Now, THAT'S a list I can get behind

You know that post I wrote about the surprising Kris Kristofferson? Truth is, I really meant to write about Mel Brooks. People get those two confused all the time, don't they? No? Fine. Be that way.

So anyway, back to Mel... I stumbled upon this awesome article on Topless Robot (I stumbled on it, I didn't name it) — "10 Kickass Things Mel Brooks Did (Besides His Movies)" — which led me to my 'unknown brainiac' spiel... which led to Mr. Kristofferson... which led to... oh, to live in my brain. But today — today, I really am going to write about Mel Brooks.

Here are the "10 reasons you should be impressed besides how many times he got you to watch Blazing Saddles and still laugh." I could try to put it better, but why work that hard? (Many kudos to Topless Robot for this list.)

Created Get Smart. Yep, that was him — with Buck Henry, who, by the way, besides playing Liz Lemon's dad on 30 Rock, was nominated for an Oscar for writing The Graduate, which starred Anne Bancroft (see below) — there is just no end to these brainiacs in hiding.

Gave us Max Brooks. If nothing else, Mel's son has been credited (or blamed, depending) for the recent uptick of zombies in pop culture — his 2003 book, The Zombie Survival Guide, pre-dates the truly hilarious Shaun of the Dead, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake, the film adaptation of I Am Legend (you know what I think about that movie), the Cinderella story movie (the actual movie, not the plot) Zombieland, AMC's The Walking Dead, to name a few. That and his next book, World War Z, are both on their way to the silver screen. Plus — how cute is Mel's grandson, Henry Mel?

Rocked Broadway. You know all those movies that have been musicalized and transported to the Great White Way? Blame Brooks. His production of The Producers won 12 Tonys, and Young Frankenstein was nominated for three. Next up, he's writing the book and music for a Broadway version of Blazing Saddles. "The sheriff's near."

Wrote in comedy's version of the Brill Building. If it weren't true, it would be ridiculous. Nah, it's still ridiculous. Wrap your mind around this round table: Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Daniel Simon, Larry Gelbart, Selma Diamond, Michael Stewart and Mel Tolkin. Uh huh. In one room. Writing for one guy (Sid Caesar). For the record — those minds brought us (just a sampling, mind you): Blazing Saddles, Manhattan, The Jerk, The Odd Couple, Sleeper, Young Frankenstein, My Three Sons, Bye Bye Birdie, Diff'rent Strokes, M.A.S.H., Hot in Cleveland... you get the drift.

Discovered Dave Chappelle. Betcha didn't know that. DC's first film role was in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Thanks for that, Mel.

Got the EGOT. Mel Brooks is one of only ten people — EVER — to win the grand slam of entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. I know, I know — you want to know who the other nine are. Hey, I need something to write about tomorrow.

Won the heart and hand of Anne Bancroft. A duo right up there with Newman & Woodward for Hollywood romances that make you believe in "wuv, true wuv" (recognize that? It's from a movie directed by Carl Reiner's son... see how that works?). And proof positive that women go for men who make them laugh. Really.

Brought us The Elephant Man. Not only did Brooks produce this far from funny story of the "classic wandering Jew" directed by David Lynch, he was on set every day. Though... would you believe it was Brooks' kids' babysitter who gave him the script? That's at least a little funny.

Defused landmines. No, really. Brooks joined the Army Corps of Engineers when he was 17. Legend has it that when the Germans began blasting propaganda at the American troops through loudspeakers, Brooks set up his own loudspeakers and blasted back with his impression of "Toot Toot Tootsie." Take that, you stinkin' Krauts!

Gave us Gene Wilder. Further proving my beautiful-women-love-funny-men theory, it was Anne Bancroft who introduced Mel to Gene after she worked with him on stage. Three years later, Mel cast Gene as Bloom in The Producers, after which we got Gene as Willy Wonka, Gene as Young Frankenstein, Gene as Jim, The Waco Kid. Happy days.

Don't you have to write it to own it?

In a seeming triumph of culture over commerce... of high art over pop art... of the little guy over the big, bad mogul... author Chinua Achebe has succeeded in forcing rapper 50 Cent to change the title of his upcoming movie.

