Reasons I Don't Review Romances

Part I

In case you didn't read the reviews before you went the theater, here's a cheat sheet:

If you're watching a film about a man trying to decide between women, odds are pretty goods it's billed as Serious Drama and will be applauded for its "insight into life and love."

If you're watching a film about a woman trying to decide between men, odds are pretty good it's billed as romantic comedy and it won't win any awards.


Part II

A woman is courted by two men.

This is how is plays out in the movies:

    90.0% - One turns out to be a total jerk and the other is Mr. Right. The choice is easy and destined to work out.

    9.0% - It's a tough choice but one of the men nobly bows out or dies, or they both do, or the woman does, usually by suicide or she ends up with some unexpected third guy.

    0.9% - It's a tough choice. She chooses ones. The other is heartbroken but eventually gets over it.

    0.1% - She chooses to remain single.


This is how it plays out in real life:

    90.0% - It's a tough choice. She chooses ones. The other is heartbroken but eventually gets over it.

    9.0% - She chooses to remain single.

    0.9% - One turns out to be a total jerk and the other is Mr. Right. The choice is easy and destined to work out.

    0.1% - It's a tough choice but one of the men nobly bows out or dies, or they both do, or the woman does, usually by suicide, or she ends up with some unexpected third guy.


Part III

In case you are watching a movie about romantic pursuit and have to leave before you catch the ending, here's what happened:

If you're watching a film about a guy under 16 pursuing a girl, he'll impress her in a sport, competition, disaster or alien invasion by succeeding, through hard work and a zany unconventional last-ditch-effort plan while gaining enough confidence to finally ask her out directly, but instead choose his loyal but Hollywood-plain best-friend since childhood.

If you're watching a film about a guy 16-30 pursuing a woman, he'll disguise himself and/or get close to her under false pretenses but when it all comes out she'll forgive him. Otherwise he'll end up with the cute (but not necessarily sexy) outcast who helped him with the ruse.

If you're watching a film about a guy over 30 pursuing a woman, she'll be younger than him and either re-invigorate his routine life with her refreshingly spunky sense of adventure and carefree charmingly-bipolar personality or she'll draw him into committing a crime, betray him and leave him to die.

If you're watching a film about a gal under 16 pursuing a boy, she'll disguise herself and/or get close to him under false pretenses but when it all comes out he'll forgive her. Otherwise she'll end up with the clean-cut (but just a little dorky) school outcast who helped her with the ruse.

If you're watching a film about a gal 16-30 pursuing a man, they'll be fiercely competitive school or career rivals despite their obvious chemistry until they unite against a common threat and instantly forgive all their past insults. Later they'll ignore the fact that their highly-driven, competitive natures mean that they'll probably go back to fighting when, post-adventure, they try to have a real relationship, but by then the movie will already be over so who cares, right?

If you're watching a film about a gal over 30 pursuing a man, then it's a movie no one has heard of because the studio didn't believe in it, pulled the marketing and dumped it on a few screens in March.

If you're watching a film about anyone pursuing anyone and it doesn't work out (gasp!) and someone ends up (double gasp!) single, then it is must have been either Melodrama and somebody died just when their perfect love had beaten all the odds or it was Art and the characters were talky intellectuals/artists with iffy ideas about fidelity and the lesson will be that emotional entanglements suck, but we can't live without them, enjoy the good times while they last and have a laugh at its absurdity now and then (but don't bother re-evaluating your life or, you know, being a self-centered jerk).

And if the film was about anyone pursuing anyone of the same gender (triple gasp!), then it was definitely Art, though it might still be Melodrama too. The ending was that society couldn't tolerate their forbidden love and at least one person got killed. We definitely won't get to see a complicated long-term sustainable homosexual relationship or find out that it looks a lot like a complicated long-term sustainable heterosexual relationship, but nobody wants to see a movie about complicated long-term sustainable relationships anyway so no big deal.

Titles That Lie

A friend brought my attention to how Abbott and Costello never actually go to Mars in Abbott and Costello  Go to Mars and I got to thinking about the way different movie titles lie or mislead. I asked my coworkers to throw in some suggestions. Here’s a list of some favorites:

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars – Except that they don’t. They go to Marti Gras and Venus.

The Greatest Story Ever Told – I’ve seen better. Frequently.

Troll 2 – Not only isn’t there an ‘original’ Troll movie, there aren’t even any trolls. The movie’s about goblins.

Curse of the Cat People – This “sequel” to Cat People has neither curses nor cat people. It’s actually a rather touching story about a child whose dead mother becomes her invisible friend.

Only Angels Have Wings – What about birds, bats, some insects, planes, pegasi, dragons, large estates, libraries, theaters, windmills, soccer teams, Paul McCartney and Hooters?

Armageddon – The title promises one thing, and then the movie deliberately doesn’t give it to you.

The Last Picture Show – This came out in 1971 and there’ve been bunches since.

White Men Can’t Jump – Patently untrue.

The Neverending Story – More accurately The 1 Hour 42 Minute Story. Hmmm… not as catchy.

Boys Don’t Cry – While it’s true that boys don’t have emotions, they often cry when chopping onions.

Mission Impossible – Unless they make a movie about Tom Cruise trying to divide by zero or something, it would be more honest to rename the franchise Mission Improbable.

They Won’t Believe Me – Spoiler: They do… only too late.

It’s a Wonderful Life – It’s kind of eh.

To Kill a Mocking Bird – The early screenings had a lot of disappointed hunters expecting a documentary.

A Thousand Clowns – Falls 999 clowns short.

I, Robot – Though the title comes from Isaac Asimov’s short story collection, the film is actually an adaptation of Jeff Vintar’s Hardwired (but considering that Hardwired takes place within a single room, it’s not very faithful to that either). The movie is about robots rebelling and killing, the exact opposite of what they do in Asimov’s works: serving and protecting.

Dead Man Walking – Not a zombie movie.

Serenity – One of the least apt spaceship names in science-fiction.

Back to the Future – Should really be Back to the Present and, besides, they travel to the past.

Can’t Hardly Wait – A movie about a bunch of high school graduates, none of whom are eagerly anticipating college. They’re either stuck in the past or living in the moment.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Sounds like it ought to be a great youtube video, but it’s actually about Elizabeth Taylor shrieking and Paul Newman sulking.

The Longest Day – Set on June 6^th, 1944 although the longest day in 1944 was actually June 21^st.

Fidelity – It’s more often about the opposite.

Eyes Without a Face – More a case of too many faces than too few.

Brazil – Not set there; not a single scene.

To Have and Have Not – “Adapted” from the novel by Ernest Hemingway if by adapted you mean has the same title and a few characters with matching names. The plot was shamelessly plucked from Casablanca.

Made in the USA – A French film.

Some Films Came Out in 2011

Yeah, so some films came out in 2011. The consensus seems to be it was a slow year. I have to agree, but still, I enjoyed myself. I saw about 35 films from 2011 by my count, which is better attendance than my last three years. I've still got almost 20 more I'd like to get around to.

The Oscars aired over the weekend and they tended to bear out the 'slow year' assessment with above-average but generally straight-forward crowd-pleasers The Artist and Hugo leading with five awards apiece in races that were hardly nail-biting. I enjoyed both films quite a bit, but was sad to see the two films I thought were truly brilliant get beaten out, The Tree of Life for best picture, director and cinematography and A Separation for best screenplay (to the thoroughly mediocre Midnight in Paris). My friends and I were fairly disappointed with the results and yet, one must acknowledge that this is what the Oscars do: they validate safe, middlebrow films that are generally liked at least a little bit by everyone. It is hard to fault the Academy too much for fulfilling it's long-established role.

For it could be much worse. Dull and conventional as the Academy is, they still have better taste than the movie-going public. I know that's a terribly snobby thing to say, but today I happened to look over the box-office returns for 2011 and, for someone who cares about cinema, it's highlights, innovations, eccentricities, emotional power and imaginative possibilities, it can't help but be a little depressing to see the numbers.

Here's the top 20 grossers for the year:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon

3. Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1

4. The Hangover 2

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

6. Fast Five

7. Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol

8. Cars 2

9. Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows

10. Thor

11. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

12. Captain America

13. The Help

14. Bridesmaids

15. Kung Fu Panda 2

16. Puss in Boots

17. X-Men: First Class

18. Rio

19. The Smurfs

20. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

Out of 20 films there are 12 sequels, 3 prequels and 3 comic book adaptations (which will probably spawn sequels of their own).

Of the remaining 3, one was an adaptation of a book (The Help), leaving only two original properties. One was Bridesmaids, produced by Judd Apatow (probably my all-time comedic nemesis) in his trademark style. The other was Rio, a warmly-received animated kids movie which performed well for Blue Sky Studios at the box-office, but barely half as well as their panned 2009 blockbuster threequel Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. They won't make the mistake of risking a new franchise anytime soon; next year they've announced Ice Age: Continental Drift. No joke.

