Black-and-White Box Sets, Ten Letters

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As you may have gleaned from looking around the site, I’m a puzzle guy.  I solve ‘em and I make ‘em, and so for a couple of days this week I get to indulge by combining two of my passions—movies and crossword puzzles.

This is my regularly scheduled “light” week (and I’m particularly busy anyway), so I will (try to) be brief.  First, a few announcements:

The 34th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is happening this coming weekend, the 18th through 20th.  The fun and games take place at the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott.  It’s not too late to take part in the country’s oldest and largest crossword competition (as it says at the link, where you’ll find puzzles and plenty of info about the tournament).  If you’re a crossword fan and anywhere within shootin’ range of Brooklyn, go.  (I’m not able to make it this time but had a great experience a couple of years ago and hope to make it back again before long.)

The tournament founder and director is Will Shortz, editor at the New York Times, home to many of the greatest crossword puzzles you’ll find anywhere.  Case in point:  the puzzle in today’s morning paper.  I absolutely adore this crossword and highly recommend you get to it.  You can pick up the Times, of course, at any Starbucks, or if you’re an online subscriber, get the puzzle here.  Kudos to constructor Jeremy Newton for a clever idea and great execution.  It’s everything a crossword puzzle should be!  (After you’ve finished—no spoilers here—you can find this apt movie clip from this post a year ago.)

I’ve been making puzzles for several years, with a few dozen that have run in the major venues, mostly in the Times.  My latest endeavor has been making a monthly pair of mini-crosswords called Gram Crackers.  You can find them, as always, at the MAD Puzzles page.  Next month’s will be going up a few days early, on April Fools’ Day.  Consider yourself warned.

Our theme this week
Movies about crossword puzzles

Crossword Craze Cartoons

The man credited with the first crossword puzzle in this country is Arthur Wynne, who created something he called a “word-cross” that ran in the New York World on December 21, 1913.  That’s a picture of his work above, back when puzzles were at “square one,” so to speak, with FUN already there to give solvers a head start.  Crosswords have changed a lot in their century-long history.  You could say they have a checkered past.  One notable time in crossword lore was the 1920s, when among other crazes—flagpole sitting, marathon dancing—the country fell hard for the crossword puzzle.  Puzzle books flew off shelves, contests tested the wits of solvers, and somebody in Hollywood had picked up the habit too.

Today we have a couple of animated short films, a form not much older than crosswords themselves.  Both feature popular characters who starred in dozens of cartoons.  One was Felix the Cat, in his first incarnation, who debuted in 1919 and appeared in today’s short, Felix All Puzzled, at the height of the crossoword craze, in 1924.  The other is Alice, a young girl played by Margie Gay, about five years old, starring with a cast of make-believe characters in Alice Solves the Puzzle, in 1925.  The Alice comedies are notable for the man behind the series, Walt Disney, who was still a few years away from creating the toon that changed it all, Mickey Mouse.

Like puzzles, cartoons have changed a lot too.  These shorts are a long way from Pixar, but as Arthur Wynne might have said, you gotta start somewhere. 

The Brits caught the craze too.

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Best of 2010

It’s never too late to take a look back, and with the Oscars coming later this month, this may be as good a time as any.  I will forgo any lengthy introduction—none needed, really—except to say that the films featured this week are what I view to be the best of 2010.  The number 15 seems to work best for the format of this site and allows me to avoid skipping some worthy films which would be the case if I limited the list to 10.  The rankings are somewhat arbitrary.  I might rank them differently on another day.  The exception would be the top two films, which I think are head and shoulders above the other contenders, movies most likely to remembered and watched again many years from now.

For this week, I’ll just be looking at English-language films.  I’ll take a briefer look at a few foreign-language movies next week.

Our theme this week
Top English-language films of 2010

Best Films of 2010 (#15 to #11)

#15 — Fair Game

A political thriller about the Plame affair in which a high-profile couple takes on the Bush regime and are fortunate to survive, Fair Game is a mostly fact-based document of what happened in one telling episode of a low, dishonest decade.  In their third collaboration, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn offer first-rate performances as wife and husband Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, who sacrifice careers for getting out the truth.  At this moment, the nation may not have much passion for a film about the misconduct (not to mention, crimes) of our bygone leaders; we have more urgent problems, and we’d just as well be done with the past.  Hardly a hit, the film fell short of $10 million at the domestic box office, and barely broke $20 million worldwide.  But I’d guess the picture will stand as one of the better political films of our time.  It’s not exactly an uplifting tale, not if you like to see justice prevail, though that’s not the fault of the filmmaking so much as history.

