I’m back, bitches!
Did you miss me? Of course you didn't. No one reads this
blog. You didn't even know I was gone. Hell, I barely knew I was gone myself
(if that makes any sense). I've been—I was—noveling pretty hard and it got to
be just a huge pain to be updating or trying to keep to an updating schedule
when I was so rigidly trying to maintain some sort of writing schedule with the
book. Having never finishing a book before, I was so worried that I would
simply quit (for reasons that have been explained in a previous blog, slackers)
and ANY distractions were just apt to be cut from my life to facilitate the
mountain that had never been climbed: Novelmaking. Mount Booking.
(Mount Booking? Whatever.)
Anywho, nearly 6 months and almost 1000 pages later (all
told with notes and drafts, even though the book is only 294 pages), the book
is finished, and I’m taking a brief break (read: writing other things) and I
decided to break off a little bit of blogging after I was hit with an idea the
other day. Observe:
It’s December. That time of the year for yuletide hoopla AND
(and) various BEST OF lists: best in books, best in music, and, of course, best
in film. I’m no stranger to these things. I can admit to even sharing a list or
two of my own with friends or perusing websites/blogs for celebrity picks (like
you do) because, you know, ‘cause. That’s what happens. Film geeks, looking for
recommendations from our Mental Mentors on some of the films we may have missed
despite our constant vigilance or ones we were too afraid to try. It’s a thing.
I’m sure you've done it…no? Well, fuck you too.
I’m kidding.
Anyway, I was thinking of how, if I had a BEST OF from this
year, I don’t even think I could put together a top 5, let alone top 10. It wasn't a good year, cinematically, for me. Say what you will, but baring, say,
Chronicle, Avengers, and, of course, Your Sister’s Sister (the review of which
can be found as a previous blog), there were very few films that blew me away
(compared to in years past) and most of them were just downright disappointing
(I’m looking at you TDKR). So, instead, I started to think about how there have
been other films in my life that I judge by a completely different standard.
Films which, after watching them, just made me want to break out pen and pad
and begin sketching my own film right out of the theater (sometimes on the way
to the bathroom--awkward).
I started thinking about Back to the Future.
I've said it before and I’ll post it here it again (for the
cheap seats): for, I would be confident in postulating, a good percentage of
children born in the early to mid-80’s, Back to the Future kind of raised you.
It was your Cinematic Dad (with Princess Bride as your mom). The 80’s were full
of awesome movies (way too many to even BEGIN listing here) but if there is a
film that serves as a Time Capsule for that decade, BTTF is it. It was always
on TV. There was massive hype behind it and the time traveling Delorean from
the film (to this day, if I don’t have any place to go, I will follow anyone
driving a Delorean just to see one MOVE) that lasts to this day. I was smitten
with the movie as a young’n. I wanted to be Marty McFly. I played BTTF on long
bus trips (I didn't have lots of friends as a kid), I wore out at least one VHS
tape of the first movie and two tapes on the sequel. I wanted (and still do) a
Hoverboard, even if I had to ride one in pink and begged my mother to indulge
me in buying the various bullshit fakes that they used to advertise in the back
of Boys Life Magazine. But more than that, watching BTTF, I can remember one of
my earliest ambitions come to me during the credits:
“Man, I want to make movies like THAT.”
This feeling would come to me many times after that in my
life, but watching that movie gave me my first, and very special glimpse into
the human being I would eventually mutate into. As the years wore on, other
films would come to give me that same feeling. In 1990 (after BTTF, part 2) it
was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In ’91 it was Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. In
’93 and impressionable 10-year-old with an Afro wanted to make movies after
being shocked and amazed by high leaping raptors in Jurassic Park. In ’94 Brandon
Lee jumping across rooftops to Nine Inch Nails in The Crow would burn an idea
into my brain that stayed with me through most of Middle School (that I wasn't able to fully realize until this year with The Danica Project). It wasn't an every year thing, the next wouldn't come
until 1996 with From Dusk Till Dawn (my first exposure to Rodriguez—I became
obsessed). And then, in 1997, The Fifth Element changed the very idea of what
movies could be for me (I’m sorry, but that movie is technically flawless).
Then it happened again in ’98 with Dark City.
