Flame & Citron, directed by former Dogme 95 auteur Ole Christian Madsen, walks a thin line between ass-kicking assassin movie and dense WWII period drama. The film recounts the true story of Bent and Jørgen, code names Flame and Citron, as they cruise around occupied Copenhagen offing Danish Nazis and German officers. In addition to action flick and period drama, the film also features a healthy dose of noir. The spare lighting and superb camera work showcase solid performances.

The film opens with several scenes of Bent and Jørgen carrying out their grim duty, knocking on doors, killing their mark, moving on, all overlaid with voice-over by Bent, which is both informative and moving. The plot steadily thickens, scene by scene, as more characters, each with their own motivations, begin to play a role. The ballooning cast of players is too much to keep track of in a first viewing, but this may well be the point. As the sabotage and double-crossing mounts, we’re forced to trust that Bent and Jørgen are doing the right thing, even if it’s confusing and ugly.

Thure Lindhardt as Bent and Mads Mikkelsen as Jørgen both give excellent performances. Lindhardt’s Bent is brash and young. Idealistic and a bit naive, he wears a blank expression on his face that hints at the irrevocable callousness that comes with being able to take a life with such apparent ease. Mikkelsen’s Jørgen, on the other hand, is a nervous wreck when it comes time to kill. A middle-aged family man, his activities in the resistance have torn apart his family. In his cool moments, he looks like a murderous Gregory Peck.

There have been plenty of films dramatizing what happened on the front lines of World War II, most of which build conflict within the ranks of a group of soldiers, locked in a battle of wills about how a war should be fought. Flame & Citron uses this device as well, indeed these are soldiers, even if they wear suits and fedoras. But where Flame & Citron is unique amongst war movies is that it’s really not clear who is on whose team. During the Allied invasion of France, the two sides where unmistakable, but in an occupied country like Denmark, the fighters did not have the luxury of clarity. Some Danes welcomed the Germans, while others merely tolerated them. Still others, such as our heroes in the film, went about killing as many Danish sympathizers as possible, hoping their information was reliable.

Flame & Citron rises above most war and action films because the morality of the killings becomes increasingly suspect. Bent enters a relationship with a woman who may be an ally, an enemy, or both. The channels through which they get their targets begin to become compromised. Other times, they simply make mistakes, killing the wrong person. The emotional intensity that goes along with having the moral conviction to kill for your country, only to find out you may have killed an innocent person or even an ally, is handled well by Madsen and his actors. One notable scene shows Bent and Jørgen in their car, contemplating the possibility they’ve made a mistake. Jørgen screams, “We have never killed innocent people!” while the opposite seems quite likely to be true.

With all the intrigue and heavy drama, Flame & Citron never loses the action sensibility that kicks the film off so well. I won’t spoil anything, but it’s worth noting that the ending does not disappoint in terms of fire power and thrilling heroics. There’s much to love about Flame & Citron.

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After 114 conversations here on the cozy FilmCouch, we’ve decided to say goodbye. We’ve had a good run, and we’re eternally grateful to all our listeners. We’ll miss you guys.

For the final show, we talk about why we did this podcast in the first place. What is it about movies that makes them better when they are the subject of a good conversation? We talk with Karina and Adam, and revisit some of our favorite moments. Paul still thinks longingly about Australian auteur Rolf DeHeer. Kevin remembers some sage words from Brad Neely. Adam recalls a spirited argument about Dear Pillow. And finally, Karina brings us back to late summer 2008, when gymnast Nastia Liukin’s sultry Olympic performance got us dreaming of possible gymnastic exploitation flicks.

Also, we give a few tips to you, dear listener, about how you can carry on the podcasting torch. It’s really not that hard to do. E-mail us if you want any other tips.

Without further ado, the final FilmCouch:

(FilmCouch in the iTunes store)

0:00 - Intro

3:38 - Listener e-mail

8:39 - Paul and Kevin’s reflections

17:41 - Now it’s your turn: tips for podcasting

21:24 - Adam remembers arguing about pornography

26:05 - Karina on Nastia Liukin, future podcasting possibilities

Bonus! Here’s the FilmCouch music, for you to enjoy:

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The SXSW Film Festival is over. We didn’t make it to Austin this year, but we still had a festival experience in our very own home (Paul’s mom’s home, actually), thanks the IFC’s Festival Direct. While Joe Swanberg’s latest offering, Alexander the Last, was premeiring in Austin, we were watching it in a Michigan living room. We discuss how setting influences viewing, and the merits of the film.

We also discuss two other SXSW Festival Direct titles, Zift and Three Blind Mice.

Be sure to e-mail your most awkward movie watching moments involving sex scenes and your parents, to filmcouch [at] spout [dot] com.

0:00 - Intro

1:51 - Listener feedback

11:16 - Alexander the Last

30:39 - Zift, Three Blind Mice

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Both a huge party and something of a petri dish of American independent creativity, SXSW is steadily becoming an invaluable stop on the festival circuit. The Austin festival is also the forerunner of a whole slew of American festivals that are proud to be far from New York and LA, and more importantly, far from Park City. So it’s no surprise that the festival would break even more ground in the decentralization of the independent film experience. This year, SXSW and IFC have teamed to offer five films on-demand via IFC Festival Direct, allowing viewers at home to see festival premieres on the same day the play for Austin audiences.

For a midwesterner such as myself, this is tremendously good news. The elephant in the room when talking about any artwork is always access. Who is it for, and who can actually see it? For many, entering the current discussion surrounding independent film is simply an economic impossibility. SXSW is very friendly toward the average-Joe or Jane attendee, especially compared to many other festivals, but a plane ticket and a pass are still a serious expense. It would be easy for the festival organizers to pay lip service to the idea of creating an event for more than just the elite, and then do nothing about it. Instead, they deserve a tremendous amount of credit for actively attempting to engage people who want to attend the festival, but can’t.

That said, the “festival at home” experience is far from flawless. Despite the fact that I’m pretty close to the ideal candidate for this type of thing, I don’t have the right kind of cable package required to see on-demand movies. I’ve often considered anteing up for better cable just for IFC, but for the most part a high-speed internet connection and Netflix subscription keep me occupied, and they are a big enough chunk of my monthly budget. So while audiences can technically watch these festival films anywhere, there’s still a large barrier to access, and it still comes down to cost. So I spent the weekend calling up friends, interviewing them about what kind of cable they have, then sheepishly asking if I could invite myself over to watch a few movies. Luckily, I have gracious friends.

On Saturday Paul and I went over to his mother’s house to watch Joe Swanberg’s latest film, Alexander the Last. A few business items: Paul is the same Paul with whom I co-host FilmCouch, Spout’s weekly podcast. Also, Spout has collaborated with Joe Swanberg in the past; he and Ronald Bronstein produced an original web series for us called Butterknife, and they provided video coverage of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. If you’re familiar with Joe’s work, talk of creative cross-pollination comes as no surprise. His productions are intimate affairs made by an ever-expanding group of collaborators. SXSW has played a key role in these collaborations, both by embracing Swanberg’s work (this is the fourth film he’s premiered there), and by providing an atmosphere in which artistic pretense is rejected in favor of sharing passions over beer and BBQ.

For me, the SXSW premiere of Swanberg’s previous film, Nights and Weekends, was like an unintentional social network meet-up. I began chatting with the folks around me and recognizing name after name. One person writes for this blog, another guy was the DP on this other movie I saw yesterday, and on and on. Watching a Swanberg premiere at Paul’s mom’s house, on the other hand, was a wholly different experience. As the opening credits rolled, we did find ourselves playing mumblecore bingo, picking out names we recognized. But as the film got underway it was much easier to focus on what was on screen. Even easier, perhaps, than if Joe were sitting two rows in front of me and I were wondering which party to go to later.

I’ve often wondered if Joe’s films work as social events more than as actual movies. But I was pleasantly surprised that Alexander the Last still gave me plenty to chew on. The film follows an ensemble of young actors and musicians dealing with temptation, and struggling with how to portray sex and all that goes along with it, while keeping their relationships and themselves intact. The film certainly feels autobiographical, at least in its themes. It’s evident that this is the product of a somewhat insular community of artists, but that subtext doesn’t detract much from the work itself. Seeing the film in a living room adorned with a lacy Victorian pastiche –– complete with Paul’s mom walking in during a pretty explicit sex scene –– helped confirm that Swanberg’s films do work on their own, thousands of miles from the hip little bubble they’ve created.