As reported last week in the culture blog, Vulture (and HuffPo and EW, etc.) the facts lay out as follows:

In 1958, Achebe wrote what is widely acknowledged as the most read African novel of all time, titled "Things Fall Apart."

In 2010, 50 Cent wrote, produced and financed a film directed by Mario Van Peebles, about a football player diagnosed with cancer, also titled "Things Fall Apart."

In 2011, Achebe's lawyers contacted 50 Cent to rename his movie prior to its release. In response, 50 Cent offered Achebe $1 million to be allowed to use the title. Mr. Achebe's legal team refused 50 Cent's offer, saying "the novel with the said title was initially produced in 1958 (that is 17 years before [50] was born). [It is] listed as the most-read book in modern African literature, and won't be sold for even £1bn."

This is the point at which 50 Cent agreed to rename his movie “All Things Fall Apart.”

Were I 50 Cent, rather than acquiesce, I might instead have replied to Achebe's representatives, "tread softly, because you tread on my dreams," and then gently reminded them that Chinua Achebe took his title from a William Butler Yeats poem, "The Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

I might have gone on to note that 50-some years ago, when Mr. Achebe's novel was about to be released, Yeats' legal team evidently declined to ask Mr. Achebe to re-title it, nor did they point out that "the poem with the said phrase was initially published in 1920 (that is 10 years before [Achebe] was born). It was written by one of the most venerable poets of the 20th century, and won't be sold for even £1tn."

"The worst are full of passionate intensity." Indeed.

(This post is dedicated to my big sister, who introduced me to Yeats, and to Achebe and Didion, and to a whole assortment of great authors — and who can recite this poem from memory.)

A Tale of 100 Movies

AFI's 100 Greatest Movies: The Story You Haven't Heard

It happened one night that Lawrence of Arabia went north by northwest, following Sullivan's travels until he reached Casablanca. Arriving before the last picture show aired on the network, he began to tell a few good fellas the west side story, which goes something like this:

On a dark and stormy night, the general, the graduate — even the godfather! — went singin' in the rain on the waterfront. Entranced by the sound of music under the city lights, the wild bunch opened a swing time cabaret, where they planned to mash the grapes of wrath and drink all night, eat venison delivered by the deer hunter and serve duck soup at two temperatures because some like it hot. But then, in the heat of the night, Tootsie arrived with news of the gold rush in Nashville — and suddenly, they were all gone with the wind.

All was not lost, as the searchers managed to keep Schindler's list up-to-date: according to reports, one flew over the cuckoo's nest when Sophie’s choice meant saving Private Ryan and letting the others go. The midnight cowboy flagged a taxi driver to head over the bridge on the river Kwai. Bonnie and Clyde, still unforgiven, escaped the deafening silence of the lambs and fled to Chinatown. The blade runner, not surprisingly, took the maltese falcon to kill a mockingbird. Shane was last seen riding away on a streetcar named desire, gazing out the rear window at Sunset Blvd. shimmering at sunrise. As for that psycho, Annie Hall — she gathered 12 angry men and a raging bull to go after the treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid spent a night at the opera, hoping for a toy story featuring the Wizard of Oz and the Lord of the Rings. The fellowship of the ring, sadly, turned out just to be some pulp fiction all about eve, so they returned to the apartment, where the African queen was reading the Philadelphia story. She swore the sixth sense let her see Snow White and the seven dwarves, but Dr. Strangelove insists there is no such thing — all she saw was some American graffiti.

Tomorrow at high noon, Mr. Smith goes to Washington to ask "who's afraid of Virginia Woolf bringing up baby?" Going there is just step one, according to the godfather, part 2 is getting double indemnity, so he can ask whatever he wants. Also in our nation’s capitol, all the president's men decided finally to let yankee doodle dandy become a citizen. Kane made the French Connection by reversing his nouns and adjectives and presenting the easy rider with a clockwork, orange. King Kong ate Jaws and apparently ET (the extra terrestrial) sent Rocky back 10 years to fight in the Star Wars. Last we heard he was suffering from vertigo and writing his memoir, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The raiders of the lost ark were going to do the right thing, of course, and take a platoon to save the Titanic, but Spartacus, still stinging from intolerance, announced "these modern times call for an apocalypse, now." Luckily, Ben-hur and Forrest Gump, fresh from the Shawshank Redemption, were able to dissuade him, convincing him it's a wonderful life and these are the best years of our lives.

