You might believe a man can fly…

The Superman saga continues to settle in.  WB made the Brett Ratner hire official on Wednesday with a press release   The quickest and most complete coverage continues to turn up in Corona’s Coming Attractions.

My current take on the Brett Ratner hire is hopeful.  He has become a better director every time out and the story of a man who is not what he is thought to be is right up his alley.  Frankly, if I had my druthers, I’d rather see the Ratner version of Batman, with a Bruce Wayne who beds every hottie in Gotham, throwing people off the trail of the most serious dude in the dark streets of the night.  

My only advice at this point is that Ratner look at the work of Dick Donner and Bob Zemeckis, two great genre filmmakers who have every tool at their disposal.  Ratner’s got excellent taste.  But he needs to add a few more pieces to his directing skill set… particularly the medium shot, filling the frame with more than one active character at a time.   

As I was writing this, I took a look at movies by Zemeckis, Ridley Scott, Cameron Crowe and Michael Mann, looking at the over-the-shoulder shot and why I’m still not 100% with Ratner on his choices.  I was surprised to find how rarely these filmmakers used the shot in the traditional sense and how, when they did, they loaded the frame behind each person to the point where you might expect to be distracted.  But in each case, the actors held the space brilliantly. 

The most extreme example of avoiding traditional over-the-shoulder shots was Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath, which is loaded with two-person scenes and has less than a dozen such shots in the entire movie, limited to only two scenes.  And both of them are scenes of alienation.  One of them is specifically used to create a power imbalance with a male character, where we are not only over-the-shoulder, but the man is three steps above Michelle Pfeiffer.

Crowe loves the close-up and uses at least three different sizes of framing every time he goes into a conversational situation, combined with a lot of long shots, establishing space.  Scott also changes sizes and he also likes to move characters in and out of what would otherwise be over-the-shoulders, even moving them into spaces completely out of frame.

In the great two-man table scene in Heat, Mann actually uses the over-the-shoulder quite a bit.  So why does it work so well?  For starters, he takes a long time establishing the space before moving in.  Once he is in and is going over DeNiro and Pacino’s shoulders, he is fearless.  The camera moves on all four accesses.  He loads the background with restaurant patrons who do everything that might distract the camera, from greeting other people to drinking from beer bottles, etc., etc.  And he almost never goes in to extreme close-up… the actors’ heads rarely take up more than a quarter of the frame.  The scene is simple, but the eyelines and reactions and head movements are always in sync.  It always feels like real time in a real place… not a scene in a movie.

Why do I make such a big deal about this?  Well, it is one of those basics of filmmaking that take a lot of directors a long time to master… if they ever do.  And I suspect that I’ll be covering Brett Ratner and his movies for a long, long time. 

I keep thinking about the scenes in The Family Man where you could tell that Ratner was defining character with the space the characters were in… not so many close-ups.  And those scenes were the ones that worked best.  The defining bachelor pad.  The scene in the bowling alley where the neighbor was opening the door to an affair… and you could feel the danger with the guys just yards away.  The scenes in the tire store, where Cage’s character was drinking in the scene. 

Ratner has remarkably good taste in ideas and actors.  His sense of humor is clear.  He loves size.  I don’t know the man and I’ve never been on his sets, but the overwhelming impression I get is that if he tried a little less hard… if he trusted his actors a little more to hold the audience… if he directed with a slightly increased sense of omniscience… he could become one of the top commercial directors – and I can only assume from his choices that he wants to be the Donner of his generation.  (Spielberg is truly singular.)

Superman was only Donner’s fourth movie… after 20 years as one of the very best TV directors and a decade after his first effort at a feature.  The fifth Superman will be Ratner’s sixth film, after less than a decade behind the camera and only six years after his first feature. 

I want Ratner to become one of the best.  For that matter, I want Kevin Smith’s work behind the camera to become as interesting as his work at the typewriter.  I want PT Anderson’s next film to have a full story, the right number of characters and an editor who Anderson trusts enough to keep it tight without Anderson purposefully chasing the 90 minute mark.  I want to know what Shekhar Kapur is really capable of doing.  I want Hollywood to appreciate what we are missing while Terry Gilliam and Francis Coppola aren’t making movies.  I want David O. Russell to work more and to work cheap… he’s smarter than any CG.   And damn it, I want Adaptation to be good enough to make my Top Ten for the year.

