Ten Points About 1995's "Seven"

The Cheese Fry recently watched David Fincher's serial killer masterpiece Seven with the 16-year-old, who'd never seen it.  We've watched it many times over the years, of course, but it's been a while.  We were coming into it pretty fresh.  And, of course, there's something special about watching a favorite movie with someone who's never seen it before.  And the 16-year-old knew next to nothing about Seven aside from it being about a serial killer and starring Brad Pitt.  Here's a few observations.

1. It's aged very, very well.  True, there are no smartphones or flatscreen computers so it's definitely of the 1990s, but the movie has such a timeless, fable quality that it still feels very contemporary and strangely urgent.  Morgan Freeman's big speech about living in a world where apathy is considered a virtue strikes a nerve all these years later.  It's much easier to tune out with social media than engage with people around you.
2. The ending ("John Doe's got the upper hand!") remains unflinchingly genius.  As shocking and tragic as it may be - the bad guy is more or less winning, the ending also feels completely inevitable and totally earned.  It's very hard to watch the torture on Brad Pitt's face as he wrestles with what to do, gun in hand, John Doe cuffed on his knees in front of him.  It's easy to say that a movie star like Pitt just coasts on charisma and charm, as in something like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  He's fantastic in that movie, but it's mostly just Pitt being cool.  When properly motivated, however, like in moments like this in Seven, he can deliver the actorly goods.
3. We realized for the first time that John Doe likely doesn't have a plan for the last two deadly sins (wrath and envy) until he poses as a news photographer and encounters Pitt.  Pitt goes nuts, breaking the camera and displaying his character's hot-headed rage, which John Doe will use against him.  What if Pitt hadn't done that?  How might the movie have ended?
4. There's just the one traditional action sequence when Pitt chases John Doe through apartment buildings and into the street.  Otherwise, it's mostly a seedier, grosser episode of your favorite TV police procedural with red herrings, high tech forensic geek-outs, and talky philosophizing about justice and crime.
5. Some interesting irony in that John Doe's twisted mission to showcase society's shameless evils more or less aligns with Freeman's view of the world.
6. There is no sanctuary in this infamously unnamed city.  It's always raining, dark, and crowded.  Everyone, in fact, seems in need of a bath and a fresh change of clothes.  Note also that our main characters can't even find solace in their homes: Pitt's apartment is rattled by a subway every ten minutes, while Freeman has to use a metronome at his bedside to drown out the constant yelling of arguing neighbors.  The one respite (aside from the bright desert sunshine of the movie's most devastating moment, although technically everyone had to drive for many miles out of the city to get there) is the city library after hours, where Freeman wanders the aisles in peace.
7. No surprise that Morgan Freeman turns every line into a polished jewel.  A national treasure.
8. Kevin Spacey is so very young here, but he packs such a punch, the essence of speaking softly and carrying a big stick.  It's an incredibly high bar to meet after so much build up with the gruesome, complicated deaths, but Spacey's creepy calm more than lives up to the hype.
9. We don't think Seven invented the "tired cop who's about to retire gets one last case" trope, but it certainly plays it out effectively.  When we first meet him, Freeman is a cop eager to quit.  He's seen it all and has had enough.  But by at the end, he tells his captain "I'll be around."  A big part of this transformation comes in the scene at the bar where Pitt loudly refuses to believe Freeman cares so little.  Pitt's lines here are so, so great: "I don’t think you’re quitting because you believe these things you say.  I don’t.  I think you want to believe them because you’re quitting."  You can see on Freeman's face - no dialogue needed - that there's truth in that.
10. We'd be remiss without also pointing out the insane title sequence of stuttering, skewed, overlapping images over grungy guitars.  Brilliant tone-setter.

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Notes on Watching the "Alien" Rerelease with a 14-Year-Old

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Alien.  To commemorate the occasion, last weekend the movie was re-released in theaters.  We were surprised that the 14-year-old seemed interested in watching it.

* Teen girls in our part of town treat moviegoing like a sleepover.  Slippers, baggy hoodies, sweatpants, a fuzzy blanket.  When you're all cuddled up like that in a plush leather Cinemark chair - that's heated, no less - in a cold movie theater, it's not surprising that you might get a little drowsy.  Fifteen minutes into the movie, we get a whispered "I'm getting sleepy."

* Concessions report: Diet Dr Pepper with cherry and vanilla for us, blue Icee for the 14-year-old.  No popcorn, no candy.

* The folks behind this re-release clearly assumed that anyone buying a ticket has already seen the movie.  And so before the movie they screen a 15-minute featurette with Alien director Ridley Scott talking to the director of this summer's new Alien sequel.  And of course, we get lots of Alien clips that spoils good chunks of the movie.  Cue exasperated sighs and groans from the 14-year-old.

* Was the 14-year-old the youngest audience member?  Probably.  There was a family there and the boy may have been 12.

* We agree that the first act of Alien - pretty much everything until the alien gets into the ship - is slow.  We tried to warn the 14-year-old.  We found that chunk of movie slow when we first watched it thirty years ago.  That measured build-up, however, is no match for Zoomers raised on endless scrolls of bite-sized TikTok videos.

* After John Hurt has his big moment at the dining table, 14-year-old asks "Is that guy dead?"  Yes.  Yes, he is.

* We did not go full geek and wear our Nostromo T-shirt.

* The movie got the 14-year-old good on the jump scare when Tom Skeritt's in the dark air vent trying to figure out where the alien is - we know it's closing in but we're not sure from where - and he swings his flashlight around behind him... and the alien is right there!  Eek!

* The 14-year-old's assessment in the hallway outside the theater: "It was okay."  That's pretty high praise actually from someone who often thinks anything made before 2010 is dusty ancient history.

* The next day, when asked what were her favorite parts, the 14-year-old could think of two: when Sigourney Weaver blew the alien into space and when android Ian Holm's creepy white sweat first appeared.

* For the record, the 14-year-old loved James Cameron's Aliens sequel.  As any decent American would.

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Why We Hate This Cinemark Spot

The Cheese Fry's local movie theater is a Cinemark.  It's ten minutes away, so we go to the same one every time.  (We prefer row C, the last row in the front section so there's no chance a noisy talker sits behind us.)

