Moviephile

I believe I already mentioned the fact that my in-laws bought me a trip to see Cinematic Titanic Live for my birthday earlier this month. It was delightful. For my full review of that show (typos and all) visit the official MST3k fan site.

The movie featured at that performance was Santa Claus Conquers the Martians - a movie that was previously performed by MST3k; a “somewhat controversial” choice on their part.  I still don’t know why Cinematic Titanic decided to choose a movie that the exact same people (minus J. Elvis) had already made fun of once… Can it possibly have been some kind of complex, well-thought out move to simultaneously connect to their old fans while distancing themselves from their old work? Or was it just that they were able to get this movie really, really cheap? (Hmmm….)

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a poorly made Sci-Fi/Christmas film. The plot is this: the children of Mars have forgotten how to have fun, so a handful of Martians go down to Earth and kidnap Santa with the idea that Santa’s Christmas magic and toys will bring joy back to Martian kids. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it has a kicky little theme song (”Hooray for Santy Claus!”)

Anyway, as I said, I received a trip to the live show for my birthday, and it was lovely. However, fortuitously, I also received the DVD of their riff on said movie. I took it home and watched it with my parents on St. Stephen’s Day. Hense, two viewings of the Cinematic Titanic version of the film.

However, I also have a DVD of the original MST3k riff, and it seemed a shame to pass it over for the sake of its Cinematic Titanic progeny… so when Mr. Hall and I visited his parents, we watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. That makes three viewings.

Then when we got home from our vacation yesterday we discovered we had a Christmas present from a friend, Miss Landis. We opened it up - and found that she (knowing how we enjoy watching bad movies) has given us the un-MST3k’d, un-Cinmatic Titanic’d, RAW version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

I’ve never actually seen this movie without a humorous commentary running over it - so I daresay this spells one more (a FOURTH!) viewing of the film before the end of the holiday season.

Okay. I’m not a huge fan of musicals, or a huge fan of Sondheim. I don’t have anything in particular AGAINST them, I just tend to prefer non-musicals or non-Sondheim.

But I like Tim Burton (well, olden days Tim Burton, anyway) so I decided I would give Sweeney Todd a try. It was released, what, last Christmas? So I figured it was seasonably appropriate to finally watch it.

I had a couple problems with this movie right off the bat. For one thing… why did he cast a bunch of non-singers as the leads in this movie? I have nothing against Johnny Depp (except perhaps that I think his best performances were when he was receiving the least amount of praise, i.e. pre-Capt. Jack) and especially not against Alan Rickman (who I’ve always felt is very attractive in a Mr. Spock kind of way)… but, honestly. Sondheim tunes are always extremely complex (if that’s the word I want…) and I’m just not entirely sure it was the most melodious possible choice to cast a bunch of guys who can only kind of hit the right notes.

For another thing, I have a problem with the fact that all Tim Burton movies now feature his semi-wife/main squeeze Helena Bonham Carter. I mean, really. Granted it’s his call who he’s going to cast (and I can’t say she’s been terribly mis-cast in any of his films, although I didn’t really buy her in Big Fish … but I disliked the majority of the casting in Big Fish and Big Fish itself, so that’s no shocker) - but, come on. Really.

I had issues with the story - which I suppose I can’t blame Tim Burton for since he didn’t come up with it. Like was that era of London’s history really so permissive that nobody questioned a woman being openly raped at a party? That you could just randomly beat up and terrorize law-abiding citizens without arousing any annoyance on anyone’s part and only making one enemy? (I also take issue that it was a very eighties-type of “No Happy Endings!!” story.)

But in the end, the thing that ruined this movie the most for me is that it has essentially twenty minutes worth of actual story and character development that are stretched out over two hours with a bunch of semi-songs. (I call them semi-songs because I’m really not a fan of whatever you would call Sondheim’s style… avant garde, maybe? You know. Where it doesn’t rhyme, has no form, and you couldn’t hum it back to yourself if you tried.) Again, this is nothing I can blame Tim Burton for - except perhaps the fact that he chose to make it into a movie rather than leave it as the somewhat pretentious piece of musical theater that it is.

