MADness—the Blog

Did you know that just five days ago the 3rd greatest film of all time was released?

The news gave me a jolt at first.  Then I realized there was a simple explanation.  The IMDb site has been hacked.

Right?

I sat next to a couple, both probably in their young twenties.  Apparently he’d seen the film before, and she had not.  Early on I heard him say, “See that?  They just cut from a dream to reality.”  A minute or two later he was nearly out of seat, pointing to the screen.  “No, that’s reality.  The other one was a dream too.”  He slumped back in his seat.  “It’s so confusing.”

He was right about the last part.  It would take repeated viewings, probably more than two, to sort out the levels of dreams in Christopher Nolan’s Inception.  Nolan has a talent for visuals, a thirst for action, and a taste for puzzles, but he seems to lack the knack for putting together a story in a coherent narrative.  It may be the Nolan has it all worked out, the thousand pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit without a single hole in the picture, and after watching the whole thing twenty-four times, anyone can see it.  Though I doubt it.  After one time through, I’m left with a bunch of fragments and I’m not sure why I should care to watch again to find out if the fragments fit or not.  I don’t mind storytellers playing with structure—I’m a puzzle guy who likes that kind of stuff—but I like character too, and I need to feel some emotional resonance with who’s in the story especially if you’re asking me to do mental gymnastics to make sense of the narrative.

Inception appears to be a big hit with critics and at the box office.  It will probably be the summer’s biggest hit not a sequel.  I may be in the minority, and despite some brilliant effects and other imaginative touches, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.

Movies are dreamlike, dreams don’t always make sense, and I’ve seen enough Lynch and Kubrick to let a filmmaker take me to places where I’ll accept what I don’t fully comprehend.  But Nolan is operating on a different level.  He’s not offering anything profound.  He’s playing a trick called stump the audience.  You watch a scene, you think it’s reality, but it’s just a dream, or a dream within a dream.  It’s dreams all the way down.  And when he takes us back to reality in the end, all you can do is shrug.  Whatever you say, Christopher.

You may have heard reports of a crossword sighting, and we can now confirm.  MAD Puzzle No. 8 is in building.  If you want it, I’d recommend looking in the Puzzles room.

That one is new, this one is not.

Notice anything odd?

Of course not.  Congratulations on a job well done!

Are you stumped?  I’ll explain, after the jump.

More »

It’s the country’s birthday, a time to celebrate America.  I’m not going to come up with a list of movies for the holiday, because there’s just no end to them.  The country is too big to be defined by a few movies, or even genres.  There have been musicals, westerns, war movies, film noir, to name just a few, that are distinctly American, one way or another.  Take your pick.

My picks aren’t meant to be representative, but each reflects an aspect of the country worth noting.  One takes its name from a George M. Cohan song, and its story is about a man whose ideas of patriotism are challenged until finally he must redefine what the country means to him.  The next takes its title from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and tells a story about people living through one of the most difficult times in our country’s history.  The third film’s opening sequence is set to one of the greatest pieces of American music, and celebrates one of my favorite corners of the country.  When I think about fireworks in movies, this is the one that jumps to mind.

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Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Oliver Stone, director
Prologue

He’s my little yankee doodle boy.

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The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
John Ford, director

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Manhattan (1979)
Woody Allen, director
George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”

Hey, baby, it’s the 4th of July! 

That was fast.  Seems we got here in a hurry this year. 

Holidays are meant for remembering and when I do I think about growing up in the east with parades and Little League games and barbeques and days at the beach and a party somewhere and, of course, some fireworks.  Maybe those things haven’t changed but when I think back they seem a little more special because holidays—like a lot in life—just feel that way when you’re young.

Wherever I was there’s a good chance some rock ‘n’ roll was playing on the radio and when this holiday comes around there are a couple of songs in particular I can’t not think about.  Which means I listen to them again, and now through this thing called the internet, you can too.  Enjoy the holiday, folks, wherever you are.

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4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Bruce Springsteen

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4th of July
X / Dave Alvin