Cinemark's trailer packet before the movie always, always features this ridiculous spot pushing the theater's concessions app.  We hate it.  It's not just because we have to sit through those 30 seconds of hell every time we see a Cinemark movie, although that can't help.  We hated this spot the very first time we saw it.  Let us explain why.

* Why is this idiot going to get snacks towards what seems to be the movie's big ending?  We can understand an unexpected bathroom break, but this guy walks in with a huge tub of popcorn like he just arrived at the theater.  Note also that he enters with that obnoxious empty-cup straw noise.  So he's somehow slurped down the entire drink on his way from the soda fountain to the theater?  Don't insult our intelligence by trying to make a point with a completely unrealistic scenario.

* Look at these people's absurd reactions - in slow motion no less, an accompanied by some kind of aria to further heighten the psuedo-drama of it all - to whatever they're seeing.  Wide eyes.  Slack jaws.  Bouncing and pointing.  Hands over mouths.  Laughter.  Also tears.  The dude who throws up his arms signaling a touchdown.  What a douche.  Can you imagine him sitting next to you?  We don't think audiences from the 1910s who saw a movie for the very time in their entire lives had these sorts of over the top, bug-eyed, cartoon responses.  

This got us to thinking if there was ever a twist or an ending to a movie we saw in theaters that might come close to inspiring this sort of wild reaction from us.  Spoilers below.  Off the top of our heads...

1. The penis reveal in The Crying Game

2. The hair gel gag in There's Something About Mary
3. DiCaprio's shocking murder in The Departed
4. The big ghost twist at the end of The Sixth Sense
Huge, unexpected moments, but none of these inspired us to throw our popcorn bucket in the air.

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Sight and Sound's Top 100 Films

The British Film Institute recently unveiled its updated "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time" from Sight and Sound magazine, which tallied votes from 1600+ film critics.  The list caused a big hullabaloo with film nerds who complained that the title at the top of the list - Jeanne Dielman, an obscure 1970s social realism drama from Belgium written and directed by a woman - replaced the usual "best of" movies like Vertigo and Citizen Kane.  

We just figured it was film snobs doing what film snobs do best: impress other film snobs by championing the most unknown and challenging movies possible.  But there have been accusations of a purposeful "woke" agenda that may have rigged the ballot box to be sure underrepresented filmmakers got in and bumped out more traditional titles.  A more charitable spin is that the voters may have simply wanted to encourage film lovers to sample movies they might not otherwise watch, especially those from international filmmakers.  Shrug.

Anyway... we took a look at the list to see how our own moviegoing has stacked up with the fancy critics of Sight and Sound. 

How many of these "greatest movies ever" have you seen?

One interesting side note: we saw one critic suggest that these sort of lists should never include recent titles, that it can take 10-15 years to properly evaluate a film's lasting value and import.  This makes sense.  Will Parasite and Get Out really be regarded as the best ever ten years from now?

Category 1: We saw it and we love it.  We'd have no issue watching any of these again and again.
Ranked #6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
12 on the list. “The Godfather” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
19. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
24. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
36. (tie) City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
38. (tie) Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
38. (tie) Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
54. (tie) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott 1982)
63. (tie) Casablanca (Michael Curtiz 1942)
63. (tie) GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese 1990)
78. (tie) Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder 1950)
88. (tie) The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
95. (tie) The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)

Category 2: We saw it and we like it.  Solid, top tier movies everyone should see, but not necessarily ones we're eager to sit down and watch again.
2. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
3. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
8. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
10. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1951)
15. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
29. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
31. (tie) Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
41. (tie) Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
45. (tie) North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
50. (tie) The Piano (Jane Campion, 1992)
54. (tie) The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
63. (tie) The Third Man (Carol Reed 1949)
67. (tie) Metropolis (Fritz Lang 1927)
67. (tie) La Jetée (Chris Marker 1962)
78. (tie) Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin 1936)
95. (tie) Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
95. (tie) Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

Category 3: We saw it and once was enough.  Big props to our film theory and criticism classes that allowed me to see most of these movies.  We appreciate the importance of these titles, many of which helped create film "grammar" as we know it. But they're not the easiest things to sit through.
13. La Règle du Jeu aka Rules of the  Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
21. (tie) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)
23. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
38. (tie) À bout de souffle aka Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
43. (tie) Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
50. (tie) The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
54. (tie) Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
84. (tie) Blue Velvet (David Lynch 1986)

Category 4: We haven't seen it, but we'd certainly like to.  These remain on our "to do" list.
4. Tokyo Story (Ozu Yasujiro, 1953)
5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2001)
20. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
25. (tie) The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
30. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)
36. (tie) M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
41. (tie) Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
45. (tie) Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
45. (tie) The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
54. (tie) Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
60. (tie) La dolce vita (Federico Fellini 1960)
60. (tie) Moonlight (Barry Jenkins 2016)
72. (tie) My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki Hayao 1988)
75. (tie) Spirited Away (Miyazaki Hayao 2001)
88. (tie) Chungking Express (Wong Kar Wai, 1994)
90. (tie) Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019)

Category 5: We haven't seen it, and, honestly, probably won’t.  Maybe this makes us film heathens, but file these under "life is too short."
7. Beau travail” (Claire Denis, 1998)
9. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
11. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
18. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
31. (tie) 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
43. (tie) Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)
60. (tie) Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash 1991)
67. (tie) The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1948)
72. (tie) L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni 1960)
75. (tie) Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk 1959)
90. (tie) Ugetsu (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953)
90. (tie) Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 1999)

Category 6: We never heard of it.  In some cases, we've heard of the filmmaker.  But either way, a good chunk of these titles are the sort you'd find on film school syllabi across the country or whispered at swanky cocktail parties.  Since this is the longest list, turns out were are indeed film heathens.
1. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
14. Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
16. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943)
17. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)
21. (tie) Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)
25. (tie) Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
27. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
28. Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)
31. (tie) Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
34. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
35. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
48. (tie) Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
48. (tie) Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
52. (tie) News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976)
52. (tie) Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
54. (tie) Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard 1963)
59. Sans soleil (Chris Marker 1982)
66. Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty 1973)
67. (tie) The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda 2000)
67. (tie) Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky 1966)
72. (tie) Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini 1954)
75. (tie) Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi Kenji 1954)
78. (tie) A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang 1991)
78. (tie) Sátántangó (Béla Tarr 1994)
78. (tie) Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette 1974)
78. (tie) A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1946)
84. (tie) Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard 1965)
84. (tie) Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard 1988-1998)
84. (tie) The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
90. (tie) Madame de… (Max Ophüls, 1953)
90. (tie) The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1962)
95. (tie) A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
95. (tie) Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1965)
95. (tie) Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)

For the record, the Cheese Fry's "Best Film" list is incomplete and always pending, but among those you'll find on the list (in addition to Category 1 above) are Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993), Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003), Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), Out of Sight (Steven Soderberg, 1998), The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974), and Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1990).

