impotence of Carter” (to borrow a phrase from James Lileks) and see a menace that had to be toppled from his iron throne. But by couching his work in the language of allegory, Lucas created a story that survived its political origins in a way that many other political films could not. Which is a good thing for us, but I suspect the idealist that Lucas used to be is a little bit sad about it.

(Post-script: I hate to have to mention this, because it seems like it should be self-evident, but…yes. I am serious. This is actually sourced in J.W. Rinzler’s “The Making of Star Wars”, which took contemporary interviews with Lucas and his friends and co-workers, along with drafts of the script, to show how the atmosphere of political idealism and frustrated radicalism that Lucas lived in during the 70s informed the work. Lucas has explained all this, but he’s offered so many contradictory explanations of the genesis of his work that most people ignore it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.)

8:12: Red carpet bullshit. Other people can blog this. I have my limits.

8:15: Oh jesus they’re doing recaps of the red carpet now?

8:16: No, seriously, whose idea was that, anyway? “Okay, we’ve got about fifty minutes’ worth of softball interview time, so let’s flashback towards the end of it and talk more about the dresses we already showed.”

8:21: Natalie Portman explains that Billy Crystal will be wonderful as host because he won’t be mean and he’ll only want to entertain. The Oscars are the only place and time on the entire planet where anybody expresses enthusiasm for Billy Crystal any more, you know.

8:25: Chris Rock says that he has given Billy Crystal some material but doesn’t know if Billy will use it. Let’s see if Billy is funny! Then we’ll know.

8:33: One minutes and thirty seconds – that was how long it took Billy Crystal to drag out his Sammy Davis Jr. impersonation. Which, it seems, now must be done in blackface. Good call there, Oscars! Boy, I sure am glad we fired Brett Ratner for being homophobic so Billy Crystal could be sorta-racist.

8:35: One thing about the BillyCrystalVerse that is in its favour: The Adventures of Tintin was, it seems, a much bigger deal than it was here.

8:37: One good joke in his first pre-singing part of the monologue (the economy and millionaires giving one another golden statues) and now we’re into the singing, which is excruciating. I mean, James Franco was really bad last year, but he didn’t sing, and at least Anne Hathaway was pretty. Billy Crystal is cheesy – not the good kind of cheesy either – and he’s fallen so deep into his schtick that the jokes are increasingly about his schtick. And he’s not pretty like Anne Hathaway. And he’s arguably less funny than Hathaway is now. Actually forget the “arguably.”

8:43: Tom Hanks gives away the award for Best Cinematography. Should go to Tree of Life or War Horse, I think, but ends up going to Hugo, which is not an indefensible pick. Does this mark the start of a Hugo landslide? And then ten seconds later we jump to Best Art Direction, which goes to Hugo as well. Interesting! And then they give the winners like fifteen seconds to accept their speeches because who cares about these people and their life achievements, am I right? Arrrrrgh I hate how the Oscars have cut down the victory speeches for non-celebrities to basically nothing.

8:45: Jaime Weinman, on Twitter, says that Art Direction always goes to a period film or fantasy film because otherwise the art director (is deemed) to be doing basically nothing. By my count, the last film which argues against this hypothesis is All The President’s Men, which won it in 1976. Ow.

8:51: Billy Crystal explains that the theatre is made up like the “movie palaces of our youth.” The movie palaces of my youth were strip malls with shitty seats, so I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. And to make his point here are a bunch of random scenes from famous movies! Quick – what do Jaws, Ghost, Avatar, The Princess Bride, The Godfather, The Hangover, A Few Good Men, Star Wars, Twilight, Amelie, Raging Bull and Midnight Cowboy have in common? If you said “they are all movies,” you are correct!

8:54: Costume design! Where Anonymous is nominated, amazingly enough, as celebrities explain why costume design is important. I was wondering if perhaps Hugo was going to go three-for-three, but no, The Artist takes it. Ugh ugh ugh The Artist.

8:56: Makeup! Will Albert Nobbs take it because Glenn Close pretends to be a guy, or will it be Harry Potter because wizards and monsters? Neither! It goes to The Iron Lady, and Meryl Streep’s odds of winning Best Actress just went up a couple points. Makeup people’s speeches are actually very nice and there is no musical hustle off the stage, so that’s all right.

8:59: And now: celebrities in a dark room will tell you about their first movies! Hilary Swank of course names three or four because she is an overachiever and she is all “and I won two Oscars already, not that I would tell you this.”

9:03: Ad for The Lorax. Hey, did you know the Lorax is now shilling for an SUV? Probably you did, but it turns out the Lorax is shilling for many other products as well! It’s almost as if they missed the entire point of the book!

9:06: Sandra Bullock says we are going “to try something new,” which is always a sign for “joke that will fail.” This time, it is Bullock explaining that she will be speaking in Chinese, but instead actually speaks in German. Which is the sign for Best Foreign Language Film, which goes – not surprisingly – to A Separation, because it was very good. In fact it was better than most of the Best Picture nominees! But this is nothing new. Also, I somehow managed to miss that a Canadian (e.g., Quebecois) film got nominated for Best Foreign Film this year. I’m out of the loop!

9:08: A Separation guy explains that Iran is actually mostly filled with people who don’t hate everybody, which should be a fairly non-controversial statement, which means it will enrage Fox and Friends tomorrow morning for at least two minutes and thirty seconds.

9:10: Christian Bale presents Best Supporting Actress because he won Best Supporting Actor last year. Did you forget about that? And it’s going to Octavia Spencer, which is not a big surprise because she has a good performance in what was, admittedly, a terrible movie, but at least she gets an Oscar out of it. Octavia completely melts down when she gets the award, which is cute. Maybe now she’ll get a post-Oscar career bump! Wait, no, that only happens to guys and young ingenues, and she is neither of those. Oh well.

9:18: Billy Crystal does a bit about old-timey focus groups, which actually means Christopher Guest and his usual gang get to do a really good bit about focus-grouping The Wizard of Oz, and that is nothing I can complain about. Then Billy Crystal thanks everybody famous who was in his terrible opening number and the show returns to being insufferable.

9:22: Editing! Usually goes to the winner of Best Picture, because most of the voters don’t really think about what editing is but assume the best movie is also the best edited. (Which, given that editing is supposed to be invisible and unnoticed, is not really the worst argument around.) Sometimes, though, it goes to a movie with very obvious and dramatic edits, because those films can say “hey, editing!” to voters. And it goes to… Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which I do not think will win Best Picture and had showy editing. The winners clearly had no idea they were going to win and apologize for stammering by saying “we’re editors.” Heh.

9:25: Best Sound Editing, meanwhile, goes to Hugo, and there’s definitely some momentum building now.

9:27: Best Sound Mixing! Hugo is nominated for this one, and… yep that’s another win. See, in the last week, all of the buzz has been about The Artist, The Help and The Descendants. All of these technical wins for Hugo might indicate a steamroller building up, but then again with the exception of The Artist none of those films are particularly deep in the technical categories. In short: I have no idea what’s going to happen! This type of incisive analysis is why you tune in to these liveblogs, folks.

9:34: Kermit and Miss Piggy show up to be briefly amusing and break the tedium… by introducing Cirque du Soleil, who then present the opening number that the Oscars never have any more because they’re too cool to do that, I guess.

9:41: Robert Downey Jr. comes out with a camera crew claiming to be the subject of a documentary, and does a bit with Gwyneth Paltrow. Which is funny. (I am not one of those people who hate Gwyneth.) This is all to present the documentary award, which goes to Undefeated, the great football documentary which is approximately nine months away from being fictionalized by Disney.

9:44: And we have our first “play them out forcefully” moment of the night, because we need more time to make sure celebrities tell us about their first movie experiences while in a dark room.

9:45: Chris Rock does a brilliant bit about race and voice acting for the best animation awards, which unfortunately downplays the difficulty of voice acting, which is a problem Hollywood has nowadays. (I blame Robin Williams.) And the Oscar goes to Rango, because Pixar didn’t make a movie last year, despite rumours otherwise that they might have done. Those rumours were not true. Ignore them.

9:52: Crystal does a bit with Melissa McCarthy where she does her bit from Bridesmaids, because that is what Melissa McCarthy does now as deemed by Hollywood. Emma Stone and Ben Stiller do a bit and she is much funnier than him. Also, she is taller than him. Jonah Hill is in this sketch for approximately two seconds and is funnier than Billy Crystal has been all night.

