Bracket of Brackets

It's strange how the 72 hours (give or take) between Selection Sunday and the tip of the first first second-round game of the NCAA tournament turns me from a passive college basketball follower to a freakish fan. Some of it is the love of sport and watching someone get named the Best for that particular year. But if I know anything about myself, I also know that I'm a slave to organization matchups.

In short, I love me some brackets.

I know it's not just me. Wanting to rank the best of something in a neat one-on-one matchup-style, single-elimination tournament is inherently human. Steve Rushin had a great piece on it in a recent Sports Illustrated. In fact, it is so ingrained in our DNA that a quick Google search found countless brackets - not just on basketball, but on absolutely anything, from the kind of fantastic (sports movies) to the insane (curse words). So I present the Bracket of Brackets: 16 different brackets, each ranking its own special something. This is the first round, so I urge you to vote in the comments or on Facebook and in a couple days, I will narrow it down. What's the best bracket of them all? You decide!

(Full disclosure: After I decided to do this but before I had finished gathering my various brackets, I discovered that The Atlantic Wire had done something similar, but at that point, I was too far gone. Oh well. Great minds, yadda-yadda-yadda.)

First Round

1. NCAA Tournament

 
I mean, obviously. It's the thing that brought us all here in the first place. Sixty-four 68 teams of 18-to-22(ish) year olds vying to be the best basketball team out of the entire Division I. The opportunity for a tiny upstart or non-basketball specialists ('sup, Harvard!) to shock some practically-professional-already players from State U? Fantastic stuff! It's the original, so it's got to be No. 1.

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16. Tournament of Brackets

Almost as meta as a bracket of brackets, here we have a tournament of different types of brackets, courtesy of The New Yorker. Do you prefer plain old lines or two-toned boxes? Are you a colored bars fan or do you go for the fancy two-tone lozenges? The world is your oyster!
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2. Beer Dance

Unfortunately, The Street opted not to resurrect last year's Beer Dance, where 14 craft beers battled for thirst-quenching supremacy. Still, a year old or not, they get points for A) keeping it to the crafties, rather than boring old Bud and Coors and B) keeping it widespread, with beers from Portland to Boston and  everywhere in between.

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15. Tournament of Books

Each year, the Morning News, with a sponsorship from Barnes & Nobles' Nook e-reader, has the previous year's best fiction books duke it out until only one reigns supreme. As a librarian, I'm actually legally obligated to include this, and it gets points for being perhaps the most organized of all the brackets (including the NCAA one). Still, I know I'm a special brand of nerdy, which is why it got such a low seed.
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3. Ultimate Curse Word Bracket

 
Deadspin, being the greatest thing of all time, especially during tournament season, has devised a battle royale of swearwords. There are highlights. There are lowlights. You will find yourself aghast that your favorite swear somehow got a five seed. Just, whatever you do, don't open this bracket in mixed company.

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14. Fug Madness

What's better than organizationally ranking teams/people/phrases/anything at all and then eliminating one by one until you have an ultimate winner? Doing all that but with SNARK! Go Fug Yourself, a celebrity fashion website that's as awful as its name implies, has organized all the best celebrity miscues of the past year for your voting pleasure. Bonus points for naming the regions after Cher, Madonna, Bjork and Charro.
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4. Best Sports Movie

CBS Sports has come up with 64 sports movies, divided by their emphasis on baseball, basketball, football and other (i.e. hockey, boxing, golf, etc.). They've got all the ones you would expect to see, although there is some questionable seeding (Jerry Maguire the No. 1 in the football region over Rudy?!). Because this is from CBS Sports, it even comes with overanalysis from "experts." You can decide whether that's a pro or a con.

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13. Greatest Baseball Team of All Time

 (Note: The bracket is bigger than this but they don't have it all in one spot.) Bleacher Report has ranked the 32 greatest baseball teams in the history of the game. It's pretty self-explanatory.

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5. Most Hated College Basketball Player of the Past 30 Years

The only thing better than rooting for the underdog of your choice is rooting AGAINST that smarmy jerk from whatever school you hate year after year. (This year, it's Marshall Henderson. And not just for me, but for America.) If you love rooting against people/teams as much as you love rooting for them, Grantland has the bracket for you. (Bonus points: The regions are divided by decades...except for that one region that is entirely devoted to Duke.)

