Yes, I realize Harry Potter is old news. However, seeing as how I just read it for the first time, it is, as they say, news to me. So, a brief overview of what stood out:
First, I had been warned that J.K. Rowling's strength is not writing, but storytelling - an assessment with which I entirely agree. Harry Potter probably shouldn't win any "excellence in writing" awards, but I found them nigh impossible to put down, and I feel they'll make excellent read-aloud books. They are engaging, entertaining, interesting, and altogether pleasant. I should mention here that the reason it took me so long to read them wasn't because I was a snob about them being "too popular", but because I didn't want to get into something that so many people were alarmingly obsessed with. Yep, I fell victim to Harry Potter's charms. There is a pair of hand-knit Hufflepuff socks in my near future, and I am no longer concerned that, if I knit a yellow-and-maroon striped Mary Poppins scarf as I've been wanting to for several years, people will assume it's a Gryffindor scarf instead. This would be an acceptable assumption.
Second, being a Christian and active in a church community, I had also been warned that Harry Potter is an occultic evil which will encourage children to engage in witchcraft. I had also heard the extreme opposition, being that Harry Potter is actually a Christian story because it's about the power of love and because there is a Bible verse pertaining to the Resurrection on Harry's parents grave. Now having read the whole shebang, I disagree with both positions. For starters, the only element of magic in Harry Potter that comes close to being occultic is the Divination class - the teacher of which is presented as little more than a harmless fraud whom Dumbledore humours. Though it is eventually revealed that she has been gifted with a grand total of two true prophecies in her lifetime, where they come from is not explained, and her divination through tea leaves and crystal balls is presented as something fake which reveals nothing. After reading Potter, I'm actually quite troubled by the dearth of accusations about its occultic nature, because this is a very serious and dangerous accusation to be throwing about on such flimsy grounds.
Of course, not being occultic doesn't automatically make a story Christian. For me, the single most interesting and important thing Harry Potter has to offer to the Church is its thorough exploration of redemption without Christ, particularly demonstrated through the storyline of Severus Snape. As much as Dumbledore talks on and on about how love is the most important thing, and love conquers all, and it's all about love, he turns out, through his interactions with Snape, to be the biggest hypocrite in the series. Dumbledore offers Snape redemption in works, but can do nothing for his broken soul, and even abuses it further by taking advantage of his feelings for Harry's late mother, Lily. He begins his control over Snape as a young man by telling him that, if he really loves Lily, he will work for Dumbledore against Voldemort, and what could be a good thing turns out to be very cruel as we learn that Snape's "love" for Lily was little more than a very painful, broken, dangerous obsession. The first major climax of the series, at the end of The Half-Blood Prince, features Dumbledore forcing Snape to destroy himself even further for "the greater good". As I read it, the great hero of the tale who champions love is someone whose primary practice is using people. Dumbledore is the ultimate embodiment of what happens when we believe the ends justify the means, even if the ends are good. Harry Potter is a fascinating exploration of a life which I don't know, but am very happy to have this opportunity to understand. I'd go so far as to say it's essential reading for the Christian who wants to better comprehend the world they live in.
All this to say, Harry Potter is a worthwhile read. The films suffer from unsuccessful scripts, but they do have extraordinary art direction which makes them worth the time.
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Monday, January 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The Talk (Star Wars Edition)
You’re watching Talking to Your Kids About Star Wars. See the Web's top videos on AOL Video
Because no responsible parent will let their kids grow up thinking that Greedo shot first. It's good to see that someone is thinking of the children.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Keepin' it Simple, Keepin' it Real: Inception
There's been a horrendous amount of bandwidth devoted to attempting to explain Inception, writer/director Christopher Nolan's most recent feature film. Virtual pissing contests to determine who "gets" the film best are running rampant, and even high-profile critics like Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman have written blog posts about how the film is so confusing and they just don't understand it, generously inviting heaps of responses in the comment section to the effect of what idiots they are.
I don't think not understanding Inception makes you an idiot. I do suspect it makes you someone who's determined to over-think things, or who just wasn't paying attention to the first hour and a half. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, and featuring Tom Berenger and Cilian Murphy, Inception is, put simply, probably the best heist film you'll ever see.
What? A heist film? But I thought it was a high-concept sci-fi something-or-other!
Well, yes and no. Inception is a heist film through and through, using the classic story of a broken master ne'er-do-well (DiCaprio's Dominic Cobb) going in for that one last job whose reward will help him get his life back on track, and get him out of the business for good. This being a classic heist, the job is shadier and riskier than usual. The film's first act sees Cobb assemble his team and explain the nature of the job to the audience; the second act begins with all the team's well-laid plains going quickly SNAFU; the third act pushes their problem-solving skills to the limit in order to get the job done and make it out alive. It's the setting that shoehorns Inception into the high-concept stratosphere - Cobb's not-quite-legal business is "subconscious security", that is, teaching (mostly corporate) clients how to prevent company secrets and intellectual property from being stolen right out of their dreams. And dreams are strange, nebulous, confusing things, which seems to be the starting point for much of the confusion surrounding this film.
The thing is, Nolan meticulously uses the first half of this nearly three-hour production for the purpose of explaining how dreams work, what the rules of his world are, what the story is about, and what to expect once the action starts. It is this careful explanation that makes that first half noticeably slower and clunkier than the films written by or with his brother Jonathan (such as The Prestige and the recent Batman films), but it's worth sitting and sifting through.
Most importantly, Nolan goes to great pains to repeatedly explain the final frame of the film long before the audience gets there. Don't be fooled by the reams of "what does the end mean????" floating around in cyberspace - its simply the culmination of the film's firmly-developed themes. Inception may be confusing to some because its anti-anarchist, anti-cyberpunk, anti-Animatrix story is not one I've seen before in a film dealing with dreams and reality. Simply put, its themes are as follows: there is such a thing as reality, there is such a thing as truth, and running away into your dreams is unhealthy, and a terrible solution to the hardships of real life. Reality and truth are good. These are not welcome ideas to the subculture that worships the Wachowski brothers. Also important thematically is the recurring question of what Inception's characters put more trust in: what they know, or what they believe. Mixed into a simple, straightforward heist film are some simple-but-complex philosophies, and I for one think Nolan did a fantastic job of mixing them. Also, it's just extremely pleasant to watch a straightforward story told very well. Inception doesn't so much have twists, because a well-told story doesn't need them.
In other words, if you've been put off of watching Inception because you've been given the idea that it's some incomprehensible piece of artsy-fartsy-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo, I think you've been given the wrong idea. See it for the fabulous acting, mind-blowing art direction and cinematography, the interesting and important philosophical challenges, and the scene that, in my mind, serves to justify the existence and purpose of wire-work. It really is that good, that simple, and that comprehensible.
