Movies

The rumor mill says Batman 3 (The Caped Crusader?) will feature Killer Croc as the primary villan and part of the movie will be set outside of Gotham with shooting in New Orleans.

Doubt it. Nolan wouldn't touch a character like Killer Croc. I take this as evidence pointing toward the Black Mask. He was introduced when Millar was 15, so he fits the description too. I don't think they would set a major action sequence outside of Gotham either, so I suspect the New Orleans shoot, if it's real, is for a part like the Hong Kong part of The Dark Knight. The Black Mask makes a lot of sense because someone has to fill the void left by the deaths of Gambol, the Chechen and Maroni.

So right now I'm hoping for the Riddler and the Black Mask, and I think that combination is most likely. Not sure who I'd have play them. DiCaprio could work as the Black Mask, but I'd like to see them find a no-name who fits better.

Do critics or viewers better predict how good a movie is?

One of my friends said he likes to look up the Rotten Tomatoes rating for a movie to decide whether to see it. I suggested he look at the Flixster ratings instead because they'll tend to better predict whether he'll like the movie.

This is something we can test empirically, as long as there is a standard for what "like the movie" means. A sensible definition is that people like a movie in proportion of the average rating of the movie on Netflix.*

So I gathered data on the ten or eleven most popular movies over the past three years and regressed the Netflix ratings on both the Rottan Tomatoes ratings and the Flixster ratings. The results (in technical terms):

(1) Netflix = 0.006*RT + 3.47
R^2 = 0.3436

(2) Netflix = 0.0191*Flixster + 2.39
R^2 = 0.6893

Both predict the Netflix ratings decently, but the Flixster rating is easily the better predictor. It can explain about 69% of the spread (variance) in the Netflix scores compared with less than 35% for the RT ratings.

Here's a nice graph:

The conclusion is that you should never use RT when deciding whether to watch an old movie. You can just use Flixster or Netflix. On the other hand, when new movies are released the Flixster ratings are probably biased because only the bigger fans see movies on opening weekend. You'll have to wait a few weeks before you can get an accurate judgment from Flixster. So maybe Rotten Tomatoes has a use for very new releases.

* - Technical appendix: There are some biases to the Netflix ratings--Netflix customers aren't the "typical American" because they're more likely to be younger and more educated. But it's the only good available data, and with millions of ratings shouldn't be too biased. The other problem is that movies with a small number of ratings have a selection bias: only people who expect to like the movie will watch it so all the ratings are probably slightly inflated compared to what they would be if a random sample of people were forced to watch and rate the movies. But that isn't such a big problem since, if you're considering watching the movie, you're implicitly in the set (or close to being in the set) of people who would watch the given movie.

Reality

Abstract: Inception is not a smart movie because as far as I can tell the director intended it to "blow people's minds" with a focus on the metaphysical themes. But that debate is old hat. Fortunately, with art you get out what you put in--in garbled form. For me, it is a movie about ideas and purpose. It's a morality play about not living in the past and about choosing what to make of your future.

Inception ends on an intentionally puzzling note. Is Cobb in the real world or not? If it's a dream (almost) anything can happen, so the hypothesis (effectively) can't be falsified. The one piece of evidence that could possibly lead us to reject the theory is the top falling down, but we don't know if it does. If he's not dreaming it is strange that the kids are close to the same age and wearing very similar clothes, that he wakes up without cords attached, that he somehow woke up at all, and that everyone nods at him but no one talks to him, etc. All of this seems left intentionally to draw into question the reality of what we see.

Nolan is drawing our attention to the reality, but he should be hoping that we're mindful enough to draw our attention away, to acknowledge we'll never know if it was real of not--we can't--and that we shouldn't care. We shouldn't care because we don't want to live a life that's "real," we want to experience a certain kind of life: one filled with love, compassion, family, sacrifice, and pleasure. That is the life Cobb finds (we believe) at the end of the movie and the life we should leave the theater intent on creating (not having).

The reality, no pun intended, is that the entire movie is an inception on us. It's a "dream" that helps us to discover the importance of living as opposed to obsessing over trivialities. Much of the movie doesn't make sense (why is Cobb being chased by corporations? where did it start? why do the rules change all the time? and why is the ending ambiguous aside from one hard-to-spot clue?) and we're meant to learn that doesn't matter. We learn movies don't have to be realistic to be thrilling. (They just need copious amounts of violence and explosives. Inception would be a bad movie without them.) We learn that your life might be a computer simulation or a dream, but that doesn't imply it can't be meaningful.

Things matter because we make them matter. The movie is a movie--it isn't real. But we argue about how it "really" ended because we choose to make that important, to make it "real." Inception isn't about metaphysics, it's about ethics. It should be about seeing the world is new ways. It's should be about the power of ideas (our mind) to shape our reality, about how our choices determine what is important and what feels real. We understand on a visceral level that the ending is a happy ending whether it's "real" or not.