The top 9 highest-grossing films this year were sequels. On average, the top 8 films were the 4th entry in a franchise. The fourth! I can remember back to when my grandparents complained about how all that ever got churned out was sequels (as in direct sequels, number two in a series). They didn't know how good they had it. But this is presumably what people want. Or what advertisers have trained people to think they want.

Alright, then. Not depressed yet? Let's look at how the nominees for best picture fared. I'm going to list the nine nominees in order of their box-office takes, each one followed by a film that outgrossed them displayed in parenthesis as a point of comparison.

#13 The Help (Fast Five)

#41 War Horse (Battle: Los Angeles)

#42 The Descendants (Real Steel)

#46 Moneyball (Tower Heist)

#52 Hugo (Jack and Jill - This years front-runner at the Golden Raspberries)

#59 Midnight in Paris (Justin Bieber: Never Say Never)

#96 The Artist (Sucker Punch. A "fantasia of misogyny" - A. O. Scott)

#97 Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (The Roommate)

#132 The Tree of Life (Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer, Season of the Witch, etc.)

I like to think I have better taste than either the theater-swarming masses or the decrepit Academy, but then who doesn't? So here are my top 10 films of the year (make that 11, and keep in mind I didn't see everything, or even all that much) along with capsule summaries that may explain their lack of wide-scale appeal.

#132 The Tree of Life - Mankind, not to mention the individual, is doomed to a patrimony of struggle and bitterness, but don't worry, we're just insignificant motes in the grand scheme of the universe anyway.

#175 A Separation - An Iranian family deals with divorce, a grandparent with Alzheimer's disease and the contested miscarriage of an employee living in poverty. Even though everyone means well they still compromise their morals and tear each other apart.

#168 The Skin I Live In - Soap opera meets horror thriller meets sexual identity thesis in a beguiling, carefully-structured and admittedly unmarketable rabbit hole about an absurdly unethical surgeon, his beautiful experimental patient, and their complicated pasts.

#163 Shame - Loneliness and emptiness erode the soul. Sex doesn't help.

#170 Melancholia - Depression and the apocalypse are the only soulmates at a disastrous wedding.

#185 Take Shelter - You're either going insane or a terrifying storm is about to destroy everything and everyone you love.

#110 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - There's no honor among spies. Or action. Or even sex appeal.

#151 Margin Call - Investment bankers are greedy, but not happy.

#42 The Descendants - A family that stalks together, stays together (except for the terminally comatose adulterous wife).

#62 Source Code - A war vet uses time-travel to fight terrorism and fall in love. Too bad he's already dead. Or not... I guess.

#96 The Artist - 1929 hated the silent era. 2011 loves it.

Anyway, that's my take on 2011. Bitter as I sound, I ended up having a blast by the end! And I'm looking forward to the great films of 2012.

Review of Koalageddon 2

The past decade has seen a steady stream of environmental issue documentaries, of highly varying quality, doubtlessly leveraging popular interest in climate change and the plunging financial barriers to distributing independent shot-on-digital productions. Nowadays I tend to catch an uneven smattering of these films (grassroot documentaries being the type of thing I feel more obligated than excited to see), but several years ago when the concept was fresher and my motivation higher, I really kept up with them. It was around this time that I remember hearing about Koalageddon, a zero-budget documentary about the threat of deforestation (and formerly hunting) to the survival of Adelaidian koalas in Australia.

I didn’t catch the film when it played at the 2005 Saint Louis International Film Festival (it was the first I attended and I failed to schedule my time well), but I did Netflix it when it became widely available on DVD about a year later. It struck me as honestly pretty mediocre. Clearly a lot of passion had gone into the subject matter, but ultimately it came off as shrill and obsessive, with long unbroken shots of koalas set to narration that was more poetic than informative. A lot of the statistics sounded wrong or irrelevant, like comparing the U.S. expenditure on the Iraq War to the Australian Fund for the Protection of Endangered Species. Sure the latter is a paltry sum by comparison to the American defense budget, but I’m not sure the infographic vaguely equating tanks to koalas made any actual sense.

Worse still, director Liu Xiaojun (who intrudes into his subject matter with Michael Moore-like persistence) and several of his interview subjects are clearly describing pandas on several occasions. Most of the interviews are conducted in Mandarin, which starts feeling suspicious about fifteen minutes in, and though the subtitles are meticulous about displaying “koala” you can clearly hear the director and interviewees saying “xiongmao” (panda). I read later that Xiaojun had wanted to make a documentary about endangered pandas, but was pressured (some say violently) to change his topic by Chinese censors over fears that it would appear critical of their already-beleaguered environmental policies. The result may be one of the first documentaries whose subject is a metaphor for a wholly different subject. While this adds a touch of comedic surrealism to the film, Koalageddon was just too scattershot and unprofessional to make a big impression on me. I sent the DVD back to Netflex and forgot the whole thing. I figured I would never hear of Liu Xiaojun again.

And then the rumors began.

It all started here, in a 2009 article about Liu Xiaojun receiving a $2.25 million Australian Film Society grant to establish a permanent Adelaidian koala shelter and film a documentary on the process. It was to function as a sort sequel in which the ‘Koalageddon’ would be averted and was intended to be broadcast as a three part TV special. But in a massively embarrassing oversight, the last Adelaidian koala had already died in captivity four months earlier leading Xiaojun to call Peter Garrett, the Australian Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts a “murderous hyena” and his grant “like putting a Band-Aid on a rotting corpse.” The rumors continued to heat up after Xiaojun refused to return the money and purportedly swore a blood oath to avenge the koalas during an interview with the Brisbane Daily Post. He promptly dropped off the public radar for more than a year.

If you’re reading this review you already know how the story ends: Xiaojun reemerged in August with “Koalageddon 2: Eucalyptus Now” a controversial action/horror film featuring zombie koalas, copious violence and one of the strangest sex scenes in recent memory. That would be odd enough as it is, but even more surprising is that the film is actually getting really good reviews. I had a chance to see it at this year’s festival and I have to admit Liu Xiaojun has made a masterpiece of sorts, hampered as it is by last-minute subtitling. He is poised to become an international star, but it looks unlikely that he plans to continue as a filmmaker.

Koalageddon 2 opens in a small park in Adelaide. A young girl reads the plaque under a stone monument memorializing the extinct species of local koala. A storm kicks up and the girl runs off to join her mother under an umbrella. The park is left empty as drops begin to fall. In next to no time a lightning bolt strikes the statue, bringing to life five adorable koalas whose eyes flash ominously crimson. The subtitled narration is especially unclear about how this metamorphosis works but it involves “Mother Dirt’s lust for revengement [sic]” and “the Lords of Blood and Milk.”

The koalas, listed as Nergal, Hannibal, Monstro, Ned and Deathweaver in the credits but never named in the course of movie, quickly split up to search for Eucalyptus leaves but become distracted from their mission by various modern conveniences and societal pitfalls. For nearly half the movie, which might be anywhere from a week to several decades within the movie’s universe (Xiaojun plays with chronology in a way that defies clear sequencing and demands multiple viewings), we watch the koalas adapting to contemporary culture. Nergal becomes addicted to comic books, internet porn and dope. Monstro binges on fast food and takes out his frustration at failing to emotionally connect with his middle-class coworkers by moonlighting as a graffiti artist and notorious vandal. Hannibal turns to prostitution, gets talked into a botched back-alley abortion, spins into a manic-depressive cycle fueled by regret and self-loathing and is ultimately drawn into the underground fetish club scene from which he never returns. Ned talks on a cell phone all day (we never find out to whom and it’s implied that there might not be anyone on the other end) while taking endless walks (filmed in staggeringly well-choreographed long takes) through Adelaide’s economically-booming but spiritually-bankrupt suburbs.

Only Deathweaver comes within reach of happiness after being rescued from mobsters by free-wheeling, debonair hobo Maverick ‘Coolpop’ Christman (played by Liu Xiaojun himself). The two promptly fall in love while outwitting various greedy businessmen, hypocritical priests, conservative politicians and even a snotty film critic.

In each of these scenarios the human characters never find the presence of talking koalas strange.

It isn’t until the last half-hour that the movie falls into the usual action and horror movie clichés. The koalas find their appetite for eucalyptus impossible to appease productively (though they hardly seem to try and only intermittent reference is made to a “global leaf shortage”) and begin to sate themselves on human flesh. This is ambiguously tied in with their bodies beginning to rot, presumably because they are zombies of some sort? Or is an allegory for their corrupted purity and innocence? Xiaojun’s screenplay is just trying to tackle too much, and I think he may have written himself into a corner. Still, the ensuing bloodbath is, from a purely aesthetic point of view, a really impressive piece of filmmaking. Several other extinct animals such as the thylacine, desert bandicoot and hopping mouse make cameos as they join in the carnage.

