... FOR "MOVIES AS METAPHORS"

Disney/Pixar's Inside Out tells the story of 11- year-old Riley Andersen, uprooted from her home in Minnesota and carted off to San Francisco, where her father just landed a new job. On the cusp of adolescence, Riley is completely unprepared for the mental and emotional turmoil the move is about to cause herself and her family; her parents, likewise, can't understand why their little girl, once so bright and open and the light of their lives, suddenly turns so irritable and distant. Ultimately, Riley is able to reconcile her feelings and make up with Mom and Dad (SPOILER), and they live in perfect harmony together forever after. All this, of course, is just the springboard for the really interesting stuff, in which we learn that Riley's emotions are sentient beings operating a giant control room inside her head. There's Joy, green-yellow and eternally optimistic; Anger, who's always on the verge of blowing his red brick top; Fear, a bug-eyed purple nebbish; Disgust, who can barely hide the look of disdain on her face; and Sadness, mopey and morose and blue. So far, Joy has been Riley's dominant personality trait, until circumstances force Sadness to challenge that position, and when both Joy and Sadness are ejected from headquarters and plunged deeper into the recesses of Riley's brain, it's up to Anger, Fear, and Disgust to keep up appearances - with often disastrous results.

Suffice it to say Inside Out is unlike anything Pixar has ever attempted before - eye-popping and funny and heartfelt, yes, but clearly conceived as a metaphor for the way our emotions sometimes get the better of us... and how our children learn to cope with those emotions during their formative years, much to the chagrin of their parents. It's an idea rife with dramatic possibilities, which director Pete Docter (Up) and co-screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley are consistently able to mine for comedy and visual gold. (I haven't even begun to describe Riley's "Personality Islands," or the color-coded translucent orbs in which her memories are "stored" and then carted off to Long Term Memory when she sleeps, or Bing Bong, or the stopovers in Imagination Land or - my personal favorite - Abstract Thought, where the characters are rendered as cubist shapes that would make Picasso proud.)

... FOR "'THE IMITATION GAME,' 'A BEAUTIFUL MIND,' AND THE PERILS OF HISTORY VERSUS HOLLYWOOD"

A couple of months ago, a friend messaged me on Facebook, asking me for a recommendation on which film he should see on the big screen for the weekend. Browsing the showtimes for local theaters, I told him to avoid Taken 3 at all costs (the big release for that Friday, and, let's face it, a ripoff of The Fugitive, with bigger explosions and less logic) and heartily recommended The Imitation Game instead, starting Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. "Oh, yeah," my friend wrote back, "[that] reminded me of A Beautiful Mind a little. I'm sure it's very different, but the decrypting idea was similar."

Immediately I jumped to the new movie's defense. "Except the encryption stuff in The Imitation Game actually happened," I snapped, and instantly regretted it. First of all, who was I to say that the film shouldn't remind him of A Beautiful Mind? Both are period pieces. They're both shot in the same drab monochromatic browns. Both feature eccentric actors at the height of their star power. And yes, if you watch the trailers for both, they each seem to center around code-breaking and high-stakes government intrigue. But the simpler truth is that Biopics have always been known for futzing the truth when it comes to their larger-than-life historical subjects. What makes The Imitation Game any different? Though the film doesn't shy away from the fact that Alan Turing was homosexual, the events leading up to his arrest for "gross indecency" in 1952 Britain (among other things) differ greatly from how they're presented on-screen. Details about the codebreakers' work ethic have been glossed over, characters have been left out completely or invented for dramatic purposes, and it's even suggested that Turing suffered from Asperger Syndrome (he didn't) to make his actions seem more heroic. And yet we're meant to accept all this as gospel truth!

... FOR "MACGUFFIN WITH EGG (PART 4 - 'RONIN' EDITION)"

Been a while. Shall we recap? A MacGuffin, lest we forget, is any object or doodad in a story or film that every character wants desperately to get their hands on. It hardly matters what said object is; all we need to know is that everyone wants it, and will do whatever it takes to get it, often at the expense of each other's lives. Done right, the MacGuffin will reveal important truths about the characters (i.e., just how much is this person willing to sacrifice in order to accomplish his/her goals?). Done wrong, or explain it too much, and, well, who cares?

