Best Films of 2009

I realize how late this is, and I apologize.  But with the Academy Award noms in full swing I am finally being forced to lay decree to the year of 2009.  To tell the truth, it has taken me AT LEAST this long to catch up on most of the material in 2009 (and I’m still quite behind).  While I was initially going to give in to the popular kids and stack-rank, I decided that this year had too many excellent selections from extremely broad-ranging categories.  So, I decided to list the best picks that fit together and then list my number 1 and 2 favorite movies of 2009.  Yay for experimenting with narrative!  This list is of my absolute favorite flicks of the last year, complete with basic defenses of each selection. In the year that ended up being dominated by a record-breaking work of spectacle over ten years in the making, I seek to highlight some of the very positive advances in story that may have been overshadowed, both at the box office and overall.  So, without further ado…

_In the Realm of Innovative Story and Character:

Adventureland, (500) Days of Summer, Up in the Air,

Adventureland holds a special place in my heart.  While Mottola’s story is nothing revolutionary by any means, the overall style of the narrative itself along with the sincerity and charm that he managed to bring to the  characters all combined to create an encapsulating story about love and post-grad fears.  The acting is quite spot-on with Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds, and Martin Starr playing post-teen angst and confusion with actual commitment and conviction.  Adventureland really plays like what a John Hughe’s movie would exist as in the decade of “returning to naturalism.”  While Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, and Matt Bush play more slap-stick roles in an effort to keep the movie buoyed between overwhelming depression and light comedy, the characters are overall so well-written and played so close to life by the actors that sympathy can be garnered for any, one character at any given time.  Despite infidelity, lying, false bravado, and apathetic sexual encounters, every character is so completely engrossing and thoughtful that the audience identifies with them and keeps from objectifying them.  An early win in the year for character and story, Adventureland did poorly at the box office and failed to garner an abundance of critical praise.  While skimmed over for its simplistic plot whimsical style, the piece is a great character study in the lives of young, idealistic people at a cross-roads in their lives.

Marc Webb’s first feature, (500) Days of Summer, is an awesome example of how narrative can be the crux of the story.  And while that may seem like an obvious statement, the point I’m trying to make is that Summer’s story is best told through the seemingly random sequence of narrative segments that we view to discover the rise and fall of the story’s main relationship.  I don’t want to give anything away, but everything about Summer is perfect.  The characters are completely attainable and relatable while still keeping enough of an essence of individuality to keep you guessing as to how the story will pan out.  Summer also takes full advantage of surrealist storytelling to make a common romantic rendezvous into something that both genders thoroughly enjoy.  Elements of the surreal keep most detractors of the genre ensconsed while the heart of the affair provides more than enough drama and romance for the die-hard followers of the style.  Summer may be, in effect, the first truly unisex romantic comedy.

Initially, when I was stack-ranking this list, I had included Up in the Air as the number 3 film of 2009.  Reitman constantly impressed me with a gorgeous story and an intriguing message that added the perfect piece of punctuation to the end. Clooney’s performance was dazzling, as well, as he carried the story on his back and managed to upend the “anti-hero” archetype by story’s end. As it is, Reitman ends up displacing all archetypes in Up in the Air, opting instead for turbulent characters that accomplish more in 109 minutes than most characters do in entire television seasons.  Expertly written and expertly directed, Up in the Air helped me wash the taste of Avatar out of my mouth as they were released around the same time.

_In the Realm of Imaginative Storytelling and Experimenting with Narrative:

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Where the Wild Things Are, and Moon,

Let me preface this entry by stating two things, outright.  Number one, I have a GREAT affinity for Terry Gilliam’s style and vision.  And number two, like every Gilliam picture, The Imaginarium has some MAJOR flaws.  That being said, the story is FABULOUS.  Gilliam has managed to weave another fantastical fairy tale together involving some of the greatest actors of our generation.  Despite a huge crisis in the way of Gilliam’s lead, Heath Ledger passing away in the midst of filming, Gilliam had to forge ahead and finish his work with some revisions to the script and the entire story, as a whole.  The characters are magical, the story is quite fun and imaginative, and, overall, Gilliam manages to remind us what CGI should be regulated to for the time being: Images and moments that we all understand to be completely surreal, anti-realistic, nightmarish, or absurd in nature.  Not to recreate life.  While the future will eventually bring about this technology, we just don’t have it yet.  AND THAT GOES FOR YOU, TOO, CAMERON!  Sorry, allow me to get down from my soapbox.  But this breed of absurdist fantasy combined with a stellar cast of actors and a director who can pull it off, really hit the mark that 2009 was otherwise devoid of.  While the third act does COMPLETELY fall apart and actually ends up being quite dreadful, the rest of the movie made me smile so wide it actually made up for it.  Oh, and did I mention that Tom Waits is in it?

