There are a wealth of movies that I haven’t seen, both good and bad, and many of those I actually do WANT to see. Many are the times that I bring home 3 or 4 of those titles and late at night, I settle in to watch one but I find myself glancing over to my personal collection, movies that I have seen several to countless times. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m standing in front of my DVD racks, scanning while the forgotten new title drones on behind me. Invariably, I will choose one and slap that in the player instead, a movie I know by heart. A warm fuzzy feeling comes over me, like I’ve just wrapped myself in my favourite old ratty sweater on a cold winter’s night as the credits unfold. I call these ‘movie comfort food’ and for me, most often these choices are classics, often war movies or westerns, and of those, many are John Wayne movies.

There’s an undeniable pleasure in watching The Duke act as if he’s not acting (he did famously quip that acting is simply reacting) and in fact, I have this theory that Marion Morrison, the person, was essentially the same one I see on the screen, so much so that when I’m asked what person. living or dead, I would most like to spend an evening with socially, John Wayne’s name is invariably invoked (as is Alfred Hitchcock, which is another blog). My Dinner With the Duke.

Movie comfort food doesn’t have to be great or even good in quality and for most people I’ve talked to, it’s not. It just has to fill that need, the need to settle in and be washed over by a warm wave of nostalgia. What is your movie comfort food?

The story of a 60′s Job, Larry Gopnick, who has everything go wrong at once then finds his life going downhill from there, A Serious Man has many of the hallmarks of a Coen brothers, quirky characters, darkly
comic bits and a skewed view of the foibles of life. But I kept asking myself throughout, what is all this pointing to? Like Larry, I felt that I was witnessing a great cosmic joke perpetrated by the creator
(God/Coens) but I wasn’t being let in on it. What’s the meaning of it all? It seems only the Coen’s can answer that.

I read some reviews after, both positive and negative, hoping to shine some light on my confusion, but the positive seemed to be members of the club and the negative were confused, like me. There was no middle ground.

I work in a video store and have spoken to many people about this movie, some regular ‘Joes’, some dyed-in-the-wool Coen brothers fans, and not a single one liked or ‘got’ it either. I guess we didn’t drink the Koolaid.

Best Picture – The Hurt Locker
Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow
Best Actor – Jeff Bridges
Best Actress – Sandra Bullock (I weep at this)
Best Supporting Actor – Christoph Waltz
Best Supporting Actress – Mo’Nique

And of course the obvious for Best Animated Film…Up.

Check back in just over a month to see how I did!

60 years ago last year (now) was the greatest year in movie history. We had released (in the same year!), Gone With the Wind, Wizard Of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Women, Ninotchka, Gunga Din…and the list goes on. Was 2009 even close? No. It wasn’t a bad year but when you have to pad your top ten with movies that were merely very good, it’s not a great year. So here’s my list, such as it is, starting with a tie for first (I’m sorry! I just couldn’t decide!):

1) Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited Naziploitation epic is everything we have come to expect from this self-proclaimed film junkie, long, tense scenes of dialogue, over-the-top violence, bigger-than-life characters and something to offend almost everyone. This might top Pulp Fiction as my favourite Tarantino movie and if Christoph Waltz as a Nazi colonel doesn’t get an Oscar nomination, I’ll stop watching movies, period.

1) Up – Pixar’s output is uniformly excellent, in fact the last 4 movies, (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Up), have just gotten better and after seeing each for the first time, I have declared that they can’t possibly top it…and they do. In fact, the first ten minutes of Up is, without a doubt, the BEST ten minutes I’ve seen in a movie in years, so much so that the rest of this hilarious, touching and gorgeous contemplation on aging and life tends to let me down a bit, even though it is still astonishing.

The Hurt Locker – Director Kathryn Bigelow is a bit of an outsider in Hollywood. She started out as a James Cameron protege and (thankfully) moved away to make some under-rated minor classics (Near Dark, Strange Days) but in The Hurt Locker, she has made her masterpiece. Shot in a virtual cinéma vérité style, this look inside an American bomb-defusion squad in Iraq has the most tense scenes of the year.

