Thursday Movie Picks - Storms/Adverse Weather

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three films that fit the week's theme (this week suggested by yours truly!) and telling us about them!)

Well, they say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, and that's certainly true so far here in good ol' Manhattan - the winds have been whipping down the streets so strongly that sometimes they just push you right along your path. It's not awful but the wildly fluctuating temperatures are finally taking their toll on my body - I can just feel the cold coming on and I do NOT like it. I will be throwing everything in my arsenal at it in the hopes that it does not get worse, but I don't know... sometimes you can just tell when it's not going to go away...

BUT ANYWAY, who cares about my health (other than my mother)? We're here to talk movies!

One of the things the movies do better than any other art form is present "larger than life" events, which makes them ideal for showcasing the darkest side of Mother Nature. Unfortunately, most movies focused on such special effects-heavy adverse conditions don't have super-well-written scripts to go along with the impressive visuals, but I suppose you can't have everything.

Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996) I still remember seeing this for the first time in the local $2 second-run movie theater. I was 12. I don't remember if it was my first PG-13 movie or not, but I remember watching it in awe. Of nature, of moviemaking, of science... of just about everything on screen. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are exes and storm chasers who are flung back together for a series of mighty strong tornadoes - NOT AT ALL because they love each other, ONLY for the science! They have to get close enough to the tornado's path in order to drop a container of mini weather robots that look like metal balls. But also far enough away that they don't get sucked up into the tornado themselves. It's a dangerous game, but somebody's gotta do it, and they're both crazy enough to get right up in there to accomplish their goal - especially since there's also a rival, better-funded team lurking about. It's thrilling stuff, and the special effects still hold up - shocking for a film made twenty years ago. OH, and the name of the machine they created with all the weather robots? Dorothy. Which leads us to...

The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) In which a Kansas farm girl gets knocked on the head during a tornado and proceeds to accidentally kill one woman and be manipulated by a pink-wearing bitch who travels in a bubble and a charlatan of a Mayor into murdering another in order to return home. OR MAYBE it was all a dream! Oh, I kid, I kid. Everyone alive knows The Wizard of Oz. By now, it's part of our cultural knowledge - it's seeped into our collective consciousness in a way no other film has, and with good reason: It's the simplest expression of all the possibilities of film, the perfect introduction to movies for anyone. To know it, is to love it.

The Impossible (J.A. Bayona, 2012) Ya know what? I don't care about the whitewashing. I really don't. Yes, the real family the story is based on was Spanish, not British, but when we got these amazing performances from Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Holland, I don't really care. And on a purely technical level, this film is just astonishing. The sound design is one of the best, most inventive I've heard, putting you right there in the middle of the tsunami with these characters. It's a stunning film that deserved not one bit of the backlash it received.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - The Wizard of Oz

(Written as part of the "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series over at The Film Experience.)

In my Junior year of High School, we had to do something called "The America Project". We had to pick something - an idea, a place, a person, a thing - and present a portfolio explaining why that something is American. I, of course, picked the movies. The final product wasn't very good, for a lot of reasons, but I was a good enough writer to still get a B on it (although, to me, that was as good as failing. I'm serious). In my Senior year, I wrote my final research paper in Advanced Placement US History on L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz as the first American fairy tale. Clearly, that idea came one year too late. Because is there anything more American than MGM's 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz? I mean, besides apple pie and baseball?

It’s hard to think of another movie as well-known or as well-loved as The Wizard of Oz. It's so much a part of our collective DNA that it feels like we are all born into this word knowing the story, the songs, and the performances. In reality, Oz was just another film from one of Hollywood's Golden Years, until it became the first Hollywood film to be shown in one evening, uncut, on a commercial network. For many years between 1959 and 1980 (the years when it was shown on television as an annual special event), 49% of American households watched it. Nearly half of America tuning in to watch the same movie, for years on end. When people make the claim that Oz is the most-watched film of all time, it’s easy to believe it. It’s also easy to say that television made Oz what it is today. Without those yearly airings, would it be as popular as it is?

My instinct says yes. Because it’s not just nostalgia that makes people love Oz so much. It’s a really well-made movie, yes, but it’s more than that, too. It’s the magic of the movies, pure and simple.

In every frame, The Wizard of Oz shows us what movies can do that no other medium can. It can transport us, break the fourth wall in ways that theater, music, and dance just can’t. No matter how many times you see it, every time Dorothy opens her front door onto this new, strange, colorful world and surveys Munchkinland, it feels like the first time. Everything, the camerawork, the effects, the crafts, and the music, put you in that place. Everyone becomes a kid again in that moment, whether or not they watched The Wizard of Oz regularly as a kid. This is something that can really only be done in the movies, and even then only a select few do it as well as The Wizard of Oz (Star Wars and… The Lord of the Rings? Avatar?).

Given the collective love for the land of Oz, and all its inherent beauty, it may come as a surprise that my favorite shot is from the Kansas portion of the film. But then, if those opening scenes weren’t so great, we wouldn’t care about Dorothy’s journey. The decision to tint those scenes sepia is so smart. For a long time, the Kansas scenes were shown on TV in black & white, and I have to imagine that robbed the film of a lot of is beauty – the sepia makes Kansas feels not just drab, but a bit dusty in a way B&W does not, and in a way that enhances the feel of those scenes (and to the nostalgia of those watching, I imagine). But whether in sepia or in black & white, I think my favorite shot stands out.

It comes right after the timeless “Over the Rainbow”, easily one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Whenever I watched The Wizard of Oz as a kid, this shot had a really strong hold on me. It was an oasis, always prompting a contented sigh. For a little boy who so desperately wanted to go over the rainbow to Oz, through the looking-glass to Wonderland, or into the wardrobe to Narnia (or later, through a fake wall to take a train to Hogwarts), this was the epitome of everything I ever dreamed of. The ultimate escape. Even though it’s in sepia tones, to me, it was always in colors as bright as they are in Oz. Come to think of it, it's actually the first shot of that land beyond the moon, behind the rain:

Just as with that first scene in Oz, it isn’t the image alone that makes this shot work. The dimming music cue, the sound of birds, and the look on Judy Garland’s face in the shot immediately before it combine to give this image a huge impact. If you've ever dreamed of something better, of being something greater, of doing something more with your life, this shot speaks to you. And if you're a nerdy little boy who loves reading books more than anything, who always gets picked last in gym class, and who only has one friend in the world that isn't a stuffed animal or an action figure; who wants nothing more than to make friends and go on adventures... well, that one shot offers more hope than a whole lifetime of "It gets better"s. That's why The Wizard of Oz endures. That's the power of the magic of movies.