movies

According to this press release from an admittedly biased Galaxy Press, publishers of Stories from the Golden Age, pulp fiction is back en vogue, driving the biggest movies of the decade:

Pulp fiction is back as entertainment, according to box office and publishing reports. America’s fascination was evidenced with Hollywood’s top-grossing films for the first decade of the 21st century, of which 8 of the top 10 were either stories written during fiction’s golden age in the 1930s, 40s and 50s like Lord of the Rings or based on heroes from that time as in Batman: The Dark Knight, Spider Man 1 and 2 and Star Wars Episode 3, garnering well over $3,200,000,000 in the US alone.

The Dark Knight Film Poster

Citing comparisons between the 1930’s and 40’s (the so-called Golden Age of Pulp Fiction) and our current age of uncertainty, the press release finds the unfavorable yet similar issues of economic collapse, multiple wars, and a public so hungry for escapism that they readily consume “pulp” stories with high-action entertainment value, full of heroes ready and able to take us away from all this. (One can only suppose that sales of Calgon, bath soap, home spa products have also been so favored.)

While all of this makes sense to me, I was wondering where they got their information on this top ten grossing movies… Desperate, I finally got the list at Wikipedia. I will remind folks that I’m no fan of the Wiki, but A), they seem to have compiled all their data from BoxOfficeMojo and 2), this list is good enough for Kottke, so in this case, the list should be good enough for me.

While the list, however, may be good enough for Kottke in the reliability sense, he seems unhappy with the actual top ten grossing films themselves:

Only one movie on the list was made from an original screenplay: Finding Nemo…the rest are all sequels or adapted from books, TV shows, amusement park rides, etc. Out of the top 50, only nine are not franchise films.

Thankfully, I don’t have to debate Kottke on this issue, Sean at Film Junk has done if for me:

Now, it’s pretty easy to jump on this list and whine and moan about how it means there is nothing original in Hollywood anymore. While I agree that there is a problem with studios valuing brand over concept, don’t forget, we are talking about the movies that made the most money here. OF COURSE familiar characters and titles are going to attract more viewers than strange and unfamiliar ones… doesn’t that make sense? A lot of people don’t even see movies at the theatre, so they don’t discover something until it hits TV or DVD. The first installment is the one that introduces the concept, attracts a following and then builds the franchise. Even the first movie from an existing property needs to build an audience — notice that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Spider-Man are the only movies on this list that are the first in their series?

This bit of film revenue history is very well documented — a fact most recently heard in TCM’s special on epic films.

Sean continues:

Anyway, I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s certainly not surprising. Unfortunately it’s this trend that has also resulted in the whole toy and board game movie debacle. Maybe we need a few brand-based movies to fail so that people realize that good stories are also important.

Who can deny that LOTR aren’t good films — or that Tolkien’s works aren’t good stories?!

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

I don’t know why people continue to wrinkle their snobbish noses at pop culture and commercial success, as if adoration of the masses is equal to bad taste; but people do it.

While I find the disdain of pop culture especially uncool in a democratic society, even a game-loving-fool such as myself can agree that not all the games, toys and movie merch is grand and that sales of one may bolster the sales of the other, in some sort of unwarranted mutual adoration society… But all of this seems perilously close to becoming a chicken-or-the-egg conversation.

Even more so when you add in the act of collecting.

Yet, fundamentally, I believe that whatever the original commercial sins of those movies which make the top grossing lists, their power will be adjusted over time. Only those movies, toys, etc. which provoke a strong sense of nostalgia will continue to matter. People don’t continue to collect Star Wars simply because of its box office gross. The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Star Trek have more than survived the test of time, they’ve thrived.

Such tests of time include high prices on the secondary market which prompts a renewed commercial interest in everything from theatrical re-releases, official reproductions and memorabilia, conversion of film to the latest consumer formats, etc. And the consistently high retail sales of those items are driven by collectors — collectors you might know better as “film fans.”

So it’s the acts of collectors over next few decades which will really prove the best movies of this now-ending decade.

To some extent, the most popular “biggest grossing” films of the past ten years will most certainly be in our memories — and these films may indeed be colored by desires for heroes in a time where we lack rose-colored glasses. But just which will bring a real sense of nostalgia, what films, books, games, etc. will forever tint the early years of 2000, that remains to be seen.

A Christmas Story

I saw the ad for the 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story on TBS and I had a few thoughts — which turned out to be pretty cool, because this week’s Monday Movie Meme is about favorite holiday movies.

My first thought was not about how that film, despite it’s having been set decades earlier, seems to ring nostalgic for so many of us (and interesting phenomenon that I do often ponder whenever I think of A Christmas Story, but rather how TBS has turned that film into a different kind of holiday classic…

You know, one of those films you associate with the holidays and family simply because it was on TV every year when you were a kid.

