The Secret World of Arrietty

Dear James Glenton, Assistant Sound Re-Recording Mixer,

Hey James, I just wanted to let you know how happy I am that the tinnitus you suffered mixing Clash of the Titans was not permanent. I knew your recovery from that cacophonous mess was complete listening to the quiet, almost reflective soundscape of The Secret World of Arrietty. And what a pleasure it is to watch an animated film that is not overstuffed with wise-cracking animals and fart noises, but has the confidence to rely on character, story, and tone to enrapture an audience.

Yours in silence,

Casey

Status: Priority Post

Project X

Dear John Agoglia, Location Manager,

As a 28 year-old guy, Project X seems like the best shooting experience ever. I’d like to imagine that the overlong party sequence required weeks of topless extras, countless takes of jumping into the pool from every possible angle, and wild, improvised moments of debauchery for the numerous montages. But instead, I couldn’t help think of you.

Why? Because apparently, I just got old.

Full disclosure: the fact that I’m a very recent homeowner might have had something to do with my inability to enjoy all the onscreen anarchy. But I wasn’t alone in the audience. As I glanced around and saw people over the age of 30 shielding their eyes, it wasn’t due to any gross-out humour. It’s because we all shared the pain of responsibility. Much like you.

However, I suppose it’s possible you were the film crew’s answer to the character “Costa”– charmingly conning the real property owner and neighbours into believing everything would be fine. If that’s the case, I commend you for probably negotiating lower location fees because there were no stars in the film and it was to be shot like a home-movie. After all, the producers would be the ones on the hook if things got out of control. Todd Philips and Joel Silver can certainly afford to trash whatever McMansion they need in the quest for the next box-office hit. But somehow I don’t think you treated your job with such woeful disregard for decency as the film’s awful best friend.

My suspicion is you were more like the unwanted parent of the film set, considered a “wet blanket” by all the halfwits who put this film together. If the script is any indication, you had one hell of a mess to clean up.

The plot is straight out of a Katy Perry music video, and so much more (of the same). Why not go all the way, and at least render the parents as rich, uptight, repressive snobs who had the destruction of their entire personal fortune coming? And shouldn’t you give the neighbours more villainous characteristics than just calling the cops? When it comes to a sober second voice looking over the script, only the legal department spoke up. I’m guessing it was their insistence that the characters stress it’s a “seniors only” party, so we could enjoy all the bare breasts without fear of moral litigation. For that, please pass on my thanks.

So why am I upset? Did I not know what I was getting into? Well, call me as naïve as the film’s “hero” Thomas, but no, I guess I didn’t. I shouldn’t expect anything cleverer than a midget punching people in the balls from what is essentially The Teenage Hangover: Before the Blackout. But Project X one-ups those tedious exercises in “comedy” by not giving us a single character to care about. We’re more than happy to forget all the idiots we had to deal with on screen, kind of like the high school experience itself.

Whoa, maybe that’s the point?

Nope. This is no cautionary tale. The film wears the consequences like a badge of honor. Yet, with the exception of someone trying to torch the neighbourhood with a flame-thrower (spoiler alert?), I can’t accuse the film of not being somewhat credible. We’ve seen the YouTube interview with that Melbourne teen who undoubtedly inspired the film (made almost explicit in the final sequence). I guess that’s where my age starts to show. The cartoonish Animal House antics have now become an instruction manual for how to get popular in today’s 15 seconds of fame universe.

The Gen X answer to this film is certainly last week’s release Wanderlust. Produced by Judd Aptow, it has all the same themes, copious amounts of nudity, people taking drugs, partying all hours of the night, yet somehow gives us characters experiencing a meaningful struggle. The cardboard cutout people we get in Project X don’t truly undergo changes, they just rise superficial steps up a social ladder that’s about to end. The hollowness of this final high-note is therefore obvious to everyone outside the target demographic. Unfortunately, the kids who will eat this film up still have their biggest mistakes ahead of them.

