Journal mcgrew's Journal: Movie Review: Gran Torino 9
Clint Eastwood's new tagline is "Get off my lawn." In honor of this fine film, I'm putting that quote in my sig.
My daughters' mom is down with pneumonia, so my youngest Patty made the trip to town. Last night I took her to see the new Clint Eastwood movie, Gran Torino.
Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a curmudgenly racist Korean War veteran who owns a silver star, a mint condition 1972 Ford Gran Torino, a couple of guns, and a house in a once nice neighborhood that has become a ghetto.
His racism seems to be a manifestation of his dislike of everyone, including his middle aged children and especially himself. Kowalski has a dark, secret shame that has eaten at him since the war that he has talked to nobody about. The movie ends with his coming to terms with, and making up for, the source of his secret shame.
It starts with a funeral, and ends with another. At the risk of a spoiler (which wouldn't spoil the movie a bit, as you can see it coming a mile away), the ending made Patty cry because, she said, Eastwood looks like her grandfather. He has succeeded with Gran Torino at what he failed at in Million Dollar Baby.
At his house after his lat wife's funeral, when his family are all there, the Hmong neighbors come over to try to borrow jumper cables. He curses them and sends them away. "Goddamned gooks, can't you see we're in mourning? Fucking animals!"
One of the many Hmong who live next door is a nerdy young man who gets no respect from anyone, whose sister bullies him into doing what the Hmong call "woman's work", such as washing dishes and working in the garden. A Hispanic gang bullies him as he's walking down the street, and an Asian gang comes to his rescue with a bigger gun than the Hispanics have. The Asian gang insists on recruiting him, and his initiation is to steal Kowalski's Gran Torino.
Of course, Hilarity then ensues.
The movie is the funniest show I've seen since the "Cops" episode in season two of My Name Is Earl. It is most definately not a politically correct movie. Kowalski's language is, as they say, "colorful". If you are offended by terms like pollack, dego, spook, and zipperhead, this is not the movie for you.
But this essay is not just a review of an excellent movie. It is about the misuse of technology by studio managers who love money above all else and art not at all.
The movie studios used to blame the FCC for its censorship of sex, nudity, and strong language in its films. In the 1970s they started using this to their advantage, making most movies full of sex and profanity that you wouldn't be able to see on TV. After the advent of cable and VCRs, this became a sham. When cable first started, the movies on the cable channels, unlike today, were not censored. Let me warn you that if you plan on seeing this movie, don't wait for it to get to TV. Either go to the theater or rent or buy the DVD; I know I'll be buying a copy when the DVD comes out. I'll be blunt, when it hits the quaintly named "small screen", this excellent flick will become a piece of putrid, stinking shit.
There is no rational reason for this. The movie contains no sex, no nudity, and actually very little violence. But Eastwood's character calls everyone, friend and foe alike, by slurs on their ethnic heritage. He also calls them pricks, pussys, assholes, sons of bitches, bastards, and so forth. Excising these obscenities will completely change the movie.
He probably won't even smoke in the TV version. Since there's no way to make this movie politically correct, it shouldn't even be on broadcast TV. But of course, it will. It will have to. The studios don't care about art or integrity, they only care about money.
Then there's Surround Sound. It wasn't as bad as Return of the Jedi where I found myself looking back at the back of the theater when some craft streaked by overhead, but I did find my eyes moving toward the theater's exit sign where an onscreen telephone was apparently ringing.
The sound should be only within the screen. The optimum would be four channels and four speakers, each at a corner of the screen. This would allow sound to precicely follow objects on the screen. The way it is now, sounds move right and left and forward and back, but not up and down. I should not be distracted by a sound that takes my eyes off the screen, as it destroys the immersion. You don't need extra channels to make sound move forward and backwards unless you want the sound to be behind you.
The people who made this movie also made the same mistake that has been made over and over since the advent of digital audio recording -- the combination of analog and digital. With both sound and picture, analog and digital each has advantages and disadvantages. When you combine them you get the worst of both and the best of neither.
Perhaps some theaters haven't gone completely digital, and perhaps the one I saw it in hasn't, either. But there was at least one scratch on the film, and several momentary digital glitches that showed themselves as horizontal streaks on the screen, most likely lasting no longer than a single frame.
There are reel change marks, which were necessary in the old multireel projectors, but these days theaters that use film have a single huge reel.
Worse were the antipiracy marks. These were introduced because after the advent of digital movies, insiders and critics would leak the entire movie to P2P. The marks were introduced so that each copy would have a unique signature, and leaked movies could be traced to the leaker. The studios claimed that the marks would be invisible, but they aren't. One scene in Passion of the Christ had a very visible mark when I saw it at the theater, although the mark was gone in the DVD version.
They really went overboard with the antipiracy marks in Gran Torino. Several scenes were almost ruined by them. Because of this, I'd say skip the theater. It will be much better on DVD where this stupid insanity will be gone. The idiotic studio executives, in their religious zeal to prevent piracy, will sooner or later suffer financial losses because people will stop going to the theater where the antipiracy marks make the theater inferior to watching at home. This is especially stupid since with the advent of higher defininition TVs, you are spared the antics of assholes in the audience, plus can drink a beer and smoke a cigarette as you watch, and can pause it when you need to go to the bathroom while having as good a picture as the theater, and sometimes better since they don't always focus the projector lenses properly these days. Again, because of their pursuance of the almighty dollar they no longer hire union projectionists, sometimes having a single projectionist for multiple screens.
I will certainly be buying this DVD. The next time a "must see" movie comes out I'll most likely wait for the DVD, because the movie executives are idiots.
Skip the theater, and buy the DVD. And don't see the Wikipedia article about this film, as it is written incredibly badly and completely spoils the movie.
It was well below freezing when we got to the theater, about zero fareinheight (about seventeen below in centegrade). I got out of the car and hightailed it into the warm building.
"Wow", Patty said, "for an old guy you run pretty fast!"
Yeah (Score:2)
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I actually got an M1c from my dad a while back. it is a fantastic rifle, I hunt with it and occasionally use it in highpower target shooting matches.
its also fun to show off to friends when you watch a WWII movie.
"You ever run into one of those people you shouldnt have fucked with? Thats me."
Awesome movie.
Another movie mr mcgrew might enjoy is The Wrestler. definitely see that one.
Oh, I've got one. (Score:2)
A Mexican, a Jew, and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "Get the fuck out of here."
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Lest anyone think The Gaytriot is trolling, that joke was from the movie.
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I watched it (Score:1)
Clint Eastwood made me think of my grandfather, too. He was also a Korean War veteran but he was one who fought for the other side. Same thing.
"Me? I've got a light." Methinks the most memorable part.
Thanks for the review, mcgrew.
BTW in case you wonder, I downloaded the pirated movie. This movie is unlikely to be shown here, in China, at least for now.