Marvelous Movies You May Have Missed: Amélie

Today marks the 16th anniversary of Princess Diana's tragic death in Paris.  Looking back, I remember with vivid detail the total devastation I felt when I first heard the news and the following week when I woke up in the middle of the night armed with a box of tissues to watch the funeral. It is a little embarassing to admit that I cried more watching that funeral than any funeral I've attended for people I actually knew, even relatives. 

I know.

But I can't help it. Even when my dad starts spouting off my long line of Irish and Scottish relatives that are sure to be turning in their graves at the mere thought of my infatuation with British royalty, I can't stop my love for all things Windsor.

I thought maybe that was part of the reason I loved the movie, Amélie ("Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain"), a French movie released back in 2001. Through this event that appears to have absolutely nothing to do with the main character, Amelie becomes a catalyst for changing the lives of those around her.  If you've ever thought that we are not all connected in some way, not only us as humans, but everything that surrounds us, you may find some new ideas to ponder after watching this movie.

        

It is a charming and delightful film.  Some have called it sappy, and I suppose it is. Another reason I thought it may have had so much success was that it was released in 2001, at a time when the world could use a little lighthearted whimsy.  Rewatching it today, it does not lose any of its original charm. And let's face it, the world could still use a little more whimsy.

Closing Credits

When I was at home on sick leave yesterday, moping and feeling sorry for myself for my case of springtime sniffles, I found solace in catching up on my Twitter feed. On there was the tweet from Roger Ebert about his “Leave of Presence” – I had glanced at it on Tuesday, noted the pleasantness of the phrasing, and mulled over its meaning without bothering to click on the article link.  
 
Upon reading what turned out to be his final article, I was saddened to learn that Roger's cancer had returned and he was forced to take a step back for the time being. Still, it sounded like new adventures were in the works, for this man of 70 that had been doing the same job with the same amount of devotion and impeccable quality for 46 years. A man that spent much more of his last years working on his life's work than worrying about how long that life would last.  He may have lost the ability to talk, but he never did lose his voice.

I grew up watching Siskel and Ebert - before I even really read more in the newspaper than the comic section, I knew to look for the "Two thumbs up" stamp of approval on a movie poster. He was the golden standard in my golden world of cinema, and his reach extended far beyond the movieplex.

Here are just a few ways in which this man who spent so much of his time in the dark, helped me to find some inner light:

1. You don't have to always agree with someone's opinion in order to respect them.
Ebert was already a well-established name in quality for movies by the time I came around, so I never really doubted his word.  Until I did. It was a shock to the system, something that made me question myself, get angry at poor ol' Roger, and declare that "he has no idea what he's talking about." But he did. Roger's opinion may have differed from mine, but along with that opinion was always solid ground on exactly why it was different. I grew to learn that not everyone I like is going to feel the same way about things that I do; and yet, I can still value what they have to say, and more importantly, value them regardless of what they say.

2. No one's opinion should matter more to you than your own.
I took every film class my college with no (at the time) film program offered, including film criticism.  I found it a difficult task to be definitive in my opinion on a film, because a part of me would feel bad if I thought a movie was terrible and another part of me would find doubt in my esteem of a film that everyone else in class hated. I found myself constantly checking on Roger's website to see what his opinion was, to see if I was on the right path. But there were times when our opinions would differ and I would find myself wavering, trying to find a way to make Roger's or my teachers, or my peers opinions match my own.  No matter how hard I tried, if I didn't love a film, I couldn't bring myself to say I did.  And you know what? That's okay.  Sure, I still feel bad when I say a movie is terrible, but only because maybe there is a redemption factor in it for you, not because I doubt my own opinion. It's a slow path to believing in yourself sometimes, but it is a path worth taking.