9:54: Visual effects! Hugo is nominated: will it take the award from those movies with far more elaborate effects like Harry Potter or Rise of the Planet of the Apes? And it will! Momentum, Hugo has it.

9:57: EXTREMELY MEAN-SPIRITED JOKE I COULD HAVE MADE ABOUT THE MELISSA MCCARTHY/BILLY CRYSTAL BIT FROM EARLIER: “Man, Meg Ryan has gained a lot of weight.”

9:58: Melissa Leo shows up to present Best Supporting Actor. Christopher Plummer wins – note that he is wearing his Order of Canada pin! – and gets a mammoth ovation. Plummer gets off a crackerjack joke about how he was practicing his acceptance speech when he was born. Nolte looks pissed that he didn’t win. Christopher Plummer winning officially redeems all of the shittiness thus far of this year’s Oscars, which have been remarkably shitty.

10:07: Billy Crystal does his “telepathy” bit. Mostly lame, although Scorcese trying to play along with Crystal’s schtick is cute. Also, the dog from The Artist shows up, because it is my theory that secretly The Artist is so popular because people want to give the dog awards but there are no major awards where the dog is eligible.

10:11: Crystal actually gets off a decent joke about the stupidly elaborate stage prop for the musical portion of the awards. The world stops dead, the universe is instantly annihilated, and then we are all recreated anew. So that happened.

10:13: Best Original Score (as opposed to Best Stolen Score, removed as a category in 1931) includes a nomination for some film called “The Adventures of Tin Tin,” but who cares because The Artist wins its second award of the night! The composer has no formal training in music, because absolutely everybody involved with this film is a plucky underdog. His mike seems to be sorta metallic for some reason, which is probably why when he asks for another ten seconds to thank his wife, he gets it.

10:16: Will Ferrell and Zach Galifakanis come out banging cymbals. They are actually entertaining. Hey, remember when Best Original Song included performances of the songs? That was great. Now, you get ten seconds of the song. But since “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets won, nobody is going to complain about that, even though they should. Brett McKenzie doesn’t thank Jason Segel, and I wonder if Segel’s strained expresson is a bit or not. My guess is that it’s a bit.

10:23: I don’t know if Americans are getting similar ads at all, but here in Canada, that was about the seven hundredth advert for Missing, Ashley Judd’s new TV series. It is not making me enthusiastic.

10:24: Angelina Jolie presents Best Adapted Screenplay, telling us that people think writing is easy but in fact it is very hard! Nobody has trouble believing this. (People have trouble believing that when they write, it it hard for them to do it poorly.) The movies are presented with little minimalist art things like you would find on the Internet when people do those “hey what if movies were old Penguin books” dealies, which is nice. The Descendants wins in what is its first real opportunity of the night. So that is interesting!

10:28: Original screenplay. I have this sick feeling that The Artist will win, particularly after Bridesmaids gets one of its most boring scenes for the presentation reel. (They have been pimping its few nominees all night because a lot of people actually went to see Bridesmaids.) But no, Woody Allen wins for Midnight in Paris, because he really had a lot of difficulty writing a movie about a screenwriter who wishes he lived in the good old days.

10:31: Celebrities in a dark room talking about movies! Best bit: Reese Witherspoon admitting that her favourite movie is Overboard. Second best bit: Robert Downey Jr. saying “this needs Werner Herzog to say something complicated” and then cutting to Herzog. Worst bit: the rest of it.

10:37: Billy Crystal welcomes the entire cast of Bridesmaids, who are good enough to show up and juice ratings but not quite good enough to win awards. They are presenting short film awards, so Kirsten Wiig and Maya Rudolph make a bunch of dick jokes and instantly win my loyalty forever. The winners of the dramatic category are a father/daughter team, and dad says that “now I don’t have to wait till her wedding to say how brilliant she is,” and the audience goes “aww,” and then the daughter dedicates the win to her mother and the audience goes “awww” again. Rose Byrne and Melissa McCarthy interrupt their speech to shout “Scorcese!” and do shots. The Best Documentary short winners are the ones who did the one about plastic surgeons working in Pakistan and they give a short but enthusiastic speech. Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper don’t do anything really interesting. The Best Animated Short award goes to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, and the title is really long and I have nothing else.

10:47: For some reason, at the commercial breaks, the oscars have girls dressed up as old-timey confection vendors walking up and down the aisle. I’m not sure what the point of that was except to make viewers say “what the fuck?” But on that level, it certainly is effective. Because: what the fuck?

10:50: Michael Douglas sounds raspy and looks much more gaunt than usual as he presents Best Director. I hope he’s doing all right. The Best Director vignettes are unintentionally hilarious, especially the Terrance Malick one where the actors basically just throw up their hands and say “I don’t fucking know, okay? We don’t get it either.”

10:51: And the Oscar goes to Michel whatsisname from The Artist, which… fuck off. People keep asking me why I hate this movie, and my answer is this: you remember how people hated on, and continue to hate on, Shakespeare In Love for being fluffy and inconsequential? Well, Shakespeare In Love actually makes some statements about the ennobling pursuit of art above all, and about the craft of writing. The Artist says, figuratively speaking, not a goddamn thing. It actually merits all of the complaints Shakespeare got. That’s why I bitch about it.

10:56: The Governor’s Awards recap, which used to be the lifetime achievement awards they presented on the main show, but now that would take up too much time from covering the fucking red carpet, I suppose. Better to do a brief, edited recap and then trot out James Earl Jones, Oprah Winfrey and makeup artist Dick Smith for a perfunctory standing O. Ugh. The Oscars were always schmoozy and shamelessly opulent, but now they’ve become just soulless.

11:03: Memorial reel time. Billy Crystal gives a shout-out to two former Oscar producers: Gil Cates and the other one who died this year, who is not as important as Gil Cates apparently. The reel this year is filled with still images, because that is classier, I suppose, then actually showing the actors doing what they did on screen. God, they can even overproduce the memorial reel?

11:10: Celebrities sitting in a dark room talking about movies, part three! Jonah Hill explains that film people are crazy because they want their film to be the best thing ever and then says that it’s because they care more about the movies than themselves, which doesn’t quite work if you think about it for more than two seconds.

11:13: Natalie Portman presents Best Actor. Instead of having five actresses give actors verbal blowjobs this year, instead they are going to have Natalie Portman give all the blowjobs. In other contexts this would be far more enjoyable, but unfortunately we are on this Bataan death march of an awards show.

11:14: Portman claims that George Clooney made us all believe he was “just a regular guy,” which – not so much, and I liked The Descendants but Clooney is always going to be a movie star even if he gains weight to look schlubby. For Jean Dujardin, they pick one of the two non-silent scenes from The Artist just because they want to fuck with people. And then Dujardin wins and that fucking Artist score plays again.

11:19: Dujardin thanks Douglas Fairbanks for hosting the first Oscars and then screams a bit. He can get away with this, because he is French.

11:23: Colin Firth gives the ladies nominated for Best Actress their blowjobs, because the Oscars are equal-opportunity. Because he is Colin Firth, he can give the trite emotional boilerplate real heft and meaning. The only fun bits come when he references Mamma Mia while celebrating Meryl Streep, and when he tells Michelle Williams she taught him so much despite being twenty-three years younger than him.

11:29: And Meryl Streep picks up her third award for a great performance in an otherwise shitty movie. Somebody in the audience is screaming “YEAAAHHHH” over and over again. Despite the fact that Viola Davis probably should have won, I can’t get upset, because Meryl Streep is wonderful and awesome. She first thanks her husband and then her makeup artist, who won earlier tonight, and they both spoke about having worked together for thirty years, which is really nice.

11:33: Best Picture montage! Which is kind of pointless, since The Artist seems like a lock at this point.

11:36: Yep, The Artist. Ugh. Okay, I am out.

I suspect that very few of you know what ‘The Shining’ is really about. You might think you know; you might talk about themes of isolation, claustrophobia, and the darkness in the human spirit made manifest as a “haunted” hotel. But you’d be wrong. You probably aren’t aware of the hidden messages about the dangers of going off the gold standard. You didn’t even know that it was a hidden confession from Stanley Kubrick explaining that he faked the moon landing footage. You hadn’t the slightest clue of its hidden warnings about the Mayan apocalypse in 2012. And you…okay, you probably knew about the secret subtext relating to America’s treatment of Native Americans. That one’s so well-known that even Cracked.com covered it. But you probably didn’t know about all of the hidden meanings, because you simply can’t. There’s so many hidden meanings that there’s a whole other movie coming out just about all the meanings in the first movie.