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12. Best College Eats

You can't watch an NCAA tournament game without eating something that will harden your arteries in .05 seconds and that goes double if you actually attend college yourself. What should be on the menu of your viewing party? Here are some ideas.
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6. Burger Bracketology

If you do not happen to be a college student and have to settle for various fast and not-so-fast foods for your unhealthy March diet, you'll probably wind up at one or more of these places. Somehow, I've only eaten at two of them, which makes me sad for myself. Thank goodness this tournament lasts a couple more weeks.

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11. Best TV Couple

 
Entertainment Weekly is still finalizing this bracket, which means that when you vote on it, it will be HOT OFF THE PRESS. The fact that they're all but ensuring at least one showing by Lost's Sawyer means I'm game. And guessing who might make the field is almost as exciting as Selection Sunday. Cory and Topanga? Joni and Chachi? Troy and Abed? The possibilities are endless!
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7. Best Sitcom of the Past 30 Years

Vulture counted down the top sitcoms of the past 30 years. There are a couple of downsides here: 1) For whatever reason, they decided to hold this bracket a full month before official bracket season is recognized in America. It's like celebrating Christmas in November or Independence Day on June 4. IT'S NOT EVEN FLAG DAY YET, PEOPLE. 2) The winners were decided by the people; they were determined by "all-star writers." Please. Still, it's ranking TV sitcoms and Roseanne makes it to the Final Four, so obviously it's amazing.

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10. MTV's Musical March Madness

Musical March Madness is MTV's opportunity to rank the top 64 bands whose music videos they play whose music videos they would play if they weren't too busy showing reruns of True Life: I Have Embarrassing Parents 2. I like that this has become an annual tradition and I'm intrigued/confused by their combination of the hottest artists of the year (Mumford and Sons, Paramore, fun.) and people who, I suppose they may have done something in 2012, but who haven't been on my radar for the entirety of the Obama administration (Metallica, Linkin Park, No Doubt). 

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8. Ultimate NFL Mascot

With its second entry, Bleacher Report is officially the Big 10 of the Bracket of Brackets. I'm sorry - I'm a sucker for mascots. 

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9. Animal March Madness

It's only right that the first opponents the fake animals will face are real ones. AND LOOKIT HOW PRECIOUS THIS SECOND-ROUND MATCHUP IS. 

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And that's it. Feel free to comment your votes for the first round, or send them to me via Facebook or Twitter (@kafvautour) or telepathy or whatever works. Because if you don't, then I'll just pick what I like the best and it will be otters for the win!

An Ode to Pro Wrestling (or How I Made it Through My Awkward Stage)

I've been meaning to write this blog post for a couple of weeks - ever since I learned of the passing of William "Paul Bearer" Moody - but then life and work and reruns of the Family Feud got in the way and so here I am, overcome with equal parts guilt and nostalgia. Just like a high school reunion!

It's been almost 10 years since I actually watched a professional wrestling event, a fact that would have horrified 11-year-old me to no end. Seriously, what kind of disappointment am I? But every few weeks or months, something will happen - an old wrestler will die, or will show up in a movie or on a TV show - and I'll be rocketed back to that time when I owned more oversized Austin 3:16 t-shirts than dresses or skirts.

From the time I was about 4 until I went away to college at age 18, wrestling was my religion. That sounds like hyperbole; it isn't. I watched every single episode, sometimes more than once, for the entirety of the 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s. I would read everything I could about the performers, to the point where I could tell you not only how many times they had held the Intercontinental belt but also what their real name is and where they grew up. Mr. Perfect was Curt Hennig. Shawn Michaels was Michael Hickenbottom. Hulk Hogan was Terry Bollea. Nowadays, anyone with access to Google can figure that out, but this was just before the Internet. I was using my book-learnin' to productive ends.

My childhood memories are highlighted by Wrestling Events. The Christmas presents I asked Santa Claus for were pay-per-view purchases and tickets to shows. One year, when I was in middle school, my dad took me to WrestleMania (you can even see me on TV holding up a sign after Stone Cold Steve Austin beats Shawn Michaels for the championship, with a little help from Mike Tyson). Another time, in high school, it was the Royal Rumble. These were the presents I dreamed about, not a designer purse or fancy jewelry. My birthday gifts were t-shirts featuring the likeness of Bret "The Hitman" Hart. I devoured anything written by Mick Foley. (Later on, after I had stopped following wrestling regularly, I tossed the Foley books, thinking I would never read them again. I really wish I still had them. They were fascinating looks into the industry, a real-life literary version of The Wrestler, and Foley, without the use of a ghostwriter, is a fantastic author.)