On Sunday I crashed another friend’s place for a double feature of Three Blind Mice and Zift. Three Blind Mice premiered at Toronto this past fall. It’s written and directed by Matthew Newton, who also plays one of three Australian naval officers on their last night home before redeployment. Newton glows with mischievous energy on screen, bouncing between darkly comic disasters. The film could have handled its emotional weight with more skill, but it’s still a nice example of a filmmaker taking stock of the emotional effects of war without dealing directly with its politics. While Three Blind Mice would certainly be fun to see at the festival, it loses very little when translated to the small screen. It strikes me as a film that could enjoy a healthy life through on-demand and video even without the boost of the IFC Festival Direct co-premiere.

Zift, on the other hand, felt out of place on the small screen. The film, produced in Bulgaria, is an arty, Eastern Bloc take on conventional film noir. The production value was a little spotty, and despite being in black and white, the lighting was rather flat. It had its moments, especially a gritty noir twist at the end, but I couldn’t help but feel that it would have played much better in a crowded midnight screening, where elements that are cool and weird for their own sake can thrive off of excitement from the audience.

Overall, IFC’s Festival Direct is a great step in the right direction. For all the talk about how the internet is forever changing the face of independent film, relatively little has been done to push initial distribution to the scope the web allows. This leads to my one suggestion about how this experience could dramatically improve: let users pay to stream on-demand content online, not just through cable. Seven dollars per film is perfectly reasonable, but many indie film fans don’t have the requisite expensive cable packages. The internet, on the other hand, is far more ubiquitous. Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes have all devised ways to securely stream movies; how great would it be if we could stream them the same day as their festival premiere?

The success of Slumdog Millionaire, despite our reservations about it, has got us thinking about romance in film. We look to another Westerner’s spin on Indian romance, Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues. The animated feature, which is now available for free online, weaves an ancient Indian epic with a modern day break-up story, all with a soundtrack of vintage Annette Hanshaw. Then we look at Roman Holiday. A classic romance involving royalty, where the lovers don’t live happily ever after.

Karina tells us what to look out for at this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, the indie film destination where everybody knows your name. Don’t miss Alexander The Last, Drag Me To Hell, Sorry, Thanks, It Came From Kuchar, and St. Nick.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

2:24 - Romance, from India to Rome

25:46 - Karina on SXSW

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Last Friday, Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Fox will bring the comic strip Marmaduke to the big screen. One the one hand, this is baffling. The comic, a series of crudely rendered half-jokes, makes very little sense, and has no story whatsoever. The fact that Marmaduke is a mischievous great dane barely even qualifies as a premise. On the other hand, studios have sunk massive amounts of money into comic strip movies like Garfield and Dennis the Menace, and money-making dog movies like Marley & Me, which has earned $166 million worldwide since its Christmas ‘08 release.

So Marmaduke might make economic sense, but it makes little sense otherwise. The green-lighting of this project is a peek into the bizarre minds of studio executives. If movies like Wall-E and the Harry Potter series bring home the bacon and earn critical acclaim, why empty the coffers for family tent-pole movies based on the crappiest of source material available? I have a theory. Just as Zack Snyder was goaded on by the allegedly “unfilmable” quality of the Watchmen graphic novel, the executives at Fox must see the production of a Marmaduke film as an act of artistic defiance. Let’s turn and unreadable comic into an unwatchable movie, they say, and laugh all the way to the bank when it destroys the competition at the box office!

In that vein, I challenge the major studios to make the following comic strips into movies, just to see if people will pay to see the resulting crap. If they should choose to accept this challenge, may God help us all.

Family Circus

Bil Keane’s gentile tales of misspoken children and familial bliss have graced the funny pages for decades. They are never funny. At best, the panels hint at a vague Kids Say The Darndest Things kind of cuteness. At worst, they are astoundingly bland statements about how families are generally a good thing. In some ways, a Family Circus movie would be a safer bet than Marmaduke, due to better brand recognition. On second thought, the lack of a slobbering, CGI dog would be a strike against its box office chances.

How it could actually work: Family Circus’s dopey simplicity and complete lack of self-awareness has made it the ideal fodder for parody. So far this has mostly existed on the internet, a few examples being Dysfunctional Family Circus, Scott Meets Family Circus, and the hilariously overwrought fake reviews that appeared on Amazon a few years ago. Of course Keane would never allow a vulgar distortion of his work to be made into a movie. If a straight-laced movie were made, however, I’m sure we could look forward to hilarious home-brew commentary tracks and endless trailer mash-ups.

Cathy

Cathy is a long-running strip about a woman dealing with “the four basic guilt groups,” defined by the strip’s creator, Cathy Guisewite, as Food, Love, Mom, and Work. For most of the comic’s runtime, it chronicled the foibles of being a single woman in the modern world. GoComics.com sums up the strip by saying, “She personifies the young career woman and her typical daily obstacles. Ice cream, panic attacks, stress and love are all in a day’s work.” But alas, Cathy and longtime boyfriend Irving were married in 2004. The wacky hi-jinks continue, however, now with biting commentary on modern relationships, i.e., “AAAACK! Men like iPods!”

How it could actually work: While there would be something incredible about watching a frizzy-haried Renée Zellweger arguing with her mom and trying to resist the temptation of fudge for ninety minutes, there’s really only one way a Cathy movie could succeed. Two words: Andy Samberg.

Hagar the Horrible

A comic about a viking would seem to be ripe for a big-screen, action-packed film adaptation, except for the fact that the comic is mostly about Hagar bickering with his wife Helga and his hapless lieutenant, Lucky Eddie. The movie would be the perfect chance for Brendan Gleeson to squander his first leading role in a big-budget picture.

How it could actually work: The world is hungry for a good viking movie, and Hagar the Horrible could provide the brand recognition needed. If Pirates of the Caribbean was able to build an entertaining and financially successful franchise from an amusement park ride, I don’t see why Haggar couldn’t do the same. A few things would be key: First of all, it has to be pretty violent, a PG-13 rating would be best. Also, the film would have to really delve into Hagar and Helga’s tense gender conflicts, which the comic only hints at. How does Hagar behave on long trips away from his overbearing wife, as his men rape and pillage?

The Lockhorns

There’s no way around it: a Lockhorns movie would be soul-crushingly depressing. The single panel comic satires marriage, showing the various squabbles of middle-aged couple Leroy and Loretta. While some optimistic fan has injected the Lockhorns‘ Wikipedia page with this ray of sunshine –– “Leroy and Loretta show how foolish it is to be unkind to the people we love” –– I don’t buy it. The comic is clearly about the inevitable misery of long-term relationships, and the futility of trying to find something better. Why don’t they get a divorce? They’ve covered that, it’s too expensive. Ugh.

How it could actually work: In order to avoid making millions of children cry, the movie would have to spurn the young audience usually associated with comic strip movies. The Lockhorns could work as a dark comedy, with a heavy dose of gut-punching drama. It would delve into the relationship in the least sexy way possible, exposing layer after calloused layer. While I’d like to say that they learn to truly love one another in the end, that wouldn’t be true to the source material. The film would end with the two slowly drifting off to sleep on opposite ends of the couch after yet another petty argument, utterly resigned to their shared fate.

Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes is the Watchmen of comic strips, except more people have actually read it. The tales of mischievous young Calvin and his toy tiger Hobbes are the definitive love letter to the imagination for an entire generation. This comic makes the list not because it’s dopey and unfunny like the others, rather, it’s here because it’s so good. A movie of Calvin and Hobbes would almost certainly be a total disaster, bitterly offending millions. Why, you ask? Calvin and Hobbes is one of those comics where the genius is in the details. There’s nothing particularly interesting about a boy who pretends his toy tiger is alive. But Bill Watterson wrote a chemistry between the two that could not be replicated in another medium, or by another artist.

How it could actually work: The only way a Calvin and Hobbes movie could possibly work is if they did it in the same way they did the Charlie Brown Specials. They would need to do a traditional hand-drawn animation, replicating the look of comic as much as possible. The voices would be hard to nail, but it would be doable. If the movie had too much of a plot, it would feel forced. Instead, it would follow Calvin and Hobbes through a series of small adventures: sledding, killing time in the back yard on a Saturday, making fun of Susie Derkins, all while making smart observations about life. The most important element of a successful Calvin and Hobbes movie would be this: Bill Watterson gets final cut.

