I Love Adam Sandler Movies

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Sax von Stroheim

Sax von Stroheim writes:

jack_and_jill

God knows, they aren’t very well made. Adam Sandler may be our Jerry Lewis – he certainly seems to embarrass middlebrow would-be-sophisticates in the way that Jerry did – but unlike Lewis he has no interest at all in filmmaking as a craft. I get the sense that he thinks of the film set as a place where he and his buddies get to hang out at.

But I find them really funny and they are usually about things that are actually relevant to life in contemporary America. For instance, Jack & Jill deals with diversity and stereotypes in a very direct way that’s rare in mainstream entertainment today: Sandler’s movies don’t have any of the ironic distance and intellectual gamesmanship of Sacha Baron Cohen’s movies or Larry David’s shows.

If a comedy is funny, does it matter if it’s made very well? Well, a little, I think, in as much as better filmmakers can, theoretically at least, pull off more elaborate gags. But I don’t think it matters as much as it does in other popular genres:  a good action movie, for example, almost always comes down to the filmmaking.

Anyway, I do love Adam Sandler movies, though I find myself completely uninterested in trying to convince anyone else that they should love them or even like them. I mean, he’s ridiculously popular and successful, why should anyone (let alone me) care that most film critics treat his work with an almost reflexive revulsion?

Related

  • FWIW, Armond White loves Sandler, too.
  • There are a couple of Sandler movies on Netflix Streaming right now. Happy Gilmore is one of his earliest starring-vehicles: it gets pretty close to a “pure” Sandler experience and is a great place to start if you’re at all interested in giving the Sandman a chance. Anger Management is more representiative of the later, “higher concept” Sandler movies. (Punch-Drunk Love is on there, too: it’s a great movie, though doesn’t really count as an “Adam Sandler movie”, IMO.)
  • My favorites – Jack & Jill, The Waterboy, and The Wedding Singer – aren’t on Netflix right now, but they’re the kinds of movies that show up on cable all of the time.
Posted in Movies, Performers | Tagged | 4 Comments

Quote Du Jour

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Andrew Bacevich thinks he knows why so many establishment journos consider isolationism such a clear-and-present danger:

Warn about the revival of isolationism and your prospects of making the grade as a pundit or candidate for high office suddenly brighten.

Happy to embrace the “isolationist” label myself.

Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

White People Having Fun

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

NSFW (of a very innocent kind) alert:

Posted in Humor, Sex | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Listing Movies: Double-Digit Directors

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

For some years now I’ve kept a spreadsheet containing information related to movies that I consider to be part of my personal pantheon. It’s hardly an exclusive list — it now includes over 2000 movies (I’m an inclusive sort of dude). And it’s definitely not intended as a declaration of all-time greatness. It’s more of a tool for keeping track of movies I’ve found meaningful, special, etc. I find that scrolling through it can be kind of therapeutic. Among other things, it provides interesting perspective on my tastes and viewing habits.

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to see what filmmakers turn up most frequently on my list. So I sorted by director name and tallied ’em up. The results are surprising, even to me.

Filmmakers with 10 or more entries:

D.W. Griffith  25
Howard Hawks  23
Alfred Hitchcock 23
Mikio Naruse  23
Yasujiro Ozu  22
Buster Keaton  20
Fritz Lang  20
Ernst Lubitsch  20
John Ford  18
Kenji Mizoguchi  18
Brian De Palma  17
Jean Renoir  17
Frank Borzage  16
Anthony Mann  16
Luis Bunuel  15
Charles Chaplin  15
Satyajit Ray  15
Robert Altman  14
Jean-Luc Godard  14
Raoul Walsh  13
John Boorman  12
John Huston  12
Louis Malle  12
Max Ophuls  12
Johnnie To  12
Jacques Rivette  11
Eric Rohmer  11
Jacques Tourneur 11
George Cukor  10
Sam Peckinpah  10
William Wellman  10
William Wyler  10

Some notes and observations:

  • It’s impossible for a filmmaker to score highly using this method of evaluation unless he was regularly active for a long time. So giants like Orson Welles, Edward Yang, and Chris Marker lose out — at least on this particular metric.
  • Griffith leads the list in part because he’s Griffith, but also because he made a lot of amazing short films.
  • Keaton wasn’t always credited as the director of his films, but I don’t think anyone denies that he more or less directed his movies.
  • A similar case can be made for Harold Lloyd: He’s another non-director who clearly had a lot of control over his output. Unfortunately, I can’t sort the list to yield a number on Lloyd, and I’m too lazy to count them all up by hand. Consider him present in spirit.
  • I’m counting “Corvette K-225” and “The Thing from Another World” as Hawks-directed pictures, even though that’s debatable.
  • De Palma is surely the most controversial guy on the list. That’s fine by me. Who wants a non-controversial De Palma?
  • Numbers that surprised me: Mann, Huston, Malle, Tourneur, Boorman, Wellman, To.
  • There is clearly a bias against filmmakers who made their mark after the ’60s. I think that’s mostly due to the changing nature of film production. A Ford or a Hitchcock made a new movie almost every year. Today no one but Woody Allen does that.
  • Oh, I’m forgetting about the indefatigable Johnnie To. Like Allen, he makes about a movie a year. Obviously, I’ve liked a lot of them.
  • Directors just missing the cut: Ingmar Bergman, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Roman Polanski, Fred Schepisi (somewhat surprisingly), Victor Sjostrom, Preston Sturges, King Vidor.
Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

How Government Drags Us Down

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Epaminondas

epiminondas writes:

This is a very good talk given by John Tamny, an editor at Forbes Magazine.  He discusses many misconceptions about the Great Depression and how the reckless actions of the Federal Reserve endanger our ability to invest scarce resources.  All in all, this is a very basic deconstruction of Keynesian economics. The first part of this video is not very interesting, so move the time hack to 8:30 and start there.