District 9 – Working with a budget that was probably the same as the caterer’s on Transformers 2, South African helmer Neill Blomkamp has crafted a movie that is at once a thoughtful treatise on the horrors of apartheid and a crackerjack sci-fi action extravaganza, not an easy thing to do, to be sure.

(500) Days of Summer – Zooey Deschanel absolutely shines in the best romantic comedy of the year as the titular Summer, the girl who Joseph Gordon-Levitt woos and wins…or does he? I love a movie that approaches romance with all the foibles and difficulties that REAL romance actually has. This is a masterpiece of misperception.

Star Trek – When word came that Lost and Alias creator J.J. Abrams was rejiggering Star Trek and (gasp!) making a prequel about when the original crew meets, Trekkers were all in a tizzy (since I’m not one, I wasn’t). I am happy to report that he has made the best Star Trek movie yet, a movie that is Trek enough for the fans yet very accessible for the non-fan (I can’t tell you the number of people who have told me that they loved it even though they knew nothing about Star Trek).

Sugar – It’s a good year when a baseball movie gets released but it’s a great year when a good baseball movie shows its face. Sugar is that movie. From the writing and directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who plumbed the depths of drug addiction in Half Nelson, comes this behind-the-scenes look at life for Dominican Republic ball players trying to make it to ‘The Show”, the Majors. It’s alternately heartbreaking and heartwarming and demonstrates the many hardships that these ‘strangers in a strange land’ have to endure. If you like baseball, you’ll love this one.

Away We Go – Sam Mendes once again proves his directorial abilities in disparate genres with this charming indie comedy starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph as a thirty-something couple, newly pregnant, who wander the country, touching base with friends and family, to find the perfect place to raise a family. Along the way they find out much about each other and themselves, in very funny ways. It’s the supporting cast that shines here, especially Jim Gaffigan as a tired-of-life husband and Maggie Gyllanhaal as a new age mother. Mendes’ next challenge: he’s been tapped to direct the next Bond opus…wow!

Nine – Okay, so the critics panned this. I don’t care! How could I not love a big bold musical about two of my favourite subjects, Italy and filmmaking, based on a Fellini film to boot? Sure, it doesn’t hold a candle to 8 1/2 and sure, the songs are somewhat forgettable and sure, some of the roles are somewhat miscast but this worked for me. I had fun and left the theatre in a great mood. Besides, Daniel Day-Lewis and Marion Cotillard’s performances are worth the price of admission alone. This one is my guilty pleasure.

The Informant! – Steven Soderbergh is either a community of several different artists or the most talented single man on earth. He makes the afore-mentioned Sam Mendes seem genre-bound. This year alone saw the release of the small Girlfriend Experience, the epic (4 1/2 hour!) Che and The Informant!, a comedy so wacky, it could only be based on a true story. That story is about a corn production executive (Matt Damon) who squeals on his company’s price-fixing but begins to lose control of the situation, creating all sorts of difficult but hilarious situations for the FBI. Damon handles this one perfectly and the story is so incredible, I checked the internet when I got home to verify it. Yep, it’s true!

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – “Really?  A Bond movie?”, you may ask.  Well, as a Bond fanatic, and more the books than the movies (Roger Moore almost singlehandedly destroyed the series), On Her Majesty’s Service is my favourite book and was my favourite Bond movie until the new Casino Royale.  The book shows Bond at his most vulnerable, in love, and at his most angry, when that love is threatened, and the movie manages to stick closely to the book.  James Bond becomes Sir Hilary Bray, genealogist,  and spends his Christmas holidays at a ski resort/clinic in beautiful Switzerland trying to finally bring down the elusive Blofeld, played smarmily by Telly Savalas.  Even though, I’m not fond of John Glen’s erratic fight scene editing and George Lazenby, in his only Bond appearance, isn’t Sean Connery (but he’s miles better than the stiff Moore), this one has lots of holiday cheer, skiing, figure skating and Diana Rigg.

