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Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delights

It settles screaming matches, decides friendly bets, and solves nagging questions. It's a globally recognized authority, yet it had humble beginnings. It's rarely wrong, always up to date and sometimes even ahead of the curve. In fact, it's not too much of an exaggeration to say it functions in its field like a god (God, with a capital G, even had his own credits page, albeit briefly), deciding when life is created or mutated or ended — which is why we bow and scrape to its all-knowing supremacy and celebrate its uniqueness. We need it, we love it and we applaud it. Heck, if it were a drug, we'd be hopelessly addicted to it.

[Now that's a lede.] What is the Internet Movie Database?

But who are those guys?. L.A. Weekly's proudly batshit columnist [and fellow stroppy alum] Nikki Finke found out. It began, as no one the cinetrix knows would be surprised to learn, with starlets:

[I]t was babelicious actresses that led to Col Needham — a 37-year-old lifelong movie fanatic and computer wiz living in Britain who is fond of saying he was scared out of swimming pools after seeing Jaws in 1975, wowed by Star Wars in 1977, and terrified by Alien in 1979 — founding IMDB.

Nerd. The locals used to say of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory that nobody ever came in, and nobody ever came out. Apparently, film geeks' favorite resource IMDb is run much the same way.

[H]ow does IMDB work? It’s easy to imagine some airplane hangar in a dusty, out-of-the-way desert location, and inside is a sea of desktop computers manned by 20-something Oompa Loompas in T-shirts, jeans and Converse. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong.

Well, sorta. Read the whole sordid story here.

Sandman, get 'im outta here

The cinetrix was reading a review in the Times that caused her to wonder what the adjective equivalent of a Tom Swifty is called.

As a Korean-American, Ms. Cho is able to deal in racial tropes in a way few comedians can. On Saturday she used a streetwise, smack-talking black persona often enough that if people in the audience closed their eyes, they might have thought they were listening to yet another in the line of black comedians who have used the homey confines of the Apollo to go over the top and stay there. [emphasis mine]

She is willing to bet this woman knows. Note the tricksy coded message to W's evangelical base:

And Mr. Bush's campaign communications director, Nicolle Devenish, said in an interview: "Those who support the president are inside the Garden. Those who are opposed to the president's policies are protesting outside the Garden."

It would kill you to say "Madison Square," Ms. Devenish? Way to stay on message.

OK, back to the godless heathen flicks for me.

Barbecue is a noun

...which is not to say that there isn't plenty of fine eating where I live now. A locally produced NPR program I caught on Friday tipped me off to this heroic enterprise: an documentary investigation of barbecue culture in the Carolinas called Barbecue Is a Noun.

"If you use it as a verb, you can barbecue anything, but... barbecue is... roast pork."

Why a movie about barbecue?

Even as many parts of North and South Carolina become decidedly less rural, barbecue maintains its popularity as a meal and as a symbol of the region's agrarian tradition. Barbecue is among the politest and most enduring controversies the Carolinas have to offer. The people of North and South Carolina have no trouble agreeing that barbecue is itself great, but they rarely agree on where to go for great barbecue.

Of course, anyone who brings proper barbecue to Williamsburg is all right in my book.

The documentary begins screening this fall. If you're hungry now, the brothers Lee can help you.

Butter-flavored topping

Anyone who's ever been homesick knows it's always the little things that get you. For the cinetrix this morning, it was surfing from the browser window the 'Fesser'd left open--the Boston Globe's Red Sox coverage--over to the movie section. You know, just to see what's playing.

Those clever monkeys have assembled Movies and a Meal, maps of restaurants near several local theatres: Boston Common, Coolidge Corner, Copley Square, Fenway, Harvard Square, and Kendall Square.

Screw Proustian madeleines. The cinetrix is now suffused with longing for El Pelon's fried plantains, Veggie Planet's Dinner for Henry, Emma's spicy sauce, Atasca's chourico paté...

Cellular sidebar

Today's wsj.com [sub. req'd] takes a look at an upcoming release, Cellular, and the filmmakers' strained relationship with Cingular even as Nokia gleefully product-placed its handset in the starring role. See, the wireless carrier didn't like suspenseful scenes that hinged on shitty reception. Here's an idea, shore up your service!