There are probably plenty of reasons why I embraced wrestling as entirely as I did. I was a loner of a kid who never really fit in with my classmates. I had friends for stretches who then didn't want to be friends anymore, and I always felt more comfortable either around adults or by myself. Wrestling was my release, and so I obsessed over it. My stress has always been relegated to my stomach - when I was going through a rough patch at school, I would wake up with excruciating stomachaches that only eased after I learned I could stay home. It sounds like I was faking, but I wasn't. The pain was real. When my parents allowed me to shell out $30 of their hard-earned money (a steal, nowadays) to order WrestleMania or the Survivor Series on pay-per-view, the good stress would hit me and my stomach would act up again. That was how much I loved it, all of it.

I stopped watching when I went away to college, for a few reasons. One was that, frankly, I was embarrassed. In elementary school, I was known as The Girl Who Watches Wrestling because I was the only one (this was post-Hulk Hogan and pre-The Rock, when wrestling's popularity was in a bit of a downswing). Luckily, my middle and high schools were both regional, so I was able to re-invent myself in a new place in the seventh grade and my wrestling fandom became my little secret for most of the next few years. Another reason was that I was going to be living in a dorm room, sharing space and one TV with another 18-year-old girl. I knew I wasn't going to be able to subject her to four hours of professional wrestling each week, so I quit, cold turkey.

Thankfully for me, college was also where I found myself. For the first time in my life, my peers that became friends FELT like friends, permanent ones. And they have been. It wasn't long before I could joke with them about my wrestling fan past, showing them pictures of me dressed as Randy "Macho Man" Savage for Halloween when I was 8 or posing with Paul Bearer and Dink the Clown at a FanFest when I was 10. They thought it was silly/cute, like that school picture when you're wearing hot pink sweatpants and a bowl cut. Ah, childhood. Weren't we all dorky?

Now that I'm almost six years out of college, I'll sometimes think about giving wrestling another shot, setting up the DVR to record Monday Night RAW or Smackdown, but it won't happen. I like the role it plays in my life now, getting exciting when I stumble across some random mention of a wrestler I remember meeting or watching. When I heard Paul Bearer died, I immediately dug out that photo of me and him from 1995 and posted it on Facebook. When I recently watched Magic Mike, I was gleeful when I learned that my hunch was right - the deep voice of the stripper named Tarzan was definitely Kevin "Diesel" Nash, and he's still as dreamy as ever. While grocery shopping last week, I saw the boxes of Fruity Pebbles were not only adorned with Fred and Wilma's daughter but also a cartooned John Cena; obviously, that box sits on my kitchen shelf as I type.

In a way, I guess pro wrestling was kind of like that imaginary friend that kids have when they're lonely or awkward or whatever. I'm just lucky enough that my imaginary friend has a real-life component that brings back some fantastic memories when I'm least expecting them.

Book Review: Night Shift

I couldn't believe that I had never come across this short story collection of Stephen King's before. Obviously, it's Stephen King, so that's a shocker right there. Plus, in the bibliography of Stephen King, I always look forward to his short stories because they allow him to stretch his writerly wings. So often people like to pigeon-hole him into the prototypical Horror Writer and while that's true, the guy has game in all sorts of writing styles. You can always count on his short story collections to have a few nonfiction or nonhorror stories to highlight the fact.

This was the fifth selection of my chronological Stephen King bibliography reading project and the first short story collection. The book contains quite a few well-known stories, most notably "Children of the Corn," made into a cadre of horror films. I'd never read the story and haven't seen any of the films so I enjoyed discovering it. (For the equally unwashed, the story follows a bickering couple on the brink of divorce as they road-trip across the country. In the middle of Nebraska, surrounded by cornfields, they come across a deserted town that has been taken over by the town's children. Turns out the children worship a god/monster who lives in the corn and has them sacrifice anyone over the age of 19. Kids!) "The Lawnmower Man" was also part of the collection, but was not at all the same story as the movie that steals its name (a source of court-settled annoyance for King).

It also had a prequel and sequel to 'Salem's Lot - the former a series of letters from the haunted house's new owner in the 1800s as he discovers and then falls victim to its history; the latter showing the danger of the town even after it's been deserted and burned to the ground - as well as a story about a group of young people that survive a superflu that kills a majority of the population,  kind of a precursor to The Stand.

