38. Symapthy for the Devil &...

Lyrics

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith

I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands a’ sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the Blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, ah yeah

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the god they made

I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedy's?"
When after all
It was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, ahhh yeah, get down, baby

(2:54) woo
(3:03) woooah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game mmm yeah
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, have some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, mmm yeah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, mmm yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, mmm mean it, get down

(4:43) Woo, who
ah yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
(4:52) bum bum ba ba ba do a, bum bum ba ba ba do a
(5:06) yea Ahh yeah!

Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, a can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame

Oh, who
woo, woo
Woo, who alright
(5:35) oo, oo oo
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah

well What's my name
Tell me, baby, a what's my name
Tell me, sweetie, a what's my name

oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who

oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
Ahhhhh, yeah

Woo woo

I've been thinking a bit recently about how important good singing is for my enjoyment of a song. Or how important it is that the singer of the song has a good voice. I find Adele for example pretty boring, while I think that Lana Del Rey is the most interesting female singer to come out in this century. Yet it is undeniable that Adele has a better, stronger voice than Del Rey. She is a 'better' singer. Sympathy for the Devil is a good example of this. Especially in the second half of the song it is pretty clear that Mick Jagger is not a good singer. He is much worse than Adele (and probably also worse than Lana del Rey). Yet Adele has never made a song as good as this one. Nor do I believe that this would be a better song if you would swap her with Jagger. Anyway, on to the movie. It is not a very inspired choice, but it was a very easy one. 

  

The Movie: The Devil's Advocate (Taylor Hackford, 1997)

 

I found The Devil's Advocate to be a pretty entertaining film, but it is a huge, way too long mess. It tries do do too much, but is too often not very successful. This could have been a great 90 minute sleazy, pulpy thriller/horror. Instead it is nearly 2,5 hours long. In this 2,5 hours it tries to be a sleazy, pulpy horror movie, a serious horror movie, a romantic drama, a courthouse drama and even a satire. I think that's it, though I might've forgotten some other genres it wants to be. And everytime it does something good or even great it goes on to do something unbelievably stupid. The best example of this comes near the end. Keanu Reeves plays a Florida advocate who has never lost a case. After winning a particularly hard case he is brought to New York to work for John Milton, a rich corporate. John Milton is played by Al Pacino and is the literal devil. I found it a bit funny that, as he is brought up by his deeply religious mother, Reeves' character Kevin Lomax, seems completely oblivious to the name of his boss. But Kevin is a pretty oblivious fella anyway. Only in his final confrontation with John, after a whole lot of hints, does he realize that his boss is the devil incarnated. 

This final confrontation is a glorious, relatively long scene. A major reason for this is Al Pacino. In this movie he gives a masterclass in convincingly overacting/chewing the scenery. It is rare to see someone having so much fun playing a role, while at the same time being utterly convincing. In that final confrontation he raises his game even more. He is (finally) helped by some juicy dialogue about how he differs from God (it's too bad really that they didn't get someone to play God incarnated), how he is the last humanist on earth, how he is awesome, and how he can make Kevin's life awesome. How can he make Kevin's lfie awesome? Well, if Kevin is willing to fuck Christabella, one of his hot colleagues, who is actually also Kevin's half-sister they will raise Satan's kid and rule the world. And why must Kevin do this? Well because John, that devil, is Kevin's father. One night in 1966 he seduced Kevin's deeply religious mother. That's also why Kevin won all his cases. It was 'divine' intervention. Only not by God, but by the devil. As you can see this scene is completely bonkers. But in a glorious way, with deliciously pulpy dialogue, an Al Pacino having the time of his life, some great cinematography and some really good special effects. I wished that more of the movie was in that vein, but I loved that scene so much that I was willing to forgive every flaw of the movie. And then, the scene ended and we cut to what turned out to be the most stupid plot twist I've ever seen. And one of the worst, most stupid and disappointing endings I've ever seen. It was a hackneyed way to stupidly and lazily add a moral and a happy ending to the movie.  

