Order HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING here
(also reviewed)
Order SHATTERDAY here
Is there nobility in the moviegoing experience? Don't ask me, friend. I don't know from nobility; all I know from is survival and dreams.
Being a movie critic comes with its own set of insecurities. Not being pertinent is just one of them. Sinking in a habitual format that doesn't suit every movie and not being accurate enough are two others. I always try to improve, you know? I always liked Harlan Ellison as a pop culture character and as a writer, so I thought that maybe his collection of movie reviews HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING could teach me a thing or two. I was right, teaching me things it did, but it also put me in front of a very important fact : I'm not that bad at what I do. Ellison is a talented movie critic indeed, yet his best asset as a writer, and I suppose as a person, is to shamelessly expose his humanity in everything he does.
The quirky thing about HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING is that it's impossible to really be enthusiastic about if you don't agree with 100% of what's written in there. It's a 400something pages book so the odds are fairly low. Ellison holds on to his opinions like a pit bill clenches its jaws. He sticks to his guns for just about everything,. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing. I appreciated the integrity of the process, yet sometimes I wondered if his suspension of disbelief walked out on him during certain viewings. Take LETHAL WEAPON for example, for it's a movie I have also recently reviewed. Ellison accused the movie of being a lie, because the traffic is too light in L.A during one scene. Who cares? It's a lie, but it's not a critical lie. Lives won't be ruined because of an erroneous perception of L.A traffic. Chances are that this detail won't even make people move there.
The further you go in the collection, the more Ellison's reputation grows as a reviewer and the more space he has to do what he does best : tell stories. HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING gets better and better as reviews slowly turns into longer essays. There were two reviews I thoroughly enjoyed : First, the two-volumes review/history of the painful development cycle of DUNE, which gave us invaluable insight on the movie business. The actual review of the film is about one page long and the rest is about Harlan Ellison hunting for the truth and chasing a screening of the movie. Every thought a movie review could be suspenseful? Well, this one is.
The other truly enthralling review is Ellison's tireless defense of Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL's integrity. Ellison saw the original version of the movie (which I believe is super long) and was moved so much, he decided to wage war with movie executive Sid Sheinberg over several reviews, for his decision to re-edit the movie to give it an happy ending. Ellison's passionate rants about BRAZIL will make you want to see it. It is indeed a transcendent work and Ellison makes it justice through his prose and through his rabid defense alike. If there's anything I learned from HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING is that sometimes it's OK to get personal with your subject.
ROBOCOP, despite its popularity, is as vicious a piece of wetwork as anything I've encountered in recent memory. Devoid of even the faintest scintilla of compassion or common sense, it is as low as the foreheads of those members of the screening audience who cheered and laughed at each escalated scene of violence. It is a film about, and intended for, no less than brutes. It is a film that struck me as being made by, and for, savages and ghouls. Written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, and directed by the Ducthman Paul Verhoeven, this is a templace for everything rabid and drooling in our culture.
I loved whenever Harlan Ellison tackled a film with rage, even when it was a film I'm fond of. When he's angry, Ellison is sharper and less likely to drift into empty banter territory. Everybody can say : the photography was stunning, the art direction beautiful, blah blah blah and look brilliant. You can hear the wind blow through these hollow statements and Ellison is guilty of using them from time to time. I really enjoyed his destruction of RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and while I thought he was being a little conservative about it, I'll concede that he made good points about the film. I also appreciated his courage for calling out french filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard for being a complacent fucker. The man had his moments of genius, but he released a LOT of crap also and Ellison had the courage to stand up and say it.
I'm not really sure who the target audience for HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING is. I know it's not me. I enjoyed it, but it was way too much about Ellison himself and not enough about the movies. There is some good about that process, but when Ellison skimmed his review just to go on a rant, well, I developped a reflex to skim that rant if it had nothing to do with the film. It would've been a much more user-friendly experience if it would've been separated in thematic volumes. HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING was an interesting and educative experience, but it is made to be a reference volume more than a seamless reading.