And now for the cinematic/video portion of tonight’s program:

Movies Seen in a Theater in 2008

Finally reversing a three-year downward trend, The Girlfriend and I managed to catch two more movies in a theater this year than last, 19 versus 17 in 2007, but that’s still a long way down from the 31 we saw in 2005. While I previously blamed the decline on being too busy with other things, I think the biggest problem in 2008 was that there really wasn’t much either of us wanted to see. There’s a rant to be made and this isn’t the time to do it, but briefly, I think that, for whatever reason, I’m losing touch with popular culture. The stuff that seems to be mega-popular now just doesn’t appeal to me, and I’m increasingly feeling alienated and marginalized by Hollywood and the “keepers of cool.” I’m feeling old, to be honest, and I don’t like it.

But, as I said, that’s a topic for another time. Here are the movies I saw on the big screen in ’08:

1. I Am Legend
2. Juno
3. Michael Clayton
4. Jumper
5. The Other Boleyn Girl
6. Leatherheads
7. Iron Man
8. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
9. WALL-E
10. Mamma Mia!
11. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
12. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
13. The Dark Knight
14. Burn After Reading
15. Day of the Locust
16. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
17. Quantum of Solace
18. Twilight
19. Four Christmases

My favorite movies of 2008: Juno (actually an ’07 movie, but I didn’t get around to seeing it for a while), Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, WALL-E, Quantum of Solace.

The worst movie I saw in 2008: Four Christmases. Without question. I’ve rarely had such a miserable time in a movie theater.

I’m pretty resistant to so-called Christmas movies in general, because nobody knows how to make them anymore; they’re always queasy stews of crass, slapstick humor and cloying sentiment, without any charm or insight into the ambivalence many people actually feel toward the holidays. I gave in on this one because the trailers made it look like it might have been a cousin of Bad Santa, the one Christmas-themed movie of recent years that I unreservedly adore, and because some of the jokes looked pretty funny.

As so often happens, though, the best gags were in the trailer and what you got wasn’t quite what was advertised. If the movie had been true to its premise, i.e., that Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon have a perfectly happy life when it’s just the two of them and seeing their respective families is less desirable than an emergency appendectomy, it might have a sharp and genuine black comedy. Instead, we’ve got the all-too-predictable character arc involving a ticking biological clock and characters who gradually reveal their deep, gnawing dissatisfaction with their lives and then “grow” into maturity by the final reel — “maturity” naturally being a reaffirmation of traditional domestic existence and reproduction. Not that there’s anything wrong with getting married and having a family, but when you’ve just spent two hours plumbing the horrific depths of family dysfunction, it’s cheesy and fake to suddenly jump happily on the bandwagon. Also, I’ve about decided Vince Vaughn isn’t half as funny and cool as we all used to think he was.

The critically panned adventure flick that I actually thought wasn’t all that bad: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Fooled you, didn’t I? You thought I was talking about some other critically panned adventure flick. Well, I’ll get to that one in a second. Regarding the third Mummy flick, I’ll just say that I got exactly what I was expecting when I went in, I was entertained, and it was better than The Mummy Returns.

Runner-up: Jumper, which wasn’t great but I liked it well enough to wonder if I’d seen the same movie every one else was so mercilessly shredding.

The movie I went into with the most apprehension and was relieved to actually like: A no-brainer here if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The most overrated movie of 2008: I’m probably going to get pilloried for this, but I really didn’t like The Dark Knight that much. Sure, it’s well-made and it gets extra credit for attempting to say something about Big, Real-World Issues, and Heath Ledger was totally awesome as The Joker… but there’s just something about the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale take on Batman that doesn’t work for me. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but I remember feeling the same way about Batman Begins. I admire these films, but I don’t enjoy them.

The best classic film I saw in a beautiful old-tymey movie palace while on vacation: The Day of the Locust from 1973 (Anne and I saw it at the gorgeous Castro Theatre while we were in San Francisco).

Biggest disappointment of 2008: Hellboy II. I want to like the Hellboy movies, I really do — I love the concept, I love the cast, and in the case of Hellboy II I love the eye-popping visuals, but in the end they just don’t stay in my mind after I leave the theater.