There’s nothing that I can say in praising Where the Wild Things Are that hasn’t already been said.  Jonze characterizes childhood as expertly as possible with what is, in my humble opinion, the most fitting narrative form, absurdism.  Jonze’s use of language and plot structure don’t matter nearly as much in Wild Things as the raw emotional tone of the film matters.  I have often read that the film’s emotional core drives the narrative and acts as the crux of the film, rather than any concrete plot structure or story arc.  And I couldn’t agree more.  Along those lines, I would love to see a subset of cinema better explore this exercise, as it seemed to truly work for almost all audiences and I would love to see this largely unutilized technique become a more prevalant aspect of the industry.  Just think everyone!  Wouldn’t it be great if all films endeavored for an overarching catharsis!?!

Moon was another film that was largely overlooked last year but that deserved much more attention.  Again, there is much in this movie that I DO NOT want to give away, so I will merely say that the flick’s driving force is its adherence to the importance of its tone, above all else.  Like Wild Things, Moon’s emphasis is on the tone that it establishes with its audience early on and its experimenting with its tonal shift.  While Moon’s plot is quite exciting and original, it still is not as unique as the movies overall feel and it’s emotional bearings that it constantly shifts, forcing its audience to re-assess and re-evaluate what has occurred.

_In the Realm of “Just Plain Fun” Films That Kept Me Captivated While Adhering to an Excellent Structure

Zombieland, Star Trek, District 9, Taken, and Sherlock Holmes

An uncharacteristic amount of films came out in 2009 that didn’t exactly leave me awe-struck from a technical standpoint.  Nor did they inflect any sort of reverential admiration in the way they were written or produced.  While these films weren’t exactly revolutionary in any premiere way, however, they did still manage to evoke a visceral infatuation from me that the rest of 2009 failed to:  In other words, these films were a TON of fun.  Zombieland was a simply awesome romp following Woody Harrellson at the top of his game acting like a bad-ass tutor to the likes of Jesse Eisenberg as Eisenberg experiences his coming-of-age during a zombie apocalypse.  While fairly color-by-numbers the very criticism that detractors can take against Zombieland is the main reason I adored it.  Though you know every move that’s going to be made before they make it, the characters are so enduring that you desperately WANT to see these characters make those said choices.  Nothing shocking appears in this story and that’s exactly the way I wanted it. 

Taken was much the same way.  While extremely over-the-top and ridiculous at points, Taken fully understands the realm its playing in and unapologetically pushes it forward.  Liam Neeson spends the entirety of the movie kicking ass and taking names and the movie brilliantly succeeds because of it. 

Sherlock Holmes was fairly campy (adding martial arts to nineteenth century England usually incurs the wrath of the word “campy”)  but it truly was fun to see Downey battle it out with English degenerates while matching wits and solving capers.  Honestly never thought I’d say that.

District 9 actually WAS revolutionary, but only in the way it accomplished everything it set out to, and more, with a meager budget.  While still a simple sci-fi statement on imperialism, District 9 produced results MUCH MORE efficiently and creatively than James Cameron came close to…

And, of course, Star Trek.  Everyone’s favorite and the film that is receiving the most sympathy for being snubbed at the Oscar nominations.  An incredible reboot of the franchise with a fantastic Chris Pine helming the endeavor, Star Trek was EVERYTHING I wanted out of the film, a simple-yet-exhilirating and fun ride.