Posted in Politics and Economics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

“Red Rock West”

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

red_rock

When I saw it on release in 1993, I took this crime yarn, directed by John Dahl and written by Dahl and his brother Rick, as a postmodern joke — a droll riff on smalltown noir themes. The surprise for me watching it a few days ago was how well it works as a tense and juicy picture in its own right. It ain’t just a put-on (although it’s certainly that too). The actors (led by Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle and J.T. Walsh) chew the scenery in the best downtown-theater/B-movie way, the story twists surprise and delight, and the atmosphere is irresistible. I’ve become a big John Dahl fan, if rather late in the game.

Related

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Quote Du Jour

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

sexualcriminal“The sadistic female usually treats crime more lightly than the male. The most serious and dastardly crime is treated with cold disdain. It is characteristic of such women when cornered to try to shift the blame entirely on their lovers or some member of the family. She is cunning and conniving, excessively neurotic and fickle. There is a lack of maternal feeling and a streak of masculine virility in the structure of her personality. She is overly conscious of material things, such as money and finery. She is desolate and wanton. Her sexual nature, which may be heightened during this time, turns to acts of perversion. Revenge, hatred, and jealousy are the very essence of her soul. The female sadist will often exercise an excessive amount of patience in the perpetration of the crime. Frustration and inhibitions forced upon them by others preventing them from achieving a desired goal or from securing monetary gain, may serve as a springboard for a life of crime and may fan the spark of hatred into flaming outbursts of sadistic rage.”

— From an essay on “The Female Sadistic Criminal” by J. Paul DeRiver in The Sexual Criminal, a 1949 criminology textbook used by the LAPD

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Sex | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Linkage

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

  • Harrowing. Comments are pretty spicy.
  • Riffs for sale.
  • Armond White must be the most talked about (and argued over) movie critic in the world.
  • How gay.
  • Towards a new art?
  • How to take this as anything but parody? Someone should write a screenplay about a down-on-his luck male writer who finds success posting wild feminist screeds on the internet. It’ll be like “Tootsie” for the 21st century.
  • World’s greatest tortoise?
  • I’ve always considered “the great American novel” to be a BS phrase that critics throw around when they want to call attention to themselves. So I guess this means that critics aren’t interested in over-praising women authors? Or something?
  • Fiat everything! (H/T Foseti)
  • This is one of my favorite Nova episodes. Highly recommended if you’re into art, collecting, or detective stories. On Netflix Instant.
  • Maybe the Redskins should change their name to the Washington Elizabeth Warrens?
  • Nice collection of Gene Mack’s ballpark drawings from the ’30s and ’40s. They’re done in a cartoon style, yet for me they have a soaked-in-experience realism, one that comes through in quirks and minute details. I’m reminded of the paintings of the Northern Renaissance with their “realism of particulars” as opposed to Italy’s realism of perspective and anatomy.
  • Mark Dice’s petition pranks are great arguments against democracy.
Posted in Animals, Art, Books Publishing and Writing, Linkathons, Movies, Music, Politics and Economics, Sports | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Beach Boys’ Second Studio Album: Surfin’ U.S.A.

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Sax von Stroheim

Sax von Stroheim writes:

Surfin'USACover

The colonization of the imagination of the American Teenager: if everybody had an ocean, then everyone would be living the California dream.

Question: Does it matter that they were just capitalizing on a fad? That they wanted to be called the Pendeltones (after the Pendelton shirts in style at the time), but the record label thought “Beach Boys” would help them catch the surf music wave? That they crammed this album with surf instrumentals?

Answer: No, or, better yet, who cares what their motives were? The language of the surfers allowed them to give voice to breathtakingly beautiful existential angst. “The lonely sea, the lonely sea/It never stops for you or me/It moves along from day to day/That’s why my love/You’ll never stay.” This is the first great Brian Wilson (as opposed to Beach Boys) song:

And maybe the question to begin with is missing something major. Maybe surfing isn’t a fad, or doesn’t have to be a fad. Maybe it can be an ethos, a way of life?

And isn’t that what artists do? Take the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life and mold them into an idealized image of the world. Like turning a traveling salesman’s joke into a story of melancholy longing:

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Linkage

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

  • Adrian Hyland delivers a thoroughly-reported big-picture piece about the carb wars.
  • Yo, baby.
  • Manosphere vet Matt Forney on what it’s like to be interviewed by ABC.
  • A short q&a with the very reasonable and intelligent architecture critic and historian Witold Rybczynski. Fun quote: “Since historic revivals have occurred regularly over the ages, there’s no reason to expect that they won’t continue.” Note the interviewer’s horror. I’m looking forward to Rybczynski’s new book.
  • Matt Taibbi says that the real cause of our public-pension funding crisis is cut-throat hedge-fund misbehavior.
  • Gavin McInnes suspects that most women aren’t happy as fulltime workers.
  • A very detailed look at a false rape accusation.
  • I’m thinking that “Let It Bleed” is probably the Rolling Stones’ finest moment.
  • Zachary Pearson’s “Theory and Structure” introduction to making craft cocktails is an informative, brainy delight: acidity; sugar; bitter; alcohol.
Posted in Linkathons | Tagged , , , , , , | 20 Comments