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The "Dad Thriller"

Max Read offers a fascinating and amusing analysis of a 1990s genre he calls the "Dad Thriller."  It's definitely worth a read.  We wish we'd thought of it.

For example, here are some key questions to consider when deciding if a movie is a "Dad Thriller."

* Is Harrison Ford in the movie?
* Is the director Philip Noyce?
* Is there a satellite uplink?
* Is a key plot point a guy trying to get on the phone with the right guy to give him the correct information?
* Is there a shadowy cabal of lawyers and/or corporate executives?
* Is an American or English actor playing a current or former Irish Republican terrorist and attempting an unconvincing Irish accent?
* Is the main bad guy motivated by money? If he is motivated by ideology, are his politics incomprehensible and unrecognizable?
* Is the advice or warning of the movie's hero going unheeded by feckless bureaucrats?
* Is the main bad guy a former Soviet military commander?
* Is there a tense but ultimately productive exchange about race between a black guy and a white guy who are forced by circumstance to work together?
* Is the movie's hero obligated to go undertake a dangerous mission despite being an analyst, not field personnel?

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Trailer Check

Here are the seven trailers we sat through before seeing Spiderman No Way Home this past week. If each trailer runs two minutes, that's almost 20 minutes of coming attractions before the feature starts. It didn't used to be this many, did it? 

The Batman - As Mrs. Cheese Fry asked, "Why is Batman always so grim?" It's fairly amazing that Warner Bros. continues to make Batman movies. But if the audience keeps paying to see them, why stop? After a successful run with Christian Bale, we cycled to Ben Affleck and now to Robert Pattinson. We have to admit, as completely familiar and repetitive as this one seems to be, we find ourselves fairly intrigued as it seems to push the gritty, grim darkness to new depths, dialing all of that even past Chris Nolan levels. Lots of rain, fire, loud creepy music, and Bruce Wayne barking "I don't care what happens to me!" Very cool. Sigh. We're part of the problem, aren't we? 

Ambulance - The action-movie premise seems solid: desperate military veteran agrees to help a buddy pull a heist, then everything goes sideways, a cop is shot, hostages are taken, he's in over his head, yadda yadda yadda. Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II are always magnetic. So far, so good. But then you'll start to notice the movie's style - it's all swooping cameras, quick cuts, artfully photographed destruction - and realize that it's directed by Michael Bay. A few of his movies are fun, like The Rock, so you're trying to maintain optimism. But then comes the title. Ambulance. Presumably titled after the getaway vehicle in the movie. It's laughably obvious and unimaginative in a way that calls to mind a fake trailer on "Saturday Night Live." Imagine Speed if it were called City Bus. 

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Nope. We missed the first one and surely will be unable to follow this second chapter. We hope James Marsden was well paid. 

Death on the Nile - A sequel of sorts to Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express (which was pretty good), it doesn't seem to be a particularly exciting movie. The marketing department won't like hearing that. But the A-list cast is stacked, the Agatha Christie name carries the promise of a sophisticated plot, the setting seems exotic and luxurious, and no one will be shooting lasers. 

Crypto.com - So Matt Damon (we hope he was well paid) is telling us with a straight face that the bravery of mountain climbers, astronauts, and - get this - the Wright Brothers is very much the same sort of bravery needed to invest in the volatile emerging market of cryptocurrency, which is mostly for now a way for rich people to get richer. Got it. 

Uncharted - We're just happy to see a big budget thriller that isn't an adaptation of a Marvel comic book or 1990s video game.**  It certainly looks it's trying to emulate the treasure-hunting heroics of the Indiana Jones movies, but who knows? We're told that Mark Wahlberg can be polarizing, but we certainly like him. The trailer ends with an amazing "how will he get out of that?" cliffhanger moment that makes a huge impression. 

**Update: we have since learned that this movie is indeed based on a series of video games.  But of course it is.  So then, our only non-adapted film from this group is... Ambulance?

Morbius - At the risk of sounding like an old man hunched in a lawn chair yelling at tween skateboarders, this is what's wrong with Hollywood (or, to be fair, what's wrong with moviegoers). Another obscure Marvel character, another tedious origin story, another superpower action movie with a too-big CGI effects budget. Further demerits because it looks like the hero (antihero, whatever) is a vampire. Please, no one go see this. And yes, we certainly see the irony of our endorsement of the new Batman reboot all the while trashing this one. We're not proud of that.

To further explore this question of audiences only responded to movies based on existing IP, we looked at domestic box office for 2019 - we won't look at 2020 or 2021 since the pandemic disrupted everything.   And yes, we know Hollywood now turns on worldwide box office, but for the sake of argument, let's only consider American audiences.  As the great film journalist Scott Mendelson likes to say, audiences who complain about comic book movies need to actually, like, pay to see non-comic book movies when they get made.  Hollywood responds to what audiences pay to see.  Be sure to go see the movies you want to see more of.

So in 2019 you'd have to go all the way down to Jordan Peele's Us (#12 at the box office, earning $175 million) to find a movie not based on either a comic book or a previous movie.  After that, it's Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (#18, $141 million).  So out of the top 20 movies, only two were original, though one could argue that Peele and Tarantino are sort of a brand of their own.  In which case, there's Knives Out at #21 earning $115 million.

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Five bite-sized movie reviews

* Army of the Dead boasts the sort of high concept logline you expect to get pitched over martinis in Hollywood: "a Las Vegas heist thriller with zombies."  The idea probably should have died there.  As much as we love Dave Bautista's wounded weariness in any role, this is a movie ripping off ideas, characters, conflicts - and even entire story beats - from other, better movies.  But the most egregious sin for us is the sinking feeling that the filmmakers are giggling at the audience by arbitrarily killing off characters just because they can.  In the end, it's pointless, grim, and unsatisfying.