Despite the comparisons to The Matrix, Inception is really a counterpoint. The Matrix, like Nozick's experience machine, is about how we live for more than just pleasure (or happiness), and about making the right choices to become the kind of person you want (are meant?) to be. In contrast, Inception shows how what is "real" isn't important. We don't want to be in the "real" world so we can see our "real" kids and have "real" accomplishments. We want to live in the "real" world because the people we care about are there. The real Mal is dead because her projection lacks her vitality, Cobb learns. Limbo (like the experience machine) becomes hell for Mal and Cobb because we need social connections--friends and family--to be happy. We don't need them because they are "real" but because that is how we want to experience life. That's why Cobb needs to be with his kids and why, though the camera draws us to the totem and our frontal lobe draws us to hackneyed metaphysics, we are really being guided toward the inception of a novel idea of why and how to live.

More on Inception

Written 7/23, but on delayed post avoid spoilers.


In a famous experiment subjects were asked for rank 5 jams. Their rankings were pretty consistent, most people preferred one of the two jams you'd expect since they were the most expensive and best-selling. Another set of subjects were asked to rank the same jams--and explain why they preferred their favorite. Same results? No. When people had to think about which jam they liked they couldn't pin down what was so great about the two the first subjects preferred. Instead they tended to pick one of the two jams that were particularly sweet as their favorite, despite the fact that these jams ranked 4th and 5th in the first experiment.

Sometimes it's easy to know the truth about how you feel--as long as you don't think. Your subconscious supercomputer just knows. But you can short that circuit and let your conscious brain take over. And when that happens your liable to "overthink."

I think that's what happened to nearly half the population that saw the end of Inception. You can intuit that the ending is a happy one--your brain knows Cobb is reunited with his kids. But it can't explain why. So some people let their rational brain take over and start spinning yarns. The result:

So with that said here are some thoughts (written after my second viewing) on points of contention in the blogosphere and with things I felt were muddled or confusing.

1. Cobb did get out of the dream at the end. The top was just about to fall. The audience's totem is Cobb's wedding ring. Watch closely and you can see that whenever it's a dream he's wearing it and whenever he's in reality he's not. Also apply Ockham's Razor.

2. Where does Ariadne get the dream machine in the hospital dream? Is it there just in case?

3. I don't think the hospital dream having gravity is a plot hole. There's no acceleration on Eames. The fact that the hospital collapses when it appears the character are accelerating in the elevator may be a plot hole. The throughout the movie the synching of the dream's time is a bit fuzzy. Lee "I'm the best editor of all time" Smith and co. needed some leeway.

4. Some people say that the top spins for an inordinately long period of time at the end. But it spins forever earlier in the film, when Cobb is in his hotel room.

5. When Ariadne and Cobb enter "limbo" they are really in a shared dream with Fischer. They don't lose their minds because they aren't in Limbo, and what happens to Fischer in the hospital affects their world because they are in his dream. That's why when they try to resuscitate him it starts lightening and why when he wakes up the dream collapses. Cobb dies and goes to the real limbo, where he does start to lose his mind, as Arthur(?) said he would earlier in the movie.

6. If you have doubts Nolan intended the ring to be our totem consider that he placed a long shot of Cobbs fingers at the beginning of the movie when he's eating rice. When he wakes up and has his hand resting on the arm rest we get another long shot of his fingers.

7. I don't understood why the dreamer can't just do whatever he wants as Ariande does in her dream. It risks turning Fischer's subconscious against them, but that happened already. Shouldn't Yusef be willing to take a risk and bend the dream rules to get security off his ass in the city? And in the snow fortress level Fischer knows he's dreaming so what is the risk? Then again, Eames does seem to have superpowers in that dream . . .

8. I don't think there is a clear explanation for why Saito is so much older than Cobb. He entered limbo a few seconds or minutes later in Hospital level-time. I think time is just meant to move super fast.

Dogs

When people die in a story, people often cry. When Dumbledore died, a lot of people cried. When Snape died I'm sure some people bawled too.

Why?

I've never seen The Notebook but I'm sure someone dies and everyone cried then too. I might watch Schindler's List later today, which is what got me thinking about the topic.

The only time I ever cried during a movie was when I saw Air Bud. There's a scene when the boy who found Bud and taught him to play makes the dog run away and it him he hates it--because he knows if he doesn't he'll have to give the dog back to an abusive clown, its legal owner.

It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would rend your heart. But the thing was, Nash had recently killed my dog. He planted a heart worm in her and she died. It was like a warped parallel with the story on screen: in the movie, the boy loves the dog so much he sacrifices ownership of her; in reality, Nash loved the dog so much that he killed it instead of letting someone else own her.

"This is a sick world we live in."

Total Recall

Before Arnold became the governor of California in a "total recall" election he stared in an under-appreciated movie Total Recall.


