"Why would I put on a hat if my best friend just got blown up in front of me?" An excellent question posed by Jason Schwartzman's character in Wes Anderson's excellent Amex ad. In just under two minutes, the ad encapsulates the brilliance of Anderson's vision: it's filled with snappy dialogue, exquisite production design, and perfectly pitched non sequitors. It begins with a car explosion. Anderson shouts "Cut!", acknowledges that it's an ad ("Anyway, American Express ad"), and poses the question, "Making movies. How do you do it?" He then strides through a series of vignettes while attempting to give directions: "First, think up a good story," but he's then interrupted by a PA who wants to introduce him to the daughter of a man who loaned the a sportscar to the production. "Two, how do you tell it?" he says and then directs a propmaster to put a bayonette on a .357 magnum. "Next, there's your collaborators," while a PA is telling him that the producers won't pay $15000 for a helicopter rental. As he prepares for the next shot, he concludes: "You mix it all together and that's more or less it." Slate posted an admiring review yesterday.
Category: cinema
Movies, matinees, picture shows. Acting! Genius!
Of course Crash won Best Picture. Why wouldn't Academy members — I'm assuming they're mostly white and Angeleno — rally around a film that momentarily relieved them of guilt they feel for living in such a racially segregated city? (I have to admit that I love Ludacris's rant about the racial implications of riding city buses. That, and Don Cheadle's opening, were the only moments in the entire movie that weren't heavy-handed, cheesy, or gag-inducing).The Morning News has a great list of quotes from other reviewers who disliked the movie as much as I did. A sample: "Contrived, obvious and overstated, Crash is basically just one white man's righteous attempt to make other white people feel as if they've confronted the problem of racism head-on."