The economy may be failing, but Hollywood’s hype machine has been working overtime. It’s latest manufactured frenzy has finally reached a crescendo: Watchmen hits theaters today. Does it live up to the hype? Does it live up to the graphic novel? Does it live up to its own three hour run time? In searching for answers to these questions, the FilmCouchers meet in a epic battle on the precipice of the Apocalypse, or you could say, we disagree.

Karina checks in with an update on the True/False Film Festival. The little Missouri fest is quickly becoming one of the places to see top-notch documentaries. We discuss Love on Delivery, October Country, and We Live In Public.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

3:57 - Watchmen

25:30 - True/False

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Director Zack Snyder has succeeded in doing the impossible: he has adapted the “unfilmable” graphic novel, Watchmen, to the screen. While there’s no doubt that he has made the movie with surprisingly little deviation from the source material, that doesn’t mean he has made a good film. In many ways, Watchmen is a case study in the inherent differences between the comic page and the screen. Success on screen, even if the adaptation is faithful, is not guaranteed.

The story (in case you didn’t piece it together from the constant barrage of trailers and posters clogging the internet since last summer) revolves around a group of costumed super heroes whose fates intertwine with the events of the twentieth century. Set in an alternate 1985, the world is on the brink of nuclear holocaust. The action is set in motion by the murder of The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a retired hero with dubious morals. The outlawed heroes fight to avert impending doom, and spur to action the only one among them with the power to single-handedly save the world, Dr. Manhattan. Played by a blue CGI mock-up of a naked, impossibly ripped Billy Crudup, Dr. Manhattan is the result of an experiment gone wrong. He is the only hero with supernatural powers, which are inconceivably vast, and has become the lynchpin in the United States’ defense strategy against the Soviets. His powers have gradually separated him from the plight of humanity, illustrated by his failing relationship with Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), a sexy, second-generation heroine.

There’s a concern that the web of back-stories and sizable cast of characters could render the film inaccessible to those who haven’t read the graphic novel. On the contrary, I think the Watchmen virgins are at an advantage going into the film. Snyder covers a dizzying amount of material, staying true to the core of the original story even while making some significant cuts. For Watchmen fans, I think the problem is not the cuts, but rather the treatment of some of the material that’s left in. Hollywood seems to assume that comic books are ready-made storyboards, in need only of several million dollars of CGI to come to life. In many ways, Watchmen is a collection of examples which show why the formula is much more complicated than that.

The opening credits stride through several decades of alternate history, showing how the Watchmen, and their predecessors the Minutemen, fit into American history. Rather than produce old-looking photos, or depict Dr. Manhattan shaking JFK’s hand in the grainy film of the day, a la Forrest Gump, Snyder sets up nearly still live action scenes. The camera pulls out of these mostly frozen moments, giving a nostalgic feeling of living within the photos. It’s a nice effect, but it’s also extremely fake looking. There’s something very odd about seeing actors you know were told to hold very still, like they’re faking slow motion. At first this really turned me off, but then I began to like it. As the montage went on, it began to feel self-consciously fake, as if these scenes are not depictions of the actual events, but rather glorified memories, existing only in the minds of aging super heroes.

After the credits, the film continues to make drastic jumps in tone and pace. Some of these work quite well, while others do not. About half way into the film, after being pulled in repeatedly by stunning sequences and shunted back out by unsuccessful ones, I found a pattern: the movie works really well when it doesn’t try to be an actual movie. Many passages, the majority of the film even, are a delight to watch. But when the film needs to slow down and just let a scene play, a scene which needs no visual flourishes but is still important, it seems bored with itself. A perfect example is The Comedian’s burial. Rather than inner-cut wide shots of somber figures gathered around the grave with contemplative close-ups, Snyder instead decides to use movie magic to make the camera fly from a tight shot of a stone angel statue back, back, flying over the mourners, cutting through the rain, until the camera itself passes through an impossibly small hole in a wrought-iron sign that reads “Cemetery.” Scenes like this made me wish Snyder could have somehow kept the entire film in music video mode, where it really sings.

For every dramatic visual improvement the film offers, there’s a lack-luster chunk of dialog that sounds as though the actors are reading the comic aloud. There’s plenty of voiceover, the filmic version of comics’ ubiquitous narration boxes, with Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a grizzled anti-hero with a simmering contempt for the city he’s trying to save, each narrating portions of the film. Alan Moore, who wrote the graphic novel but has distanced himself from the film, penned passages that are now canonical in the graphic novel world. These passages are adhered to where ever possible, which works in certain scenes, but in others the translation to screen feels awkward. Some of Rorschach’s ponderings, which come off as masterpieces of noir prose in the book, feel hokey here. While Dr. Manhattan’s voiceover, with an epic calmness, makes his scenes some of the strongest in the film, due in no small part to Crudup’s stellar voice work.

Plenty of scenes are given the justice they deserve, but others, particularly near the beginning, feel like the abridged version. In particular, a dialog between The Comedian and Dr. Manhattan in a Vietnam bar, a key foreshadowing of the central conflict the blue demi-god faces, plays like a sped-up dress rehearsal. Ozymandias, a hero who has cashed in on his fame and turned his attention toward global energy reform, underscores the futility of placing humanity’s hope in Dr. Manhattan. If the full volley of Soviet nukes come, he explains, “even Dr. Manhattan can’t be everywhere at once.” Watchmen, as thorough an adaptation as it is, suffers from the same fate. It can’t be everywhere at once. In some ways, it’s too complete a retelling of the graphic novel, as it sets itself up for easy panel-to-scene comparison, making the film’s inadequacies that much easier to measure.

It’s clear that Snyder has found a kindred spirit in Dr. Manhattan. As Silk Spectre II distances herself from her big, blue, supernatural lover, she says a line that could just as easily be meant for the director himself, “You know how everything fits together, except people.”

For our pre-Oscar show, we wanted to give our predictions of who will take home the little naked men, but we also wanted to give a running commentary on the awards as they happen. We reached a compromise. We’ve decided to put on our own Oscar ceremony, so we can react to our own predictions, all while providing witty and humorous insights. Watch out for a few upsets! Even we were surprised! (We’ll also be providing commentary on the actual show, via twitter, which you can follow right on SpoutBlog).

Karina joins us to talk about live-twittering the Oscars and the Independent Spirit Awards. She also talks about a compelling new documentary called Moving Midway.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

Contests:
Tell us which movie you think should be turned into a graphic novel, for a chance to win the graphic novel version of Waltz With Bashir. Tell us which film has the best production design of all time, and you could win a companion tome to the forthcoming film, Watchmen. E-mail both to filmcouch (at) spout (dot) com.

0:00 - Intro

2:02 - Listener feedback, contests

9:51 - Our fake Oscars

30: 44 - Karina

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As economic woes turn to economic nightmares, comparisons to the Great Depression are a time a dozen. But what about movies? How did the movies of the ’30s respond to the crisis of the day? A series of pre-code Depression era films is being shown now at Film Forum, under the title Breadlines and Champagne. We take a look at American Madness, A Man’s Castle, and Our Daily Bread.

But what of the current crisis? Are there a slew of modern day Depression movies in the works? Maybe. Tom Hanks is rumored to be starring as a pensive barista in an adaptation of the riches-to-rags bestselling book, How Starbucks Saved My Life.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

1:26 - Waltz With Bashir graphic novel giveaway, listener feedback

6:48 - Kit Kittredge, Karina on Breadlines and Champagne

20:32 - Our Daily Bread

31:07 - How Starbucks Saved My Life

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Joaquin Phoenix’s meltdown/prank on David Letterman Wednesday was certainly eye-opening, but it wasn’t exactly original. There’s a long and storied history of celebrities appearing on Letterman and completely losing their shit. This precedent may lend credibility to the argument that Phoenix’s performance was nothing but an elaborate hoax, perpetrated more for Casey Affleck’s documentary than for the television audience. But this isn’t necessarily always the case. While some of the freak-outs on this list where planned, many of them were genuine meltdowns.