Coolpop Christman delivers several pace-destroying impassioned speeches pleading for both sides to stop fighting, live in harmony and practice a vegan diet. Nobody listens.

Even Deathweaver gradually succumbs to the craving for human meat, but his struggle to resist is especially bittersweet. In the film’s most touching moment, set against a blazing sunset backdrop and an elegiac symphony score, Maverick Christman takes his own life so that his friend and lover may safely feed for another week. The gesture, however, is ultimately useless. Deathweaver must eventually venture out into the streets for sustenance and is gunned down in a slow-motion hail of bullets.

At this point the little girl from the opening scene (the one seen reading the plaque) reappears in the audience of onlookers to deliver the film’s now-iconic final line: “Don’t you see? We are all koalas and oil is our eucalyptus!” While regarded as ham-fisted by some, it has become something of an environmentalist anthem in Asia and Australia and its penetration into the region's popular culture is already to the point where Thai cosmetics giant SenHyg has adopted “Oil is our eucalyptus” as the tagline for their latest eucalyptus oil hand cream.

The ending credits roll over a series of seemingly unrelated images from around Adelaide, absent of any of the characters we’ve been introduced to. It’s a little reminiscent of Antonioni’s ending in Eclipse. However, on closer inspection each frame has a disturbing reminder of the toll consumerism has taken on koalas: the teenage girl singing karaoke sports a jaunty koala-fur hat, the father figure grilling burgers in his backyard is using ground koala meat, the old man teaching chess to his grandson is playing with pieces carved from koala ivory (I suspect this last is Xiaojun’s artistic license and not a literal product). It’s all surprisingly moving.

Though Koalageddon 2: Eucalyptus Now is already establishing itself as a cult film, it’s not surprising that Australia is distancing itself from the work it inadvertently funded and China has banned it outright, not for the violence and nudity, but because of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot in which Monstro morphs into a panda, grows 100 feet tall and crushes Zhongnanhai.

I don’t know whether we’ll see more by Xiaojun in the future or if, instead, his name will remain forever tied to these two idiosyncratic films, but I wish we had more like him. His combination of a heartfelt documentary core souped up with stylish genre fixings will likely serve as a formula for many movies to come.

Walrus Rating: 7.5

Review of Night Bacon

I generally try to avoid writing negative reviews, and I’ve vowed as much before, but catching an advanced screening of “Night Bacon: The Movie” (2010) a few days ago, I feel actively obligated to break that vow. Being moderately familiar with the television show I had pretty low expectations to begin with, but decided to attend because (a) it was free, (b) I try to keep up on even bad animation and (c) a friend invited me who claims, incomprehensibly, to be a big fan. I’m assuming his enthusiasm is all part of that inexhaustible 80’s nostalgia thing, but I hated the show even as a kid.

Though “Night Bacon,” the cartoon series, was an indelible part of my childhood and that of most people growing up in 1980’s Kansas, I realized later (when it came up in conversation at college) that almost nobody outside of the Midwest has even heard of the show. That’s not surprising, in retrospect, since I find on Wikipedia that it was funded exclusively by Wichita Pork Agglomeration and produced by their small animation subsidiary, Porktoons, not far from where I grew up. The low-grade animation, moronic plots, obnoxious music and appalling misinformation served as little more than an extended commercial for pork products and the show, sensibly enough, was never carried by any station outside of Wichita Pork Agglomeration’s sales region.

So for those of you from the west coast, east coast and the world at large, who missed out on the experience, I present a pseudo-summary of the television series cobbled together from my distant memories and a few quick internet searches:

The star was Francis, a rather generic all-around boy genius and pop singer who transforms, at dusk, into dashing crime-fighting superhero Night Bacon. Night Bacon looks exactly like a giant strip of bacon, but retains Francis’s eyes and mouth. In a strangely cannibalistic twist, which never seemed to bother me as a kid, Night Bacon eats large quantities of regular-sized bacon for energy.

I never saw the earliest episodes, but my friend (the “big fan”) says that the origin involved Francis’s mother being bitten by a Pork Fairy while pregnant, causing Francis to be born with all the intelligence of a human boy, but with the innate superpowers of bacon. The list of these superpowers was endless, but apparently in constant flux due to the show’s total lack of continuity. The writers would invent or forget about powers depending on the needs of the current episode, but the one semi-consistent element was the Bacon Ray, which was usually deployed at the last minute as an irresistible killing blow.

Even the Bacon Ray alternated inexplicably between a lightning bolt that fried villains into, you guessed it, more bacon and a laser beam that caused foes (even chickens) to explode into bacon bits. I have a fuzzy memory of one occasion when the Bacon Ray was portrayed as a rainbow (a la the Care Bears), but with the colors restricted to the meat spectrum (dark red to pulpy yellow), in keeping with the show’s exhausting, though immediately-recognizable, color scheme.

I do remember the Pork Fairies, which were a reoccurring element of the show and, though surreal, actually kind of adorable. The Pork Fairies were smiley, winged, nearly-circular pigs that frolic and flutter happily in the woodlands of some unspecified third-world country. Their habitat is constantly under threat by foreign conspiracies to cut down the forest and plant oat fields and vegetable gardens (invariably portrayed as menacing and undesirable). Francis, his best friend Roger and the rest of the gang (all members are his father’s Friendly Meat Corporation) are constantly trying to save the lovable Pork Fairies from misguided activists and vegetarians. These scenarios are typical examples of “Night Bacon” appropriating, and inverting, environmentalist rhetoric towards its own twisted ends.

Francis had a laboratory where he produced the inevitable stream of wacky gadgets that appeared in every animated kid’s show of that era. He also had Maria Porkova, a sexy lab assistant whose outfits and pork-based innuendo never seemed appropriate for the target audience and never had anything to do with the plot. Her one task seemed to be running the Baconizer, a hovering, spinning golden ring. The Baconizer is the one part of the show I will never, never forget, though I often wish I could. The Pork Fairies, willingly self-sacrificing to assist Francis, would leap through the Baconizer which magically transformed them into a flurry of energy-providing bacon to fuel Night Bacon’s superpowers.

While the Baconizer completely misrepresents the complicated and gory process by which bacon is actually made, one decision by the creators, doubtlessly intended to make us worry even less about the poor Pork Fairies, made the entire thing almost traumatizing. This was the shrill, giddy, hysterical giggle that the Pork Fairies emitted as they passed through the Baconizer. Watching clips on YouTube, this hideous laughter still sends chills down my spine. Nothing and nobody should ever be so… happy. According to the trivia on the official fan site the Baconizer was originally going to be called the Super Laughter Ring, or SLaughteRing for short (whose idea was that?), and the sound bite was recorded with that in mind. Since the show regularly recycled whatever animation they already had, it was never changed.

Like with a lot of other Saturday morning cartoons, the best part of Night Bacon was often the villains. These fell into two categories. The first were miscellaneous monsters-of-the-weeks like the Asian stereotype Master Veggie Med-Lee, psychotic Professor Health Nut, clueless vampire Count Calory and the nefarious Vitamen from Venus. Even as a kid I remember thinking these villains were awfully tasteless and sent a horrible dietary message for impressionable kids.

The other type of badguy was poultry, usually chickens, but drawn to look more like vultures, harpies and gargoyles. They were frequently depicted as bumbling, unsanitary and suffering from leprosy. The birds lived segregated from the rest of society (my friend claims this was a race metaphor) and were usually just ignored by Night Bacon (though due to a favor he performed in some episode I never saw, he was occasionally allowed into their exclusive Turkey Club), but they inevitably turned out to be working as henchmen for the main villains.

One of the shows running gags will give you some idea of the shocking amount of violence (to say nothing of the sex) that eventually caused so many complaints that “Night Bacon” was moved from Saturday mornings to Tuesday Evenings. This running gag involved the chickens, who often ended up in police custody or were otherwise subdued by Night Bacon by the end of the episode. Then, mere moments before the episode ended and for no reason whatsoever Night Bacon would slash off the heads of the captive chickens and their bodies would dance around spastically to the closing credit music. If that weren’t enough, the intermittent gouts of blood that squirted from their necks splattered, as though on a camera lens, to form the names in the credits.

I remember that my mom HATED “Night Bacon” (she never knowingly let us watch it) and nothing more so than the gratuitous violence directed at chickens. And yet, on cleaning out my closet in my parent’s home some years ago, I discovered that it was a plastic toy chicken that was the sole item of “Night Bacon” merchandizing that I apparently ever possessed. The chicken was meant to be filled with ketchup through (I kid you not) a cap right where the anus should be and the head could be removed so that the ketchup could be squeezed out through the neck. I never liked ketchup and my “Night Bacon” chicken has, consequently, never been used. I’m tempted to see if I can get anything for it on Ebay.

