The House Next Door

Damn you, Blogspot's Dummy-proof coding system! Damn you all to HELL! Dummy-proof computer items cause me to lose money! But then again, Odie the Programmer's credo is: Build an idiot proof system, and they'll build a better idiot. I lay in wait.

Remind me someday to tell you the history of hyperlinks...

As for the Golden Globes, I wonder who made spaghetti for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association this year. You'll recall that Diane Ladd made spaghetti for the HFPA and then BANG, she got a nomination. Sharon Stone got a nomination too (insert dirty joke here).

I'm going to go search through your TV articles to see for whom you're rooting. I have a yearly bet with a friend of mine on predictions. He always wins these; I tend to take the Oscars. I have Brokeback, Lee, Hoffman, Huffman, Walk the Line, Phoenix, Witherspoon, Clooney for Sup. Actor, MacLaine for Sup. Actress, Crash for screenplay, Recollections of a Ho for score and Christmas in Love for song (just because nobody's ever heard of it).

Congrats on pawning off your Press Tour duties to Mr. Sepinwall. Happy Hypertexting.

Hey Odie, where is your website?

Currently in limbo. It's there, but incredibly neglected. I'm redoing the database, so it's kind of useless right now. Hoping to have it back up and running by the weekend.

Will let you know when it's back up.

Matt, I know this probably belongs in a post by itself, but I wanted to know if you had seen this article in the NY Times about Malick cutting The New World?

I guess it's a good thing that I saw it when I did. I gave it a negative review, but at least I saw it the way Malick intended. What do you think about this?

I also note that New Line is really misleading people about the movie in its commercials. People are going to go to this movie thinking it's a big, lush romantic Hollywood movie, not an art movie. I can hear people coming out of the googleplex saying "What the hell was THAT shit?!"

She says some really dumb things in that article.

"If the audience knows that the English settlers will land and the cowboys will turn out to be gay, the movies shouldn't waste 15 minutes getting there."

Wow, Odie. I just got done watching the Pacific feed of the Golden Globes. You called a lot of stuff. Even John Williams, whose super-lush TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST HO score I thought even the Hollywood Foreign Press would see through.

They should fire Patricia Arquette on MEDIUM and replace her with you.

Grand Epic: Her comments are indicative of today's MTV-watching, Attention Deficit Disorder-having moviegoers. These people will sit through 20 minutes of commercials at the Regal Cinemas, yet can't sit still long enough for a good story to build momentum.

I cannot begin to count how many movies would be cut today, based on the Times writer's rationale. We know the Birds are going to attack the people of Bodega Bay, so why wait almost an hour? We already know Bill Holden's dead, so why not just cut to his murder in Sunset Blvd.? Thanks to the trailer, we know that the house is haunted in What Lies Beneath, so why give us an hour of red herrings to the contrary? (Wait that actually IS a good question! What a terrible movie...)

Matt: Replacing Patricia Arquette would not be as lucrative as me getting my own Psychic Odie Line. $4.99 the first minute, $3.50 each additional minute. Normally, my Northern Joisey accent provides me the tendency to talk faster than Scorsese, but on the Psychic Odie Line, I talk slower than Ennis Del Mar and Sling Blade. Ever notice how they kinda sound alike? "If this sling blade gets hold of you, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, you're dead. Like French fried taters..."

I predicted the TV ones too, and did well there. I also predicted that I would lose to my friend. The bastard beat me by one.

And I love the Rememberances of Hos Past score by John Williams!

Looking forward to taping Bravo's GG replay on Saturday, and fast-forwarding through for highlights. From what I've read online today, should take about twenty minutes.

Hey Matt, any chance you can code your links to launch new windows instead of taking us away from your page?

Matt, I would have told you to use the TARGET attribute of the anchor tag in HTML to get the results Jon wants, but I got this mean error from blogspot:

Your HTML cannot be accepted: Attribute "TARGET" is not allowed.

There is nothing I hate more than a computer telling me what I can do. Damn you blogspot! Damn you all to...well, you know.

Jon: Like I said, I'm still kind of a dummy about this new world of coding and such. I'm still in LA, but when I return I'll ask one of my computer literate friends (ahem, Odie?) to see if there's some way to do what you want without angering the Blogspot gods.

"the new world" of coding. I get it!

"The new world of coding." I caught that clever turn of phrase too, and based on where my college-days nickname appears in that paragraph, I must be Programmer Pocahantas. Do I get to sing "Coders of the Wind?"

My favorite part of that Caryn James' article mentioned above is this:

"Mr. Malick, who doesn't give interviews, wasn't about to explain himself, but the film's producer, Sarah Green, did it for him in a telephone interview. Like anybody else, she said, "Terry gets impatient sitting in theaters," and while preparing the DVD of "The New World" he saw that the film he had raced to deliver to New Line for the qualifying Oscar run "would play better if it were tightened up a little."