Crispin Glover

A number of people compared Joaquin Phoenix’s appearance to this classic 1987 clip. When someone in the audience made a comment about his shoes, Glover became incensed, went on a tirade about the press, then nearly kicked Dave in the face. It was all an act, at least as far as Glover was concerned. He was actually in character, playing the role from the movie he was there to promote, Rubin and Ed, which wasn’t released until several years later. The incident parallels the Phoenix appearance so well because in both cases, sources insist that Dave was not in on the joke.

Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore has gone through many phases in her long career. There was the cute phase, followed by the snorting-coke-while-thirteen phase, followed by many others, right up to the current, lucrative cosmetic endorsements pahse. In 1995 she was deep in the naked phase. She appeared nude in the January issue of PLAYBOY that year, prompting Steven Spielberg, who directed her in E. T., to send her a quilt for her birthday, along with a note that read “Cover yourself up.” Apparently, Spielberg took it even further, having his art department alter the playboy photos to make Drew appear clothed, and tucked those into the quilt as well. Presumably in an act of birthday karma, she appeared on Letterman’s show on his birthday that year, where she jumped on his desk and showed him her bra-less breasts, Spielberg-be-damned!

Jerry Lawler slaps Andy Kaufman

Legendary comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufman was known for befuddling his audience. Perhaps his most enduring prank was his appearance on Letterman in 1982 with professional wrestler Jerry Lawler. Lawler and Kaufman had a wrestling feud that spanned many incidents, including a match in which Lalwer’s pile-driver injured Kaufman’s neck. While the injury was real, Kaufman acted as if it were much worse than it was, blurring reality with entertainment in his trademark fashion. The confrontation on Letterman, and Andy’s subsequent flip-out, were staged, but nobody but Kaufman and Lawler knew it at the time. It wasn’t revealed to be a hoax until 1995, more than ten years after Kaufman’s death.

Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton was forced to postpone an appearance on Letterman’s show in the summer on 2007 due to her incarceration in the LA County Jail. Once released, she made the appearance, hoping to talk about her clothing line, fragrance, and movie, Repo! The Genetic Opera. Dave had other ideas. For several awkward minutes he pelted the heiress with questions about what life was like in the slammer. A visibly distraught Hilton finally said, “I’ve moved on with my life so I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.” After some haggling, Letterman finally let it drop.

Madonna

This infamous 1994 interview is unhinged television at its best. The appearance is surprisingly long, mostly because Madonna refused to leave the set. The segment was shocking at the time; Madonna set the talk show f-bomb record with a whopping 13. But now it’s just fascinating. Structure and a pretense are quickly destroyed, and we get to watch two larger-than-life personalities match wits for twenty minutes, an eternity in the world of late-night television.

Among the movie promos screened during the Super Bowl, there were teasers for predictable blockbusters-to-be, such as multi-million dollar toy commercials Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe, and nostalgic ’70s TV throw-back, The Land of the Lost. But there was also a teaser for a new comedy from a much rarer sub-genre, the historical comedy. The Year One, set to release in June 19, is an Apatow-produced buddy comedy starring Jack Black and Michael Cera. They play Zed and Oh, two lovable losers encountering various characters from Biblical history, including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Abraham. It’s not yet clear how they can meet all these people in a single lifetime (is this a time travel movie?)

But two things are clear: One, Judd Apatow seems to be looking to change-up his formula, at least to a degree. I’m not sure how long I want to watch the aging cast of Freaks and Geeks sit around a bong and talk about sex. Even if The Year One is just Superbad with togas, he’s at least trying to keep things fresh. And two, this film marks the return of a rare breed of comedy. Until now, it looked like historical comedies reached their apex decades ago with the work of Mel Brooks and Monty Python. Now, with the comedy auteur du jour producing a movie set in the distant past, the historical comedy sub-genre could become vogue once more. Or it could just be terrible. There are precedents for both.

Here’s our list of seven notable historical comedies — some great, some utterly forgettable.

Monty Python’s The Life of Brian

There are several odd threads connecting movies that make fun of the past, and one of them is George Harrison. George Harrison formed HandMade Films in 1979 to finance The Life of Brian, when the original backers, EMI, bailed after reading the script. They were apparently scared off by the film’s biting commentary on organized religion. The film follows Brian, a lowly first century Jew born a few doors down from Jesus. Try as his might, Brian can’t avoid being mistaken for the Messiah, even to the bitter end. The Year One seems to most closely resemble this classic satire. Let’s hope Black and Cera have the comedic balls skewer sacred cows the way the old Python crew did.

History of the World, Part 1

Mel Brooks at his best. This movie is like a World History survey course taught by your crazy Jewish uncle. This film is divided into segments, jumping from the dawn of man to Old Testament times, and on to the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition, and the French Revolution. The fact that Brooks plays a prominent role in each segment let’s the film keep up it’s comedic pace while taking a scattershot view of history. History of the World, Part 1 is one of the few great examples of a spoof film. The deluge of Scary Movies, Disaster Movies, and God-knows-what-else Movies have reduced spoof to the lowest common denominator of stupid jokes about last six months of popular culture. Good spoofs don’t need to be dumb, if the jokes come too fast, or the references are too obscure, watch it again.

Kung Fu Hustle

Set in 1930s Shanghai, Stephen Chow’s martial arts comedy walks a fine line: It’s an effective parody of Kung Fu cinema, it has great action sequences, and it’s really funny. Even for viewers unfamiliar with Chinese history, it’s apparent that the tongue-in-cheek depictions of the slum, Pig Sty Alley, are filled with a calculated absurdity. It’s a great example of an historical comedy not only because it pokes fun at the conditions of 1930s Shanghai, but also because it lovingly makes fun of all of Hong Kong cinema.

Wagons East! and Almost Heroes

This duo of terrible historical comedies represents another odd aspect of this sub-genre (besides George Harrison): portly comedians dying right after making awful historical comedies. John Candy died of a heart attack during the production of Wagons East! The producers claimed he had completed his scenes, but this is debatable, as he seems to have been written out of several of them. In the film, Candy plays a surly guide leading a frontier expedition with a wise-cracking pansy, Richard Lewis. Almost Heroes was Chris Farley’s last major role before his death. Farley plays a surly guide leading a frontier expedition with a wise-cracking pansy, Matthew Perry. You do not need to see these movies, unless you get a lot of pleasure thinking about ironically similar deaths of late comedians.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The dust bowl, public works projects, racism. The Cohen brothers got a lot of mileage out of poking fun at the Depression-era south in this screw-ball take on The Odyssey. Like other good historical comedies, the film succeeds because while it does take a few pot shots at “simpler times” it’s also clear that the filmmakers are genuinely in love with the period. This is most clearly manifest in the film’s soundtrack, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001.The film’s depiction of Southern politics of the era is based in some truth. Menelaus “Pappy” O’Daniel, Governor of Mississippi and host of the radio show “The Flour Hour,” was based on W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, one-time governor then senator from Texas, who also ran a flour business and had a radio show.

Shakespeare in Love

While remembered by many as melodramatic Oscar-bait, this 1998 Best Picture winner was certainly a comedy. In fact, it was the first comedy since Annie Hall (1977) to take home the top prize, and it hasn’t happened since. The film follows Shakespeare as he writes Romeo and Juliet, influenced by a forbidden romance with a cross-dressing Gwyneth Paltrow. By mixing actual history with plenty of made-up elements, all with a very dramatic, Shakespearean feel, the film is a masterpiece to theater fans. For the rest of us, it’s still and enjoyable movie.

Caveman

Last but not least, the second historical comedy bank-rolled by George Harrison (third if you count Time Bandits). This one stars his old buddy Ringo Starr as Atouk, a grunting caveman rejected from his tribe. He forms a new tribe of fellow misfits. Together they fend off dinosaur attacks and plan an ambush on Atouk’s former tribe. Almost no actual words are spoken in the film. Instead, the characters deliver simple line in caveman speak. When the film was shown at drive-ins, the audience would be given a translation guide. I’d like to see Apatow and company dedicate The Year One to George Harrison, patron saint of making fun of the past.

We’ve already talked about the sickly-sweet little movie that could, Slumdog Millionaire, but it’s looming Oscar domination convinced us to revisit it. This time Paul weighs in with his opinion, and draws a parallel to John Singleton’s Boyz ‘N the Hood.