The Thin Man – Now I’m really stretching, you may say, but the fact is that the first Thin Man movie takes place almost entirely over Christmas eve and Christmas day and has much holiday cheer, in the form of copious amounts of alcohol consumed by William Powell and Myrna Loy as the mystery-solving Nick and Nora Charles, a rich couple who have some unseemly connections (his, actually).  As in the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the mystery is simply a cover for a romantic screwball comedy, with Powell and Loy throwing around wisecracks like a drunk spilling their drink.  In many ways, it’s the anti-Christmas movie because there’s not a lot of goodwill to men, just murders to solve and this is never more clear than when Nora says, after a few too many Merry Christmases are bandied about, “The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill ‘em.”  By the way, there were 5 sequels, all with the Thin Man moniker, even though the titular Thin Man was a victim in the first movie only.

3 Godfathers – This might be the least known movie on the list.  A John Ford/John Wayne western, 3 Godfathers is a Christmas parable about three outlaws on the run through the desert.  They come upon a pregnant woman who, with the help of the three men, gives birth before dying and her last wish is that the men take care of the baby so they head to the town of New Jerusalem where they find her family but also reparation for their crimes.  This is a terrific movie with strong Nativity themes running throughout and takes place entirely during the Christmas week.  If you haven’t seen this lesser-known gem, search it out.

Remember the Night – Okay, I managed to squeeze a Preston Sturges movie on to the list.  Sturges wrote the screenplay but Mitchell Leisen directed (even though Sturges was very blunt about his less-than-exemplary opinion of Leisen’s skills).  Barbara Stanwyck plays a thief in New York, court-ordered to spend Christmas week with lawyer Fred Macmurray, whose plans to visit his family now have some excess baggage.  The requisite crazy Sturges dialogue and oddball characters keep the laughs coming but the standout is the heart-tugging scene when Stanwyck makes a stop at her childhood home, to find she’s neither welcome nor wanted.

Elf – Every year the studios try to catch lightning in a bottle by releasing a couple of Christmas movies, hoping they catch the public’s fickle attentions.  Usually we get a Deck the Halls or Surviving Christmas (if you haven’t heard of these, be happy) but every once in a while we get an Elf.  Although this one has been catching some speed the last couple of years, Elf is still a bit of an outsider and the most enjoyable Christmas movie in years.  Will Ferrell is a human adopted as a baby by Santa and raised as an elf but realizes he’s not like the other elves so he travels to New York to find his father, curmudgeon book publisher James Caan.  This one successfully mixes some edge with some sweet scenes (especially with sort-of romantic interest, Zooey Deschanel, who shines here) to create very big laughs.  My only complaint is that the movie is almost derailed by a silly (even within the context of this movie) finale in Central Park. 

Die Hard – This is my favourite Christmas movie.  It is actually my favourite movie, period, so by virtue of that, it has to be my favourite Christmas movie.  You may think that this movie is about New York cop John McClane fighting terrorists in a Los Angeles highrise, an action-packed thrill ride filled with violence and inappropriate language and you would be right, but it is also chock-a-block with Christmas music, decorations, holiday cheer, faith in your fellow-man, a negative predilection towards greed and consumerism and family togetherness.  Think about it.

Honourable Mention: Saturday Night Live, December 8, 1990 – I know.  This is an episode of a television comedy sketch show and so, it really doesn’t belong on this list…that’s why it’s an honourable mention.  Saturday Night Live has had a spotty success rate and I’m not patient enough to slog through the crap to find that golden kernel of comedy, however the night this aired, I was otherwise engaged and I heard Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians were the musical guests and I was very into them at the time so I taped it.  Thank you to myself for that prescience.  This was one of the only SNL episodes that worked (for me) from start to finish.  Tom Hanks hosted and once again, brought back my favourite SNL character, Mr. Short Term Memory in a skit that after dozens of viewings still makes me roll on the floor (“Hey!  You’re Tony Randall!”).  ‘The Five Timers Club’, ‘Carl Sagan’s Global Warming Christmas Special’, ‘Sabra Shopping Network”, all absolutely hilarious.  And, oh yeah, Edie Brickell was good, too.