(Fair Game at MAD:  preview and review)

#14 — The Kids Are All Right

It’s a normal family in the usual way—dysfunctional.  But a family headed by a lesbian couple is not something we’ve seen much onscreen before.  Nic and Jules have two teenage kids, and when the biological father comes into the picture, life gets complicated.  The title tells the story:  the kids are better at coping than any of the adults.  The acting is pitch-perfect, with a fine ensemble that includes Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo.  I enjoyed the mix of comedy and drama, along with the interplay of the characters.  It all felt very much like family.  The writing, though, I found a bit uneven.  Mark Ruffalo’s sperm-donor character is at times clichéd and in the end left dangling without a real resolution.  But The Kids Are All Right was nevertheless one of the gems of the summer, and having just then seen a string of films that fell short of the mark, I left the theater this time smiling.  For that, I remain grateful.

#13 — Toy Story 3

Andy is heading off to college and that brings some big changes to the lives of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and their toy pals.  Toy Story 3 tugs at the heartstrings, and though manipulative, it’s effective in the best Pixar tradition.  It’s hard to argue with the success of the studio, the envy of the rest of Hollywood, but this film, as enjoyable as it was, seemed to be missing some of the spark that Pixar is known for.  That may be because this is a sequel, a reprise of many characters we know very well, here in a new film for the third (and hopefully last) time.  Two of the next three Pixar releases will also be sequels (Cars 2 this year, Monsters, Inc. 2 next year); if the focus of the company now is to mine old hits for new box office gold, that would be a shame.  Pixar became Pixar because it was startlingly original.  That’s its legacy, and I hope, its future.

#12 — The Illusionist

Here’s an animated film that felt original from the first frame to the last.  Maybe the trick is to dust off an old, unproduced script written by the great Jacques Tati.  Director Sylvain Chomet brings the story to life, a whimsical and melancholy tale about an aging magician who befriends Alice, a young fan who believes his illusions are real.  The illusionist is Tatischeff (Tati’s birth name), and the story is a personal one, intended to be a missive to Tati’s estranged daughter.  The Illusionist is set in a series of European cities, primarily Edinburgh.  A British-French production, the movie takes its time, in stark contrast to the hyper, breathless pace of much American animation.  It’s not a story aimed at kids, but still one that kids can enjoy.  My five-year-old son liked it some but thought it slow in parts.  Children a bit older should find the film entertaining and worthwhile.

#11 — The King’s Speech

Movies about British royals have become staples of the holiday film calendar, and The King’s Speech is one of the finer examples.  It’s an entertaining look at the troubles of George VI, the king with the stammer who needs the help of a commoner to learn to give a speech.  The cast is superb throughout, led by Colin Firth as the king, Geoffrey Rush as his unorthodox speech therapist, and Helena Bonham Carter as the devoted queen whose faith in her husband hardly wavers and is never broken.  The king’s ordeal, and his efforts to overcome it, are the focus of the story.  Unspoken is the fact that his heroism, as important as it may be, does not compare on a personal level with the heroism of the many thousands who fought for their country, at great sacrifice, in the war to come.  One quibble with the film is its utter respectability, as if the filmmakers knew they had a dynamite story, a real crowd-pleaser, and didn’t dare do a thing to risk it.  A little more of the unexpected may have made a very good film even better.

(The King’s Speech at MAD:  preview and review)

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“Upside Down”

from Curious George

This week I need to keep to an abbreviated schedule so this will be another musical interlude, continuing with the general theme of last week, the world of animation.  Look for a return to regular features in the next week or two.

“You’ve Got a Friend in Me”

from Toy Story

This week I need to keep to an abbreviated schedule so this will be another musical interlude, continuing with the general theme of last week, the world of animation.  Look for a return to regular features in the next week or two.

“The Bare Necessities”

from The Jungle Book

This week I need to keep to an abbreviated schedule so this will be another musical interlude, continuing with the general theme of last week, the world of animation.  Look for a return to regular features in the next week or two.

“Heigh-Ho”

from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

This week I need to keep to an abbreviated schedule so this will be another musical interlude, continuing with the general theme of last week, the world of animation.  Look for a return to regular features in the next week or two.

“Give a Little Whistle”

from Pinocchio

This week I need to keep to an abbreviated schedule so this will be another musical interlude, continuing with the general theme of last week, the world of animation.  Look for a return to regular features in the next week or two.

Merrie Melodies Tribute

Our theme this week
Selected shorts from Merrie Melodies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” (1931)
Tuesday         —   “A Wild Hare” (1940)
Wednesday    —   “A Tale of Two Kitties” (1942)
Thursday        —   “Duck Amuck” (1953)

“What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957)

Notes in brief
It takes about fifteen hours for a performance of the entire Ring cycle of Richard Wagner’s.   It takes less than seven minutes for “What’s Opera, Doc?”  I don’t say that to recommend one over the other, but it’s something to consider if time is a factor.