3. It is never as easy as it seems.
I always thought Ebert's job was the dream job. Live in Chicago, work for a newspaper, get paid to watch movies. When I was a winner of the "Outguess Ebert" contest several years ago, I received an envelope with the return address of the Chicago Sun-Times and a congratulations letter and some free movie tickets inside. Honestly, as awesome as it was to beat Roger at guessing that year's Oscar winners, I actually cherished the envelope from whom my mom deemed as "my future employer." I still have it.  Silly? Maybe. But I have to say that it pushed me to start this blog. Which as you can see, has been pretty pathetically kept up.  Turns out writing, especially in a time-sensitive media, is not as easy as it looks, even when it is about something you love.

4. Who you are is more important than what you are aka don't hate the game, change it.
I'm terrible at holding myself back sometimes. Waiting for when I'm thinner, richer, smarter, happier, more organized, more stylish...more "more" to try things. In the meantime, life and all its opportunities are not waiting, but moving on without me. Trying to hide out "until" just doesn't work. If you are meant to shine, you will, regardless of anything you do to try to make yourself dim.  Roger knew that of himself, and knew how to bring that out in others (uh, hello...Oprah!)  Even in his announcement of his latest health crisis, Roger wasn't taking himself out of the game. He was just changing it.

5. Don't limit yourself.
If I thought I could never like foreign films, I'd have missed out on the near perfection that is Amelie.  If I didn't watch documentaries about things that might not be the most pleasant of subjects, I'd probaby not be a vegetarian or have any idea of what was going on outside my small world. Because I enjoyed and valued Roger's take on things, there were a lot of movies that I would never have watched otherwise that I gave a shot. These films not only expanded my knowledge of cinema, but broadened my horizons as well.  The world is expansive beyond your wildest dreams, and your life can be too, if only you are willing to allow it. 

This picture just made me chuckle - Ebert was such a mainstay in my youth that when "Roger and Me" came out, I naturally assumed it was about this Roger. I kept waiting for him to show up the whole time. Hey, I was 11.


Life is a limited release.
No one knows when the end credits are going to start rolling. Another classic Roger quote is "No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough." May your movie be an epic one.

Oh, and Roger? I'll see you at the movies.

The Dark Knight Rises...and so will we

I've always had this irrational fear at the movies of something bad happening.  I never really knew why, maybe because I started going to the movies without my parents at a time when it seemed like I wasn't allowed to do anything without adult supervision. So to be trusted enough to be dropped off at a location and sit in a dark room full of strangers for a couple of hours was both liberating and felt the smallest bit dangerous.

I have had a recurring nightmare since I was 8 or so about a gunman, or gunmen, entering the theater and terrorizing people. In this nightmare, I always try to find a way to escape, and it always ends with myself playing dead. It has always disturbed me how often this dream occurs, enough times that when AMC revealed their "loveseat" style seating years ago, my first thought was not how comfy it would be on a date, but rather the fact that it would make for a better hiding spot than seats that fold up.

Disturbing as these nightmares could be, I always chalked them up to my overactive imagination. Until yesterday.

I have been a midnight movie goer for years, the last being for "The Hunger Games" earlier this year.  I had contemplated it for "The Amazing Spider-Man" or "The Dark Knight Rises" but decided against it because a. I'm getting older, as are my friends, and convincing people to be up till 3 in the morning is not so easy to do these days and b. as excited as I was to see these movies, I wanted to be able to get lost in them, to pay total attention to the action on screen, instead of worrying about falling asleep. Never in my decision to go or not to go to a midnight showing was a fear for my safety while watching the movie. Maybe a little for the drive home afterwards, but never while inside the theater. Until yesterday.

People who know me, know me as the movie girl, the one they are always surprised if they have seen something I haven't.  That is because not only do I see a lot of movies, I see a lot in theaters, including on opening weekend. I'm not timid to go alone, I'm a bit of a snob and require certain rules at a theater, the biggest being no talking during the movie.  I like to be as far removed from my surroundings and as much inside the movie as possible. Latecomers, texters, even the light saber wanded theater employees irk me.