_Most Underrated Movie of 2009

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs along with Where the Wild Things Are proved that all you need are a handful of sentences and some childlike imagination to take an audiance on a wonderful adventure through storytelling.  The film was EXTREMELY loosely based on the children’s book in that food did, in fact, fall from the sky in both productions.  Going into Meatballs I was extremely skeptical, as I have qualms about rendering stories from pre-existing materials, especially when those materials are darling of children’s literature.  Meatballs quickly shut me up, however, with its lovely array of characters that proved to be both charming AND complex.  Each character had its own arc and structure and it truly reflected the care that the writers put into the film.  Meatballs easily made its money back, but did so gradually, and without much more than a peep from critics.  It deserves to sit as a distant second, but still tangential addition to the likes of Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are as proof that adaptations can take both successfully take artistic liscense, as well as actually produce entertaining cinema.

2. Up

Pixar rarely fails to awe, and Up is no exception. In addition to the small task of producing one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, Pixar managed to market this endeavor without giving away ANY crucial plot turns, WHATSOEVER.  Short of the “elderly citizen reluctantly takes kid on adventure in flying house” clips that we were shown, nothing that is central to the plot can be surmised from the entire advertising campaign. And the end result was a movie choc-ful of surprises.  Within the first 20 minutes of the movie I was welling up with tears, and by the end credits, my eyes were bleary again.  Ed Asner delivers a wonderful starring performance and proves that a narrative revolving around a senior citizen, a boy scout, and a flying house can captivate audiences better than any blockbuster revolving around giant, killer robots.

1. Away We Go

Completely underrated and unbelievably snubbed by the academy, critics, and end-of-the-year-list-makers alike, Sam Mendes latest directorial treat was absolutely wonderful in every cinematic aspect.  John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph both brighten up the screen in their melancholy world.  Conquering the mid-mid-life crisis, Kransinski and Rudolph’s characters both carry Mendes’ film as it explores our position in this life and our how we find our meaning.  There is so much truth in this movie that it made me complete reassess Rudolph and Kransinski as actors.  After only seeing them in comedy’s on TV, it was so refreshing to come away from a film with MORE respect for actors, instead of less.  And while the acting is what fully sold me, the story, pacing, and overall style of the film are impeccable, as well.

Now, before anyone starts screaming about how many wunderbar flicks I left out, remember, these are my PERSONAL tastes.  It’s is SO hard to delineate what makes one film better than another.  I loved Zombieland, of course, but I feel Mottola hit more cinematic buttons with Adventureland, and besides, they are two COMPLETELY different films.  To be fair, however, I’m going to keep a tab of films that, as of January 13th 2010, I have not seen and therefore could not qualify in my list, however, I do recognize that they were regarded as “good.”  First, to the honorable mentions!

ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND the embarassingly long laundry list of flicks that I have yet to see:

Movies I Have Not Seen So I Cannot NOT List Them:
_The Princess and the Frog
_Invictus
_A Single Man
_A Serious Man
_Brothers
_The Bunny and the Bull
_The Road
_Fantastic Mr. Fox
_The Box
_The Men Who Stare at Goats
_Precious
_A Christmas Carol
_An Education
_The Hurt Locker
_Big Fan
_The Reader

Lollipop (Candyman)

Oh, my apologies for leaving you for so long, my babies!  I have been uncharacteristically busy (which, I suppose, could be considered a good thing) and, in as a result, Shwayblog has suffered.  My gift to you all is this trip down Nostalgia Mountain.  Remember Aqua, anyone?  Does the Barbie Girl song ring a bell?  I thought so.  Well, what you probably didn’t know was that Aqua actually had WAY more sugar-infused pop hits than merely Barbie Girl.  This little number is proof of that fact.  As you can see from the video, I was predisposed to love neon and techno from a young age…

China Yanks Avatar

According to the LA times, after making 75 million dollars and becoming China’s most successful movie of all time, James Cameron’s overrated epic Avatar is being pulled from all of its 2-D screens in China.  Sighted by some to be a defensive political move in response to a feared backlash against recent Chinese government upheavals, the decision to pull the film could very well be much less extravagent.  China has a mere 4000 screens and they allot preference to domestic Chinese releases.  The L.A. Times cites David Wolf in that “most foreign films get a 10-day run before being pulled. Executives at Fox had expected “Avatar” to play much longer, however, due to its massive popularity.”  China has done this multiple times in the past, and has recently sighted the upcoming Chinese New Year as the motivation to pull Cameron’s Blue-Cats-R-Us.  Regardless of the intent, this is one of the handfuls of times that I side with the Chinese Government and find myself strangely appreciative of their non-reverential status towards the film.  Maybe we should put sanctions on how long movies can run here.  Hahaha, I kid, I kid. 

