Awkward Press

According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their ongoing feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs. This week, they take a break from their usual shenanigans to help you win big money in your Oscar pools.

Jeffrey:

True fact: I have never missed an Oscar ceremony. Oh, I’m sure there were a few years before I came of thinking age that it wasn’t high on my priority list, but as long as I’ve loved movies, the Academy Awards has been appointment viewing. I was watching when Sally Field said, “You like me, you really like me!” I was there when Rob Lowe performed his infamous duet with Snow White. (Well, not there, but you know what I mean.) I’ve sat through Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin, David Letterman, Chris Rock, lots and lots of Billy Crystal, and more horrendous musical numbers than I can count.

I was a little bit of a late bloomer; I didn’t start to become cynical about what the Oscars represent until I was, oh, 32 or so. I mean, I recognize that in any given year, there are always great films that go completely unrecognized by the Academy. But of all the major entertainment awards, the Oscars are still the most consistent in recognizing works and performances of actual artistic merit. The Emmys are hit-or-miss, and any award show that gives prizes to Two and a Half Men is automatically disqualified from relevance. The Golden Globes are an also-ran. Winning a Grammy is practically an insult. And the Tonys? Please. As if Denis O’ Hare in Take Me Out could even hold a candle to Thomas Jefferson Byrd in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. You might as well give a Tony to Tom Wopat!

Having said that, this year I am less interested in seeing who wins than I have ever been before. As everyone who knows anything about anything knows, this year there are 10 best picture nominees instead of 5. Why? I don’t know. Every year there are at least two films that don’t have a chance in hell; this year there are 8. My favorite of the nominees — A Serious Man — doesn’t stand a chance. I quite liked Inglorious Bastards , Up in the Air, and An Education, but none of them are going to get it, either. The race to watch is between The Hurt Locker and Avatar. My views on Avatar are pretty well known to anyone who reads this website (no one reads this website), and I thought The Hurt Locker was well-made but ultimately unengaging. (more…)

According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Jeffrey Dinsmore is one of those people I’ve always expected big things from and from whom I’ve always expected big things. As a novelist, he has written one of the funniest books of the ‘00s, a metaphysical sci-fi detective story called Johnny Astronaut. Well, he claims he wrote it. The author credit on the cover reads “Rory Carmichael”, but I am told there is some question regarding whether or not this person actually exists. I personally choose to believe he doesn’t, if only because he has never been photographed alongside Jeffrey. I’m told that photos of Carmichael by himself are fairly scarce too.

As a biographer, Dinsmore co-wrote I, an Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey, the memoirs of a movie star who has not aged well. I am told Karen Jamey, like Carmichael, may only exist in Jeffrey’s head. I saw a movie the other night and thought I saw Karen Jamey’s name in the credits, but a visit to imdb revealed that the last name of the actress is actually “Janney”. And her first name is actually “Allison”. The movie was American Beauty. Like Karen Jamey, it has not aged well either.

Jamey… Janney… Jamey… Janney

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According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Jeffrey:
The first two “adult” books I read when I was a kid were Judy Blume’s Wifey and Stephen King’s short-story collection Night Shift. I’m probably not the only child of the 70’s whose life was permanently changed in an icky way by Wifey. My parents should really have been locked up for keeping that book in the living room instead of hiding it away in their bedroom bookshelf with their Anaïs Nin books. Although I guess it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, since I read the Anaïs Nin books, too. Many, many times.

Night Shift didn’t make me feel icky in the same way that Wifey did, but it did introduce me to the thrill of being terrified. I would read my favorite stories over and over again, astounded that one writer could create so many goose-pimple-inducing scenarios. I’m sure much of it would come across as silly today—I haven’t read it since I was a kid—but at the time, Night Shift was as scary as scary could get. (more…)

According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

However, this week Jeffrey and Mike will be jettisoning one of the key elements of their “Awkward Movie Challenge” to commemorate the end of the decade: the “challenge” part. Instead of explaining to each other why they’re such huge assholes for not liking the same movie (or electronically making out because they love the same one), each fellow will discuss his personal favorite film of the ‘00s.