The animation was always abysmal, even lazier than the worst moments in Rocky and Bullwinkle or Schoolhouse Rock, from which it borrowed many of its money-saving techniques. These included not only repeating clips, but lengthy segments of looping, most notably during the shows insufferable musical interludes. These involved two practically interchangeable bands: (1) Francis and the Sausage Links, who played mindless techno beats with Francis singing in falsetto and a trio of sausages providing backup, and (2) Sergeant Pepperoni’s Hearty Breakfast Band, which featured bad pork-themed parody songs and commercial jingles.

Francis and the Sausage Links would often play for several minutes at a time with no visual accompaniment other than the titular strip of bacon and the three sausages waggling around in front of microphones. The whole thing was mysteriously hypnotic and vaguely obscene. Sergeant Pepperoni’s Hearty Breakfast Band only stuck around for half a season, partly because of Porktoon's failure to negotiate music rights and partly because their blatantly unhealthy advice caused several accidents amongst young viewers. Lyrics varied from the stupid and disgusting (“sausage grease brings world peace, but bacon fat is where it’s at!”) to the dangerously self-serving, like telling kids that “vegetables are a fad” and to eat a pack of bacon “once a day and twice at night!”

Even less animation effort was involved with the once-an-episode speeches delivered by Pork President Alexander Hamilton, who was drawn as a strip of bacon with a blue square face in one corner, designed to look like an American flag with the streaks of meat and fat serving as the red and white stripes. Only the mouth would move during the speeches, which could run for five minutes and consisted of little but dishonest propaganda about the health benefits of pork products and the dangers of a diet high in fruits and vegetables.

For example: “You wouldn’t eat a dirty penny you found on the ground, would you? Or a trampled gob of bubble gum? Or a hunk of dog excrement? And yet many people eat stuff that grows in and on the ground every day! I ask you, is that wise? Is that sanitary?” These rants often sounded closer to Mussolini than any American president, let alone our first Secretary of the Treasury. The FCC made Porktoons cease airing these segments after a 1984 court decision.

The movie adaptation includes cameos from Hamilton and almost every other character from the series, although the chickens are conspicuous absent and are, in fact, never even referred to. Hamilton commissions Francis and Roger to stop a group of terrorist Neutritionists [sic] who have convinced the world that bacon is dangerously high in fat and sodium and should only be eaten only in moderation. Night Bacon soon discovers that the Neutritionists are not what they seem. Their real motive is to enslave the human race by turning them into health-obsessed zombies using their Neutriton bombs, which can only be resisted by eating excessive amounts of bacon. As Maria Porkova says, “At least a dozen strips of bacon per meal is the only guarantee for immunity. And after a strip, a big juicy sausage is just the thing!”

Night Bacon is captured after taking a bath in his restorative grease reservoir, which Doctor von Vegan has maniacally replaced with strength-sapping vegetable oil. Just when all seems lost, Francis administers a light “pork chop” to Doctor von Vegan’s scrawny neck, and he withers like a punctured balloon, but not before activating his Organic Farming Doomsday Device. Night Bacon remembers his trusty Bacon Ray just in time (the device's countdown shows one billionth of a second remaining) to destroy the machine and save the day. In celebration, his father’s Friendly Pork Corporation hosts an ultimate world concert for Francis and the Sausage Links. Despite the fact that plot has completely petered out, the concert scenes continue for another 25 minutes before the film ends.

Personally, I don’t think any amount of 1980’s nostalgia can justify how bad the film is. The transition to 3D CG is somehow even uglier than the original. The show’s humor remains clunky and unpleasant and there is no attempt to make the story even slightly interested. The sole mildly funny moment, in a sick kind of way, occurs when the cast of Veggietales shows up to the concert and are offhandedly slaughtered by Francis and Roger.

Do I have anything good to say about “Night Bacon: The Movie”? It could have been worse: it could have been live action.

Walrus Rating: 1.0

These Cliches Are For Your Own Safety

It has come to the attention of the Screen Characters Guild that preventable fatalities amongst horror film characters are at an all time high. Many characters, even protagonists and persons played by famous actors, have demonstrated a complete disregard for standard safety guidelines. It now falls upon the SCG to remind you that these practical precautions and handy rules of thumb are designed with your own safety and well-being in mind.

Please review the following brochure carefully. With luck, we hope to see you in a sequel.


If you hear a noise, thinking the killer is nearby, go silent immediately. It will actually turn out to be something else.

Whereas if you say you hear a noise you greatly multiple the real risk. Should someone else replies something like “it was probably just the wind” it will never actually turn out to be the wind or any other benign explanation offered. It will turn out to be the killer. If anyone says “I didn’t hear anything” than you are especially screwed.

Other phrases that can doom you and your entire party include:

Do not announce any phobias or weaknesses. It will only be inconvenient later when are forced to overcome them.

The first time you are attacked or chased by the killer, your boyfriend/husband will not believe you. That’s just normal. There’s a good chance you’ll shortly be vindicated by the killer unexpectedly murdering him. However, if he still doesn’t believe you after the second or third incident, I have bad news. He’s the one trying to kill you for insurance/inheritance money. If the frightening incidents you are experiencing are particularly strange and mysterious, count yourself lucky; your significant other is plotting to drive you insane instead, which gives you considerably more time to fumble about in distress before you have to buckle down and fight back.

Do not respond to any invitations from eccentric millionaires. Psychiatric experiments, even when they pay well, should obviously be rejected. Never, ever go camping. Do not visit any haunted houses or agree to look after any remote locations. If anyone describes the history of a place, avoid going there. Don’t even enter your attic or cellar (unless you have a nice finished basement) or any room where the light switch doesn’t work. Do not clear dust and cobwebs off anything. If you are in a place with lots of dust and cobwebs, leave.

Pay extremely close attention to local legends and any references to objects that could be used as weapons. Allow yourself to be regaled by old-timers, especially if everyone else regards them as crazy. If anyone starts to talk about their past, especially if involves a trauma or transgression, make a note to keep your distance. Express the utmost interest in hearing out any longwinded description of the how villainy against you was engineered.

If someone mentions that they have a twin, dead sibling or long-lost relative, avoid them and anyone who looks like them. Beware of people loudly proclaiming that they run a successful enterprise of any type. They are actually in a great deal of debt and are probably planning to kill you for your money. Treat with suspicion anyone who does not have a clear motive to be the killer. Most importantly, do not have sex with anyone. Let me repeat that: NO SEX.

Remove any keys from your key ring that do not correspond to your house, a potential escape route or a vehicle. It would also be wise to label your keys clearly and make sure they have distinctive shapes that you can distinguish in the dark and under stressful conditions.

While we’re at it, make sure to keep your gas tank full and your car battery charged. When driving, never take any detours or pick up hitchhikers. If you must pick up a hitchhiker, do not proceed to turn on the car radio and listen to news bulletins. It is highly recommended that if you even find yourself driving anywhere with a group of friends, to just turn around and settle for a subdued little get-together at a crowded, well-lit pizza parlor. Do not invite your ex.

And remember, safety is the responsibility of everyone.

Well, except the killer.

The Superpower-Driven Narrative

If you are one of the many aspiring directors who are interested in making Hollywood blockbusters, but are worried because you’re artistically inclined, frugal, or otherwise disadvantaged, don’t worry. The Film Walrus is endeavoring to help you out with a handy guide to making crappy films that sell like collectable cross-marketed hotcakes. Today’s lesson: superhero movies.

Everybody (males 13-30, the “everybody” that counts) loves superhero movies and it’s a good place to start if you’re worried about straying into sincerity, sophistication or originality. The key thing to note is that you have a lot of flexibility, since audiences will flock to see a superhero film even if you don’t call it a superhero film. What do I mean? Many, if not most action films are really just superheroes flicks in disguise. Take James Bond, swap the tuxedo for a cape, and voila! Take Dirty Harry, swap the cop outfit for a cape. Take John McClane, swap the wife-beater for a cape. Rambo, Jason Bourne, Jackie Chan, Captain Jack Sparrow, Shane, Julius Caesar, Flipper, Willy Loman, etc, etc, etc.

The point is: if capes seem too sissy to you, they can be disposed of. The superhuman abilities are what matter. All we need is a handsome male lead we can identify with plus the escapist fantasy of being more powerful than everyone around us. The ‘handsome male lead’ part of the equation is an interchangeable cog that you can leave up to the producer. We’ll focus on what’s really important, designing what I call the superpower-driven narrative, a more financially consistent alternative to character-driven screenwriting.

Most of the heavy lifting happens right here at the beginning, brainstorming what superpowers to give your hero. Try and be creative, but don’t sweat it if you’re not; there’s plenty of alternatives to new ideas!