I know just how Malick feels. Glad to see even he gets bored and impatient watch his movies. ;-)

On the one hand, I want to see the version Matt and Odie saw. On the other, if films ae often found during editing, as they were with Kieslowski and many other filmmakers, who am I to argue against Malick's decision?

My Mom used to say "you can bullshit the baker, and you might get a bun. If you bullshit me, you won't get none." It sounds like New Line twisted Malick's arm because they figured they had a bomb that didn't get any awards. They made him edit the movie so that it was more palatable to the multiplex crowd. Look at how the film is being marketed in TV commercials. It is NOT being promoted as a Malick movie; it's being promoted like it's Titanic.

Why would an acclaimed director suddenly edit his movie, especially if it is so critically well regarded in its original format? This sounds like studio spin, the same kind of spin that gave me 2 different (and equally horrible) versions of Heaven's Gate. The same studio spin that turned Congo and Mommy Dearest into comedies. Uh-huh.

And I love the "Terry gets impatient sitting in theaters." That's the understatement quote of the year. Now if Woody Allen would say "bad Hitchcock ripoffs with scripts that could be used for Charmin make me sick," it would make my day. Hell, I might even have an orgasm.

Personally, I think 30 minutes off of The New World might make it a masterpiece. This blog's proprietor would kill me for saying that. He has to find me first.

I was talking to someone on AIM earlier who's seen the original cut, here's what he said when i asked him about the new cut:

"The New World would be one of the greatest American movies of the last decade even if they edited an episode of King of Queens into the middle of it."

I laughed.

It looks like the proprietor of this blog has a new person to go after! I have been saved! I'd tell that AIM person to watch out. Desecrating Malick with Kevin James, even if he was funny in Hitch, is cruisin' for a bruisin'. Why not edit an episode of F-Troop in the middle instead? At least it has...um..."Indians."

I can't wait to hear the reaction from the leader of our merry band of Zollerites.

Odie, did you misread that comment? The persong who told me that LOVED the film. He meant it would still be great with a crappy sitcom edited into the middle of it. Why would Matt go after him?

Anybody who posts comments on this blog is my friend, and I'm not going after them. No attacks here, only spirited debate that everyone knows not ot take personally.

And now I throw down the gauntlet: Odie, do you think Woody Allen approves of his his protagonist in MATCH POINT, as many others have claimed or implied?

I meant that in jest, of course. I know Matt's a great guy and he would not "go after" anybody who disagreed with him. Otherwise I'd be in deep trouble because we disagree often. So, pardon my words; I was just ribbing our blogmaster.

Grand Epic: I did not misread your comment, actually. I was tossing back a more appropriate, more horrible alternative to test your AIM pal's theory. Let's see how much he loves it with THAT sitcom in there!

Mr. Zoller Seitz, I nobly submit my face for your gauntlet. Woody Allen likes to work out his personal problems onscreen. Like Wilder and Hitchcock, he makes an excellent candidate for the field of psychoanalytic criticism. I wrote about him (and Hitchcock) last semester in one of my Comm grad classes.

Woody does identify with his protagonist, but that is not why I hated Match Point. Unlike the Hays Code, I don't have a rule that states criminals can't get away with their crimes. I hated Match Point because, as I state at the top of my ten worsts list "it's an abomination, a pseudo-Hitchcockian tale of amorality whose script is so poorly written that the heavy dialogue seemed to warp the screen."

Allen's movies are filled with casual misogyny. Watching his films, I get the sense that his ouevre really hates women. From a purely cinematic standpoint, this isn't necessarily a problem (my two favorite directors, Wilder and Hitchcock, have movies considered far more misogynistic--and far better--than anything Allen has ever done). It has just never been more blatant and sloppy than in Match Point, and I think this is why the proverbial panties are in a bunch. He's throwing it right in your face like bad 3-D. It follows the Fatal Attraction rule that adultery is always the woman's fault (better movies have been made following that rule). It's "The Heart Wants What It Wants: The Movie."

I must tread lightly. Just because I hated the movie is no excuse for me to ruin it for anyone else. My opinion is not gospel, at least not as far as movies are concerned!

By making the victims in Match Point incompetently written, stereotypical, one dimensional caricatures or deus ex machina, Allen takes the easy way out. If his tone were amorally black comic, like Frenzy for example, then this might be forgivable. But Match Point takes itself so damn seriously that it throws itself right off the track. It is strangled by Allen's heavy handedness. If Merchant Ivory, Godard and Hitchcock got together at Troma, the result would be this movie. There isn't a credible second of suspense, and the crime story is straight out of Crime Fiction 101.

The last scene of this film is a direct lift from the superior In the Bedroom, a movie that travels in similar thematic company as Match Point. Look at Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' face, and then look at Tom Wilkinson's. The directors and the actors are telling us two different things.