A lot of things bother me about what happened in Aurora; the fact that so many innocent lives were taken for no apparent reason is for sure the most upsetting and incomprehensible. It is blinding, life halting, sob inducing to think about. I have tried to think about other things but it has not been easy; it feels too close. The victims are my peers, people who love movies as much as I do, who don't find it ridiculous to wait online with prepurchased tickets for 5 hours to pack into a theater with no air conditioning to watch something others will wait months to catch on DVD.

However, the link that has really floored me is that the shooter was, on paper anyway, also a peer.  A student that worked in the building next to mine and lived across the street from campus. Someone that I may have come across in passing everyday without knowing. Someone who is now causing dogs to sniff around my workplace "just in case" rooms full of innocent strangers and neighbors and law enforcement officers were not enough potential bloodshed.

With any kind of tragedy the biggest question asked is always "why?' It is the question that always occurs, despite the fact that there is no correct answer. No answer will make this okay. No answer will justify what has been done.

Because of this I will try not to focus on the one to blame. I will try to focus on those that never left that movie theater, the ones at my work that never anticipated being there, lying in hospital beds trying to heal physical wounds, and the ones that made it out trying to heal the emotional ones.

We will all have to get used to a new world at the movies.  A world where purses are searched, fellow movie goers are scrutinized, and wanded theater employees are frequent visitors.

I hate that I was scared to go to the movie theater today. I hate that I was more aware of my surroundings than what was happening on the screen.  I hate the idea that I may have seen my last midnight show ever.  Most of all, I hate that my life no longer feels safe in one of my most cherished places. But I will not let this one person take away my joy and neither should you.

When I was in my first car accident as a teenager, my mom made me drive the same day. And then the day after that and the day after that. She did not want one bad experience to define me, to cause me so much fear that I would no longer enjoy something I once loved. She was also one of the first people I know to get on a plane after September 11th and encouraged me to do the same.  It is hard to imagine all I would have missed out on if  I let fear take over.  I will do the same for this.  I will continue to go to the theater. I will continue to get lost in a world outside of this one.  Will it ever be like before? No. But I recently saw a quote that seems appropriate: "Reality is something you rise above." We will all rise above this.  We will be okay.

Saturday in The Office

During a lazy weekend a few months ago, I caught up with some of my favorite pals from NBC's The Office in some of their more recent independent feature film roles.  Creed Bratton, who plays wonderfully creepy Creed on TV, plays equally creepy on the big screen as Uncle James in Azazel Jacobs coming-of-age tale Terri. Played wonderfully by newcomer Jacob Wysocki, Terri is a teenager that should be full of angst but can't seem to gather the energy it would take to care.  Overweight, living with an uncle on the verge of senility, with no parents to be found, or really friends for that matter, Terri lets us in to his quiet world of quirkiness.  After missing a lot of school, Terri is pulled into the office of Assistant Principal Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly).  Fitzgerald is the kind of Assistant Principal that most of us would have liked, but never would have admitted to it; he genuinely cares for Terri, even if he doesn't always know the best way to go about doing that.

Even discovering that maybe his friendship with Fitzgerald places him in a category that everyone else already did (the dude wears pajamas to school everyday, need I say more?), Terri grudgingly gives in to becoming friends with the other less desirables in Fitzgerald's posse, such as Chad (Bridger Zadina), a kid who constantly pulls out his hair.  When one of the more popular girls in school, Heather (Olivia Crocicchia) allows a boy to do a very private thing in a very public place, she becomes an outcast that only someone the likes of Terri can sympathize and reach out towards. 

This is where Terri could become really cliché; the part of most teen movies where the lovable loser gets the girl, is accepted by the cool kids, and becomes valedictorian and prom king. However, this film stays away from the coming-of-age playbook and stays true to life, or at least the life we have been presented.  As the tagline states, "We've all been there."  The scenarios may be different but the emotions are the same.

