DVD. You Choose. I Watch. We Talk.

Last year or a bit further back (?) I tried to give you the choice of which DVDs I would review from the weekly crop released but we didn't get very far on account of Netflix's month-long delays with some studios and my policies of mandatory procrastination. So irritating! Given that the bulk of readers and, indeed, the bulk of everyone watches their movies at home now (sigh), let's try again! I'll figure it out on my end.  We'll skip the newish releases we've already discussed like 21 Jump Street (review) and Mirror Mirror (review) and the one's I have no interest in. 

Let's start simple with 2012 movies fairly fresh on DVD that I haven't seen. though perhaps I'll speak out if there's a great commentary. If there is I trust someone will let me know. 

• THE FLOWERS OF WAR Zhang Yimou's historical epic starring Christian Bale that was submitted for foreign film last year but didn't make it.
• THIS MEANS WAR Reese Witherspoon's terribly reviewed slutty* action comedy in which she can't choose between Chris Pine & Tom Hardy. Her friend suggests a sex off (*I'm guessing? hoping?)
• JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME An indie from the Duplass brothers co-starring the always welcome Judy Greer and Susan Sarandon.
• THE PERFECT FAMILY Kathleen Turner returns to the screen as the mother of a dysfunctional Catholic family. 

poll by twiigs.com

You choose for me and I'll cover it somehow next week.
Make your case in the comments if you'd like other people to vote your way.

Biutiful Interrupted

It's not my habit to skip an Oscar nominee. But things happen. So it was that I missed Javier Bardem's Oscar nominated Best Actor turn in Biutiful (2010). This seems to happen to me about once a decade, so I've already used my "get out of jail free" card for the 'teens.... or the ten's... what are we calling this new decade? (In the Aughts the only nominee I missed was Tommy Lee Jones in In The Valley of Elah.) As the movie began with its somber first notes and black screen the words "Alejandro González Iñárritu" struck dread in my heart. I quickly remembered why I hadn't wept when the film had given me the slip before the nominations in January. Iñárritu's insatiable appetite for Miserabilism has been killing my mood since Amores Perros way back in 2000. I will forever be grateful that he introduced me to Gael Garcia Bernal but beyond that he hasn't done me favors.

I was no great fan of Babel and I openly hated 21 Grams. In fact the only Iñárritu I've ever enjoyed was the short film "Powder Keg" which is very typical of his oeuvre despite being a BMW commercial so maybe I can only handle his aggressive Feel Bad omnipotence in short doses?

It's not my preference to balk at a Reader Request. But this happened: as I began to watch the film, I suspected very quickly that I wasn't going to be able to handle it. A shot of Bardem's smiling face framed by wintry whites and cool blues immediately upset me; the saddest smile I've seen onscreen in many a year. Bardem is such a fine actor but more than that he has almost the perfect movie face, it's hugely memorable without being limited by its specificity: Is he handsome? Is he ugly? How can he be so imposingly monolithic in profile yet so human and fleshy head on?

I've always loved Javier Bardem but by the time his "Uxbal" was in a doctor's office getting a prostate exam and being an asshole about the needle for a blood test (is Uxbal a drug addict?) my mood was crashing. The last two funerals I've been to were both cancer related and one of them, very very recently, was for a dear friend's father who happens to be the exact same age as my own father (thankfully still with us).

I wasn't expecting the follow up scene, wherein Uxbal visited a funeral home where three little dead boys lay, one of them (ostensibly) haunting him. Nor was I expecting Uxbal to prey on the boy's family for money (something about his ability to commune with the dead -- fake or real?). By the time his sad looking son (like father like...) was having a bedwetting episode and Uxbal was pissing blood the next morning, I had to turn the damn thing off.

Note to filmmakers: never ever show a closeup of the contents of a toilet bowl. There are some things we see every day in real life that we need never see onscreen.

I looked at the DVD clock and realized I was only 20 minutes in and I had a full 128 minutes to go and opted for self preservation. I have been struggling with a particularly strong stubbornly escalating bout of depression and I didn't want to welcome more of it in. I had heard from the film's naysayers that the movie is relentless about piling on -- to the point of Job-like cruelty. And if cancer, addiction, poverty, ghosts, blood, and preying on grieving parents were just Iñárritu's opening reel gambit, it was going to be beyond my coping abilities in my present state.

I am not one of those sad and limited moviegoers who yearns for all movies to be happy -- a boyfriend of a good friend once complained about the sad movies we were dragging him, too "do you like any happy movies?" he asked in exasperation. And it's true that I do quite love a good tragedy. But I know my limit-testing buttons and Biutiful pushed nearly half of them in its first 20 minutes, including a peculiar uncommon one... toilet bowl closeups. Were I convinced that the world revolved around me, I'd suspect that Iñárritu was created in a lab just to test me. For this test, I have laid down my pencil and admitted defeat.

Have you ever fully intended to watch a movie and bailed from mood crashing?

Previous Reader Requests:
The Other Woman, The Rescuers and Beauty & The Beast

"Who Will Rescue Me?"

I'm lost at sea without a friend
This journey, will it ever end?
Who will rescue me?

So... goes the ballad that opens The Rescuers (1977), as Little Orphan Penny drops her message in a bottle into the swamp. I swear Shelby Flint's vocals dribbled out over the sides of my television like syrup. Who will rescue me from this treacle?!?

It wasn't always this way with The Rescuers and me. In fact, as a child it was one of my favorite movies. (When you voted for it in a poll some time ago, I was excited to revisit it!) As it turns out, sometimes childhood loves are best left in childhood.

Has this ever happened to you with an old formerly beloved movie?

