The Cheapskate’s Guide to Cinema

I’m sitting here waiting for a file to download to my computer right now. Based on last night’s experience, it’ll probably take around 5 hours. What I’m downloading is a DVD-quality WMV file of Blood Diamond, at no charge, perfectly legally. I downloaded Sherlock Holmes last night. Best Buy, and their CinemaNow website, started an 8-day promotion yesterday in which they’re giving away purchases (not rentals) of digital copies of select movies each day. Being a movie fan with the most meager of budgets, I should be pretty happy about this, but I’m honestly just a bit irritated. I know it’s not polite to look a gift horse in the mouth, but having some experience with horses, I know that’s precisely what you need to do; you don’t want the trouble and cost of the upkeep of an unwell horse, after all. Best Buy’s promotion needed to be thought through better before they did it. They’re putting up one coupon code a day, and limiting it to the first 5,000 people. There are currently 5,443,084 people “liking” Best Buy’s page. Which means that a little less than 0.1% are actually going to get to use the code on any given day. That’s great for those people, and on the first two days I’ve been lucky enough to be one of them, but I’m sure my luck won’t hold forever, and it’s not so great for the 99.9%+ who miss out. Best Buy doesn’t owe anybody anything with this, but it’s hard for people not to resent being told “sorry, you’re out of luck” when they miss a window of opportunity that is literally only a few minutes long. You don’t want your freebie promotion to generate more ill-will than good. Plus, all those people trying it is resulting in “server too busy” errors; it took me 10 minutes to “purchase” the item, and another 50 to actually succeed in initiating the download. So, while I am grateful — free movies! — I can’t help but think it could have been handled better.

But while I was waiting for RoxioNow to initiate my download, I got to thinking about the various ways I watch movies. I currently make my living off of eBay and flea markets, because in this economy it’s hard to find a job as a programmer. So I don’t have enough to always go to the first-run movie theatre or buy a full price DVD (and I don’t have a Blu-Ray player yet). But even if I only see the latest-and-greatest when I can occasionally scrape together a bit of money, I still see a fair amount of movies, and as noted in my “About” page, if it’s new to me, that’s all that counts. So here’s the Cheapskate’s Guide to Cinema: the best ways to watch movies without breaking the budget.

Human Feelings

Human Feelings is a made-for-TV movie — actually, it was intended as a pilot for a TV series that never got picked up — which aired in 1978. You’d think by now I’d learn to take that as a big warning sign, that made-for-TV movies — especially older ones, which usually had proportionately lower budgets compared to today — have a tendency to not turn out as good as their high concept. But I figured I had an hour and a half to kill, so this might be worth a shot.

In my defense, it stars Billy Crystal, and Billy Crystal is usually good for a few laughs. Usually.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Released in 1988, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen very nearly wasn’t released at all. Behind schedule, far over budget, more than a little bit off of the mainstream, it wasn’t exactly the darling of the studio’s eye — especially since the studio heads had recently undergone a shift in management, and the new heads weren’t keen on releasing anything by their predecessors. Reportedly, fewer than 50 prints were released to U.S. theatres, dooming the movie to relative obscurity and becoming a cult classic at best. But that would hardly be the first nor last time that would be true for a film directed by the Monty Python alumnus. Like most people, I didn’t see it when it was new, or even when it was first released on video. It’s probably just as well in my case; I would have been just a bit young at the time, and although I might have liked it, I probably wouldn’t have “gotten” it as much as an adult.

But since I became an adult and became aware of it, it’s been sitting on my “to see” list for some time. Tonight, I finally got to cross it off the list, and I’m glad. The movie is simply a delight, not just a fantasy movie, but a testament to the place that fantasy holds in culture.

Devil’s Advocate: Adam West’s Batman

Opinions. Everyone’s got ‘em. Sometimes a lot of people have the same one, and especially when it comes to pop culture, and especially on the internet, there is often a “group mind” effect. A collective opinion forms on certain works, and woe betide the odd person who goes against the grain. Well, I’m willing to go against the grain. Sometimes I think the collective opinion is wrong — not just something I disagree with, but fundamentally wrong in some respect — and I’m willing to play Devil’s Advocate and say so. And if you agree or disagree with me? Please, say so! This blog has an equal-opportunity comments section, the more commentators the merrier.

So let’s talk about comic books, and their screen adaptations. Specifically, let’s talk about Batman. Let’s talk about the 1960s comedic, camp, “Can’t get rid of a bomb” Adam West Batman. The TV series ran from 1966 to 1968, and the spin-off movie was released in 1966 between the first and second seasons. Now, West’s Batman might not seem controversial at first; certainly a lot of the mainstream loved him and still does. A lot of us grew up on him (in re-runs in my case), and the notion that somebody might hate the Adam West Batman may seem strange. But I was a comic book fan for a number of years (technically, I still am, I just can’t afford to be; being a dedicated comic book fan is seriously much more expensive than being a movie fan). And I’d join comic book communities on the internet, just as I do with movies now (though I never had a comic book blog of my own.) And time after time, far more than I ever saw any praise for the old Batman, I saw mockery, derision, disgust and outright hatred. “Batman should be serious”, “Batman should be dark”, “Adam West ruined Batman, and it took Frank Miller and Tim Burton to repair it.” For a certain apparently-large section of the Bat-fan demographic, expressing a liking for Adam West is like going to a Metallica fan-site and asking “So, how about that brilliant Justin Bieber?”