Watchmen is still a month away, but the buzz is already reaching a crescendo. It’s gotten to the point where the thing to talk about is how much people are talking about Watchmen. We play a clip from an interview with director Zach Snyder, who tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to convince us he’s the man for the job.

A movie based an a self-help book based on a Sex In The City episode? Karina couldn’t resist. He’s Just Not That Into You isn’t very funny, but it does provide some insight into the inner workings of romantic comedies.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

2:10 - Listener e-mail

6:44 - Paul’s take on Slumdog Millionaire

17:33 - Watching the Watchmen hype machine

30:24 - Karina on He’s Just Not That Into You

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Last week I offered a list of movies that made ambitious predictions about the near future, only to lose credibility when their dark futures didn’t become a reality. As meaningful as this exercise is, it’s also very limited, I can only debunk movies whose futures have already failed come true, or can I? Using FutureMe.org, I sent my future self an e-mail, asking how movies which predict what the next ten years have fared. Luckily, PastMe.org must be up and running in 2019, because I received a prompt and courteous response from my future self. Here is the response, which I will write in ten years:

Past Self,

Got your e-mail about failed movie predictions. I knew it was coming Here’s what I’ve got for you:

2012

I realize this Roland Emmerich mega-budget doomsday picture hasn’t come out yet in your time. I don’t recommend seeing it when it does, unless you were so impressed with Emmerich’s filmmaking in Godzilla and 10,000 BC that you actually want to see more. The film predicts that multiple apocalyptic catastrophes befall the world in 2012, in accordance with an ancient Mayan calendar which stops on December 21 of that year. What we know now is that the Mayans simply ran out of room on the rock they were carving, and were not trying to warn future generations of anything. Promoters of New Age Mayan mysticism did make a big deal about what they said would be the end of the world, making several appearances on popular talk shows. Of course, nothing happened on December 21, 2012, except that the special edition Blu-Ray of 2012 went on sale, hoping to make up for poor sales by becoming the ironic Christmas gift of choice.

I Am Legend

This 2007 Will Smith vehicle is another example of revisionist futurism, when a story’s prediction doesn’t come true, the story is retold and the date is moved further into the future. This is the third film adaptation of Robert Matheson’s original novel. Published in 1954, the book follows a scientist named Robert Neville from 1976 to 1979. Neville is apparently the sole survivor of a pandemic which resembles vampirism. The Will Smith version takes place in 2012, clearly a favorite year for doomsday prophets. While the prediction of a virus that turns everyone into rabid beasts didn’t exactly come true, that year’s American Idol competition was particularly brutal, inspiring an outbreak of backyard gladiatorial battles, similar to those now used to choose the winner of the show.

The Postman

This 1997 film, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, was generally regarded as a flop when it was released. It grew in popularity, however, as its prophetic vision of 2013 began to look more like reality. In the film, society is in ruins after a nuclear war. Costner’s character inadvertently brings hope to the destitute survivors when he starts delivering mail. While there was no global nuclear war in 2013 (that doesn’t happen until 2015), the film did accurately predict the return of pony express style mail delivery. Due to the ongoing financial crisis, the US government shut down the Postal Service, assuming that private carriers and e-mail would fill in. It worked for a few months, until bad loans and $300-per-barrel oil drove the private delivery firms out of business right during the Great Broadband Crash of ‘13. It was a bad year. But letters from loved ones did seem that much more meaningful when they were hand delivered by a disheveled vigilante fighting off dysentery.

Back to the Future Part II

The 1989 film Back to the Future Part II made several predictions about what the world of 2015 would look like. Having lived through that memorable year, I can tell you things didn’t turn out as shown in the film. In reality, flying cars were not released commercially until 2036, but never became widely available due to the market domination of flying Segways. Hoverboards, on the other hand, were widely available by 2015, but were pulled off the market following the unfortunate death of Tony Hawk during the 2016 X-Games. Many blamed the incident on Hawk’s malfunctioning cybernetic legs, rather than the Hoverboard, but the toy was still unable to recover from legal trouble. One prediction Back to the Future Part II did get right was Marty McFly’s futuristic Nike shoes. Nike released the Air McFly, in July 2008. While they were a limited edition, there’s no reason you couldn’t wear them in 2015.

Blade Runner

In Ridley Scott’s 1982 science fiction noir, Harrison Ford plays Deckard, a hard boiled detective hired to assassinate several illegal androids known as replicants. The film’s predictions about what a gritty futuristic Los Angeles would look like were pretty accurate. Genetically engineered pets are also available, but you need to go to some rather unsavory neighborhoods to find people who produce them. Super realistic androids, similar to replicants, also exist in 2019. Which brings me to a rather important point. This e-mail is not actually from your future self. I am a replicant. Your memories were transferred to me shortly before your grisly death.

Thanks for writing. If you have any more questions about the future of movies, let me know!

Best,

Future Kevin

…And the Oscar for most sorrowful face goes to… Mickey Rourke! Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler grabbed our heart, slammed it to the mat, and showered it with tears. But does Mickey Rourke’s resurrection have what it takes to beat Sean Penn’s transformation in Milk?

Karina gives an update about IFC’s Festival Direct, a way to be among the first to see new indie films even if you can’t spring for a festival pass. Also, an odd run-in with Steven Soderbergh, who may or may not have a bone to pick with our intrepid blogger.

We debate which is the most absurd piece of Che merchandise sent in by listeners, and respond to feedback about usefulness of subjecting terrible, exploitative horror movies to the rigors of film criticism.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

2:05 - Absurd Che merchandise

9:42 - Listener response regarding horror and film criticism

15:30 - The Wrestler

35:58 - Karina on IFC, Che

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We don’t ask much from science fiction movies: entertaining plot lines, competent acting, huge explosions, and accurate predictions of the future. Many films fail to deliver on that final request, prognosticating about the world to come and screwing it up again and again. Many of these movies rely on the believability of their premise, but when that premise involves a prediction about the state of the world at a specific future date, they’re setting themselves up for failure when that day comes to pass without incident. Here are five films that forecasted doom and gloom that did not happen.

The Time Machine - 1966 Nuclear War

H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel, The Time Machine, was made into a feature film in 1960, and again in 2002. While the story has changed somewhat in each incarnation, it’s always involves a Victorian scientist traveling to the distant future where he finds humanity has devolved into two distinct groups, one savage, the other hopelessly apathetic. In the 1960 version, George, the scientist, makes several stops before ending up in the distant future. He happens to stop during World War I, World War II, and a nuclear war in 1966. The prediction that London would be nuked in ‘66, causing lava to flow in the streets, was clearly wrong, but it wasn’t a very outlandish idea. Just two years after the film’s release, in October, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly caused the United States and The Soviet Union to engage in an all-out nuclear war. If that happened, you would not want to be in Miami, and London wouldn’t be much safer.

Death Race 2000 - Homicidal Road Race

One of the finer Roger Corman-produced cult classics, this 1975 film stars David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone as race car drivers in the dystopian future of the year 2000. The Transcontinental Road Race is won not only by speed, but also by running over innocent civilians for points. The race is the only remaining sport, and one of the ways the oppressive American regime distracts the populace from government corruption. The film was remade last year by Paul W. S. Anderson, with the race taking place in a prison, where the racers are only trying to kill one another. Needless to say, this completely ruined the original concept of the film. While there weren’t any murderous car races in 2000 (that we know of), both films do cite a financial collapse as the cause of the dystopia that makes the race possible. In the case of last year’s remake, it was a little spooky when the stock market crashed about a month and a half after the film’s premiere.

Escape From New York - 1997 New York Prison Colony

John Carpenter’s 1981 film predicted that World War III, between the United States and the Soviet Union, would result in economic hardships and a skyrocketing crime rate. By 1997, the year in which the film is set, New York City is a prison colony. When Air Force One crashes in Manhattan, special ops soldier turned criminal Snake Plisskin has 24 hours to rescue the captured president and save himself and the world! Predicting in 1981 that crime would rise exponentially could’ve seemed like a safe bet. Violent crime was a growing problem throughout the 70s and 80s, in New York and elsewhere. But in the 90s New York started getting a lot safer, the violent crime rate fell 75% from 1993 to 2003. If the president were trapped in New York now, it would probably be in a long line to get discount Broadway tickets in Times Square, not held hostage by warring criminal gangs.

