Contradicting Popular Opinion: 30.3.06

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Contradicting Popular Opinion
A.K.A.

An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks

First off, a special thanks goes out to reader Mike Rodgers who corrected a stupid mistake on my part. My idiocy has been stricken from the record. Let’s us never speak of it again.

So, March has been a month of change here at Inside Pulse. Or is it the Inside Pulse? The IP? Anywhos there has been some shaking up round these parts, and I thought it time to get to the bottom of this thing.

Off goes my snarky columnist hat and on goes my snarky journalist hat. It is a nicer hat anyway. It’s got a big pimp feather in it.

Let’s sit down with Michaelangelo McCullar

Contradicting Popular Opinion Interviews Mikey, the King Koopa of the Movie Zone

BACKGROUND NOISE

CPO: Who are you and what exactly do you do here?

MM: I am Michaelangelo McCullar, and I’m the Movies Zone editor. I took over for Steve Coogan back in November, I believe it was.

CPO: How long have you been at InsidePulse?

MM: Since October 2004. After the site launched, but one of the original Movies Zone staff when it launched.

WHAT’S HAPPENING? (SANS RERUN)

CPO: So, what is happening in the movie section? How has it changed since you started, and how is it changing now?

MM:Well, we’ve finally settled on a solid core of staff, with a wide variety of cinematic tastes, so that allows us to cover a pretty broad spectrum of film. We have a solid core of columnists, with Erik Schwob, Robert Sutton, Brad Torreano, John Cavanagh, Travis Leamons, Ryan Closs, and yourself providing daily content on everything under the sun pertaining to movies. We’ve beefed up our DVD reviews, and all credit for that goes to Travis Leamons, who’s developed some solid connections with studios and PR firms that allows us to cover and review a lot more DVDs than we normally would. We’re also, as some may have noticed, revamping our review system to provide our readers a final score that is easily understandable. Overall, I think we’re heading in the right direction.

CPO: What brought about the changes in the review format?

MM: Mainly, it was a desire to make sure that the Movies Zone was in step with the rest of Inside Pulse. There’s an overall grading schema for the site, and we were a bit out of step with that. Mainly, that was because you were dealing with a different beast. You play a video game for 10-20 hours. You can listen to a CD 3-4 times. You can read a book or graphic novel slowly and deliberately, digesting it along the way. Movies in the theater, you get maybe 2 hours. It’s a very impressionistic art, and it can be hard to fully analyze what you’ve seen and separate emotional connections from actual quality questions. I give all the credit for this to John Cavanagh. He approached me with an idea on how to revamp DVD reviews, and part of it was this system of reviewing the movie that I thought was an excellent idea. We presented it to the overall IP editorial staff for their input, and after a few tweaks it’s ready for unveiling. You can see an example of it with my review of Inside Man, and you can see an example of the new DVD scoring schema with John’s review of Get Rich or Die Tryin’. We’re going to roll out the movie scoring changes permanently starting this weekend, and DVDs will follow in about 2 weeks.

CPO: How will this affect other aspects of the movie zone? Say top ten lists, a critic might like a movie he gave an 8 more than an 8.5…

MM: Well, what are we evaluating with those lists? They’re the 10 best films of the year according to that critic. It’s not necessarily your 10 favorite films of the year. There’s a difference. The Warriors is one of my five favorite films of all time, but you’d never see me defending it as one of the greatest films ever made. But I also think that, with the new scoring criteria, there’s flexibility to be had. Say you have 3 or 4 films tied with an 8.5. How do you break that logjam? For some, acting would be most important. Maybe the story. For me, personally, the number one priority of a film is to entertain. So if I have multiple films with the same score, I’d look at which ones were the most entertaining. But it’s all about being honest with yourself and the readers.

CPO: Would you discourage readers from just looking at one aspect of the review? Say for instance, Bob only cares about the Entertainment value in the breakdown.

MM: That’s up to the individual reader. Snobbish cineastes (like myself) may question why people like Rob Schneider or David Spade or Jon Heder have careers. But not only are there enough people who pay to see them that they get work to begin with, they’re going to be in the same movie together. There’s obviously a demographic for that. It’s not my job to tell someone what to like. It’s my job to tell people what I like, and let them make up their own minds if I’m a credible font of criticism or not. So if they are looking to focus on only one or two aspects of a review, then by all means do so. And in the end, there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, Schindler’s List is a vastly superior film to Half-Baked, but if I have a choice on what I’m going to spend my evening watching, Half-Baked wins 99 times out of 100.

CPO: I understand you have a new column on its way. How is it different from The Perfect Flick?