Match Point's lazy self-importance and utter failure in every aspect of its being are what made me want to vomit, not that certain "innocent" people got shot. Allen agreed with his protagonist when he made this movie the last time (back when it was called Crimes and Misdemeanors). That was a better movie.

Odie, I agree with your assesment of some of MATCH POINT's shortcomings -- I mentioned the boringly expository dialogue and stilted performances in my review -- but I have to disagree that the tone is self-importantly serious.

I think Allen has sought and achieved a black comedic tone, somewhere in the vicinity of Evelyn Waugh or Mike Leigh in NAKED, or Kubrick in BARRY LYNDON. Arch and poisoned. (Remember that scene that ends with Brian Cox telling his wife to lay off the "G&T's"?) He examines these characters as a zoologist might examine nasty, shiny bugs.

And yes, they're amoral. And yes, the movie is amoral as well, in the sense that it recognizes morality not as an innate imperative, but as a social construct, a set of rules we agree to abide by, but which have no power over us except that which we allow them to have. This is a chilling attitude, but a bracing and necessary one, I think, because it goes in exactly the opposite direction from 99 percent of commercial films; rather than complacently encourage us to condemn or praise certain characters based on a presumed, shared moral code, it asks us to consider the very idea of morality -- what it is, why it was invented, what it means. God doesn't enforce morality, and when society does, it's often by chance (cops don't punish every infraction, only the ones they catch). So what is it good for?

It's true that the somewhat similar CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS had a quality of lament, a sense that the filmmaker wished people were better than they are. MATCH POINT is far more cynical; there is no God and everybody's starting point in life is based on chance, from their geographic orgin point (Ireland vs. England) to their social station (poor to working class vs. rich).

I love that Allen gives us a protagonist who chooses to kill rather than give up the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. That's the sort of twist that gets under your skin -- a more pentrating social critique than anything in BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. The end of the movie is saying, "This kid is scum, and he got away with it because of sheer dumb luck." God doesn't exist, society is too busy to be everywhere at once, and sometimes the dice just roll in an evil person's favor. If I call that point of view realistic, as opposed to cynical, does that make me a bad person? It doesn't make me angry or despairing; it makes me value morality all the more. It's a code one ought to live by regardless of the threat of certain punishment, or the presence of a supposedly watchful God.

I think by showing us a world with no outward manifestation of morality, Allen makes us think about what it really means, and what it's really for.

Care to take a swing at that?

I would love to take a swing at it, and I'm bringing the ghost of Patricia Highsmith with me.

Characters who are inclined to murder rather than give up the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed (or wish to aspire) is nothing new. Highsmith's Ripley immediately comes to mind, moreso in her books and in Malkovich's Ripley's Game than in Matt Damon's incarnation. What about the hero of the Scottish Play? Or Medea (not to be confused with MAdea, though she's always pulling guns on people)?

I am fascinated by amoral themes and characters (please see my paper on Nietzsche, entitled One Minute of Knowledge: Man as his Own Personal Sophist). Had MATCH POINT been as engrossing and well written as something by Waugh or NAKED, both of which you cite, it would be worth mentioning in the same breath as those items, or in the same sentence as my two favorite neo-noirs of late, THE LAST SEDUCTION and BOUND. Wendy Kroy--now THAT is an amoral character to die for.

"Everybody knows the bad guys won," Leonard Cohen once sang. It happens, and it happens more than one cares to acknowledge. I believe that people are intrinsically evil, and that for the most part, they will do whatever it takes to get ahead in life, to live that lifestyle to which they become accustomed. According to the ideas presented in your post, I should have been doing cartwheels of joy after this movie. Your post says it supports my view of people at large. I will agree with you to a point: Woody is trying to show you an amoral world. But he's using such easy targets that the film is incredibly ineffective. Have some balls: Make Scarlett Johanssen's character a human being and not just a semen receptacle. She was so grating and manipulative on the screenplay level, I wanted to shoot her myself. Had we been inclined to have one iota of care for her--or even for Rhys-Meyers if we're to remain on the topic of amoral creatures--I would not have been so turned off by the film's laziness.

Perhaps what makes me so mad is that MATCH POINT does such a shitty job of arguing the points that you so wonderfully laid out in your post. I am shocked that the critics who are jumping all over CRASH for being one-dimensional and manipulative aren't all over Woody. The characters that serve his intentions are equally one dimensional and coincidental. Instead of race, however, Woody's going after class, and he's going after it in a less respectable genre, the thriller. And oh yeah, he's Woody Allen. He's getting a pass, and I'm glad the Writer's Guild wasn't fooled this time.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers may have made a great Elvis, but he's horrible here. Compare him to David Thewlis in the aforementioned NAKED or anybody who has played Ripley (even you, Dennis Hopper). Those other characters had layers (like an ogre, says Shrek).