As you can see in the still above, the animation team let the texture of the canvas bleed through and for a few seconds as the movie kicked off I thought "how lovely" (I'm not always so pleased with today's beautiful and shiny but often sterile animated images) but as the movie progressed it turned out not so lovely at all, a mess of inconsistent animation that often looked rushed through production.

For those who need a refresher, The Rescuers is about a girl named Penny who has been "borrowed" from her orphanage by a pawn shop owner named "Medusa" (wicked highly enjoyable voicework from Oscar regular Geraldine Page). Medusa wants a gargantuan diamond called The Devil's Eye which is buried in a cave that Penny is small enough to slip into in a creepy place called Devil's Bayou. Penny's bottled cry for help reaches the Rescue Aid Society, an international organization of ethnically and geographically stereotyped mice who meet in the United Nations building: HIGH CONCEPT!

While the characters are cute enough -- particularly elegant rodent Bianca (Eva Gabor) and a dragonfly named Evinrud -- the primary emotion that The Rescuers seems to be going for is pity. It works but "pity" isn't the most cathartic or endearing emotion to rest a whole movie on. Penny is either too young, too dumb or too helpless to be carrying this picture. The other significant problem is that despite a scant 78 minute running time, there's not enough plot to fill it with. Time and again we have a plot complications that are as thrilling as treading water. The narrative doesn't actually move until the complication is over. Like so:

1. Oh no, the mice are in trouble.
2. Cue frantic activity on or offscreen!
3. Whew, the mice are okay. So...
4. Back to the plot where you left it. Proceed.

And let's not even talk about the excessive amount of time we spent with the albatross Orville [yawn]. He's mere connective tissue to take you from Act 1 (New York) to Act 2 (Devil's Bayou) and last time I checked no intermission between acts ever lasted as long as Orville's fumbling flying routine.

The pictures sole bright spot then is Madame Medusa.

Seeing the movie as an adult, it's shocking to realize that she's nearly a carbon copy of Cruella de Vil: She enters the picture throwing open a door violently; She loses her temper constantly; She drives like a madwoman in vehicles that leave huge puffs of smoke behind them; She has a bumbling human henchman she despises; She has a one track mind (fur/diamonds) and she even has a scene where she slows down her "car" creepily while searching for the hiding protagonist, that immediately brings the famous "soot" scene in 101 Dalmatians to mind. When she's not recalling Cruella she's lifting Miss Hannigan from Annie.

In other words, she's no original.

Disney Generations: Cruela begat Medusa begat Ursula.

But if we needed Medusa as a missing link evolutionary step to get us from Cruella to Ursula than we owe Medusa a bag full of those diamonds she covets. Movie buffs have long noted that Disney has two types of villains: rotund or spindly. Medusa splits the difference, her arms and legs are skinny and her movements scream "bony villain" with their sharp angles, yet her body is saggy and slovenly. You know she's not the slip of a thing that she used to be. In 10 more years, she'll be a big as a house(boat). 

Though I can no longer claim I have any affection for The Rescuers, I still completely dig Medusa and her darling crocodiles Flotsam and Jetsam.... I mean, Nero and Brutus! They're keepers. Or at least placeholders until Ursula, Flotsam & Jetsam arrive 12 years later for The Little Mermaid.

The Rescuers: C
Related Posts: Beauty & The Beast and 101 Dalmatians.

Quickie Requests... June Brides?

Have you all been enjoying our sudden obsession with theme weeks, first Moulin Rouge! and now X-Men?

Next week and probably for the rest of June --  it being, well, June -- we'll have a very loose wedding theme (Don't worry if you're not so romantic. Normal blogging shall continue as well). That'll kick off with Wednesday's night's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" episode celebrating Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) on its 25th anniversary. I haven't seen that one in well over a decade so I'm very curious. Have you seen it more recently?

Who are your favorite cinematic brides?

Which onscreen weddings do you think about the most?

Newish on DVD. Reader's Choice?

Last time we did this you chose The Other Woman -- curse you!!! -- but we'll do this bi-weekly because I aim to please. The following films debuted on DVD yesterday or last week. Which are you planning to watch? Which would you have me watch/write up?

• BIUTIFUL -in which Javier Bardem gives Job a run for his money in the personal misery department. Sounds like a laugh riot.
• BLUE CRUSH 2 -in which... well, surfer girls! Three of them.
• THE COMPANY MEN - in which rich famous-looking guys lose their jobs and must rebuild their lives. It's hard being super rich and then not quite as rich, okay !?!
• DRIVE ANGRY - in which Nicolas Cage and Amber Heard put medal to the pedal and chase after a cult leader in some sort of exploitation movie. 3D only obviously not now that it's for home viewing.
• JUST GO WITH IT -in which Jennifer Aniston pretends to be Adam Sandler's wife for reasons we can't comprehend and Nicole Kidman cameos for reasons currently unknown to us.
• PASSION PLAY -in which musician Mickey Rourke falls for "bird woman" Megan Fox at a travelling circus. Bird women do have their appeal.
• RUBBER - in which a tire menaces people.
• SANCTUM - in which... no, I don't know what happens. I think it's about a watery cave? Produced by James Cameron but not directed by him.
• TRUE GRIT - in which Hailee Steinfeld looks for people who have True Grit, even though she already possesses it. Very Wizard of Oz, that. Also: Pigtails.

I'm not including True Grit in the poll because it got plentiful attention from December through March. (I even interviewed the great cinematographer Roger Deakins.) And I'm not including The Company Men because I tried to sit through it once already and just could not deal.

poll by twiigs.com

If you want to sway undecided votes your way, make a case in the comments.