MM: The Perfect Flick was a celebration of my favorite genre films. I can appreciate French New Wave and the Surrealistic film masters, but my heart and soul lies in things blowing up and people getting shot with 212 bullets from a single clip while someone rolls gracefully in slow motion, never getting wrinkled. But I decided to shelve it, not the least of which was because I felt that my column overlapped with Robert Sutton’s, and his was far superior to mine.

So I’ve been wanting to do a new column for a while, and kicked around some ideas, but nothing stuck. But now, with the new review system, I think I’ve come up with a new idea that should be fun to run with. It’s called The 50 Club, and it will be a Tribunal-style look at some of the all-time great films. Each week, I’ll hook up with two other staffers and we’ll examine one of the so-called “greatest” films of all time. We’ll each put that film to the new scoring system and see if it holds up. Under the new system, the only way a film can score a 10 is if it gets no more than 1 9 and the rest 10’s. So an overall total of 49 or 50 must be scored in order to get a 10. The 49 or 50 Club sounds awkward, so I shortened it because I can.

But really, I just wanted to take the so-called great films and see if they really are that great. Or is it that they just excel in one or two areas and we’re willing to overlook their other deficiencies because they’re so superior in those categories? A good example would be a geek classic, Clerks. Great dialogue and entertainment value. But the acting is merely passable at best, and the flick looks like, well, like it was shot for $25 grand. So I think anyone wanting to argue its position in the overall great films Pantheon would be facing an uphill battle.

I’ll be kicking off the new column next Wednesday, April 5. Our debut column will look at the flick that put Speilberg on the map, Jaws. I hope everyone digs it.

THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

CPO: Here is a two parter: How many “Ninja Turtle” jokes have you heard in your lifetime?
I’m thinking about starting a Ninja Turtles rip-off comics where giant jive-spouting alligators are named things like Ed Paschke, and Arthur Ganson. Think that’ll work?

MM: Too many to count, even though he’s Michelangelo and I’m MICHAELANGELO. One’s a famous painter, the other’s my grandfather.

And I think, in a world where Barney the Dinosaur and Teletubbies exist, nothing’s out of the realm of possibilities.

To be honest, I didn’t start going by my full name until my writing partner and I were trying in the late 90s to get a film made. And even then, I started only because it annoyed the holy hell out of him that, even though his name came first on the title page, my name was so long it got all the attention.

CPO: You’ve mentioned movie section columns. Not counting those, what do you read here at IP?

MM: Pretty much everyone. I read my fellow LOS CINCOS ENFUEGOS members Shawn Smith, Mike Eagle, and Dan Hevia. I read Eric S. because he’s the reason I followed to Inside Pulse in the first place. Gloomchen always gets a read. I dig all 37 columns a week you write. Lucard, Mark B., Tom Pandich, and the rest of the Games crew. Mathan, who is the only person who rivals you for weekly content. Aaron Cameron (I’m still in mourning about The Friday Bootleg). Jeff Fernandez (I have to read him, I won his Battle Royale), D’Errico, Chris Lamb, and the rest of the Music crew. PK and his fWo crew. Sara Reller over in Culture. I read most everything that pops up on the site. If I give any section short shrift, sadly, it’s Wrestling, and that’s because the product’s been God-awful for over a year now. I came back briefly for the Matt Hardy/Lita/Edge lover’s quarrel, but when they jobbed Matt in 90 seconds I said f*ck that and left for good. You know the product’s bad when Scott Keith won’t watch it anymore. So I read Eric and Hevia as I said, and I love Gordi’s stuff, and Jed Schaeffer (sic.) whenever he can get a break from impending fatherhood to write something, and I glance at everyone else’s stuff, but I’m so disinterested in wrestling now that I just can’t read it all the time.

CURTAIN CALL

CPO: This being Contradicting Popular Opinion, are there any movies that made a mint, or were critical darlings, that you just didn’t get? Is there one in particular that made you ask, “why would anybody ever like that movie?”

MM: I think you and I are in 100% complete agreement on the incredulity at the number of soiled jockeys caused by King Kong. I mean, that flick was, at best, 45 minutes too long. Really, they could have chopped 75-80 minutes out of that and it would have been three times better. Peter Jackson built a printing press for cash with his LOTR trilogy, and this was a film made by someone who was totally unfettered in indulging his excesses. And yet, it appeared on damn near everyone’s top 10 list, and I’m perplexed as to why.

CPO: How about the opposite? You ever wonder, “how come nobody liked BLANK?”