As is the case with any short story collection, there are as many duds as there are superstars. There was one stretch when it seemed like every story was about someone or something normal turning into a big bad monster, be it an industrial folding machine, the town drunk, a former astronaut's own hands, factory rats, all the trucks of the world. Not that all of them were bad - I rather enjoyed "Trucks," in particular. But still, it was getting kind of old. But then the rest of the stories arrived. My personal favorites (in addition to the 'Salem's Lot collection and "Children of the Corn") were "Sometimes They Come Back," about a young man haunted by the ghosts of hooligans who murdered his brother years ago; "Strawberry Spring," about a guy who may or may not turn into a serial killer every few years when a strawberry spring arrives; and "Quitters, Inc.," about a company that goes to extreme lengths to get its clients to quit smoking.

And as I had suspected, there were a couple of nonhorror stories to show King's writing chops, a pair of heartwrenching tales that dealt with the death of loved ones. "The Last Rung on the Ladder" is about a brother dealing with his estranged sister's death, while "The Woman in the Room" focuses on an adult son internally debating whether he should mercy-kill his mother while she suffers on her deathbed (a situation King had experience with in his personal life).

In all, it didn't disappoint, as King's short story collections rarely do. And after Rage, it was nice to get back on the pro-King bandwagon.

Up next (for the King collection): my personal favorite, The Stand.

Double Feature: Magic Mike and Dreamgirls

I'm rather enjoying my new tradition of watching two movies back to back that could not be more different. Last time around, it was The Artist and There's Something About Mary. This week, I opted for Magic Mike and Dreamgirls.

On the surface, the movies are obviously different, but there are more similarities than you would think. Both highlight the rise and fall of various stage performers. Both depict the dangers of temptation and drug use. Both involve penis pumps. (Oh wait, that might have just been Magic Mike.) But let's get started.

Magic Mike

Mike (Channing Tatum) has big hopes and his dream is to run his own furniture-building business, making homegoods from unusual items. Without any credit and not much money, he's forced to take on a few jobs to make that dream happen: car detailing, roofing, and of course, his night job of being a male stripper.

One day at the construction site, Mike meets Adam, a lost young guy with no real plans for life. He showed up for work at the roofing company after answering a Craigslist ad and quits the first day after the foreman accuses him of stealing cans of soda. Later that night, Adam escapes an excruciating dinner with his sister Brooke (who is supporting him) and her annoying boyfriend and bumps into Mike. Mike gets him into a club, where they chat up some girls and...convince them to go to the male strip show next door. Surprise, Adam! Your new bud is a Chippendales man!

Adam watches while Mike and the rest of the performers put on a show, and any discomfort he has at watching men take their clothes off is kind of hidden by the fact that they get to rub themselves all over the ladies in the audience. When one of the performers - a grizzled veteran named Tarzan (played hilariously by former WWE superstar Kevin Nash) - passes out before his act, the manager/host (Matthew McConaughey) convinces Adam to take the stage. What he does isn't pretty (it looks more like a guy taking his clothes off to be examined by a doctor) but his babyface and flirtatious personality elicits a response from the crowd and he's quickly hired.

From there, we see Adam's rise, with the help of the other strippers, especially Mike. He becomes more comfortable on the stage, really putting on a show, while reveling in the life off it - the booze, the girls, the parties. While Mike has never turned down a girl (he has an on-again, off-again affair with a kinky psychology student played by Olivia Munn), he's less into the crazy party atmosphere than the other guys. His maturity draws him more to Brooke, Adam's no-nonsense sister. Both are dismayed as Adam falls further and further down the wrong path, hooking up with the wrong girls, experimenting with drugs and then starting to sell them.

I'll stop there, so as not to ruin the end of the movie for anyone. I was kind of surprised at myself for wanting to see this movie, but I figured that A) I'm a straight woman and B) I do find Channing Tatum extremely good-looking. I'm allowed movie candy once in awhile. They can't ALL be Oscar nominees, alright?!

Anyway, equally surprising was how much I enjoyed it. I mean, obviously, the visuals. And the surprise addition of Kevin Nash was delightful. But I actually liked the story, it wasn't completely predictable and Tatum, McConaughey and Cody Horn (Brooke) were all pretty good. It's not going to make AFI's next Top 100 Movies Ever list but it was an entertaining couple of hours.

