This is NOT a Review (a book of unsolicited movie opinions)

By MovieChopShop

If you're looking for a book of straightforward movie reviews, this isn't the book for you.

Instead, this is a collection of the most subjective, random, and out-there movie texts we could squeeze out of our cinema-soaked brains. Covering everything from 2010 blockbusters to the genre of "nostalgia films," we take you on a roller-coaster ride through the world of geek cinema.

Topics include:
-The Hollywood Remake Machine: Why I just don’t care anymore
-Harry Potter and the Reason You Should Ignore This Review
-Believe it or Not! When “Based on a True Story” Goes Bad...
-Screen Teens: From Materialism to “Twilight-ification”
-I...I Think I’ve Got It! Trying to decipher Inception
-How it Works: Why not all 3D is created equal
-How to Name Your Batman Movie...
-Why Michael Bay is full of S#!&!
...and many, many more

For the past two years, MovieChopShop.com has been dedicated to "going deeper," breaking down the world of movies, motion picture technology, and the film industry in our own eccentric way. What you hold in your hands is the best of the best, the cream of the crop, and other clichéd
metaphors as well. Proceed accordingly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ThoughtFlyPress
• Release date: Mar 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452487892

MovieChopShop

Based out of Louisville, Kentucky, MovieChopShop strives to provide a unique perspective on national and international cinema. Come to us for a our take on all movies, new and old, and provide feedback to begin an ongoing conversation designed to foster the sharing of ideas and opinions.We are a dedicated group of professionals. Videographers, journalists, filmmakers–we bring our unique skills to play in an attempt to share our thoughts about film and filmmaking, past and present.So whenever you want news and commentary on the world of Hollywood and Independent Film, MovieChopShop is there to break things down and look at them in a whole new way.

Book preview

This is NOT a Review

(a book of unsolicited movie opinions)

by MovieChopShop

Chloe ChloeG Garner

Brian Quaid Cunningham

Jon ShepRamsey Palmer

Dennis HansKlopek O’Neil

Copyright © 2011 by ThoughtFly LLC

Cover design by Brian Cunningham

Edited by Chloe Garner

Published by ThoughtFly Press at Smashwords

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

First Printed February, 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION!

OSCARS!

MOVIE INDSTRY!

LOVE TO HATE!

LOVE TO LOVE!

VERSUS!

WHAT WE THINK!

WHAT WE REALLY THINK!

STUFF QUAID SAYS!

SMALL-SCREEN MOVIES!

INTRODUCTION!

Welcome to your MovieChopShop book! It's an exiting place to be, let me tell you. I joined MovieChopShop in August last year, and so, while I've written my fair share of the articles to follow, I still understand what it's like to come at these pages with fresh eyes. So let's do the guided tour, shall we?

First, brace yourself for the ego. Nothing I can say can prepare you for it, and there's really no getting around it. These may be our unsolicited opinions, but we're still pretty darn sure we're right and, if you disagree, that you are quite unforgivably wrong. Let me put your fears to rest and assure you that these are genuinely friendly people that you're going to meet in these pages; they simply know more than the average human could ever hope to (or want to) know about movies (present company excluded; I just watch the things). I speculate wildly on what brings up these peaks of passion as we go along, but believe me that it is caused by a deep love for the art of movies and not a hatred of you personally. Well, maybe you.

Next, a few terms. A 'fanboy' is someone who speaks Klingon, owns a Jedi costume, or can sing the Morporkian anthem. Though the last one may be a little obscure. Shep, Quaid, and Hans all pride themselves for being fanboys, though, to my knowledge, none of them owns a wizard's hat and/or wand. They have a peculiar preoccupation with the film Citizen Kane that I would explain to you if I could, but I, dear reader, am just as in the dark about that one as you are. Or maybe you aren't, and I'm selling you short. Apologies.

'Geeking out' should be self explanatory, but I wanted to snag the opportunity to share my amusement at the idea of these three, nervously fidgeting, unable to contain their enthusiasm as they eagerly await the opening of a movie based on a children's book. The image makes them much less menacing here, in their written, more cerebral form. Childlike wonder does indeed exist in them, much as they try cover it up with curmudgeony cynicism.

'MacGuffin' I had to look up online. It's the thing that everyone is after in a movie, that moves the plot along, without having to actually be defined or explained. In other words, it's exactly what you thought it was, and I wasted my search engine effort. Though I did find out that rosebud was the MacGuffin in Citizen Kane. Isn't that helpful?