I have been accused by some of being a Ratner basher.  He’s 32 years old.  Rob Cohen is 53 years old.  Rob Cohen is going to improve, but he’s never going to be great.  Ratner is at the beginning of a long career.  If he has a passion for greatness, he can climb the mountain.  He’s not the boy genius that Soderbergh was.  But Soderbergh’s current run of hits started after eleven years of experimenting.  Ratner is no Michael Bay… but Ratner’s work already has a humanity that Bay will have to get – if he ever gets it - intravenously.  Ratner is no Spike Jonze.  But Spike Jonze’s only major film so far (Being John Malkovich) didn’t gross sixty percent of what Ratner’s lowest grossing film to date (Money Talks) grossed.  And Jonze is a year older than Ratner.  (And you want bizarre?  Ratner and Jonze grew up in the two areas that I grew up in… life is coincidence.) 

All I want is a great movie… every time I walk into the theater.  I don’t care if it’s arty or commercial, sappy or slapstick, political or navel-gazing.   Because I am obsessed, I filter an enormous amount of stuff through my brain while I watch any movie.  Some of it means nothing to “real” audiences.  Some of it is the stuff that they don’t realize is bugging them when they shrug their shoulders as they leave the theater and someone says, “How was it?”  I try desperately to make my experience of movies about what the filmmaker’s goals are and not just my personal preferences because if my job were simply to tell you how I feel about a movie, I would be all but worthless.  Any idiot can tell you what he feels.  But only certain idiots can really explain why.

God damn it, I know what PT Anderson wanted to do with Punch Drunk Love.  And he succeeded.  But it is a minor work in a minor note.  If that’s not good enough, bust PT’s chops, not mine!   Catherine Breillat wanted to tell us what a genius she is in Sex is Comedy and told us so often I felt that she made herself look like a pompous fool   Neil Jordan is one of the world’s greatest filmmakers and avoids being tagged with any trademark… except that even when he fails, the work is likely to be the smartest work you will have seen that month every single time.

Back to Soderbergh for a second… I am embarrassed to say that I thought Sex, Lies & Videotape was overrated and I enjoyed his subsequent failures in a childish, self-satisfied way.  I couldn’t quite understand why King of the Hill never took off.  (I took my entire family to see it at the Fine Arts in Chicago.)  And then I started to see The Underneath on cable TV.  And every time it was on, I couldn’t change the channel.  And something deep was grabbing me.  And then, he became… for me.  Years after he emerged, the power of his work brought me into his camp.  I think I am still capable of seeing with that clarity.   

Lots of directors can make you believe a man can fly these days.  If Brett Ratner makes me feel what that power is all about, I will become one of his biggest supporters.  I want to be one of his biggest supporters every bit as much as I wanted to find something to love in The Four Feathers and as much as I want the Farrelly Bros. to make me embarrassed to laugh my ass off again, and as much as I want Chicago to keep the road that Moulin Rouge started open so that a joyous form of the filmic arts is not buried for another decade before someone tries to revive it again.

It’s got to be more than a bird… it’s got to be more than a plane… it’s got to be more than believing a man can fly…we believe that Drew Barrymore can fly these days…make it super, man.

AS FOR THE SUPER CASTING:  It’s kind of a shame that Chris Klein has made so many movies since American Pie… he’s kind of a used-up commodity.  Josh Hartnett is expressionless enough to be the guy.  I think that Goran Visnjic would be a spectacular choice… he’s 6’ 4” and just turned 30, you know.  Keanu Reeves and Hugh Jackman might both be good, but they have other franchises to play with.  Rules of Attraction’s Ian Somerhalder would be interesting if he wasn’t 5’ 9” tall.  Kip Pardue, who is also in Rules, might prove himself kinky enough to deserve a look.  Of course, Guy Pearce would make the greatest older Superman.  But I don’t think they’re going to go there. 

MORE CLARIFICAITON:  On Lukeford.net, a “fellow journalist” told Luke: “David Poland rips every journalist who doesn't do a good job. Entertainment journalism is too cutthroat as it is. I don't see ever ripping into another journalist. This is war. You do not take shots at guys in your own trench no matter what they've done.”