Roger Ebert declared this one of the best movies of the year in 2011.  I wouldn't go that far.  It's slow paced and kind of trickles into an ending, but if you like movies that do not really take you anywhere but allow you a snippet of an inside look into someone's life for a while, give this movie a shot.

The other film I took in was Michael J. Weithorn's directorial film debut, A Little Help, starring Jenna Fischer as Laura, a dental hygienist who is dealing with the aftermath of losing her husband and trying to handle her 12 year old son. This is no Pam Beesly-Halpert; unless maybe you limit your comparison to the drunken Pam at the Dundies.

That is because we spend the majority of the movie watching Laura try to escape her humdrum life through a can of Budweiser. Not very content with her status quo, Laura falls into an even deeper sense of dreariness once her husband is out of the picture, leaving her alone with her already meddlesome family. To everyone Laura is a screw-up, and her reluctance to sue the doctor in her husband's case in order to provide a better life for her and her son is perfect evidence that without "a little help" Laura would be falling off the deep end with no safety net.

The only person that sees Laura in a different light is her brother-in-law; the other member of the family who tends to try and sneak out of family together time whenever he has the chance. The fact that he would like to spend that away time with Laura is just another issue for her to try and handle. There is not a lot that happens in this movie, but what does occur feels authentic for the characters.

While it could have played off very unrealistic for Laura to go with the lie bratty son Dennis (Daniel Yelsky) tells everyone at his new school about the way his father died; it doesn't. After all the put downs and lack of trust to be able to do anything right that Laura receives from her own family, it's not hard to imagine that fessing up is not high on her list of priorities.

 Like Terri, this could be considered an antithesis to the most fast-paced, action-filled movies out there. Although there is a small glimmer of hope that we are leaving her a little better off than where we found her, Laura's storyline does not wrap up in a pretty little bow. But if nothing else, maybe these two stories will allow the viewer to see their own struggles as survivable.

 Besides, it sure beats a day in the office next to a co-worker like Dwight Shrute.

And the Nomination Goes to...

For a full list of nominations for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, click here: http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/83/nominees.html

The Oscars, hosted by Anne Hathaway and Best Actor nominee James Franco, will be held on February 27th. 33 days to go -- happy watching!

Golden Globes Recap

Tonight marked the 68th annual Golden Globe Awards, one of my favorite award shows, not only because the stars are able to drink during the show, usually adding an extra dimension to their speeches, but it also manages to combine the best of both film and television in the watchable span of 3 hours. In keeping with the curtailed premise, here’s a quick rundown of the highlights and lowlights of the evening.

1. Ricky Gervais hosts: Never one to shy away from controversy, tonight was no exception of the comedian’s “get over yourself” wit. While some of his jokes seemed to go a bit too far, I’m guessing there was some inner chuckling going on amongst the awkward silences and small boos. However, after commenting on having to help the President of the Hollywood Foreign Press, the group responsible for the awards, off the toilet and popping back in his teeth, I have a feeling he will not be asked back.

In case you missed it, here’s a perfect example of his jaw dropping jeering:
“Also not nominated, I Love You Phillip Morris, with Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey, two heterosexual actors pretending to be gay — the complete opposite of some famous Scientologists then.”

2. More crowded than a Black Friday sale: True, the stars get to sit at tables and eat and drink and be merry during the awards. Unfortunately this also means that winners have one last job to perform before accepting their award – find their way out of the maze and onto the stage. Whoever designed the seating chart this year should not place bets in Vegas; many of the winners ended up in tables way in the back, taking lengthy amounts of time to get to the stage only to be cut off by the orchestra halfway through their speeches. And what kind of weird world do we live in when Justin Bieber has a better seat than Al Pacino?!

3. And while we are on the subject of strange decisions of the people behind the scenes, who was directing this show? Talk about odd cut aways to stars that were not remotely related to the actor or project being celebrated on stage. If someone famous is reacting to something on stage, then by all means, let the audience see it. However, if the person looks bored, is talking to someone else, is chewing gum (ahem, Johnny Depp), looks utterly confused (Helena Bonham Carter) or has a name similar sounding to something someone says onstage (Claire Dane's "Holla" is not the same as "Halle" Berry, sorry), then by all means, keep the camera on the person talking.
Also, was it really necessary to go directly to Jane Lynch when Annette Bening was awarded best actress for her portrayal of a lesbian? Tacky.