To wit: In Paramount's Mission: Impossible series, Tom Cruise and his Impossible Mission Force are sent to retrieve any number of mysterious artifacts, from a computer file to a vial full of hazardous material, before bad guys can sell it for profit or terror. Characters resolve their differences with bullets or by beating each other to a bloody pulp. In Jaws, the MacGuffin is the shark - the existence of which will test the limits of the three men who set out to stop it. And in Hitchcock's Notorious, uranium stored in champagne bottles forces a spy (Cary Grant) to put the woman he loves (Ingrid Bergman) in harm's way.

... FOR "DETAILS YOU PROBABLY NEVER NOTICED IN POPULAR FILMS BEFORE ('DIE HARD' EDITION)"

A continuation on a theme, again, as we take a closer look at Die Hard (1988). Unquestionably one of the most influential action films of the 80s (along with Raiders Of The Lost Ark and John Woo's The Killer), John McTiernan's game-changing box office blockbuster snuck up on audiences worldwide, catapulting Bruce Willis into superstardom and launching its own brand of wannabes and knockoffs ("Die Hard... on a boat!" "Die Hard... on a plane!" "Die Hard... in a hockey arena!" ). To judge the film by its countless clones and imitators, though, is to diminish its special contributions to the genre.

Aside from the obvious, which we'll cover in a future Franchise Face-Off (or, if you prefer, you can read Matt Zoller Seitz's in-depth appreciation of its 25th anniversary here), Die Hard is a masterpiece of spatial composition and the characters' relation to the camera frame. The production design by Jackson DeGovia, for example, or McTiernan's staging of certain shots, which constantly arranges actors and objects in trianglular formations:

... IN DEFENSE OF "THE FILMS OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN"

Writing the post on plagiarism was fun, not just because it distracted me from the business of Disney or comic books or strange coincidences between films, but because it reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in quite some time: the films of M. Night Shyamalan. No doubt you recognize the name; there was a time not long ago, in fact, when audiences could barely bring themselves to think about anyone else. From The Sixth Sense (1999) to Unbreakable (2000) to Signs (2002) and, yes, even The Village (2004), the man could do no wrong, at least in the eyes of box office pundits. Then came the accusations of ripping off other people's work, the big-screen debacle that was Lady In The Water (2006), and worse, The Happening (2008), and suddenly, the one-time wunderkind was reduced to a fake and a fraud, a Hollywood hack whose luck - not to mention his talent - had definitely run out. (And don't get me started on After Earth or The Last Airbender, big-budget studio extravaganzas which clearly showed Shyamalan out of his element.)

Still, for a while there, Shyamalan was rightly regarded as one of the defining voices of the 90s/early Noughties. Like Tarantino, Fincher, Anderson (Wes or P.T.) or Jonze, you went to see a Shyamalan movie to experience the shock of the new, for the mood he created, and for the many ways he toyed with the language of film. Everyone remembers the twist to The Sixth Sense (and to a lesser extent, Unbreakable and The Village), yet there is so much more to his earlier films than initially meets the eye. His long, languishing camera takes, for one - as opposed to the staccato style of editing so common to the contemporaries of his day (here's looking at you, Michael Bay). Or the way he used specific colors to key us in on important plot points. By the time he was 32, people were calling him "the next Spielberg," or, better still, "the next Hitchcock." With praise like that, it's no wonder all the acclaim and attention seemed to go to his head.

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY #4"

In which we take a look at a series of odd movie coincidences - scenes, jokes, dialogue, even specific camera shots shared between two seemingly unrelated films. Anyone who's sat through a particular scene in a movie and thought, "Gee, haven't I seen someone do this somewhere before?" will know exactly what I'm talking about.