* Awake is pretty terrible. It feels cheap, rushed, and totally undercooked. While the idea that a global phenomenon preventing sleep might lead to social chaos and insanity is somewhat intriguing, what should maybe take a couple of weeks to play out here takes about 24 hours: after a single night of no sleep, the world totally falls apart and a church of wild-eyed wackos is ready to sacrifice a young girl who was able to sleep the previous night.  It's that kind of movie, chock full of underdeveloped drama and supporting characters that come and go at random.  Ugh.

* Greenland stars Gerard Butler, which typically signals a cheesy, B-movie aesthetic of big thrills on a low budget.  We were pleasantly surprised that this film delivers genuine edge and grit.  Post-9/11 and post-"Walking Dead,' we've all seen countless iterations of "end of the world" stories, but this one works hard to create a sense of realistic panic and dread.  It's easy to buy that this scary breakdown of law and order and morality is exactly how things would go if the world suddenly realized that a planet-killer comet was only two days away.  It's a Gerard Butler movie, so you get the required eye-rolling moments of happenstance and coincidence, but it packs a punch.

* In the Heights is certainly an exuberant and vivid movie. Recent casting controversy aside, there's a lot of fun to be had soaking up the story's Caribbean Latin culture and spending time with these likable characters, all of them hungering for a better life. The issue is that aside from a dreamy dance on the side of a building and a fantastic showstopper number at a city pool, there's a surprising flatness to the action. It just doesn't hit the mark. None of the songs are particularly earwormy, there's no clear antagonist to create conflict, and the story rambles on for about 45 minutes too long. We wanted to like it more than we did. 

* Tenet, like all Christopher Nolan films, can give you a headache as you try to understand just what exactly is going on.  The idea of an "inversion" machine that makes time run backwards is undeniably clever and unique - especially in those truly weirdo, nonsensical moments when forwards and backwards characters cross paths - but that doesn't mean it makes for a clear story. There are some undeniably memorable moments, but in the end, the movie feels like more of a mental exercise of plot mechanics than an effective drama. That is, it's all head and no heart.

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The Pop Culture Birthday Comparison

The Cheese Fry turns 47 today, which is pretty old no matter how you slice it.  We wanted to rub salt in the wound and look at some performances from our youth and calculate the age of the actor when he appeared in that role.  These characters all feel very grown-up and adult and manly, but in truth most of them were far younger then than we are now. Ouch.

33 - Bruce Willis' age in Die Hard (1988)
33 - Mel Gibson's age in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
34 - Sean Connery's age in Goldfinger (1964)
34 - Bill Murray's age in Ghostbusters (1984)
37 - George Clooney's age in Out of Sight (1998)
37 - Robert Redford's age in The Sting (1973)
37 - Arnold Schwarzenegger's age in The Terminator (1987)
38 - Harrison Ford's age in The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
38 - Michael Keaton's age in Batman (1989)
38 - Craig T. Nelson's age in Poltergeist (1982)
40 - Chevy Chase's age in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
40 - John Travolta's age in Pulp Fiction (1994)
41 - Clint Eastwood's age in Dirty Harry (1971)
42 - Tom Hanks' age in Saving Private Ryan (1998)
43 - Roy Scheider's age in Jaws (1975)
45 - Dustin Hoffman's age in Tootsie (1982)
46 - Jimmy Stewart's age in Rear Window (1954)
46 - Paul Gleason's age in The Breakfast Club (1984)
46 - Sam Neill's age in Jurassic Park (1993)
46 - Tom Skeritt's age in Alien (1979)

For this bit, a tip of the hat to the great Lex G.

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The Six Marvel Cinematic Universe Films We Still Haven't Seen (In the Order We'd Like to See Them)

1. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
2. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
3. Spiderman: Homecoming (2017)
4. Doctor Strange (2016)
5. Thor: The Dark World (2013)
6. Thor (2011)

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Does the Future Use Helvetica?

Author Dave Addey may just well be a genius.  His fascinating blog "Typeset of the Future" dives deep into the fonts and graphics used by science fiction films.  The level of obsessive analysis and attention to detail are nothing short of amazing.

So far, he's examined Moon, Alien, Blade Runner, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  His blog reports that next year he'll be publishing a book with even more analyses.

As but one example of his OCD focus on the minutiae of film, Addey created a video to try and understand the resolution and enlargement numbers in the famous sequence in Blade Runner in which Harrison Ford uses a machine in his apartment to zoom in on a photograph to look for clues.

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Mrs. Fry's Perspective on "Blade Runner"

Mrs. Cheese Fry decided to screen the 1982 classic Blade Runner in anticipation of watching the new sequel.  It was the first time she'd seen it.  Mrs. Fry delivered the expected dose of skeptical shrugs and eye rolls.

Here are some samples of her commentary.

"I don't know if I can take another hour of this narration" regarding Harrison Ford's noir-inspired voiceover.  We explained in detail the infamous history of the narration and she did a great job pretending to be interested.

"Why is it so dark?" asking about the purposefully bleak cinematography - all but one scene takes place at night - suggesting an ecological disaster.

"We're not going to see him naked even though we saw that other woman show everything" stating in a nutshell Hollywood's longtime aversion to male nudity. For the record, Harrison Ford did take his shirt all the way off moments after this criticism was leveled.  But he definitely didn't have the sort of nudity rider in his contract that costar Joanna Cassidy had in hers.

"What's with all of the old TV sets?" noticing that the filmmakers in 1981 failed to properly foresee and include flatscreen displays in their production design, opting instead for clunky, boxy CRT displays that were dated as of 1991.

"Of course she'll do what he wants - she's a robot" referring to the now-controversial moment when Harrison Ford refuses to let Sean Young leave his apartment and throws her against the wall for a forced kiss.  Replicants still have free will, we explained, which is one of the reasons why Blade Runners have jobs.

"So... where'd they get all of that blood?" asking about the bloody deaths of Replicants, not yet getting that Replicants aren't mechanical, but altered biological lifeforms.  Again, she feigned interest but mostly got annoyed that we kept pausing the movie for a geeked-out discussion of the minutiae of Replicants and Blade Runners and director Ridley Scott's rainy, neon-soaked vision of 2019 Los Angeles.