In the end… although it had some nice visual moments, I found Sweeney Todd depressing, vapid and unmelodious.  And that’s my last word on the matter.

The British film magazine “Empire” recently compiled a list of the 100 Best Movie Characters of all time.

And Empire also seriously undermined their credibility by declaring that the number one best movie character of all time is… get this…

“Tyler Durden from Fight Club”.

Really.

That one guy from Fight Club.

Tyler Durden.

Better than Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, or James Bond.  Better than Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockinbird. Better than Rick from Casablanca. (Neither of whom even made the top 25, by the way).

I think this speaks for itself. No need to go into pages and pages of rants about how ridiculous and wrong it is.  An article on Yahoo Movies talks about some other problems with the list - not the least of which is that Boba Fett got a slot (Boba Fett??!! You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me!! He had like three minutes of screen time, like two lines, and died screaming like a little girl when a blind man humorously knocked him over!! HE WA NOT A PROPER CHARACTER IN THOSE MOVIES!! HIS ENTIRE FAN FOLLOWING WAS GENERATED BY NOVELS AND COMIC BOOKS!!! HE SHOULD NOT BE ON THIS LIST!!! ARRHGHGH!!) and that characters from Anchorman snagged not one but two slots. (Don’t get me wrong. I love Anchorman: Will Ferrel’s funniest film without a doubt. But, seriously: two characters from it are Greatest Characters of All Time? I kind of think not.)

But this also brings to the forefront one of the main problems with these lists which are generated by online voting: namely, the fact that it is mostly teens-and-twentysomethings who are voting on these lists, and therefore movies that came out in the last five or ten years are heavily favored. If a proper film historian (or, even, a random person with any experience of watching films made before 1995) made this list, I expect that “The Joker” from The Dark Knight and Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean would not have made the top 25, as fun as they are.

AFI’s list of “100 Greatest Heroes and Villians” is much more reliable, even though they put Jodie Foster’s character from Silence of the Lambs (honestly - and nothing against Jodie Foster - we all know she was just a delivery system for Hannibal Lector) and Sigourney Weaver’s character from Aliens in the top ten because somebody would complain if there weren’t any girls up there.

Tyler Durden indeed. (Grumbles.)

Did I mention lately that in addition to having the best husband ever, I also have the best in-laws ever?

My birthday is coming up on the 7th (the day that lives in infamy, don’t you know). Well, when I got home from work yesterday I discovered a birthday card from my in-laws. I opened it and found a folded piece of paper. “Hm,” I remarked to myself. “Looks not unlike a ticket confirmation of some kind.”

It was. It was a confirmation of two tickets, for myself and my husband, for an upcoming local, live performance of CINEMATIC TITANIC!!!

… No, it’s not a band. If you aren’t up on my previous posts, this bears a little explanation: my favorite TV show was Mystery Science Theater 3000. MST3k was a “theater” show (in the tradition of shows like Svengoolie and Elvira) where a B or C-grade movie is shown and then mocked; however, MST3k took the step of actually having the hosts present throughout the entire movie and mocking the entire thing. MST3k was on for ten years, then got cancelled. The cast has gone on to other projects… including, but not only, Cinematic Titanic.

Cinematic Titanic is not a TV show, but direct-to-DVD (or download) releases - although it has essentially the same format as MST3k. The hosts (all of the writers of the show - all five of them - are hosts on this show) are outlines on the bottom of the screen, present throughout the entire crappy movie, mocking it constantly.  What fun.

However, in an unusual move, the cast is touring. They are doing live versions of the show on DVD. I found out a couple months ago that they are coming to Chicago for several performances this month. I sadly decided I would not be able to attend due to tight finances, and there it sat.

UNTIL I OPENED MY BIRTHDAY CARD LAST NIGHT!! I am so excited. I’ve already met half of the cast of MST3k (the Sci-Fi channel years) - but I haven’t met the Comedy Central years cast, i.e. Joel, Frank, Trace, Josh, etc (the Cinematic Titanic cast) so I’m very excited.

And yes, I have superb in-laws, in case I didn’t mention that already.