That last scene was fortunately not the only time the movie embraced it's pulpy potential. There is also for example a great scene in which Al Pacino berates in Spanish a couple of thugs in the subway. As you see basically everything great about this movie involves Al Pacino. He is also given a slightly satiric speech that reminded me a bit of Ned Beatty's famous speech in Network. That too is pretty entertaining. When it did this kind of things, the movie was great fun. Unfortunately too often it did other things. The scenes were the movie tried to be a serious horror movie were admittedly pretty scary, but they scared me, because of how flawed they were. They were completely random. There were basically two or three of them and there was no single reason why they would exist in the movie. So they caught me pretty much by surprise. There was also no logic or consistency within them. The director showed pretty gross things that had no real relation to the plot or 'ideas' of the movie. So during those I was prepared for any randomly horrific thing to happen. As I said I was pretty tense during them, but I am not sure that it was because of good film making.

But whether for good or bad reasons, at least the horror scenes worked. The scenes where the movie tried to be a courthouse drama or a relationships drama didn't work in any way and there were too many of them. The courthouse drama was the most bland, unimaginative and dull courthouse drama I've ever seen. Not only that, the movie often couldn't even convincingly make clear how Reeves won his cases. As for the relationship drama. Well, if there is one cinematic cliche I am tired of, it is that of the couple fighting irrationally, because one half of the couple spends to much time at his/her job. The movie probably sets the world record for such scenes. There are about six/seven of them. And of course each scene follows the same pattern. Kevin comes home late from work, his wife is mad him, they shout idiotically, Kevin promises to be there for her, and after two scenes the whole thing starts anew. By the way Kevin's wife is played by Charlize Theron. The previous Reeves-Theron movie I discussed here was Sweet November. That was probably the worst movie I've yet discussed on this blog, but at least Reeves and Theron had much better chemistry there and at least they tried to be sympathetic. They also actually gave better performances there than here. I've often thought that the claims that Reeves is a bad actor are exaggerated, but his performance here can't be excused. Even by his usual standards he wouldn't be able to hold his own in a scene with Al  Pacino. But here with Pacino at his best and Reevvves at his worst, it is just laughable. He also seems to think he is in a different movie from Pacino. While Pacino knows he is what should be a pulpy entertainment, Reeves thinks he is in an Oscar-worthy imimportant ddrama. He overacts his seriousness. This is by far his worst performance. 

 

37. Dancing Queen &...

Lyrics

You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen

Friday night and the lights are low
Looking out for the place to go
Where they play the right music, getting in the swing
You come in to look for a king
Anybody could be that guy
Night is young and the music's high
With a bit of rock music, everything is fine
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...

You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen

You're a teaser, you turn 'em on
Leave them burning and then you're gone
Looking out for another, anyone will do
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...

You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen


I don't know whether I will ever get to the 2000th song. It is quite a lot. But I certainly do hope to get as far as possible. Which means that I'll most probably get to Mamma Mia, which is in the 479th position. Which means that I'll have to watch the movie Mamma Mia. There are some tolerable ABBA songs, like Dancing Queen, and I actually like the next ABBA song on the list, The Day Before You Came. But most of their songs are really awful, so watching a schmaltzy musical full of their songs is not something that sounds like great fun to me. To make matters worse, the musical is directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who made The Iron Lady. This biopic about Margaret Thatcher is probably the worst biopic I have ever seen. The movie I linked this song to is not very good either, though it certainly was a pleasure to watch the actress playing the young dancing queen.