Finally. 'This is not a review'. As you might imagine, there's a story here. In early February, Shep posted an article (you'll get to it in What we REALLY Think) about The Blind Side. He hated it down to its very idea. Which is pretty normal, really. The problem was, that was all he could hate about it, because he hadn't actually seen it yet. He admitted as much in the opening paragraph of his not-a-review. Now, you may or may not know this, but people are mean online. Really mean. And the attending commenters tore the not-a-review to shreds because he hadn't actually seen the movie, and he was dismissing two entire genres of movies (sports films and based-on-a-true-story films) based on a movie he hadn't even seen. The back-and-forth there got pretty ugly, but the upside was that it laid the stage for a whole year of 'this is not a review' reviews. If we haven't seen the movie, we aren't reviewing it. But it doesn't mean that we aren't going to talk about it, anyway. See 'ego'.

So here we are, on the precipice of a new Oscar(s?) season, with a full year of movies behind us. Welcome to your MovieChopShop book; this is 2010 in not-review.

-ChloeG

OSCARS!

I have some sort of weird fascination with Oscar history. Tracing it back, it starts quite simply: my whole life, I've been a ridiculous movie nerd. Movies are the only motivating reason I've ever had to leave the house and sit in a crowded room of seats that are too close to each other and pay attention to something (I'm talking to you, sports games, music concerts, school, and church). So ever since the dawn of my love of movies, I've wanted to know everything I could about them. Well, what easier way than to consult the well-detailed history of the Oscars? During the summer of my thirteenth year I took it upon myself to watch as many Best Picture winners as I could possibly get my hands on. Luckily, my local Hollywood Video (RIP) had a pretty extensive Academy Awards section. Though I've found myself with the distinct talent of knowing them all chronologically by heart, it's been eleven years and I sadly still have not all the way accomplished this task, although I have seen 69 of 82.

I suppose my fascination with each race year by year lies in the fact that I wonder what future 13-year-olds with no friends will have to look back on when they're trying to become movie geniuses. Which ones will they regard as the classics—Titanic? The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King? The Departed? Which ones will seem the more obscure ones—Shakespeare in Love? Crash? The Hurt Locker? (Which is to say nothing of the quality of Hurt Locker, but it is the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner of all time.)

My fellow ChopShoppers enjoy writing and musing about the Oscars just as much as I do, but every December through February, I make it my business to go nuts over it all as much as I can because it's basically all I'm thinking about.

In the following pages, you will find such coverage of last year's Oscars including Dances with Smurfs in which Quaid justly puzzles at the Oscar prospects of Avatar, Dear Oscar, my pre-nominations letter to the Academy detailing a few last-minute requests, as well as my last-minute predictions of the major winners (some right, some wrong). For the post-Oscar wrap-up, Quaid gives you the skinny on Hurt Locker's victory over Avatar and I take a look back at a full decade's worth of Best Picture winners and the films that posed the biggest threat to them.

So I hope you're up for some reading, friends, because there are words ahoy!

-ShepRamsey

Dances with Smurfs Goes for the Gold. Seriously?

Posted on 20 January 2010 by Quaid

I am the lone Avatar defender on this site. Shep abhors the film and I’m pretty sure Hans is less than luke-warm about Cameron’s latest opus.

Me, though, I was kinda into it. I came out of the movie feeling like I’d just seen a good Cameron spectacle, complete with revolutionary visual effects, well thought-out action scenes, and a plot that had an adequate amount of twists and turns. I defended the movie to my cohorts.

Then the awards nominations came in. And Avatar became what it really shouldn’t be — the runaway favorite to become this year’s leader in awards.

At the Golden Globes, the movie picked up best Director and best Picture (Drama). It even received a writer’s guild nomination for best screenplay.

Best screenplay? REALLY??? I mean, even the movie’s most avid defenders will concede problems with dialogue, logic, and convenient story elements. Love the movie all you want, the script isn’t better than the one for Inglourious Basterds. Period.

So this begs the question…why all the love? I’ll put on my arrogant bastard cap and give you the answer.

Let’s set the stage. Every year, it seems like awards ceremonies (like the Oscars and Golden Globes) mean less and less to filmgoers. For avid fans, the bullshit factor is too great, and casual moviegoers get bored with watching movies they’ve never heard of clean up. In addition, the awards shows are accused of being snooty and stuck-up, and Hollywood is admittedly continuing to lose touch with reality.

