Sorry kids, this is one of those lame blog posts where said blogger apologizes for being AWOL from their online perch. Blah blah blah, freelance writing for money takes up so much time, blah blah blah, holiday season, blah blah blah. You get the picture. Besides, if even freakin' David Bordwell* is entering the blogosphere, maybe the Cinecultist is now passe.
Nah.
Promises, promises: More postings soon, including an end of the year top 10 that's been churning around in our film obsessive noggin.
*True Story: CC bought Bordwell and Thompson's Film Art book a total of three times during our cinema studies days, each time completing the course which required it, gleefully selling it back to the bookstore and then cursing his name when it showed up on the syllabus yet again.
This article in Variety today announcing that the totally brilliant English comedian/writer Jennifer Saunders (one of the minds behind Absolutely Fabulous!) will be producing two new series for BBC America inspired Cinecultist to click around on YouTube for classic French and Saunders episodes. We found the above Bergman parody which features Death asking for a Hob Nob. Ridiculously funny, you must admit.
By the way, CC has also had Ingmar Bergman on the brain lately because the documentary Bergman's Island will be screening at Film Forum starting tomorrow. Bergman is such a cute old coot reminiscing about his career from his home on Fårö Island. Did you know he was married 5 times, had 9 children and that sequence from Scenes From A Marriage where the husband comes home only to announce he's leaving his unsuspecting wife for another woman, Bergman really did that to wife number two? The film is quite a tribute to the amazing life of a true cinema artist.
Over the weekend Cinecultist did that rare thing in our obsessive movie-going lifestyle, we actually bought a ticket to see a film in the theaters. We'd missed the preview screenings of The History Boys and thought it might be worth a watch. If you ever go to the movies here in New York, or really any major American city these days, you know trying to get into a flick over the weekend can be tough sometimes, so CC bought ahead on Fandango.
Like a lot of online businesses these days, Fandango keeps track of all of your vital info, from your purchasing frequency to your favorite spending locations. In our account you can see all the movies CC's bought online over the last few years which is sort of a fun exercise in personal anthropology. Then today we got an email from those info trackers at Fandango asking CC to log on and rate The History Boys for a potential gift of up to $100. Our interest piqued, we clicked through the email to a log in page. Fandango wanted to know about our social habits and viewing preferences besides movies, to place in a public profile. We filed a bit of the most innocuous details about ourself and then proceeded to The History Boys page. We were asked to rate the movie on a scale of 1 to 5 (from Oh No! to Must Go!) and then fill in a review.
This kind of thing always tickles the Cinecultist and makes us rub our hands in evil glee because when companies or publicists at advance movie screenings ask for our opinion, they really don't know what they're getting themselves into. For god's sake, CC has an advance degree in being an obnoxious movie goer! We've been trained in this field but some of its leaders.
Afterwards we tried to click back to see our review online, but it doesn't seem to be up quite yet. Maybe they have to approve the reviews first, make sure no one uses some crazy obscenities or gives a rave review of Deck the Halls. Anyhow, here was our opinion, just in case Fandango tries to censor our lukewarm response to the flick.
I'd read a certain amount about the award-winning play but hadn't seen it, so thought a film with the original cast would be the next best thing. However, I didn't think the reported energy and intensity from the stage production translated into a visual or gripping movie. While the acting was good, particularly Samuel Barnett, and the soundtrack of '80s hits were fun, the various monologues about learning, history and thinking for yourself didn't really come across as strongly as I would've expected. Only later when I was describing the film to friends, in particular the issues of homosexuality and relationship between teachers and students, did it come across as a more interesting film than while I was watching it. That very intangible quality of a movie to move from scene to scene with force is tough to quantify, and while I thought the History Boys was a good movie, it didn't have that "something" that could've made it great. Too bad.
After all of that work, of course it turned out that the $100 was towards discounted magazine subscriptions. Yick. If there's one thing CC doesn't need in our life is even more magazines filling up our tiny apartment. Advice to Fandango, use this user talk-back feature to award your clients with discounted concessions or a punch card towards free movies. That would be a good incentive. Also, CC sort of likes that idea that a community could grow on these movie ticket websites and movie lovers could dialogue or interface with each other on line. Any way for film fans to connect and argue seems like a good idea to Cinecultist.