30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 25

            I decided to do the 30 day movie challenge as a blog series as it ties into my blog activities rather easily and I am once again not blogging my usual series with regularity in spite of saying that I would.

            Today is "A Movie that I think should not be remade".  A movie only ever needs to be remade for a small little group of reasons.  One might be that the concept or themes failed to be adequately explored in the original material, that the characters and universe could have supported a deeper exploration of the material (yesterday's suggestion of "Highlander").  Another reason is that the idea was good, but poorly executed, creating a vision that had so much potential but due to poor acting, or poor effects, or just a bad camera the movie is held back by arbitrary and fixable limitations ("Clash of theTitans" versus "Clash of the Titans", which will have to get remade again in a few years because the main actor is so far below adequate).  The last reason is that it is a recognizable mythos that regardless of number of iterations so long as a smart artist is put behind it the characters in question can deliver a new and engaging story ("Batman and Robin" versus "Batman Begins").  But there are times in which movies are good enough, and hold up well enough over time that no remake would ever be really warranted, this holds true especially for movies heavy in dialogue, or those that speak very much to a time and place, the movie I picked today does that.  What film do I think emboldens its era well enough, and has production values that meet the needs of the narrative unquestionably?  "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".

Trailers back in the day were more of the "It's good, go and see it" which was a far cry from the trailers today which show you why you should go see something.

            This is my second favorite movie of all time after "Fight Club" and they fall on the same themes (beating back against a corrupt system that is out to marginalize or destroy you) but fall so far apart on the methodology scale of things that they are not even recognizable.  "Fight Club" seeks to tear down the corrupt system with bombs, while rejecting modern society through acts of violence visited on each other, "Smith" embraces the ideals of the system, and uses the systems own rules to expound his position as an honest man who is being attacked by those who have hijacked the system.  I suppose there is also a parallel in that Smith was a boy scout leader, and Tyler was a leader of a men's social organization for guys who felt like society treated them like children.

You know how much that office/apartment costs on the retail market?  More than a Senator could afford, must be a lobbyist's base of operation

            The plot of the film is this: After a senator dies the 40 something Smith (Jimmy Stewart) is appointed by the governor to take his place, Smith is surprised by this as he has done nothing but be a community leader even though his father was in politics.  Turns out Smith was appointed more or less as a publicity stunt and is expected to just slack jaw his way through Washington.  When Smith proposes a bill to create a national campground on land political bosses were planning on destroying to built an unnecessary public works project, the bosses falsify evidence that Smith is trying to use his office to profit off of his park idea.  Smith filibusters the Senate in hopes that his words will show him to be innocent.  He is tremendously boned.  Much like everyone who was involved in the Keating Five loosing a huge amount of face in the real world regardless of how little or how much they knew was going on (that being one of the initial reasons I wasn't going to vote for Senator McCain, before Sarah Palin came along and dwarfed all other reasons).  And the end of the movie is rather hope inspiring, though I will admit that it is unlikely.

Though ending on this image would have been a little dark.

             Go watch this classic movie.  It stars Jimmy Stewart, who was very much the precursor to what Tom Hanks has been for the last 30 years, a very nice everyman who is easy to identify with and respect.  The sets look authentic to Washington, and even the black and white element helps place this movie in the time of its creation as it deals with themes that were very much part of the time.  I would love to see a movie like this one in modern times, and I think that "Thank You For Smoking" was about as close as I could hope for, with maybe the short lived television series "Mister Sterling" (that was criminally under rated and only failed because it was created in the storm of political shows that appeared following "The West Wing" becoming the best Television show of all time.

Go watch this too, it is awesome.

            If you liked my take on this movie, please click the Google "+1" button in the comments section, post the link on your facebook, or send people over from anywhere else you might social network.

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 5

            I decided to do the 30 day movie challenge as a blog series as it ties into my blog activities rather easily and I am once again not blogging my usual series with regularity in spite of saying that I would.

            Today is "A Movie that reminds me of Someone", and today I have a movie that everyone and their mother has seen, commented on, and quite frankly gotten a little tired of, but I generally regard as comfort food viewing.  The movie is "It's a Wonderful Life".

            Who does this remind me of?  My Mom and Dad, though chiefly my dad.  Prior to DVD's allowing him access to the slews of movies he watched as a child and allowing him to rediscover various westerns and war films that I am not really attracted to, "It's a Wonderful Life" was my Dad's favorite movie.

A Trailer you've probably never seen.

            And really that isn't the only thing.  It is a holiday movie and I am home from college during the holidays, so I get a connection between this and seeing my parents in person.  And I guess there is one other big reason I associate this: my Dad practically is George Bailey, the protagonist of "It's a Wonderful Life".

My father circa 1946-ish

            He comes from a small town and has through a lot of willpower managed to rise up both academically and professionally beyond what the world would have labeled an easy path.  He also works in an environment that exposes him to the worst weaknesses in people, but has managed to come out the other side of it short of certifiable lunacy.
            Dad's never been brought to the brink, but I think that is because he has a job that allows him to yell really loud at whomever is causing the worst of the problems.  And when I say yell, I mean loud enough that your heart will beat irregularly.  The man has developed an ability to attack with just the power of his anger, it's like telekinesis.  Which puts him in a different category than George.

Closer to whatever category this is.

            And that brings me to another thing that I only found out in the last couple years.  At one point my dad was also Clarence, the guardian angel.  I found out that my father talked a man out of killing himself.  Being that my father hadn't met the guy and knew nothing about him, nor did he have the power to create some fanciful parallel earth in which the man had never existed to show the guy how he'd be missed, instead Dad did it the old fashioned way, and told the guy he shouldn't do that to his poor mother.

Another key difference between my father and this man: Eyebrows, this guy has too much of them.

            This is why I often compare my father to a combination of John McClain and Andy Griffith, because I can hear a story of him talking a guy down from a suicide right after hearing how he broke his arm fighting a violent thug.  Or the times he has helped host bike rallies for kids in Sarasota, but also hear about how he nearly killed a man with his fingers.  None of those stories encapsulates him.  Much like how Jimmy Stewart (who was the everyman Tom Hanks of his era) was a hero in World War II, a guy who could make a movie about Christmas and angels is also a bomber pilot of extreme repute.  So yeah.  "It's a Wonderful Life" reminds me of my Dad in varying shades.

Plus he's paying a good chunk of my tuition so I occasionally need to remind him that he is in fact a really cool Dad.