Why I think "Play It Again, Sam" is every part the equal to "Casablanca" and other musings

Casablanca turned 70 the other day.  I celebrated this by watching a film that has Casablanca completely entrenched in its plotting, humour, characters and soundtrack, yet isn't Casablanca. This was the Woody Allen comedy that isn't quite a Woody Allen comedy, Play It Again, Sam. So to recap, I'm watching a film that contains great similarities with Casablanca without being Casablanca, written by one of the great film comedies without seemingly being part of his oeuvre.  Got it?  Great.

Back in ye olden times, before Woody Allen was the Hollywood workhorse putting out films of varying humour and varying quality every year, he was an inspired stand up comic beginning to encroach art forms, writing several plays, articles and films (including directing the bizarre editing experiment What's Up, Tiger Lily?).  So, his own directing/actor career was beginning to pick up when he starred in an adaptation of his own play with future Annie Hall cast members Tony Roberts and Diane Keaton.  Allen plays Allan, a film obsessed neurotic Jew obsessed with Humphrey Bogart living in - no, not New York - San Francisco.  Yes, seeing a traditional Woody Allen comedy play out in a city away from the Big Apple takes getting use to, especially given that, beyond one sequence on the trams, it could really be set anywhere.  Allan is going through a rough divorce and his friends, couple Dick (Roberts) and Linda (Keaton), try setting him up with girls to help.  Allan's feelings of inadequacy (of course he has those, it's a Woody Allen character) manifest themselves in the form of a dating advice dispensing Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy).  The story documents Allan's terrible dates and his growing relationship with Linda, setting up a Casablanca aping finale.

Casablanca, on the other hand, needs no introduction.

Let me sum up how I feel about these films.  I both feel they are pretty equal, however, Play It Again, Sam is always better than its reputations, and Casablanca is the opposite.

Casablanca seems to have hold some prime real estate in movie lists - Best Film, Best Quotes, Best Romance, Best Heroes and on and on.  I think it's serviceable.  I never buy into the romance of the plot, which is quite damning considering the film identifies itself as one of the best romances of all time.  While the finale is fun, it never gets those tears rolling and the script, for all its memorable quotes, really is a bit hokey.  The fact that Bogart himself came up with the 'here's looking at you, kid' line really shows given that it is repeated OH I DON'T KNOW, ABOUT THREE OR FOUR TIMES COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTEXT.

On the other hand, Play It Again, Sam is stunningly written.  Incredibly inventive, witty and surprisingly emotional.  I think what really stuns me is that it takes the finale from Casablanca word for word and actually gives it an emotional heart.  Maybe it's just as a consequence as seeing Keaton and Allen as a seminal film romance in Annie Hall, but from the moment their romance is on the cards, the film adds a surprisingly effect emotional layer.  When Rick gives up  Ilsa, the only thing he seems to be giving up is someone to drink champagne with (as well as someone to direct his horribly overused lines too).  Allan on the other hand seems to be giving up the one gal perfect to him.  Ah well, they'll always have Manhattan.

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Other musings

I recently discovered Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  It is currently my sound track at work.  It's surprising how well it works as a completely audible experience.  There's also a strangely melancholic tone to MST3K (especially its end theme) that really reminds me of Space Quest's Roger Wilco or Futurama's Philip J Fry.  Obviously I really relate to being trapped in futuristic settings.

I'm watching Gremlins II: the New Batch as I type this.  This ties in with being trapped in futuristic settings.  It worries me that most offices are scarily similar to the Clamp Enterprises building.  On a happier note, Haviland Morris is a fox and the film is still very funny.

Gremlins II is one of the many sequels that I am better acquainted with in comparison to the original (see also: Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, the Empire Strikes Back and Batman Returns).  I had a sequel heavy childhood.

Although ignored from the above article, I have huge issues with Play It Again, Sam's direction.  I would have loved to seen an in form 70s Woody Allen take it on.  Oh well, maybe in another lifetime.

In non-film news...ummmmm....it was own clothes day in the office today.  That's pretty remarkable right?

My Auntie and Uncle are getting married in a couple of weeks time.  They've been together for at least 20 years.  Bless them and their cotton socks.  Do I need to buy a new suit for the occasion?