In a related category, the most sumptuous period piece that I utterly forgot five minutes after leaving the theater: The Other Boleyn Girl. Pretty, but effervescent. Other movies I remember liking but otherwise can’t recall: Michael Clayton and Leatherheads. Sorry, George.

Finally, just to wrap up, I seem to be one of the few straight people with a penis who liked Mamma Mia! (but then I like ABBA, and I’m not ashamed to say so); I thought Burn After Reading was bizarre even by Coen Brothers standards; Zack and Miri Make a Porno was a surprisingly sweet love story with some genuinely funny moments, but I really live in a very different universe than Kevin Smith; and as for Twilight… well, let’s just say I love my Girlfriend and I have to occasionally make up for dragging her to so many films I want to see, and we’ll leave it at that.

Moving on now to home viewing:

Movies Seen at Home in 2008

1. Doctor Strange (animated)
2. My Fair Lady
3. The Pursuit of Happyness
4. We Are Marshall
5. Open Season
6. The Invincible Iron Man (animated)
7. Flushed Away
8. In the Shadow of the Moon
9. Highlander: The Source
10. Hellboy: Sword of Storms (animated)
11. Hellboy: Blood and Iron (animated)
12. The Last Picture Show
13. The Matador
14. The Mist
15. Martian Child
16. Highlander: The Search for Vengeance (animated)
17. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
18. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
19. Tin Cup
20. Bullitt
21. Escape from Alcatraz
22. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
23. Used Cars
24. Mindwarp
25. Friday the 13th
26. The Incredible Shrinking Man
27. The Pit and the Pendulum
28. Grace Is Gone
29. Hot Dog: The Movie
30. The Hoax
31. Prince of Darkness
32. Ghosts of Mars
33. Calendar Girls

As with my 2008 reading list, I hauled in a pretty good DVD crop this year, Highlander: The Suck notwithstanding. I’ll spare you a title-by-title critique of everything I watched, but I’d like to make a few quick comments. First, looking over the list, I notice that there were a lot of animated films this year, which is kind of odd for me (the animated Hellboy movies, incidentally, are awesome; they somehow work for me in ways that the live-action films do not, especially Sword of Storms). The documentaries In the Shadow of the Moon, Hearts of Darkness, and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill are all excellent and highly recommended.

I didn’t expect to like The Pursuit of Happyness or The Hoax, but I really did.

The Mist scared the hell out of me, when I wasn’t being distracted by how much Thomas Jane resembles Christopher Lambert. (If a Highlander remake really is in the offing, they ought to offer the role of Connor MacLeod to Jane.) Seriously, this flick gets my vote for the best-ever adaptation of a Stephen King horror story (Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption are King stories as well, but obviously not in the horror genre).

Martian Child and Grace Is Gone prove yet again that John Cusack is one of our best and yet most underappreciated actors.

Bullitt and Escape from Alcatraz made me wonder if perhaps coolness is a finite resource that peaked decades ago.

Mindwarp, which I picked up simply because it had Bruce Campbell in it, demonstrates that there’s a big difference between enjoyably crappy and just plain crappy crappy.

Oh, and Hot Dog: The Movie was one of those forbidden ’80s sex comedies that I never got around to seeing back in the day and thought I’d finally cross off my list. It probably won’t surprise anyone that it was my experience with Porky’s all over again. How did the people who made these manage to drain all the fun out of sex, for God’s sake? It really boggles the mind…

And finally:

TV Series Viewed on DVD in 2008

Movies aren’t the only thing I waste my valuable free time on; I also watch a lot of stuff that was made for television but, for one reason or another, I missed when it first aired.