1) Remake an earlier movie. There are tons of films like “Man Made Monster” (1941) and “4D Man” (1959) that are ripe for fresh incarnations. If you’re worried about fans of the original hating your ill-conceived attempts to modernize the story (Note: you should describe your decision to add misplaced comic relief, flimsy technogadgetry CG and supermodels that serve no purpose but to pose for the poster art as “updating the film to be relevant in our modern day and age.”), just find some actor from the original film who’s still alive and put them in a walk-on cameo. If the dissidents still don’t fall in, shout “series reboot!” and tint all your production stills darker. Don’t ask why, but people go wild for that.

2) Adapt an as-yet untainted work, preferably something with more pictures than words like a comic book or magazine ad. Saturday morning cartoons from ¾ of a generation back (remember your demographic; you want to aim for licensed nostalgia, not historical awareness or cultural literacy) are also acceptable. Make sure to put on a big show of how “loyal” and “into” the source material you are, while changing everything important to make it more commercial. You’ll also want to pare down the vocabulary and squeeze out any talky character development, what I like to call “the residual pall of the written word” (if you didn’t understand that, you’re well on your way!). Audiences can smell the reek of intellectual ambitions from miles away, and you can bet they’ll wrinkle their noses.

3) Rely on total nonsense. Pick out some random creature and contrive to have the hero cross-DNA with it. Maybe he has tapeworm powers, turns into a capybara during full moons or is half-dragon. Go further. Maybe he has robot DNA (from being infected by a mutated computer virus) or is part hurricane (ooh, topical!) or was raised by wild vending machines (consider the tie-ins!). He could be born with shotguns for limbs. Maybe his father was a ghost and his mother was a pop rock band. The less sense it makes the better! Give your screenwriters something challenging to explain. If the logic gets dicey, throw in a meteorite.

4) Feeling lazy? Just pick a cool job like spy, assassin, rogue cop, film blogger or cooper and make them insanely good at it. Superhuman strength and a tendency to never get shot go without saying. If it doesn’t sound cool, add a prefix like ‘super,’ ‘cyber’ or ‘turbo’ to their job title.

OK, now that we’ve got some superpower ideas, let’s rank them into three groups by asking, “Does this make our protagonist essentially invincible?”
1) Yes
2) Almost
3) No

Powers of the second type are what we’re after, but the others are useful, too. If you want to go with a first order power, then invent a weakness. It’s OK to just use kryptonite, but call it something else and make it glow a different color. Or apply a variation of the “vampire catch,” like all his powers go away during even-numbered hours or whenever he hasn’t eaten enough combo value meals (remember, it doesn’t have to make sense).

The third order powers can be used for sidekicks, midlevel henchmen and minibosses (you should be keeping the videogame supplement in mind at all stages of production). If you really insist, you can go with a band of heroes with lesser complimentary powers or batch two or three abilities together for a hybrid hero. If it seems contrived for one person to gain multiple unrelated powers, have an elderly mentor character wave his hands and mumble something about military experiments or ancient prophecies.

Now while those options are doable, it’s the powers of the second order that are goldmines. They maximize cool while still leaving room for tension. Now this is where superpower-driven narrative comes into play, as the various implications of your chosen superhuman skills basically write the plot of the movie for you. In fact, the whole first half of the movie should be spent doing little but indulging the most obvious superpower applications that pop into your head.

But eventually we need to introduce a serious threat. Take a moment or two to brainstorm how the hero’s weaknesses might be exploited. We don’t really need these to imperil him (the villain can always just hold his girlfriend hostage), but we’ll use them if we choose to introduce a “surprise” villain who has the same powers as the hero, but evil and a smidgen stronger. This is a nice little screenwriting shortcut that makes for great final battles, but if you have leftover superpower ideas from up above, feel free to do a more distinctive final boss.

We’re almost done! Just stir in a fistful of angst for our main character, aggravated by a father figure who gets killed immediately after the audience has established an emotional bond. Tack on a romantic interest who the hero must keep in the dark “for her own protection,” much to the detriment of their relationship. If you’re trying to look progressive, give her some witty banter or a minor superpower or have her reveal that she knew the hero’s alter-ego the whole time when she saves him (gasp!) just when all hope seems lost. Just make sure she’s hot.

Now scribble out a couple one-liners, hire a team in South Korea to do the CG explosions and plug in an extended charade implying your superhero is actually torn about the morality of vigilante justice. (Remember, if the hero cries about it a little, the audience doesn’t have to feel bad about all the graphic murders). Lastly, pick a set piece for the final showdown. I recommend a [blank] factory (fill in the blank with something awesome, preferably flammable) or a national landmark. The End. Roll credits.

The target is to get approximately two minutes of decent action movie fodder so that you can cut together a trailer. Anything past that is icing on the hotcakes. Don’t worry if you didn’t use all the potential of your chosen superpower, you can skim through the fanfic later and steal their ideas for the sequels.

Alright, let’s put this guide into action:

What should our superpower be? How about bilocation, the ability to be in two places at once? Perfect for comedy setups and explaining away poor continuity. It comes from the Bible (probably) so the rest just writes itself.

Secret sect of ninja monks has been protecting humanity since the dawn of time. Cynical handyman is revealed to be unlikely Chosen One destined to repel a dark lord that returns every 100 years. Sexy nun is put in charge of training him to use his superpower. He can only die if both versions of him are killed at once, so we crosscut between one being chased through catacombs and another fighting gargoyles, which are actually petrified aliens. Vatican City turns out to be a spaceship. Yadda yadda yadda and we end up in a zero-G final showdown on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Go home. Bathe in cash.

It’s really that easy!

Keep an eye out for future installments where I’ll explain what to do if you blow your entire budget on explosions in the pre-credit sequence* and how to fix a script that doesn’t call for any helicopter scenes**.

* Have characters constantly refer to the pre-credit sequence as “The [blank] Incident” and flashback to the explosion.
** Add helicopters.

Film Walrus Issues Required Reading

I’d like to issue two hardy welcomes to a couple of new bloggers who I know from the fleshosphere.

Fellow WashU film student Exactly Why shares my passion for film in general, and noir and horror specifically. Her comments have often appeared on the Film Walrus and our discussions have helped shape my ideas on cinema. Most recently, she joined me for a weekend of SLIFF fun. Her new blog, “Why Film, Exactly?” will no doubt benefit from her wide-ranging film taste, talented writing skills and training in Classics.

Meanwhile, my older sister Meredith has entered the blog arena with The Czech, a diverse social issues blog. Along with my brother’s music review blog, this puts half my family in the blogosphere and allows us to cover most of everything that is interesting on the internet.

It’s probably no coincidence that my sister’s blog is named after our most important heritage. Czech culture is replete with superlative achievements ranging from our cinematic new wave to our bridges and spires.

Our shadowy-puppetmaster role on the global political-economic stage is a testament both the greatness and subtlety of Czechs. The nonexistence of negative Czech stereotypes (sorry Poland) is one clear indicator that we’ve been successful at our insidious campaign. One of Wim Wenders’ characters in “Kings of the Road” assesses the impact of America on Germany by saying “The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.” Well the counterrevolution has come and gone: the Czechs have invaded your unconscious. If all goes according to plan, no one will even realize that power has changed hands. I can literally announce it on The Film Walrus and you’ll probably remain complacent.

But enough fun, we didn’t orchestrate this coup just to gloat. I must now command you to add reading these new blogs to your standing orders of working, consuming and reproducing. And don’t you drones have some droning you should be doing, too?

Three Rants

Not being in a very spritely mood recently, for reasons that will become obvious in one of the anecdotes below, I’ve decided to bring you three shameless rants for the price of one. Though the films are unrelated, the ravings go nicely together because they are shorter, more personal and more experimental than my usual negative reviews. The first two didn’t even start out as intentional rants.

I don’t like to dwell on the negative too often, but it can be quite therapeutic. You might say a threefer seems a bit excessive for a mere cleansing vent, but today I don’t just want to whine; I want to wallow.


Rant #1: “Three Brothers” (1981) by Francesco Rosi

Sometimes I like to pretend that I get to write the plot summaries on the back of DVDs. It took me several tries to mentally prepare a complete description of “Three Brothers,” fully articulating the contemplative tone and deep themes that theoretically sell indie-foreign titles. I was dissatisfied with my final draft. Eventually it struck me that an unedited transcript of my first attempt was more succinct and would actually be more helpful to anyone who was considering purchasing the film. Here it is:

“Three Italian brothers who have led symbolically divergent lives attempt to reunite at their ancestral home after the death of their mother. Familial bonds and politics mix freely in this – zzzzz… zzzzZZZZzzz…”


Rant #2: “Sense and Sensibility” (1995) by Ang Lee

Like many film bloggers who take their hobby too far, I often scribble notes during viewings to help jog my memory when I get around to writing the review. Typically I mark down the exact time of screenshots I want to go back and capture later on my PC, the names of characters (which I forget instantly otherwise) and all the styles, themes and interesting scenes that I might want to bring up. My notes while watching “Sense and Sensibility” look a little different than usual:



Rant #3: “Transformers” (2007) by Michael Bay

Last week, as part of my still-ongoing spell of sci-fi gluttony, I made the mistake of renting “Transformers” from the library. The film sent me into sputtering conniption fits of the magnitude I usually reserve for road rage homicide or the news that UPS accidently delivered a package of fire to my house instead of “Burn!” (1969), like I ordered.