Being an Arnold movie, it had a healthy dose of gratuitous violence. Being based on a Phillip K. Dick story it also included some angst about reality thrown in. The basic idea is that we meet Arnold's character in a futuristic world. He really wants to go to Mars, but he's a construction worker and can't afford it. He hears about "simulated vacations" and orders one where he goes to Mars as a secret agent. They put him under and next thing we see he wakes up, we're told the memory implantation failed, yethe does goes on a wild sci-fi shoot out just like the dream he ordered.

So was the vast majority of the movie us watching his implanted memories or watching his real life? I'm ambivalent about it and I think there is evidence on both sides, though I'm inclined to say it's real. As far as I know Arnold and the director haven't stated their beliefs (contra Blade Runner, is Harrison Ford an android?).

Most people think that this idea about doubting the existence of the external world is "deep" and "mind blowing." (What blows my mind is that people are willing to admit an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie confused them.) But skepticism is a pretty banal old idea. Indeed, you've probably heard people ask, at least a dozen times, "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" You've probably asked yourself how you know other people are real and how you know you that they experience "green" when they see grass the same way you do. You probably concluded that you don't and never can know with certainly that other people exist or whether the tree would make a sound. The solipsist and other radical skeptic positions are irrefutable, though uninteresting. So if Total Recall is all a dream then anything can happen. There's no way to "prove" it's real because anything that is consistent with it being real is also consistent with it being a dream. Indeed, if you were a contrarian you could argue, without contradicting anything in the story, that The Lord of the Rings is all just Aragorn's dream and that Star Wars is just R2D2's dream (droids don't expect to be the hero, they just want 15 minutes of fame). But no one thinks that claims are remotely interesting or "mind blowing" do they?

Does your taste in movies predict your intelligence?

********** HUGE Inception Spoilers *********

Read the title. What's your answer? If it's what I suspect, please don't tell that to Doug, author of the following review of Inception, which was highly recommended by a friend:

I've come to think of this brilliant film as an intellectual barometer of sorts: show it to someone, and you'll observe a critical reaction directly proportional to their IQ.

A common complaint about 'Inception' amongst slower types seems to be that Mr. Nolan's film is 'confusing,' 'nonsense,' 'slow,' or 'lacks an emotional core.'

The filmic logic underlying 'Inception' is painstakingly planned and airtight, despite some claims that it is made up on the fly. Those that enjoy the film seem to have had little difficulty with its somewhat convoluted narrative structure. Viewers that can surmount this Chinese-box puzzle of narration are rewarded with the rich emotional core within.

The stupid, unfortunately, drop the box in frustration, unable to appreciate what occurs in the stunning final half hour. Sadly, if the thread is lost, one might as well have stared at a grey square for the previous two hours: the ending becomes meaningless.

Employers might do well to replace the frightful Myers-Briggs inventory, etc. with screenings of 'Inception.'

Wait, does he think the Myers-Briggs test assesses your IQ?

I guess he has a point though. If someone doesn't like the movies (or music) you like, they must be an idiot. If you're not interested in a violent, sci-fi thriller it's because you're "slow." It's not because you're an old lady who never had a taste for watching three dozen people's simulated deaths or because you've never cared much for sci-fi worlds when you can get lost in mythic lore. It's because you're a moron.

Some people have had the audacity to claim Inception isn't the most emotionally touching movie since Forrest Gump. Didn't you see Cobb's three emotional states (haunted 99% of the time, distraught at his wife's death,  enraged at Arthur)? Fortunately, Doug sets them straight.

Doug also notes the film's "airtight" logic, which isn't made up on the fly. In the middle of the movie they don't change the rules about dying. And the movie doesn't have any plot holes. Eames decides to go on with the mission because finishing it is the only way to escape the L.A. dream, though of course he ends up back in L.A. all the same. They plan for three dreams, yet conveniently there's a dream machine right in the middle of the hospital as needed.

But "the ending" is the heart of the movie, it's trump card for the award shows come winter. Only "the stupid" didn't notice that Cobb only wears his wedding ring in the dream world and isn't wearing it when he meets his kids. Everyone who is anyone pays careful attention to each character's left hand throughout the film.

On a final note, I like Doug's use of the British spelling of gray. It helps create a refined atmosphere for his musings.




A friend also recommended this review.

Visceral reaction: "wow, this guy needs to read Orwell because that didn't make shit worth o' sense at the end."

Upon reflection: He implies that Inception "[i]mplant[s] the seeds of revolutionary and/or world-changing ideas in viewers." My question: what are those ideas?

Is it "the importance of living in the real present?" No one ever told me "keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs" or "don't live in the past." At least no movie ever suggested it.

Is it to blaze your own trail "instead of slavishly . . . adhering to the . . . expectations of others?" Come to think of it, no one ever told me I should try to be my own man, though I do vaguely remember a play where the pretentious advisor said "above all else, to thine own self be true."