1. Long Way Round (complete series) — Long Way Round is a 10-part British-made series featuring the actor Ewan MacGregor and his friend Charlie Boorman as they ride motorcycles around the world. It’s a fun series, and like all great travel programs, it combines real-life adventure with a look into parts of the world I know very little about, namely the former Soviet-bloc nations of Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Siberia, as well as Mongolia. I thought Ewan was cool based on his portrayal of young Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels, but after riding around the world with him, as it were, I wish I actually knew the man. I think I have a bit of a man-crush on him, to tell you the truth.
   There is a sequel series called Long Way Down, which I hope to see sometime in ’09.
2. Battlestar Galactica: Razor (TV movie) — I have a couple of friends who keep trying, bless their hearts, to somehow get me interested in the Battlestar Galactica remake, even though I’ve tried every way I can think of to tell them that it’s not my cup of tea. Their latest gambit was the Razor TV movie, a prequel/companion piece to the series, which my friends thought I might groove on because it features “old-school” Cylons, i.e., Cylons who resemble the ones in the 1978 version of the show. I’ll admit, the homage to the original series did make my elderly geek’s heart go zing! (or would that be zap?), but I still just can’t get into the new BSG. Sorry, guys.
3. The Paul Lynde Halloween Special — This is a strange little curiosity that I saw mentioned on a blog somewhere and simply had to see with my own eyes. It’s a 1976 variety/holiday special that, as far as I know, aired only a single time. Mid-70s variety shows were kind of insane anyhow, but this one is far out on the fringes of even that twisted star system. It’s hosted by the uber-gay Hollywood Squares personality Paul Lynde (did people honestly not know he was gay back then?) along with Witchie-poo from Sid and Marty Krofft’s H.R. Pufnstuff and the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz (a.k.a., Billie Hays and Margaret Hamilton, respectively). In the tradition of the genre, it also included a cast of guest stars that make one’s head spin from the sheer randomness: Tim Conway, Florence Henderson, Roz Kelly (Fonzie’s girlfriend Pinky Tuscadero from Happy Days), and, making what I think was their first major television appearance, the rock band KISS. Oh, and Donny and Marie Osmond turn up as well in a brief cameo. It’s as if the producers just started calling people and whoever was available got pencilled in.
   I vaguely remember seeing this thing when it first aired, but watching it now, I was simply astounded at the deep weirdness of it all. The mix of guests who appear to have nothing whatsoever in common; the musical numbers ranging from torch songs to disco to, well, KISS; the painfully silly storyline that exists mostly to segue from one musical bit to the next; the unfunny comedy sketches; and Lynde’s self-conscious discomfort, especially whenever he has to stand next to the intimidating members of KISS in their glory-days make-up, leather, and platform boots. He looks as if he fears Gene Simmons is about to disembowel him… and truthfully, Gene looks as if he’s considering it but is restraining himself because he knows the band needs the national exposure. In a way, it’s too bad these sorts of specials are no longer made. They’re difficult to sit through, yes, but they serve as an amazing time capsule of so much of what was floating around the pop-cultural zeitgeist at that time. Thirty years doesn’t seem all that long ago, at least not to me, but it really was a very different world in 1976…
4. Burn Notice, Season One (complete) — And finally, a made-for-cable series I hadn’t even heard of until a co-worker loaned me his discs. It’s about a CIA agent who is “burned,” i.e., what used to be called “disavowed” in the old Mission: Impossible days. For reasons unknown, he is suddenly cut off from all agency support in the middle of an operation. He gets the hell beaten out of him and when he awakes, he finds he’s been dumped in Miami with no credentials, no financial assets, and no place else to go. Naturally, he becomes a sort of private eye/freelance do-gooder while he tries to find out who burned him and why. For sidekicks, he has another ex-agent (the always-cool Bruce Campbell) and his crazy ex-IRA terrorist, ex-girfriend (Gabrielle Anwar, who you may remember was briefly the new “It” girl back in the mid-90s) for sidekicks, and his mom — played by a wonderfully earthy Sharon Gless of Cagney and Lacey fame — is around to drive him to distraction. The show is smart and funny, but with a genuine emotional core — our hero, Michael, has a lot of family issues to work through — and I really loved it. What it really is, is a reworking of all the detective shows I loved back in my adolescence. It’s easy enough to see elements of The Rockford Files, Magnum, Simon and Simon, and even MacGyver in the show’s premise. Also, I have to say that it’s a delight to discover a TV series that stars nothing but adults, i.e., people over 30. That’s my own age talking, I know, but it’s refreshing to feel like I actually relate to the characters I’m watching. You don’t realize just how youth-centric so much of our popular entertainment is these days until you encounter something like this.
   Anyhow, The Girlfriend and I breezed through this DVD set in about a week; the series is now in its third season on the USA network, but we’re waiting impatiently for the Season Two DVDs.

***
And this concludes the 2008 media wrap-up. Whew. I feel like I’ve finally digested a really big, heavy meal, if you know what I mean. Now there’s a spring in my step and I’m ready to move forward!