12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movies: Elf

Actually, I tolerate this movie at a rate of only medium, rather than “highly,” but I picked it over Gremlins because I had more to say about it, I’d seen it more recently, and I had found better screencaps. Plus there is Zooey Deschanel as a blonde. Singing. In the shower.

Elf (Jon Favreau, 2003).

After inadvertently wreaking havoc on the elf community due to his ungainly size, a man raised as an elf at the North Pole is sent to the U.S. in search of his true identity.

(the imdb)

Please answer the phone that way at least once this week. I plan to but, then, I almost always answer the phone weird, so I won’t have that element of surprise that you will. (My new favorite? Ask the person who’s calling you if they’re there instead of saying hello. Example: it comes up on caller I.D. as “Joe Brown.” Answer the phone, “Is Joe there? Can I speak with Joe Brown, please? Mr. Brown? You’re probably wondering why I’ve called …”)

That’s another thing. (sigh) Buddy, you should know that your father — he’s on the Naughty List.

Nooooo!

I remember thinking when this came out how odd it was that Jon Favreau directed it, but Buddy’s father Walter Hobbs, as interpreted by James Caan, is certainly what I would think of as a Favreauvian creation: a nasty, singleminded piece of work who needs the familiar but lonely high ground of distance from others, and congruent distance from the emotions intimacy might entail, above all else.

(Psst, it is Amy Sedaris. Woo-hoo!)

I think we should call security.

Good idea.

I like to whisper too!

Buddy is a nuisance to his own father not only because of his inconvenient bumblings, but also because he is a deviation from the norm. To confront a person who won’t let you push them away is to confront yourself, and people like Walter Hobbs seek to avoid that at all costs. I believe Favreau is a genius at whipping up these mean little slaves to the system, as an actor and as a director.

That said about a keen and critical eye for slaves to the system, the product placement in this film is almost beyond belief. One of the most blatant things I’ve seen since E.T. I do not count the scene in Wayne’s World II because they did that on purpose (albeit they got paid).

Zooey Deschanel: I don’t know about elves. I didn’t think much about elves because I was trying to think about the man in charge, the one that was going to bring me presents. I believed in Santa Claus until I was, like, 14. [I believed] if my parents think I do, then they’ll give me two sets of presents. And if Santa Claus really does exist, then he’ll appreciate my support.

(“Zooey Deschanel talks about Elf.” Rebecca Murray. 2003. About.com)

Make work your favorite. That’s your new “favorite.”

When the threads of this project were spun out of the distaff of Hollywood nothingness in 1993, Jim Carrey was originally attached to star as Buddy the Elf. I truly love the guy but I am pretty glad he didn’t get it. He’s got far too much pathos in his eyes and the film would have flopped. Will Ferrell gives Buddy an unblinking, irascible cheerfulness that you get the sense would not flag in the face of finding himself engulfed in flames, like a grip of Terminator robots grimly marching across the ocean floor in pursuit of John Connor. Oh, hey, marriage-made-in-heaven sequel idea? “Come wit’ me if yoo be-leaf in Santa!”

Now what can I get you for Christmas?

Don’t tell him what you want, he’s a liar.

Let the kid talk.

You disgust me! How can you live with yourself?

Just cool it, Zippy.

You sit on a throne of lies!

See? I told you Zooey Deschanel showers in this movie. She also eats top ramen. Tell a friend.

Yeah, pretty much. Where this film succeeds for me is in its treatment of the redemption of characters peripheral to Buddy the Elf: namely, his father, Walter, and Jovie, his would-be girlfriend. Grating as he is, if Buddy had changed to accept the new world in to which he thrusts himself, it would have been a cheap and deflating transformation à la Enchanted.*

To see people rise above themselves and protect a dumb, innocent guy is at least affirming. Buddy doesn’t have to change, because the world will always have burpy rays of sunshine: we need to change enough to take care of them, to share their optimism and deserve their devotion. I can hang with that.