To all my friends, family and readers, may the joy of the season be made manifest in your lives.

Although my dad was a couple of months shy of active service in World War 2 (he joined up on his 18th birthday but all he saw was basic training outside Toronto and weekend furloughs in Toronto), I have several uncles who saw a great deal of action.  My uncle Mike was shot down behind German lines early in the war and sat through the war in a POW camp.  As a child, when he and my aunt Kaye would come over for a swim and he would take off his shirt, I would marvel at the foot long scar rippling across his left shoulder from stray bullets during his capture.  The Canadian military was ultimately very generous, providing him with a pension and a cushy job chauffeuring military types around Southern Ontario until his retirement but that would be a small price for the indignities he must have suffered and horrific sights he must have been privy to in those years in the German camp, as in the quintessential POW movie, The Great Escape.  Although this rollicking and exciting adventure strays sometimes from the source material, the book by Paul Brickhill that outlines his own experiences as a prisoner at the infamous Stalag Luft II, the truly amazing thing is that the most unbelievable parts in the film are those that actually happened with Steve McQueen’s unpredictable behaviour and demands accounting for the bulk of the changes from the book.  Another great movie (and book) from this same event is the British classic, The Wooden Horse, the true-life story of how an escape tunnel was dug essentially using only a wooden gymnastic horse and the ingenuity of dozens of prisoners.

My uncle Harry was one of the 76,000 Canadian troops that participated in the invasion of Sicily and ultimately Italy and spent many long months working his way north to free Italy from the fascist grip of Mussolini.  On a recent trip to Italy, we were in Salerno, where the disembarkation of the Allied invasion of Italy took place and and as I walked on the boardwalk next to the Mediterranean, I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of young men who lost their lives where I was walking.  The invasion of Sicily brings to mind the Oscar-winning film about the man who led the great invasion, Patton.  General George Patton was an imposing, brash, egotistical man but a brilliant tactician and the ideal fodder for a movie biography.  Francis Coppola and former military man Edmund North wrote a terrific script that perfectly captured the enigma that was Patton.  George C. Scott would not give a better performance, even if he felt it necessary to turn down the Oscar that came with it and the movie would famously become Richard Nixon’s favourite.

Many years ago, I watched what was essentially another rip-off of The Dirty Dozen, The Devil’s Brigade.  An entertaining romp, this one held a place of importance  and pride to me though because it concerned a ragtag U.S. commando unit drummed into shape by Canadian Special Forces officers, led by Cliff Robertson.  For once, the Canadians were the real heroes.  It was many years later that my dad informed that not only was the Devil’s Brigade a real World War 2 unit, but the best man at my parent’s wedding, George Stocking, was a former member of the Devil’s Brigade.  I promptly rushed home and watched it again and got a copy for my dad, who had never seen the movie.

My favourite war sub-genre is the submarine movie.  The idea that a small group of men from every background works together for the greater good (and their own safety) inside a giant tube, constantly facing stress and danger is a formula that never gets old for me.  Purists will list Das Boot and Run Silent Run Deep as the classics of the genre but my favourite is a propaganda piece that may lack in realism, but more than makes up for it in heart, Destination Tokyo.  Released at the start of the Second World War to give audiences a glimpse into the heretofore unknown world of the silent service, it stars Cary Grant as the skipper of a sub that has the unenviable task of sneaking into Tokyo Bay on an espionage mission, providing us with humour, pathos, excitement, and sheer bravado in spades.  Yeah, it’s old-fashioned but it’s old-fashioned fun.

Many may feel, even with the advent of ultra-realistic movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, that war movies diminish the great sacrifices the men and women who have served have made but I know that during virtually every war movie I watch, I have at least a moment of reflection when I’m thankful uncles Mike and Harry and all the other uncles, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and aunts were willing to make the decision to serve their country so that pacifists like myself can enjoy the freedom they fought for.