But seriously…

Nathan Rabin’s “Why Some Comics Aren’t Laughing at Jay Leno”

This is an amazing article about the recent backlash against Leno and how it’s been a long time coming, at least in the Comedy world.  The author, Nathan Rabin, makes great points throughout the article, but none struck me quite as significantly as when he points to the fact that Leno represents the comedy of mediocrity.  Big Chin seemed to cash in all his credibility and chutzpah from the 80’s when he took over The Tonight Show from Carson.  Now, we have seen him pander to the lowest common denominator night after night, in an effort to maintain his ratings and vice-hold on the market.   What I didn’t necessarily agree with was the entire section diagramming comedy writer’s innate jealousy for other writer’s success.  While I am an EXTREMELY jealous, catty person, and I COMPLETELY fall into this category, I’m not certain that the whole of the comedy collective does.  In some circles, comedy is still very communal and viewed as a sort of team sport, with groups trying to make it and bring their team with them.  Also, while I do detest Leno’s success, I hate it because I feel that he hasn’t earned it.  Every night that Conan has a hit show, or every post I read in defense of Conan, I revel in, because I WANT to see Conan succeed, because I love his work and respect him so greatly.  Overall, however, the article is FANTASTIC, and made it onto The Wall Street Journal.  You may have heard of it. 

Why Some Comics Aren’t Laughing at Jay Leno

Shy Ronnie

Andy Samberg seems to be made of musical gold.  Everything I hear from him is either absolutely hilarious or absolutely catchy.  And Shy Ronnie is both.  Samberg has teamed with Rihanna to produce an incredibly addictive two-minute duet that you’ll be humming all day.  Oh, and it’s also pretty funny as well.  Seriously, is Samberg the sole factor keeping SNL on the air right now? 

P.S.  I have no idea why the click is backwards, and if the Youtube vid gets taken down for copyright reasons, HERE is the clip on Hulu.

The Next Actor to Play Spider-Man

I stumbled upon this quick, concise mash-up of ten Hollywood actors who could, and very well may, fill Maguire’s empty shoes as the new Spider-Man.  Something to consider with this list is that the new Spider-Man is said to be a reboot set in Peter Parker’s high school years.  Due to this, 9/10 of this list reads as a who’s-who of young, male Hollywood.  And while I take EXTREME grievance with much of the selections, I think it’s interesting to hear Empire’s take on the whole matter.  Some actors that they SADLY left off this list are the obvious, yet older, Topher Grace, and Andrew Garfield, who was recently quite spot-on in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.  Follow the link below!

Empire’s Top 10 Actors to Play Spider-Man

Letterman Comes to Conan’s Aid and Bashes Leno

Remember when the late-night wars were about ratings, and generally between the stations?  Well, not anymore!!!  Jay Leno is REALLY ruffling the feathers of talk show-hosts nation-wide and his old friend Mr. Letterman is finally speaking out on it.  While I am in NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, a Letterman fan, I actually quite enjoyed these two clips that I was sent on Ain’t It Cool.  Maybe out of all this insanity, Craig Ferguson can emerge and finally get the recognition he deserves.  Enjoy!

Clip on CBS.com!

Conan O’Brien Beats NBC With a Weapon They Know Nothing Of: Tact.

My, has it been an exciting week in Hollywoodland!  First my dreams come true with the usurping of Raimi’s Spider-man franchise, and now Conan is finally telling NBC to shove it!  Hurray for bold moves!

What has developed over at NBC is the result of piss-poor decision-making and NBC’s acquiescense to Jay Leno, the antiquated comedian who ousted Letterman for the very position in question oh so many years ago.  The Peacock Network had moved Leno up to an unprecedented 10 o’clock time slot from his 11:30 time slot on The Tonight Show in an attempt to replace more expensive, scripted programming with Leno’s much cheaper, theoretcially more popular, late-night show.  The move was absolutely disastrous for NBC’s late-night ratings, and eventually proved to be poisonous to all surrounding programs, even local news sets!  As the show directly following Leno, The Tonight Show (now manned by a promoted Conan O’Brien) began to lose steam in the ratings race, as well.  Things became so bad for NBC that local broadcasting affiliates threatened to drop the network if it did not resolve the late-night fiasco and attempt to salvage their numbers. 