I don't think not understanding Inception makes you an idiot. I do suspect it makes you someone who's determined to over-think things, or who just wasn't paying attention to the first hour and a half. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, and featuring Tom Berenger and Cilian Murphy, Inception is, put simply, probably the best heist film you'll ever see.
What? A heist film? But I thought it was a high-concept sci-fi something-or-other!
Well, yes and no. Inception is a heist film through and through, using the classic story of a broken master ne'er-do-well (DiCaprio's Dominic Cobb) going in for that one last job whose reward will help him get his life back on track, and get him out of the business for good. This being a classic heist, the job is shadier and riskier than usual. The film's first act sees Cobb assemble his team and explain the nature of the job to the audience; the second act begins with all the team's well-laid plains going quickly SNAFU; the third act pushes their problem-solving skills to the limit in order to get the job done and make it out alive. It's the setting that shoehorns Inception into the high-concept stratosphere - Cobb's not-quite-legal business is "subconscious security", that is, teaching (mostly corporate) clients how to prevent company secrets and intellectual property from being stolen right out of their dreams. And dreams are strange, nebulous, confusing things, which seems to be the starting point for much of the confusion surrounding this film.
The thing is, Nolan meticulously uses the first half of this nearly three-hour production for the purpose of explaining how dreams work, what the rules of his world are, what the story is about, and what to expect once the action starts. It is this careful explanation that makes that first half noticeably slower and clunkier than the films written by or with his brother Jonathan (such as The Prestige and the recent Batman films), but it's worth sitting and sifting through.
Most importantly, Nolan goes to great pains to repeatedly explain the final frame of the film long before the audience gets there. Don't be fooled by the reams of "what does the end mean????" floating around in cyberspace - its simply the culmination of the film's firmly-developed themes. Inception may be confusing to some because its anti-anarchist, anti-cyberpunk, anti-Animatrix story is not one I've seen before in a film dealing with dreams and reality. Simply put, its themes are as follows: there is such a thing as reality, there is such a thing as truth, and running away into your dreams is unhealthy, and a terrible solution to the hardships of real life. Reality and truth are good. These are not welcome ideas to the subculture that worships the Wachowski brothers. Also important thematically is the recurring question of what Inception's characters put more trust in: what they know, or what they believe. Mixed into a simple, straightforward heist film are some simple-but-complex philosophies, and I for one think Nolan did a fantastic job of mixing them. Also, it's just extremely pleasant to watch a straightforward story told very well. Inception doesn't so much have twists, because a well-told story doesn't need them.
In other words, if you've been put off of watching Inception because you've been given the idea that it's some incomprehensible piece of artsy-fartsy-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo, I think you've been given the wrong idea. See it for the fabulous acting, mind-blowing art direction and cinematography, the interesting and important philosophical challenges, and the scene that, in my mind, serves to justify the existence and purpose of wire-work. It really is that good, that simple, and that comprehensible.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Wonderful World of Polish Cold-War Era Film Posters
This certainly warrants further exploration.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Iron Man 2
It's hard to sell a sequel to film critics. It's easy to sell them to audiences in a fiscal sense, but until Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, the most recent good sequel in popular consciousness was Terminator 2. A good film with the word "2" in the title is a confusing beast for professional critics, a good comic-book film with the word "2" in the title doubly so. The resulting effect caused by Iron Man 2 has been reviews which say, "there was too much action, and not enough talking, booo", or "it was okay, but there was too much talking and not enough action. Booo." Would it surprise you to learn that I think neither is accurate?
Iron Man 2 picks up where the first film left off, with Tony Stark announcing his secret identity and showboating it like no one's business, with an appropriately ludicrous introduction that works because of how thoroughly Tony's character was cemented in Iron Man. No, wait, scratch that. Iron Man 2 picks up with Russian career prisoner Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) being given a reason to finally get off his butt and seek revenge for the apparent wrong done to his father by Tony's father fourty years earlier. Rourke is a careful actor, one who has a knack for making a character both over-the-top and down to earth at the same time, and that talent serves this film very well. One critic complained that "it's hard to fear a villain who wears reading glasses, chews toothpicks and coos sweet nothings to a pet cockatoo", but I'd argue that it is these quiet, matter-of-fact eccentricities - and normal things, like being pudgy and wearing reading glasses - that make Vanko so scary, especially when combined with Rourke's sleepy portrayal that seems to suit a man who's spent most of his life in and out of Russian prisons. And who (aside from Russian speakers) knows what he's actually saying to his bird? For all we know, it could be twisted and disturbing sweet nothings, like when Emily Watson moans that she's going to bite Adam Sandler's face off at the end of Punch-Drunk Love. At any rate, Rourke is a standout, producing a character who's also a believable person.
Though the cast is uniformly excellent, special mention must be made of Sam Rockwell as Stark's chief rival in the Department of Defense contracts game, Justin Hammer. Taking on the typically thankless role of the hero's less successful, less charismatic, less intelligent, extremely irritating foil, the film is Rockwell's to steal - and steal it, he does. His scenes with Mickey Rourke are just great, and he perfectly delivers what will probably be this film's most memorable bit of dialogue, in a scene in which he tries to sell Rhodey a new type of bunker-buster missile.
This film does have a bit of an awkward pace, but it's nothing to write home about, and what really stands out is how short the fights are. There's a decent bit of set-up, particularly when Vanko's alter-ego Whiplash is introduced against the backdrop of the Monaco Grand Prix, but when heroes and villains actually start hitting each other, epic boss fights last perhaps fourty seconds. It's like someone actually sat down and asked themselves, "if two people capable of causing massive destruction actually tried to kill each other, what would happen?" - this isn't two giants punching each other in the head for twenty minutes (*cough*Transformers!*cough*).
But, let's face it, the question I've been asked the most is, "is it better than the first film?" No. Is it Spider-Man 2? Not quite. Is it a solid film with great writing, acting, directing, and really great superhero action? Yes. Frankly, the only thing I'm truly disappointed with is that the infamous briefcase suit made a quick but crucial appearance - but there was no word on whether or not it harnessed the power of MAGNETS! Go for the movie, stay for the credits, stay for the scene after the credits, and look forward to the next Avenger film.