"Where the heck's that Gaff guy during all of this?" referencing the climactic fight between Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer and wondering why Ford didn't have backup.  Gaff's the Edward James Olmos character - a Blade Runner rival - who appears in three short scenes total.  It's not like they're Glover and Gibson in the Lethal Weapon movies, you know?

But did she like the movie?  "I could have not seen it."

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Knee-jerk catch-up: "Split" and "Logan" and "Captain Underpants" and "Wonder Woman" and "War for the Planet of the Apes"

Once upon a time, the Cheese Fry meticulously posted "Knee Jerk" reviews to each and every film we saw in a theater.  As the Fry family grew and extra-curriculum responsibilities expanded, that level of commitment became harder and harder to maintain.

We want to turn over a new leaf.  Whether that's actually possible remains to be seen.  But we would like to at least play catch-up on the movies we saw in 2017 that lacked a "Knee Jerk" review.

Split is far more entertaining and satisfying than it has any right to be. We've all seen this sort of thing before: the sociopath kidnaps pretty girls and locks them up, forcing them to dig deep and plot their escape, yadda yadda.  But the villain has multiple personalities, only a few of which are the "real" kidnappers. This is surely not medically accurate, but it gives the female victims a chance to work the other personalities to get out.  More importantly, writer-director M Night Shyamalan gets us out of the basement with a whole other subplot that shows the kidnapper out in the real world interacting with his kindly, if slow-to-catch-on, therapist.  A home run movie, even before the clever tag that links it to Shyamalan's 2000 film Unbreakable.

Logan stands out in a marketplace completely crowded with loud, noisy, cookie-cutter superhero movies. We used to loved superheroes, but Hollywood has just about worn us out. The Wolverine character - and Hugh Jackman's clenched-teeth, bad-boy-with-maybe-a-heart-of-gold performance - was always one of the best things about the X-Men movies. This sequel - looking ahead to Wolverine's last days in a bleak, dead-end future - can only be described as feral. It's a gritty, ferocious R-rated cry of pain (and splattering of blood) as Wolverine begrudgingly decides to be a hero one last time. For those who always wanted to know how deadly those claws could be.

Captain Underpants is no Pixar classic, which one might surmise from the title. The film's got a fun and distinctive cartoon style, sure, but it's a mostly manic and silly story about a mean vice principal who thinks he's a superhero. Or something like that. The movie lurches and careens forward with a palpable desperation to be exciting! and fun! and hilarious! Without question, the unending string of bathroom gags means it's squarely aimed at young boys. We actually dozed off halfway through it.  Probably not a pull quote the studio would want to use.

Wonder Woman is a joy. Many of the familiar superhero origin tropes are there, but there's no way to shake the feeling that this is a movie directed by a woman. It just feels... different somehow. The World War I setting certainly helps in the way casual chauvinism of that era underscores how far women still have to go in 2017, as does the matter-of-fact way Wonder Woman is presented. She's attractive but the camera doesn't leer and linger. She's more a symbol of strength and goodness (if only the Superman of 2013's uneven Man of Steel had taken that approach) than sex appeal.  The winning, charismatic performance by Gal Gadot is how a movie star is born. Yes, the ending is way over the top and goes on way too long. But of the movies on this list, it's our favorite by far.

War for the Planet of the Apes is the first Apes movie that we paid to see in theaters.  The first two we watched at home.  We picked poorly.  The first two are vastly underrated films, surprisingly effective thrillers that offer layered and thoughtful commentary on freedom and prejudice and warfare. And while this sequel is certainly a technical masterpiece - it's simply amazing to imagine that these creatures live only inside a computer server - it's ultimately a big disappointment  What begins as a fun sort of primate take on a traditional Western (small group of apes travel rocky plains looking for revenge) soon turns into a dour POW movie as the apes suffer under the heel of warden Woody Harrelson (always love him). If that's not bad enough, the apes' climactic escape involves a most unsatisfying deus ex machina rescue.  Sigh.

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A few words about "Gravity"

We saw this almost two months ago, far past the self-imposed expiration date of our usual "Knee-Jerk" review.  But it's stuck with us and if you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for?  

It's a masterpiece, plain and simple, a stirring example of the narrative and visceral power of cinema.  Was that pretentious enough for you?  Get off the couch and go, people.

Technically, the movie is nothing sort of awesome, using watershed visual effects to show you things you've never seen before.  Think about that a moment.  Filmmakers face an incredibly sophisticated audience that, like some kind of CGI junkie, needs bigger and bigger spectacles to get that kick of excitement to justify $8 tickets and $10 soft drinks.  (We suspect that the protracted, eye-popping finale of The Avengers is one reason that movie was such a ridiculous success, but we digress.)  But writer-director Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki find multiple ways here to push the envelope.  Disintegrating spacecraft coming apart in the soundless vacuum of space, glorious sunrises and sunsets from orbit, beautiful-yet-deadly microgravity flames, out-of-control astronauts spinning in and out of sunlight, Sandra Bullock floating in a space station.  Read a little about the movie's years-in-the-making backstory and you'll see what we mean.  The filmmakers invented entire new camera rigs and production processes.  You may have heard comparisons to the iconic, groundbreaking outer space visuals of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It's no hyperbole.  This movie is that good.  (Just make sure you see it in 3D and/or in IMAX for the full effect.)

As for the story, it's a cousin of Cast Away, putting a smart-but-inexperienced character into an impossible situation where survival depends on resourcefulness, luck, and a need to toughen up real quick.  Stories of survival are our most primal; everyone can relate to a desire to cheat death.  So there's a simplicity to the story.  We know what Sandra Bullock and George Clooney's characters must do, so it becomes a question of watching them succeed or fail by overcoming obstacles the plot throws in the way.  And there are a lot of obstacles.  This is one of those "Murphy's Law" movies we love so much - everything that can go wrong will go... and at the worst possible moment.  Even better, unlike so many recent would-be blockbusters, Gravity doesn't feel the need to drag everything out over 120+ minutes and cram in multiple loud climaxes and arbitrary, exhausting plot twists.  This movie's barely an hour and a half long.  That gives the action a lean, sparse quality.  There is no fat. It's got, like, momentum.

