Tracking shots be damned

Why is is that every director who wants to put their artistic signature on a movie — the indelible stamp that bears his creative DNA and no other fool's — always chooses exactly the same thing? It's always a bloody tracking shot. Andrew Sullivan's recent gallery of famous tracking shots has been great: maybe the best way to enjoy these things. Everybody holds them up as God's gift to cinema, undeniable proof that an auteur is in the house, and so on, but all I think when I'm watching one is, "I'm watching a tracking shot." Yes, I feel admiration, but my admiration jolts me out of the movie. That's a pretty big drawback, in my book — artistry be damned. Which is why the best ones are to be found in the first five minutes, or during the credits (Boogie Nights, A Touch Of Evil, The Player), where they can happily draw attention to themselves, advertise their creator's genius, etc, without ruining the film. (The world's worst offender, by several ions: the Dunkirk tracking shot in Atonement).

The new Tarantino script

Check out the typos. I mean I get that Tarantino is a master of the demotic, and that isn't necessarily the same thing as the written word, but you'd think if you'd called your movie Inglorious Bastards, that you'd have to explain the title enough times to enough people so that by the time you actually got to finishing the final draft, you'd know not to write "Inglourious Basterds" on your frontispiece. His hand-writing is almost as childish as Spielberg's and similarly unjoined up, as if the last thing they wrote was an school essay on what they did during the holidays. It's actually rather reassuring, in a way, confirming one's suspicions about the idiot-savant intensity of great talents. Not so reassuring, I guess, if you have handwriting like that but no Pulp Fiction or Schindler's List to show for it.

Bond versus Indy

Total Politics, the newest political magazine in the UK, gets straight down to the important issues of the day, asking the following question of Gordon Brown and David Cameron: Who do you prefer, Indiana Jones or James Bond? Gordon Brown replied, "Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones," but then added, "but I still like James Bond." David Cameron was unequivocal, "I'm a big Bond fan."

Thus it is clear: David Cameron is the more surefooted politician and will be the next British prime minister.

1. Brown flip-flopped, thus underlining the weakness voters sense in his premiereship.
2. Cameron went for the more patriotic choice. Brits have had enough of their leaders sucking up to Americans.
3. Even though Cameron would have been wrong to say this in any year between 1981 and 2007, he has picked the one year in which the Bond film is better than the Indy. In politics, timing is everything.
   

Trailer of the year

The list is life

Entertainment Weekly ranks 1,000 "new classics" in movies, books, TV shows, albums from the last 25 years. Their movie list is particularly good:—

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03)
3. Titanic (1997)
4. Blue Velvet (1986)
5. Toy Story (1995)
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
9. Die Hard (1988)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
13. GoodFellas (1990)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)
21. Schindler's List (1993)
22. Rushmore (1998)
27. Aliens (1986)
29. The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
30. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
31. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
34. Fargo (1996)
35. The Incredibles (2004)
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
39. The Sixth Sense (1999)
41. Dazed and Confused (1993)
42. Clueless (1995)
44. The Player (1992)
47. Men in Black (1997)
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
50. The Piano (1993)

Doubtfuls include:—

7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)
20. The Lion King (1994)
24. A Room With a View (1986)
25. Shrek (2001)
32. Fight Club (1999)
60. Scream (1996)
64. No Country For Old Men (2007)
66. Natural Born Killers (1994)
75. Out of Africa (1985)
77. Sid and Nancy (1986)
93. Ed Wood (1994)
94. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
98. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

When it comes to picking classics, it helps to see which movies are being shown on cable TV: as reliable a guide as any as to which movies are bedding down into the popular consciousness. Many of the movies on this list are to be found there, in almost constant rotation. It's worth remembering, the next time you hear a critic going on about how movies have declined/died/had their souls sucked out by Star Wars, etc etc.