In all seriousness, what does make ‘The Shining’ such a popular subject for such a diverse range of “cryptic meaning” essays? Surely if Kubrick really had a message he was trying to convey, no matter how cleverly he concealed it, you’d expect to get some kind of consensus as to what it might be. But (for those of you who really don’t feel like sitting through a 40-minute YouTube video, or spend an hour or so looking at screenshots) Kubrick’s film almost seems to become a sort of Rorshach test, continually revealing cryptic messages that just happen to exactly coincide with the researcher’s personal perspective. Why? What is it about ‘The Shining’ that makes it more confusing than ‘The Prisoner’? What makes this film the one that people fixate on, while ‘Donnie Darko’ (to name another cult film that plays its cards close to the vest) seems to avoid these kinds of questions? I don’t know that we can ever know for sure, but here are my suggestions.

1) Kubrick isn’t talking. Well, I mean…of course he’s not talking now, but even when he was alive, he wasn’t talking about his movies. Kubrick had a reputation as a notorious recluse, but it would be more accurate to describe him as someone who just didn’t give interviews. He was perfectly content to be social, but he also hated the way that filmmakers who loved to talk about their work had reduced watching a movie to a sterile exercise in spotting the things the director had talked about in a magazine. He didn’t want you to be thinking about the technical reasons that the hedge maze had replaced the hedge animals (budget constraints, for the record–moving hedge animals weren’t technically feasible in 1980.) He wanted you to be watching the movie, and to let you come to your own conclusions about it. Seen from a certain point of view though, a reclusive movie-maker who doesn’t want to talk about his movies because he wants you to “work it out for yourself” can sound like someone who’s embedded a secret meaning. The more mystery invested in the process, the more people expect from the ultimate solution. “Some people are just crazy” is not going to satisfy them.

2) Kubrick had a reputation as a perfectionist. Time and time again, as you read these analyses, you’ll come across a phrase that’s almost word-for-word identical every single time: “A legendary perfectionist like Kubrick certainly wouldn’t allow such an obvious continuity error.” It is a prima facie assumption made in all of these analyses that any apparent mistake in the film must be placed there deliberately, as Kubrick was known for being a perfectionist. These must be hidden messages, because Kubrick doesn’t make mistakes.

This is, of course, an assumption so wrong that it almost has to be unpicked word-for-word. Kubrick was a notorious perfectionist, true, but “perfectionist” in this case doesn’t mean “meticulous about set continuity.” Kubrick’s reputation came from his habit of shooting far more film than was necessary, sometimes doing 80-100 takes of a single scene, in order to get the widest possible ranges of performance from his actors and to force them to genuinely inhabit their characters. ‘The Shining’ was no exception; Kubrick spent 200 days in principal photography for a 144-minute film. (This means that on average, Kubrick shot about 45 seconds of usable footage per day. Almost certainly, there must have been whole months worth of days where he shot nothing at all that he used in the final film.) Kubrick was a perfectionist in that he wanted the perfect take, and was willing to shoot as long as was needed until he got it; and once he was armed with all those perfect takes, he would go into the editing room and spend months assembling them into a finished film.

But there’s a big difference between that and being precise about continuity. In fact, Kubrick’s approach works against tight set continuity; when you’re shooting 30, 40, 50 takes of one shot, even going back the next day for more, then of course tiny details aren’t going to be the same from shot to shot. Kubrick wanted the perfect emotional resonance, not the perfect amount of sandwich eaten from moment to moment. Even if he did notice the continuity problems (and he almost certainly did) what was he going to do once he was in the editing booth? Throw out the best performance because the scrapbook was on the wrong page? Kubrick had to be aware that only obsessive viewers notice continuity mistakes to begin with, and he almost certainly had more important things to concern himself. But to the ‘Shining’ enthusiast, each of these tiny mistakes has to be a deliberate message, because they assume Kubrick is a genius who doesn’t do anything by accident.

3) The movie is different from the book. This is true of just about all adaptations, of course, but there’s a little more to it here. One, Kubrick didn’t discuss why he made the changes he made when adapting the novel. (See above.) Two, it’s assumed that a legendary perfectionist like Kubrick wouldn’t make arbitrary changes unless he had a grand vision to them. (See above.) And three, King and Kubrick were legendarily at odds over the adaptation, with King going so far as to write and direct his own adaptation that was more to his liking. With the theme of “changes from the book” highlighted, everyone’s attention is drawn to them. And again, we’re back to the “hidden messages” territory, with every tiny alteration assumed to have cryptic meaning, from the hotel’s origin to its final fate and everything in between.

Again, though, this assumes that Kubrick was able to work in the realm of pure art, with no concessions needing to be made to practicality. Subplots like the simmering conflict between Ullman the hotel manager and Jack, or backstory like his assault on a student at Stovington Prep? Dropped for time, perhaps, because the movie is already over two hours long and there’s not even a mention of them. Wendy and Danny seem different because the characters wound up being interpreted by actors, and because certain elements had to be emphasized and dropped to get the film down to a manageable running time. Logistically difficult effects, such as the destruction of the Overlook Hotel or the moving hedge animals, had to be dropped completely. Nobody ever gets to do everything the way they want to entirely…except maybe George Lucas, which may explain why it’s not such a good thing…and Kubrick is certainly no exception. But if you’re not willing to believe that, then each change takes on a special significance.

4) The ending is ambiguous. Sure, we know that Jack died. But then we get that last cryptic scene, of the photograph in the empty hotel filled with mysterious people and Jack at the center. The caption, “July 4th Ball, 1921.” It has to mean something. It’s the final shot of the film, the one that Kubrick wants us to leave on, the one he wants to resonate in our heads as we’re leaving the theater. He actually went so far as to cut an epilogue out of the film after it reached theaters, so that all we see is the cut from Jack’s body to the mysterious photo. A cryptic ending like that is one that demands endless analysis, deeper investigation, because we want things to make sense. And that ending really, really doesn’t, at least not in a logical and linear sense. (It says a lot that even after “notorious recluse” Kubrick came out and blatantly explained the ending to everyone, people still don’t believe it.) Whatever conclusions you come to about the final shot, you bring something of your own ideas and experiences to it…which leads us to…

5) People really, really like to create patterns. It’s human nature, and the final element that brings the first four together. Once you’ve decided that there is a hidden meaning to ‘The Shining’, once you’ve started looking at it not as a film but as a series of cryptic messages encoded into tiny details, then there’s a sufficiently large mass of data present that you can draw any number of connections between data points based on your own personal viewpoint as a lens. Think that Kubrick was a numerologist? Examine the time codes, you’re bound to find a pattern of significant shots at significant times. (Because Kubrick didn’t really put in any scenes that he didn’t think were important.) Want to find messages about your own personal political, mystical, or historical views? They’re bound to be there if you think symbolically enough and are willing to put in some work massaging the data. (Remember, numbers are infinitely transformable. Add, subtract, multiply and divide and 7/4/1921 can become any set of numbers you care to name.) And ultimately, you will come away convinced that Kubrick’s message was about exactly what you want it to be about. It’s a comforting thought, really. Kubrick must be a genius for hiding such an intricate message in the film, and you must be a genius for being able to find it. The two of you no doubt think alike, and wouldn’t we all want to think of ourselves as being in the company of geniuses?