It's also got something else: narrative ambiguities.  This is the sort of extra layer that can transform good movies into great art.  We don't want to spoil the movie, but there's more than one way - as you may have heard - to read the movie's last act.  There is no right answer.  We viewed it one way, then started wondering if maybe we had it wrong.  (And it's not one of those annoying European-style open endings where you have no idea what you just saw or where the film just ends abruptly before a resolution like "The Sopranos."  This is more of a... fuzzy ending.)  Cuaron seems to want his audience to, you know, think.  He's designed it that way.  Even better, the story's plot is ingeniously linked directly to Bullock's own personal crisis of faith.  Screenwriting professors talk a lot about how a character's external struggle should mirror his/her internal struggle.  This is a textbook example of how it's done.  Admittedly, we didn't catch on to some of these poetic parallels until much later (i.e. Bullock may be sort-of, kind-of suicidal, which is echoed in her situation in the movie, stuck between the earth and the heavens).  But that's why the movie is so brilliant, people.  It begs repeat viewing to look for more meaning, more connections, more metaphors.

As for the acting, Clooney does what Clooney does best: exude swagger and charm.  Bullock has the harder task since she's alone for a good chunk of the movie.  The part isn't as showy as Tom Hanks' part in Cast Away if only because this movie has more of an action vibe.  It's a lot of  "Argh!" and "Oh no!" and "Eeeek!"  But she does get a couple of powerful monologues and a showy emotional breakdown moment.  An Oscar nomination is a sure thing.  Will she win?  Not sure.  But it's a far more subtle, emotional performance than the showy, rather shrill "look-at-me" one from The Blind Side that got her Best Actress a few years ago.

A+

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Driving through the 80s

Before the Cheese Fry's corporate relocation to Texas, we embarked on an important mission to visit the Southern California private homes that were used as exterior locations in three of our favorite iconic 1980s movies.

The farthest trip took us all the way out into hot, dry Simi Valley.  That's where the Freeling family lived in sleepy Cuesta Verde in 1982's Poltergeist.

Here's the picture we took:

And now a still from the movie when the subdivision didn't have so many white camper pick-up trucks ruining scenes.  And we thought the house imploded ("You moved the headstones but you didn't move the bodies!") at the movie's conclusion.  Hollywood, you fooled us again.

Our next trip took us to the outer reaches of Burbank, which filled in for Hill Valley in 1985's Back to the Future.  It's the power lines that give this one away, don't you think? Here's our shot taken on a slow drive-by.  This seemed to be a slightly sketchy neighborhood.

Very hard to find a good still off the internet for some reason even though this is where Doc Brown uttered the line "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."  All we could find was this dusky shot from one of the sequels.

Tujunga, California, shoved up against the mountains, is almost as far out as Simi Valley.  This place doubled for Elliot's suburban house in 1982's E.T.  Here's our shot, taken while standing brazenly at the foot of the driveway.

And then here's a shot from the movie, when the neighborhood was so new there were no trees or grass.  Right or wrong, this movie imprinted in us what a happy family's neighborhood ought to look like: rolling hills, clean white pavement, identical cookie cutter houses lining the blocks.  We love suburbia.

Phone home, people.

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Six thoughts on "Rock of Ages"

We don't typically review movies we see on cable, but this one deserves some sort of response.  

1. We loved the candy-colored 1980s Sunset Strip vibe, especially a loving recreation of Tower Records circa 1987 (remember those walls of cassette tapes?).  But having spent many years commuting on Sunset Blvd, something felt off here.  The landmarks looked right, but the geography was all wrong.  Among other things, it looked like the movie was suggesting Sunset ran north and south instead of the proper east and west.  And stores separated by blocks looked here like they were sitting side by side.  So we did some research and found out... the filmmakers "recreated" Sunset Blvd... on a rundown intersection in Miami.  Fail.
2. This is a movie that needed to be 95 minutes, tops.  You get in, you get out.  No one gets hurt.  No way does this fluff deserve 2 hours and 10 minutes of your life. 
3. Alec Baldwin is horribly miscast.  Wow.
4. We're not sure why the whole Catherine Zeta-Jones subplot even existed.  You cut it out, what do you miss?  Maybe one nice gag at the end.
5. Why not play it more straight and dramatic?  The filmmakers layer on this goofy, half-winking campiness to everything (we think that's one reason why Paul Giamatti is so awful), probably cultivated by director Adam Shankman.  But it doesn't work.  It feels like no one had faith in the story and so decided to treat it like a lark.
6. The reason to see it is for the 1980s hair band songs, especially some clever "Glee"-style mashups.  We grew up with most of these songs, so it a lot of it was fun.  But while we might give a pass to including Quarterflash's bluesy "Harden My Heart," we have to draw the line at Starship's "We Built This City," a song that we think Blender magazine once called the worst song ever written.  It's a song about not selling out.  The irony runs thick.

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Call it the Wooderson Effect

Vulture.com posted a fascinating series of charts analyzing the ages of Hollywood's leading men and their female costars.  The men get older and older, their co-stars stay the same age.  Matthew McConaughey's character in Dazed and Confused would approve.  Nothing like good old fashioned, institutionalized American sexism: older men are distinguished, older women need to stay indoors.  

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Lego genius

This is the sort of pop culture obsession we can get behind.  If it were us, of course, we'd probably create a Lego Starship Enterprise.

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Attacking Echo Base

We've previously shared with you a crazy, in-depth look at the so-called "Endor Holocaust," an examination of the deadly consequences to inhabitants of Endor if a Death Star-sized moon exploded in its orbit as depicted in the final moments of Return of the Jedi.  Let's just say the Ewoks won't be celebrating for long.

And now comes a fascinating, detailed military examination of the Hoth battle from The Empire Strikes Back that looks at the poor combat strategy employed by Darth Vader and the Empire.  Genius.