Dreamgirls

It's the 1960s and Effie, Deena and Lorell, three African-American girls from Detroit, have been singing as a group since they were little kids. A chance meeting with a car salesman/wannabe music executive named Curtis (Jamie Foxx) at a local talent competition quickly leads to their first semi-break - as backup singers for a Little Richard-esque showman named James "Thunder" Early. Effie (Jennifer Hudson), always the lead of their threesome, is put off by the idea of being a backup singer, but she trusts Curtis and even ends up having an affair with him.

Thanks to Curtis' management and the writing ability of Effie's brother CC, the girls record a hit themselves but quickly learn the cutthroat nature of the 1960s music scene - the payola scandal and innate racism that has white artists stealing black artists' songs and passing them off as their own. Curtis decides to go into the payola business himself and gets a big break for the girls, but not before mixing up the group: Deena (Beyonce), not Effie, is going to be the lead, despite the fact that everyone, including Deena, knows Effie has the real pipes. Why? Effie's a little chunky while Deena is a pretty face.

Things get worse for Effie there, as she watches Curtis get closer and closer to his new lead. He soon cuts ties with Effie personally and professionally, replacing her with another girl, and Deena Jones and the Dreams soon take off, topping the charts throughout the '60s and into the disco era of the '70s.

Things aren't perfect, however. Jimmy Early - who is also on Curtis' record label and whose sound has been altered into more of a smooth soul singer rather than his energetic rock stylings earlier - is frustrated that he can't perform the types of songs he wants to and turns to drugs. Deena - now married to Curtis - is resentful of his grip on her career, forcing her to star in a movie she doesn't like. And poor Effie is destitute, raising a young daughter by herself (surprise, Curtis!)

Eventually, for various reasons, things start to fall apart for Curtis and Effie's friends learn what's happened to her over the past decade.

Full Disclosure: I hate musicals. It's why I kept pushing off seeing Les Miserables until the Oscars came and went and now probably won't (unless it's the second feature of one of my weekly marathons, viewed after Bring it On or something). The reason I hate them is because I can't find them believable. It's easy to watch a movie, even if you know the movie is completely fake, because the people are normal people that are acting as though it's real. But I can't suspend my disbelief when the people start singing about their feelings in the middle of a conversation. It's just...it's not right.

I thought Dreamgirls would be better than most musicals for me because most of the songs would be performances, which are realistic uses for songs in a movie. I was right. There were a few middle-of-the-conversation songs and they were as corny as ever (like the weird duet with CC and Effie. CC IS NOT A SINGER!) but they were few and far between. Plus, the ability of Jennifer Hudson was enough to make me forget. God, she's really good. Really, everyone was. I can see why she won Best Supporting Actress and why Murphy was nominated for Supporting Actor, and I thought Foxx and Beyonce were great, as well. I especially respected Beyonce playing a role whose entire definition is that she's not as good a singer as someone else; as a professional singer herself, that must have been hard. It also made me wonder if Kelly Rowland was originally supposed to be the lead singer of Destiny's Child. MIND OFFICIALLY BLOWN.

Anyway, you don't need me to tell you that an Oscar-winning movie was good, but I'm still going to tell you that. You might need me to tell you that a movie about male strippers was also pretty decent, and I'll do that for you, as well.

Book Review: The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Art of Racing in the Rain tells the story of the Swift family through the eyes of their dog, Enzo. Enzo is a special dog - smart, intuitive, a true human brain in a canine body. If only he had opposable thumbs. Enzo was adopted as a puppy by Denny, then a young, single guy trying to climb the ranks to become a racecar driver. The two immediately fell for each other and Denny shared his love of racing by watching recordings of old races together and teaching Enzo his specialty: how to race in wet weather.

Years pass and Denny meets and falls in love with Eve. Enzo's not sure about Eve at first, but after a few emotional moments between the pair, they bond. When Eve gives birth to their daughter Zoe, Denny is on the road racing and it's Enzo who stays with Eve to comfort her through the night.

Eve soon becomes ill, and because she waits so long to go to the doctor, her cancer is fairly advanced. She doesn't have much time, so she moves in with her retired parents, who can care for her full-time while Denny works. She also takes Zoe with her, knowing she probably doesn't have much time left with her daughter. The whole situation makes sense except when Eve dies and her parents, citing the fact that they've cared for their granddaughter for the previous several months, sue Denny for custody. Everything is further complicated when Denny is simultaneously taken to court by one of Eve's manipulative cousins for a phony sexual assault charge.

