The Appeal and Frustration of Ambiguous Movie Endings

Posted on November 1, 2011 at 8:00 am

I like Ann Hornaday’s piece in the Washington Post about ambiguous endings.

In “The Film Snob’s Dictionary,” writers David Kamp and Lawrence Levi cheekily chart out the differences between Movies and Films (“It’s a Movie if it’s black-and-white because it’s old. It’s a Film if it’s black-and-white because it’s Jarmuschy.”) They might have added another definition: It’s a Movie if it ends. It’s a Film if it stops.

Studio films tend to spell everything out — motivations, backstories — while independent films invite the audience to fill in the blanks or just ponder the unanswerable. One reason for that is money. Studio films are expensive and have to appeal to the broadest possible audience. The more money you spend, the more people weigh in on the film’s artistic choices, and the more people weigh in, generally speaking, the more questions get answered on screen.

Of course, even the most definitive-appearing ending leaves a lot open for discussion. Does finding out what “Rosebud” means in “Citizen Kane answer a question or raise a dozen more? What happens after Rhett tells Scarlett he does not give a damn what happens to her? Does anyone ever open that crate in the government warehouse and find the Lost Ark of the Covenant? What exactly does “happily ever after” mean?

Hornaday discusses some of this year’s most open-ended movies, including “Take Shelter,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” and “Meek’s Cutoff.” I love to come out of a movie and talk about what I think happens next, don’t you? Do you have a favorite theory about an ambiguous ending?

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Mark Jenkins on ‘Margin Call’ — Quoting Me

Posted on October 27, 2011 at 8:00 am

Many thanks to my friend Mark Jenkins for including me in his insightful piece for the Washington Post about the timeliness of the new movie, Margin Call.

As the Occupy Wall Street protests continue and expand, “Margin Call” might seem the right movie at the right time. The psychological drama, which observes roughly 24 hours at a crisis-rocked New York investment firm, is strongly evocative of the 2008 money-quake that shattered major banks and brokerages. But the movie, which opened Friday, may not be set in 2008.

“The actual film has absolutely no time-stamping,” cautions writer-director J.C. Chandor. “The company is unnamed. There are no dates. For me, it was really important that this could have taken place in 2004, in 2005, in 2003. … “Margin Call,” Minow says, “comes at a teachable moment. The Occupy Wall Street movement has reminded people that the perpetrators of the financial meltdown are still doing the same things.”

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Media Appearances

The Real Star of ‘Hangover 2’: Ken Jeong

Posted on May 21, 2011 at 9:36 pm

I’m a huge fan of Ken Jeong (“The Hangover,” “Role Models,” “Community”) and am really delighted that he will appear this week in “Hangover 2.” Jen Chaney has a fascinating interview with him in today’s Washington Post, about dividing his time between his medical practice as an internist and doing stand-up at comedy clubs until his break-through role in “Knocked Up,” and about making “The Hangover” as his wife, also a doctor, was getting treated for breast cancer.

“I am totally uninhibited at the risk of making myself look idiotic,” he admits. But that’s what Todd Phillips, director of “The Hangover” movies, cites as Jeong’s greatest asset. “Ken has fearlessness almost more than anybody I’ve ever worked with,” he says….”That whole experience of ‘The Hangover,’ for me, was therapeutic,” he says. “It was my primal-scream therapy.”

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Actors

What Can We Learn from #1 Songs?

Posted on April 27, 2011 at 8:00 am

Jessie Rifkin listened to every number one song in the history of the pop charts, from Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool” up through this week’s “ET” by Katy Perry and wrote about it for the Washington Post. He notes that “The first 100 non-instrumental No. 1’s were performed by 38 solo acts and 62 groups, but the most recent 100 were performed by 91 solo acts and nine groups” and that George Harrison and Elvis Presley had number one hits after they were not at the top of their careers. “And only 19 instrumentals have reached the top spot, none after 1985’s synth-percussion-fest “Miami Vice Theme” by Jan Hammer.” Perhaps most significantly,

What is remembered as the defining music of an era and what actually sold the most at the time are very different. Imagine the 1960s without Bob Dylan, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix; the 1970s without KISS, the Who and Led Zeppelin; the 1980s without Bruce Springsteen, Journey and Run-DMC; the 1990s without Nirvana, Green Day and Public Enemy; the aughts without John Mayer, Linkin Park and Taylor Swift. None of these giants have had a No. 1 song — at least not yet.