Terminator - Self Aware Machines by 1997

In the world of the Terminator films, humanity struggles against killer robots created by Skynet, a self-aware automated defense system. In Terminator 2: Judgement Day, it is revealed that Skynet became aware in 1997 (a bad year, apparently), starting a massive nuclear war shortly after. In the 2003 sequel, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, we learn that the nuclear holocaust was delayed until 2004. Then, in 2008, the premiere episode of The Sarah Conner Chronicles revealed that Judgement Day was actually delayed until 2011. As much as I love the Terminator franchise, that’s not a very good track record of future predictions. It also reveals a curious phenomenon shared by all the films on this list so far, I call it revisionist futurism. When a prediction doesn’t pan out, simply remake the movie (or make a sequel) that places the date further in the future, buying more time. This happened with Time Machine and Death Race, and they’re trying to get a remake of Escape From New York off the ground. If they do, you can bet that it won’t be set in 1997.

Strange Days - Dystopian Los Angeles of 1999

In this 1995 cyberpunk sci-fi film, Ralph Fiennes play Lenny Nero, a dealer of erotic recordings of brain waves which makes the listener feel as if they are experiencing the recorded events. Set against the backdrop of a tense, dystopian Los Angeles of 1999, it failed to predict exactly how technology would mediate sexual pleasure, but it still serves as an interesting barometer of the mid-90s. The film’s vision of a Los Angles suffering under a brutal police state, and the murder of a prominent hip-hop artist and anti-police activist, is clearly reflective of the race riots of a few years prior. The brain wave recordings, while not yet a reality, do illustrate the way that the porn industry is a driving force in development of new technology. If smut ever does get that realistic, learn from the mistakes of Lenny Nero and stay away from snuff films.

—-

There are plenty of films whose futures have yet to play out. We won’t really know, for example, if the flying cars from Back to the Future Part II will exist in 2015 for another six years. We could just wait to see if this and other predictions come true, or we could try something else: sending a e-mail to the future with the hope of hearing back about the veracity of near-future predictions! Tune in next week, where (hopefully) the future me will respond with a list of five more movies whose predictions haven’t happened yet, but are still doomed to fail. Hopefully the future me will explain how and why they didn’t work out. See you in the future!

My Bloody Valentine 3D isn’t worth watching in one dimension, let alone three. But it does serve to spark some good conversation. What other gimmicks have boosted the box office of sub-par films? What does good contemporary horror look like? Neil Marshall’s The Descent offers a refreshing palette cleanser. Also, what do horror and porn have in common, besides cheap nudity?

Karina checks in from Park City with some hits and misses from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Moon, Hump Day, and The September Issue were worth writing home about, while Paper Hearts and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men will quietly fall into obscurity (we hope).

Listen to FilmCouch and win free stuff! Send us an e-mail telling us the most absurd piece of merchandise you’ve seen branded with an image of Che Guevara, and you can win a program from the Che roadshow signed by Steven Soderbergh, a copy of Che’s Diaries, and the soundtrack to the film. Send e-mails to filmcouch (at) spout (dot) com.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

3:22 - Psychoanalyzing a listener based on his favorite films

8:15 - My Bloody Valentine 3D, gimmicks throughout movie history

16:22 - Humanizing horror vs. porn with blood

31:12 - Sundance

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Clint Eastwood’s new cranky-old-man epic, Gran Torino, sped past the competition to prove its raw masculine authority at the box office. Over the past twenty years, Eastwood has perfected his own sub-genre: the grizzled old timer who comes back for one last hurrah. This latest iteration adds a surprising dose of compassion.

Karina shares which movies she’s most excited to see at Sundance this year. The list includes, Moon, The Clone Returns Home, Hump Day, O’er the Land, The September Issue, The Informers, and World’s Greatest Dad.

Listen to FilmCouch and win free stuff! We’ve got two contests going on. Send us an e-mail telling us the most absurd piece of merchandise you’ve seen branded with an image of Che Guevara, and you can win a program from the Che roadshow signed by Steven Soderbergh, a copy of Che’s Diaries, and the soundtrack to the film. Also, send us your favorite movie about Hollywood, and you can win a copy of the new film The Deal, starring William H. Macy. Send e-mails to filmcouch (at) spout (dot) com.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

1:31 - contests

5:58 - listener feedback

11:55 - Gran Torino

29:57 - Sundance preview

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As we crack open fresh calendars for a new year, we’re treated to a predictable rash of blog posts: 2009 technology predictions. I’ve read a number of these, and prognostications about Microsoft buying Yahoo make me want to light my laptop on fire just to cure the boredom. As an anecdote to lame, ‘what’s the next Twitter?’-style tech prediction lists, I’ve decided to make a list 2009 tech predictions entirely inspired by movies.

2008 was the year in which widely available real-world gadgets were just as good as what James Bond had. Sure, Daniel Craig kicked some ass in Quantum of Solace, but his only real piece of tech was a phone with a camera and GPS! (Hope you got a good texting plan with that, James.) I predict this trend will continue in 2009. We’ll see even more real-world gadgets that used to be the sole domain of Hollywood special effects gurus. Sure, some of these technologies will require minor miracles to become a reality in the coming year, but others are closer than you think.

Strength-Enhancing Exoskeleton Armor

In Iron Man, Tony Stark creates a crude, internally-powered suit of armor to escape his terrorist captors. Once he’s safely at home in his billion-dollar laboratory, he hones the suit into a golden ass-kicking machine, and becomes Iron Man. This story isn’t that far from the truth. Rather than a single billionaire playboy, teams of research scientists are developing robotic suits that significantly increase the wearer’s strength. And the end goal is goal is the same: beating the hell out of terrorists. Almost five years ago, UC Berkley researchers announced a DARPA-funded project called BLEEX, the Berkley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (pictured at left). If you’re thinking that giant backpack is full of the machinery that runs the thing, you’re wrong. That’s the 70 lbs. pack the wearer can hardly feel, thanks to his robot legs. Assuming secret military technology is always ahead of publicized military technology, and considering that the BLEEX is five years old, I think it’s safe to say that in 2009 President Obama will personally don an Iron Man suit and kill Osama bin Laden.

Levitation

Levitation in movies is usually some sort of magical or paranormal phenomenon, like Yoda using the force to lift Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing out of the swamp. But there are examples of technological levitation in fiction, especially flying saucers and other craft that can stay aloft without forward momentum. A technological version of the Force is still a long way off, but there are plenty of forms of levitation that are quite common. Magnetism can be easily harnessed to levitate certain objects, and just last week, scientists added another method to the growing list of levitation technologies. Harvard physicist Federico Capasso has effectively reversed the Casimir effect, which causes metal objects to become attracted to one another when they’re very close together. As exciting as this sounds, the reversal only works on extremely small pieces of metal. But it’s still a step in the right direction.

Invisibility

Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak relies on magic rather than technology, but this hasn’t stopped scientists from trying to replicate its effects. While one would hope that researchers’ interest in invisibility technology goes beyond their fondness for the boy wizard, they invariably mention Potter’s cloak in every news story about advances in invisibility technology. The development of meta-materials that can redirect lightwaves around an object have made steady progress in recent years. In a National Geographic article from November of last year, researcher Ulf Leonhardt claimed that invisibility cloaks are now “feasible.” Of course there are a few catches. The phenomenon alters visible light slightly while it bends it, and it can only work with specific shapes, meaning that a coat of invisible paint on a spy plane or a stylish cape are still out of reach. With the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in July of this year, I’m sure Potter-loving invisibility scientists will pursue their study with renewed fervor.

X-Ray Vision

The most popular depiction of x-ray vision is of course Superman, but the Man of Steel doesn’t need a gadget to see Louis Lane’s underwear. There are examples of technological x-ray vision in movies, like the all-but-forgotten 1996 Schwarzenegger vehicle, Eraser. The film featured an advanced weapon called a rail-gun, which had a scope that could see through solid objects. X-ray vision, like levitation, has existed in certain forms for long time, but making it as practical as Superman’s vision is another matter. Thermal imaging goggles used by police and military can see through certain objects that block visual light because of their ability to see infrared light. A new technology being employed in security situations is terahertz imagery, which can see through fabrics and plastic. While the mail-order x-ray specs sold out of comic books in the ’60s were a sham, back in 1998 Sony sold thousands of consumer video cameras whose “night shot” feature allowed users to see through clothing, especially swim wear.