Attempts to explain five films that inexplicably make me cry and other musings

After four years of mixed interest, I finally sat down to watch Superman Returns on the blu-ray.  The disc was annoyingly scratched, disrupting the flow of opening 30 minutes (grr, bloody lovefilm, that's three out of the last five that have had sub-par maintance).  Despite this, I was absolutely besotted by the first half of the film.  I even got so absorbed into the nostalgic-tinged drama that I felt my eyes welling up after the baseball stadium sequence.  Superman had turned his back on Earth and here he was saving the day and being warmly embraced back into the fold, as if he never left.  Touching, no?

I cry in a lot of movies.  I've been accused of crying too much and at some very odd films.  So here is my attempt to justify some of the more recent oddities.  Let's get the more explainable ones out of the way first.

1) Chico & Rita - Okay, not much to explain here.  If you've ever found it plausible that someone could cry over Casablanca, then you'll understand this.  This film revolves around one of those mythic cinema "meant-to-be" couples and of course, they keep getting driven apart.  What makes Chico & Rita refreshing though is that the wedge this time isn't any unforeseeable evil force/villain, but instead the actions of the couple themselves.

2) Ponyo - There are three moments in this delightful children's film that thaw that icy heart o' mine.  First, there is a sequence early on in which Ponyo, our underwater protagonist, in the process of escaping from her father (and his dreadful taste in fashion) makes her way to a busy coastal harbour.  In her attempts to escape the oncoming boating traffic, she becomes ensnared in one of those plastic six-pack holder thingys.  Yep, mild peril of the highest degree!  Obviously, I was a fish in a previous life.  A second escape attempt sees Ponyo, desperate to return to the shore and her new friend Sosuke, disturbs the fragile balance of the ocean, causing great waves to batter the port town in which Sosuke lives.  This upsets me jsut because Ponyo is so unaware of the consequences of her actions and furthermore, the danger she is putting all of the townsfolk in.  Finally, the film's conclusion makes me cry, mainly because of how final it is. Ponyo makes her choice.  She can never go home in the same way again.  Her relationship with her family has shifted and it is only in time that she can conclude whether this was the right choice or not.

3) Robocop/Wall-E - I'm tying these two together because they work on a similar theme.  There's a moment about two thirds into Robocop, in which our titular hero, plagued by visions of his former life, returns to his former home.  His family, thinking him dead (which he kinda is) have moved on and sold the house.  Robocop wanders the empty hallways, confronted by his burgeoning memories.  Now, although, much like Ponyo, there is an aspect of the finality of his situation (he had his perfect idyllic life and he can never get that back), I think what upsets me more is how he has loss much more than his prior life - he has lost himself.  I am also a man that, not only cries like a child at the ending of Wall-E, I would have changed it so that he doesn't get his memories (ergo himself) magically back.  Yes, I wanted all the kids to leave that cinema sobbing uncontrollably (to make myself look slightly less pathetic).

4) Hugo - So this one might not seem much of a surprise, but I have to stress that what makes me cry in this film isn't anything to do with plot or the emotion of the characters or anything tangibly about the film.  It's just Ben Kingsley.  Literally.  As soon as he's on screen, the tears start following.  He doesn't even have to say anything.  He can stand as mute as a toenail and I'll be upset.  It just seems to be his performance in this film.  Crazy.

5) Moneyball - There's a montage a third into the film where Jonah Hill starts explaining sabermetrics.  It's an incredibly edited sequence consisting of spreadsheets, grainy black and white photos and Jonah Hill's voice.  It cuts straight to the narrative heart of the film - people judge others not by their true value, whether that be their pitching skill or their skills as a friend, but by superficial affections which result in many of us never fulfilling our potential.  Life eh? It's a bitch.

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Other musing

I recently had to (yes, had to, there was no other choice) purchase a mouse pad and some coasters.  As I've just turned 24, this made me feel very old and practical, so I followed it up with a quick purchase of the complete Rocketeer comics and Heartbeats on DVD.  I ranked Heartbeats as my favourite film of 2010 (I know, something beat Shutter Island, crazy).  It'll be interesting if it holds up.  I'm kinda worried.

I did my first review for an actual magazine.  Does that mean I can refer to myself as a critic now?  Do I get a critic hat?