I live in Southern Ontario, not exactly Hollywood North (although a fair bit of filmmaking does take place in Toronto and isolated areas) so when I see my environs captured on celluloid, it’s usually Anyplace, U.S.A. over top of places familiar to me with all the requisite flag and sign changes.  I can still however, scream and point as I see these poorly disguised landmarks in movies like Short Circuit, To Die For and Dawn Of the Dead (shot in the mall I used to work at and okay, I simply screamed in pain at Short Circuit).  But here was a country so steeped in history, so utterly familiar to those who have never been there that the very names conjure up vivid images, Trevi Fountain, St. Peter’s Basilica, Pompeii, the Colosseum, mozzarella, pizza, Michelangelo.  And so I found in my travels that so much of what I was seeing in person revived memories of movies both recent and long forgotten.  It seemed as though each sight, taste or smell elicited a film flashback  and so I will give a day-by-day reminisce, mingled with the movies brought to mind.

Day One: Rome (the airport at least)-Flying into Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport in Fiumicino, a suburb of Rome, I was reminded of the opening scenes of Avanti!, the Billy Wilder-directed Jack Lemmon comedy about an American businessman wrested from his golf-and-martini life to fly to Italy to facilitate the shipping of his father’s body back Stateside, even as he is engulfed by ‘amore’.  The opening scenes are the pilot’s view of the approach to Da Vinci Airport and I looked out the small window over the wing (why does it seem I’m always over the wing?) at the vast sprawl of suburban Rome, feeling somewhat more excited about the prospect than Jack Lemmon did.  As I climbed into my tiny Fiat Grande Punto and raced down the Autostrade on the 3 1/2 hour journey to our hotel, I felt at times like Matt Damon racing through the countryside in The Italian Job or one of the Bourne movies, until my wife told me to slow down or the GPS bleated its insistence that I was in fact speeding.  We arrived at our hotel, jet-lagged and apprehensive about this strange new country.

Day Two: Paestum-A mere four kilometres from our hotel (although the guide book said one kilometre so we decided to ditch the car and get a taste of the countryside…boy, did we ever) is the ancient Greek town of Poseidonia, which the Romans later named Paestum, where lay what most historians consider the best-preserved Greek ruins in the world.  Beyond the quiet humility I felt as I thought about my relative insignificance in the long dance of history that played out on this plain, I also felt awed as I envisioned a 40-foot-high Laurence Olivier sitting in the enormous temple of Zeus in the Ray Harryhausen ‘classic’, Clash Of the Titans.  But what I was most reminded of, sadly, was the movie that played on the plane the day before, the latest Nia Vardalos fiasco, My Life In Ruins.  The (unfunny) story of a Greek tour guide finding romance with the hunk bus driver while showcasing the beauty of Greece, I was saddened for a fleeting second by the thought of the wasted potential of Vardalos, who wrote and starred in the wonderful My Big Fat Greek Wedding then squandered that with Connie and Carla and this latest dreck.  Fortunately, the glory of my surroundings woke me from this sad reverie.  After our sojourn at the ruins, we stopped for our first lunch in a small bar/gelateria (a bar in Italy is the North American equivalent to a coffee shop) and it was here that one of the real differences between Europe and North America becomes most evident, the food.  In North America, we have a philosophy that more and bigger is better.  Grocery stores have become supercentres with several dozen varieties of, well, everything.  Buffets are ubiquitous, obesity is on the rise and processed is the word of the day.  In Europe, however, they still seem to take pride in their food, both growing and making it.  Everywhere we went, from the wonderful hotel restaurant to the Autogrill, Italy’s expressway rest stop, the food was terrific and made with care from fresh ingredients.  Virtually every local pizzeria featured what I would term ‘artisan’ food.  Which leads me to…