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Knee-jerk review: "The 85th Annual Academy Awards"

1. We admire Seth McFarlane.  He's a self-made man, an artist who toiled in obscurity animating lame Hanna Barbera cartoons while quietly crafting the idea that would became the juggernaut "Family Guy."  His success was not handed to him.  We like that.  Yeah yeah, "Family Guy" never explored high-minded social satire like "The Simpsons," but it certainly can still be funny, cramming in more jokes-per-minute than just about anything we've ever seen.  The fact that so many of the gags are directed right at the pop culture nostalgia of Generation X makes it all the more appealing in that inside baseball sort of way.  If you get it, you're in the club.
2. We have mixed feelings about "We Saw Your Boobs."  Hmmm.  The juvenile side of us finds it quite hilarious, especially given the many hours we logged long ago (not now, of course, don't be silly) looking for naked scenes in movies.  But there's also a side of us that's a little offended, a side that doesn't like how the song reduces talented actresses' accomplishments to some fleeting nude scene in a way that simply can't be done in a similarly insulting way for male actors.  Then again, one could argue that this is the hallmark of a great gag: you laugh and cringe at the same time.  Extra credit for the convoluted time-travel set-up, by the way, which allowed Seth to do the bit while also openly acknowledging how inappropriate it is.  Extra credit also for stating what we all know to be true: Kate Winslet invariably takes off her clothes in every movie.

3. The Captain Kirk thing went on too long.  We're in agreement on that, right?

4. That's surely the first Smokey and the Bandit reference on network TV in since the 1990s.  "We're gonna do what they say cain't be done."  Aside: there is no obvious evidence of medical intervention on Sally Field's face.
5. A shocking win for Christoph Waltz and Django Unchained.   Wow.  Is it just us or is Waltz essentially playing the same character that won him the Oscar for Inglourious Basterds?  They sound... exactly... the same.  It's the same guy, people.  Guess you have to give the Academy credit for consistency.  They really really like whatever it is Waltz has been doing.  Maybe he should keep doing it.

6. Any acceptance speech that isn't just a list of names is a good one in our book.  We often wonder if the Oscars should somehow come with closed-captions so viewers at home can keep track of the agents, producers, publicists, and attorneys getting name-checked at the podium.

7. If there is any equal of our beloved filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, it's probably Ang Lee.  Both of them refuse to be pigeonholed in a single style, choosing instead to travel in a variety of genres.  Westerns, sci-fi, superheroes, thrillers, heists, fantasy, period drama.  They don't always succeed, but their efforts are always intriguing.  We could use more directors like this.

8. For these overviews of the Best Picture nominees, why can't they show a single powerhouse scene to really take us into the movie?  Why do we instead get these trailer-like montages?
9. Maybe Joss Whedon should have written the banter for The Avengers actors.  Awkward and unfunny.
10. We felt bad that the visual effects guy was cut off by the Jaws theme, especially since he was trying to talk about the fragile, hopelessly dysfunctional state of the visual effects industry.  But these people were surely all told a million times how much time they had and what would happen if they ran over.  If he wanted to preach about visual effects finances, he should have started sooner.  What if everyone were indulged and allowed to talk as long as they wanted?  Dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria.
11. How embarrassing would it be if the winner for Best Costume Design showed up wearing something really ugly?  Would the Oscar win offset any perception of fashion incompetence?  Could they still get hired?  These are the things we think about.

12. Very exciting!  Fifty years of James Bond... but then all we get is a long montage clip.  At the very least, shouldn't the six Bond actors stroll out on stage in matching tuxedos to thunderous applause?  Then we learned from Deadline's Nikki Finke that Connery hates the Broccoli family.  How petty.
13. It feels wrong to hear Halle Berry say "Pussy Galore."
14. Shirley Bassey is still alive?  Huh.
15. If you can't get the Bond actors, then the next best thing would have been to coax to the stage McCartney for "Live and Let Die" (best Bond song ever) and Carly Simon for "Nobody Does It Better" to hit the trifecta.

16.  At this point, stand-up comedy and sitcoms are just an amusing footnote to Jamie Foxx's career, aren't they?

17. The orchestra is up the street and around the corner in the Capitol Building.  Why? 

18. An homage to classic movie musicals... of the last ten years only... and one of which is up for Best Picture this year.  We liked the Les Miserables showstopper, but in general, this felt like a waste of 15 minutes.  It was pointed out to us later that the people who are producing the Oscars - producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan - are Broadway guys who helped make Chicago.  Now it's starting to make sense, isn't it?
19. This goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway.  It is absolutely ridiculous what filmmakers can do with computer technology (even as they run effects companies into the ground - see #10 above).  It's easy to spot big tentpole effects of dinosaurs and aliens and nuclear holocausts, sure.  But the majority of the effects work that you see in movies is completely seamless and rendered so realistically and vividly that you'd never guess it was an effect at all.

20. We laughed out loud at the Von Trapp "They're gone!" gag.  Sorry.

21. As is often the case, Best Supporting Actress goes to the ingenue.  Oscar loves anointing cute young women.  Here, we get Anne Hathaway doing her "oh my gosh I'm so excited" routine yet again.  The realest thing about her acceptance speech is the weirdly craven moment she whispered "It came true" to her new Oscar.  We suppose we should all be happy for her, finally achieving her goal.  Doesn't she know you're supposed to pretend to be above it all and not want it that badly?  She really is like the annoying perky, hammy, isn't-it-swell? theater arts student.  That said, we can't fault her for her talent.  She has the goods.  Hathaway was easily the best thing in The Dark Knight Returns and The Devil Wears Prada is way underrated. 

22. Sit down,Harvey Weinstein, you're in the shot!

23. Okay okay, Adele's song "Skyfall" is definitely growing on us.

24. If Kristen Stewart doesn't want to be there on stage giving out an award, why is she there?

25. Stuntman (and member of the weird 1970s Burt Reynolds royal court) Hal Needham gets an honorary Oscar.  Big cable staple growing up: Needham's film Hooper.  No CGI back then.  You're really driving cars under collapsing brick smokestacks.

26. And now... "In Memoriam."  Or, that part of the show where you say "I didn't know he/she died!"

27. Here we go again with more Chicago love.  Good grief.  It was a great movie, yes.  But it was ten years ago and the show's now devoted two segments to reminding us about it.  Memo to Oscar producers: no one cares.  How about some random celebrations of Shakespeare in Love or Forrest Gump or while you're at it?  We saw a tweet that said the producers are making the Oscars into the Tonys so they can get a job producing the Emmys.  Zing!