The other week, I posted an MCOD connecting a joke in A League Of Their Own (1992) with an earlier one, from The Naked Gun (1988). Actually, that wasn't entirely fair: Though the setup is basically the same - man urinates, long and loudly, for a captive audience, seems to stop... then picks up again, just as long and as loud as before - the context is not, so I feel the need to backtrack a bit. In A League, you see, the joke is all about character: by the time Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) is introduced to his fellow Peaches, he's already been established as a louse and a loser, so his little stint at the latrine (or was that a sink?), at least, makes sense from a certain point of view. In The Naked Gun, it's less about character than out-and-out silliness, for which its creators - a comedy team known as ZAZ, for David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker - had pretty much cornered the market.

... FOR "SHIA LaBEOUF-ISMS" (OR, "HOW TO PLAGUARIZE OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK AND PAY THE PENALTY FOR IT") - UPDATED!

Actor/rabble rouser/fledgling filmmaker Shia LaBeouf got himself into a bit of hot water last month, when the former Transformers star was accused of plagiarizing someone else's work for HowardContour.com, his 12-minute short about the trials and tribulations of an Internet movie critic. Just to be clear: LaBeouf flat out stole the plot of Daniel Clowes's 2007 comic book Justin M. Damiano, including specific frames and entire lines of dialogue, and tried passing it off his own. (Clowes's name is conspicuously absent from the film itself, and never once during interviews did LaBeouf mention Justin M. Damiano as his source material.)

... FOR "TWENTY YEARS LATER: 'JURASSIC PARK' (AN APPRECIATION - OF SORTS)"

Jurassic Park gets a fancy new upgrade on Blu-ray this month (in 3D!) after raking in an additional $42 million in U.S. theaters (including one week in IMAX) since April 5th. I haven't been too enthusiastic about these post-converted 3D re- releases so far (read here for evidence on that), but I have to admit seeing Steven Spielberg's 1993 dinosaur epic again on the big screen might have its perks. (That sublime raptors-in-the-kitchen climax, in full-on jump-at-your-face three-dimensional glory? Yes, please!) I've resisted the urge to buy a ticket, though, since I happened to catch the movie twice on TV during the last week (once on DVD, and the other during its regular rotation on Starz), and I realized that my appreciation for it hasn't dwindled a bit since my initial viewing 20 years ago.

Even on the small screen, to witness Jurassic Park again is to be reminded of two things: one, that it helped change the face of CG special effects work as we know it, and two, it's a prime example of Spielberg's unparalleled genius as a virtuoso action director. No one can deny that the dinosaurs are the stars of the show - a glorious mix of computer-generated images, animatronics, and sound design. But without Spielberg's sly signature wit Jurassic Park might have turned out to be just another mindless monster movie.

... FOR "IMAGES ('BATMAN' 1989-97 EDITION - PART FOUR)"

Part Four of our Burton/Schumacher retrospective, in which we take a visual tour of the 1989-97 series' special (and not-so-special) pleasures.

One truism about comic books - or any serialized form of entertainment - is that they're always in flux. Readership dwindles, tastes splinter off and mature, and publishing houses find themselves in a constant struggle to stay one step ahead of the public - to remain pertinent, say, or keep current with the ever-changing media climate. It's why we have so many iterations, spin-offs and incarnations of the same old titles: to please any number of fans at any given moment.

... FOR "IMAGES ('BATMAN' 1989-97 EDITION - PART TWO)"

Part Two of our Burton/Schumacher retrospective, in which we take a visual tour of the 1989-97 series' special (and not-so-special) pleasures.

It was the summer of 1989, and the hype was inescapable: backpacks, posters, video games, candy dispensers - you couldn't walk two feet without bumping into Batman paraphernalia of some kind. (According to this report, Batman merchandise earned over $500 million in retail that year.) Little did marketing pundits realize that the Caped Crusader's long-awaited return to theater screens would turn out to be such a pop culture phenomenon; Premiere magazine, in fact, in their annual summer box-office prediction issue, guessed that Batman would place 3rd - after Ghostbusters II and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, respectfully - in ticket sales from May to August. (Tim Burton's block-busting juggernaut wound up grossing $251.2 million in the U.S. - $54 million more than Crusade, and $138 million more than Ghostbusters.)