Iron Man 2 picks up where the first film left off, with Tony Stark announcing his secret identity and showboating it like no one's business, with an appropriately ludicrous introduction that works because of how thoroughly Tony's character was cemented in Iron Man. No, wait, scratch that. Iron Man 2 picks up with Russian career prisoner Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) being given a reason to finally get off his butt and seek revenge for the apparent wrong done to his father by Tony's father fourty years earlier. Rourke is a careful actor, one who has a knack for making a character both over-the-top and down to earth at the same time, and that talent serves this film very well. One critic complained that "it's hard to fear a villain who wears reading glasses, chews toothpicks and coos sweet nothings to a pet cockatoo", but I'd argue that it is these quiet, matter-of-fact eccentricities - and normal things, like being pudgy and wearing reading glasses - that make Vanko so scary, especially when combined with Rourke's sleepy portrayal that seems to suit a man who's spent most of his life in and out of Russian prisons. And who (aside from Russian speakers) knows what he's actually saying to his bird? For all we know, it could be twisted and disturbing sweet nothings, like when Emily Watson moans that she's going to bite Adam Sandler's face off at the end of Punch-Drunk Love. At any rate, Rourke is a standout, producing a character who's also a believable person.
Though the cast is uniformly excellent, special mention must be made of Sam Rockwell as Stark's chief rival in the Department of Defense contracts game, Justin Hammer. Taking on the typically thankless role of the hero's less successful, less charismatic, less intelligent, extremely irritating foil, the film is Rockwell's to steal - and steal it, he does. His scenes with Mickey Rourke are just great, and he perfectly delivers what will probably be this film's most memorable bit of dialogue, in a scene in which he tries to sell Rhodey a new type of bunker-buster missile.
This film does have a bit of an awkward pace, but it's nothing to write home about, and what really stands out is how short the fights are. There's a decent bit of set-up, particularly when Vanko's alter-ego Whiplash is introduced against the backdrop of the Monaco Grand Prix, but when heroes and villains actually start hitting each other, epic boss fights last perhaps fourty seconds. It's like someone actually sat down and asked themselves, "if two people capable of causing massive destruction actually tried to kill each other, what would happen?" - this isn't two giants punching each other in the head for twenty minutes (*cough*Transformers!*cough*).
But, let's face it, the question I've been asked the most is, "is it better than the first film?" No. Is it Spider-Man 2? Not quite. Is it a solid film with great writing, acting, directing, and really great superhero action? Yes. Frankly, the only thing I'm truly disappointed with is that the infamous briefcase suit made a quick but crucial appearance - but there was no word on whether or not it harnessed the power of MAGNETS! Go for the movie, stay for the credits, stay for the scene after the credits, and look forward to the next Avenger film.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
They Live at the Road House!
A question often* posed to me is, "Elly, just how much awesomeness can one weekend hold?" Well, there was the time I watched Hard Boiled, Where Eagles Dare, The Transporter 2, and Speed Racer all in one such time span, and about nine years ago my first true all-night movie marathon consisted of The Core, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Mystery Men, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, some random episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, both the David Lynch and Sci-Fi Channel versions of Dune, and possibly UHF. That was epic. Caroline, if by some slim chance you've stumbled across this page, I'm pretty unhappy about having lost your contact information and forgotten your last name, so leave a comment, okay? You rock.
This time around, only two films were in play...but they contained so much awesomeness between them that their memories belong beside those mythic weekends remembered above: John Carpenter's classic homage to 50's sci-fi, They Live (1988), and the late great Patrick Swayze's legendary homage to some martial arts style whose name escapes me but which often pops up in Jet Li films, Road House (1989).
They Live stars Saskatoon native (hi folks! Thanks for the comics!) and former wrestling villain 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as a simple drifter known only as Nada who's hitched across the U.S. from Detroit to L.A. in a Great Depression-style journey to find work. He lands a construction job and sets up camp in a shanty town filled with other transient workers and poor folk, whose food needs are looked after by the church across the street, a church at which strange comings and goings take place in the middle of the night and whose basement looks like a combination drug kitchen/counterfeit sunglasses operation. When the church is violently raided one night by a small army of cops, Nada discovers that the sunglasses are what all the fuss is about, as wearing them makes him feel like he's just ordered a big meal from a drug kitchen. Aliens walk among us! They've taken over and are sucking the life out of Earth! They look like the ghouls from Fallout 3 mated with the villains from Mars Attacks!! And if you're not wearing the special sunglasses, they look just like regular people! Conveniently armed with two pairs of said sunglasses, Nada enlists the help of fellow drifter Frank (Keith David), and together they set out to kick their bubblegum habit once and for all and show those lousy aliens the door. Or the window. Both work.
John Carpenter's films work because he never forgets what they are. He never tries to treat a completely ludicrous premise as anything but, choosing instead to jump in, latch on, and have fun, as demonstrated in films like Big Trouble in Little China and my personal favourite, Escape from New York. This same work ethic can also turn out rock-solid dramas, like his 1984 sci-fi horror classic The Thing, which is of the same quality as the literal mother of them all, Alien. They Live is not a drama, and it looks like Carpenter had lots of fun with that fact. With his brilliant use of black-and-white Sunglasses Vision, a hero who's not the sharpest tool in the box, and such famous lines as "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum" (referenced in legions of movies, shows, and The Dresden Files) and the less-famous line "Brother, life's a bitch - and she's back in heat" (which concludes the longest dirty fight I've ever seen on film, clocking in at nearly six minutes), all topped off with a Hong Kong-style twist and a horrifically funny final shot which now rivals The Lost Boys for my favourite ending to a ridiculous movie, They Live contains almost too much awesomeness for one film to hold. Which is code for, if you think that contrived and melodramatic action films like the ones homaged in Hot Fuzz are in fact deep and serious, you'll probably think that They Live is a stupid failure. And hey, even if you watch it for what it is, you may still think it's a stupid failure. That's okay. You'd just be wrong. ;)
FUN FACT! Keith David worked with John Carpenter prior to They Live, with a chilling and memorable role in The Thing.
MASS EFFECT FUN FACT! Keith David also provided the voice of Captain/Councilor Anderson in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.
CRAZY COINCIDENCE FUN FACT! Keith David also has a small role in...
Road House (which I keep confusing with From Dusk 'Til Dawn, which takes place in a roadhouse), which aired on TV the day after They Live, is a film my husband taped because it is, and I quote, "mythic". Mythically awful, mythically awesome, take your pick; it certainly deserves its allegedly legendary status. Starring Patrick Swayze as a nice young doctor of philosophy who can't find work philosophizing and is instead famous in bar circles for being one of the best bouncers in the U.S. (I am not making this up), Road House sees Swayze's Dalton accepting a job offer to turn around the reputation of the Double Deuce, an incredibly seedy, sleazy, violent small-town bar which happens to be owned by a nice older man who wants to see the place get cleaned up. Obviously, all problems stem from the fact that the town is owned and controlled by some seedy, sleazy, violent tycoon rancher, which may leave some readers wondering whether or not Dalton will have to save the town and hook up with the tycoon's ex-wife. I think I'll leave you hanging.
