Database

Synopsis of Story: A dognapper is released from prison ostensibly cured from her obsession. But she encounters machines. The sound of Big Ben reverses her "treatment." Many comic encounters end with her being captured by a complex machine — intended to process the dogs — in the end.

Folding Comment: There's no particular folding here, though one could make a case for the rigid mechanics of the story folded into the similar rigid mechanics of the machine that ultimately wins.

Synopsis of Story: An Arabian King is demented. His new wife delays her execution by telling intriguing stories that last night after night. These stories involve many exotic locales, comic figures and adventures. Adapted from the classic book, The central stories are "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and "Aladdin and His Lamp."

Folding Comment: The simple fold is a movie about a story in which stories are told. But there is a more complex fold in the presentation: the story is presented in a way where the storyteller is ambiguous. It could be told by the wife/slave of the ogre giant segment inserted in the beginning. or from the giant himself, or from a storyteller in the bazaar, or from one of the genies.

Synopsis of Story: Innocent townie goes to ivy league school. Is a crew star. Gets tapped to join the elite secret society (patterned after the skull and bones society of Yale). His curious friend is murdered by the society, and he finds out.

Folding Comment: There's no amazing folding here, though as with many movies, the plot tuns on the device of a video.

Synopsis of Story: We follow Mick Jagger around as he acts like an amiable, but daft star.

Folding Comment: There's no folding worth noting.

Synopsis of Story: This is a documentary about Venice skateboard punks who invented and promoted hot dogging.

Folding Comment: The filmmaking style — especially the editing — emulates the content of the film, which involves energetic swoops and radical cuts.

Synopsis of Story: The story has many framing devices: movie, story, book, play, etc. They all originate from the Christian character. He is writing a book, play and/or having a vision about a girl, Satine. She is a prostitute/performer with whom he has the predictable relationship. She dies at the end of the play/movie, and he writes about it

Folding Comment: The chief folding device is simple: he writes the movie which we see.

But there is a much more complex folding. The movie has a movie inside, which has a narrated song/tour (by a Greek chorus figure), which is of the writing of a book, which is about a floor show, which is of the writing of a play, which is of an absinthe vision, which is of another floor show. This latter is the major part of the movie where much is made of performers being prostitutes, and finally in _that_ we have the play within which reflects every other element and level. Many of these levels have an internal structure as well, for instance the first play contains the absinthe vision contains the first floor show. The second floor show contains the second play.

And the business about performers and prostitutes allows for yet another type of fold: folded acting, where the actor communicates the character played, and simultaneously provides an annotation on the character or the nature of acting.

Synopsis of Story: Young couples go on a fishing trip in the Bermuda Triangle. They end up stuck on a ghost ship lost decades earlier. One of them becomes possessed and kills the others. Only a few escape to discover that much time has passed.

Folding Comment: No folding (unless you consider that this is a close copy of "The Shining" where the building becomes a character.)

Synopsis of Story: Nigerian immigrant, Okwe, works in a London hotel wherein illegal kidney transplants occur. His somewhat Turkish girlfriend, working illegally, wants to sell a kidney for a bogus US passport. Okwe manages to turn the tables, getting the money for the operation and the passport but takes the bad guy's kidney instead. He and the girl go separate ways.

Folding Comment: There is an interesting and subtle fold in this project whose primary goal is invoking a mood. But it is done in a very dualistic (bad/good, native/immigrant) context. The idea is that all actors are at risk of being prostitutes and at least sacrifice vital "organs" for their identity. The girl here (from a similar role in Amile), is doing (apparently) costly acting and playing a character who literally desperate to buy an identity.

Synopsis of Story: This simple remake follows a the well-established body-swapping template, except in this case, the twist of Big where a character is placed in an older version of themselves. Only this time it is a girl, with accompanying sexual jokes.

Folding Comment: The folding is similarly simple: an actor in a character's body in another character's body.

Synopsis of Story: A one night stand in the past ended with a missed rendezvous. The man has written about it and on his book tour encounters the girl. The film covers real time of their reacquaintance, discussing both the remembered and written fiction of their love.

Folding Comment: The fold is simple but elegant in its personal connection. Love as a fiction, that fiction as a film.

Synopsis of Story: It is a simple date movie, except nominally told via a diary and involving an obese, tasteless dummy. As before, two men vie for her attention and she eventually ends with the "good" one. Along the way, she gets arrested in Thailand.