There are eight million stories in the naked city he romanticized all out of proportion and other musings

New York. The Big Apple. The Naked City. The City That Never Sleeps. Gotham. The Capital of the World. The City So Nice, They Named It Twice. I've never been, but I know a few people that have, so it must exist in the real world and not just on movie sets across the world. New York has been well represented in and well treated by Hollywood over the years. Make a list of your top 10 films. Go ahead, I'll wait. I'd wager good (as opposed to morally rehensible) money that New York is featured at least once in that list. How could it not be? Sweet Smell of Success, Ghostbusters, All About Eve, On the Waterfront, Marty, the Apartment, Rosemary's Baby, Midnight Cowboy, Do The Right Thing, the French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon, King Kong, Once Upon a Time in America, When Harry Met Sally, Metropolitan, the Fisher King, Eyes Wide Shut, the œuvres of Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, and, spoilers ahoy, Planet of the Apes. And that's just scratching the surface. Some of these films are merely set with the five boroughs as a backdrop, others represent the city as its own character.

As a kid, I fell in love with the architecture and feel of New York through Ghostbusters. To this day, I still have a yearning to climb those steps and visit the New York Public Library (which I intend to do in November, touch wood). Film is definitely a medium that idealises many aspects of life, whether it be locations, emotions or situations (both tragic and comedic). Most films do this implicitly, seemingly unaware of their actions or their consequences, but one of my favourite films confronts this head on and also happens to be one of the greatest New York movies of all time; Woody Allen's Manhattan.

There's much going on in Allen's love letter to the town that raised him, especially when pontificating on constant battle between anticipated and realised states in love. However, most of the later scenes in this film are forgotten in favourite for the tour de force that is the opening montage. Voice over is a tricky commodity. It's a particularly delicate tool in a filmmaker's bag. When it goes well, it goes so far in making a film distinctive and successful, (though more recent examples seem to have a comedic presence attached; see Adaptation, Goodfellas, the Big Lebowski). Never has been more apparent to me than watching Jules Dassin's Naked City.

My housemates have been away on holiday this week, so I've been taking advantage of the incredibly quick internet connection in the kitchen by watching high quality streamed films via my film rental service of choice. I've been getting home from work, doing a bit of tidying, doing a bit of study, having tea and sticking something on the old PS3 streaming do'hicky. On Wednesday, I queued up Naked City. I was shocked. The opening sequence was, albeit less successful, riffing on the some of the same ideas as the introductory shots to Manhattan.

The strength of the introduction to Manhattan is how multifaceted it is. Primarily, it acts at a superficial level to introduce us to the setting and the main character, Woody Allen's affected writer Isaac. Context also allows us to extrapolate that Isaac (and therefore by proxy, Woody) is writing autobiographically about his feelings toward New York, all the while providing us with vibrant visuals and music. It's hard not to romanticize New York out of all proportion when presented with a backdrop like that. Furthermore, it introduces us to some of the themes of the film - the gap between expectation and reality, acting according to how one feels as opposed to how one is expected to feel. All that, plus it's funny as well. It's an invigorating sequence made all the better by how well its various aspects work together in unity.

Naked City could not be further from this. Its biggest problem is how disjointed it is. As Jules Dassin would further prove with Rififi, he was a great visual storyteller. There is a completely silent, 33 minute long heist sequence at the heart of Rififi which I can't praise enough. The same sort of visual panache is evident throughout Naked City, in fact, I'd go so far to say that it is visually one of the most consistently high quality films out there. So what's the problem? Well, much like Manhattan, we are presented with a montage of images highlight the different walks of life present in New York, the energy, the sights. Also like Manhattan, there's a voice over. This voice over is one of the most ill-judged and flat out confusing aspects of a film I have seen since Quentin Tarantino being cast in, well, anything.

The narration is presented in an odd, almost Rod Serling manner by producer Mark Hellinger. He tells us who he is, names the players involved, generally acts as a title sequence. The whole thing has a 'you've not seen anything like this folks', PT Barnum showman vibe as it opens, but as it continues, it just becomes more baffling. It starts telling you exactly what you're seeing on screen. First, if you've started watching a film, do you really need someone in the film telling you how good it is? No, that's the job of the promotional material, the film should just be concerned with being good. Secondly, as I've mentioned above, Dassin (and his Oscar winning DP William H. Daniels) know how to construct a story visually. All the information that Hellinger provides, we've already seen. It doesn't require any further pointing out. The whole thing is hokey and redundant. My only hypothesis is that, given that Hellinger died during the post production, the voice over acted as a tribute to a man they enjoyed working with. Unfortunately, it near derails this beautiful example of 40s noir.

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Other musings

One of my friends has traded his car in for a disused taxi.  I can't think of anything worth sharing more than that.