Day Three: Rome-We rose at 4:30 for the 3 1/2 hour drive back to Rome.  I know, “Why are you driving all the way back to Rome?”, you ask.  Well, you see, we had tickets for a papal audience at the Vatican at 10:30 and I had never driven in Rome proper so I wanted to get there in plenty of time, for that as well as REAL reason for the trip back, a 12:45 appointment at the top of the Spanish Steps to have our wedding vows renewed (yes, I’m such a romantic)!  Well, we made great time (again, Italian Job) and it seemed, as we approached the outskirts of Rome and the GPS informed us that we had a half hour to drive just 13 kilometres to reach our exact destination, that we were on the cusp of possibly the greatest day of our lives and everything was falling into place.  Then we hit the famed Rome traffic jam, five packed lanes as far as the eye could see!

(In the spirit of my beloved serials)…What dastardly deed had the populace of Rome foisted on our hapless hero and his blushing bride-to-be (sort of)?  Would they make it to their appointment with destiny?  Are their upcoming nuptials in jeopardy?  Would the marriage be consummated (okay, ewww..)?  Find out in the next spellbinding chapter of From Italy With Love or My Week In Italy Through Film at this theatre next week (or whenever I get the rest done)!

My friend, Cito...not really.

At the end of a less-than-illustrious baseball season (for Blue Jays fans), I’m going to review the year that was and comment on the year that is to come based on the events of the last 48 hours.

Citogate.  Fox Sports News (which I trust more than Fox News) reported yesterday that a ‘near-mutiny’ has existed in the Blue Jays clubhouse and unnamed players have insisted that due to a lack of communication, ‘old-school’ style managing and general negativity, two-time World Series winning manager Cito Gaston has to be let go by next season.  Cito has expressed incredulity at this and has been ‘blindsided’ (his own words) and while yesterday, rumblings were still being heard off the record, today the players have had an about-face and it appears now everyone is just peachy about having Cito back next year.  What happened?  A closed door meeting?  An edict from on high?  No, apparently a clubhouse meeting was scheduled but called off and head office had its own fish to fry (more on that later).  No, I think everyone is still unhappy but no one expected the story to leak so now those same ‘no ones’ don’t want to look like whiny babies complaining that Daddy is mean to them when they don’t do their chores.  Let’s be honest, with the exception of a couple on the roster, Adam Lind, Aaron Hill, Roy Halladay and perhaps Marco Scutaro, no one had performed to specs the last couple of months and I find it a bit disingenuous to blame a man who sits on a bench and watches YOU play and who through the last half of last season and the first two months of this one provided a glowing win-loss record, 78-51 (in a season this long, it’s easy to forget that the Jays were an American-League-leading 27-14 through May).  Yes, Cito has a different approach.  He lets guys work through their difficulties on the field, often to the groans of the fans.  He has a quiet, almost hands-off approach so it’s easy to disregard his wisdom (as Travis Snider found out early on this season to his regret) but he must know something because he….wins….games! (his managerial record is 809-758).  Well, it appears that Cito will be around for next year but one person who won’t be is J.P. Ricciardi.