Not true.  I rip very few of the many, many journalists who don’t do a good job.  I don’t even rip the person who said that to Luke – I recognize the rant – when he does a bad job… only for being an occasional psycho.

Let me state this clearly.  I have the hubris to judge the work of the artists who make movies, the businessmen who finance movies, the executives who develop movies and the marketers who sell movies.  I do this five days a week.  And I am often merciless, the way I am supposed to be as an honest journalist. 

Why should the media that judges as easily and mercilessly as I do – often less honorably – get a free ride?  More so, what kind of self-serving jackass would I be to let the people who do what I do get a pass while I feel free to rip away at everyone else?

You know what I would tell someone who whines about e-journalism being too cutthroat?  I mean, after I get up off the floor and my sides stop aching from all the laughter?  I would say, “If you can’t handle the job and you can’t handle the pressure of being judged on your work, go find a job where you don’t have a public profile.”  Seriously. 

Love movies and want to lurk in the background?  Become a publicist.  Become an exec.  Become one of the hundreds of credits in a film that few people take the time to appreciate.  There are publicists and execs in this town that I absolutely adore.  Few of them know or could ever trust how much I care for them.  And few of them will ever tell me the truth about how they feel about me and my work.  Sometimes I work more closely with some of them and sometimes I will go months without talking to them.  Sometimes I have to mislead them and sometimes they have to mislead me.  But I understand what their job is and I don’t need to hold their feet to the fire for doing their jobs, in print or otherwise. 

When I write about a movie that I don’t like, I am aware that, meaningless as I am to some, my thoughts might mean something to someone who matters in that particular case and I could cost someone a job.  I can do damage.  I have to take responsibility for that.  Occasionally I get reckless, but I try to remain aware that that there is a responsibility associated with throwing around my weight.  I know that there are people who hate me that will never tell me that they hate me.  (The hallelujah flip side is that I have people who love me that I will never know love me.)  That is a part of the price for choosing to do what I do.  It doesn’t matter that some of these people have the criticism I dish out –and more – coming.  I am not proud of my ability to create human pain.

So, given that, when I read journalism that I consider problematic, I would feel like a complete hypocrite if I didn’t point it out.  It’s that simple.  I don’t like being accused of acting like a harsh parent without portfolio or driving a nice kid at IGN to attack me as though I really hated him and/or everyone on the web. 

There are only two movie journalists working today whose firing I would celebrate.  There are a few who might generate an unkind smirk with their firing, but I would be an asshole for smirking in their cases. Only two people have jobs where I feel they actually damage the industry and whatever shreds of respect exist for entertainment journalism.

Finally, let me point out that I am not exactly stingy with praise either.  Praise to movies or praise to other journalists.  I haven’t heard from one columnist since I ripped his column two weeks in a row.  Maybe he stopped reading the column, maybe he was so hurt that doesn’t care about the praise for other columns since, or maybe he just hasn’t felt like saying “hi.”  I don’t know.  I like this guy, so I am sad for the loss if our relationship has died.  But I am willing to take that responsibility.  I knew what I was getting myself into.  Hell, I even sent him an e-mail warning that negativity was coming his way.  It’s my fault, if there is fault to be assigned.  But how could I trust my own judgment about anything I printed if I only wrote about other journalists when I liked their work?

I enjoy the camaraderie of other people who do what I do.  But publicists are often in the same trench I am in.  Execs are in the trench with me.  Filmmakers are in the trench.  Movie lovers are in the trench. 

The war is against bad movies, bad journalism, bad art and bad intentions.  The war is against misplaced rage.  The war is against insane egomania.  The war is against personal complacency. 

And the irony?  The vast majority of these people who are supposedly outside of the trench, shooting at us valiant journos (ha ha), understand what we have to do and accept the heat we deliver on a regular basis with infinitely more grace than the vast majority of our journalist colleagues could muster were they to suffer 10 percent of that same heat.  Think the movie business is getting worse and worse?  Its decline is not nearly as steep as that of entertainment journalism.  And anyone who is honest knows it.  And so we are all the more defensive, aren’t we. 

KABOOM!