Scene From It's A Wonderful Life

Most of the Christmas movies and television programing hasn’t changed much; we’ve still got the animated Frosty and Rudolph “specials,” and Miracle On 34th Street, It’s A Wonderful Life, etc. Most of these are not as memorable — or more accurately, these films are not as tied to family holiday traditions because at Christmas time, we kids were preoccupied with our gifts. So while I fondly remember Rudolph, The Littlest Angel, and The Little Drummer Boy, I remember those pretty much like any other TV viewing event.

(Even now, watching Miracle or It’s A Wonderful Life is pretty much a solo couch potato event; momma’s down-time in a busy holiday season.)

But there are other holidays too. And television network execs take advantage of this time, programming us along with setting the program schedule.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Film Poster

For me, the phrase “holiday films” brings to mind those I watched with my cousins. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the old console TV, we watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang & Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory — I think it was Thanksgiving and Easter, respectively. (And I tried for years to stay up and watch The Ten Commandments at Easter too; only I never made it more than an hour before nodding off.) I do remember that sometime between the time we kids were expected to join adults in conversation and the age at which we became too cool to do so, the TV networks changed the holiday family films. (Don’t ask me what they were. Once my cousins and I mockingly went to watch Willy Wonka, and he wasn’t there.) I guess the network guys and gals had moved onto a younger kid demographic for their ‘new’ holiday family fun.

(This reminded me of the one Mother’s Day that one of the major TV networks ran Rambo or something equally disgusting. I guess the thinking was that men would stick around for family time if they could have a all the action and excitement of body count film to watch. But I digress.)

Thinking of how the films change reminded me that soon enough, TBS will stop running A Christmas Story. And that simple act will change family traditions.

It is this fact, and this alone, that has me finally turning the corner on an area of collecting I have been snobby about: film collecting.

I used to be offended when I had rented a booth in an antique mall and some guy was moving into his booth, stocking it with nothing but VHS cassettes. Those were not collectible, I thought to myself snobbishly. Collections are not simply amounts of something, they represent something more… A collection is more than a stack of movies, a shelf of books, a pile of CDs or iPod full of audio files. A collection, I vehemently believe, is attached to something more than simple consumption of merchandise.

Scene From A Christmas Story

But now, thinking back on all those movies that were once my family’s tradition, I see it differently. If I buy all those movies, they are significantly different than movies I like to have around to watch should the mood strike me. Accumulating the original Willy Wonka & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a nostalgic act — I’m buying back a bit of my childhood.

So, movie collectors, you have my apologies for having been an ignorant, stuck-up collector. Please don’t make me put my tongue on a flagpole.

Rocky is one of those cultural institutions that’s inescapably referenced, parodied and otherwise appreciated at every turn. If you’ve never seen Rocky, you’re wrong. You’re probably seen enough of it, in bits and pieces dispersed through the rest of the world, to know exactly what it’s all about. After surviving a run of six movies over 30 years, it all must mean something.

To be perfectly honest, my own interest in Rocky was only sparked in 2006 with the release of The Meat action figure, and my interest in boxing went as deep as trying to defeat Soda Popinski in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! Still, we all love a good movie about a person beating the odds to become something special and live their dreams. It’s like Scarface, but with much less cocaine and naked weirdness. I think that any film that’s earned an Academy Award for Best Picture is worth owning in the best possible format.

Of course, after the highly rated Rocky, the films suffer a steady decline in ratings points until the relatively successful comeback of ‘Rocky Balboa’ in 2006, but it’s more about watching the odyssey of a single man over a span of 30 years than embracing a flawless cinematic experience. With Stallone expressing no interest in pursuing a Rocky 7 at this point (despite online interviews which were garbled by BabelFish suggesting otherwise), this is very likely the definitive collection for the entire saga, and in the best available format.

We’ll worry about what format comes next when it actually happens, but reports from this set pretty definitively state that the earlier films were simply shot on older technology that never anticipated the crystalline clarity that we have today. In short, grainy films are grainy. It can be a big part of the atmosphere and the charm, and to remaster things to the point where they no longer resemble the actual master is an exercise in pointlessness, and to a large degree, artlessness.

The Blu-Ray set includes seven discs in a great little shiny slipcase. Each disc obviously contains one complete film, with a seventh disc set aside for a bunch of extra features : the usual Making Of and Behind The Scenes stuff, a game, trailers, commentary from Stallone himself, interviews, and tributes to both James Crabe (director of photography, originally on the 2006 DVD ‘Definitive’ edition of Rocky) and Burgess Meredith (Mickey, also available on the same DVD). There’s no scene guide in this package, so be sure to retain the slipcase for all of this information. Ignore the Amazon reviews for this also – they display low ratings only because Amazon lowered the price on the item after said reviewers purchased it and have nothing to do with the product itself. I think that the intellectual leap it will take to get humanity to use Amazon product reviews properly is akin to what it took to invent the wheel. Seriously, people.