The whole story is told from Enzo's point of view, and as I read the book and explained it to people, I could feel them rolling their eyes at the inevitable corniness of the situation. I understand. It sounds like it really should be corny. But Garth Stein does a fabulous job of giving Enzo a real voice: he is intelligent enough to be able to tell the story thoroughly but still enough of a dog that that part of his personality shines through (my favorite was when friends of Denny's dog-sit and Enzo becomes extremely embarrassed that they should discover he sleeps with a stuffed dog...but not embarrassed enough where he could sleep without the dog for the night).

In fact, Enzo's voice is probably the least corny thing about the book, which was pretty predictable and its human characters pretty one-dimensional. The real key to the book was the relationship between Denny and Enzo, and any person who has loved a dog would certainly understand the connection. In fact, everything considered, I would say that the book is actually extremely well-written, in a kind of strange way, because of the character of Enzo, not despite of him.

Movie Review: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Nothing quite proves that you've launched yourself head-first into the annals of adulthood like choosing, of your own accord, to watch a movie starring seven people in their 60s and 70s talking about coming to grips with being in your 60s and 70s but here I find myself. I can't say no to you, Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy!

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is about seven older folks facing some of the various challenges of being an older folk. Smith's Muriel, a horrid racist, needs a hip replacement ASAP. Judi Dench's Evelyn is recently widowed after 40 years of marriage. Tom Wilkinson's Graham retired after a lifetime as a successful judge. Nighy's and Penelope Wilton's Douglas and Jean are a married couple who find themselves struggling for money after investing in their adult daughter's bust of a business. And Ronald Pickup's Norman and Celia Imrie's Madge are looking for love in all the wrong places (and right places and pretty much any place they find themselves in).

Through effective marketing, circumstance or lifelong longing, the group find themselves en route to the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful in India. What they find - a dilapidated building run by the energetic yet disorganized and poor Sonny (Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel). Each reacts in their own way: some embrace India and all it's glory, using the experience as a fresh start, while others seem intent on being miserable. Chief among the latter is Jean, a high-maintenance witch of a woman whose only joy is falling in love with Graham (before learning that he's gay, of course). Both India enthusiasts, Douglas and Evelyn make a connection themselves, while Muriel connects with a speechless servant girl (and a member of the lowest Indian caste). Sonny has his own issues, mostly involving his mother, who disapproves of both the hotel and his taste in girlfriends.

The heart of the group is Graham, who grew up in India, fell in love with a man there, and has been spending his life trying to get back. He and everyone else come out of their shells and have at least some semblance of a decent ending (well, for most).

The movie was fairly predictable and some of the "evil" characters were a little over-the-top in their evilness. Mostly, I'm thinking about Sonny's mother and Jean, neither of whom really had a redeeming quality. I also felt bad for Celia Imrie since she really didn't get a storyline at all. But still, the acting chops of the entire cast kept the movie fresh and enjoyable and so it was easy to look past some of the obvious/negative stuff.

Double Feature: The High and Low (Brow) of It

So the Oscars are over and I feel pretty confident in my movie criticism abilities. I mean, before the show I predicted that Argo, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence (swoon!), Christoph Waltz, Anne Hathaway and Stephen Spielberg would win and five outta six ain't bad (damn you, Ang Lee!).

But now that the Oscars are over, I don't have a nice OCD-appealing list of movies to watch and that is just sad. So when I had my at-home movie session this weekend, I scrounged the ole Roku to find Oscar movies that I had never seen. Which led me to...

The Artist

I saw a lot of the Oscar-nominated movies last year (The Descendents, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Moneyball, War Horse) but somehow missed, you know, the one that was apparently the best of all. Oops.

For those who also missed the boat last year (spoilers abound), The Artist is tells the story of George Valentin, a superstar in the time of silent movies. When we first see him, it's 1927 and he's on top of the world - cockily showing off to his sometimes-wife, sometimes-costar, showboating with his sometimes-costar, always-best-bud dog friend, and playing to the newspapers. A chance meeting at the premiere of his latest film brings into his life Peppy Miller, a spunky wannabe movie star. Both are obviously attracted to each other, and when she winds up with a bit part in his next film, he takes her under his wing, giving her a "beauty mark" with a makeup pencil that will allow her to stand out from the other girls.