Time Travel

Debating the physical and philosophical effects of time travel is a favorite passtime of sci-fi buffs and people who edit Wikipedia entries. The scientific consensus is that Back to the Future-style DeLorean time travel is not possible, but Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity do allow for certain types of time travel. For example, the phenomenon of time dilation allows for something akin to traveling into the future. If there were twins, and one stayed on Earth while the other went on a long trip on a spaceship at nearly the speed of light, the traveling twin would be younger when he returned. From his perspective, his trip lasted one year, while his twin would insist that he’d been gone for ten years. So this means that the DeLorean would have to travel much faster than 88 miles per hour, and once they traveled to the future, they could never go back.

There is another theoretically possible form of time travel, which involves constructing an infinitely long cylinder in space and rotating it on its longitudinal axis. This would bend space time around the cylinder, allowing a spacecraft to essentially fly back in time. But since there are no infinitely long cylinders laying around, time travel in 2009 seems unlikely. Unless a time traveler from the future decides to come back to 2009 and share his knowledge with us. He’d probably kill his own grandfather, too, just to mess with our heads.

A remark made in Aaron Rose’s art-nerd documentary Beautiful Losers, about humor acting as a sledge hammer, got us thinking about the power of both the comic and the tragic. Not long ago, Karina reviewed a little known documentary called Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father. Then the film was played on MSNBC, and her analytical criticisms of the film set off a firestorm of angry comments. We chat about tragedy, context, and the dangers of critiquing non-fiction films as works of art.

Another type of movie that often avoids critical attention is comedy. A new PBS mini-series seeks to correct this. Make ‘Em Laugh explores the evolution of American comedy, revealing its power as a cultural force.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, Che giveaway

4:45 - Listener e-mail

9:40 - The Dear Zachary dust-up

19:31 - Make ‘Em Laugh

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It’s only a couple of short weeks before the 2008 Oscar nominees are announced, and the internet is abuzz with prognostications. One hotly debated topic is whether or not Wall-E can pull off a Best Picture nomination, or even a win. It would be the second animated film to be nominated in the category, after Beauty and the Beast, which got the honor before the Animated Feature prize existed. Will the stodgy old Academy seat Wall-E at the kid’s table, giving it an easy win in the animation category, or will it be allowed to play with the big boys?

A best pic nomination for Wall-E would be a rare honor for animation in general, but it would also be a long over due rarity for another reason: Wall-E would only be the second best pic nominated film in the history of the Oscars to be set in the future. The only one to date is A Clockwork Orange. When you consider how many nominees are period pieces (I didn’t care to count), this represents a massive bias on the part of the Academy. It’s clear that they love the past, but they hate the future.

What would the history of the Academy Awards look like if the Hollywood elite wasn’t terrified of speculative fiction? Below, seven movies about the future that should have been nominated for Best Picture:

1. Metropolis

The first Academy Awards, held in 1929, gave honors to films produced in both 1928 and 1927, so this should have at least been nominated. Of course the nomination process was rather primitive back then, and American audiences probably wouldn’t have been familiar with German films such as this, but for the purpose of revisionist history, we’ll say it got snubbed. There’s something very 20th century about Art Deco skyscrapers and class conflict, but Metropolis‘ depiction of 2026 still feels relevant today. The film laid the ground work for countless sci-fi tropes, including sexy female androids (see #5).

2. On The Beach

This 1959 post-apocalyptic drama stars Gregory Peck as the captain of a US submarine stationed in Melbourne. Set in the near future of 1964, nuclear war has wiped out the rest of the planet, and it’s only a matter of months before the wind brings the deadly radioactive fallout to Australia. The film is a beautiful meditation on the inevitability of death, featuring a solid performance by Ava Gardner, and the most melancholy work by Fred Astaire I’ve ever seen (he does not sing or dance). On the Beach was nominated for both Best Score and Best Editing Oscars, and director Stanley Kramer won a BAFTA.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Kubrick’s masterpiece wasn’t completely snubbed; it received four Oscar nominations, with a win for Visual Effects. But the fact that it didn’t get a Best Picture nomination is criminal. The film is consistently listed on top 100 movie lists, and breaks the top ten on plenty of them. It’s clear that something went very wrong that year. Perhaps the snub can be blamed on the fact that the film was so far ahead of its time, that many people just didn’t get it. Pauline Kael said it was “a monumentally unimaginative movie.”

4. Solaris

This 1972 Russian science fiction film is just as cerebral as 2001, and perhaps an even deeper plumb of the human psyche. The Palme d’Or nominated film, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, follows the story of psychologist Chris Kelvin as he ventures to a distant space station, orbiting the water-covered planet Solaris. The station has fallen into disarray, and Kelvin soon figures out why. An apparition of his dead wife appears, apparently created by Solaris using Kelvin’s brain waves. The film is slow and introspective, and is one of those rare gems of science fiction that transcends the trappings of the genre. It should have at least been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film; instead, it wasn’t nominated for anything.

5. Blade Runner

For some, saying that Blade Runner was one of the five best films of 1982 is stating the obvious. Perhaps the blending of sci-fi and noir seemed at the time to be nothing more than a cheap genre gimmick. But the enduring quality of Blade Runner makes it clear that it deserved more than the two nominations in received for Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects. The snub of Blade Runner is perhaps the best way to prove the Academy’s bias toward the past, when you consider that Ridley Scott’s 2000 film, Gladiator was not only nominated for Best Picture, but it won! I repeat, Gladiator won Best Picture, while Blade Runner was not even nominated. Which did you think was the better movie?

6. Brazil

Terry Gilliam’s dystopian black comedy might have had a shot at few Academy awards if Gilliam hadn’t burned every bridge in Hollywood as he made it. The film operates in the dystopian mold cast by 1984, with a healthy dose of dark humor and fantasy. It’s one of the most egregious examples of a studio re-cutting a film and essentially destroying it in the process. Fortunately, Gilliam’s cut is readily available on DVD now, but the director’s trustworthiness in Hollywood is still highly suspect. Gilliam is one of those filmmakers who, no matter how good a movie he makes, will never be welcomed into the inner sanctum. Still, Brazil deserved a Best Picture nomination.

7. Children of Men

When the 2006 Best Picture nominees were announced, you may have heard a faint stream of cursing on the wind. That was me. I know that people tend to win Oscars when they’re “due,” which easily explains why The Departed took home the top prize, but the fact that Children of Men wasn’t even nominated is just silly. It was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing, which is the Academy’s way of saying, “Wow, this movie is incredible, but it’s about the future, so let’s only honor that one really long take near the end.” Bullshit.

2008 was not the banner year that ‘07 turned out to be, but there were still plenty of movies worth watching. Sometimes end-of-year lists look like straight Oscar predictions, with little deviance from critic to critic, not so this year. Some of our favorite stuff was not playing in a theatre near you, some of it was. For the record, our complete lists are after the jump.

But first! Wholphin 7 is out now! The geniuses over at McSweeny’s have once again curated a delightful collection of rare and unseen short films. We share our thoughts about a few favorites. One film we both loved, Glory at Sea, is available for free here.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, listener e-mail

2:59 - Wholphin 7

16:18 - Kevin’s list, Paul’s “soup”

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Paul’s unranked list:

Tulpan

Be Kind Rewind

I Love Sarah Jane (entire film viewable)

August Evening

Shotgun Stories

Revanche

The Dark Knight

Glory at Sea

Kevin’s ranked list:

1. The Dark Knight

2. Let the Right One In

3. The Good, The Bad, and The Weird

4. Wall-E

5. Wellness

6. Happy-Go-Lucky

7. Glory at Sea

8. Waltz With Bashir

9. Medicine for Melancholy

10. Encounters at the End of the World

Frank Miller’s film adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit is an elaborately stylized train wreck. It would be easy to see only the glaring dissonances, such as childish one-liners sharing the screen with a scene in which a man is bludgeoned with a severed head, and write off the film entirely. But this wouldn’t do it the justice it deserves. The Spirit is a kind of “what if?” that populates the daydreams of only the most committed comic book nerds, which by some miracle has actually been made into a film. It’s a film that exists to answer an outlandish hypothetical question: what if two of the greatest comic artists of all time, Will Eisner and Frank Miller, teamed up to make a movie?!? Fortunately for Mr. Eisner, he didn’t live to see the result

The plot of the film is really unremarkable, and serves only to deliver the more considered stylistic elements. One of the big questions the film needs to answer, but doesn’t, is whether or not it’s a comedy. And what does “comic” mean here?