Is it that "we are masters of our own destiny?" That is indeed an original idea. I love the part where Cobb says "The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves."

Is it that "'villains' are just figments of our imagination," that it's all in our heads and everyone wrestles with his own demons? Or that sometimes I'm my own worst enemy? Perhaps the message is that there is good and evil in everyone?

Whatever it is, Inception had a revolutionary new lesson to teach me. Since I don't know what it is, I'm forced to conclude I'm just another dumbass.

Descriptive and Normative

I will never understand why the difference between descriptive statements and normative statements is so hard for people to understand.

David Berri once wrote a post on The Wages of Wins blog about who was widely considered an "MVP-candidate" but wasn't actually playing well. He was obviously making the normative statement "if you're not playing well, you don't deserve the MVP award. These guys aren't playing well [... you infer the rest]." But commenters objected, writing that Dave shouldn't title "Who is not the MVP" if he wasn't making a descriptive point about who is not the actual MVP. Yet we know that is a disingenuous point because if you take the title "Who is not the MVP" literally when the MVP won't be award for 5 months, then you expect the post to include every name in the NBA.

Still, you might be willing to cut the commentator some slack since writers often try to pass off normative statements for facts. Nicholas Krisftof wrote the worst op-ed he's ever written a few days ago. It's an opinion column celebrating wider availability for an abortificant that is very safe to use. It's obvious he's pro-choice and celebrating this fact because of the way he places facts in the article and the language he uses: "Up to 70,000 women die from complications of abortions . . .  last year the World Health Organization expanded it's uses as an 'essential medicine.'" But it's painful to read because, while this is an opinion column, Kristof is trying to hide his opinion and manipulate the reader by telling the story of a pill (with selectively chosen facts) as if it were a news story.

One of the most painful areas where people mix up normative and positive statements is when they talk about the arts. A third of the time when people say "that was a great movie" they mean that lots of people like or that on average people like it (descriptive), another third of the time they mean "I like it" (normative) and another third it's hard to know what they mean but it's something along the lines of either "this movie is widely praised by the elite" (descriptive) or "I think this movie will be widely praised by the elite for its structural properties" (normative). When I tried to write all of that I started to understand, just a little, why people can be so confused about whether people are saying something about what is or what should be. Look at this story where the author makes a statement of fact "Inception is ranked #3 on IMDb" but presents it in a warped way "Inception is the third greatest movie of all time." It certainly is not the third greatest movie of all time by any reasonable metric, so does he really just mean he liked it a lot? Or does he think IMDb is a representative poll? (This would make a nice post on why people need to learn statistics in high school.)

The most painful area, though, where people confuse the normative/positive distinction, is ethics. People often use "legal" as a proxy for moral, as in "well it ain't illegal" which is meant to imply it's acceptable and you shouldn't complain. To this day, despite being reminded a hundred times, my dad still thinks that say "the Supreme Court ruled [insert ruling, say that abortion is legal]" is a good argument for why I should think killing an infant is acceptable. Philosophers often confuse what is "natural" with what is right. This comes up often in relation to utilitarianism, where philosophers argue that because utilitarianism places too much of a burden on people to do the right things all the time that it's the wrong moral philosophy. If ethics had a low point of complete intellectual abdication in the past 50 years, it might be that debate. Yet, somehow, a related debate is starting to drag things down even further. As scientists have understand more about people's moral intuitions and it's become clear that, like how all languages are related and share a similar structure, all the rules different societies develop to regulate behavior share similar structure. Someone this has evolved into "morality is a product of evolution" becoming a catch-phrase that is meant to be taken as a normative statement--whatever your brain tells you to do is acceptable because your brain evolved to know right from wrong. Or something. It doesn't make any sense to me, but I've heard people I'd consider pretty smart and reasonable try to make that point.

All of that was cringe-inducing to write.

Favorite Movies

I always wondered if there were a poll of Americans that asks what their favorite movie is, like this one for England. It turns out there is one, from 2008, and contrary to my claim in an an earlier post, Gone with the Wind was #1.


Star Wars, the favorite in England, is #2. I think a response of any of the Star Wars movies counted for Star Wars, or many people who consider the trilogy their favorite and just said "Star Wars" because it seems odd that Star Wars was #2 and Empire didn't make the cut.

What is very surprising is that The Godfather comes it at #9. That may be a product of The Godfather - Part 2 siphoning off votes. Many people consider these two movies their favorites, but they are strongly divided about which is better (The Godfather is il migliore.)

Also revealing is that The Shawshank Redemption didn't make the list, but Forrest Gump did. I've long thought that IMDb and other sources were biased in favor of Shawshank because young people like it but old people don't. Given that Shawshank is #3 in the English poll, I suspect that there is a big divide between Americans and foreigners too. It's probably not that shocking, though, that Gump, which crushed Shawshank at the box office, is more popular. (I think it Gump is a vastly superior feel-good story.)