Last year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences attempted to take a small step toward solving this problem by expanding the Best Picture field to ten nominees. The idea is that with a greater field, more popular films and blockbusters might make it into the running.

This is a good idea, even thought it was created with the whorish idea of boosting ratings and pacifying audiences.

This year, though, it looks like the critics and awards-givers are going a step farther. When Avatar, a fairly standard blockbuster, began to garner critical and audience acclaim, the Academy (among others) smelled an opportunity.

For as long as they’ve been giving out awards, these groups have always wanted runaway locks for awards. The Academy is obsessed with lavishing praise on a very small handful of movies. Each year, a huge field of good movies is knocked down to five or six biggies. Instead of approaching each category individually, they look at movies in terms of number of nominations. So even though that small movie (that wasn’t that great) might have the best female performance of the decade, it will most likely be snubbed for a merely good performance from a movie that actually has a shot at the top honors.

And when it looks like there could be one movie that will sweep, Lord of the Rings style, watch out. The Academy will do everything they can to provide that movie with as many nominations as possible. They want there to be a powerhouse of film that everyone can cheer for, get behind, and celebrate as THE GREATEST SHOW OF THE YEAR!

This is, after all, show business. The goal isn’t fairness, it’s spectacle, and you can’t achieve a great show when you have twenty different movies taking home one or two awards. It has to be a horse race with two or three films out front galloping for the finish line. That great indie drama might just have to make due with a best supporting actor nomination.

I can feel it in the air–these awards peoples really want Avatar to clean up. They want one film to define the year, and they want us to believe it’s Great with a capital G. They want to prove they love the same films as the common folk, they want to push the hype as far as it can go, and they want to make sure people actually, you know, tune in to the show.

With Avatar they’ll succeed at all their goals, but they’ll shoot themselves in the foot in the process. Does anyone remember Gladiator? Or A Beautiful Mind? Remember how those films racked up award after award, and everyone talked about how they were the best thing since sliced bread? And remember how quickly we forgot they even existed? That’s the fate that awaits Avatar. Once the movie is off the 3D silver screen, it will be relegated to the middle of the fanboys’ DVD and Blu-Ray collections. Nobody will even argue that it’s Cameron’s best, debating (at best) whether it’s better or worse than The Abyss.

When it comes out on DVD, I’ll buy it. I might even watch it a few times, and I’ll enjoy it. But ask yourself…in ten years, will we really think this movie is better than Up in the Air or The Hurt Locker?

Dear Oscar…

Posted on 29 January 2010 by ShepRamsey

Dear Oscar,

I’m writing to ask you a favor or two (or three or four or a whole lot more) in this upcoming Oscar season. I’ve been extra good this year, seeing many movies and pumping lots and lots of money into the industry. You would be ever so proud of me!

Anyway, enough of my foolishness, I’d like to get straight to the point. As you finish your checklist, giving notice to which films have been naughty and which have been nice, there are just a few that you may have forgotten, and I’d like to take just a few minutes of your time to remind you of them.

For some of the smaller categories, I’d like to first throw out a few kind words for the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography of the current Best Foreign Film favorite, The White Ribbon, the outstanding musical scores for both Star Trek and Coraline, the art direction of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the eerily effective sound design of Paranormal Activity. And how about some love for Drag Me to Hell in the Best Makeup department! (If Norbit can do it, why not a good movie?) And as few for Avatar as can be allowed.

In the Original Screenplay category, I don’t believe I have too many qualms. I wholeheartedly approve of a lot of the scripts that I understand are locks (or at least near-locks) for a nomination—The Hurt Locker, UpInglourious Basterds, and A Serious Man all showed up on my end-of-the-year top ten. There are a couple that I’m really hoping won’t be featured here…but I’ll save that for later.

I realize that your perceived obligation towards films like Up in the Air (an excellent film), An Education (a decent one), and Precious (still haven’t seen it), might find the Adapted Screenplay category fairly crowded, but here are a few I hope you saved some good will for. First off, the terrific, clever, and wildly fun script for Star Trek is such a well-put-together story that redefines the concept of a reboot with such brazen ingenuity that it surely deserves some notice. Also, Where the Wild Things Are was an outstanding expansion on a classic children’s story—all of the terrible movie versions of Dr. Seuss books really ought to take a look at this one.