But let's hear it for the research department folks who pulled together the sidebar, "Memorable Celluloid Cellphones." As the 'Fesser has observed, often and wisely, nothing dates a film faster than the size of its cellphones.

Notable cinematic appearances by cellphones and other wireless devices:

1987: In Wall Street, Michael Douglas, as corporate raider Gordon Gekko, makes deals from a giant cellphone on a beach.

1995: Casey Ryback, played by Steven Seagal, uses Apple Computer's ill-fated personal digital assistant, the Newton, to make an urgent fax from a hijacked passenger train in Under Siege 2.

1997: Pierce Brosnan's 007 totes an Ericsson phone in Tomorrow Never Dies. In a full-page newspaper ad, the cellphone maker proclaims, "James Bond uses his Ericsson for all his close calls."

1998: In Lethal Weapon 4, the characters played by Joe Pesci and Chris Rock rant about cellphone service. Among the tamer lines, Mr. Rock's character, Detective Lee Butters, says, "You get a call, they cut you off. You make a call, they cut you off. What's the point?"

1999: In the first Matrix film, Keanu Reeves's Neo receives a Nokia phone in an overnight-mail package, then gets a call helping him escape a sting. The Nokia 8110 also pops up elsewhere in the movie. Nokia opens a Matrix Web site centered on the film.

1999: In The Insider, a scientist and a news producer spend much of the movie plotting their exposure of the tobacco industry by talking over cellphones. In one scene, the producer, played by Al Pacino, wades into the ocean to get a better signal to talk to the despondent informant.

2000: Nokia surrounds placement in the first Charlie's Angels film with a major marketing push, including TV ads and retail-store contests.

2003: The Matrix is back with two new films, only this time the phones are by Samsung. The South Korean handset maker launches a Web site and a specially designed model around the movies.

2003: Teenager Frankie Muniz, playing Agent Cody Banks, uses a T-Mobile Sidekick as one of his many gadgets.

2004: Tom Cruise's character checks messages on a Sidekick, and a cellphone runs low on battery charge at a crucial moment in Collateral.

2004: The titular character of Little Black Book is Ron Livingston's character's Palm hand-held device, which his girlfriend examines to learn about his dating history. The movie had made just $18.4 million through Aug. 22.

And don't forget, in 2002's Collateral Damage, Ahnuld fights baddies who are constantly letting their fingers do the walking and detonating shit via cellphone. [Curse you, J Hoberman, for putting me in a position to know this!]

Meester DeMille...

Stephen Holden is ready for his close-up, as he files his first two Times Movie Minutes this week, for Bush's Brain and Suspect Zero.

I'm guessing A.O. Scott is on vacation, but Tony, I'd watch your back. Holden exudes gravitas and serenity, not the fidgety energy that marred Scott's earliest turns. And his shirt is perfectly innocuous. It doesn't hurt that he resembles the sort of clutch British actor of a certain age who may have been hanging out in a toga with Derek Jacobi back in the day, either.

Yo, Manohla! What you got?

Sleaze on down the road

It may be time to look into the V-chip after all.

Why? Because because because because BECAUSE... Muppets' Flick to Include Tarantino.

The film, with the working title "The Muppets' Wonderful Wizard of Oz," is set to begin production in Vancouver, British Columbia, next month and air in the coming TV season on "The Wonderful World of Disney."

Tarantino's role as himself is likely to be overshadowed by pop star Ashanti, starring as Dorothy, and Miss Piggy. The muppet will play three wicked witches and Glinda, Good Witch of the South.

Among other muppets, Kermit the Frog is the Scarecrow, the Great Gonzo is the Tin Man and Fozzie Bear is the Lion. Besides Ashanti, the film features actress-singer Queen Latifah playing Auntie Em.

For the record, fuck corporate synergy. Have we learned nothing, people? White boy jive and L. Frank Baum don't mix. Latifah may be a queen, but she is no Miz Ross.

Great. Now the cinetrix is overcome by terrible visions sullying some of her most cherished childhood cultural touchstones: Statler and Waldorf recreating the "Like a Virgin" scene from Reservoir Dogs ["Dick dick dick dick dick dick DICK." "How many 'dicks' is that?" "A lot." "A-hah ha hah hah!"], Gonzo with a ball gag, Sam the Eagle as Max Cherry [and Beaker playing the Chris Tucker role], and Miss Piggy and Janice kung-fu fighting.