If you don't believe me, here's a hint: 9, 20, 25, 14, 19, 13.

God has another most beautiful angel

When Audrey Hepburn died, Elizabeth Taylor said, "God has a most beautiful new angel."

Elizabeth Taylor died this morning, and as my friend Amy would say, "that's some heck of a team God is putting together up there."

If you're not an old movie buff like moi, your idea of Liz Taylor is probably incomplete. Husbands out the yin yang, weight gain, weight loss, weight gain, pills, rehab, crazy hair. Perfume shiller. Maybe you even think of her as an AIDS research advocate and fund raiser extraordinaire.

Personally, she was also known for being an extraordinary friend. By all accounts, she saved Montgomery Clift's life after his car accident near her home, climbing through a back window because the doors were too mangled to open and reaching into his mouth to pull out loose teeth that were blocking his airway. She continued to care for him, renting a suite at the Chateau Marmont for his recovery and doing her part to see that he continued to work in Hollywood.

Indelibly linked to AIDS and AIDS research, she was inspired to campaign for the cause when another friend, Rock Hudson, announced he was suffering from the disease. Against the advice of friends and publicists, Elizabeth went ahead and became the face and voice for a disease that at the time, no one wanted even to discuss, let alone acknowledge the scale of the threat it posed.

Professionally, Elizabeth Taylor won two Academy Awards for acting (for "BUtterfield 8" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"). One of the last fixtures of "Old Hollywood," she was almost so un-really gorgeous, it's sometimes hard to see her performances past her face, but they're there. Everyone has their favorites, but for me, it's

National Velvet (I don't care, I love that movie)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Paul and Liz in the same movie? Need I say more?)
A Place in the Sun (when Montgomery Clift was almost as beautiful as Liz)
Suddenly, Last Summer (though really, it's Katherine Hepburn in that movie who is so riveting — can you say twisted and obsessed? Brrrrr.)
and Giant. Not because I should, but because I actually do. And also because in it, Dennis Hopper plays Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson's son. Who knew?
(By the way, the average RT score for those movies? 94.4. Nice going, Elizabeth.)

Albert Einstein said "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." Feels like Elizabeth Taylor was here not even a minute.

Funniest movie review ever?

I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for a cheerleader movie. I was going to say "for a good cheerleader movie," but the truth is, I'll settle for a decent one. Fired Up! is just such an animal. Standard fare, not as good as some, better than most, it's in theaters now.

Let me repeat, this is "standard fare," by-the-books, could-not-be-more-ABC-123 movie making. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

You know the formula:
1. Movie starts, we meet our feckless football player heroes
2. Ten minutes in, our heroes make their fateful decision (in this case — gasp! — to attend cheer leading rather than football camp)
3. Twenty minutes in and — wouldn'tcha know? — complications arise (the boy's girl already has a boyfriend)
D. Forty minutes in (or so) and it's all or nothin' — there's no going back now
E. Twenty minutes left, everything seems hopeless, all is lost (betrayal! eviction! blah blah blah!)
Finally, five minutes to go and — holy wrap-up, Batman! — all is resolved (our heroes return in the nick of time, the nemesis team is confronted, the boy gets the girl)

Mind-blowingly innovative? Revolutionary? Ground-breaking? Not so much.

Imagine my surprise then, when scanning the reviews on RT, I read this snippet—and from a fresh (in RT terms, that means positive) review, no less: "[Fired Up!] violates the most basic rules of cinematic storytelling grammar." Remember folks—this is a boy-meets-girl—boy-loses-girl—boy-gets-girl—cheerleader movie.

I had to read on. Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy read:

Fired Up! is rather a kind of anti-movie, peculiar and terrible in the most garish ways conceivable, closer perhaps to surrealism than legitimate Hollywood narrative cinema. First-time director Will Gluck and first-time writer Freedom Jones haven't just made a crappy cheerleader movie, they've made something that violates tens of rules governing classical filmmaking

"Anti-movie?" Really?