Extra-tolerable bonus: Buddy’s supervisor at the North Pole is Peter Billingsley, of A Christmas Story. “You’re not a cotton-headed ninny-muggins, Buddy. You’re just … different.” Aw. Super-cool!

*Enchanted had nice music but, really, Giselle goes from being a full-throated maiden of the forest to Chi-ironing her hair and operating a dress shop in Manhattan. Conform, little girl! For all the posturing at positioning a new kind of feminist anti-hero that that script threw at us, in the end, it pandered to the same “princess-demographic” ideals it was purporting to rebel against. But, dang, that Amy Adams is cute as a button, yes?

Mean Girls Monday: That is just exactly the way of it

This is the kind of thing that happens to me every day of my life.

Fight Club Friday: Advice

Honesty is the best policy.

via Jackie and Arlene on the tumblr.

It’s Friday! Do what feels right and make your own fun.

Movie Moment — Mean Girls Monday: Kälteen bars edition

The bizarre self-esteem and weight issues that the character of Regina evinces in this movie will be a recurring theme some other, better-researched day because, like the movie itself, those traits are satirically funny and cutting while still being devastatingly true, but today let’s focus on the great comedic timing of this specific Mean Girls movie moment.

Caps by me. Click to enlarge.

Movie Moment: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975).

I wrote quite a while ago about how I had always responded very strongly to this movie, well before reading the book, but I recently rewatched it after having gone through the excruciating experience of being impelled to read the book all of a night in September (thanks to a loan from Jonohs), and it reminded me I’ve been collecting screencaps which I’d like to share.

Actually I have dozens more of these, but I think in this edition I want to keep the focus mainly on the question of Mac’s mental state and the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.

“In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she won’t know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch.”

(I’m pretty sure that all of these particular caps are via One Day, One Movie on the tumblr.)

Did You Know? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed on location at the State Mental Hospital in scenic Salem, Oregon. I’m not familiar with that particular monkeyhouse, but Ken Kesey was: he based the 1962 book, from which the movie was adapted, on his experiences working as an orderly there, during which time he participated in a study where he was given, among other hallucinogenic compounds, a friendly little fuckstorm of LSD and peyote. Yummy! Your tax dollars at work!

Nurse Ratched: If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don’t think that he would like it.

McMurphy: [to Harding] You’d like it, wouldn’t you? Here, give it to me.

“Is that crazy enough for you? You want me to take a shit on the floor?”

“Hey, baby, where you from?” “I am from 1234 Asylum Street, Room 22.”

The original Oregon State Hospital for the Insane was established by J.C. Hawthorne in what was then East Portland, Oregon, (now the Hawthorne District). It was built in 1862, and the street on which it was built was renamed Asylum Street. Local residents protested about the name, however, and it was renamed Hawthorne after the hospital’s founder in 1888.

The street in Salem on which the current hospital is located, Center Street, was also originally named Asylum Avenue.

Heartwarming. I used to live very close to Hawthorne in Portland. Between you and me, the name change was unnecessary. There is just as much a cacophony of poverty, despair, madcap high spirits, compassionately helpless onlookers, and emotionless venture capitalists as the name “Asylum Street” suggests. An intersection of mixed purposes and emotions.

Droppin’ c-bombs. That Mac!

“Now they’re telling me I’m crazy because I don’t sit there like a goddamn vegetable. Doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. If that’s what being crazy is, then I’m senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, whacko — no more, no less, that’s it.”

I have basically scene by scene screencaps but I’ve always felt really strongly about this movie and I’m committed to hoping that everyone goes and watches it for themselves. No spoilers today.

The main difference between the [film and the book] is that the novel is narrated by Chief Bromden, and the reader knows straight away that he [no spoilers].

This was a major source of controversy in developing the screenplay, and eventually the reason why the author, Ken Kesey, was not the final writer. He felt as though the narration of a schizophrenic was an important aspect of the novel, because it produced a hallucinogenic perspective where the reader/viewer is not always sure exactly what is true. (the wiki)

That was my only criticism to Jonohs, I believe, when we discussed the differences between the book and its film adaptation, so now I’m feeling pretty unoriginal.

The end.