Standing outside the Alpine Cinema in Brooklyn with my aunt and uncle, you could feel the anticipation crackling in the air. It was midnight on June 24th (getting tickets on opening day was next to impossible) and I can tell you the crowd wasn't just there to watch a movie - they came to be part of an event, a communal experience unlike anything since the original Star Wars. That same excitement carried into the theater too. New York audiences have always been a little more... rambunctious than other places, but this was something different. They cheered when the lights went down. They cheered when the "Batman" title card came up on the screen. They hooped and hollered at the first appearance of the Batmobile. And they rose to their feet and applauded when the lights came up again.

... FOR "THAT SINKING FEELING... IN 3D!"

We now take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you... James Cameron's Titanic on Facebook!

Has anybody seen this? Chances are, you probably have: As of this writing, the Titanic Facebook page has been "liked" 18,181,157 times since its debut on May 19, 2011. Eighteen million! Am I reading that right? Do that many people still care about Titanic? Sure, the thing made about a gazillion dollars when it first came out, and deservedly captured the imagination of millions of movie-goers worldwide, but still. How many people who "liked" the page were even alive when it first hit theaters 15 years ago? 

... FOR "IN-JOKES AND SUCH"

Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a military operative trying to uncover a potential terrorist threat from on board a Chicago commuter train. The catch is, he's part of a highfalutin' government experiment that plugs his consciousness into the body of a passenger for only 8 minutes at a time, and he's been tasked with reliving those minutes, over and over again, until he can discover the bomber's identity.

If the plot sounds familiar, you're right: it's Groundhog Day (though significantly less funny) mixed with a healthy dose of TV's Quantum Leap (look! When he looks in the mirror the face he sees is not his own but someone else's!), updated for our terror-fueled times. But if you think you're one step ahead of the movie, guess again: Source Code, in between its time-hopping hijinks, also features some downtime between Gyllenhaal's character and his estranged father, a voice-only cameo by none other than... Scott Bakula, star of TV's Quantum Leap. (Bakula even gets to utter his immortal phrase from that series – "Oh, Boy!" – at a crucial moment during their conversation.)

... FOR "'GREASE' (IS THE WORD IS THE WORD NOW WITH WORDS)…"

Caught a curious ad for a movie the other day. Here it is:

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you, folks: It's Grease: The Sing-Along, where you're invited to attend dressed as your favorite Pink Lady or T-Bird and warble along with hopeless devotion. (It's a lot like those interactive midnight screenings they hold for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, only a lot less creepy.)

... FOR "MOVIE DIALOGUE AND 'THE RULE OF THREES'"

Something occurred to me the other day as I sat watching The Princess And The Frog with the kids for the twentieth time. (Good movie, that one. It's always nice when kids latch onto something that doesn't make me want to jab a chopstick in both ears.) Original thought doesn't occur to me all that often, to be perfectly honest, so I thought I'd better get it out there.

You're familiar with "The Rule Of Threes," yes? It's a general rule of thumb based on the assumption that people always remember things better in threes (click here for a more in-depth definition). In screenwriting, the most important use of this rule is the three-act structure, which goes something like this:

   Act One: Main character gets into trouble;

   Act Two: Main character tries to get out of

     trouble, but the more he tries, the deeper he

     gets;

   Act Three: Main character gets out of trouble.

... FOR "'WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE' AND THE RISKY BUSINESS OF FILM ADAPTATIONS"

Adapting books into film can be a tricky business. Especially when that book is a much-loved children's classic. Especially when that children's classic is less than 50 (written) pages long.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Cat In The Hat, The Polar Express - all books we've loved since childhood, turned into Hollywood features of wildly varying quality. A big reason these adaptations fail artistically is because of the padding: Since movies these days run at least seventy to eighty minutes (any shorter and they'd qualify as a "short"), filmmakers are forced to figure out how to bloat these books to feature length. And in doing so, they usually stray from the tone of the original story - what made the book such an enduring classic to begin with.