Mike:

I did not watch “Twin Peaks” during its initial run, when the “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” question received as much airtime on the nightly news as The Gulf War and the Queen of England was ducking out of Paul McCartney’s command performance rather than miss the latest episode. But several years after it went off the air, I was flicking through late night T.V. and landed on Bravo where I was halted by the image of a man picking stones out of a bowl held by a cop wearing oven mitts. He then tossed each stone at a glass bottle as some sort of Tibetan deductive detecting technique he”d learned about in a dream. I’d stumbled across a rerun of episode two of “Twin Peaks”, written and directed by the show’s co-creator, David Lynch. I’d never seen anything so goofy yet genuinely funny, so weird yet comfortably ordinary on television, and I’d already been a regular viewer of the goofy, funny, weird, ordinary “Northern Exposure”. After watching my first episode of “Peaks”, “Northern Exposure” seemed relatively trite. Everything else on T.V. seemed like a massive heap of cow dung.

Agent Dale Cooper solves Who Killed Laura Palmer with a little help from a pair of oven mitts on "Twin Peaks".

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According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Mike:

When we go to the movies, we have fairly reasonable expectations for whatever flick it is we’re going to view. If we’re to watch a comedy, we want to laugh. If a horror movie is on the docket, we want to get the chills. A drama should wrap us up in its plot, or at least engage us with characters worthy of emotional investment. At the very least, we want to be entertained. Some movies actually fulfill such expectations. A lot don’t. But then there are a select few that take our expectations, lift them over their heads, and smash them to pieces. I recall having such an experience around this time a decade ago. I was a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, a movie that blended the epic storytelling of Scorsese’s Goodfellas with the puerile silliness of a seventh grader telling dirty jokes to crack up his friends at recess. So, naturally, I was psyched to see Anderson’s follow-up, Magnolia (released ten years ago this Friday). The trailer was pretty incomprehensible, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The cast was pretty stellar, though (Julianne Moore and Jason Robards, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Melora Walters, Melinda Dillon, Phillip Baker Hall, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly…). Tom Cruise was in it too. (more…)

According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly semi-regular feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Jeffrey:

It’s difficult for me to understand why so many people have such animosity for Wes Anderson. Read the comments on any review of The Fantastic Mr. Fox and you’ll find half a dozen variations on the phrase, “He hasn’t done anything worthwhile since The Royal Tenenbaums.” For those of you keeping score at home, the “nothing worthwhile” in this comment refers to two movies (out of a five film career): The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited. I’ll agree, The Darjeeling Limited was a waste of everyone’s time and should promptly be forgotten. But this is only because Anderson ignored the first rule of filmmaking in the official Filmmakers Guide to Making Films: do not let Jason Schwartzman collaborate on your screenplay. Anderson can be forgiven for making this rookie mistake because from what I hear, he ripped up his Filmmakers Guide to Making Films years ago and replaced it with lollipops.

Anderson’s greatest claim to fame may be his introduction of the word “whimsical” to the handbook of movie reviewers’ derogatives. I’m not sure how he came to embody the essence of whimsy, because a surface glance at any of his films reveals a deep undercurrent of sadness. Bottle Rocket ends with one of the main characters getting sent to prison. In Rushmore, no one ends up particularly happy. Hackman dies in The Royal Tenenbaums and Luke Wilson engages in one of the gnarliest suicide attempts I’ve ever seen captured on film. In The Darjeeling Limited, everyone’s an asshole and the movie sucks. The only one that actually fits the characterization of pure whimsy to me is The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and that’s garnering Anderson some of the biggest raves of his career. So go figure.
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According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Mike:

When we last left The Awkward Movie Challenge, Jeffrey and I were caught in a bitter, blood-spewing, movie-critiquing apocalypse over Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, a film most likely never intended to stir up such mutual loathing between close friends. Since then, Jeffrey flew out to the East Coast for the express purpose of discussing his feelings with me in person. Yes, there were tears, hateful words were spoken, punches were thrown (as was dinnerware), but there were also words of forgiveness… and a fair amount of cuddling. Now that the scales have been set level again, Jeffrey and I are ready to continue delivering those movie challenges you crave the way a junkie craves plunging a syringe into his scrotum to deliver that sweet, sweet fix.

We’ve decided that David Lynch’s cult classic Blue Velvet (1986) would be the perfect film to kiss and make up to. Lynch is my personal favorite director (some might accuse me of being a bit obsessed, but those people probably just know me very, very well), and I believe that Jeffrey has described Blue Velvet as his all-time favorite film (correct me if I’m incorrect, Dinz). So what, you ask, is the point of evaluating a film that both of us unconditionally love and I’ve been writing about ever since I was a college undergrad constantly inventing new ways to shoe-horn David Lynch references into my term papers? I don’t know. Perhaps the problem is that you ask too many fucking questions. I recommend you sit back and just allow the cool waves of fawning to wash over you like a lilting mountain breeze.