And I know this is a long shot—and there will be many who flat-out disagree with me—but the script for Watchmen deserves some recognition for the way that it improved on an already excellent story by slightly altering a thing or two so that it made more sense and even resonated more strongly thematically. Again, I realize I might be the only one who thinks this, but I thought I’d just throw it out there.

And save for Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, the prospects of the Best Supporting Actor category are looking rather unimpressive. Allow me to offer up a suggestion or two. Really, any number of actors from the wide ensemble of the hilarious political satire In the Loop (also worthy of consideration for Best Adapted Screenplay) would be entirely deserving of recognition, but the most likely candidate would probably be Peter Capaldi, whose consistently irate foul-mouthed political advisor provides a constant barrage of solid laughs. (Also, it would probably present the biggest challenge for finding a TV-friendly Oscar clip since Mark Wahlberg’s nomination for The Departed.)

Also, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, and George Wyner from A Serious Man could also use some love. Keep them in your thoughts.

It might be asking too much to see Nicolas Cage’s name show up in the category of Best Actor for his fantastic and outlandishly over-the-top work in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask such a fate for, say, Viggo Mortensen in The Road or perhaps—my favorite performance of the year—Michael Stuhlbarg in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man. He is so good, so funny, so likable, and easily makes for one of the Coen brothers’ best characters ever—and for the creators of The Dude and Marge Gunderson, that’s really saying something.

And I understand that consideration for Melanie Laurent from Inglourious Basterds is being emphasized in the Lead Actress category instead of the Supporting Actress category. What that means for her chances of getting nominated, I’m not sure, although I’ll just throw out that I’d be pleased to see her name pop up in either category.

Oh, but what about the big one? Best Picture. This is a historic year for this category, as it will include ten nominees for the first time in about 60 years. Now, I’ve been reading up pretty regularly on various predictions for the category. There seem to be five locks: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, and Up in the Air. Then there are four likely nominees, which include An Education, Invictus, A Serious Man, and Up. And then there’s the phantom tenth spot—what could it be? Many predictions I’m seeing are saying it will likely go to the summer’s sci-fi sleeper hit District 9. If this prediction turns out to be true, then I would be perfectly content with that. I might also suggest Star Trek for the Phantom #10, but I loved me some District 9 too, and that would be just fine with me.

However, for this category, I’m not going to campaign for what I want, but rather what I really, really don’t want.

Now, Invictus and An Education were okay in my opinion. I’d certainly never nominate them myself, but seeing them included here—especially in a category of ten—doesn’t really irritate me.

No, Oscar, I’m shooting a bit higher here. Specifically, I’d like to see everything that happened at the Golden Globes not come close to happening at the Oscars.

With that in mind, the film that had better not sneak into the Best Picture nominees is the Best Musical/Comedy winner at the Globes, The Hangover. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to seeing that kind of movie (i.e. whacky fun comedy) getting awards recognition if it really delivers the goods…but The Hangover is NOT that movie—it’s a tired clusterfuck of misogyny, bad slapstick, clichéd gags where large sleeping animals wake up in the back seat of cars and then destroy the car, and multiple jokes about how funny guys’ asses are. It was bad enough when it won the Globe and even worse when it actually wrangled up a Writer’s Guild nomination (when far better fare like Inglourious Basterds and Up were deemed disqualified), but it had better get shut out of the Oscars like it rightfully deserves.

Now, I’ve made peace with the fact that Avatar is going to get nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and a generous assortment of technical awards. It wasn’t easy. I’ve had a lot of trouble wrapping my brain around the ludicrous popularity of this movie. I saw the film at the midnight screening the night before it officially opened and, after my initial excitement to see it had been beaten senseless and left for dead, I walked out hating it. But not only did I hate it, I felt sure that it would completely bomb. I thought that Avatar’s lazy performances and bad script, complete with horrendous dialogue, hackneyed plot, and socio-political ignorance would alienate snobby critical types and movie geeks like myself just as strongly as it would alienate general audiences with its intensely demanding 162-minute runtime, funny-looking blue people, overly obvious environmental agenda, and blatant lack of any kind of originality that went beyond its visuals, which were good, but geez, they weren’t that good. Hell, I enjoyed the effects in 2012 more than those in Avatar.