Folding Comment: The folding here was explicit in the book: a book about a book. The first film worked with this, but this one does not... except for one scene where the story in the diary in the book in the movie has her on the phone leaving a message for her boyfriend. Midway through the message, he rings at the door and he speaks to her through the door phone. She keeps him waiting while she finishes the message! That message rivals "Nurse Betty" for folding.

See the discussion here.

Synopsis of Story: Losers collect in a gym, and get wrapped up in a dodgeball contest to save the gym. They are up against tough teams, but by various means (and pure hearts) they win.

Folding Comment: There's a double fold here. The normal fold would be a (film) performance about a (sports) performance. This adds another layer: a comic performance spoofing both.

Synopsis of Story: Upperclass British playwright is having a dry spell when he becomes entranced by a family of boys and their widowed mother. They inspire him to write "Peter Pan." The widow dies after being introduced to Neverland which blurs reality and imagination.

Folding Comment: There are two folds. The simple one is folding the film into a play. But there is a fold within the story as well, folding imagined reality (which is related to the play via a concept of "Neverland") into reality.

Synopsis of Story: Oil wildcatters crash their plane in the remote Gobi desert. One happens to be an aircraft designer, so they remake the large crashed plane into a smaller flyable one just in the nick of time.

Folding Comment: There's no folding here.

Synopsis of Story: Nerd teenager spies girl staying next door. Falls in love with her. Discovers she is a porn star with qualms. Has several encounters with her "pimp" and finally contrives to settle the score by making his own porn-like movie. All ends happily for everyone.

Folding Comment: This is a classic film within a film form. The plot directs us to the climax, which is our hero making an "educational" film while all sorts of other educational concerns are raised. That the movie we are seeing is the film that is made is hinted many times as we "see" little "movies" of what is in our hero's mind.

Synopsis of Story: Superheros have to go underground because of insurance suits. Bob Parr goes to work for an insurance company and is frustrated. A spurned fan becomes a superscientist who kills superheros. Bob, who is initially tricked into helping them, and later Helen and the kids take him on.

Folding Comment: The primary folding is in the manner of telling the story folded into the story. In answer to the Shrek movies (which were about the film business and the battle between Pixar/Disney and Dreamworks) Pixar highlights in this movie on its own way of working.

Pixar's strength is its ability to attract top talent, to collectively address sophisticated narrative techniques, and then to get out of the way. Things are not done by committee, what the business calls "insurance."

The story here equates Pixar's superheros and disdain for the ordinary (and the safety of "insurance") with the story we see.

A second folding is the overlapping of genres: Bond, cartoon/superheros, Star Wars chases.

Synopsis of Story: Three young kids find themselves thrust into a world where they understand the mechanics (many-identitied greedy relative kills their parents, uncle and aunt to get money) but no one else does.

Folding Comment: This is a movie of a book where we see (and hear) the book being written. Two realities. To this are added two other realities, reality of the adults and that of the kids. Clearly we are on the kid's side of things in the books. The movie has it more on the villain's side. But the fold is still there.

See the discussion here about orreries.

Synopsis of Story: Aggressive hockey coach assembles a team of college kids to take on the powerhouse Russians at the 1980 Olympics. They train hard, bond and win.

Folding Comment: The fold is the unremarkable one of a (film) performance of a (sports) performance.

Synopsis of Story: A boring man leaves his "ordinary life" by secretly taking up ballroom dancing. A specific beautiful teacher is the surrogate for the alternate reality. He leaves his wife out of the new world. He enters a contest and loses, but (independent of the contest) wins his wife back.

Folding Comment: This is a typical example of the folded dance film, with only two notable exceptions. First, the offended wife talks about marriage as "witness to a life" and is offended that she is left out of his "movie." That's more explicit recognition of folding than you usually get in these. The second change is that he loses the big contest.

Synopsis of Story: A man falls in love with (a video image of) a woman and hooks up with her. Meanwhile another woman similarly falls in love with him, unbeknownst. Events conspire to allow the second woman to replace the first until the conspiracy unravels at the end. The two lovers are re-united.

Folding Comment: What's attempted here is an unsuccessful merger of two folded techniques: parallel realities/truths and character swapping. The second girl (played by Rose) swaps roles, but not bodies with Alex. This mirrors a deeper fold in competition between the reality of the two girls.

Synopsis of Story: Three young men lose a buddy so decide to go on a camping adventure seeking the treasure of DB Cooper. Funny things are supposed to happen.

Folding Comment: This is another of those films that is supposed to reference other films, not by spoofing but by straight incorporation. Then the madcap characters react. It is so inartfully done that I cannot index it as folded.