Someone(s) should be fired

Who picks the music that plays during end credits? Whomever it is, in many cases, s/he is doing an abominable job. End credit music should be fun but not memorable, or jumpy and fresh enough to get you to sit through and actually enjoy some extra clips that they have tacked on to get you to acknowledge the otherwise never-watched list of people who don’t matter…to you.

So what is Melissa Etheridge doing at the end of “An Inconvenient Truth”? Or Bryan Adams in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”? The Melissa Etheridge song has a message, sure, but it’s hokie dyke rock at the end of a film intended to reach and sober a broad audience. Give me a break. It made me laugh at the end of a most unlaughable two hours. Shameful.

And Bryan Adams? Stay within the era kids! Yes, it’s a love story that ends with a marriage and its release-date was at the height of BA’s reign in soft rock. The film, though, did an otherwise admirable job of maintaining a serious and dated tone, dated in the early 19 1190’s . Again, shameful.

Perhaps this is what W. means about history being the ultimate judge: relying on pop music is a great misstep, as what is pop today will inevitably NOT be tomorrow. Yes, I’m sure that’s it.

I am reaching for a glass

I am back in Maryland and have many back-logged mental blog posts that I could not be bothered to write while I was on a Costa Rican beach.

This, however, is not one of those. This is about American cinema, specifically two somewhat recent movie-going ventures: ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ and the new ‘National Treasure’ movie whose subheading I did not manage to catch as that is how much it matters.

First, Charlie Wilson. This man makes me want to be in politics. Much like ‘Bad Santa’, the film makes alcoholism attractive again, something to aspire to, even. They just make it look so easy…the magic of film. Otherwise, there is little to say about it. It was charming and timely and all those nice things, but mostly it made me want to be a booze hound. Also, I went with my family on Christmas day which warrants a bit of commentary.

As is always the case, the Jews of Bethesda were out in full force. Quite a lot of Jew-fros in pea coats talking about our traditions of Chinese food on that most Hallmark, I mean holy, of days. I have also recently discovered, however, that Christmas movies are not just for Jews anymore. As one gentile friend explained it to me, their family, by some holy writ, has to spend the entire day together. Well, after the morning gifting festivities expire, they too tire of simply staring at each other, so they take an excursion to stare at something else for a while. The movies are perfect: a family can see one together, stay together the whole day without drawing blood, and have something to talk about over dinner.

Unless they saw National Treasure 2, in which case they will have gone home, gone straight for the bottle, and either drawn blood before dinner or passed out and skipped it entirely.

I have a theory as to why it was SO bad, and it’s not necessarily the writers’ fault. This was the first PG movie I had seen since Home Alone, and I think that the genre of PG movies died with that film. Think about it…G-rated movies are still incredible, but they are generally animated and full of hilarious innuendo that is meant to go over the kids’ heads and reach a larger, parental audience. Then there is PG-13, the live-action-practically-anything-goes-but-you-can-only-say-”fuck”-once-rating. Brilliant teen and light adventure movies (including, I believe, National Treasure 1) end up PG-13. The theory goes, then, that National Treasure 2 was written as a PG movie, as a piece of throwaway crap that couldn’t do or say anything exciting in spite of the hot actress and legacy of a good-bad-movie left by the first film.

That being said, the kids in the audience liked it. Perhaps my standards for bad movies are too high (or is it low?). The best I have seen in that category lately is “Gray Matters”. It really warrants its own post but this one is already far too long so don’t ask, just rent. At the very least, here is the IMDB link.