The cartoon borrows music from Wagner, and more, yet the story is the same classic conflict we’ve seen before between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.  Elmer this time is Siegfried, and with his spear and magic helmet, he’s out to “Kill the wabbit!”  You know how it’s going to end, right?  Elmer is always thwarted by his nemesis—but get ready for a twist.  (Still, look who gets the last laugh.)

Like yesterday’s feature, “What’s Opera, Doc?” was picked for induction to the National Film Registry and ranked among The 50 Greatest Cartoons in the 1994 animators’ poll.  It topped the list—the #1 cartoon of all time!

1.  Howard Hughes received director’s credit for two films.  One was Hell’s Angels in 1930, starring Jean Harlow, and the other was his return to Hollywood in the 1940s, Jane Russell’s debut.  What was the movie?

2.  Martin Scorsese was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Aviator (2004), then finally won the Oscar for The Departed (2006).  He had four previous nominations for the directors’ prize.  Name the films.

Mean Streets (1973)
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Raging Bull (1980)
The King of Comedy (1982)
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Goodfellas (1990)
The Age of Innocence (1993)
Casino (1995)
Gangs of New York (2003)

3.  Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes, both associated with Warner Bros., were name variations on a series of musical animated shorts from Disney that ran during the 1920s and ’30s.  What was the name of the Disney cartoon series?

Comical Concerts
Bonkers in Bandland
Silly Symphonies
Mad Rhapsodies
Nutty Numbers

4.  Mel Gibson’s latest scandal has cost him the services of which A-list actor who had been interested in starring in a Gibson-directed Viking movie?

5.  Match the film critic with the review for Inception and the online comment about the review.

The Critics:

a.  David Edelstein, New York
b.  Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
c.  Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline.com

The Reviews:

1.  “For the record, I wanted to surrender to this dream; I didn’t want to be out in the cold, alone. But I truly have no idea what so many people are raving about. It’s as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on … Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself.”

2.  “Everything he does is forced and overthought, and Inception, far from being his ticket into hall-of-fame greatness, is a very expensive-looking, elephantine film whose myriad so-called complexities — of both the emotional and intellectual sort — add up to a kind of ADD tedium.”

3.  ”I found it dazzling but also a maddeningly arbitrary kind of movie….  The movie didn’t really cohere for me.”

The Online Comments:

i.  “___ has never deserved your respect. ___ is a terrible film critic, with highly questionable taste.”

ii.  “I can’t really take you seriously anymore, ___. You praise cashgrab trash like Ironman 2 but bash a movie like The Dark Knight. Yes, The Dark Knight was overhyped, but Jesus, comeon, you are a professional critic..you let the opinions of others cloud your mind. It’s not your job to assess whether a movie deserves hype or not. Just review the movie, explain what you didn’t particularly like, and don’t bring up all the other crap.”

iii.  ”Kill the beast! Spill ___ blood! Smash ___ face!  You must be punished for your dumbness and illitarecy. Christopher Nolan RULEZ you drool! Whoo—ahhhhhhhhhhhh.  Otherwise, this was really a rather well-done and exceptionally convincing review on all points. Splendid.”

Answers here.

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Merrie Melodies Tribute

Our theme this week
Selected shorts from Merrie Melodies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” (1931)
Tuesday         —   “A Wild Hare” (1940)
Wednesday    —   “A Tale of Two Kitties” (1942)

“Duck Amuck” (1953)

Notes in brief
Daffy Duck debuted in 1937 in a Tex Avery short, and the lisping, loony toon has been a regular in the Merrie Melodies stable ever since.  He often played the arch-rival of Bugs Bunny, and more often than not he got the short end of the stick.  In “Duck Amuck,” he’s the star of the show, (almost) the only animated character in the cel.  He fights a battle with his off-screen creator, who plays one mean trick after another on the helpless Daffy.  Who is his creator?  In one sense, it’s Chuck Jones, one of the grand masters of animation.  But there’s another—and funnier—answer to that question, and it comes at the end of the six-and-a-half minute short.

“Duck Amuck” is one of about two dozen animated works to be inducted into the National Film Registry.  In a poll published in the 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, as voted by 1,000 people who work in the animation field, “Duck Amuck” ranked #2 all-time.  It gets my vote for the most brilliant cartoon short ever.

Merrie Melodies Tribute

Our theme this week
Selected shorts from Merrie Melodies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” (1931)
Tuesday         —   “A Wild Hare” (1940)

“A Tale of Two Kitties” (1942)

Notes in brief
“A Tale or Two Kitties” was the first of three shorts featuring the cartoon characters Babbit and Catstello, a couple of cats patterned on the comedy team Abbott and Costello.  It’s now remembered for introducing Tweety Bird, one of the most popular of the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes characters, who went on to appear in about 50 cartoons during the next few decades.   Tweety’s first words, “I tawt I taw a puddy tat,” became one of the best known signature lines in cartoons and was the title of a 1951 hit single for Mel Blanc.

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