Get your own sense of what Jessie Rifkin listened to with these wonderful compilations of five seconds from every number one song on the top 40. If you are as old as I am, it is the aural equivalent of seeing your life pass before your eyes. What is the first pop song you remember? What is the first one you ever bought? What’s your favorite one-hit wonder?

Remembering Elizabeth Taylor

Posted on March 27, 2011 at 12:00 pm

I have loved the tributes to the incomparable Elizabeth Taylor this week and wanted to share some of the best. My friend Margo Howard has a priceless recollection of having Elizabeth Taylor as her babysitter. Dan Zak in the Washington Post asked movie critics and people who knew Miss Taylor to contribute their favorite memories and performances, and I was honored to be included. Adam Bernstein’s obituary in the Washington Post captured her beautifully. He described her as ” a voluptuous violet-eyed actress who lived a life of luster and anguish and spent more than six decades as one of the world’s most visible women for her two Academy Awards, eight marriages, ravaging illnesses and work in AIDS philanthropy.”

By her mid-20s, she had been a screen goddess, teenage bride, mother, divorcee and widow. She endured near-death traumas, and many declared her a symbol of survival — with which she agreed. “I’ve been through it all, baby,” she once said. “I’m Mother Courage.” News about her love affairs, jewelry collection, weight fluctuations and socializing in rich and royal circles were followed by millions of people. More than for any film role, she became famous for being famous, setting a media template for later generations of entertainers, models and all variety of semi-somebodies. She was the “archetypal star goddess,” biographer Diana Maddox once wrote.

Slate’s brilliant movie critic, Dana Stevens, wrote a perceptive appreciation of Miss Taylor as personality, actress, star, and woman: “She was at her best playing characters who inhabited their own bodies with a confident, careless pleasure…Even in her lowest moments onscreen and off, Elizabeth Taylor was always bursting to excess with life.” She also includes a link to Roger Ebert’s marvelous 1969 interview with Miss Taylor and Richard Burton. Ebert’s poignant Elizabeth Taylor tribute in the Wall Street Journal

Turner Classic Movies will have an all-day tribute on April 10. They’re all worth watching but be sure to set your DVR for the ones I’ve put in bold.

6 a.m. – Lassie Come Home (1943), with Roddy McDowall and Edmund Gwenn; directed by Fred M. Wilcox.

7:30 a.m. – National Velvet (1944), with Mickey Rooney, Anne Revere and Angela Lansbury; directed by Clarence Brown.

10 a.m. – Conspirator (1952), with Robert Taylor and Robert Flemyng; directed by Victor Saville.

11:30 a.m. – Father of the Bride (1950), with Spencer Tracy, Billie Burke, Joan Bennett and Don Taylor; directed by Vincente Minnelli.

1:15 a.m. – Father’s Little Dividend (1951), with Spencer Tracy, Billie Burke, Joan Bennett and Don Taylor; directed by Vincente Minnelli.

2:45 p.m. – Raintree County (1957), with Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor and Agnes Moorehead; directed by Edward Dmytryk.

6 p.m. – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), with Paul Newman and Burl Ives; directed by Richard Brooks.

8 p.m. – Butterfield 8 (1960), with Laurence Harvey and Eddie Fisher; directed by Daniel Mann.

10 p.m. – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), with Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Dennis; directed by Mike Nichols.

12:30 a.m. – Giant (1956), with James Dean and Rock Hudson; directed by George Stevens.

4 a.m. – Ivanhoe (1952), with Robert Taylor and Joan Fontaine; directed by Richard Thorpe.

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Actors