ONE GUY I NEVER EXPECTED TO LIKE:  Rex Reed is a funky dude.  But since spending a little time with him at the Bermuda Film Festival, I read him with gentler eyes.  And I have enjoyed that.  This week, he writes about the New York Film Festival.  And while we disagree about half the movies he covers, it’s still a fun read… here.

GREEK DOLLARS:  One friend of this column has suggested that the extended release period for My Big Fat Greek Wedding is probably eating into the profit profile of the film at this point.  And yes, the film will not be taking home a percentage of the gross in the high 70s or low 80s like Spider-Man did this summer.  However, the film has only recently added most of the screens that have allowed it to grow to eight-figure weekends.  Theaters that had the film in May are certainly cleaning up.  But exhibitors who jumped on the boat after the phenomenon started will make up for those extended runs, just as Sony Classics improved their rental returns by letting the phenomenon of Crouching Tiger grow over an extended period of time.

SPEAKING OF SEPTAGENERIAN SEX:  Oh, we weren’t talking about that?  Well, South Korea is all abuzz.  A new film called Too Young To Die proves, graphically, that its 70something stars are too young to give up on Lewinskys… or is that “Hughs”… or “Scooby Doos” (it really sucked!) 

Typical males…all this fuss over the guy’s genitalia and no indication anywhere that he reciprocates the act.  Men are such dogs… and this one is over 500 in dog years.

I’m not sure that I want to see woman in her 70s playing the mouth organ with her lover in his 70s until I am in my 70s.  And of course, I am terribly concerned that this film will cause young girls already considering a tongue pierce to push it to the edge and have all their teeth removed.  Nonetheless, I will fight to my last dying breath – before or after 70 – for the right for this act to be shown in a film meant for adults.  (I am showing such restraint… oy!)  The story is right here. 

READER OF THE DAY:  NOT COP ROCK writes:  “Here's a point that's been glossed over the one time I saw it mentioned: you can't claim "artistic integrity" if you allow airplane and television versions of your films to be cut in the first place. It is simply an economic decision to wring a few more ducats out, artistic integrity be damned. Yes, I realize that the number of filmmakers who can put their foot down and say "cut on frame over my lawyer's dead body" can be counted on one hand.

Actually, this whole thing is one giant circus of hypocrisy. Studios want to storm the gates of de facto censorship and make an actual assault in the name of free speech rights and freedom of expression? Then they should be aiming their lawyers in the direction of the MPAA and the could-it-be-anymore-Fascist ratings board. Patrick Goldstein did a good piece when you were in Toronto about Roger Avary battling them over Rules of Attraction, which is a down-to-the-wire story because he opens in two weeks.”

HOTEL BOY tells us what he things drew Jesse Jackson’s ire in Barbershop:  “No doubt, it was the point when Cedric the Entertainer says "f**k Jesse Jackson", but he'll never cop to that.  If the remarks about King really offended him, why didn't he get his panties in a bunch about Malcolm X, when the feds recording Malcolm's conversations say "This guy is a monk compared to King".  Why didn't he get upset about Warren Beatty's line in Bulworth when he says that blacks need to "put down the malt liquor and chicken wings and get behind something other than a running back that stabbed his wife"?

The truth is, the movie acknowledges something Jesse Jackson might have suspected for a while but never wanted to cop to, which is, while he'd like to think he is praised by all of the black community, this just isn't the case.  And that's what freaks him out.“

NOT ANITA’S SON writes:  “Dave, I don't suppose she has much of a shot at this late date, but I'd sure like to see Kirsten Dunst nab a Supporting Actress nomination for The Cat's Meow.  The movie managed to be much ado about very little (although, arguably, that's also true of the anecdote that inspired it).  Dunst, however, rose above it all with a delightful performance.  I wasn't much of a fan until crazy/beautiful showed how stunningly real she can be.  Her Marion Davies is a complete 180, and just as impressive.  Even Spider-Man allowed a few hints of her potential.  I think there's an Oscar in her future, but it'll undoubtedly be overdue when it comes.  (Best Actress for The Grandma Moses Story in 2070?)”

E ME:  I know Grandma Moses and he will never tell his life story! 

It’s just another whiny Thursday… fire at will.  Seriously.  I am curious about how you see the balance between journalists and “the industry.”