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According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Jeffrey:

August 24th marks the 30th anniversary of Rock n’ Roll High School, the movie that is best known for introducing the world to beloved film star Clint Howard. Also, some band called the Ramones is in it. The three principal Ramones (Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee) have sadly passed on to that great Gabba Gabba in the sky, but, luckily, director Allan Arkush had the smarts to preserve the young pinheads in celluloid for future generations to enjoy. It would’ve been nice if the film he constructed around them wasn’t painfully unfunny, but I suppose we have to take what we can get.

Rock n’ Roll High School centers around the struggle between Miss Togar (Mary Woronov), principal of Vince Lombardi High, and Riff Randall (P.J. Soles), “rock n’ roller.” After a brief introductory scene in which we meet school brain Kate Rambeau (Dey Young) and football star Tom Roberts (Vincent Van Patten), we join Miss Togar in a school board meeting. While Miss Toger is informing the school board of her intentions to clean up the school, Riff hijacks the P.A. system and welcomes everyone to “Rock n’ Roll High School.” Which is really just Vince Lombardi High School with rock songs on the P.A. The crowd goes wild, because they think she’s going to play some Grand Funk Railroad.

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According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Unfortunately, this week Jeffrey is being a very, very small baby, and he says he does not have time to provide his contribution, so Mike is taking over the Awkward Movie Challenge, making it considerably less challenging, but a whole lot more awkward.

Mike:

In many ways, I’m a sad specimen. When Gremlins debuted in theaters 25 years ago this past June 8th (the same day as Ghostbusters, incidentally), my friend from down the block asked me if I wanted to see it with his family. I backed out because… well, I was a great big chicken (for more evidence of that, check out the regular feature Things That Scare Me on my site Psychobabble). I was not fooled by that fluffy Gizmo thing being hawked at the local Toys ‘R Us. I knew that he was just the cutesy-pie bait used to lure impressionable 10-year olds like me into some sort of traumatizing orgy of disemboweling and face-slashing.

When I finally saw Gremlins after it debuted on HBO a year later, I didn’t find it particularly horrifying, although I did find it to be highly entertaining. Still, I wasn’t completely wrong in my initial assumption that Gremlins might be disturbing; I was only wrong in thinking it contained material that would disturb me (I was more frightened of humanoid creatures than the kinds of scaly beasties in this film, and I lived in terror of seeing any kind of graphic eviscerating).

An assortment of Gremlins merch.

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According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Jeffrey:

2009 is a spectacular year for 25th anniversaries, because 1984 was a spectacular year for movies. Besides Purple Rain, which we discussed last week, it is also the year that brought us Ghostbusters and Gremlins (to be discussed next week). In fact, not only did the last two movies come out in the same year, they came out on the same damn day: June 8, 1984. What a glorious, glorious day to be a 9 year old boy, which is what I was, at the movie theater, trying to decide which one I should see first.

In addition to Purple Rain, Ghostbusters, and Gremlins 1984 also brought us Footloose (February 17), Repo Man and This is Spinal Tap (March 2), Splash (March 9), Police Academy (March 23), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (May 1), 16 Candles (May 4), Bachelor Party (June 19), The Karate Kid (June 22), Revenge of the Nerds (July 20), The Terminator (October 26), A Nightmare on Elm Street and Stop Making Sense (November 16), and the top-grossing film of the year, Beverly Hills Cop (December 5). Not to mention The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (August 15), both Breakin’ (May 4) and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (December 21), The Neverending Story (July 20), Romancing the Stone (March 30), and Tim Burton’s first major(ish) effort, Frankenweenie (December 1). Nearly every month of 1984 saw the release of an iconic film that has lived on in cinematic history. Was it the best year for film ever? I have no idea. I just spent 30 minutes on IMDB looking up those dates and I’m not venturing back in for a comparison. But in terms of quality mainstream Hollywood movies that have stood the test of time, I doubt you’re going to find too many years to rival that one.

Now, please note that I use the phrase “stood the test of time” loosely. Very few of these movies stand the test of time in the way that, say, The Godfather or Chinatown stands the test of time. But there is undoubtedly something compelling about them that keeps us watching. Is it mere nostalgia? Or are these movies actually good? In some cases, there’s no question: Stop Making Sense is one of the best music documentaries of all time, and This Is Spinal Tap is the movie that both defined the mockumentary genre and surpasses pretty much every effort since. In other cases, the quality of the film is so overshadowed by its place in culture that it becomes very difficult to look at it with fresh eyes.

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