For myself, I don’t think there is a hidden message in ‘The Shining’. I think that Kubrick, like all great artists, loved ambiguity, and loved to insert it in the work instead of forcing his own conclusions onto you. You are required, by design, to think about what’s going on in front of you because the answers are not provided, and Kubrick isn’t telling because your answer is probably better than his anyway. I think he’d probably be impressed at some of the creativity people have brought to finding meanings in his film…even if I can easily picture Wendy looking at Jack’s manuscript and reading, “It can be ruled out that Stanley Kubrick didn’t notice this obvious mistake as he precisely edited the shot that way for a reason and we all saw it happen…”

FLAPJACKS: So did you see the new Liam Neeson movie?
ME: Oh, you mean Liam Neeson Versus Wolves? Yeah. It was okay, I guess.
FLAPJACKS: Only “okay,” though? I was hoping that it would be a classic. Is it better than Liam Neeson Versus Kidnappers?
ME: Oh, it’s much better than that. Which, needless to say, makes it also much, much better than Liam Neeson Versus Amnesia.
FLAPJACKS: But I’m guessing it’s not better than Liam Neeson Versus Batman.
ME: Oh, heavens no.
FLAPJACKS: And not better than Liam Neeson Versus Outdated Ideas About Sexuality.
ME: Well, I don’t know that that’s a fair comparison. One is a serious dramatic study of an important modern figure in science, and the other is about punching wolves to death. Seems very apples-and-oranges.
FLAPJACKS: But they’re both movies, right? So we should be able to compare them on that basis. I mean, all the time critics are willing to compare trash cinema to high drama in an unflattering manner because they’re both movies. Because they’re critics. So can’t we do the same thing?
ME: I just don’t think the basis for comparison is strong. You might as well try to compare Liam Neeson Versus Wolves to Liam Neeson Versus The Holocaust.
FLAPJACKS: I see your point. Can we compare Liam Neeson Versus Wolves to Liam Neeson Versus The Grief Caused By A Loved One’s Death (And Also Hugh Grant Is In It)?
ME: He’s not even the main character in that one, so I would say no. Let’s try to stick to movies where Liam Neeson is central to the movie. So Liam Neeson Versus The Bastard English is in –
FLAPJACKS: Aren’t there actually two of those?
ME: I think the second one is characterized more accurately as Liam Neeson Versus The Bastard English and His Fellow Shortsighted Irish. But my point is both of those work, whereas Liam Neeson Versus Hades isn’t quite right because for some reason Hollywood thought that Sam Worthington is cooler than Liam Neeson.
FLAPJACKS: That is just crazy talk. But wait, how about Liam Neeson Versus George Lucas’ Dialogue? He’s not exactly the main character in that. I mean, it’s Star Wars, part whatever.
ME: I think Qui-Gon Jinn is really the main character of that movie, despite dying before the end. So it works. Main character in a large ensemble still counts, so Liam Neeson Versus Post-Revolutionary France qualifies, but Liam Neeson Versus The Protestant Nativists doesn’t because his character dies in the first fifteen minutes.
FLAPJACKS: Which would also disqualify Liam Neeson Versus The Crusades, I suppose. How about Liam Neeson Versus Ghosts?
ME: Counts, but only barely.
FLAPJACKS: So, now that we have established the basis for comparison, how good is Liam Neeson Versus Wolves?
ME: Well, let me put it this way: he really punches the shit out of those wolves.
FLAPJACKS: Can’t ask for more than that.

Everyone’s talking about MGM, Paramount, and Universal this summer, but for some reason, nobody but me has the inside scoop on this summer’s films from indie horror/sci-fi titan The Asylum! Well, I know you all wanted that rectified, so here’s the inside scoop on their upcoming releases!

continue reading "2012 Mockbuster Preview!"

BEST PICTURE: The Artist is a lock, because audiences are crazy for this film’s simulation of nostalgia. (It has all the blissful reverie with half the calories, and unlike those other terrible foreign films you don’t have to read any subtitles!) The Descendants will get in, ditto Hugo and Moneyball. I’m sure about those four. Midnight In Paris probably gets in because it’s Woody Allen’s first actual entertaining film in god knows how long. The Oscars have a lengthy track record of confusing “long and pretentious” with “good” so I figure The Tree of Life makes it into this category. That’s six. Let’s round it out with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Help, which people like for reasons which are sadly not a mystery. I really don’t think there’ll be enough films getting votes to have ten BP nominees this year. Unless the Academy really loved fucking War Horse more than anybody else who saw it who wasn’t a film critic (seriously, I have never seen such a divide between critical opinion and popular opinion as with respect to War Horse. ATTENTION CRITICS: Armond White fucking loved stupid old War Horse. This should have been a big old hint.)

RESULTS: The Artist, The Descendants, Moneyball, Hugo, Midnight In Paris, The Tree of Life, The Help, War Horse and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close? The FUCK? Jesus Christ, Academy, that movie was shit and people did not like it and critics mostly didn’t either. I don’t get you, Academy.

BEST DIRECTOR: Whoever directed The Artist, because it is so precious and it is such an achievement! Alexander Payne for The Descendants, because it is honestly good and Payne deserves a nomination. Woody Allen, because it’s been a while since he got a nomination and the Academy is mostly made of old people who want things to be like they were when they were kids. Martin Scorcese for Hugo, so he can do what he typically does: not win. (And unlike many Scorcese nominations, this time the not-winning will be richly deserved. Hugo isn’t bad, but it sure isn’t the achievement people are making it out to be.) And probably Terrance Malick for The Tree of Life, because wank wank wank wank wank wank wank. David Fincher deserves a nomination for Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but that shit is not gonna happen, I don’t think.

RESULTS: The Artist guy, Payne, Allen, Scorcese, Malick. This one was easy to predict. At a certain point you get cynical and, as a result, correct about things Oscar.

BEST ACTOR: Clooney for The Descendants and Pitt for Moneyball are both locks, because they are Hollywood royalty and both nominations would be deserved. Jean Dujardin for The Artist, which I am reliably informed will make you believe in miracles again and also cure gout. Michael Fassbender for Shame in the “this is very serious and we must nominate somebody in this movie for being fierce and honest and reminding us that going to the movies should be like going to the dentist” category. That leaves one slot, and it could go to Leo for J. Edgar despite the fact that the movie was terrible and everyone agreed it was terrible, mostly because Clint Eastwood commands that kind of loyalty amongst the people who vote for awards. (Hey, remember how a perfectly average film like Invictus got multiple acting nominations?) However, I’ll bet on a longshot: Brendan Gleeson for The Guard. Because why not. (Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is also quite possible and more plausible than Gleeson, really, but fuck it.)

RESULTS: Clooney, Dujardin, Pitt, Oldman, and Demian Bichir from A Better Life, which trends off the SAGs. No Fassbender? Huh. I guess 2012 is a feely-goody year for Oscar.

BEST ACTRESS: Viola Davis for The Help, because racism is bad. Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady, because everybody loves Meryl Streep (and not undeservedly), even when she is in a bad movie, and isn’t it time she had another Oscar already, even if we all missed like four or five much better oportunities to give her one (I’m looking at you, LAST YEAR WHEN SANDRA BULLOCK WON). Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs, because she dressed up like a man in a very unconvincing and boring movie, and that must have been a lot of work. Tilda Swinton for We Need To Talk About Kevin because she is this year’s female entry in the Michael Fassbender category mentioned above. Again, one slot left, and it’ll go to a young actress because look at all these acclaimed older actresses, what good are they? So either Michelle Williams for My Week With Marilyn (which is a bad movie, but Michelle Williams has been in so many good ones that she deserves a pass) or Rooney Mara for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but if I had to pick I’d go with Williams because Hollywood isn’t ready for edgy movies about girls with nose rings and stuff in the Academy Awards.

RESULTS: Close, Streep, Williams, Mara, Davis. My comment about Swinton being this year’s lady Fassbender was correct, but in the wrong way.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christopher Plummer for Beginners is a lock and should win because he is old and has had a damn brilliant career, and I am rooting for my fellow Torontonian. Kenneth Branagh is widely considered to be a lock for My Week With Marilyn, as is Albert Brooks for Drive, and can you believe none of these guys has ever won an Oscar? That is crazy. Let’s see, who else? Jonah Hill for Moneyball? Could happen. And I’m gonna go into left field and predict that Ryan Gosling gets a nom here for Crazy Stupid Love, because Ryan Gosling had an incredible year but he’s not going to win anything.

RESULTS: Plummer, Branagh, Hill, Nick Nolte for Warrior (which was a good performance in a good movie, but come on) and Max von Sydow for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, and all nominations of this sort should from now on be referred to as Ghost. As in “I can’t believe they nominated the shitty 9/11 movie for Best Picture, that’s so Ghost.“

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Whatsername who was in The Artist and OH GOD do I ever hate that movie so much. I want to punch everybody involved in the making of The Artist in the face. I am owed that, dammit. Also Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer for The Help, because racism is bad. Shailene Woodley has some mojo for The Descendants, so why not. Finally, let’s finish with Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs, who is getting a lot of praise for dressing up like a man in a boring, boring movie.

RESULTS: Berenice Bejo for The Artist, McTeer, Chastain, Spencer, and Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids, which almost but not quite makes up for all of the other shitty nominations this year.