No answer is easily found in this equation.  At least not to the exectutives.  For me, it’s quite simple.  Fire Leno, forever, and leave Conan right where he is.  Replace that God awful attempt of a show that Leno perpetrated with the scripted television that he replaced.  Le sigh.  But this isn’t my world, pretties.  No, this is Earth.  The same place where Paris Hilton is still allowed to exist.  Anyway, the problem is that Leno is financially more bankable than Conan in the numbers game.  Well, he was, at least, when all these prior moves went down.  The other problem is that Conan and Leno both have AMAZING agents and managers who have managed to give NBC a huge headache over this whole debacle.  Conan is contracted to host The Tonight Show, and cannot be removed from that franchise, which means that they can’t merely push Conan back and call Leno’s new failure “The Tonight Show.”  That is Conan’s and Conan’s only.  The loophole is that they CAN simply move the age-old Tonight Show wherever they want it.  Which is precisely what NBC would like to do.  Word broke on Sunday that The Jay Leno Show would be moving to an 11:35 time slot and would promptly push O’Brien’s Tonight Show to 12:05.  This seemed to solve all their problems at once, as it made good on Conan’s contract and it put Leno (who is contracted millions of dollars whether he works or not, so dropping him is simply out of the question) back where he is most poised to make money.  This seemed to solve all of their problems…until Conan did what I absolutely love him for.  He unwaveringly stood his ground.  O’Brien issued a statement on January 12th stating that he would not move the program to the new time slot as it would “damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting.”  O’Brien also sighted that the move would be unfair to his replacement on Late Night, Jimmy Fallon.  With an incredible amount of poise and tact, Conan went on to describe how he had been preparing for years for the opportunity to host The Tonight Show and that he refused to see it eventually go down in flames due to NBC’s negligence. 

Whether or not you believe that Conan is really looking towards the future and actually attempting to salvage everyone’s career who is involved, you have to acknowledge that Conan has managed to come out on top of this situation the least-unscathed.  And while it very well may be that this is all one big ego trip about time slots and who’s playing second fiddle, I honestly don’t think it matters.  Conan’s points about the franchise of The Tonight Show inevitably tanking are all MORE than relevant, and his comment regarding being unfair to Fallon is a double-edged sword which reminds the public just how unfair NBC is being to Conan, himself!  O’Brien was promised the chance to carry on The Tonight Show’s legacy and that chance is being further and further diminished by NBC’s thoughtless business practices. 

Which brings me to my favorite part.  As Conan himself states in his letter, you needn’t be sorry for him. While he doesn’t specifically address this notion, the fact of the matter is that he is far too lucrative a talent to be thrown to the wolves.  If NBC refuses to make good on what they promised him, Conan will EASILY be able to find other, better opportunities elsewhere.  Personally, I think that O’Brien is a gargantuan talent that has not been able to fully grow yet, as a comedian and an artist.  I wish that he would enlist with a low-budget cable network (*ahem* Comedy Central *ahem*) where he would have full creative control and be restricted by absolutely nothing but his own mind.  Regardless of where he ends up, however, there is one thing that I would certainly put my money on: Conan O’Brien WILL have the last laugh.  And that puts an even bigger smile on my face than the one I had yesterday when I heard that Mopey Maguire would no longer be Spider-Man.  At this rate, I can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow!  Maybe Michael Bay will end up in prison for 35 to life!

P.S.  This is the Yahoo article which contains Conan’s public letter.  A great read!

Happy “Tobey Maguire is No Longer Spider-Man Day” Everyone!

Today, January 11th, 2010, we learned that talks have fallen through with Raimi and the studios and that the director of the first three Spider-chronicles will not return to direct the fourth.  With him, he is taking the principle cast of at least Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.  And it looks like 2010 is already shaping up to be the breath of fresh air that we had all been anticipating it to be!  Maguire as a casting choice has always struck me as an irritating and awkward move.  While I obviously understand that I am in the minority on this issue, I have still never fully understood the draw that Maguire brings to the franchise.  Short of physically semi-resembling the character of Peter Parker, and having an impressive resume of The Cider House Rules and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at the time of casting, Tobey Maguire plays the character of Peter Parker as everything he was not.  Quiet, one-dimensional, and purely reactionary in his civilian life.  The character of Peter Parker functions as a largely ascerbic, sardonic, loud-mouthed little punk who lucked out BIG TIME in the superhero lottery after being bitten by a radioactive spider.  In his origin story, Spider-Man is actually a bit of a primadonna.  He lets his new-found fame get to him and allows a common criminal to easily slip right by him which (spoiler alert for all of you who have never watched TV/read a comic before) leads to the death of his dear Uncle Ben.  This act alone launches him into a quest for vengeance and justice that spurs the character’s heroic, good-natured tendencies and pushes the super-hero narrative further.

