Almost Famous- Cameron Crowe (2000)

Halfway through Almost Famous, there’s a scene in which Kate Hudson—never more coquettish—surveys the detritus of a concert. She slides on used programs and twirls across scuffed floors as Cat Stevens whispers over the soundtrack. For a movie that’s more plot-driven than most people remember, it’s a dream-like intermission.

Even if it does divide a more hopeful first half from a more cynical second half, the scene fits in with the rest of Almost Famous because all of its world is a dream. It’s an unreliable yet loving memory of composites. Yes, Stillwater is basically the Allman Brothers, and Russell Hammond, the guitar player with mystique, is basically Jimmy Page. So what? The power of the film does not lies in its spare “dood, did he really have a threesome when he was fifteen?” parts. It comes from Crowe’s memoirist alchemy of combining the vigor of adolescence with the wisdom and nostalgia of adulthood.

For example, early on, Zooey Deschanel’s character Anna is in an argument with her mother, who is clearly informed by Crowe’s own mom. (Few works are as transparently autobiographical.) Anna screams, “This is a house of lies,” and it comes from a very real place of adolescent frustration. But that line is so loaded with the melodrama of being that age, of generalized judgments about the world around her, that we as adults are supposed to patronize it. We’ve almost been trained to. Years ago in a theater that no longer exists, I saw this idea hammered home a few scenes later, when Anna explains that the sentiment of “America” by Simon and Garfunkel is the reason she is leaving home. All of the middle-aged people around me laughed, thinking it slight that a silly song they had all forgotten could sum up a moment that significant. I slumped in my seat, embarrassed that, for a split second, I thought the idea was a bit romantic. I believed in that same artistic purity and purpose that Anna did, despite all of the social cues I was given. Besides the fact that it sounds cool, I named this blog “A House of Lies” because I want to harness that naive adolescent vitality but weigh it down with the deflated wisdom of the intervening years. Almost Famous is an attempt to stop time and drink in a moment that we’ll never get back. It’s a celebration of the moving and engaging ephemera that Crowe still loves, but it’s commenting just as much on his own life and informal education. That’s what I’m aiming for I guess.

In the third act we get another dose of that complicated treatment of the past when Ben Fong-Torres brags to William that a nearby office has a Mojo, a rudimentary fax machine that can send a page every eighteen minutes.This is one of Crowe’s more facile gags—technology that used to be state-of-the-art is now laughable!—but it underlines that the whole environment of the film is passe. This is a love letter to a setting that has clearly set, and that notion is what adds a layer of heartbreak to the proceedings. An unproven reporter gets to spend weeks with a band to craft a sought-after cover story? Such a thing as an independent concert promoter exists? In light of everything that has happened in the intervening ten years, you might as well be watching The Lord of the Rings. Emotionally, Crowe is conflicted: he’s a middle-aged child. In other ways though, the movie has taken on a purely elegiac veneer.

Perhaps I’m giving too much credit to Crowe’s thematic ambiguity. It’s clear whose side he would be on in that theater I mentioned earlier. Nearly two hours after the house of lies scene, the ever-sagacious Polexia sums up the movie with: “They don’t even know what it is to be a fan. I mean, to truly love some silly little piece of music or some band so much that it hurts.” Although he was forty-three when he directed the film, Crowe still had more in common with her and the junior-in-high-school version of me than he did with all of the soccer moms laughing. If that’s not incendiary, I don’t know what is.

Beginning a decade that cannibalized itself into superhero films and stymied bottle rockets of franchises, this is, in every way, a Personal Film. Hell, the chicken scratch super-imposed on all of the inserts is Crowe’s hand-writing. It’s literally hand-made nostalgia on Dreamworks’ $60 million tab. I could go on and on about Billy Crudup’s instinctual performance and John Toll’s sumptuous photography and the line “let’s just go get some barbecue or something” and the way Sherman at the front desk says “handful.” There are hundreds of tiny moments lovingly recreated here, and I’ve seen it so many times that I can quote them all. Not since Home Alone, when my brother and I acted the whole thing through, have I been attached to a movie and eager to enjoy it all again in such a purely child-like way.

There were a lot of movies that were deeper and more artfully made, but the reason why Almost Famous is my favorite film of the aughts is the theoretical focus that Crowe brings to it. He’s able to exalt the experience of being young, but he combines that with a realistic and astute measure that he can’t even help but feel. Most artists try to act older than they are, to bring a God-like objectivity to their work. Crowe is still a guy trying to be young. In that way, it’s all happening.