Any chance QT'll sing, "If I was king of the f-f-f-forest?" Naaaahhh.

If you need her, the cinetrix will be clicking the heels of her red Mary Jane clogs together. If happy little bluebirds fly/ beyond the rainbow/ Why oh why can't I?

Wolverines!

The hardy handful of longtime pullquote readers may have noticed the cinetrix has a little hang-up, bordering on mania: John Milius's right-wing teen epic, Red Dawn. Ah, 1984. Morning in America. Good times.

See, kids, the cinetrix is one of those unambitious Gen X children of the 80s. Bet you youngsters didn't know the reason why we're such slackers was that the media pummeled us nonstop with the message that the Russkies were going to nuke us, tomorrow. I mean, Sting didn't just happen. And, well, HBO had to show something while it was cueing up Just One of the Guys or The Legend of Billie Jean.

Fair is fair!

Anyway, thanks to GreenCine, I have yet another excuse to trot out my tawdry obsession. Turns out, after Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom scared the Kali-fearing bejeezus out of kids, Steven Spielberg and his friend, Smilin' Jack Valenti, invented the PG-13 rating

"I went to Jack Valenti, who's a friend of mine, and I said, 'Jack, why don't we do a rating called PG-13, which would suit films like "Gremlins" and "Indy 2"?"' Spielberg said. "So I called Jack, and Jack said, 'Leave it to me ...' "

Chilling ellipsis, no? You can read the whole sordid history of the PG-13 rating here, if you'd like, but this is what caught my eye:

August 10, 1984, marked the first debut of a PG-13 movie: "Red Dawn," about a Communist invasion of America and the high-school rebels who fight back.

Which is to say, "Wolverines!"

Since this week has been all about giving away potentially lucrative intellectual property, here's an idea ripe for some Second City-based theatre troupe: live Red Dawn. In W.'s Amerika, the time is ripe. Think of the pyrotecnics, acting and incendiary! Done right, it could rival the 'Nam play in Rushmore [which slays the 'Fesser and lays him out in helpless giggles everytime].

Just save me a seat on the aisle, Guffman style.

O Futura!

A designer takes a typographical look at director Wes Anderson's full-body embrace of the Futura font, mainly Bold, in The Royal Tenenbaums. [Adopted Margot appears to favor Futura Medium.]

Yet, as much as Futura is used in the movie, a few other typefaces make their appearances. Interestingly, it is usually in connection to someone or something outside the Tenenbaum family and is usually Helvetica.

It's not surprising that obsessive Anderson should be font-fixated, but the cinetrix is wondering whether there are other films [excluding the Art Deco artefacts from the RKO Radio Pictures years] that are as typographically precise?

And does everyone's favorite font Frere have a line on this? [via MediaNugget]

Assayas... you say no

[Ahem. Sorry.]

Hie thee to BAMcinématek August 26 through September 16, New Yorkers, for "I Can Hear the Guitar: Selected by Olivier Assayas," and report back.

In the Village Voice this week, French director Assayas--to whom the cinetrix will forever owe a debt for giving the world the transcendent Irma Vep--"trie[s] to describe my own idiosyncratic relationship to rock music and how it connects with my idiosyncratic relationship to cinema."

Music to my ears.

Granted, there's some wankerish lionizing of Cahiers stuff, like Godard's One Plus One, to wade through, but then Assayas breaks it down. Here are some highlights:

The '60s: New American cinema Then, music came on tiptoes, often by car radio, slipping into the scenery.
The '70s: Punk rock and horror What is the cinematic equivalent of punk? I found it in horror films.
Martin Scorsese considers himself a failed rock musician. I think he's a successful rock musician who has found his instrument in sound editing.
David Lynch A noise has as much importance as a high-pitched frequency; a faraway rumble is as important as a song that suddenly takes over the foreground.
My own films [I]t was music more than cinema that gave me the most intense artistic emotions, that showed me my own path, that gave me certain invisible keys.

Note, too, the September 4th screenings of the restored Rude Boy are dedicated to Joe Strummer.