THE ACTUAL BEST FILMS OF 2011 WERE, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER: The Muppets, 50/50, Win-Win, A Better Life, Attack the Block, Crazy Stupid Love, The Guard, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Fright Night, Moneyball, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Captain America: The First Avenger, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Young Adult.
NUMBER OF NOMINATIONS IN THE “BIG SIX” CATEGORIES THOSE FILMS WILL GET: Not a lot of them

In email, zzzzthunk asks:

So a long time ago you talked about how a Flash movie shouldn’t be about the origin of the Flash but instead be about the final adventure of Barry Allen. But who signs on to be Barry Allen in that movie when they’re just going to be cut from the franchise?

Firstly, go ask Liam Neeson why he signed on to play Qui-Gon Jinn. Hint: the answer is “it’s fun and you get to make a lot of money.” But the real answer is that if I was going to plot out a trilogy of Flash movies (as trilogies are the hot thing these days, assuming the first one goes off properly), whoever played Barry would be key in all three. But, since I am not a hack, each movie itself would also have to be a self-contained work within a larger theme.

So what is the Flash’s theme? “Runs real fast” is not an answer, and Geoff Johns’ thing where he tries to turn Barry Allen into Batman isn’t the answer either. Barry Allen works best when he’s just a decent sort who gets superpowers and does good because he can, which is not that fascinating, which means his conflict should be external rather than internal. Wally’s can be internal, though – and the fact that I am mentioning Wally should key off that a Flash movie and/or trilogy should ultimately be about family. The Flash has always been best when the generational aspect of the costume raises its head: after all, the Flash was basically always just a dude who ran fast, and what ultimately distinguished him from other superheroes was really the fact that at a certain point someone took over for the previous guy, and then again, and then again.

So:

The Flash: Barry Allen’s last adventure. Jay and Wally and Linda are introduced as well: Jay is quite explicitly the “older Flash,” and Wally is the former sidekick, grown up, with Linda as his lady. And he’s got cancer, which is of course killing him because every time he uses his speed powers his metabolism clocks up to deadly o’clock. Professor Zoom is the villain, perhaps with Savitar as his assistant, and Zoom wants to command the Speed Force itself to do Bad Things. (NOTE: Do not ever call it the Speed Force in the movies. Say it out loud and you will quickly understand why. Call it “the lightning,” which sounds properly ominous, and you are fine.)

But Zoom gets killed by the end, and the end is Barry Allen running himself into relativity/the Speed Force to save the world from the Speed Force, turning into pure Speed Lightning, traveling through Wally (and curing him in the process by retro-aging the cancer into nonexistence) and eventually going back through time to become the lightning bolt that gives him his superpowers in the first place. (This can actually work as a nice twist on the superhero movie genre as a whole, by having the movie resolutely refuse to explain WHY Barry has speed powers throughout the entire movie – until it does right at the end.) Your conclusion is Wally putting on Barry’s uniform and declaring that the Flash lives again.

There is nothing terribly original in this – the originality would be in putting several disparate elements and tying them together into a satisfying whole. But then we turn to the second movie:

The Return of Barry Allen: Exactly what you think it is. Take Mark Waid’s classic Flash story and use it for the midway point of the trilogy. Any actor warned of this in advance would kill to play Barry Allen now, because he gets to play both the noble hero and a psychotic villain in what is essentially the same role. (This is of course why you need Zoom to be the baddie in the first movie.) And this is as straight an adaptation as can be: maybe you remove Johnny Quick (because he’s mostly extraneous to the plot), but you keep Max Mercury around because you’ll need him to explain the Speed Force a little more than Jay can – particularly how it’s sort of like Heaven – and because he’ll come in handy for movie number three, to be the Magical Speedster who doles out less-than-helpful advice as necessary.

The Fastest Man Alive: The capper of the trilogy only features maybe a brief appearance from Barry within the Speed Force, because at this point it’s become clear that although a trilogy of Flash movies is about family and generational responsibility, it’s also about man’s relationship with what he perceives to be Heaven and what Heaven even is. The third movie is a combination of “The Quick and the Dead” and “Dead Heat” (the Flash stories, not the movies of the same names) and features Savitar as the villain, trying to ascend to his idea of Heaven, even if it destroys the world – and Wally then has to choose, at the same time, ascension to bliss or return to Earth – and Linda. You can place a lot of callbacks in this movie to the first of the trilogy, and show how Wally’s different choices and different personality mean that things end differently for him.

That’s your Flash trilogy right there: a commentary on the superhero as mortal man, and on the superhero as godly ascended being. You can fit in a lot of commentary on man’s relationship with religion as you see fit, but it will all be in the entertaining context of somebody being a superhero by running really, really fast. And, in case any of the movies bomb, each one has its own satisfying ending (Barry ascends and Wally takes his place/Wally finally comes out of Barry’s shadow/Wally makes his final choice). I think that works.

So they are rereleasing Titanic in IMAX 3D in a few months (and, curiously, advertising it with trailers that are not IMAX and not 3D, so… good going, movie marketing people). Now, I can already hear the groans from the peanut gallery, but… it’s been fifteen years. Yes, everybody was sick to death of Titanic fever after six months of it, but then again we were all sick of “Wonderwall” because every radio station played it to death back in 1995 (this is when there were still radio stations that you listened to, kids), and fifteen years later it turns out that “Wonderwall” is actually a really good song and our hatred for it was based almost entirely on saturation, and maybe a little bit because the Gallagher brothers were dickheads.

So, fifteen years later, is Titanic a good movie?

Well, it’s worth saying right off the bat that James Cameron is notoriously shit with villains. He can do inhuman monsters quite well, but when it comes to actual humans, his villains are almost uniformly massive disappointments:1 the Evil Military Guy in Avatar, the Evil Terrorist Guy in True Lies, and of course, Billy Zane, Titanic‘s Evil Rich Guy, who is easily the worst part of the entire movie. He just feels completely superfluous to the plot, mostly because he is completely superfluous to the plot, which is a romance set within a disaster movie. A movie about a boat crashing does not need a villain, and especially does not need a villain to make stupid jokes about Picasso paintings.

And yes, the adorable Irish ragamuffins in steerage class and their quaintly adorable working-class party kind of stick in the throat a bit. Particularly of late, the “it’s better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable” moral is taking a beating, mostly because people have come to recognize that it’s generally a lot easier – or at least simpler – to be rich and also moderately okay than poor and also happy. Of course, given that this is turn-of-the-century times when societal morals for women meant that being rich meant, for all intents and purposes, societal imprisonment and very little personal agency, it’s certainly less unbearable. Also, Kate Winslet would have to be married to Billy Zane’s character, so I take it back: Billy Zane does serve a purpose in this movie, and it is to help us rationalize Kate Winslet’s choices.

But for the most part, this is about whether the Kate and Leo romance works as well as the boat-sinking aspect of the film does. After all, I trust nobody will argue that the boat-sinking part of the movie is anything other than excellent. Even in early 1997 when people were considering murder of Leo fangirls as justifiable homicide, they were willing to admit that the actual boat-sinking part was stunning, and it holds up today. Cameron’s ability to instill drama and excitement into what could easily have been a foregone conclusion2 remains one of his signal achievements as a filmmaker, and the little codicils he throws in (the old couple embracing on the bed, the band playing on, et cetera) could have been cheesy, but aren’t.

And the truth: yes, the Kate/Leo pairing works. It worked then and it works now. Maybe in 1996 people were willing to argue that these two weren’t major acting talents and instead just lucky kids. It was not a good argument even then, what with Winslet’s turns in Heavenly Creatures and Sense and Sensibility, as well as DiCaprio’s in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and The Basketball Diaries. But nowadays, Kate Winslet3 has an Academy Award and two Golden Globes and gets nominated for something like, every other year and when she isn’t getting nominated Leonardo DiCaprio is, and when he isn’t he’s busy being Martin Scorcese’s new go-to guy. And they were very nearly as good back then.

Yes, the dialogue is clunky, but good actors can sell clunky dialogue because good actors know that in real life, clunky dialogue is what most people say all the time. Tons of movies have clunky dialogue and yet survive on the strength of the actors delivering it: good actors sell clunky dialogue with Method and commitment, because inelegance and cliche is what we fill our lives with even when we don’t want to admit it and instead want to pretend that we are all Vicious Circle-level wits all of the time instead of people who quote The Simpsons at one another. Most people who complain about clunky dialogue are writers or want to be writers, and they dislike an artificial entity like a script engaging with the messiness of real life – and further, on some level they disapprove of relying on actors to find the reality in the lead and the wheat in the chaff. But it’s still an option. In Titanic, Kate and Leo sell the shit out of the clunky dialogue, turning what could be trite or stiff into what is real, and that is an achievement. The two of them make this movie work, and to give them full credit for the film’s success as a story is only deserved.