Anyway, I thought for sure that this movie just wasn’t going to cut it for anyone. Brother, was I wrong. It’s now the highest grossing movie of all time and I just don’t get it. I mean, I hate Transformers too, but at least I get why people find it entertaining…with Avatar I feel like I’m going insane and everyone I know is just letting me. All of the things that people hate about George Lucas’s Star Wars Prequel Trilogy are all present in Avatar and then some. What the hell am I missing here? I can understand it making a couple hundred million dollars, but the highest grossing film of all time??? Whatever good faith I had in the movie-going community after The Dark Knight became the #2 all-time domestic earner has been destroyed, and its ashes pissed upon.

Anyway, Oscar, that’s all a big build-up to this: please don’t nominate its script (a script which in my review of the movie I called one of the worst of the decade, and I stand strong right beside that statement), and please, please, please, please don’t award it with the Oscar for Best Picture. The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds are CLEARLY so much better.

When I was about 14 or 15 I took on the wild task of trying to watch as many Best Picture winners as I could get my hands on. I did pretty well. Fifty years from now, when some other young, budding movie nerd decides to take on the same insane task…please don’t make him watch Avatar.

Sincerely,

Shep

Why can’t I bring myself to watch Precious (Based on the novel Push by Sapphire)?

Posted on 01 February 2010 by Quaid

As any good movie reviewer (all right, I’m very loosely a reviewer…I’ll concede that), I try and watch as many of the awards nominated films as possible each year. That can be difficult when you live in Louisville, Kentucky. I mean, for God’s sake, we didn’t get The Road until earlier this month.

Still, whenever an over-hyped drama hits the local cinema, I’m there, ready to be wowed by the best the year has to offer.

Every year, though, it seems there is at least one movie that gets tons of buzz–but I have no interest in seeing. They’re usually the overly-heavy period dramas, quite often having something to do with some small child who was destroyed by World War II and the Holocaust.

These movies, while well done and well acted and well written, never really succeed at engaging me. I feel like I’ve seen them all before, usually done better and with more emotional resonance. Still, when a star-studded and heavy movie tackles dark issues like genocide or the hells of war, the Academy (among others) feels the unflinching need to heap awards praise on it. Especially if it’s directed by Clint Eastwood.

Which means, of course, that I have to go see it. I feel like the kid at the table screaming No mommy, I don’t want to eat my vegetables! To which my saintly Ma replies But it’s good for you. Open up. Down the hatch.

This year the movie that keeps begging to be watched is Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire. Now, why don’t I want to watch this movie? Let’s start with the title.

I know the colon’d titles are all the rage these days, but usually it’s for franchise fare. Lord of the Rings had to brand itself before letting you know the installment’s name. Pirates of the Caribbean had to make sure the word Pirates was in the title. Precious, on the other hand, takes a super simple title and complicates it to ridiculous ends just to fellate the story’s writer (yes, I know it’s a woman) and let you know that the gritty street drama was based on a book. Because, you know, that matters.

Plus the writer’s name is Sapphire. I hate one-named people (looking at you McG).

Next up, plot. Take a look at the synopsis: In Harlem, an overweight, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child is invited to enroll in an alternative school in hopes that her life can head in a new direction.

So it feels strikingly like Dangerous Minds and a dozen other inner-city self-betterment dramas I’ve seen in the past 15 years. Add to that the fact that I know the plot involves incest and rape, and, well, it doesn’t exactly sound like it will be fun to watch.

Of course, so many movies that aren’t fun are also great. Hell, I’m a big fan of Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, and that movie is vying for the title of most depressing film of all time. If a movie is going to depress me, though, it had better be 1) damn well made and 2) exploring compelling and life-changing themes.

I have no doubt that Precious delivers #1, but watching the trailer I had no sense that it does anything with #2. The movie looks borderline exploitative as we watch a struggling lower-class girl fight just about every difficulty that can be laid out in front of her. Maybe she overcomes at the end, maybe she doesn’t, or maybe, like real life, she will fall somewhere between the two extremes.

Regardless, I have to wonder…what am I supposed to get out of watching this? Is the goal just to make me realize that there are people who are victims of horrible and unfortunate circumstance? Should I realize that the strength of the human spirit can overcome all? Or is it some other simple and cliche theme wrapped up in super-depressing, dark and gritty cinematography to masque the fact that it’s hackneyed and overdone?

Maybe the movie is a masterpiece and the problem is with the marketing. Maybe my friends (who liked the movie) have just failed to adequately articulate why the film is worth seeing. I know that the rule of criticism is to keep your mouth shut until you see the movie, and I totally understand that viewpoint. But sometimes I think that argument is used to sucker people into seeing a movie they know they won’t enjoy, like, or get anything out of simply so