28. Why is ABC making Seth do his own "coming up next" bumpers?  Could they not hire an announcer?

29. Quentin Tarantino is a polarizing figure, but count us among his fans.  That said, this is an unexpected win for him.  Inglourious Basterds was more deserving.  Does this mean Hollywood likes him?  It's his second Oscar for writing, so this certainly seems like validation.  

30. Jennifer Lawrence falls on the way up the steps, a humiliating moment that instantly mutes any Hathaway-ian criticism.  To us, Lawrence is like Sandra Bullock with more talent and gravitas, the cute-but-gawky girl next door who finds Hollywood politics rather amusing and any talk of her a sex symbol to be utterly ridiculous. 

32. Daniel Day Lewis wins for Lincoln.  You could have written it down back when Spielberg cast him two years ago.  That's about as stone cold a lock as Oscars give these days.  

33. We like the First Lady, but please get out of our Oscarcast, Michelle Obama.  We're trying to go to bed.  Enough of these gimmicky shenanigans.  Open the envelope and let's call it a night.
34. The more we think about it, the sillier it seems to have this many Best Picture nominees.  Five was a nice round number.  You get two critics' choice front runners, a populist box office hit, an arty indie, and a dark horse.  It made sense.  Now it's just this weird free for all.  Five one year, ten the next.  Stop the madness.
35. Argo deserved it.

Here's what we said about the 83rd Annual Academy Awards.  You know, the year The King's Speech won.  And the 81st Annual Academy Awards.  The year that Slumdog Millionaire won.

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Knee-jerk review: ABC's "Oscars Red Carpet Live"

1. The Cheese Fry once lived around the corner from the theater formerly known as the Kodak.  Oscar week was always a nuisance of street closures and bright lights.  We walked down there a few times mid-week to see the bleachers going up and the red carpet laid out (always covered with plastic until the last second) or the giant wooden Oscar sentries rolled into place.  And then the day of the event, the sky would be filled with noisy helicopters, the streets with stretch limos.  Cool, huh?  Maybe it wasn't such a nuisance after all.
2. We want to like Kristin Chenoweth.  We do.  But we can't.  She seems to be trying... oh... so... hard. Her neck cords are always popping and straining.  And why is she the one doing the red carpet interviews?  Was Terri Hatcher and Kelly Ripa busy?  Then again, at least Kristin has been in movies.  Kelly Rowland is even more of a mystery hire.
3. Nice shot of the long red-carpeted staircase leading up to the theater lobby.  You'd never guess those heavy red drapes on the sides are hiding tourist-trap mall stores like an ice cream shop and a perfume discount outlet.  
4. There's always someone who shows up on the red carpet who completely enrages us because of their mere "why-did-you-get-invited?" inclusion.  Who will it be this year?
5. We have succumbed to Channing Tatum's charms.  Sorry.
6. The "Hooray for Hollywood" Diet Coke spot gets us every time.  Subtle, classy, and perfectly capturing our rose-tinted, magic-houred nostalgia for the magical way movies used to be made in an organized studio system.  Also a nice shout-out to the people who stick the signs on the billboards - they're important too.



7. We heard nasty rumors about Lara Spencer's cold-blooded ambition, but can't remember the details.  Does that mean we shouldn't still dislike her?  Because we do.
8. We remain fascinated by this obsession with celebrity fashion and the shallow "who are you wearing?" question.  Was it Joan Rivers who started this nonsense on her E! shows?  We get the appeal from an old-Hollywood glamour angle.  These are attractive, larger-than-life figures dolled up to look their absolute best.  But there's now also this ridiculous need to rank best-dressed and worst-dressed.  Don't these people live with enough scrutiny already?  It's enough.
9. Entertainment Weekly editor Jess Cagle seems like a classy dude.  And he's out in the red carpet hinterlands on Highland Avenue interview Daniel Radcliffe, who always looks startled.
10. We harbor a long-standing crush on Naomi Watts, but she doesn't look so good tonight.  And with that... we just became a part of the problem we attacked in number 8 above.  11. "Oscar Road Trip."  What a clever promotion, letting ordinary moviegoers hold an Oscar and get tickets to the show (or is it just tickets to the red carpet grandstands?).  Sometimes it seems like the audience is barely a factor, doesn't it?  
12. It really is all about Kristin Chenoweth in these interviews.  Jeez.
13. "I think she looks pretty there," says Mrs. Fry regarding Nicole Kidman.  We, however, note that her face doesn't much move above the nostrils.
14. Nice moment where we get a glimpse of what it's like to shuffle down the red carpet for dozens of whirring cameras.  A friend who worked in the TV world says this is called "step and repeat."  Smile, pose, walk two steps, smile, pose.
15. Mention now of another great program, this one that brings film students to Hollywood to learn about the Academy and Hollywood filmmaking.  These kinds of outreach programs are so great, but we hadn't heard about it until now.  Same with that "Oscar Road Trip."  Shouldn't that better-publicized to generate goodwill?
16. We just noticed there's no Ryan Seacrest.  No wonder we're enjoying ourselves.
17. That Oscar Mystery item better be something real and cool after all of this awkward build-up.  (Update: it is.  A pair of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.)
18. The people sliding past DeNiro as he gives his red carpet interview.  We wonder if they're nudging each other and whispering, "There's DeNiro!" "I know!"
19. The 44-year-old Jennifer Aniston is aging oh so well.  That is all.  Sigh.
20. Adele is towering over Chenoweth.  Looks like Adele could pop her in her mouth like a Gummi Bear.  We wish she would.
21. Oh, George Clooney and his little trophy girlfriends.  What a life.
22. Whispered reverentially by Mrs. Cheese Fry regarding Sandra Bullock: "I love her."
23. Sorry, but Anne Hathaway has become insufferable with her phony humility and false modesty.  She's her own biggest fan.  We're not saying this isn't true about every actor, but she's got to do better at hiding it.
24. We barely recognized Renee Zellweger.  It's almost tragic the way actresses feel a compulsion to get cosmetic work done.
25. Cool how the people in the show's control room are all wearing tuxedos.
26. At this point, hip-hop is just an amusing footnote to Queen Latifah's career, isn't it?

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