Maguire is none of those things.  He is quiet, brooding, introverted, and almost inept to social conventions.  While he can be a talented actor, it is clear that Maguire had no previous connection to the character before the script and decided to dote more on Parker’s nerdiness than his actual inherent bravado and surrogate machismo.  Rather than portray the wise-cracking, originally anti-heroic Parker of the comics, Maguire crafted his own, dulled-down rendition.  Which simply didn’t work.

This has been my problem with the franchise from the beginning.  Along the way, Kirsten Dunst has always failed to capture the iconic femme fatale that Mary Jane Watson always embodied and the awkward and unsubtle mix-up of the classic storyline, i.e. Gwen Stacy coming in AFTER Mary Jane, Mary Jane marrying Jameson’s son, etc., etc., are all further problems that left me fully disenfranchised by the series.  Then, of course, there’s Venom.  One of Spider-Man’s greates foes and a treat that fan-boys have waited years to see onscreen.  I won’t even go into the shortcomings that were apparent from that endeavor.  However, that does launch me into the short list of praise that I had for the now-defunct franchise.  While it did very little right, Raimi’s three picture chronicle DID manage to produce certain elements of the story perfectly.  Mostly, Alfred Molina was a WONDERFUL Doc Octopus, and his story was quite well-done, also.  Willem Dafoe performed well as the Green Goblin and James Franco nicely assisted in his role of Harry Osbourne.  Also, J.K. Simmons is as close to J. Jonah Jameson as we will ever actually get onscreen, and I ADORE every minute of screen time he received.  And in a moment of wishful thinking, I’d like to acknowledge Topher Grace who was COMPLETELY ERRONEOUSLY cast as Venom.  While totally inappropriate as the muscle-head photographer Eddie Brock, Grace COULD have been the quintessential Peter Parker, and yet EVERYONE seems to have simply breezed over this.  Grace has the perfect dry, sarcastic wit and persona to match Parker’s fluently.  His appearance is even more Parker-esque than Maguire.  With a slightly more kinetic/frenetic dispostition, Grace would have been PERFECT for the role.  But these are all events that never transpired…

I have had an outspoken hatred for this franchise for the longest time, as I do with almost ALL superhero franchises (X-Men, The Punisher, Watchmen, Superman Returns, Daredevil, Elecktra, etc., etc.), which is fueled from my LOVE of each original franchise (did I mention that I’m a nerd?).  So this news marks a new holiday for me!  Yay!  The news that is circling the intranets is that a reboot of the franchise is now slated for 2012 (you didn’t actually think that Sony would just leave this prospect dead in the water, did you?  There’s MONEY to be made!).  So what I thought I would never see in the next ten years (the spidey-saga rebooted) I will see in three!  SOOOOOOOOO EXCITED!  As always, below is a link to /Film’s article on the subject.  And even below that is some shameless self promotion.  Feel free to comment all over about how foolish I am for not seeing the “raw potential” that Tobey Maguire has been “wowing” audiences with for the past 8 years.

/Film

Bears With Sparklers

R U Professional

As you may know, if you know me, I am a HUGE Christian Bale fan.  The man is an incredible actor, I would even argue that he is easily one of the best of our time.  However, after Bale’s method-coma-induced blowup on the set of Terminator: Salvation, all anyone seems to credit him for is his explosive temper (which is a whole other article for another time).  This isn’t to say that this fascination with Bale-Hulk hasn’t produced some incredibly wonderful content, however.  First there was the classic (and still my favorite) mash-up of Bale’s rant by DJ Revolucion.  Now, though, there is an entire original song dedicated to Bale’s tirade entitled “R U Professional” by The Mae Shi.  The video contains a wonderful mix of Bale clips which further prove the song’s intended message, that Christian Bale is, in fact, professional.