The box office, which I've long championed as an underrated measure of people's tastes, is also a good predictor for other films such as The Sound of Music. Gender, touch on in another post, biases most polls--with that bias removed The Notebook leaps into the top 10.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is another notable absence. My guess is that is because while everyone (all age groups, both genders) like Raiders, I don't know many people who consider it their favorite.

Would The Dark Knight make the list if another poll was done today? If it did which movie would lose the most ground? My guess is The Lord of the Rings, which was #4, might drop a few spots but would stay on the list.

Stupid Questions

They say there are no stupid questions, yet this is a story about a stupid question.

My friends and I were talking about Rotten Tomatoes, which is a review aggregator for movies. They read all the reviews and decide if they're positive or negative, then report the percentage of positive reviews. If it's over 65% or so they certify the movie as "fresh."

I was explaining that the number RT reports is biased if it's meant to predict which movies are "good." Now I didn't specify what I mean by good but I think the intuitive definition is something like "most (American) people liked it" and you could estimate the percentage p that do/did by forcing N random people to watch the movie and vote thumbs up or down. Critics aren't like typical movie-goers, they tend to systemically have different tastes, so the RT number is a biased estimator of p.

The counterpoint is that, although it's rarely clearly stated, is that what makes things good or bad are some objective structural properties, things like complexity, pacing, lighting, or narrative structure. Critics are important because they're good at understanding these things, and the Academy Awards isn't done by a poll of the country because only the Academy actually knows good from bad. If that doesn't sound stupid then try to articulate some structural properties and then explain why they're the right ones (I'll return with an analogy later).

One of my friends asked "well, isn't there just good and bad music, so why not with films?" I quickly noted that "no, there isn't just good and bad music." He didn't that was a good enough answer, because I "don't know enough about music." (Implicitly I think the assumption here is that if you study music for long enough you'll understand, by divine revaluation, "the" structural properties and, well presumably then craft the perfect song possible. No, that is not meant to have a mocking tone.) A friend who played in the high school band explained that . . . well he didn't, he just talked about what kind of music he likes. I guess God just revealed to him one day that whatever he likes is also the right preference for everyone else.

After a while a light-bulb went on and everyone admitted that RT is a bad predictor (relative to say Yahoo! Movies, Netflix or Flixster) of what movies everyone likes because of selection bias. But no one informed Flixster as, ironically, they print only the RT rating when you search movies on their app, and you have to click each one-by-one to see the Flixster ratings (which is a somewhat biased version of the poll described above).

Now we return to the structural properties question. You actually can articulate a lot of properties that make any kind of art good. You can do the same for properties that make people attractive, which is illustrative. We know height makes men more attractive (up until about 6'2'' in the U.S.) and high cheek bones make women attractive (obviously likewise up to a point), and symmetric faces make both sexes more attractive. But how do we know that? Because we asked people to rate faces and those traits are correlated with higher ratings. You see, the structural approach gets things backwards.

It's Kind of a Funny Story

I don't know how I missed hearing about it.

Zach Galifianakis is in another movie and it looks like the best of the bunch. I like most feel good comedies, but they tend to come up a bit short compared to screwball comedies. They're either too long (The 40 Year Old Virgin, She's Out of My League) or need more comedy (Knocked Up). Maybe this one will have the right touch.

Return of the Jedi

Lawrence Kasdan wrote the scripts for The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, which both stand out for having the best dialogue in their respective series. But he also wrote the script for Return of the Jedi, which is plagued throughout by clunkers. What happened?

Wikipedia explains:

Unusually, the screenplay itself was not created until rather late in pre-production, well after a production schedule and budget had been created by Kazanjian and Marquand had been hired. Instead, the production team relied on Lucas's story and rough draft in order to commence work with the art department. When it came time to formally write a shooting script, Lucas, Kasdan, Marquand, and Kazanjian spent two weeks in conference discussing ideas; Kasdan used tape transcripts of these meetings to then construct the script.

Influential Movies

I forgot to include this one in my list of influential books, but it's important, now more than ever.

The Return of Depression Economics - I never finished the book, but I learned the parable of the babysitting co-op and that was my first lesson in monetary policy.

Now for my list of movies with good ideas. Most of them just have one good idea that felt novel to me, but that's all you need since most pictures preach platitudes.

Avatar - The trees (and animals) are connected like neurons in a brain. Together, they form a self, Eywa, and can think. Isn't that interesting? What does it say about ecology on Earth? Probably nothing.

Bowling for Columbine - Michael Moore has tackled some questions beyond his reach. But Bowling for Columbine is a masterpiece. He wonders why America is so violent and plagued by so many homocides. Maybe, he suggests, its because we live in fear. I think he's just scratching the surface of social capital and institutions, but I didn't know about that stuff back then.