So, in conclusion: yes, it was and is a good film. Did it deserve to win Best Picture? No, not even close – after all, 1996 was the year of Boogie Nights, Contact, The Sweet Hereafter and L.A. Confidential, all of which are better and have a distinct lack of a terrible Billy Zane villain. Heck, even The Full Monty is stronger, and that movie was a formula before the formula existed. But most of them are not as ambitious as Titanic was, and it is understandable that ambition counts for something in Hollywood.

1. His exceptions are Burke in Aliens and Coffey in The Abyss, mostly because both are realistic and understandable. [↩]
2. Remember all the SPOILERS THE BOAT SINKS jokes? No? They were there. Believe me. [↩]
3. Who is age-appropriate for me – no YOU shut up. [↩]

STEVEN SPIELBERG: Hello, everybody, and more specifically Academy voters. This is my new movie, War Horse. It is about a horse. Also there is war. I am pretty sure that these two things combined are good for at least half a dozen Oscars.
ALBERT: Boy, look at that baby horse! I bet that is a special horse.
HORSE: (whinnies, does horsey things)
ALBERT: One day, I will own that horse, for we have a special bond. He is the specialest horse ever.
HORSE: (neigh, neigh, stamps foot)
Eventually the horse comes to be sold at a HORSE AUCTION. The horse is very distressed to be separated from its mommy horse. This is is a metaphor for the BRUTALITY OF WAR, which takes away the young from their loving parents.
ALBERT’S FATHER: Oh, look at that landlord. He thinks he’s better than me because he’s rich and dresses well and isn’t a slobbering drunk and speaks without excessive unnecessary spitting. How I hate him!
LANDLORD: I want to buy that horse! Ten guineas!
ALBERT’S FATHER: ELEVENTY BILLION GUINEAS!
ONLOOKER: Wait, didn’t you come here to buy a plough horse? This horse – while clearly a very special horse, as any man can see – isn’t a plough horse.
ALBERT’S FATHER: Ah, but I have stuck it to that rich landlord that I hate because I pay him rent!
AUDIENCE: Is it possible to get that drunk?
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Excuse me, but I was one of the Hollywood young guns of the 1970s, and I was the one who basically stayed sober while everybody else got shitfaced on everything. You’ll note I still have a career, while Francis Ford Coppola makes a lot of wine and complains about the system. There are reasons for this. I’m just saying.
ALBERT’S MOTHER: Oh, you idiot, you bought a fancy horse – granted, a very special horse, that’s obvious – instead of a plough horse. How are we going to plough the fields now?
ALBERT: I’ll plough the fields with him, mother! For he is the most wonderful horse in the world! I’ll train him to be a super-horse, for we have a special bond, and now, as I knew one day that I would, we are horse and master.
ALBERT’S MOTHER: But you had absolutely nothing to do with buying this horse.
ALBERT: It still counts.
Albert TRAINS THE HORSE. He comes up with a unique whistle to summon the horse. Albert’s best friend GEORDIE watches, all the while wearing a T-shirt that says I AM HERE FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN TO EVENTUALLY DIE IN WAR. Eventually the Landlord shows up again with his young son, who we know is evil because he sneers a bit.
LANDLORD: So… you owe me money.
ALBERT’S FATHER: We’ll get you the money.
LANDLORD: Yes, eventually, I suppose, but you owe me the money right now, and it’s not because of some horrible disaster that you owe me money. It’s because you spent far too much money on a horse you didn’t need.
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Um, audience? He’s evil. You should boo him. Look at his son’s face! Evil!
AUDIENCE: Well, yes, but he’s got kind of a point, doesn’t he?
ALBERT’S FATHER: We’ll plow the rocky field with all the rocks. We’ll plant turnips there.
LANDLORD: Well, I can give you until October, I guess. But if you don’t pay up then I’ll have to evict you.
STEVEN SPIELBERG: You’re not booing, audience!
AUDIENCE: Yeah, well… we were of the understanding that there was going to be war. Are we going to get to the war soon?
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Patience. Also you should be booing him now.
AUDIENCE: He just gave them a six-month extension. Why would we boo him for that?
ALBERT: No worries! I’ll teach the horse to plow! For he is the specialest horse in the world!
Albert tries to teach the War Horse to plow. The War Horse is not good at this.
ALBERT’S FATHER: I am a self-destructive drunk and will shoot this horse!
ALBERT’S MOTHER: You can’t shoot the horse!
ALBERT: He is the specialest horse in the world and you will have to shoot me first!
Albert’s father BREAKS DOWN CRYING. Later Albert’s mother explains to Albert that his father was in the Boer War and that although he was a war hero, he also has post-traumatic stress syndrome, which makes him depressed and a drunk, and also causes him to spend money on horses he cannot afford. Albert decides to plow the field even though the War Horse is not properly trained.
ALBERT: Okay, horse! Let’s plow this field!
HORSE: (does not plow the field)
RURAL ENGLISH come to watch Albert plow the rocky field and laugh at him, because this is Olden Times and they did not have television then. Even though they are all aware that Albert’s family needs to plow this field in order to survive, none of them offer to help, since all English people are apparently DICKHEADS.
ALBERT: Horse! I am calling on our special bond here!
It begins to RAIN HEAVILY.
ALBERT: We can do it, horse! You and me! Mostly you, but I’m helping!
HORSE: (neighs in a determined manner)
ALBERT’S MOTHER: Look! They’re plowing the rocky field!
LANDLORD: And to think, all it took was rain to loosen up the dirt!
AUDIENCE: When do we get to the war part?
STEVEN SPIELBERG: It’s coming. We have to set stuff up first.
To celebrate, Albert goes RIDING on War Horse. He races the LANDLORD’S EVIL SON because the son is driving a car with a pretty girl, who of course is all about Albert and his horse because girls love horses. Then War Horse refuses to jump a stone wall and the evil son laughs at him.
ALBERT: I hope this pays off somehow later. Because ow.
MOTORCYCLE PERSON: Hello, rural England! We are now entering World War One! To commemorate this, the next time the bells ring will be the last time until the war ends!
Then it RAINS VERY HARD and the family’s turnip crop is ruined. They look grimly at one another, and Albert’s father takes War Horse to be sold to the army. War Horse is bought by the guy who played LOKI IN THE THOR MOVIE.
ALBERT: No! You can’t take my horse from me! We have a special bond!
LOKI: I can see you and this horse have a special bond. Look, I’ll just borrow this horse from you, all right? I’ll return him at the end of the war. After all, it’s clear that this is a truly wonderful horse. God, would I love to fuck it.
ALBERT: …wait, what?
LOKI: Just pretend I didn’t say that last bit while I make sex-eyes at your horse.
ALBERT: No! I volunteer for Army! I’m old enough! Well, no, I’m not, but even though I’m underage I can fight any ten German soldiers so long as I’m with my horse!
LOKI: I’m sorry, but the Army has standards and we don’t let in young men who admit they’re underage. Granted, you could have just kept on lying and claimed you were of age and I couldn’t have done anything about that, but then we would have had to deal with the inconvenient fact that you’re a commoner and therefore wouldn’t be able to ride your horse anyways. So it’s probably for the best that you have stupidly allowed me to separate you from your sexy, sexy horse, which I promise to return to you.
ALBERT: But what if you die?
LOKI: Excuse me, but I am a noble Englishman in a war film. Do you really think I’m going to die? Excuse me, audience, what are you doing?
AUDIENCE: We’re starting a pool on how many more minutes you live.
LOKI: Ah. Well. Carry on, then.
The War Horse goes to Army Horse Camp, where he trains alongside a big black horse owned by BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, who demonstrates that when he has short hair and a moustache, he looks staggeringly like DOCTOR STRANGE. During a practice charge, War Horse beats Benedict Cumberbatch’s horse quite easily.
SOME ENGLISH OFFICER: Well, it looks like we’re going to beat up those Germans awfully good, eh what? I do hope our exuberance in training doesn’t wind up being terribly ironic!
LOKI: I’m sure that there’s not going to be any irony in this war. After all, what’s ironic about warfare? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to write a letter to Albert, and enclose in that letter all of these erotic pictures I have drawn of his horse.
The English cavalry goes to war. They charge a German camp with their sabres drawn and hack up the Germans quite well, until they find out the Germans have MACHINE GUNS. The Germans kill Loki and most of the British cavalry, although they all die offscreen. Benedict Cumberbatch, his horse, War Horse, and the Ironic English Officer survive.
A GERMAN: Oh, Benedict Cumberbatch! Didn’t you realize that cavalry does not work against machine guns? You stupid English! You are being defeated by progress!
Benedict Cumberbatch THROWS DOWN HIS SABRE ANGRILY and surrenders. His horse and the War Horse are taken away by the Germans to drive an ambulance, because the War Horse knows how to accept a horse collar due to his plowing experience, and he talks to Benedict Cumberhorse in horse language and explains that Cumberhorse must also wear a horse collar.
A YOUNG GERMAN NAMED GUNTER: Boy, whoever taught you to wear a collar must have saved your life! Ironic, is it not, that knowledge of peaceful activities would save you in war? Oh my, but you are clearly a special horse who has been touched by destiny.
MEANWHILE, back in England, Albert receives Loki’s letter and his belongings, and finds out that he is dead. He is sad, because this means War Horse is probably dead as well. He mourns War Horse. Back in Germany, the war continues.
A GERMAN OFFICER: Well, all of you except Gunter are going up to the front lines, where you will probably die. Good for you, Gunter! Your knowledge of horses will save your life!
GUNTER: But my little brother is going up to the front lines!
GUNTER’S BROTHER: There’s nothing for it, Gunter.
GUNTER: But you’re fourteen! You lied to come to war!
GUNTER’S BROTHER: Sadly, there is nothing we can do.
GUNTER: We could just tell them you’re underage and they’ll have to send you home!
GUNTER’S BROTHER: That wouldn’t work, for reasons we will not state.