J.P. Ricciardi, the general manager of the Jays for the last 8 years, was fired today, one year shy of the completion of his contract.  Ricciardi came over from the Oakland A’s where he served under Billy Beane who touted the idea of ‘smallball’, taking the focus from home runs and batting averages to on-base percentages and moving men around the bases.  This theory worked well enough to win the A’s a World Series and bring Ricciardi to the attention of the cost-cutting new owner of the Jays, Ted Rogers.  He was hired in 2001 to bring this new attitude to the Jays clubhouse and so Ricciardi presented his Five Year Plan (which, by the way, we are in the 8th year of).  I need to make it clear that I was not a fan of J.P. Ricciardi.  He seemed arrogant and rude and the list of his poor decisions and signings (Wells, Rios, Burnett, Ryan, Thomas) is long and undistinguished.  I’m not particularly sad to see him go but….I do feel sorry for him.  Why, you ask?  Because, so long as the Jays are in the American League East, so long as the Jays have almost forty games a season against the Yankees and Red Sox, teams with a seemingly endless pool of financial resources to draw from, so long as Rogers is content to keep our salary cap at under one hundred millions dollars, chances are no general manager will be able to lead this team to a World Series berth (I say ‘chances are’ because last year the Tampa Bay Rays, with a salary less than half of the Jays, did just that…against those same teams.  So there is a chance).  And when the team fails to reach that pinnacle of baseball, there will be anger and animosity against ANY general manager who, the fans feel, can’t get the team there.  It’s inherently unfair but a part of life in the A.L. East.  So, to Ricciardi’s replacement, former assistant general manager Alex Anthopoulos, good luck!  You’ll need it (and a thick skin…though not as thick as you would need in New York or Boston, so thank your lucky stars you’re not there.)  I can only hope that you are more level-headed than Ricciardi, with more media patience and tact.  You’re Canadian so already chances are you’re a nice guy (not too nice though, I hope).  Oh, and good luck with the whole Halladay thing.  Really.

Oh, and get rid of Wells.  It’ll help you in the long run.  Really.

On August 6, Maclean’s published an article entitled “Say goodbye to big screen classics”, (http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/06/say-goodbye-to-big-screen-classics/) which espoused the theory that classic movies on DVD would become as rare as the dodo, or a Toronto sports team winning a championship.  Through interviews with a smattering of highly placed studio execs, the story developed that studios, due to a downturn in sales, would be virtually discontinuing the release of classics, other than huge hits like The Wizard Of Oz and Gone With the Wind.  Even a ’boutique’ distribution company like Criterion would be paring back their schedule with more of a focus on modern film.  Well, I have a word or three to say on this…

I work in the trenches, retail trenches, that is.  As the sole person in charge of the ordering for one of the largest video stores in Canada (8,000 titles for rent, 10,000 titles for sale when the average Rogers and Blockbuster carries 1000-1500), I have a daily view into the soul of the DVD consumer and most of the time I don’t like what I see.  There has always and will always be crap.  The term ‘B movie’ came from the time when you went to the theatre for the evening, and saw two movies, the ‘big’ title, an ‘A’ title and a lower budget (and usually quality) ‘B’ title.  So yes, there will always be the Adam Sandler fan (don’t think he’s the first to make a fortune from lower-brow comedy…before him there was Chevy Chase, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Lucille Ball, Arthur Lake (Blondie), Three Stooges and Fatty Arbuckle). 

It seems clear to me though that the quality of these classics are much higher than what today’s studios are putting out.  I don’t know if it’s the old studio ‘contract’ system which basically forced most actors and crew to appear in or work on whatever the studio heads told them to.  There wasn’t any of the script readings by actors and agents to decide if the potential movie fit his or her image (the studio head told YOU what fit your image).  You were on a weekly salary and you did what the bosses told you (which doesn’t sound all that different from my job, except for the pay scale).  A real difference is that while the Warners, David Selznick and Harry Cohn were businessmen first, they knew and loved movies while today’s execs are mostly MBA graduates who think that the French New Wave is Depeche Mode.  William Goldman famously said that in Hollywood, no one knows anything and that is more true today than ever. 

Yes, I admit that there is some good stuff coming out of Hollywood today (this year alone we’ve so far had Up, (500) Days of Summer, Away We Go, Inglourious Basterds and District 9) but most of this is coming from independent filmmakers or those who work outside the system with that system’s blessing.  I’ve already written a blog on the death of Hollywood (http://argento2665.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/the-blockbuster-and-the-death-of-hollywood/) so I don’t want to get back on that soapbox but I can’t help but think these issues are intrinsically tied together.  If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it and if someone removes that history, we have nothing to learn from.  Classic DVD’s are that history and I would hate to see a day when I’m forced to resort to trading with other movie buffs on the information superhighway for a fourth generation VHS dub of Sullivan’s Travels (a movie about movies that will change the way you think about movies).  I fear though that day is closer than we all think.