While sinking into the type of minor existential crisis I am fond of, I managed to turn myself towards the silent heavens and ask, “Could there be any experience worse than watching Transformers?” “Could a more excruciating piece of crap even be made?”

No one particularly celestial was listening, but Satan’s ears must have been straining in my direction because he rose to my inadvertent challenge. With his typical flair for dramatic irony and intentional misinterpretation, he (along with a genetic proclivity and a mediocre diet) arranged that I should be the very creator of the more excruciating piece of crap, in the form of four simultaneous kidney stones.

On Wednesday Katie and I hired a team of assassin-urologists to smoke out the offenders with a barrage of ultrasonic waves, but a cadre of vengeance-bent survivors arranged an ambush for me where the pass narrows. A few hours after leaving the hospital I was vomiting with pain, a state I stayed in for several hours while the ER took their sweet time procuring morphine. Work and recreation plans for the week evaporated while I moaned and flopped around on a lumpy hospital bed, until a stent could be rammed up my ureter a few days later.

Which brings us to today. I guess you could say the devil won this round, punishing me in fine Greek-tragedy style for the crime of rash hyperbole in film criticism. And yet, as I piss yet another liter of blood through my stinging genitals, I can’t help thinking that “Transformers” is still worse.

Review of Incredible Cat Tricks

With its professional camera use, multiple takes to optimize performances and inclusion of sets, “Air Bud” (1997) was every inch the Hollywood blockbuster. It turned Buddy, a talented sporty Golden Retriever, into an international celebrity and launched a series of spinoffs that capitalized on (some would say exploited) his success. It was a triumph of advertising and passable technical competence that will remain a marginal part of America’s long and prestigious tradition of gimmickry.

But the same year that “Air Bud’s” became a slam dunk success, a scrappy independent animal flick was struggling for survival. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that “Incredible Cat Tricks” is the superior film, a showcase of staggering brilliance that has been labeled by some critics as the Citizen Kane of cat trick movies.

“Incredible Cat Tricks” (1997) stars Princess Kitty, known the world over as “the world’s smartest cat” (actual ranking unknown given the variability in standardized testing) in her film debut. Often dismissed as merely well-groomed, Princess Kitty gives the performance of a lifetime as herself, a pampered grouchy cat forced to do degrading parlor tricks by a megalomaniac owner (Karen Payne, also playing herself) with too much time on her hands.

The subtlety of Princess Kitty’s role is admirable, presenting the hard-bitten world-weary lethargy of a cynical showcat sick of the spotlight’s soulless warmth and desperate to curl up in the shadows of a broken career. Her frustrated growls and attempts to bite her owner reveal the fissures in a fraught relationship with a naturalism that borders on complete inattention. Meanwhile, Payne is spot on as the slightly insane, totally clueless self-promoter who lapses into eccentric monologues about her pet’s past incarnations as an Egyptian empress.

The comparisons to Citizen Kane are particularly apropos, given its structure as a biographical roman à clef centered on the cat trick industry titan, Princess Kitty, and told through a complicated web of interviews and flashbacks that operate without ever really accessing the subject herself. Instead, her tale is told through a humane society worker, a Telemundo gameshow host and the woman who knew her best, but who ultimately never really knew her at all: Karen Payne. Their testimony builds a patchwork of personality, a network of contradictions that denies the easy answers and slick simplicity of “Air Bud.”

While critics might have accepted a tragicomic anti-heroic feline biopic, they weren’t in the least prepared to respond to the bold technical experiments that place “Incredible Cat Tricks” at the frontlines of the avant-garde. The free-style, nearly satiric appropriation of neorealist and dogme 95 methodology to give the film a look of unrehearsed immediacy is both refreshing and shockingly against the grain of Hollywood wisdom. “Incredible Cat Tricks” doesn’t just shun the obsessive drive for perfectionism that shooting multiple takes entails; it embraces mistakes as happy accidents. The director goes even further towards naked honesty, exposing the very artifice of the medium by dipping the mic boom into the frame.

Partial blame for the relatively obscurity and general critical dismissal of “Incredible Cat Tricks” is the fault of a mismanaged distribution and marketing campaign. Only available for $25 on VHS from http://www.princesskitty.com/ (the Film Walrus found a copy gathering dust at his local library) the box art promises 60 minutes of amazing cat tricks. It’s a promise the film just can’t keep, and perhaps no 52 minute movie could.

Still, after the half an hour of Princess Kitty biography and promotional material, the 20 minute cat trick performance sequence is a marvel of minimalist virtuosity that more than makes up for the blatant misadvertising. Shot with a straight-on monotone framing against a featureless blue background, the trick sequence forces our attention to focus only on Mrs. Payne and her star performer. The owner’s Princess Kitty T-shirt is the only item of expressive detail, a daring statement on celebrity narcissism. It creates an eerie photographic doppelganger that shares the stage with its 3D counterpart, silently commenting on the psychologically irreconcilability of the actor/role double-life.

How incredible are the cat tricks themselves? After the hype drummed up throughout the preceding promotional half hour, the spectator is confronted with a shocking emptiness. Art is pulled through time towards its primal state. The theater collapses. The circus collapses. The street-side organ grinder collapses. All that is left is performance reduced to its most essential state: a cat batting at chimes. It may not create music, but it signals something a great deal more profound.

Whether you accept “Incredible Cat Tricks” as a documentary, vaudville spectacle, unintentional comedy or metaphorical critique of the Hollywood fame factory, Princess Kitty has a little something for everyone. Though films like “Best in Show” and “Gates of Heaven” have mined the pet-owner relationship for semi-documentary pathos before, “Incredible Cat Tricks” may come closest to the real thing.

Walrus Rating: 1.5

*This review was written in consultation with the Film Walrus’s in-house animal film expert, Klaws Kinski. Prof. Kinski sits on the National Board of Disdainful Cinematic Snobbery and on my window sill.

Has the Sci-Fi Genre Been Robbed of Oscars?

In my review of Going My Way, I mentioned the rarity of genre films amongst Best Picture Academy Award winners. Specifically, science fiction, fantasy and horror have traditionally been left out, winning 0, 1 (Lord of the Rings) and 1 (Silence of the Lambs) respectively. In a conversation with Mad Dog afterwards, he wondered what sci-fi/fantasy films I thought deserved to win.

As a confirmed sci-fi nerd, I decided to tackle the question systematically. Besides, if we want to avoid opening up paradoxes then we’ll need a clear agenda for using our time machines and mind control rays to correct Oscar voting.

Here is my plan: I’m going to flip through the 80 year history of the Oscars and retroactively award trophies to the sci-fi genre. This is perfectly in keeping with the traditional academy practice of giving awards to the people who should have won them in the past. Since I am not bound by the byzantine rules that govern the academy, I’m going to do things my way. I’m not constraining myself to the historical nominee lists and I’m going to consider foreign films as eligible in the year they were released.

To make things even more interesting, I’m going to issue statues in three minerals:

1) Gold – For any year in which I think a science-fiction film should have won.
2) Silver – For any year in which I can name at least one science-fiction film that I like better than the film that won (even if it was not the year’s overall best).
3) Bronze – For any year in which I can name at least one fantasy or horror film that I like better than the film that won. These have to be films outside the realm of reasonable reality. Thus a horror film about a serial killer does not count, but one about zombies or pyrokinesis would. Similarly, a medieval epic would be ineligible, but a fantasy involving magic or non-human races would.

Only one award (the best possible) will be given for each year.

For each ceremony I will list the year followed by the original winner in parentheses. My comments and awards will come after. For many dates I’m limited by the breadth of SF I’ve seen, which is a little lacking for the 1950’s and before. Any help is appreciated. On silvers and bronzes, if you’re curious about what film I would have ranked #1, you’ll have to wait for a future series (or just ask in the comments).


Year by Year Revisions:

1928 (Wings): Wings is solid entertainment, but no competition for the landmark Metropolis. Gold trophy.

1929 (Broadway Melody): Even the relatively silly sci-fi adventure Woman in the Moon trumps Broadway Melody’s musical tripe, which rode in on novelty, but is outclassed by nearly every song and dance picture of the 1930’s. Silver trophy.

1930 (All Quiet on the Western Front)

1931 (Cimarron): The prototype for all bloated blockbusters that got showered with molten Oscar gold by short-sighted voters, this overblown western is now universally regretted by critics. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, however, are still considered classics. There were even better foreign films in 1931, but in practicality they never win, so a gold trophy it is.