The Dark Knight - Crime is interesting, if only because I don't know much about it. Gordon introduced the theme of The Dark Knight at the end of Batman Begins: (paraphrased) "What about escalation? . . . We start carrying semi-autos, they buy automatics. We buy body armor, they buy armor piercing rounds. And your wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops . . ."

The Godfather - "It's not personal, it's just business." That's the basis for the the best tragedy in the history of film. Compare vis a vis Anakin in the Star Wars prequels and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. And how many people think straight about their professional lives anyway?

The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions - These are a great rumination on causality and determinism. But they don't introduce a lot I'd consider novel until the very end of Revolutions, which would have been great in a book but comes up short on screen. The basic idea is when you ask a yes or no question where both answers would be contradictory*, what is the answer? Neo represents that kind of a contradiction, choice does to, and Neo resolves the contradiction by simply deciding one way or the other (we think he does at the end of Reloaded, but he doesn't, we have to wait until Revolutions for it). That is the only "mind blowing" idea I've noticed in a movie.

* Example: The barber shaves all and only the people in town who don't shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?

Quote of the Day

Christopher Nolan’s persistent thematic idea [is] 'What we see is not true, it's just a facade.' You see this in all his movies. But he never says ["why"] . . . in any depth . . ." Basically, there's nothing to 'get' in the first place.

This is not completely true. The Batman films serve steak, not tripe. But it's worth repeating over and over: If you didn't understand something it's usually because the author/director/painter/composer isn't clear or because there is nothing to "get."

Ghosbusters 3

It's never going to happen, via Bill Murray.

He also comments on Los Angeles:

It's like the first day you check into a hotel in L.A. there's a message under your door. The second day, there's eleven messages under your door. The third day, there's thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy messages. And I realized that they just want fresh blood. They. Just. Want. Fresh. Blood. You gotta get the hell out of there.

Inception Review

Inception is about a man who has been separated from his (young) kids for years and his quest to reunite with them. That is largely what separates Inception from Nolan's earlier efforts, e.g. The Prestige, Momento. This movie has an emotional core and characters you care about, not one of Nolan's hallmarks.

The movie, as a whole, however, is essential Nolan. The editing is tight and the pacing is guided by a deft touch reminiscent of The Dark Knight and most comparable to Terminator 2. The movie speaks to standard Nolan-type psycho-fare: the complexity and nature of ideas, dreaming and some metaphysical crock, and most importantly a platitude about about living for the future, not in the past.

Still, while Inception is a psychological thriller, the emphasis is firmly on the later. There's more action in the film that the original Star Wars trilogy, countless explosions, and a length chase scene for good measure. Several dozen people die, buildings collapse, there's some fistcuffs with a twist, and even a brief touch of romance in the thick of things. Also, notably, most of the film looks real. While computer-generated imagery was surely important, it takes a backseat in all but a few shots. Indeed, the raw feel of the film reminded me more of Indiana Jones than The Matrix, the later of which is the benchmark for films like this that try to walk a fine line between popular appeal and courting sophomoric critics.

Based on Rottentomatoes.com, Inception succeeded in convincing critics that it's a "smart" film. But as I've noted in the past, anyone with an IQ > 110 isn't going to get an intellectual hard on at the theater. I prefer to think that the (if you haven't seen prepare yourself for this) supposed ambiguity of the ending is just a bone throw to hipsters, not a meaningful point for discussion. If you watch carefully that seems to be Nolan's intent. The film ends the way it should, resolving the central conflict, albeit with some philosophical flourish thrown in to ensure critics left happy. (Predictably, a few used it as an opportunity to show they're better than you.)

Inception, despite being the biggest thrill of the year, has it's flaws. It leaves a little too much hanging when it hits it's climax. Nolan then tries to wrap things up quick, but it leaves you feeling both a bit shafted on the story and like the film was a bit anticlimactic. They also showed off the biggest explosion in the trailer, which is never acceptable.

In the film, inception is about planting an idea. But you have to be careful about how you plant the idea for it to grow and take hold. We'll have to see if Nolan successful pulled off inception with this film, planting a seed in Hollywood that says you can fill a film with gratuitous violence without crowding the appearance of erudition out.

Another good review.

Bond 23

Bond 23 may never get made due to MGM's bankruptcy woes.

What I don't understand is why they won't just sell the rights the distribute Bond films. Is it because they'll have to use the money to pay off creditors? But then do they really expect to not have to sell the rights to creditors when filling for bankruptcy? If they do something is wrong with our courts.

My question is why the Coase Theorem isn't applying here. The transaction cost of selling the right are tiny (just have a second price auction) and the efficient outcome is to start producing Bond 23 ASAP while Craig and Mendes can work on the film. But that isn't what's happening.

And that sucks.