The Movie: Flashdance (Adrian Lyne, 1983)

One of the best recent movies I've seen is Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012). It is a completely original, insane and very funny movie that seems to be, among other things, a parody of every movie ever made. At one point there is a scene where a photographer is taking pictures of a model, played by Eva Mendes. While doing this the photographer is constantly repeating the word 'beauty.' I was reminded of this while watching Flashdance. It seems as if the people making this movie only cared about creating beautiful shots, mostly of Pittsburgh and of the leading actress, Jennifer Beals. And they really did manage to this. The movie looks incredible and there are some truly wonderful shots, especially when Beals is on screen. Besides this, these shots are often also filled with some very nice music. Having said that the movie is also hilariously stupid and nonsensical. So I sort of enjoyed this movie, in both an ironic and non-ironic movie. What's good about it is pretty good, and what's bad about it, is so incredibly bad that it at least becomes enjoyable in a hilarious way.

The movie is at its best in its first half, when it is nearly plotless. The first half of this movie consists basically only of set-pieces meaning to show either Beals or Pittsburgh in the most sexy way possible. The first two scenes are actually really good. The first scene is basically a very good typical 80's music video set to the Oscar-winning song Flashdance (which somehow is not in Radio 2's top 2000, and neither is Maniac). We simply follow Beals as she cycles through Pittsburgh, but the combination of the music and some wonderful shots make it a very good scene. In the next scene we see Beals, whose character is named Alex Owens, dance in the bar where she works at night (During the day, she works as a welder!). This scene alone makes Flashdance's Oscar nod for Best Cinematography deserving. Using lights and shadows the movie here creates one of the most sexy and unique (although it seems inspired by Michael Jackson) dance scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Another scene I really liked during this first half is a very random scene on the streets of Pittsburgh. Alex and her sister are walking on the street, when they meet a bunch of children with whom they start dancing. In tone it is a very similar scene the famous scene in (500) Days of Summer in which Gordon-Levitt is walking happily down the street and everybody joins him in an ecstatic dance. The Flashdance scene becomes even weirder and better when we suddenly follow a policeman who controls traffic, in almost perfect accordance with the music on the soundtrack. The scene makes no sense at all, but as I've written before I am a fan of movies which create original, wonderful scenes, just because they can. It's something I haven't seen done before ever.

All of this would be even better if the movie weren't so weirdly conservative. This has probably much to do with the movie rating system in America, which decides which movies can be seen by people of what age. I don't know much how that works, so I won't waste further words on this. What I wanted to say though, is that one of the most awkward things about this movie was that we never see Alex' breasts. And it goes to great lengths to not show them. It cuts just when we would see them, or it films her in such a way that they are strategically covered. I don't mean to sound sexist, and I didn't necessarily want to see them. But not showing her breasts felt really hypocritical and seemed like evidence of some really weird values on behalf of whomever is in charge of such decisions. I have seen few movies were the women are being so objectified as in this one. There is a completely random dance scene in which the camera regards Alex in an incredibly fetishistic way. During this scene, the camera mostly focuses on her buttocks, and when it goes away from it, you sense that the camera has only gone away from Alex' buttocks, because to show it throughout the whole scene would be too perverse. But you also sense that the cameraman really wants to go back to the buttocks as soon as possible, and so it does as much as it can. And other scenes aren't much less fetishistic. So the movie is not very 'respectful' of women. That's not a problem in itself, but by not showing her breasts, it wants to pretend that it is. It wants to make us believe that by not showing Alex' breasts it represents Alex in a decent manner, which is absolutely not the case. This is made even more explicit when Alex berates her sister for dancing in a topless bar and we actually do see her sister's breasts. This is ridiculous. Not only are the dances we see Alex do in her 'normal' bar much more objectifying and erotically charged than the dances of her sister in the topless bar, but it is also obvious that her sister actually can earn more money dancing in a topless bar.

I could talk more about the nonsensical plot, but there is not much to say about that. It's just hilarious how everything in it happens for completely random reasons. It's quite funny for example how Alex' lover Nick becomes her lover. After one of her dances, Alex is stalked by a bunch of guys who want to have sex with her. She is annoyed by them and they are scared away by Nick. She goes home, only to be stalked by Nick, because he wants to have sex with her. She does accept his flirtations. By that point in the movie there is hardly any difference between Nick and those other guys. There is absolutely no reason why she should not be annoyed by the stalking of Nick, and be annoyed by the stalking of those earlier boys.
Lastly it is worth mentioning that Alex wants to be accepted to a prestigious dance school. In the final scene we see her dancing in front of the committee and they, naturally, accept her. Somehow the movie manages to make this final dance, by far the dullest and worst dance in the whole movie.