1932 (Grand Hotel): Critics seem to look down their noses at the now-passe Grand Hotel today, but I don’t know; I kind of like it. A whole slew of horror classics came out, including The Mummy, Vampyr, and The Most Dangerous Game, but I think the best answers are either Freaks the Dr. Moreau adaptation Island of Lost Souls, both of which contain sci-fi elements for the silver.

1933 (Cavalcade): King Kong has stood the test of time far better than Cavalcade, even though its effects are now more charming than terrifying. I can just imagine Kong crushing decade-spanning odes to patriotism and class unity with his over-sized hairy paws. For the record, I consider any giant monster movie with a raging beast more than ten times human size to be sci-fi (plus there's the whole lost world angle), so I don't want to hear any arguments that it shouldn't get a silver at the least. The gold, however, could be argued, but who would dare argue with the mighty Kong?

1934 (It Happened One Night)

1935 (Mutiny on the Bounty): I’m a big fan of this one, but I’d have to say that Bride of Frankenstein is about on the same level. Hell, it’s even better than its original. We’ll call this a silver to stay on the safe side.

1936 (The Great Ziegfeld): Things to Come for the silver. I’m not a huge fan of either, but they have their moments. At heart, I think I like the forward-looking Things to Come more than the antiquated nostalgia, with which I can't relate, that swells forth from Ziegfeld.

1937 (The Life of Emile Zola): Fantasy favorites Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Lost Horizon are in the running, but The Life of Emile Zola is pretty decent. No statues.

1938 (You Can’t Take It with You): Not one of Capra's best, but a sparse year as far as I can tell. I could use some help.

1939 (Gone with the Wind)

1940 (Rebecca): Dr. Cyclops, perhaps the only real sci-fi entry this year, isn't even close.

1941 (How Green Was My Valley): Anything is better than this miserable Irish mining family rubbish that notoriously stole the Oscar from Citizen Kane and Maltese Falcon. Man Made Monster, aka The Electric Man is frankly terrible, but it will have to do unless someone knows of anything better.

1942 (Mrs. Miniver): So sue me if I’d rather see a movie about a lady who transforms into a panther under emotional stress than one about a lady who transforms into a less frivolous woman under the threat of German bombs. “Cat People” takes the bronze.

1943 (Casablanca)

1944 (Going My Way): Only because I haven’t seen a single SF film from 1944, although you can read my sarcastic claim that “Going My Way” counts, here.

1945 (Lost Weekend)

1946 (The Best Years of Our Life): A truly great film, and one of the best WWII "coming home" stories out there. Just the same, I’d probably put the fantasy classic “A Matter of Life and Death” on a short list of 1946 films that I like better. Bronze trophy.

1947 (Gentleman’s Agreement): There are at least five film noirs I can think of that I prefer to “Gentleman’s Agreement” (not a bad film itself), but to nab the silver I'll have to go with the ultra-obscure but brilliantly surreal and prescient Krakatit.

1948 (Hamlet)
1949 (All the King’s Men)

1950 (All About Eve): All About Eve is too good to try toppling, but the 1950's began to usher in some legitimately interesting SF beginning with Panic in the Streets, DOA, Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M.

1951 (An American in Paris): I’ve never understood the enduring popularity of this one. I’ll take The Thing from Another World any day, but even better is The Man in the White Suit. It's about as soft as sci-fi gets, but it works. Gold trophy.

1952 (The Greatest Show on Earth): Despite the ambitious title, it seems like I should be able to outdo it, yet my SF knowledge fails me for 1952.

1953 (From Here to Eternity): A great year for B-movies: Robot Monster, War of the Worlds, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Then there is the largely fantasy-based 5000 Fingers of Dr. T which includes an atomic device (which mean science, right!). Ultimately I'm going to award a silver award based on my love for little-known Brit B-movie gem The Four Sided Triangle. Not to many people would agree that it is better than From Here to Eternity, but its often the case that everyone except me is wrong.

1954 (On the Waterfront): Much as I enjoy Them!...

1955 (Marty): I don't want to put any spoilers here, but I think Kiss Me, Deadly might qualify (discussion in the comments section). The excellent The Quatermass Xperiment provides a more explicitly SF silver.

1956 (Around the World in 80 Days): Forbidden Planet. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Earth Versus the Flying Saucers. This one is too easy and AtWi80d helps by aging quite poorly. It’s kind of a shame that one of Jules Verne’s least impressive and utterly un-sci-fi novels should be his only adaptation to win. Again, my absolute top contenders are all foreign films, so we'll assume academy jingoism should have sealed a gold.

1957 (The Bridge on the River Kwai): The Incredible Shrinking Man is not to be missed, but it isn't in the same order of magnitude as David Lean.

1958 (Gigi): Here's the year that Jules Verne should have won, for The Fabulous world of Jules Verne by Karel Zeman. Mostly based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Myserious Island, but with Zeman adding some of his own stop-motion inspirations to boot. Also good are Fiend without a Face, The Blob and I Bury the Living.

1959 (Ben-Hur): I’d like to think I could take all 212 minutes of Ben-Hur without batting a eyelash, but I’m getting little help from the year’s lineup: On the Beach? The Wasp Woman? Plan 9 from Outer Space? I'll have to call upon The Tingler, a gulity pleasure, though it means that I make gimmick-king William Castle a best-picture winner.

1960 (The Apartment)

1961 (West Side Story): I love West Side Story, but the technically-innovative and marvelously whimsical Czech mixed-media Baron von Munchausen adaption Baron Prasil is something I love even more.

1962 (Lawrence of Arabia): Many would disagree, but I know I have allies in thinking The Manchurian Candidate is worthy of the prize. Should brainwashing and mind control be considered sci-fi? I compel you to think so! Gold trophy!

1963 (Tom Jones ): Tom Jones stood for a long time, with little to oppose it save the underloved Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People (aka Fungus of Terror). However, the Czech Republic's ahead-of-its-time space opera Ikarie XB-1 handily unseats it and may even deserve a gold.

1964 (My Fair Lady): If My Fair Lady had ended with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison singing “The Rain in Spain” while being consumed in a hailstorm of nuclear bombs, it might have stopped me from sliding the Oscar over to Dr. Strangelove. Gold trophy.

1965 (The Sound of Music): Alphaville, followed by the The War Game. Silver trophy.

1966 (A Man for All Seasons): Who Wants to Kill Jesse? steals the prize in a bloodless Czech coup. And despite Paul Scofield’s excellent performance, I bequeath his acting Oscar to Olga Schoberova. Just because! (Also, it's worth mentioning the underrated Seconds).

1967 (In the Heat of the Night) It's a bit of a stretch but I'm going to combine the British Privilege and the French Weekend, too dystopian films in the thick of the political turmoil that also produced In the Heat of the Night. We'll call it a silver.

1968 (Oliver!): In what will probably be the least contested retroactive decision of this entire post, I transfer the Oscar to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” How “Oliver!” won, even given its catchy, lightweight charm, I’ll never know. On the long list of 1968 SF I’d rather rewatch would be “Yellow Submarine,” “Night of the Living Dead,” “Barbarella” and “Danger: Diabolik.” Gold, gold gold.

1969 (Midnight Cowboys): An odd year for SF. Horrors of Malformed Men, Marooned and The Illustrated Man are all interesting anomalies, but none work as well as Midnight Cowboys.

1970 (Patton): I don’t think I can count 1970’s outpouring of surrealism as SF (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Eden and After, El Topo, etc.), which is a shame. Originally I actually put forward Colossus: The Forbin Project for a silver, but I don't think that holds up. Patton emerges from the battlefield as the victor.

1971 (The French Connection): While both films share a dubious legacy of starting violent cinematic trends, I think “A Clockwork Orange” is the more groundbreaking and provocative work. I wouldn’t quite commit to calling it the year’s best, so silver trophy for now.

1972 (The Godfather)

1973 (The Sting): I'm too big a fan of The Sting to retcon 1973, but it was a year full of oddball contenders: The Holy Mountain, The Hourglass Sanatorium, The Savage Planet, The Day of the Dolphin, Sleeper, Soylent Green, Idaho Transfer, Ivan the Terrible: Back to the Future and Westworld.

1974 (The Godfather Part II)

1975 (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest): The combined cult status of Rocky Horror Picture Show, Death Race 2000, Shivers, A Boy and His Dog, Rollerball, Footprints on the Moon, The Stepford Wives and Black Moon earn a silver even if individually they might not truly rival Jack Nicholson's performance piece. Call it a silver.

1976 (Rocky): The Man Who Fell to Earth? God Told Me To? Maybe even almost Logan’s Run? This is far from my best attempt, but I grant it a silver anyway. Rocky's a popular heavyweight these days and his underdog status is overrated.