More on the Greatest Movies Debate

One statistic I forgot to include in the great movies entry was DVD sales. These are problematic because newer movies that were originally released on DVD got more hype and advertising (a bias that also afflicts box office gross). Furthermore, man consumers are reluctant to upgrade to DVD when they have a perfectly good VHS of the movie on the shelf. Add to that the unreliability of DVD sales statistics and that the best numbers come from 2005 when a few movies had just recently been released (the Star Wars Trilogy and Shawshank in late 2004) and you have a recipe for trouble. A few points:

1. While the relatively weak box office grosses for the Lord of the Rings films weaken their case, upon their release they quickly became the best selling DVDs ever.

2. The Star Wars trilogy claimed the 4th spot as a set within 10 months of release. This is even more impressive as many fans waited for the complete 6 DVD set they expected post-Episode III, others avoided the DVD upgrade to protest the "Super Special Edition" changes, and others had a quality VHS and had no need to upgrade. If anything this is strong evidence the Star Wars movies remain the most popular ever made. (It's also worth noting Star Wars is listed on Facebook as a favorite movie more than any film aside from The Godfather.)

3. The Godfather makes the list of best-selling DVDs, albeit at #20. Sales might have been depressed because no one likes the 3rd film, the DVDs were sold in a set, and because it had a weaker advertising campaign than the Star Wars films, if I remember correctly.

4. The Shawshank Redemption's absence from the top selling DVD lists in notable. This contributes to its anomalous stature along with its box office gross, compounding the possibility that maybe it rates highly simply because no one dislikes it. Another interesting fact is that while each Star Wars film costs $15 at Wal-Mart you can find Shawshank in the $5 movie bin alongside countless duds (and Jaws strangely enough).

5. Avatar and The Dark Knight are far and away the best selling Blu-Ray films of all time (Avatar is #1 by a good margin) and are enough the top selling DVDs, although I'm not sure of their ranks.

Greatest Movies Ever Made

I've always wanted to write a post about "the best movies ever made" because most people seem to think whatever their favorite or their friend's favorite is the country's favorite. The following nine films are all in what I'd consider part of the pantheon of Americans films based on the views on millions of Americans on what I consider the most representative polls. They are movies that seems to widely loved, at least within the U.S., and most of the across the world. Before I get started I want to mention two films that didn't make the cut because they are hard to judge: Gone with the Wind and Titanic.

Gone with the Wind may well have been the biggest box office hit of all time. I've read that the state of Georgia declared it's release a state holiday so everyone could attend, and some of the box office numbers suggest the average America saw the movie at least 5 times, which seems implausible to me as the film weighs in at nearly 4 hours. It was almost certainly the most hyped movie in history (even more than Episode I and The Empire Strikes Back). The New York Times review from 1939 starts with the premise that it has a claim to being the best film yet made and should be judged against that standard. As late as 1970 it was surely America's favorite movie.  Nevertheless, we can't tell how much people loved it because so many people who were adults in 1939 are dead today. It is certainly not the the favorite among Americans living today, but even among them would be just on the outside of the cut for this list.

Update: I was wrong. As of early 2008, Gone with the Wind was still Americans' favorite film. 

Titanic is similar. In 1998 it probably would have ranked as the "best movie ever made." It was the biggest box office hit since at least E.T. and it even captured the attention of the elites, winning an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards. But it's luster has worn off over time. It's average rating on Netflix is 3.8 but that may be a by product of having over 7 million ratings. (Ratings tend to decline with the number of voters because those who liked the film the most and were most likely to like it are the first to see and rate the film.)

Update: Casablanca should have made this list, easily as a classic.

Films history has yet to judge

1. Avatar (2009)

2. The Dark Knight (2008)

3. The Blind Side (2009) 

Avatar was a monster box office hit, on the scale of Titanic, E.T. and Star Wars. The Dark Knight was a milder hit, but still historically large. Both have 4.3's on Netflix and The Dark Knight is a favorite movie of over 1 million people on Facebook. The Dark Knight is also the only 2000s film in IMDb's top 10. The Blind Side was not a historic box office hit, but it has a special place on the list as possibly, among women, the "best movie ever made." It has a 4.4 on Netflix, which appears to driven primarily by female raters. Still, that rating may be inflated by the lack of people who absolutely hate the film or want to hate the film driving the rating down with 1s. I consider it the most likely to drop off this list in time. These are the only three movies that have an A average on Yahoo! Movies after tens of thousands of votes, but it's worth keeping in mind that Yahoo! is biased toward newer films. Indeed, their "newness" is what makes them hard to judge. In my opinion The Dark Knight will remain in the pantheon, the other's hold temporary positions while history judges them. (Of course, that may just be a by product of the fact that I personally think The Dark Knight is the best movie made in nearly 20 years. It's my 3rd favorite on this list.)