If Road House's awesomeness factor and Patrick Swayze factor are not enough to catch your interest, consider also that the Double Deuce's house musician is the late great blues man Jeff Healey (one of Canada's finest contributions to music), and that while he had a decent TV career before co-starring in Road House, this still may be the only time you'll ever see Sam Elliott (Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, Ang Lee's Hulk) with brown hair. He looks dangerous, like he's going to come flying through the window to kick your ass at any moment! It's wild! It's like seeing Ben Kingsley with hair in Searching for Bobby Fischer, except that Ben Kingsley looks much scarier now that he's bald. This is not to say that Sam Elliott cannot look very threatening in his current white-haired state, but rather that Sam Elliott in Road House is a bit of an experience.
NOT SO FUN FACT! There is some brief but lingering martial arts-related grossness in Road House, of the level you'd expect to see in a Steven Seagal film rather than a Patrick Swayze one. Eeeeew. Hail to the 80's.
KIND OF BORING CONCLUSION! A highly entertaining pair of films.
*Never.
This time around, only two films were in play...but they contained so much awesomeness between them that their memories belong beside those mythic weekends remembered above: John Carpenter's classic homage to 50's sci-fi, They Live (1988), and the late great Patrick Swayze's legendary homage to some martial arts style whose name escapes me but which often pops up in Jet Li films, Road House (1989).
They Live stars Saskatoon native (hi folks! Thanks for the comics!) and former wrestling villain 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as a simple drifter known only as Nada who's hitched across the U.S. from Detroit to L.A. in a Great Depression-style journey to find work. He lands a construction job and sets up camp in a shanty town filled with other transient workers and poor folk, whose food needs are looked after by the church across the street, a church at which strange comings and goings take place in the middle of the night and whose basement looks like a combination drug kitchen/counterfeit sunglasses operation. When the church is violently raided one night by a small army of cops, Nada discovers that the sunglasses are what all the fuss is about, as wearing them makes him feel like he's just ordered a big meal from a drug kitchen. Aliens walk among us! They've taken over and are sucking the life out of Earth! They look like the ghouls from Fallout 3 mated with the villains from Mars Attacks!! And if you're not wearing the special sunglasses, they look just like regular people! Conveniently armed with two pairs of said sunglasses, Nada enlists the help of fellow drifter Frank (Keith David), and together they set out to kick their bubblegum habit once and for all and show those lousy aliens the door. Or the window. Both work.
John Carpenter's films work because he never forgets what they are. He never tries to treat a completely ludicrous premise as anything but, choosing instead to jump in, latch on, and have fun, as demonstrated in films like Big Trouble in Little China and my personal favourite, Escape from New York. This same work ethic can also turn out rock-solid dramas, like his 1984 sci-fi horror classic The Thing, which is of the same quality as the literal mother of them all, Alien. They Live is not a drama, and it looks like Carpenter had lots of fun with that fact. With his brilliant use of black-and-white Sunglasses Vision, a hero who's not the sharpest tool in the box, and such famous lines as "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum" (referenced in legions of movies, shows, and The Dresden Files) and the less-famous line "Brother, life's a bitch - and she's back in heat" (which concludes the longest dirty fight I've ever seen on film, clocking in at nearly six minutes), all topped off with a Hong Kong-style twist and a horrifically funny final shot which now rivals The Lost Boys for my favourite ending to a ridiculous movie, They Live contains almost too much awesomeness for one film to hold. Which is code for, if you think that contrived and melodramatic action films like the ones homaged in Hot Fuzz are in fact deep and serious, you'll probably think that They Live is a stupid failure. And hey, even if you watch it for what it is, you may still think it's a stupid failure. That's okay. You'd just be wrong. ;)
FUN FACT! Keith David worked with John Carpenter prior to They Live, with a chilling and memorable role in The Thing.
MASS EFFECT FUN FACT! Keith David also provided the voice of Captain/Councilor Anderson in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.
CRAZY COINCIDENCE FUN FACT! Keith David also has a small role in...
Road House (which I keep confusing with From Dusk 'Til Dawn, which takes place in a roadhouse), which aired on TV the day after They Live, is a film my husband taped because it is, and I quote, "mythic". Mythically awful, mythically awesome, take your pick; it certainly deserves its allegedly legendary status. Starring Patrick Swayze as a nice young doctor of philosophy who can't find work philosophizing and is instead famous in bar circles for being one of the best bouncers in the U.S. (I am not making this up), Road House sees Swayze's Dalton accepting a job offer to turn around the reputation of the Double Deuce, an incredibly seedy, sleazy, violent small-town bar which happens to be owned by a nice older man who wants to see the place get cleaned up. Obviously, all problems stem from the fact that the town is owned and controlled by some seedy, sleazy, violent tycoon rancher, which may leave some readers wondering whether or not Dalton will have to save the town and hook up with the tycoon's ex-wife. I think I'll leave you hanging.
If Road House's awesomeness factor and Patrick Swayze factor are not enough to catch your interest, consider also that the Double Deuce's house musician is the late great blues man Jeff Healey (one of Canada's finest contributions to music), and that while he had a decent TV career before co-starring in Road House, this still may be the only time you'll ever see Sam Elliott (Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, Ang Lee's Hulk) with brown hair. He looks dangerous, like he's going to come flying through the window to kick your ass at any moment! It's wild! It's like seeing Ben Kingsley with hair in Searching for Bobby Fischer, except that Ben Kingsley looks much scarier now that he's bald. This is not to say that Sam Elliott cannot look very threatening in his current white-haired state, but rather that Sam Elliott in Road House is a bit of an experience.
NOT SO FUN FACT! There is some brief but lingering martial arts-related grossness in Road House, of the level you'd expect to see in a Steven Seagal film rather than a Patrick Swayze one. Eeeeew. Hail to the 80's.
KIND OF BORING CONCLUSION! A highly entertaining pair of films.
*Never.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The Other Postman. Unleash the hounds.
Last night, I made one of the classic movie-watching blunders: forgetting that it is directors, not writers, who have the final say on the end product. Eric Roth and Brian Helgeland are excellent screenwriters, but when you're writing for a director whose primary obsessions are epic scenery, gratuitous and very realistic sex, and the American Civil War, there's only so much you can do to help.
The Postman, by David Brin, is one of the greatest reads ever. The Postman, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, is just a few steps shy of being sufficiently over the top to qualify as a Hapless Shitstorm, a genre coined by my friend Andre to describe Baz Luhrman's Australia. The Postman is not just a bad movie, it's an empty one. That's the best description I can come up with: empty. The Postman lives up to its legendary reputation for dullness and then some. Very little happens in its 178 minutes, which I suppose is an impressive feat in its own way. On top of that, Costner forced the story into an epic Civil War allegory, a baffling move that can best be described as a critical failure. Even if you don't take into account its source material and consider the film as a distinct story in its own right, it's still a story that doesn't make any sense. Ignoring everything that made Brin's story interesting, filled instead with said nonsensical allegory and lots and lots of scenery, and basically given the Paul Verhoeven treatment, a condition in which a director reads part of a great book and decides that it would be a way better story if he completely missed, ignored and/or discarded the book's theme, thesis, and message, and replaced it with his own, The Postman is as boring as it is pointless.