I’m not about to tell someone that they should like Adam West’s Batman. If they don’t like camp or a comedic Batman, that’s their opinion, and welcome to it. But I do think they should at least respect it.

Bugsy

Warren Beatty leads a star-studded cast in this dramatization of gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Seagal’s attempt to build a hotel in Las Vegas — essentially to found Las Vegas, in fact. Of course, calling him “Bugsy” isn’t a great idea, it tends to make him fly off the handle. A lot of things make him fly off the handle. Seagal, as portrayed by Beatty, is a loose cannon, but in many ways unpredictable. He’ll let a lot of things just roll off him, but then snap at a moment’s notice.

He tends to get caught up in ideas as well. One of his oldest friends, Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley) even says that he doesn’t respect the concept of money, what interests him is the ideas that it can bring into fruition. And it’s this tendency to get caught up in the moment that drives the plot, as Bugsy is sent by his mob superiors to California to establish operations there. Once there, he finds himself smitten with singer Virginia Hill (Annette Bening), and proceeds to attempt to seduce her, despite his marriage and kids.

The Mark of Zorro (1975)

I was looking for some simple action fare. A bit of adventure, some swashbuckling, a few witty one-liners. And when you’re looking for simple action movies, how could you go wrong with Zorro? Everybody knows Zorro. Classic adventure hero, fighting for the people of California against a corrupt regime. Suave style, a sense of humor, and highly skilled with a sword. Right there you’ve got the perfect recipe for a fun movie.

How can you go wrong with Zorro? By having it be put together by incompetents every step of the way, that’s how.

Prospective Pilots: Puppets and Booster Gold?!

NBC Universal is taking some interesting chances with upcoming pilots, according to the Hollywood Reporter. First up, for their main network, they have ordered a script for The New Nabors from Jim Henson Studios. In this sitcom, a Palm Springs family is surprised to discover that their new next-door neighbors are a gang of puppets. 30 Rock executive producer John Riggi is writing, along with John Hoffman (exactly which of the two-dozen John Hoffmans on IMDb, I’m not sure, and none of them really seem like solid sells to me.) It’s not a new Muppet Show, but it might be interesting. And at the very least, it’s something different, which NBC really needs if they want to pull themselves off the bottom of the heap.

The other interesting pilot news out of NBC Universal is that they’ve ordered a pilot for a series featuring DC Comics’ Booster Gold for Syfy.

Mr. Destiny

The 1990 comedy Mr. Destiny is centered around the notion that, if you change one key event in a person’s life, the whole life changes. It’s a familiar, often-visited premise in movies; It’s a Wonderful Life did it on such a grand scale (with the event being the life happening at all) that it’s spawned almost as many imitators as Elvis Presley. With a few rare exceptions, the genre consists of some apparently-luckless individual wishing on one simple change to their past that would make everything better. Their wish is granted, and initially it seems wonderful, and then they start to see the bad side of things and just how good their actual life really was by comparison.

In some alternate life, perhaps I chose to watch a different film than Mr. Destiny tonight. I’d like to think that other Morgan might have been some tiny bit happier for it, but who knows? Maybe he got stuck watching Jack and Jill instead.

Favorite Films: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

“Six bucks and my left nut says we’re not going to be landing in Chicago.”

We all have our favorite films, and when you have a movie blog, it’s almost obligatory to occasionally push them onto your readers. So, considering we are exactly one week away from Thanksgiving in the United States, I’ve decided to open up my “Favorite Films” series of reviews with what is arguably the greatest comedy to take place at Thanksgiving. Granted, it’s not the most crowded field when it comes to holiday movies — Christmas, being just a bit more universal (or at least extending into the rest of Western civilization) certainly gets the lion’s share of holiday movies — but I am confident that even had John Hughes’ 1987 odd couple comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles been set at Christmas, it would still be a fondly-remembered comedy classic.

From the dialogue, to the plot, to the acting by its two stars, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is just about perfect.

Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)

There have been a lot of adaptations of Jack and the Beanstalk over the years, though few have been feature-length films; admittedly, at 1 hour, 17 minutes, the 1952 version is only just feature-length, but it counts nevertheless. The tale is familiar to pretty much anybody who grew up in western civilization, so the question of how entertaining a film based on the fairy tale is comes down to its production values, and who is cast in the important roles. Traditionally, Jack is portrayed as a classical fool in the story — naive, but good-hearted and ultimately heroic — and for this film the role is filled by one of the biggest fools available in the 1950s: Lou Costello. Bud Abbott, of course, is tagging along as the greedy butcher who traded the magic beans for Jack’s cow, and follows Jack up the beanstalk in hopes of finding riches in the Giant’s castle (in particular, the hen that lays the golden egg, which had been Jack’s mother’s until the Giant stole it.)