1999 is a banner year marks three distinct additions to the
list: The Matrix (nuff said) and Fight Club, which, to be fair, I wouldn't see,
in its entirety, until 2002, but it also marks the appearance of the first movie on this list that I didn't see in a theater. Dogma, the third film from 99, was my first exposure
to that guy who had made Mallrats (which my friends had seen, but I had not). It
comes as no surprise that this is also the year I (consciously) decided to be a
film maker. I had taught myself screenwriting and had suffered my first film
making defeat when Vanilla Sky came along in 2001 and saved me. I started
teaching myself film making but a re-dedication to my writing wouldn't come till
2004 when my obsession with Charlie Kaufman would spring up after seeing
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
2005 is a banner year in film making that no one talks
about. For me it was not only the year I met my wife, but it was also the year
that Sin City was released, the last of four films (all produced around the
same time, so no one really knows who was “first”) that were made “completely
digital” to be released in theaters, April 1st, 2005. Micha and I
saw it on our first date, and between apologizing for grazing her boob “accidentally”
while going for popcorn, I theorized that this film, along with the others of its
ilk, would change the world. Others agreed--which is why, I believe, all were
snubbed for special effects Oscars but, nevertheless, the re-democratizing of
the film industry had begun. It continued for me with Conversations with Other
Women which was released in 2005 as well, but I wouldn't see it till 2007 when
it was released on DVD.
Possibly the biggest film on this list, The Dark Knight,
inspired pretty much everyone. And ruled 2008.
2009 was a year of maybes. There’s certainly The Hangover
and Star Trek and Watchmen and Crank 2. But it was also the year I thought my
film career was imploding after the biggest project I had ever attempted
suddenly went belly up. I put my nose to the grindstone, however, and in 2010
an argument could be made that the film most worthy of making this list would
be my own: She’s in the Details, however, it wasn't. I didn't see many films
that year (penalties of making a feature film myself) but I did see one film a
total of three times theatrically.
That film was Scott Pilgrim vs The World. This film, much
like Fifth Element in ’97, re-energized what films could mean for me. Which is
what every film on this list has done in one way or another and what the movies
in 2009 failed to do (although Star Trek came dangerously close). I didn't just
watch this film. I ABSORBED it. In a year where I was making a movie of my own
and an Ultimate Geek Trifecta had brought together Aaron Sorkin, David Fincher
and Trent Reznor for The Social Network, this was the one film I couldn't get
enough of from behind the scenes info to the various podcasts done in
promotion, I was all about Scott Pilgrim: the juxtaposition of mediums, the
portrayal of the life of young 20-somethings (a theme of my own), the spot-on
(flawless) editing and kick ass soundtrack. It was in a class of its own. And
it tanked. Much like my own film.
It only made me love it more.
In 2011 Fincher
became the second director with two films on this list (the first is Alex Proyas
with The Crow and Dark City). The American remake of The Girl With the Dragon
Tattoo does something most don’t: out performs both the source material and
original (Swedish) film.
Which brings us to this year, which, as I have already
explained in this sprawling narrative, has been very disappointing (to me,
anyway), cinematically. Sure, you have the GIANT AWESOMENESS that is Joss Whedon’s
Avengers. And, while that is my “favorite” film of the year, it did not fill me
with the desire to go out and put a camera on some actors and say “Go!” But there
is a film that I believe stands in the class of all the others that grace this
list with their cinematic genius that deserves recognition (and was, in fact,
the spark that lit this raging blog inferno).
That film is Joseph Kahn’s Detention. In my own words: “Detention is like if Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure had an unplanned movie baby with Scream that they gave up for adoption. It became a product of the system was bounced around from one cinematic foster home to another and the only friend it had growing up was Back to the Future” (the rest
of my review can be found here).
Not only does this movie represent the best experience I had in a theater (or
GETTING to a theater), but it’s also most unique narrative voice I saw in a
year that produced Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. It deserves your time,
catch it on Blu or DVD.
So there you have it. The point of this mess: Detention - this
year’s winner of the Rob Hagans BACK TO THE FUTURE award. Were there better
films? Sure, but this one has earned a place on the shelf in both my heart and
in my brain with an exclusive few that always remind me of why I do what do.
Of what I've always wanted to do.
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