I’ve been to big, out-of-control high school house parties. A smart host usually calls the cops themselves in a closed room, then plays the hero in front of the friends while having saved face from the police. Imagine that twist, actually bringing a dimension to the characters beyond just insecure pawns.

But why am I telling you this? You were supposed to be the responsible adult on set. All I can say, is I share your pain.

Aging like a stinky cheese,

Old Man Redmond

Status: Return to Sender (2/5)

Monsieur Lazhar

Dear Laurent Boye, International Publicist,

Somebody’s been busy the past few months! Let me start by congratulating you on the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination for Monsieur Lazar. Getting the Academy to sit through another Canadian film about isolation and depression could not have been easy. Sure, there’s no weird sex or snowshoes, but opening with a teacher hanging herself in a classroom? You were probably tempted to lock the exits. Lucky for you, the story subverts expectations and turns into a genuine crowd pleaser within about five minutes. At that point, the film does a pretty good job of selling itself.

But let’s go back to when you first heard writer and director Philippe Falardeau was turning a one-man play into a feature film. I imagine everyone at Telefilm was reaching for red markers. Theatre icon Daniel McIvor adapted his own solo stage effort but didn’t exactly bring down the House. International sensation Robert Lepage tried, but is now in self-imposed cinematic exile from The Far Side of the Moon. Even by Canadian standards, the initial odds of success were stacked pretty heavy against Falardeau.

His last feature, It’s Not Me I Swear!, certainly proved how emotionally effective he could make an eccentric visual pallet and melancholy characters. But although you can now promote him as one of Canada’s most dependable directors, no one gets a financing carte blanche in our subsidized industry (contrary to what your detractors on Sun TV have said). So at what point did you know you might have a critical and commercial hit on your hands?

Casting Fellag as the titular star was probably a good start. The Algerian actor is apparently famous in his homeland as a comedian, but I would have never guessed. His dramatic performance is subtle, layered and enchanting in a way our native gag specialists (Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Patrick Huard, etc.) always fall short when crossing genres. I know playing against type makes your job a nightmare, but in this case, the North American public’s unfamiliarity only helped the character’s authenticity. But please tell him that around here, only rock stars and wrestlers get to go by one name.

I am confused, however, why you abandoned the Canadian poster, featuring the teacher walking alone down a hallway with a “papier poisson” taped to his back. It was such a simple and poetic moment from the film that captured the essence of his struggle to fit into his foreign home. Americans love fish-out-of-water stories too, yet the smiling family portrait with his students, when taken out of context, has far less dramatic and thematic relevance. I also struggle to understand how it helps the film commercially. But at least you stuck with a French title. Calling the film Mr. Lazhar would have robbed the story of some French post-colonial undertones, and just plain sounded banal. Kind of like why perfume companies don’t translate “eau de toilette.”

The young actors, however, did deserve more prominence in the publicity I suppose. Émilien Néron, as the troubled Simon, absolutely nails his climactic scene that is a lynch pin for the whole story. Each of the other student performances also feel refreshingly age appropriate and honest. So while I’m able to appreciate their importance after the fact, I think the film’s success in Canada proves the right poster can help the film appeal to a wider demographic than Half Nelson, or even Dead Poets Society.

I’ve now seen the film twice with vastly different audiences. First with critics at a steely press and industry screening during the Toronto International Film Festival, and again months later with patriotic cheerleaders at one of Heritage Minister James Moore’s swanky Parliament Hill movie nights. In both cases, my own sample exit polls found people agreed the film was more moving because of the director’s resistance to sentimentality. The American poster does just the opposite, but I suppose getting the Yanks to swallow a French Canadian pill requires a lot of sugar. So here’s hoping you find continued success south of the border.

With glowing hearts,

Christopher

P.S. Smart move taking your name off Burlesque.