4. Bleeping out does not equal blindness. So a shocked Diane Warren mouthing "Oh shit" during her long walk to the podium does not need to be bleeped out. We can't hear her. Though thanks to you, we can be sure she said something bad with the rapid cut off of music, almost like an emphasis on the curse.

5. Presenters: Obviously there was a hope to sway younger audiences to watch with some of the presenters who would not be there otherwise (Megan Fox, Justin Bieber) but even youth could not bring life to some of the lame prompts given before the final reading of nominations. There were a few exceptions -- mainly in the form of Tina Fey and Steve Carell for best screenplay, and Robert Downey Jr. for best actress in a comedy. Also Michael Douglas, returning after his recent bout of throat cancer, jokingly referred to the applause of his peers by stating, "just gotta be an easier way to receive a standing ovation."

6. The speeches. The highlights for me -
a. Melissa Leo -- for being so endearingly surprised and humble for winning, while still managing to get in a few funny quips.
b. Chris Colfer -- also adorably clueless at the idea of winning, and not only adding humor but a touching "screw that" to bullies that tell kids they can't be who they are or do what they want to do.



c. Natalie Portman -- for calling her fiance and baby daddy the best actor in the world for playing a character in the film that says he would not sleep with her character. "It's not true, he totally wants to sleep with me!"
d. Aaron Sorkin -- for telling his daughter to look around the room and note that "smart girls have more fun".

Overall, not a lot of surprises throughout the night (I mean, did you really think a movie like Burlesque could beat The Kids are All Right?) but still interesting enough to watch, if only to see if Ricky Gervais would be allowed to end the show (he was - though luckily no one seemed to be listening as he thanked God for making him an atheist).

I myself am thanking God that the SAG Awards are less than 2 weeks away, and Oscar nominations will come out January 25th for the Super Bowl of award shows, taking place on February 27th.

Toy Story #3

When Toy Story first came out, it was the beginning of a new era of digitalized cinema. It was innovative and exciting. And it was fun. So much fun that there was no surprise that a sequel was in order. As almost all sequels go, Toy Story 2 was not as good as the first, but it was still nice to see our old friends again.

This go round our old friends have not aged much, but their beloved owner Andy sure has. Now 18 and off to college, the toys from his past face a new crisis; what happens to a toy once they are no longer deemed a prized possession?

Through a series of missteps Buzz, Woody, and the gang find themselves in a sort of toyland utopia – a daycare center, where they will be played with all day by children who will never tire of them and will never grow old, as a new set of enthralled youth will run through the doors for years to come.

However, the animated world is not lost to the saying “too good to be true.” Soon the toys find themselves looking to escape slobbering toddlers for their former owner even if the best scenario involves being tossed in an attic for years to come.

As Andy has matured, presumably the audience has as well, as there is a darker feel to parts of the movie that were not there before. Sure, we had the evil kids in the former films, but a sinister undertone is given to some of the new toys encountered along the way that may be a bit frightening for younger viewers. I mean one is a clown and let’s face it; those things can freak out some adults (ok, I’ll admit it, namely me).

The film is not as enjoyable as its predecessors, but can still be a lot of fun. The addition of Ken and Barbie bring freshness to the sense of nostalgia looking back on the toys we loved, not only from the series, but from our own childhoods.

Word on the street is that the 3D action is fairly tame and probably not worth the extra money (I’ll have to take the word of those that can actually see 3D as I cannot). But this is definitely worth seeing as a theater release. Even if you know it is time to move on (and it is Pixar, please don’t go “to infinity and beyond” with sequels) it still is nice to spend some quality time with those good childhood friends.