(Paul Verhoeven got hired to direct a film version of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, by his own admission read only the prologue and thought it was too boring to read any further, and then went on to make what I would crown the king of Hapless Shitstorms (disclaimer: I have not seen Australia) whose cherry on top is the fact that its theme, message, and portrayal of the military are in every way the antithesis of Heinlein's. Costner's Postman is similar in structure, except that instead of being an antithesis, it's just more or less nothing at all. As I said, empty. I have no idea whether or not Costner read all of The Postman, but the film's content suggests that he never made it past chapter five.)
Avoid at all costs.
The Postman, by David Brin, is one of the greatest reads ever. The Postman, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, is just a few steps shy of being sufficiently over the top to qualify as a Hapless Shitstorm, a genre coined by my friend Andre to describe Baz Luhrman's Australia. The Postman is not just a bad movie, it's an empty one. That's the best description I can come up with: empty. The Postman lives up to its legendary reputation for dullness and then some. Very little happens in its 178 minutes, which I suppose is an impressive feat in its own way. On top of that, Costner forced the story into an epic Civil War allegory, a baffling move that can best be described as a critical failure. Even if you don't take into account its source material and consider the film as a distinct story in its own right, it's still a story that doesn't make any sense. Ignoring everything that made Brin's story interesting, filled instead with said nonsensical allegory and lots and lots of scenery, and basically given the Paul Verhoeven treatment, a condition in which a director reads part of a great book and decides that it would be a way better story if he completely missed, ignored and/or discarded the book's theme, thesis, and message, and replaced it with his own, The Postman is as boring as it is pointless.
(Paul Verhoeven got hired to direct a film version of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, by his own admission read only the prologue and thought it was too boring to read any further, and then went on to make what I would crown the king of Hapless Shitstorms (disclaimer: I have not seen Australia) whose cherry on top is the fact that its theme, message, and portrayal of the military are in every way the antithesis of Heinlein's. Costner's Postman is similar in structure, except that instead of being an antithesis, it's just more or less nothing at all. As I said, empty. I have no idea whether or not Costner read all of The Postman, but the film's content suggests that he never made it past chapter five.)
Avoid at all costs.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski
Much thanks to the crew at EW.com's Popwatch blog for bringing this to my attention. Warning: will only be appreciated by those who have seen and enjoyed the Cohen brother's cult bowling-noir classic The Big Lebowski.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Where The Wild Things Are
While I've got nothing against professional film critics, and read a critics review because I'm interested in what they have to say, there are four major categories in which I don't take anyone's word for in regards to a film's quality and/or message: action blockbusters (particularly comic and sci-fi related), Oscar bait or anything released during Oscar sweeps season, foreign films, and children's films. Children's films are tricky territory for critics, probably because they are not made for the people reviewing them, and in that same sphere their suitability for children is also necessarily judged. And suitability seems to have been the main point of contention regarding director Spike Jonze's brilliant adaptation of one of the few books it seems everyone you know has both read and loved: Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.
That Jonze's film is brilliant doesn't seem to have been in contention amongst critics. Beautifully written, directed, acted, designed, and photographed, Where the Wild Things Are expands on its brief but loaded source material in all the right ways. In this version of the story, young Max's journey doesn't begin with a punishment for acting his age, but a panicked flight from a confusing home situation made that way by his father's absence. It is this absence and its impact on both Max and his mother that set the framework for this picture. Miserable, confused, and hurting, he throws a spectacularly well- (or ill-) timed tantrum that gets out of hand, culminating with biting his mom and running away into the woods, and so his mystical journey begins.
And what a journey it is. The most striking thing about the land of the Wild Things is that it's not striking. It's a very familiar, plain deciduous forest, albeit one bordered by desert on one side and ocean on the other. The forests inhabitants, physical appearance aside, aren't especially fantastical either. Most of the Wild Things are easily identifiable as the different aspects of Max's being, and the rest are familiar in less obvious ways. In this way, the film allows Max to explore his feelings and question his actions after the Things crown his their king and he spends the length of his reign being caught in the middle of their conflicts. Carol is the most obvious part of Max, angry and confused by a sudden and unexplained abandonment, and it is mostly through arguments over Carol's behaviour that Max learns about his own. Max's journey to the land of the Wild Things is psychological in nature, and I would wager that its raw honesty is at the heart of what so many critics and filmgoers have claimed makes this film unsuitable for children - a claim I strongly dispute. There is much in this film to make both adult and child uncomfortable, but discomfort and unsuitability are two very different conditions, and the former is not always without its benefits.
Some critics have taken exception with the film's dark depiction of an unstable, unreliable world; others, with its violence. I would address the latter complaint first. Usually, when people complain about violence in kids films, it is because the violence is over-the-top or cartoonish, that is to say sanitized, the reality of its impacts hidden and denied. In the case of Where the Wild Things Are, it's kind of ironic that the majority of complaint's I've come across stem from the impacts of violence being portrayed in an honest and realistic fashion. The Wild Things are much bigger and stronger than Max, and so even their innocent play is fraught with peril as they cavort around jumping on each other and knocking over trees with childish exuberance. The risk of Max being involuntarily harmed is always present and palpable, largely thanks to an excellent performance by twelve-year old Max Records, and the risk of voluntary harm is always in play as well, as it is quickly established that the Wild Things have very short fuses. Also, there's the fact that they crown Max with a circlet and scepter taken from the corpse of a former king they clearly ate after they grew displeased with him, and verbal threats regarding Max becoming someone's meal are made more than once. The involuntary violence - that is, Max being hurt while playing - is not something I can find a reason for being alarmed by, as kids face it every day in the schoolyard, and it is in many ways a normal part of childhood. As my husband pointed out, Where the Wild Things Are is more honest about play than any other kid's film we've seen, because in this one - as in real life - play and games always break down after a point, resulting in at least one kid leaving hurt or unhappy. As for the threat of voluntary violence, I'd say it ties into the film's deeper theme, with is the second point of contention for many critics: the instability and unreliability of Max's world. Early in the film, Max's teacher gets a little too in-depth explaining to the class how the sun will eventually die, but not to worry, because humanity will probably have eradicated itself through any number of apocalyptic scenarios long before that happens (that uncomfortably hilarious scene brought Invader Zim''s Miss Bitters ("doom...dooom....dooooomed!"). Carols mournful monologues include a reflection on how all the sand in the desert used to be something, and what it might erode into next; and, of course, the eventual discovery that Max isn't a real king with mystical powers destroys any fairtytale qualities remaining in the Wild Things existence.