Even if it's by accident, Fired Up! is perhaps the most experimental film released to mainstream American cinemas in months, if not years.

Did I mention, it's a cheerleader movie?

Gluck's direction doesn't just exist separately from Fired Up!, as is often the case when it appears that a filmmaker is trying to privately amuse himself when given a rote script; his direction actively distracts from the movie, as though he actually had a vendetta against the story and wished to make it disappear.

Wait — as though who actually has a vendetta here? I'm just saying.

So much of the film is just so damn strange! The film's requisite villain, an arrogant college freshman, is associated on the soundtrack exclusively with rock songs composed before his birth, from both the '70s and '80s; this makes no sense whatsoever, but it is a theme which is never dropped or treated with anything but the gravest sincerity.

By the 70s and 80s, I presume he means the late 90s? Tubthumping, by Chumbawumba, was released in 1997 and Lou Bega's Mambo #5 in 1999.

But, really, why sweat the small stuff? When you can just say things like:

by far the most common tack for the gags in this film to take is that they are befuddling. Not befuddling in the sense, "Why would someone think this is funny?" but in the sense, "What the hell is happening?" And that applies both to the rapid-fire, colorful, completely opaque dialogue as well as the narrative framework itself. If the film is not funny, and it very much is not, I think this is mostly because it is so absurd - bearing in mind that absurdism, in its pure form, has nothing to do with comedy and everything to do with anarchy and nihilism.

followed closely by:

I have basically just described a bad comedy, and that is because Fired Up! is a bad comedy, and even a bad film, by any standard yardstick. But its badness is aggressive, anxious: it is not the result of doing things poorly, but of doing things that have no earthly reason to be done whatsoever. Looking over what I've written, I see that I have not communicated, and probably cannot communicate, how much of Fired Up! violates the most basic rules of cinematic storytelling grammar; and for this reason it transfixed me body and soul. The film is a disaster that has chanced its way into being a bold, terrifying experiment, where the idea of "good" or "bad", or even the simpler concepts "works" and "doesn't work" don't really matter. It amazed and delighted me simply by dint of existing so far outside of what actual filmmaking is supposed to look like.
Part of me wishes that every movie were so callously disrespectful to the rules; cinema would be a much more exhilarating artform. We'd also probably all be insane by now.

Let me end by saying: I have basically just recapped a very bad review, and that is because it is a bad review, and even bad writing, by any yardstick. The review chanced its way into being a hilarious and entertaining bit of writing, where the idea of "relevant" and "irrelevant," or even the simpler concepts of "accurate" and "inaccurate," don't really matter. Part of me wishes more reviewers were so unconcerned with the basic rules governing artistic critique; movie reviews would be far more entertaining. This review amazed and amused me simply by dint of existing and being so flat-out wrong. Perhaps the author is insane.

I rest my case

I've been known to be a bit of a stickler when it comes to grammar, typos, punctuation, etc.

No, really, it's true.

So imagine my glee when I stumbled across the story of the $2.1mm comma. Yep, one superfluous comma cost a company over two million dollars.

This is how it went down:
A Canadian communications company made a renewable deal with a strategic partner; the key clause in the deal stated that the agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

Lo and behold, not even three years after signing the deal, the partner gave written notice it was terminating the agreement. Communciations company cried foul—we've locked in our rate for five years from the signing date! But no... eighteen months of sentence parsing later and the judge ruled: that second (do you see it?) comma clearly allows for the agreement to be terminated at any point with one year's written notice. Ah, if only...

Never underestimate the importance of grammar (or a good editor, for that matter).

Rube Goldberg was Dutch?

You may not know this, but I was born in Holland. It's just one of the odd things you wouldn't expect to be true of me. But there you have it...it's both true and odd.

So I feel an odd (what else?) sort of pride in this site my dad sent to me - it's the product page of the Dutch department store, HEMA, which was founded over 80 years ago, according to this picture. Once you get to the page, just watch.

(Note - the page is in Dutch, which I can't read. And you can't buy anything on it. Then again, the page is in Dutch, so what do I know?)

(Second note - I have no idea whether or not Rube Goldberg was Dutch. I doubt it.)