Gunter’s brother leaves with the marching German army. Gunter steals War Horse and Cumberhorse and rides up to the column, grabs his brother, and they ride off.
A GERMAN SOLDIER: Shouldn’t we do something about that?
ANOTHER GERMAN SOLDIER: If we did anything, then who would track them down later for a dark, emotional execution sequence?
GUNTER: Wait the what now?
Gunter and his brother flee to a windmill, where they hide the horses inside the windmill. They talk like young boys about the women in Italy, underscoring the fact that they are YOUNG BOYS and they will DIE IN WAR. Then the Germans find them and execute them in a manner so that the audience cannot see them being shot, but for some reason they leave the horses behind even though in order to find Gunter and his brother, they would have had to walk right past the horses. The next morning, a YOUNG GIRL finds the horses in the windmill.
EMILY: Look! Grandpa! Horses! And clearly this one in particular is very special! Not the big black one, the other one.
GRANDPA: Very well and good, but I do not want you riding those horses – not even the one who is clearly a very special and important horse – for you are sickly, as evidenced by this green medicinal liquid I make you take.
EMILY: What do I have?
GRANDPA: A bad case of moviegitis. It is invariably fatal, although you will only die once you are offscreen or, in some cases, when you present a final, touching monologue.
The GERMANS arrive to ransack the farm. Emily hides the horses in her bedroom on the second floor. The movie does not explain how she manages to do this.
GERMAN OFFICER: Take everything we need. This farmer is doing his part for the war.
GRANDPA: Excuse me, but I am clearly French and you are German. Your appeal to patriotism isn’t even ironic. It’s just stupid.
GERMAN OFFICER: You forget that I am a bit of a dickhead, yes?
GRANDPA: Ah.
GERMAN SOLDIER: What is this?
GRANDPA: If you don’t know what it is, you don’t need it.
GERMAN SOLDIER: Er, it’s pretty obviously a pot. I was more asking what you used it for, you see.
GRANDPA: Oh. That makes sense.
The Germans LEAVE. Emily starts begging to be allowed to ride the horses. Eventually Grandpa relents and goes and fetches her dead mother’s saddle from the barn.
GRANDPA: Now, be careful when you ride, Emily, for you are sickly. Ride very slowly, and do not go over the hill.
Emily of course rides quickly over the hill. Grandpa follows her, and sees that the GERMANS are taking War Horse from her. They also take Cumberhorse.
GRANDPA: In retrospect maybe we should have waited until the front line wasn’t literally in our backyard in order to ride the horses.
A FAT GERMAN is in charge of the horses.
FAT GERMAN: I do so love horses. It is a shame that they have to be involved in war, which is dehumanizing. Are you listening, audience?
AUDIENCE: Sort of.
War Horse and Cumberhorse are drafted to pull big heavy artillery pieces up hills. They do this. We then cut to the BRITISH TRENCHES, where Albert has since become a soldier, along with Geordie and the Landlord’s Evil Son.
SOLDIER: All right, we’re going over the top in a bit, so everybody who wants to put their valuables here for safekeeping, do so.
ALBERT: I could put in my prized drawings of War Horse… but no!
EVIL LANDLORD’S SON: I remember that horse! You fell off it that one time while I was driving a car!
ALBERT: Hey, do you remember the name of the girl you were driving with?
EVIL LANDLORD’S SON: Not particularly.
AUDIENCE: Wait, was this sequence the only reason for that earlier scene?
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Excuse me, but I have a Best Director Oscar and you don’t, so shut up in your stupid face.
GEORDIE: Oh, I am so scared of going to war!
EVIL LANDLORD’S SON: Don’t be scared! Just remember to kill any of your friends that try to retreat, and you’ll be fine.
The English CHARGE OVER THE TOP and most of them get killed because this is World War One, duh. The EVIL LANDLORD’S SON gets shot, but Albert drags him to safety. Albert then takes out a machine-gunner’s nest with a grenade and drops into the German trench, where he is overcome by all the dead Germans he just killed with his grenade. Geordie comes up behind him and Albert nearly shoots him, but stops himself just in time.
GEORDIE: Hah on you, audience! That was exactly the moment where I would have died ironically, but it didn’t happen, now, did it?
BRITISH SERGEANT: GAS! GAS!
GEORDIE: Oh, balls.
Geordie dies in the gas. Albert is wounded. Meanwhile, back in German lines, the Germans are retreating. Fat Horse-Loving German runs to War Horse and Cumberhorse and drags them away from duty. Cumberhorse, exhausted, lies down, dying. War Horse and the Fat German comfort him in his final moments. War Horse says things to Cumberhorse in horse talk. Then a TANK shows up.
FAT GERMAN: Run! Run, War Horse!
TANK: I REPRESENT TERRIBLE, UNSTOPPABLE PROGRESS!
War Horse RUNS AWAY FROM THE TANK, eventually charging through enemy lines and running right through multiple barbed wire fences until he is bogged down in No Man’s Land and horribly entangled in barbed wire.
BRITISH SOLDIER NAMED COLIN: Somebody should go do something about that horse.
GERMAN SOLDIER NAMED PETER: Somebody should go do something about that horse.
Eventually Colin and Peter both go to save War Horse. They work together to cut the horse free.
COLIN: I say, this is quite a nice scene, isn’t it?
PETER: Ja, it serves quite effectively to convey the horror of war without overplaying it with a heavy sense of irony.
COLIN: Something about how war disrupts the essential sense of brotherhood that exists among all men, that sort of thing?
PETER: This is precisely what I was thinking. You do not need clever twists to show how war ruins people’s lives.
COLIN: In fact, one might even suggest that a scene like this, where we work at common purpose and demonstrate simple humanity in the midst of carnage and terror, does the job ten times better than that.
PETER: Indeed. I don’t know why the rest of the movie isn’t like this.
STEVEN SPIELBERG: You both be quiet.
Eventually they free War Horse, and after a coinflip Colin takes War Horse back to British lines and a doctor, who is also DAVOS SEAWORTH in the next season of GAME OF THRONES.
COLIN: Hello, doctor. Can you fix this horse?
DAVOS: Let me think about that for a second. I can save a number of human patients, or a horse. Gosh, even if this horse is special, I think I have to go with the people.
COLIN: Look, I don’t think you understand – this is a miracle horse.
DAVOS: I can see from here that those cuts are infected. He almost certainly has tetanus. I can waste time on the horse, or I can save this person over here from bleeding to death. How is this a hard choice? Sergeant, give the horse a noble end.
COLIN: But he’s a miracle horse!
DAVOS: He ran into barbed wire and you rescued him, and now he’s going to die of infection. What’s miraculous about that? If somebody can’t give me a really, really amazing reason to save this horse, then we shoot him. Anybody? No? Okay, sergeant, shoot the horse.
The SERGEANT prepares to shoot War Horse, but in the distance Albert WHISTLES his special summoning-whistle from offscreen. War Horse looks up, seeking Albert.
DAVOS: …why haven’t you shot the horse yet?
SERGEANT: Cos he moved his head a bit.
DAVOS: Really?
The sergeant tries to shoot War Horse again, but Albert whistles again and War Horse again looks around for Albert.
DAVOS: Why does him moving his head stop you from shooting him in it once he stops moving?
SERGEANT: Dunno. Maybe it is a miracle horse?
ALBERT: That’s my horse!
WAR HORSE comes and nuzzles Albert, who is TEMPORARILY BLIND because of the gas attack.
DAVOS: Look, I’m glad you found a friend, but we have to kill this horse.
ALBERT: He’s my horse! I raised him, I did! He has four white socks and a white thingy on his forehead!
DAVOS: I don’t see any white marks on this mud-encrusted horse.
COLIN: What if… we washed off all of the mud?
They wash War Horse and his white markings are revealed.
DAVOS: My word. Well, I take back everything I said about putting this horse out of its misery as it is almost certainly infected with tetanus. Clearly, this is a miracle horse and must become my first priority. Sorry, human patients!
MAN BLEEDING TO DEATH: Arrrrgh arrrrgh arrrrrgh.
Albert recovers. The war ends. War Horse is to be sold at auction, and the entire brigade has chipped in thirty pounds so Albert can buy War Horse. It is mentioned in passing that the Evil Landlord’s Son tried to pretend that War Horse was his so Albert could get it for free, showing that the Evil Landlord’s Son is not a bad chap after all. An EVIL FRENCHMAN, however, is present and wants to buy War Horse.
SERGEANT: Albert bids thirty pounds!
ALBERT: Wait, why are you bidding instead of me?
EVIL FRENCHMAN: Forty pounds for this battle-scarred but very clearly special horse! Good day, English kiniggets!
GRANDPA: One hundred pounds! And if I have to go into bankruptcy to own this horse, then I will do so!
Grandpa wins War Horse.
ALBERT: Excuse me, sir, but please let me buy my horse from you?
GRANDPA: No. My granddaughter died offscreen from her illness, as I foretold. Now this horse is all that I have left of her, as the Germans came back and took all of her toys and dresses and such to be used as crude tools on the front lines.
ALBERT: Well, all right then. Can I say goodbye to War Horse?
GRANDPA: Sure.
ALBERT: War Horse, you be a good horse for this man, all right? You help him around the farm, and do chores, and cook his meals maybe. Because you’re the very specialest horse in the world and my best friend and I love you, but sometimes life isn’t fair, and we have to strive on, and –
GRANDPA: Oh, Jesus, just take the horse.
ALBERT: Thank you so much, sir. What was your granddaughter’s name?
GRANDPA: Emily. Why? Is this going to be significant to the narrative in any way?
ALBERT: Not at all, actually. I mean, they’re not going to show me meeting that girl from the horse-versus-car race early in the film now that I am a grown-up soldier. Maybe we could pretend that I name my first daughter Emily as a sign of respect, even though we never see that.
GRANDPA: Good enough for me.
Albert returns home during a GLORIOUS SUNSET that is so gorgeous it LOOKS LIKE A GREENSCREEN even though it isn’t. Albert embraces his mother, and then his father, who knows that Albert is now as fucked up as he is. We close on a shot of War Horse, glowing golden in the sunset light.
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Take that, Scorcese! “A 3D love letter to the founding father of cinema,” my ass – this is how you win Oscars. Cinematography. war, and horses.
AUDIENCE: TWO AND A HALF HOURS WE SPENT WATCHING THIS?