I think it is this portrayal and exploration of instability that makes Where the Wild Things Are one of, possibly the best kid's film I've ever seen, and the very reason kids should be taken to see it. It is unflinching, but not unbearably so, because it is honest. The reason for Max's recent loss of his father is never spoken of in the film, allowing it to be read as being about either divorce or death, and in this way its talk of the sun's extinction is a perfect metaphor. What should be more gratuitously reliable than the sun rising, setting, and being there every day? What should be more gratuitously reliable to a child than the continued, whole existence of his family? More than any other film I've seen on the topic, Where the Wild Things Are explores what happens when the most reliable thing in a kids world is swept out from under his feet with a breadth and depth unmatched even by Brad Bird's The Iron Giant - and I would argue that it does this in a way that a child sufficiently old enough would understand and identify with. Unfortunately, I don't have a child to query on this topic, so this is all conjecture based on what I read and watched as a kid and the fact that I come from what sociologists call a broken home, but I can say this: it's no E.T. E.T. is the most famous, well-loved kid's film about broken homes of my generation, and I hate it. I think it's horribly dishonest, as it glosses over the ugliness of divorce and its impacts with both the confusingly incomplete metaphor of its titular character and the fact that, aside from being less lonely for a few weeks, Elliot never works anything out emotionally, and the only angry or irrational behaviour he exhibits can be blamed on E.T. accidentally getting drunk and passing it on psychically. There is, of course, a tidy, convenient, happy-sappy ending to the story. People love this movie, I mean truly, deeply love it - a Rotten Tomatoes poll several years back ranked it as the best sci-fi film of all time. To quote my favourite virtual philosopher, Homestar Runner: What. The. Crap. E.T. is escapism, but not the good kind. I hated it when I watched it as a child of divorce, and I hated it when I watched it as an adult child of divorce.
Where The Wild Things Are, on the other hand, lays its cards on the table. It's a story about reality, and what our options are when the prospects of a fairytale ending or mysterious stranger who will make everything okay are dim or impossible. I don't know about you, but I don't know a lot of adults who speak fondly of blatantly fictional stories about uncomfortable realities. Sure, we like our biopics, and "based on true events" stuff, but it's telling that the best, most complete, most honest film I've ever found about the destructive nature of guilt and unconfessed sin is an English-language picture written and directed by Americans...which was produced and filmed in Spain, because they could not get financial backing in their home country, and whose only U.S. distributor was Paramount Home Video. In the circles I most frequently travel in, El Maquinista (The Machinist) is often dismissed out of hand because of its R rating, a rating which seems to accompany films about truth almost as much as it does films about obscene and gratuitous lies. Where The Wild Things Are, by virtue of its source material, is already more famous than The Machinist will ever be, even in the face of a new public interest in star Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) - but I wonder how the response to this movie would change were it an original or little-known story. I'd love to read a review by someone who's never heard of the book.
Spike Jonze is a man with a very strange resume consisting mostly of music videos for the like of Bjork, The Chemical Brothers, and R.E.M., as well as writing credits for Jackass, Jackass: The Movie, and Jackass 2, but until now has been most well-known for a bizarre little film called Being John Malkovich, a picture I'm not sure I like but will always appreciate. Whether or not you take your kid to see it, Where The Wild Things Are is a work of art that accomplishes everything good artwork should.
That Jonze's film is brilliant doesn't seem to have been in contention amongst critics. Beautifully written, directed, acted, designed, and photographed, Where the Wild Things Are expands on its brief but loaded source material in all the right ways. In this version of the story, young Max's journey doesn't begin with a punishment for acting his age, but a panicked flight from a confusing home situation made that way by his father's absence. It is this absence and its impact on both Max and his mother that set the framework for this picture. Miserable, confused, and hurting, he throws a spectacularly well- (or ill-) timed tantrum that gets out of hand, culminating with biting his mom and running away into the woods, and so his mystical journey begins.
And what a journey it is. The most striking thing about the land of the Wild Things is that it's not striking. It's a very familiar, plain deciduous forest, albeit one bordered by desert on one side and ocean on the other. The forests inhabitants, physical appearance aside, aren't especially fantastical either. Most of the Wild Things are easily identifiable as the different aspects of Max's being, and the rest are familiar in less obvious ways. In this way, the film allows Max to explore his feelings and question his actions after the Things crown his their king and he spends the length of his reign being caught in the middle of their conflicts. Carol is the most obvious part of Max, angry and confused by a sudden and unexplained abandonment, and it is mostly through arguments over Carol's behaviour that Max learns about his own. Max's journey to the land of the Wild Things is psychological in nature, and I would wager that its raw honesty is at the heart of what so many critics and filmgoers have claimed makes this film unsuitable for children - a claim I strongly dispute. There is much in this film to make both adult and child uncomfortable, but discomfort and unsuitability are two very different conditions, and the former is not always without its benefits.
Some critics have taken exception with the film's dark depiction of an unstable, unreliable world; others, with its violence. I would address the latter complaint first. Usually, when people complain about violence in kids films, it is because the violence is over-the-top or cartoonish, that is to say sanitized, the reality of its impacts hidden and denied. In the case of Where the Wild Things Are, it's kind of ironic that the majority of complaint's I've come across stem from the impacts of violence being portrayed in an honest and realistic fashion. The Wild Things are much bigger and stronger than Max, and so even their innocent play is fraught with peril as they cavort around jumping on each other and knocking over trees with childish exuberance. The risk of Max being involuntarily harmed is always present and palpable, largely thanks to an excellent performance by twelve-year old Max Records, and the risk of voluntary harm is always in play as well, as it is quickly established that the Wild Things have very short fuses. Also, there's the fact that they crown Max with a circlet and scepter taken from the corpse of a former king they clearly ate after they grew displeased with him, and verbal threats regarding Max becoming someone's meal are made more than once. The involuntary violence - that is, Max being hurt while playing - is not something I can find a reason for being alarmed by, as kids face it every day in the schoolyard, and it is in many ways a normal part of childhood. As my husband pointed out, Where the Wild Things Are is more honest about play than any other kid's film we've seen, because in this one - as in real life - play and games always break down after a point, resulting in at least one kid leaving hurt or unhappy. As for the threat of voluntary violence, I'd say it ties into the film's deeper theme, with is the second point of contention for many critics: the instability and unreliability of Max's world. Early in the film, Max's teacher gets a little too in-depth explaining to the class how the sun will eventually die, but not to worry, because humanity will probably have eradicated itself through any number of apocalyptic scenarios long before that happens (that uncomfortably hilarious scene brought Invader Zim''s Miss Bitters ("doom...dooom....dooooomed!"). Carols mournful monologues include a reflection on how all the sand in the desert used to be something, and what it might erode into next; and, of course, the eventual discovery that Max isn't a real king with mystical powers destroys any fairtytale qualities remaining in the Wild Things existence.
