Comfort Films (last, phoned-in blog before vacation, guys!)

This thing is gonna be short.  I gotta go buy some presents for others and a new mac for myself.   Because having this page load in less than 1 minute is my Christmas wish and I’m going to make sure it comes true.

But Holidays, the time of family foods such as christmas turkey or goose (or ham if you’re a commie) and potatoes and cookies and cakes, and just fatness and fullness in general, got me thinking about the idea of comfort food.

My comfort foods are pasta pomodoro from this place down the street, turkey goulash, which i make myself, and a lot of things involving cheese and potatoes.  But to be honest, when i’m feeling really sad, ill or homesick, I comfort myself with the same few movies.  I will list the films and thier uses below (you may have noticed by now that lists are my phoning-it-in format of choice), and you can decide if they are applicable to you or tell me what yours are, please. I would like more comfort films with which to comfort myself.

Out of africa - comforts me as an ambitious person…although i don’t know why.  all i want in life is to be Karen Blixen, and watching this movie should only remind me that I am not. Still, I have seen this movie about 40 times. about 3x/year every year since 1995.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Comforts me as a child…this is what i watch when I have the flu or when I don’t want to go teach english to college students because i feel like i’m a 10 year-old who shouldn’t be in charge.

Cold Comfort Farm - contrary to what the title would have you think, this film comforts me as a person with OCD tendencies…when i feel like i can’t possibly organize everything in my life to a degree that would make me perfect and happy, i watch this film, which is basically about tidying people.

Coal Miner’s Daughter - Comforts me as a woman.  Loretta and Dolittle Lynn have so many problems and she’s only 14 for half of them.  And yet they still have fun honky tonkin’ and fighting and they have the decency to split up after the movie ends.

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington - Comforts me as an American.

Jaws - Comforts me as a moviegoer…this movie makes me want to go to the movies forever just in case another movie comes out that is as good as this movie.

 

I int even gonna edit this post. I have xmas-itis.  see you in the new year.

Here’s a picture of comfortingly messy people from cold comfort farm. Thanks John Schlesinger, Stella Gibbons and Kate Beckinsale!

The Awful Character Names from the Law and Order episode I just watched:

Sky Sweet and J-Train. 

Without looking up the episode, who can tell me which celebrities are being fictionalized here?

I have have been a Law and Order fan since the Dan Florek, Paul Sorvino days, but I’m pretty sure that ever since about the time Dick Wolf hired Fred Thompson and started swapping out nearly-identical, pretty brunette ADA’s every season instead of every three seasons, he has also been encouraging his writers to type their ripped-from-the-headlines episodes with jackhammers. The scripts are just that subtle.

Sky Sweet and J-Train.  Please make it less difficult to figure out who you are talking about, Law and Order.  I am stupid.  Also, please tie every murder either to a huge celebrity scandal OR to a terrorist plot.  I am not interested in anything else.

 

 

A detective and a pretty lady at the same time? Vat a country!!

The Stinky Ratatouille Script: One Reader Speaks Out!

I’m expecting some dissent under this blog.  Everyone loved this movie when it came out. Everyone. It got 96% on rotten tomatoes and nobody said it wasn’t wonderful.  And I know I’m a stick in the mud so I held my tongue at the time, but it’s been a while now and I’ve got to denigrate a national treasure and finally speak the words that have been caught in my throat for a year: Best Original Screenplay Nominee? Areyouforreal??

I will give you best animated feature. I will maybe even give you best written animated feature. I will also give you that Patton Oswald and many other voice actors are great. And, of course, I will give you that it looks amazing.  But the screenplay? The way it’s written? Is kind of dumb.  Isn’t it?  Do we have enough distance to admit this?  To find out, let your mind take a fantastical trip to the olden days of 2007, when change and the depression hadn’t come to America and we were all still able to cream our jeans over silly stuff like sophisticated animation.  Are you there yet?  Ok, let’s discuss:

So, I get and understand the part of this movie story where Remy the Foodie Rat is running from people and dodging obstacles in order to avoid their knives and clubs and other instruments of death, necessitating fast-moving visuals that will allow animators to show off.

However, I would like to have the other 7 minutes and 30 seconds of this film explained to me.

What I mean is, other than a rat wanting to cook, which was ably explained by the movie poster, can you who would defend this script (or one of your easygoing friends) explain what this movie is about, i.e. what it’s message or theme is?  After the rat dodges lots of obstacles and knives and moves to the city, then becomes a chef (by dodging lots of obstacles and knives) it becomes confusing to me. Because we have a human and a rat, both of whom seem to have personal struggles (in addition to the Rat’s continued, physical struggle of obstacle/knife evasion), and both of whose personal struggles seem to have about 10 competing morals or messages. Here are some of the morals and messages presented at different key moments in the movie, all of which seem like they are central and important at the time, only to be forgotten about moments later:

• Anyone can cook.
• (slightly modified) Anyone can cook so long as they don’t cook TV dinners, which are for jerks and poor people and non-chef rats.
• Anyone can do anything? (except in this movie world only the rat can really cook)
• Don’t steal, even if you’re a rat.
• Rats are people, too?
• It’s ok to steal if you’re stealing for your art.
• People are rat-killers and deserve to be stolen from.
• People are actually ok.
• Prejudice against both rats and people is wrong.
• Don’t hate stuff that isn’t you, whether it’s rats, people, food or France.  Except hate frozen food, though. It sucks.
• It’s wrong to kill rats, but it’s ok for rats to cook other animals so long as the result is delicious.
• Be yourself.
• Be yourself if by being yourself you will be a great chef.  If being yourself means being a janitor, then you should pretend to be someone else for a while.
• After you’re done lying about being a chef, tell the truth and even though you’ve got zero culinary talent, if you come out as yourself, your chef girlfriend who fell for you in part for your culinary talent will still love you because you’re being your honest self, even though she has no idea what that honest self is since you have been pretending to be someone else who had everything in common with her until now.
• If you want to be a great chef (or any other kind of artist), you may have to devote your life to that and as a result not really be a rat or a person, but some sort of culinary ‘tweener. Food knows no species. Food wants you to be an outcast and live down by the docks.
• Following your dreams is more important than anything. (provided your dream is in the arts. if you like accounting you should probably watch this movie about a rat who can cook a few more times).
• Per the Peter O’Toole character: Not anyone can cook, but great cooks can come from anywhere.
• Rats who claimed to love garbage and family really just want and deserve to eat in restaurants like humans and will learn good taste if given the opportunity.
• Can’t we all just get along?
• France and Paris are whimsical and pretty enough for anything to be possible.
• OMG that meat cleaver is coming right for you! Duck!

That’s what I wrote down during a second viewing of Ratatouille.  And it’s confusing.  I honestly can’t tell which of these is the real central theme or message and which is just something I’m supposed to ignore once it has passed because it was only there to give motivation for that one scene’s fleeing from objects and/or showing off of dazzling, sparkly flatwear. It’s convenient for the film that there is actually a federal law that any movie geared at people under 18 must have “Be Yourself” as its overriding moral, since that’s sprinkled liberally everywhere, conflicting directly with some character arcs and muddying the waters enough that I can’t really point to anything more specific at the heart of the script. And I keep asking you to provide evidence to the contrary because, since I can’t find any, I would like to submit that there is none.

This means that, while the movie is entertaining and cool to look at and I can enjoy it for reasons other than its screenplay, the screenplay itself shouldn’t have been singled out for praise because it didn’t do its job -telling a coherent story- exceptionally well.  It did the bare minimum, in fact, and spent most of its pages creating opportunities for animators.

Good job on the shiny, photorealistic kitchen surfaces, though.