Somebody should just let Brad Bird (no relation) direct all the action movies.

(As for the Dark Knight Rises preview: visually exciting, looks epic, excited for the movie, but totally unable to figure out what the hell Tom Hardy was saying through his Bane mask.)

Now, here’s the thing. A lot of people will be bitching mercilessly about the new Three Stooges trailer…

…but the problem is that all of the comedy in this trailer is exactly like classic Three Stooges, except the Stooges live in the modern day. The performances are just as broad as old Stooges shorts were. The slapstick is just as crude and energetic as old Stooges shorts’ slapstick was. The dialogue is just as forced as old Stooges dialogue was. Will Sasso is just as bald as Curly Howard was.

If the movie is like this trailer, then people who proclaim their love for the original Three Stooges and who say this is garbage will be exposed as poseurs. Hypocrites. Comedy snobs.

(For my part, I am kinda meh about it, which is not a knock on its quality as a Three Stooges movie. I was not always meh about the Three Stooges – but then I turned nine, and swore my allegiance to Lords Julius, Leonard and Arthur forevermore.)

Yes, I have been off in the desert. I have been contemplating the universal truths, eating nothing but locusts and honey, letting the poisonous snakes nibble on my tender bits and hallucinating from their venom, letting my beard grow out as I became sunburned and progressively insane. And now, having become wise in the ways of the universe, I return to you to speak…of Muppets.

Let’s get the least-important part out of the way first. No, the voices aren’t as good. Kermit and Miss Piggy are a reasonable approximation of their old selves, mainly because it’s difficult to tell whether Kermit is reedy and hesitant on purpose or by accident, but Fozzie’s voice has lost that braying quality that was so distinctive, and Rowlf sounds so off and has so little dialogue that they’d have been smarter to write him out entirely. But that’s miniscule stuff. The voices were always going to change someday, because that’s what happens with puppets and cartoons. Someday they will bring back Homer Simpson and he will not be voiced by Dan Castellaneta. It’s the way of the world. The question is, how’s the movie?

The answer: It takes a while to get going, but it has fun when it gets there. The first act is really flat; the screenwriter knows that he’s remaking ‘The Blues Brothers’ with Muppets, and he knows that the audience knows it. The deranged, inexplicable response to this problem is to treat the material with perfunctory disdain; the scene that sets up the dilemma (the Muppets need to come up with ten million dollars or an evil oilman will demolish their old theater!) is played with such utter disinterest that it would have been more exciting if they’d just filmed the story conference. The writer obviously loses interest in the “getting the band back together” material about halfway through, and has the characters openly admit how boring it’s becoming (“let’s do the rest of this as a montage!”) It’s a movie that is fully aware of what a lazy, slapdash premise it has, and just openly asks, “Could you do us both a favor and not care?”

Which is a shame, because I think there’s a lot of depth to the central premise that I think they ignored in an effort to keep things light and frothy. Because let’s face it, the Muppets didn’t stop becoming relevant as a cultural phenomenon because the world got harsh and cynical and the Muppets were too sweet for that kind of a world, as the film asserts. (For one thing, a TV show that put Alice Cooper on, singing “School’s Out” in an era when a lot of radio stations wouldn’t play it, is not a series that should be considered “too sweet”. The Muppets have always had a fairly twisted core to their comedy, something that this film thankfully captures in a lot of its best moments.) The Muppets “broke up” because Jim Henson died. The film makes a conscious decision to ignore this because it’s kind of a downer to talk about, but really, a film that doesn’t acknowledge that on at least a metatextual level is a movie without an emotional center, and that shows in all of the scenes that actually deal with the plot.

Luckily, there are a lot of scenes that don’t bother. The movie is at its best in the third act, where it stops trying to have a plot and starts becoming a really wonderful updating of the old Muppet Show with Jack Black as their Very Special Guest Star and slightly-more-recent pop culture references. The Muppet Telethon is like a demo reel for what the series would be like if it were brought back tomorrow, saying, “Look, all the weirdness, all the monsters, all the corny gags and the celebrity comedians and the charming self-deprecation and the throwing bowling balls through the air…yes, this still works. It is still funny. Chickens clucking out the melody of popular songs is never going to stop being funny. Here, have some more.” And that’s when I really loved the movie.

And the ending (not the actual “ending” ending, but the climax of the film) is letter-perfect, an acknowledgment of what Henson had in mind all along: Laughter and hope and family and love are not possessions. They cannot be taken away from you by anyone unless you let them. That’s a message Henson would have been proud of.

So, in short: Worth watching? Yeah, but after the first viewing you’ll probably find yourself fast forwarding to the halfway point. The important thing is that we need a new Muppet Show, dammit.

Almost entirely everything I hoped it would be – which includes the fact that the kidlets in the theatre I was in were just as entertained as I was.