MM: Recently? I’m not sure about critically. I thought it was a complete shame more people didn’t see Something New. I thought it was quite possibly the best romantic flick of the past 10 years, but it went POOF at the box office. I think, because it dealt with interracial relationships, it got caught in a bit of a crack, as Black moviegoers weren’t that receptive to the subject matter and White moviegoers probably thought it was a Black film.

Since this is CPO, let me ask you a question that’s been niggling at me (and yes, this was just an excuse to use “niggling” in a sentence): If Brokeback Mountain had been about two stockbrokers in Manhattan, would anyone have given a flying f*ck about the film?

CPO: Not really. Ang Lee has his supporters, but Hulk scared a lot of those guys away. The public interest in Brokeback lies solely in its juxtaposition of the American perspective of manliness (i.e. the cowboy/rancher) and fruitiness. If you do it with stockbrokers, it is an Oprah episode about guys on the DL. The characters are immediately less likeable, and it is relegated to the art house to be lauded by bored housewives.

Is that what you were thinking?

MM: I mean, it was a bucolic setting and that’s about it. You could have the same two guys in Brooks Brothers suits, going through the same emotions during the same time period dealing with the same emotions, and it would never have gotten a Best Picture nomination or anything else. I just find the whole backlash post-Oscars amusing. We can debate all day about the merits of Crash. It’s a pretty polarizing film, and you either love it or hate it. But for people to say Crash won because of some anti-homosexual backlash is absurd. When was the last time something that came out of Ernest Borgnine’s or Tony Curtis’s mouths was taken seriously? But because two walking advertisements for Depends said they never saw Brokeback because it was a gay flick, and to somehow extrapolate that to mean that Brokeback lost because Hollywood has an anti-gay bias is beyond absurd and bordering on repugnant. Brokeback was a decent flick with some solid acting that wouldn’t have made a blip on the national consciousness except the two leads were cowboys. Never mind that, if you look at it objectively, cowboys in the late 19th-early 20th century had a history of homosexuality (half the cowboys were also Black, something else you don’t see on the big screen too much). When Shakespeare In Love somehow beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture, did people charge Hollywood with an anti-WW2 bias? Of course not. Brokeback Mountain not winning Best Picture isn’t a tragedy. The Color Purple losing to Out of Africa, Network losing to Rocky, Pulp Fiction losing to Forrest Gump, those were tragedies.

CPO: Who is your favorite guy in the movie business that nobody else has ever heard of?

MM: Wow. That’s a tough one. Right now, I’d say Clifton Collins, Jr., but that’s about to be extremely short-lived. I think in the next year or two he’ll be a breakthrough star. Old-school, I’d say Michael Wright. He’s one of those guys you’ve seen in a bunch of films, and he’s always been excellent, but somehow he never broke big.

CPO: All right, this interviewing shit is fun. I’ll let you get the last word…. and GO!

MM: I’m just hoping that the InsidePulse readership likes the changes that are in store for Movies. I’m really hoping that with some of the new ideas and solid staff we have on board that we can really become a strong cornerstone of the overall IP experience. I had a lot of fun doing this! Thanks!

So what have we learned?

1. It’s Michaelangelo and not Michelangelo, despite what my spell check says.

2. There will be more a more intricate breakdown of film in our reviews. So, more numbers for me to chart, more statictical data to compile, and less movies scoring 10/10.

3. Somebody actually reads my Moodspins column. Sweet.

4. There will be a new Movie Zone Column called The 50 Club.

5. Rocky really is over-rated.

6. I can fill up 6 pages without working very hard. GO ME!

A question for those out there on these here internets

Disney Cartoons Musicals invariably have an acid trip song. It’s usually less than 15 seconds worth of a scene stretched out into a several minute musical number that usually doesn’t follow the normal rules of the movie. In the Lion King we have, “I just can’t wait to be King.” In The Little Mermaid we have “Under the Sea.” Winnie the Pooh gives us the Heffalump and Woozle song, Dumbo has the Pink Elephant song, Beauty and the Beast has “Be our guest,” Aladdin has “Friend like me.”

There are a lot more.

What I want to know: Which is the best, which is the worst, and which is the creepiest?

Obligatory Pimps

I don’t know what WOQW means, but the list of the five worst DC films certainly seems accurate. I’m thinking 6 and are Superman 3 and Batman 3 respectively…

Tommy praises (among other things) Capcom vs SNK: Match of the Millennium. Great game, but if you want to unlock Akuma, be prepared to play for the rest of your life. Seriously. The game is super stingy with its secrets.

And read all those folk that Mikey mentioned in the interview.