I think it is this portrayal and exploration of instability that makes Where the Wild Things Are one of, possibly the best kid's film I've ever seen, and the very reason kids should be taken to see it. It is unflinching, but not unbearably so, because it is honest. The reason for Max's recent loss of his father is never spoken of in the film, allowing it to be read as being about either divorce or death, and in this way its talk of the sun's extinction is a perfect metaphor. What should be more gratuitously reliable than the sun rising, setting, and being there every day? What should be more gratuitously reliable to a child than the continued, whole existence of his family? More than any other film I've seen on the topic, Where the Wild Things Are explores what happens when the most reliable thing in a kids world is swept out from under his feet with a breadth and depth unmatched even by Brad Bird's The Iron Giant - and I would argue that it does this in a way that a child sufficiently old enough would understand and identify with. Unfortunately, I don't have a child to query on this topic, so this is all conjecture based on what I read and watched as a kid and the fact that I come from what sociologists call a broken home, but I can say this: it's no E.T. E.T. is the most famous, well-loved kid's film about broken homes of my generation, and I hate it. I think it's horribly dishonest, as it glosses over the ugliness of divorce and its impacts with both the confusingly incomplete metaphor of its titular character and the fact that, aside from being less lonely for a few weeks, Elliot never works anything out emotionally, and the only angry or irrational behaviour he exhibits can be blamed on E.T. accidentally getting drunk and passing it on psychically. There is, of course, a tidy, convenient, happy-sappy ending to the story. People love this movie, I mean truly, deeply love it - a Rotten Tomatoes poll several years back ranked it as the best sci-fi film of all time. To quote my favourite virtual philosopher, Homestar Runner: What. The. Crap. E.T. is escapism, but not the good kind. I hated it when I watched it as a child of divorce, and I hated it when I watched it as an adult child of divorce.
Where The Wild Things Are, on the other hand, lays its cards on the table. It's a story about reality, and what our options are when the prospects of a fairytale ending or mysterious stranger who will make everything okay are dim or impossible. I don't know about you, but I don't know a lot of adults who speak fondly of blatantly fictional stories about uncomfortable realities. Sure, we like our biopics, and "based on true events" stuff, but it's telling that the best, most complete, most honest film I've ever found about the destructive nature of guilt and unconfessed sin is an English-language picture written and directed by Americans...which was produced and filmed in Spain, because they could not get financial backing in their home country, and whose only U.S. distributor was Paramount Home Video. In the circles I most frequently travel in, El Maquinista (The Machinist) is often dismissed out of hand because of its R rating, a rating which seems to accompany films about truth almost as much as it does films about obscene and gratuitous lies. Where The Wild Things Are, by virtue of its source material, is already more famous than The Machinist will ever be, even in the face of a new public interest in star Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) - but I wonder how the response to this movie would change were it an original or little-known story. I'd love to read a review by someone who's never heard of the book.
Spike Jonze is a man with a very strange resume consisting mostly of music videos for the like of Bjork, The Chemical Brothers, and R.E.M., as well as writing credits for Jackass, Jackass: The Movie, and Jackass 2, but until now has been most well-known for a bizarre little film called Being John Malkovich, a picture I'm not sure I like but will always appreciate. Whether or not you take your kid to see it, Where The Wild Things Are is a work of art that accomplishes everything good artwork should.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Just Act Natural: Rise of the Silver Surfer
When the first Fantastic Four came out in 2005, it was not a good time to be making comic book movies about comic books that weren't serious. Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man flicks had just taught the non-comic-loving world that superheroes had both brains and hearts, Guillermo Del Toro's first Hellboy (2004), though not a high-profile film, was rather good and also featuring a dark and somber mythology, and Batman Begins, which hit Can-Am screens a month before Fantastic Four, pushed critics and audiences over the final edge of belief that a comic book movie must be serious, dark, and restless in order to be good, legitimate, popularly acceptable art. The fact that Fantastic Four is not, as a series, a dark and serious enterprise didn't stop filmmakers from trying to force it to fit such a tone, and the resulting film, when not outright awful, was underwhelming and dull. So it's not surprise that its 2007 sequel 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, was a gift-wrapped critical punching bag. I certainly had no intentions of watching it with memories of the first film still fresh in my mind.
But I'll watch virtually anything as long as it's free, and this month's new Telus Preview Channel is Action, and amidst all the awesome double-bill screenings of The Rock/Con Air and Aliens/the original Predator came, obviously, Rise of the Silver Surfer, which somehow got taped and somehow got watched, in its entirety, last night. I was expecting lots of things from Silver Surfer, but a good time wasn't one of them.
And yet, a good time was exactly what I got. Casting aside all efforts to make The Fantastic Four something they're not, Rise of the Silver Surfer is lighthearted, candy-coated, well-played fun that exercises the spirit of its source material with delightful abandon. The plot is nicely straightforward: the Surfer, a scout for a planet-eating entity known as Galactus, has marked Earth as his boss's next meal, and by the time the Four get this information, they have less then a week to come up with a way to throw Galactus off course. Galactus has awfully inconvenient timing, because Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffud) and Sue Storm/The Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba) are still trying very hard to hold a wedding without a world-threatening crisis breaking out before they can say "I do". For others, however, Galactus' timing is great, because it coincides with some nameless lackey un-boxing Reed's defeated arch-nemesis Victor Von Doom so that he can meet up with the Surfer and try to strike an alliance. When his proposal is rejected, Doom turns to the U.S. military - and the Fantastic Four - with the insistence that they must work together in order to save the planet. Of course, Dr. Doom is full of crap. Fortunately, The Invisible Girl has a power none of her comrades can absorb from her: feminine charm, which, also fortunately, the non-human Surfer is not immune to. And did I mention that the Surfer has total mastery over matter, and is Earth's only hope? Much planet-saving ensues!