Shortly thereafter, new technology bring talking pictures onto the scene, and when his movie production company opts to go all-talkie, George is left on his own. He fights back by writing, directing and starring in his own (silent) movie, but it just so happens to open the exact same day as his previous company's talking-picture blockbuster, starring the newest starlet: Peppy Miller. Added to the fun is the fact that both movies start a few days before the stock market crash of 1929 and poor George is left with a bust.

[Warning: This paragraph is full of spoilers.] Over the next couple of years, George's life falls apart - he loses his wife, his job, his home, his possessions, his trusty manservant - pretty much everything except his little dog. Meanwhile, Peppy is starring in picture after picture (along with her trademark beauty mark). Eventually, George hits rock bottom, setting fire to the film reels of all of his pictures and thereby setting fire to his apartment. His quick-thinking dog brings help just in time, and when Peppy finds out, she takes him into her home to take care of him. He enjoys her company, but seeing her go to work in the morning is too much for him, and he escapes to his burnt-out apartment to kill himself. Peppy arrives just in time and they work out a way for him to succeed in the talkies without actually talking: by performing big dance numbers as Peppy's costar.

[Spoilers completed.]

The story is a good one, but what makes The Artist stand out and won it so many awards last year is HOW it was made. For the most part, it's a silent movie, with the dramatic music and slightly exaggerated acting (but not too exaggerated). But it also utilizes the limited sound it does use effectively. When he first learns about talking pictures, George has a dream where he can actually hear things - a dropped pencil case, a barking dog, giggling girls - and we can, too. And in the last scene, after George and Peppy perform their dance routine for her latest film, it ends with the director yelling cut, the film crew equipment making noise, the producer asking if they have one more take in them, and George - actually speaking - replying yes and revealing a strong French accent (maybe that's why he wasn't ready for actually talking).

The acting is really great, especially considering that both of the leads are foreign actors who have not appeared in many American movies before and since The Artist (Jean Dujardin is French, while Berenice Bejo is Argentinian). The supporting cast is more recognizable and equally great: John Goodman as the producer, James Cromewell as George's faithful butler, Penelope Ann Miller as the scorned wife, and bizarrely, Malcolm McDowell in about 10 seconds' worth of a scene.

I wasn't sure about The Artist before I watched it. I'm no film student and sometimes I think that excessively artistic movies go over my head (see Beasts of the Southern Wild), but I actually loved this movie. It was artistic and did a lot of things without seeming like it was trying too hard. I can see why it, and Dujardin, won the Oscar last year.

There's Something About Mary

I finished watching The Artist pretty early in my evening, and having had cleaned out my DVR earlier in the day (I need a hobby), I opted to try for another movie I haven't seen. Then I decided that this second movie would be the utter opposite, most non-Artist movie available and voila! There's Something About Mary!

I don't know why I never saw this movie when it came out in 1998. Maybe because I was in the 8th grade and couldn't get into an R-rated movie. I probably should have watched it somewhere between then and now because that's a good 15 years it's had to age, and while some movies stand the test of time, this one sadly does not.

For similar cave-dwellers who missed the last decade and a half, let me sum up. Mary is a down-to-earth, funny, beautiful gal (played by Cameron Diaz) that every man falls in love with. Ted fell in high school, when the two were set to go to the prom together. Through a series of unfortunate events, they never did get to that prom, and Mary moved away a few months later, forever out of Ted's life.

Intrigued by his old flame, Ted decides to hire a private investigator (Matt Dillon) to see what Mary's been up to. Along the way, the PI falls in love with her himself and tells Ted a bunch of things to make her seem unappealing. Ted's still intrigued and realizes the PI was full of it.

Shenanigans ensue, and we learn that Mary is also pined after by a local pizza deliveryman who has spent years befriending her as a handicapped architect and Ted's best friend, who happens to be Mary's ex-boyfriend from high school. Also, Brett Favre.

Full disclosure: I'm not a huge Farrelly brothers fan. I should be, what with the whole New England thing and the fact that I normally like stupid comedies. But this just didn't do it for me. Maybe because it was 15 years old. Maybe because most of the better jokes have been beaten to death outside of the movie (the hair gel scene, franks-n-beans, etc.) that they seemed tired by the time I saw them in context. Maybe because I watched it right after The Artist. Who knows? Sorry, New England.