In Eisner’s original Spirit comics, noir serials syndicated in newspapers in the 1940s, the two meanings of the word ‘comic’ were not very far apart. While Eisner’s The Spirit did go beyond “the funnies” and into more in-depth material, the tone, in terms of both art and subject matter, was generally light. There were gags, it was okay for villains to be goofy –– comics were comic. Things are very different today, thanks in large park to Frank Miller. Miller’s gritty 1986 adaptation of Batman, The Dark Knight Returns, took the character from Adam West camp to the gritty vigilante we know today in just four issues. In the nineties Miller stunned the comics world again with his violent and unflinching series, Sin City, which resulted in a film adaptation of Sin City co-directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez that matched the dark aesthetic and brutal violence of the original. Comics, especially Miller’s, are not so comic anymore.

Eisner and Miller do have common ground on which to stand: noir. Both The Spirit and Sin City are derivatives of classic film noir, and for this reason it seems to make sense for Miller to direct an updated film noir using Eisner’s classic source material. Or does it? The Spirit the comic isn’t really a derivative of classic ’40s noir, it actually is ’40s noir, albeit for the page rather than the screen. Miller’s brand of noir truly is derivative, with updates and distortions that render it something completely different than the old detective and dame yarns we all know. Sin City builds an overly stylized world and dares you to inhabit it, forcing you to ask whether people are really that depraved and violent. The Spirit the film, on the other hand, dares you to inhabit a world where you’re forced to ask if people are really that silly.

Much of the dissonance that plagues the film is evident simply by looking at the art of Eisner’s Spirit compared to Miller’s in Sin City. Eisner was a master of classic cartoon lines. The ink flows in a clear and playful way. The lines could describe Mickey Mouse as easily as they could render a dame or a dead body –– Eisner took that classic visual language and pushed it to new places. Miller pushed the medium, too, but Miller’s ink isn’t suited to anything classic or comical. With large chunks of black cut violently by stark white, Miller draws like he’s dipping his pen in his best friend’s bullet-riddled corpse. It looks amazing, but it couldn’t be more different from Eisner. It may seem like this wouldn’t matter –– it’s a live-action film after all –– but it matters a great deal. In directing The Spirit, Miller attempts to force Eisner’s soft, jovial character into his brutal, hard-edged world, and it just does not fit.

The credits of the film roll over a series of drawings of The Spirit, done by Miller. They’re stunning. The masked crusader looks like he would fit right into Sin City’s gritty world, at least on the page. On the screen, it looks like Miller ruined a perfectly good storyboard by turning it into a movie. And yet, The Spirit is still worth seeing, if just to watch Miller try to pull it off.

Christmas is a time of peace and harmony, where we remember baby Jesus, born into a manger. There were shepherds, wise men, sweet hay and swaddling clothes. But we often forget how dark the Christmas story actually is. First of all you’ve got poor Joseph, convinced that his fiance has been knocked up by another man. Then she gives birth in a barn, which would not be sweet or pleasant in any way. If that weren’t bad enough, the wise men tip Herod off to the fact that a new king has been born, and he goes and kills all the first born sons in Judea, forcing the Holy Family into exile. Real smooth, wise men, did you miss the star that told you to keep your mouths shut?

There are plenty of movies about Christmas, a few about the nativity and plenty more about Santa. But there aren’t any that capture the despair and desperation of the original tale. Placed within the larger narrative of the Christian gospel, the nativity is about a god being subjected to the vulnerability of an infancy, in order to enter a cruel world whose purpose it is to kill him. Sure, it all works out in the end, but it’s still a pretty dark story.

This lack of grit in Christmas movies became clear to me two years ago. Around Christmas, 2006, both The Nativity Story and Children of Men were released. I saw them both within a few days of one another. I was struck by how boring The Nativity Story was, especially compared to Cuarón’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece. When I think of a baby bringing peace on Earth, I can think of no better image than Clive Owen stumbling out of a shattered building with a screaming infant, its cries literally silencing tanks.

In that spirit, here are five gritty movies where everything rides on the tiny shoulders of a baby.

Children of Men

The sweet little child in this movie is the inspiration not only for this list, but for all of humanity (at least in the film). Cuarón creates a brutal world of the near future where women no longer get pregnant, and society crumbles. One reason I like thinking about this movie as an alternate nativity is that it illustrates what Jesus’ second foray into humanity could look like. According to the Bible, the baby in the manger was only part one, Christ is coming back. While I don’t think that Cuarón meant the child to be seen as the second coming, a miraculous birth giving hope to a world in the midst of the apocalypse serves as a nice illustration of God’s ultimate Christmas gift to humanity.

Tsotsi

This 2005 South African film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It tells the story of young Tsotsi and his gang of Johannesburg thugs. A car-jacking goes bad, and Tsotsi kills a woman. He then discovers her baby in the back seat of the car. As movies like Three Men and a Baby and Raising Arizona make clear, there’s nothing like a baby to inspire self-improvement. Confronted with the shame and guilt of his violent lifestyle, Tsotsi goes on a mission to make things right. Maybe this relates to why the image of baby Jesus is so popular, even though it’s such a small part of the Bible. No one wants to do wrong if they think they’ll hurt a baby.

Pan’s Labyrinth

This movie is full of pseudo-nativities (spoilers ahead). Young Ofelia and her pregnant mother go to live in the mountains with Ofelia’s new stepfather, a cruel fascist general in Franco’s Spain. While the baby’s birth is a turning point in the climax of the film, the more fitting parallel to the Christ child is actually Ofelia. The opening scene tells the story of Princess Moanna of the Underground Realm, a supernatural being who takes human form. Throughout the film, Ofelia has encounters with fantastic creatures and locations, including a faun. The faun gives her various missions, the last of which is to shed innocent blood of her baby brother in order to open the portal to the Underworld, so Ofelia (Princess Moanna) can go home. She refuses to let her brother be harmed, and is shot by her stepfather shortly after. The baby is saved, but as Ofelia dies, her innocent blood opens the portal and she rejoins her father, the king, in the supernatural Underworld. Granted, it’s not a Sunday school lesson, but it’s pretty close, right down to Ofelia’s (Christ’s) blood being the link to the heavenly father. If you want to go even further, you could start looking for parallel’s between Franco’s Spain and the Roman occupation of the Holy Land during the first century, but for our purpose here we’ll leave at the innocent blood thing.

Kill Bill

While not nearly the gospel-like parable of Pan’s Labyrinth, Quentin Taratino’s revenge epic does use a child as the central motivating force. A pregnant Beatrix Kiddo is shot and left for dead by Bill, the baby’s father. Four years later the wakes from her coma, assumes her baby is dead, and seeks revenge against her former team of assassins. Kill Bill isn’t about the redemptive effect of an innocent baby as much as it’s about motherhood, and what a mother will do to protect that innocence. Beatrix’s similarities to the Virgin Mary probably end there, but it’s still worth noting the central role that the maternal instinct plays in the film. Kill Bill is gratuitous in every way: it’s violent, it samples from an absurd amount of source material, and the total run time of the two volumes is over four hours. The plot is pretty spare, but Tarantino never has trouble sustaining a sense of urgency. In Kill Bill, as in the nativity, looking out for the welfare of a child is a motivation that never needs to be explained.

Rosemary’s Baby

Rosemary’s Baby isn’t an alternate nativity as much as it’s an anti-nativity. A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, move into a spooky old apartment building. Their meddlesome old neighbors, Minnie and Roman, seem harmless at first. After eating a few bites of Minnie’s chocolate mousse, Rosemary faints and has a dream where she is raped by a demonic presence.  Minnie and Roman suggest an obstetrician who tells Rosemary her pains and cravings of raw meat are totally normal. Clearly something sinister is afoot, but will Rosemary forsake her own child, or join the dark conspiracy? Blood is thicker than water, as they say. And while giving birth to God must have been burden for Mary, how much tougher would it be to give birth to the Devil?