In a severely limited Blu-Ray collection, or any DVD collection, this is an essential part to have around. Godfather, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Rocky – these are the essential collections of movies that should exist in any collection. Snag it for around 50 bucks, which is a stellar price for a full epic in superior fidelity.

At 11:00am today, the Autry National Center of the American West will host a first release celebration for the new Gary Cooper postage stamp.   Starting with Marilyn Monroe in 1995, the USPS has been producing 20-stamp sheets honoring numerous classic film actors  in their “Legends of Hollywood” series, including selvage art and notes for the collector.   Cooper’s stamp will be the 15th in this series, announced to the world by Leonard Maltin and Cooper’s daughter, Maria Cooper Janis, during the ceremony.

Gary Cooper started out as a stunt man in early cowboy films, eventually moving up to starring roles.   His portrayal of Marshal Will Kane in 1952’s High Noon cemented his position as a star of the western, but he performed in many other roles, from the title role in Sergeant York to Lt. Frederic Henry in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.  Cooper had a deeper connection to that last film:  he and Hemingway were close friends, both leading personal lives as adventurous as their stories and films.

The postage stamp, based on a 1940 photo, was painted by longtime USPS artist Kazuhiko Sano.  As many of Cooper’s films were black-and-white, the color is a striking addition, particularly his blue eyes against the warm colors of his face and the background.   This isn’t however, the first time Gary Cooper’s blue eyes have graced a postage stamp.   In 1990, the USPS issued four “Classic Films” postage stamps by award-winning postage stamp artist Thomas Blackshear depicting The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, and Gary Cooper in the starring role of Beau Geste.   Cooper, as with many American stars, has appeared on numerous postage stamps in other countries, but today’s Legends of Hollywood stamp is the first U.S. stamp to commemorate the actor on his own, free of a particular film or role.  If you can’t get to the release and dedication, the stamps will, of course, be available at your local post office.

I’ve written before about my love of Great Danes, including Scooby-Doo & a large piece of chalkware, but one of my absolute favorite Great Dane things is the movie The Ugly Dachshund.

Walt Disney Presents The Ugly Dachshund

It’s a goofy & somewhat sappy retro Walt Disney film from 1966, featuring humans, not animated characters. In it Mark Garrison (played by Dean Jones) is married to Fran (Suzanne Pleshette), a little woman who loves her pedigreed dachshund Danke. He plays hen-pecked hubby to the delivery of Danke’s three puppies — and beyond, while Fran and her wiener dogs rule the roost. So when Mark is offered a “real man’s dog,” a Great Dane puppy, by the family vet, Mark takes the dog home and names him Brutus.

To say that Fran does not like the big “ugly” beast is an understatement. She not only doesn’t appreciate Brutus as a potential champion, like Danke is and (Fran hopes) Danke’s pups will be, but Fran finds Brutus lacking in, ah, shall we say “grace?”

The pup’s size & awkwardness (something Dane lovers find charming), is only aggravated by the fact that Brutus believes he too is a Dachshund, and tries to do what the little dogs do. The situation is further exacerbated (exploited) by Danke’s pups, who are terribly naughty and manage to leave the scene just as momma Fran walks in — leaving Brutus looking like the sole culprit. Ah, the Disney animal hijinks!

When Brutus is framed for destroying a fabulously retro (yet rather racist) Oriental themed garden party, the big dog is about to be kicked out of the Garrison home — but when the gentle giant saves one of the Dachshund puppies from death by garbage truck, Brutus is given another chance. Now it’s just up to Mark to train the big dog.

The Ugly Dachshund On VHS

There’s lots more hilarity, but who wants to ruin the film?

In true Disney fashion, the story ends well — including some comeuppance for Fran. Whether you love Danes, Dachsies, or just love to ogle a young Suzanne Pleshette (and who doesn’t?!), you’ll love this goody retro flick. (Of course, you’ll have to get past the insensitive stereotypical depictions of Asians… But it was 1966, so forgive them.) It’s not just me; the kids adore this film too!

Up until 2004, this film was only available in VHS and you had to pay hefty prices via eBay; but now that it’s on DVD, it’s not only more affordable (both in terms of pricing & the fact that DVDs don’t wear out like tape), but it’s dropped the secondary market prices on the VHS — and you’ll want one, if you’re a collector, because the video box is very different than the DVD packaging.

If you’re a collector, there are lots of Ugly Dachshund things to collect… Film stills, movie posters & other promotional materials, as well as early Disney tie-in merch, like a record album (which included Shaggy Dog songs too).

But one thing I didn’t know about, and so didn’t expect to find, was The Ugly Dachshund Little Golden Book (#D118). When I discovered this copy at a thrift shop, I squealed, had the clerk get it out of the case, hugged it to my chest and then paid the $8. Other than rubbed corners & the previous owner’s name inked in the “belongs to” inside the front cover, it’s clean as a whistle. And whistling I am. Oh happy day at the thrift store!

Ugly Dachshund Little Golden Book