Status: Air Mail (4/5)

Act of Valor

Dear Anthony Carone, Yacht Henchman #1,

I’m so glad I killed your ass. Act of Valor’s first-person shooter cinematography perfectly fed my fantasy of pulling the trigger – for America! Who cares that Call of Duty: Army Approved is just a big-screen military recruitment video? I’ve already signed up. Because “acting” (ie. pretending) is for pussies. That’s why they used actual Navy SEALs, live ammunition, and certified scum like you to keep shit real. I’ll sleep better at night knowing we’ve sent your cartoonish characterization of terrorism to a watery grave. Tell Cristo’s Thug and Somalian they’re next.

Gotta go – I’m on a beach about to devirginate Yacht Girls 1, 2 and 3 to the soundtrack of America, Fuck Yeah! So suck it. Yup, you too.

No guts, no glory.
Christopher

P.S. You were the only Yacht Henchman. They just called you #1 to make you feel special.

Status: Standrad Delivery (3/5)

The Grey

 

Dear John Kralt, Dermot Mulroney’s Stunt Double

I just wanted to say that I totally bought you as Dermot Mulroney, who, coincidentally, I totally bought as the nebbish member of the work crew. You both fought to survive, after a thrilling plane crash, an implausible series of wolf attacks and subarctic blizzards somewhere in darkest, coldest Alaska. All the surprising nuance that makes the movie work as a character study (if not completely as an action thriller) is evident when you go crashing through that tree towards the end; you really flailed your arms with Dermot Mulroney’s unique double-jointed mobility. That’s true craftsmanship.

Sincerely,
Jared

The Help

Dear Chris Ubick, Prop Master

You know, I was surprised. For a movie about civil rights that takes place in perhaps the most abhorrent time and place for the concepts of both civility and righteousness – Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s – I was surprised by how much the plot of The Help relies, in its muddled third act, on one of your props.

Of course, I’m talking about the chocolate pie.

As prop master, I imagine it was no easy task to create (or build, or bake) that pie. For the scene to work – indeed, for the very denouement of the film to unfold in a way that is plausible – the pie has to seem irresistible. And it does. Whatever you used to create the filling (was it real chocolate, or a painted latex mold of a lesser pie?) it has a creamy texture and mahogany-and-copper color that certainly tweaks the taste buds. But your pie is more complicated than that. In addition to appearing delicious, it must also, upon the vouchsafing of some rather horrifying information, emit the vulgar essence of a dessert Dante might have been offered during his sojourn to the third circle of hell. No easy feat to accomplish with a single pastry.

But don’t worry, Chris. You pulled it off.

Poor Bryce Dallas Howard, who, mid-career and still with so much sweetness to offer, has made a habit lately of playing these bitchy types (I’m thinking of 50/50 from earlier this year), helps you out the best she can. But her role as the shrieking harpy villainess – a sort of Real Racist Housewife of Jackson – is an unenviable one. After eating your pie, she summons some terrific wails and screams, but her character is so dimensionless – and, by the end, so utterly unchanged – that it’s difficult even to take pleasure in her much-deserved comeuppance. Oscar-nominee Octavia Spencer and Sissy Spacek (who knows something about the shame of interacting in unfortunate ways with bodily matter) are there to watch and gape at Howard’s histrionics, but, despite their pedigree (the supporting cast, which includes Cicely Tyson and Allison Janney, is quite good), it really is your pie that carries this vital scene.

And the rest of the film, too.

Which I guess was my problem, Chris.

In a movie like this that searches for levity in dark places, it all comes down to finding a balance between the sweet and the foul, and you did that a lot more effectively with your pie than writer/director Tate Taylor was able to do with the rest of the film. I guess there’s something to admire in the sincerity he so unambiguously applies to just about every scene; this is a certain type of film – a well-meaning Hollywood historical drama – and films like these always deal in absolutes. But real-world issues like Civil Rights are often ambiguous: if not ideologically, at least in the motivations and desires of the people living through them.

Where you and your props team were able to find a diverse range of mid-century toilets for the film’s other scene of scatological revenge, Taylor paints a picture of Jackson that is populated primarily by two very familiar stereotypes: the (1) wise and stoic black women who suffer silently under the autocracy of the (2) wealthy, clueless, bouffant-wearing Southern Belles. And the message, in the end, is equally middling: that the courage to persevere must come from without.