At the end of last year, IFC.com, like everyone else, made best of the decade lists. Unlike most other outlets, however, their “Naughts Project” created awards for the best single director, actor, and actress over that period of time. They honored the bodies of work of Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon, and Nicole Kidman, respectively, and it’s hard to disagree with the staff’s unique, sound reasoning in each case. I have some other ideas about the best director of the ’00s, but that’s a different column.

No, what the project really did was get me thinking about who the worst director of the decade was. And figuring that out is probably more difficult than choosing a best. For one thing, we’ve most likely never heard of the worst director of the aughts. He probably went so over-budget or delivered such incompetent work that it never made it on screen. Maybe he stole millions of dollars and never shot a thing. At any rate, his work was probably not worthy of an audience, so it’s hard to judge. For argument purposes, this would have to be a director with whom people are familiar but who has, time and time again, wasted talent, time, and money on garbage. That man is Tim Burton.

Alice in Wonderland, currently sitting high atop the box office heap, is the latest offering from this “madcap visionary,” this “quirky imagineer,” or whatever else you want to call his exaggerated persona. When my mother saw the first trailer for the adaptation, she exclaimed, “You know, he is the perfect person to make that movie!” And in that one sentence, she summarized everything that was wrong with the declining trajectory of Burton’s bankrupt creativity and the problems with our current marketing machine. This artist who embodied an authentic, singular voice is now doing exactly what we expect him to do. Here is his filmography since his career took a turn for the worse:

2010- Alice in Wonderland
2007- Sweeney Todd
2005- Corpse Bride
2005- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
2003- Big Fish
2001- Planet of the Apes
1999- Sleepy Hollow
1996- Mars Attacks!

Forget asking yourself which of those films is good. Which one of those films can justify the fact that it exists? For a man who has such a supposedly original vision, only one of those—Corpse Bride—is not based on pre-existing material. Even that one is a duller copy of the macabre-cute milieu he built for The Nightmare Before Christmas, one of the only movies he’s written himself. When his films have worked (Big Fish, Sweeney Todd for some people), it’s because the source material was so strong that he couldn’t get in his own way.

So he doesn’t write his own screenplays, and he usually attaches himself to adaptations. So does Martin Scorsese. Here’s the difference: Martin Scorsese has a movie out right now too. He took his strength—being a repository of seventy years of cinematic heritage, being a master of using the camera to establish tone—and attempted something he’s never done before: an entry in the horror/suspense genre. Even at a much older age (Burton is only 52), Scorsese reinvents himself and explores. His next project is a kid’s movie in 3-D, another challenge. I can’t imagine Burton stretching himself in that way.

This past decade has seen the rise of believable CGI in visual effects, and, while it supposedly opens filmmakers up to infinite possibilities, it has only hamstrung Burton’s surreal visions. Part of what made things like the sandworms in Beetlejuice impressive was the elbow grease required for the execution. Now, with CG effects, anyone can achieve anything visually, and he was never good at telling stories and coaching performances in the first place. He doesn’t seem to bring as much to the table anymore. Johnny Depp is still in his corner, but they seem to be holding each other back in a similar way. The familiarity with Depp and the dependence upon green screen give the illusion of creativity, but neither element seems to push Burton.

Surprisingly—and tellingly—Burton’s movies keep making money. He’s a bankable, name-brand director. And what has he done with that clout? He’s one of maybe twenty directors in the world who has no trouble getting a $100 million budget approved, and he uses that privilege to retell stories that do not need to be retold. Why Alice in Wonderland now? Why Planet of the Apes? What about these projects demands his consideration?

That’s what’s so frustrating. The delicate, heartbreaking, sympathetic work on Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood show just how essential his talent should be. They’re pieces of painstaking, nuanced outsider art, and that’s why it makes no sense for him to have become the mainstream. It used to be that no one else could make a Tim Burton film; now he makes ones that anyone else could.

pitchfork:

(via Fashion of the Christ?)

thedailywhat:

Movie Poster Cliché of the Day: Jason Statham Loves to Point His Gun at Stuff is the new Matthew McConaughey Cannot Stand Up By Himself, which was the old Sean William Scott Must Ride In The Back Seat, which took the place of All Movie Posters Are Orange and Blue, which appeared on the heels of All Dreamworks Animals Make The Same Face, and so on.

[huffpo.]

fuckyeahmovieposters:

 Iron Man 2

Great movie? Or greatest movie? Nice back shot of boo as well.