Six Funny Things from the Films of 2012

by Luke Burns

This year, a few movies brought me to laughter with funny moments I wasn’t expecting. In no particular order, here are those moments:

 1. "I'm from the future!" - Looper

Is there anything more frustrating in time travel movies than when everyone ignores the advice of a character from the future? Just do what he says, damn it, he’s from the future. Looper plays on this time travel trope in the scene in which Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) discusses his plans for retirement with Abe (Jeff Daniels), a mobster from the future who has been sent back to oversee his organization’s operations in the past.

Joe: I'm going to France.
Abe: You should go to China.
Joe: I'm going to France.
Abe: I'm from the future! You should go to China.

This exchange encapsulates one of Looper’s central themes: the conflict between the arrogance of young people who think they can do anything and the arrogance of old people who think they know everything. It’s just not in Joe’s nature to listen to his elders, even an elder who KNOWS THE DAMN FUTURE.  And when (in one timeline, anyway) Joe does wind up going to China, we understand that this represents an important turning point for the character. More importantly, though, Daniels’ sheer exasperation in his line reading cracked me up.

Stand-up Comedy - 2012 In Review

by James Folta and Mike Yarsky

 
In a discussion of stand-up comedy specials, Mike Yarsky and James Folta talk about what they liked and didn’t like in 2012 and beyond.

James Folta: Lots of good comedy in the past couple years. I’ve been excited to discover John Mulaney, Hannibal Buress, Anthony Jeselnik and others. Who has excited you?

Michael P. Yarsky: Those people are definitely all great. Last year - in part because of Louie but also because he released a record, I discovered Doug Stanhope. In 2011, Doug Stanhope went onto a makeshift stage in Oslo with quasi-rehearsed material and spoke to people for whom English was their second language. At the beginning of the special, Burning the Bridge to Nowhere, he talks about how terrible and overly polished Comedy Central specials can get, and that his didn’t go remotely like it was captured on air. He said that it’s simply not indicative of live comedy or what it’s really like on the road. Not twenty minutes later or thereabouts, he is onstage, in a blurry shot and unsteady cameras, holding a plastic cup of beer, and he says, "I think that's why I hate observational comedy so much. Because there's no passion. There's no rage."

Wes Anderson's New Wave

by Mark Paglia

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) - dir. Wes Anderson

Despite respectively revolving around heists, high school, family dynamics, oceanography, tourism, and a Roald Dahl book, Wes Anderson’s films have earned a reputation for all being alike. That is to say, they all possess a bright, anachronistic set design and sad adults played by actors surnamed Murray, Schwartzman, or Wilson. Moonrise Kingdom branches out in one obvious respect by making extensive use of child actors, and in other respects as well. Overall it lacks the coherence of his earlier films, but Moonrise Kingdom very nearly makes up for this with the promise it shows for Anderson to expand his style.

You Can Never Go There and Back Again

by James Folta

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) - dir. Peter Jackson

 J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was one of the first books I ever really loved. I read it over and over. In fact, the second thing I ever bought with my own money, out of my dragon-hoard of coins collected in a sock, was the BBC radio dramatization of The Hobbit (my first purchase being the VHS set of what was then the original Star Wars trilogy). Later, I wore out my copies of the Lord of the Rings. I even read The Silmarillion and acted like I enjoyed the experience. (Don’t lie to yourself, that book is only a badge - the true believers will back me up on this one.)

So I was excited for the new film version of The Hobbit. I was excited when I first heard that Guillermo Del Toro would direct. I wasn’t even disappointed when he dropped out. (Though, can you imagine?) All this is to let you know that I’m biased towards The Hobbit. I want it to be great and live up to my childhood ideals. I’m inclined to be the Fox News to its GOP (Blam! Sucker Punch!). And, for the most part, it did satisfy me - watching this movie adapted what I loved most about the Lord of the Rings films to tell a tale with all the wonder and whimsy from the book’s sweeping mythology. It was fun in that Spielberg-directing-Indy rollicking adventure sort of way.

A Map of Empathy

By Mike Yarsky

Cloud Atlas (2012) - dir. Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski

 























Because this is the recursive, matroyshka-based Cloud Atlas I am discussing, it seemed appropriate that, in my review of the film, I would quote my review of the book, in which I quote somebody else:

‘Roger Ebert wrote of Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain: "If [it] is an ambitious folly, that's hardly inappropriate because the movie itself is about one of humankind's most grandiose follies, the quest for eternal life...The movie has already been damned as silly and praised as audacious at film festivals from Venice to Toronto -- and both those assessments are valid, in part because of the movie's biggest aesthetic gamble: its earnestness." Substitute “the quest for eternal life" with "the will to power," and "its earnestness" with "its uniqueness of form," and that is mostly where I stand with Cloud Atlas.’

Issue 1 - Horror

VIRTUAL ROUND TABLE - Horror Scenes from Non-Horror Movies

Alien Surgery
by Brian Agler

The dissection of a supposedly dead alien goes horribly wrong in Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996)
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Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - Be Afraid of the Light
by Luke Burns

Kiss Me Deadly's (1955) Mike Hammer as monster in Robert Aldrich's bleak, cynical noir

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The Opening of the Ark
by James Folta 

The climactic opening of The Ark of the Covenant in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
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Plumbing Problems
by Allen Irwin

A look at Harry Caul's investigation of Room 773 in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974)

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The Haunted House in the Clouds
by Mark Paglia

An analysis of Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as haunted house

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 "I Got a Live One Here!"
by Adam Sweeney

Jack Nicholson mixes horror with the comic in Tim Burton's Batman (1989)
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The Incinerator
by Mike Yarsky

Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3 (2010) unintentionally reveals the most horrifying truth of all





ESSAYS

Consent & Horror
by Mike Yarsky

An examination of the implicit agreements between horror films and their viewers, and the abuses thereof.





REVIEWS

Everyday Horror
ParaNorman (2012)
by Allen Irwin


 
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Lionheart's Greatest Performance
Theater of Blood (1973)
by Adam Sweeney