I agree with you about Woody's intentions, and I further state that I think he sees the world through as jaded a viewfinder as I do. You can sense Woody wishes he were the Rhys-Meyers character too, especially in that last scene. But MATCH POINT is a dismal failure because Woody Allen hasn't written a credibly real character in his entire career. This is why his "serious" movies are so taxing.

I disagree that Woody wishes he were the hero of MATCH POINT; I don't think he wishes to be put in that position, except vis-a-vis a naked, oiled-up Scarlett.

Aropos of nothing, though: In a much milder sense, he was faced with his own moral-choice-with-ugly-public-consequences (Soon Yi) and did not get away with it. (His career still hasn't entirely recovered, 13 years later, and probably never will. It's like Ingrid Bergman having a baby out of wedlock, or Roman Polanski's date rape charges; as long as the man is alive, we will not be able to judge his work without thinking of the life.

If one wishes to read MATCH POINT in terms of Allen's own life/career, I think one has to conclude that he judges himself harshly at the same time that he condemns society for hypocrisy. He's saying, "This kid is basically a self-taught intellectual dillettante and a social climbing sociopath, a guy who wants to belong to a club that wouldn't have someone like him as a member; he has no soul, only ambition and a sex drive; he's basically a shark in nice clothes. That's an incredibly honest, unflattering choice of alter ego, especially for an artist of Allen's fame, one who is so closely identified with the situations he depicts onscreen, and who blurs the line between autobiography and fiction more consistently than any American storyteller of his generation, except perhaps Philip Roth, whom he invoked in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY.

At the same time, though, Allen seems to be saying, "Enough already. A couple of dumb lucky breaks and the scandal might not have broken the way it did; you people who judge me aren't as holy as you think, you're just making entertainment out of a person who just happened to get caught in your crosshairs, and if it had been a different week, you'd have stomped a different celebrity fuckup."

Tangled? Contradictory? Self-justifying and yet self-loathing? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. But it's part of what makes this movie so fascinating to me, for all its fundamental awkwardness as a movie.

Further thoughts: I agree that MATCH POINT is no MACBETH, or for that matter, no Highsmith tale. All's I'm saying is that Allen's film is supposed to be mordant and funny and it's supposed to make you uncomfortable, even nauseous, and that he doesn't approve of anyone in the movie -- there's no evidence for it. I also think the deus ex machina, while funny and consistent with the themes laid out in the narration, is kind of disappointing; the moralist in me was rather looking forward to seeing the cops peel this kid like an onion until his hollow core was exposed. The movie ended just when it was really getting interesting.

Matt, you've given this a lot of thought. I congratulate and admire you for it. Your comments will help me when I have to write another psychoanalytic criticism article for class. They won't change my mind about MATCH POINT, but they will provide interesting food for scholarly thought. Thanks for that.

The movie still sits atop my ten worsts list which, for the record, was (from 10 to 1) Haute Tension, Derailed, Madagascar, The Longest Yard, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, J.Lo vs. J.Fo (Monster-in-Law), Chicken Little, Wedding Crashers, Fantastic Four and Match Point. You can inspire thought in the mind of young Odie (OK, I am far from young), but you can't change that stubborn fool's mind.

Shit, Odie, you make me sound like I'm Grandpa Simpson. I'm not that much older than you. Why, in my day, when a young whippersnapper...Hnnggghhh... HrrrrGGGGGHHHHHH...Cough, cough...Plotz.

Actually, Grandpa Simpson, I think I might actually be older than you. My looks betray my actual age. You should see my mother. She looks younger than I do by about 15 years.

Why, when I was your age, young Whippersnapper, I had to walk 30 miles barefoot in the snow to the nickelodeons! 30 miles uphill, I say! And the movies at the nickelodeons all were written by Joe Eszterhas, cough, hack, collapse!

When I was a boy, there were no movies. We had to draw 172,880 individual drawings, round up all our friends, hold the drawings in front of us in a big stack and drop them one at a time in sequential order, narrating as we went.

That's nothing. We didn't have paper for drawings in my younger days. We had to make shadow pupppets with our fingers and toes. There wasn't even language back then. We just painted our faces and ran around, doing our shadow puppets and saying "Gronk!" Kinda like that new Mel Gibson movie, Apocalypto.

Face it, young man, I'm older than you.

As for the final word on MATCH POINT, I don't know why I'm complaining so much. The cute theater woman did give me a refund. Not only do I have the pimp stick, I have the silver tongue that accompanies it. Woody's next movie is called Scoop, and it stars Scarlett "Screamin' Banshee" Johanssen. Let's see how that one goes.

When I was a boy, there were no children.

You win. I can't top that piece o' surrealism.

Cough, cough...Plotz.