The story deserves something better than that. I think that’s what bums me out the most, Chris: that the dramatic onus of a film that references the assassination of Medgar Evers and features a pretty disturbing scene of domestic violence should be placed on a single delicious dessert.

At least you made it well, my friend (seriously, was it real chocolate or was it Andy Serkis in a ping-pong ball suit channeling real chocolate?). You got the smooth cocoa tones of the filling just right, but The Help, as a whole, offers a pretty marbled and tasteless view of the civil rights movement.

It looks like it should taste good. But it doesn’t.

Forever and always,

Jared Young

Status: Return to Sender (2/5)

Trading Places

Giancarlo Esposito and Eddie Murphy, Trading Spaces, 1982

Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring, Breaking Bad, 2011

Dear Giancarlo Esposito, Cellmate #2 in Trading Places

I am sorry for just now, merely 10 minutes ago when my girlfriend totally called it, realizing how far you’ve truly come.

Yours Always,
Cory

Wanderlust

Dear Michael Dean, Stand-In for Mr. Rudd

Hey Michael. How are things? Feeling drained? Being a stand-in is no easy feat, I know. Especially when you’re standing in the latent heat of Paul Rudd’s charm. I picture it like a sort of terrestrial version of the Van Allen radiation belt: big elliptical oblongs of handsomeness and charisma. Could you feel it? Even just a tingle? One gets the feeling that it’s waning a bit, but who cares; he can still carry a mediocre flick. Luckily, Wanderlust is pretty damn funny. It’s as good, quantitatively, as his most recent pairing with director David Wain, Role Models, but trades the man-child grotesqueries for yuppie neurotics (which isn’t to say that it doesn’t get wonderfully grotesque). This all brings me to my real question: is he as cool in real life as he is in my head? If so, do you think we could all hang out together sometime? Maybe get an apartment together? Just ask him. See what he says. No biggie.

Sincerely,
Jared

The Artist

Dear Valeria Ghiran, boom operator,

First, let me apologize. I said some things I didn’t mean when I heard you were going to work on a black and white silent film. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been such a solid gig for you, and Justifiedwas just getting good! But I know you’ve always wanted to work on a real Hollywood film. TechnicallyThe Artist is French, and there’s no talking, but who’s laughing now, right?

I bet nobody even blinked seeing you walk around with your big pole and microphone for the entire 35 days. I wouldn’t have. Boom operators are like the bellybuttons of film sets – we just accept they exist and have a place. Sometimes they even serve a purpose. Other times, it’s just nice when producers gloss over the crew list. Am I right? So give me the skinny baby, dish up some dirt from behind-the-scenes!

For example, I know director Michel Hazanavicius is married to Bérénice Béjo, but there’s no way her and Jean Dujarin weren’t up to some “French” business between takes. I don’t think I’ve ever loved an onscreen couple as much as I did the two of them. His eyes, her smile – no offense, but I think your “sound” abilities would have only ruined what they had going. Good call to stay away.

I hope you snuck into Béjo’s trailer to slip on one sleeve of her coat and touch yourself though. I would have. She managed to turn something that sounds creepy into the most beautiful moment of the film. She would have been totally flattered to find you playing with her clothes. Europeans are always so much more direct. You probably figured that out during the cute homage to your boom operating skills when Dujardin kept ruining those takes on purpose. He totally gets you – I hope you got his number.

Also, I’ve been meaning to ask – what the hell was John Goodman actually saying? I assume you recorded all that gold for the DVD extras. My guess is he was speaking German, because he would blow-hard for a good 30 seconds and the title card would just say something like “Darleen!” Classic John.

Maybe you can help me understand one part that bothered me. I don’t know how the whole sound department hierarchy works (besides the fact you’re at the bottom), but can you tell your bosses that using the Vertigo score killed the ending for Hitchcock fans? Depriving people of a climax after such a stimulating ordeal is akin to, well, trying to now take Kim Novak seriously. But everyone has critics. Your film, however, has fewer than most. Deservedly so.

