Wednesday, February 25, 2009

To The Victors Go The Spoilers

A number of folks have written to thank me for my advice re: the fine new movie, Coraline. That advice was to rush to see it and, better still, avoid reading notices or watching previews of it. This does not just apply to Coraline. Frankly, the relentless promotion of some movies these days has damaged the whole film-watching experience for me. Time and again, I find myself in this situation: Some new movie I might like to see is about to come out...and by the time I could see it, I've seen it.

So many clips on talk shows. So many plot summaries and dialogue quotations in reviews. I try to avoid those ubiquitous "first look" and "The Making of..." featurettes on cable TV but that ain't easy. A few years ago at a party, I found myself in the midst of a discussion about the first Spider-Man movie, which I have never watched in a theater or on a DVD or on cable. But I'd seen enough of it in promos that I held my own in the chat with what I thought were folks who'd all seen the film. At the end, when I mentioned I hadn't, several others admitted as much. Twelve people had all discussed the strengths and weaknesses of a movie, only eight of us had sat through it and no one thought that was odd. Moviegoing has become that kind of experience. Actually going to the movie is only a part of it.

One of the joys of Coraline for me was sitting there, not knowing where it was going, being surprised at many a turn. More often watching a movie, I find myself sitting there thinking, "Oh, I see...we're leading towards that scene that the star showed two night ago on Leno." This is not so much a matter of Spoilers as it is of experiencing a film out of sequence.

I remember some wonderful moviegoing adventures where it really helped that I didn't know what was coming. I saw Blazing Saddles the night it opened. If I'd waited two weeks, I would have seen 70% of it via Mel Brooks talk show appearances but that evening at the Avco Embassy, every joke came as a total surprise, including the part where the characters run right out of the movie. (It also helped that night that Mr. Brooks was in the house. Before Blazing Saddles started, they were running a commercial for the L.A. Times and you heard this familar voice yell out from the back of the theater, "Get this shit off and show my movie!")

I saw Network at the Writers Guild Theater a good six weeks before it hit regular cinemas. The place was packed and no one knew one thing about it other than it was Paddy Chayefsky taking a shot at television. By the day it opened, half of America was screaming "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," having seen it in the promos and clips. It was a lot more effective to not know what was coming. (I was sitting next to Ray Bradbury when I saw it. When the film ended, he looked around the hall and said, "There isn't a person in this theater who isn't wishing he'd written that.")

This matters more with some movies that others. I kinda knew how Frost/Nixon ended before I saw it so seeing clips beforehand didn't particularly diminish the experience. But there have been a number of movies lately I didn't bother to see...because I'd already sorta seen them.

• Posted at 8:06 PM · LINK

Day After Tomorrow

That's when the WonderCon starts in San Francisco. The doors open Friday at Noon and I'm looking forward to everything except for the fact that it'll probably be raining much of Saturday and most of Sunday. But inside the Moscone Center, it'll be fun and dry, especially if you attend one of these peachy panels...

• Posted at 7:08 PM · LINK

Something to Buy

The 1938 Cadillac once owned by W.C. Fields. But you might not want it since they've taken out the martini mixer.

• Posted at 9:25 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here we see this year's Academy Awards "In Memoriam" reel, which actually looks better on YouTube than it did on the Oscar telecast. The TV show kept trying to get shots of the set and of Queen Latifah, who was singing the song...so a number of the folks being remembered seem forgotten in distant shots. (One wonders if that's the reason the Academy put it up on YouTube and in embeddable form. Usually, they don't put up full segments like this and you can't embed them.)

As usual, there are those grousing that some who should have been in the montage were omitted. Patrick McGoohan was in some pretty good movies and George Carlin was in more than you might think...but neither was included. Nor was Eartha Kitt. Nor was composer Neal Hefti. Nor were Harvey Korman, Earle Hagen, Mel Ferrer, Alexander Courage, John Phillip Law, Irving Brecher, George Furth, Beverly Garland or Guy McElwaine. There were several studio execs and one publicist included but not Bernie Brillstein.

But the startling omission, of course, was Don LaFontaine, who not only became a superstar of movie trailers but also served as the announcer of the Oscars several years. Don may have sold more movie tickets than everyone else in the segment combined. Here's who they did include...

• Posted at 12:39 AM · LINK