1977 (Annie Hall): This is probably my favorite Woody Allen film and there’s only a single 1977 that I unambiguously like more. Fortunately, it’s SF. Can you guess it? “Eraserhead.” Oh, and for the angry unwashed masses, you can pretend I said “Star Wars” or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Gold medal.

1978 (Deer Hunter): I’m of the minority opinion that 1978 was just not a standout year for SF. I’ve got no special love for Superman, Dawn of the Dead, The Boys from Brazil, Coma, the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or even the gloriously awful Starcrash. No awards.

1979 (Kramer vs. Kramer): The Tin Drum and Stalker are arguably eligible for the steal, but Alien is the obvious answer. It almost gets a gold from me, but will have to settle for a silver since I can think of exactly one better 1979 film (Apocalypse Now).

1980 (Ordinary People): The Empire Strikes Back and The Falls can both handily and independently clinch a silver trophy here.

1981 (Chariots of Fire): Time Bandits would lock in a silver trophy, but since the best film of the year (maybe even the decade) is the vaguely-sci-fi horror movie Possession I think a gold is in order.

1982 (Gandhi): Blade Runner. Solid gold. Enough said.

1983 (Terms of Endearment): I think the year's best is rightfully the French essay-film Sunless although it would never actually win for at least two reasons (ie: Frenchness and using the pseudo-documentary essay format). Therefore, Videodrome is left free to nab the gold trophy and shovel it into its chest oriface.

1984 (Amadeus): Terminator, Ghost Busters and The Brother from another Planet are all up there, but I’m a huge Amadeus fan, with its dueling composers and insight into genius, jealously and revenge. However, throw in 1984, Repo Man and Threads (and as Mad Dog mentions, Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer) for some fierce competition, and I think a silver is not improper. This was originally a bronze, but I'm capitulating before anyone can write in with crazy defenses of Dune or The Last Starfighter.

1985 (Out of Africa): Brazil walks in, guns down all the nominees in the room, and coolly walks away from the carnage with its well-deserved golden Oscar.

1986 (Platoon): I know Platoon has a lot of fans out there, but I think The Fly is just strong enough to buzz off with the silver prize.

1987 (The Last Emperor): OK, The Red Spectacles is probably not the best known or most liked ’87 SF I could have picked, so choose your own. Here are some ideas: Predator, RoboCop, Hellraiser, Wings of Honneamise, On the Silver Globe, Evil Dead II, Bad Taste, Spaceballs. But keep in mind that The Last Emperor is a pretty decent, unquestionably gorgeous film. Silver trophy.

1988 (Rain Man): I have a soft-spot for Rain Man despite its flaws. Nevertheless, I’d take cartoons-come-to-life fantasy Who Framed Roger Rabbit or the magical realism Time of the Gypsies over it. Bronze trophy. (Mad Dog notes that anime heavy-weight Akira should be in the running, and while I'm not an acolyte at that altar, it does deserve a mention.)

1989 (Driving Miss Daisy): Can Batman be considered SF? For this year it is surprisingly hard for me to find pure SF to triumph over such a frail opponent. Oh, wait, wait, wait… Tetsuo: The Iron Man. There we go. Silver it is.

1990 (Dances with Wolves): There’s always Clive Barker’s oddball horror film Nightbreed, but for a genuine silver I’ll have to turn towards one of my favorite animes, PatLabor 2: The Movie.(Note: If you are interested, you don’t have to see the show or the original movie to enjoy.) Verhoeven's undeniably fun Total Recall, a favorite since I was young and fitting way to close out the 80's, can also trounce Wolves.

1991 (Silence of the Lambs)

1992 (Unforgiven): This is a hard one to beat, so I’m going to have to call upon my secret magical realism weapon, Olivier, Olivier, for a dues ex machina. It's got a couple of undeniable sci-fi intrusions so it qualifies for a gold trophy. If you haven't seen it, you might have to buy the VHS used from Amazon or request it from a public library system to catch a peak, but I consider it worth the effort.

1993 (Schindler’s List): Talking animals is the simple, yet brilliant premise of the 1993 cerebral SF classic Look Who’s Talking Now. Nah, just kidding. The year’s best genuine SF was probably Jurassic Park, so Spielberg wins no matter what. No trophy awarded.

1994 (Forrest Gump): I seem to remember liking Forrest Gump though I’m a bit embarrassed by that in retrospect. It bears eventual rewatching. The question is rather something like Stargate or Star Trek: Generations is really any better? For now I’ll use another guilty pleasure, the fantasy-tinged Heavenly Creatures, to nab a bronze.

1995 (Braveheart): City of the Lost Children and the non-SF Se7en are my two top contenders for the year, with Ghost in the Shell not far behind. We'll say that sci-fi has a two-thirds majority to squeeze in a gold statue.

1996 (The English Patient): Mars Attacks, Multiplicity, and Space Jam just aren’t going to cut it, and even the year’s big SF release, Independence Day falls well short of The English Patient. There were a handful of better films this year, but science-fiction dropped the ball.

1997 (Titanic): I like a good Poseidon Adventure knock-off as much as the next guy (though clearly not as much as the next gal), and “Titanic” has an undeniable emotional sweep, technical audacity and flair for the dramatic. Still, I’m far less effusive than the academy. I’ll jump to the far extreme of the budget spectrum – while remaining on the same quality of acting – by picking Cube. Silver trophy.

1998 (Shakespeare in Love): Whether you prefer brooding indie sci-fi like Dark City and Pi or high-concept feel-good blockbusters like The Truman Show and Pleasantville, there was just no excuse to award Shakespeare in Love anything. Of course, everyone in 1998 was so shocked that Saving Private Ryan didn't win, that they too numb to enummerate all the other fine films that were spurned. Here's hoping that the gold trophies heals some of the wounds.

1999 (American Beauty): I was pretty in favor of this victory back in 1999, but the film seems far less daring now that I’ve seen a lot more hard-hitting dramas from the preceding decades. Still a finely acted and well-orchestrated feature, but now I think Being John Malkovich and The Matrix should have split the little gold man.

2000 (Gladiator): I've not felt any drive to go back and rewatch Gladiator over the years, but I've revisited the underrated Canadian mindtrip Possible Worlds half a dozen times, always finding new food for thought. It deserves a gold trophy. Wild Zero, benefitting from taking itself a lot less seriously than anyone involved with Gladiator, is also a fun alternative.

2001 (A Beautiful Mind): 2001 has a lot of arguable cult favorites (Donnie Darko, American Astronaut, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, and Millennium Actress to name a few) that can all lay some claim to the Silver. My vote for the year's best is the anime Spirited Away, a fantasy film that causes the gold to slip through the cracks of my own rules.

2002 (Chicago): The remake of Solaris for a silver. I thought this was just crazy personal bias, but it sounds like Tim (see comments) agrees. I called this a slow year originally, but he also reminded me of Minority Report, one of Spielberg's late career bests.

2003 (Lord of the Rings): Considering that this is already fantasy, I’ll leave well enough alone.

2004 (Million Dollar Baby): I loved Million Dollar Baby, but nothing like the creative solar flare of Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind. 2002 was a year of great ideas, and Primer deserves a mention too. Gold trophy.

2005 (Crash): Fans of V for Vendetta will probably be upset at my suggestion that this battle was even close, but it was. Serenity would have tipped the battle if there was any lingering doubts, so it’s another silver trophy for the shelf.

2006 (The Departed): I applaud a more-or-less action movie taking the prize, but did it have to be a derivative remake of a foreign film on a year when so much better came out? Take your pick of The Prestige, Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men, The Fountain and even Renaissance. Au.

2007 (No Country for Old Men): Should it have gone to There Will Be Blood? Maybe. Probably. But SF wasn't even in the running.

2008 (Slumdog Millionaire): WALL-E and Timecrimes are two fantastic sci-fi films that I'd rank over enjoyable crowd-pleaser Slumdog, but since the best film was easily Synecdoche, New York. Since that is borderline sci-fi (more fantasy, I know), we'll go ahead and call this a golden year.

2009 (The Hurt Locker): A silver for The Watchmen. Not as brilliant as the graphic novel, but pretty darn close.

2010 (The King's Speech): A disappointingly safe choice from the academy on a year with much more interesting films. Inception deserves a silver trophy, though it should have been even better, while the year's real winner was Fincher's Social Network.

Final Score:
Bronze: 5
Silver: 29
Gold: 22
Total: 56 (about 67% or 2/3 of Oscar years)

Conclusion: Spin up your time machine and recharge your mind control rayguns, science-fiction has definitively been short-changed and history needs to be fixed!

Call to Arms:
P.S. If you think you know a way to add more (or better) trophies to the stockpile, then put your suggestion in the comments section. Give the name of the original winner and the title of the film you prefer. All I ask is that you make sure to see the actual Oscar winner, too. If I agree with you, I’ll update the list.