36. Tears in Heaven &...

Lyrics


Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven.

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?

I'll find my way
Through night and day,
'Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven.

Time can bring you down,
Time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart,
Have you begging please, begging please.

Beyond the door,
There's peace I'm sure,
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven.

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven.

While I can't say that Eric Clapton is 'undoubtedly' the greatest guitar player ever, I do think he is very good. He has never really made a bad song and most of his songs are consistently great. So if you really have to choose the best Clapton song it makes sense that it is this one, considering that it is probably his most personal and emotional song. He wrote this for his son who accidentally died. Considering this the most logical movie to link this song to would be Robert Redford's Ordinary People. That is probably the best movie involving a family dealing with a dead son. But I didn't choose that one. I will probably write someday about that movie too, but for now I'll just say that I believe that Ordinary People is about more then grieving about a dead son/brother. In fact that's not even really about that. The dead son is used as a sort of glorified McGuffin there. Instead I chose a recent film that I knew was about a family dealing with the death of their son. 

The Movie: Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, 2010)

I did not expect very much from this movie. I thought it would be a sentimental drama with some good acting (Nicole Kidman got an Oscar nomination for her role here). So I was surprised when it turned out that this is a very good movie. This is a very strong, realistic drama about a couple grieving for their dead son. It is not much else, but it doesn't want or need to be. There are maybe a couple of scenes that don't work, but it is always redeemed by the fact that the filmmakers have created very believable, realistic characters. Even more importantly these characters are good, decent and rational. It is also acted incredibly well. While Nicole Kidman got an Oscar nomination for best leading actress, Aaron Eckhart, playing her husband certainly deserved one too. Eckhart is one of the most unfairly overlooked American actors. There may be no one better then him right now at playing a character who tries to do the best he can and be a good person (in whichever way necessary), despite all the hardships he may face. He doesn't show that only here, but also in Thank You for Smoking, The Dark Knight and even Erin Brockovich. He can also play dirty sleazebags though like in Nurse Betty.

This movie does something I haven't often seen in an American movie. Near the beginning of the movie Kidman's Becca and Eckhart's Howie are in a support group for parents who lost a child. One person in this group is talking about how she sometimes finds consolation by thinking that God needed an angel and that that's why He took her child. This pisses Becca off, immensely, and she stops going to the support group. In most American movies, Becca would probably later on in the movie return to the support group, apologize for her rude behavior and listen happily to people talk about how God took their child for a reason. She may not believe in God, but chances are the movie would force her to accept that there is at least the possibility that God might exist and that if she would believe in Him her life might be better. And that there might be a chance that God did took her son/daughter. That doesn't happen in this movie. Not only doesn't Becca return to the support groups, but she finds that hard science can also make her cope with her dead child. As it is explained to her there are scientific theories claiming that there are parallel universes. It might just be that in one of those parallel universes Becca lives happily together with her still living son. Now I don't now how valid these scientific theories are, but that is not the point of the scene or the movie. We don't need necessarily need God to cope with grief. This is a pretty interesting point for a Hollywood movie. Hollywood movies are progressive, but they are progressive compared to the general attitude of the American people. There are really few Hollywood movies that dare to say that God may not always be the answer. The real strength of the movie though is that it doesn't claim that God cannot be the answer. There are people in this movie for whom the believe in God has made life easier. The movie claims that we all have to find our own way to cope with grief. That is actually too specific. We all have to find our own way to live. And anything that can make our life easier (without hurting others) can be valid. God can make our lives better, but so can science or comics or dogs or smoking pot, or playing squash, etc...