Imagine – you’ve finally worked on something that your sweetheart mother, pretentious father, colour blind brother and deaf Grandma all equally enjoy. Take some credit Val, and don’t be so offended by all the praise for this brilliant and unlikely “silent” hit. That scene, with the sound – you nailed it. The audience at my screening was so quiet you could hear a cup drop. So stop being so damn modest in all your interviews. You made a point in that negative space – just like the arrow in the FedEx logo. To me, your contribution was loud and clear.

Somewhat sincerely,
Christopher

Status: Priority Post (5/5)

 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Dear Peter Straughan, Screenwriter,

Peter, you should have known better.

You were doing so well, that, in the excitement, you forgot yourself­—and your place. You tried to improve on the source material by adding some gay, taking out a lady, and relying on a metaphor that brought the whole thing down around your ears.

What happened? You had Bridget and Tomas with you this time. So perhaps it’s their fault, but I don’t believe it. I thought “It’s that goat movie all over again. Peter had a weird and great story and he let it slip through his fingers.” But your instincts are strong, and Bridget and Tomas are great, so I really want to understand completely.

So much was right. You had, in many ways, really chosen the best path. It’s a brilliant adaptation that slims down a book and a TV series into an economical and deliciously atmospheric film, with rough blankets of paranoia and flattering quilts of intelligence.

But you still pooped the bed.

I can only imagine what it was like. In the Huffington Post, you admitted that you were scared, and I believe you. When working on a screenplay as complicated and nuanced as this, you should have clung to your source material for dear life.

Is it possible, that having some so close to perfection, flushed with pride, that you let yourself blow right past the whole point of your movie? So I should be clear. What exactly did you add?

Well, you added some homosexuality. Maybe you thought it makes Guillam’s sacrifice more epic. Perhaps it makes Smiley more insightful for noticing it. Maybe you thought it more honest having a gay character. But doing so, you unintentionally make one of your main characters a complete bounder. Now this top spy has neither the smarts to hide his relationship from idiots like Alleline nor the courage or love to defend it when it conflicts with his workplace ambitions? And then he cries about it? It’s a flourish that pretends every one of these players hasn’t already sacrificed every single secret of theirs worth knowing. See? Just one little addition and the whole beautiful thing starts to stink.

The next addition was actually a removal: Anne. In the book and series, Anne is overwhelming, Smiley’s one weakness, the one he can’t escape. She produces sound and light and noise and humiliation that keeps him from clearly seeing the truth. I could even forgive you trivializing Connie Sachs, but Anne? Her power and influence trivializes the whole damn Circus, and you take her out?

Hiding Anne as you did, you give the audience the one same blind spot Smiley has. How can we know the stakes, or what was achieved, if we only see as far as his own limitations? Even if he sees past those limitations at the end, we are still blind. Imagine a Rope where Hitchcock has removed the entire first scene. That is not a better movie.

 

But adding those little chess pieces made it clear what you had done. If this is about a cold-war chess game, you made it about the wrong one. Smiley vs. Karla is a Fischer vs. Spassky-level contest. But it’s not 1972. It’s 1992. The players are no longer at their peak, and playing for diminished stakes.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a story of has-beens. In it, Smiley has made mistakes that he should have caught. The mole has operated for far too long. Most of the characters are grey and broken from years of service. The whole project itself is only on the edge of concern for the higher-ups. The players are going through the motions, waiting to see who gets tired first.

The danger of using metaphors is that they can get away from you, obscuring instead of revealing your subject. Your little chessmen subvert the original meaning of the film’s title. They get everyone wondering who was rook, and who was knight, and who was queen?

That’s a good story device, but I think it’s where you erred, overreaching past a concise masterpiece. It’s probably the same tragic mistake the characters each make: believing that they were ever anything other than mere pawns. It’s the mistake we all make, really.

Sigh.
Cory

Status: Air Mail (3.5/5)