Other Recent Masterpieces

4. Return of the King (2003)

Return of the King has a 4.4 on Netflix and an A- average with over 200,000 votes on Yahoo! Movies, far and away the most for any movie. It was a major blockbuster in the U.S., but wasn't close to legendary like Avatar or The Dark Knight. It may have a stronger claim to being the greatest film in the English-speaking world with nearly 70% of ticket sales coming overseas than to being the best American film, especially when you consider the source material, cast, and director. But there is no denying Return of the King was easily, until The Dark Knight hit theaters, the film of the decade.

5. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

There's no movie more anamolous than The Shawshank Redemption in the movie pantheon. It was a hit with critics on it's release, but not enough to win oscars when competing against Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. It wasn't much of a hit with theater goers either, raking in a paltry $25 million, far and away the weakest showing among legendary films. Yet it's IMDb's #1 movie and has been for some time. It's the only movie I know of on Netflix with a 4.6 rating, even after 4.38 million votes. It also has an A- on Yahoo! Movies, after over 97 thousand votes, more than both Star Wars and The Godfather suggesting the unprecedented ratings are not a fluke of sample size or demographic. It's incredibly puzzling how this movie had such a low box-office take and flew under the radar so much that, until a few years ago, I had no idea it was so popular. Yet it's undoubtedly true that Shawshank is one of the four serious contenders for best movie ever made.

The Classics

6. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Indiana Jone's first adventure is, by a small margin, the most popular and highest rated. It clocks in with a  4.4 on Netflix after nearly 4 million votes, which is an anomaly as other classics of the era tend to have fewer than 2.5 million. It also has an A- on Yahoo! and tends to show up on most lists up best action/adventure movie as #1. It's also IMDb's 20th best picture, yet was a box office smash, raking in more than The Dark Knight and a bit less than The Empire Strikes Back, but still a tier below behemoths like Star Wars. This is fitting, as, despite it's broad appeal, few would rank Raiders ahead of Star Wars on a list of best movies. It may be the 2nd best movie ever made, but it's almost certainly not the best, by any criteria. (For what it's worth, this is my 4th favorite on the list.)

7. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

8. Star Wars (1977)

These are listed together because they are both major contenders for greatest film, but it's not clear which is better. Empire is generally considered the best Star Wars movie, as I found from trawling the Internet looking for polls. Those polls are probably dominated by Star Wars fans, but to me this is all the more surprising as I always thought Jedi was the most popular among the obsessive and Empire just among the general public. I guess that's just my friends. Empire has a 4.4 on Netflix from over 2 million votes and ranks higher than Star Wars on IMDB's greatest movies list at #8 compared to #13. It was voted the best film ever in a number of polls, often along with Star Wars, including from Empire Magazine on multiple occasions, in a BBC/Channel 4 poll, and on Total Film. Star Wars, in addition to sharing the above accolates, ties Empire with a 4.4 on Netflix from over 2 million votes. It also bests Empire with an A- on Yahoo! vis a vis Empire's (shocking) B+. Empire was a massive blockbuster (top 10 all-time) but Star Wars was legendary, revivaled only by Avatar, E.T., and Titanic in the era of good bookkeeping. Including its re-release in 1978 makes Star Wars the biggest box-office hit of all-time. It's surely the most culturally significant film and the launching point for the biggest series of the films. (If you're dying to know my opinion, which you surely are, Star Wars is the best movie ever made, Jedi is 2nd or 3rd, and Empire is 4th.)

9. The Godfather (1972)

For a long time The Godfather was IMDb's #1 movie. Today it ranks 2nd. It has a 4.5 on Netflix from over 2.7 million votes and an A- on Yahoo! movies. The only movie that tends to best it in ratings is Shawshank, yet it was a far bigger hit on release and age may have depressed its ratings somewhat. It also has the accolades, not worth much in my opinion, of having won Best Picture and being near the top of AFI's best films list (#2 in the revised list). If the Star Wars saga is America's great fantasy story (what The Lord of the Rings is for the U.K.) then The Godfather is America's great tragedy (what the late Shakespearean tragedies are for England). When they look back in 100 years, they'll remember America's golden age by The Godfather and Star Wars. (I think it's mediocre.)

It's worth noting that The Godfather Part 2 may have made this list if it weren't so clear The Godfather is the better film. Likewise, the two other Lord of the Rings movies, both 4.4s, are clearly inferior to the part of the saga listed, but they deserve recognition. Other's that just missed the cut include E.T. for it's box office might and Schlindler's List for being on many top 10 lists and a Netflix 4.5 average, though from less than 2 million votes and a mere B+ on Yahoo! Movies, and Forrest Gump for universal acclaim despite never breaking into the top 5 in any major poll/survey/vote.

High concept Redux

One critic said The Matrix was "high concept hokum."

How can critics be so ignorant about their own field? Don't they get paid to think about movies and use big words correctly?