When I say the plot's straightforward, I don't mean there are no holes or discrepancies, just that if you roll with them, you'll have a good time. Who un-boxed Doom, and why? Why does the military let him parade around with virtually unrestricted access and no armed escort? How, exactly, does the Surfer defeat Galactus? Rise of the Silver Surfer is one of those films in which such trifles don't matter, and if you think they need to matter, of course you'll hate it. The whole feel of this film is 100% Fantastic Four comic book fun, and succeeds on those grounds. Its deliberately cheesy humour is nicely underplayed, and it has a lot of genuinely funny moments to boot, mostly courtesy of Ioan Gruffud's spot-on portrayal of Reed Richards. Gruffud, the titular star of A&E's fantastic Horatio Hornblower films, plays Reed as every inch the haplessly boring, scientific, un-witty, out-of-the-loop straight man character he is, and the result is lots of natural, believable, enjoyable comedy. A lot of critics panned his performance for being dry - well, it is, and that's the point. Reed is a dry character, who produces lots of dry humour, and when you do it right, like Gruffud does, this is a good thing. There's also a lot of fun provided by Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Chris Evans) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Michael Chiklis, The Shield), particularly in a Surfer-related plot device that causes the Four to be able to trade powers by touching each other. All in all, how understated everyone is is surprising and delightful, and really ties the film together. There are some pleasantly touching moments, too, again divided up between Reed/Sue and Johnny/Ben. And the phone call that interrupts Reed and Sue's third attempt at a wedding at the film's close is a brief moment of pure comic genius, a hilariously ludicrous scenario which the cast plays straight to end the film on a wonderfully memorable note.
I'm going to be a presumptuous cynic here and suggest that another reason Rise of the Silver Surfer didn't do well with Canadian/U.S. audiences may be that there was no significant action occurring in major Can-Am cities, or affecting major Can-Am attractions (aside from a crack in the Washington monument), and I wouldn't be surprised if this led to a lot of people not caring about damage or peril occurring on-screen simply by virtue of being disconnected from the locations. The first major peril of the film involves the Surfer dislodging the ferris wheel at Central Pier in Blackpool, Englad, a major tourist attraction and point of significance - but only if you know that it's more than just another ferris wheel in the first place, and you think about it in relation to the movie's main theme. In the context of the film's primary sub-plot, in which Reed and Sue's wedding is constantly postponed because they can't have a 'normal life', I thought it was a brilliant decision to imperil/have an assault on a monument that represents, well, a pleasant and normal life instead of the usual imperiled government or patriotic monument, which though more globally, recognizable, wouldn't have much impact in this film. There's also a lot of potential for audience disconnection in the film's climax, in which a) the Four don't defeat Galactus, and b) the parts taking place on the ground take place in what looks like a small residential area in (I believe) Hong Kong. When the lights go on again, signifying victory, it really is stunning and effective to see a city so densely lit as Hong Kong come back on-line. In the average Hollywood film this scenario would probably take place in Times Square, but with a small and unassuming Hong Kong street comes not only commercial/entertainment neon advertising, but more emphasis of the theme of a normal life: lights burst on in corner groceries, laundromats, office buildings, real run-of-the-mill, everyday sort of places. It's a small touch, but a big reinforcement.
Also, a lot of people were upset about having a non-corporeal villain, complaining that he wasn't scary. I don't think he was supposed to be. Galactus, and defeating him, is the main plot of the film - but it's not the point. It's a character-driven story, and Galactus is merely a backdrop for giving the characters new situations to interact in.
Honestly, the only thing I had a hard time rolling with in 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer was the fact that Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, whose characters are brother and sister by birth, share absolutely no discernable genetic markers, by which I mean I was starting to wonder if my memory of the comics failed me and the characters were supposed to be adopted. Alba is a lovely lady, but whoever decided to dye her hair blonde and bronze her skin for this film succeeded only in making her look very strange, very fake, and ultimately, very distracting, and not in the good way. What can I say, I'm an artist. Strange visual discrepancies distract and bother me far more than their plot equivalents. Yes, yes, I know that Sue Storm is a blonde in the comics, but this is one area in which a little revisionism wouldn't have hurt.
4 Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is enough good (mostly) clean fun that I wouldn't mind having it on my shelf if I ever find it in the cheap bin. It's a great way to spend a fun and relaxing evening, as long as you're willing to accept it for what it is.
But I'll watch virtually anything as long as it's free, and this month's new Telus Preview Channel is Action, and amidst all the awesome double-bill screenings of The Rock/Con Air and Aliens/the original Predator came, obviously, Rise of the Silver Surfer, which somehow got taped and somehow got watched, in its entirety, last night. I was expecting lots of things from Silver Surfer, but a good time wasn't one of them.
And yet, a good time was exactly what I got. Casting aside all efforts to make The Fantastic Four something they're not, Rise of the Silver Surfer is lighthearted, candy-coated, well-played fun that exercises the spirit of its source material with delightful abandon. The plot is nicely straightforward: the Surfer, a scout for a planet-eating entity known as Galactus, has marked Earth as his boss's next meal, and by the time the Four get this information, they have less then a week to come up with a way to throw Galactus off course. Galactus has awfully inconvenient timing, because Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffud) and Sue Storm/The Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba) are still trying very hard to hold a wedding without a world-threatening crisis breaking out before they can say "I do". For others, however, Galactus' timing is great, because it coincides with some nameless lackey un-boxing Reed's defeated arch-nemesis Victor Von Doom so that he can meet up with the Surfer and try to strike an alliance. When his proposal is rejected, Doom turns to the U.S. military - and the Fantastic Four - with the insistence that they must work together in order to save the planet. Of course, Dr. Doom is full of crap. Fortunately, The Invisible Girl has a power none of her comrades can absorb from her: feminine charm, which, also fortunately, the non-human Surfer is not immune to. And did I mention that the Surfer has total mastery over matter, and is Earth's only hope? Much planet-saving ensues!
When I say the plot's straightforward, I don't mean there are no holes or discrepancies, just that if you roll with them, you'll have a good time. Who un-boxed Doom, and why? Why does the military let him parade around with virtually unrestricted access and no armed escort? How, exactly, does the Surfer defeat Galactus? Rise of the Silver Surfer is one of those films in which such trifles don't matter, and if you think they need to matter, of course you'll hate it. The whole feel of this film is 100% Fantastic Four comic book fun, and succeeds on those grounds. Its deliberately cheesy humour is nicely underplayed, and it has a lot of genuinely funny moments to boot, mostly courtesy of Ioan Gruffud's spot-on portrayal of Reed Richards. Gruffud, the titular star of A&E's fantastic Horatio Hornblower films, plays Reed as every inch the haplessly boring, scientific, un-witty, out-of-the-loop straight man character he is, and the result is lots of natural, believable, enjoyable comedy. A lot of critics panned his performance for being dry - well, it is, and that's the point. Reed is a dry character, who produces lots of dry humour, and when you do it right, like Gruffud does, this is a good thing. There's also a lot of fun provided by Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Chris Evans) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Michael Chiklis, The Shield), particularly in a Surfer-related plot device that causes the Four to be able to trade powers by touching each other. All in all, how understated everyone is is surprising and delightful, and really ties the film together. There are some pleasantly touching moments, too, again divided up between Reed/Sue and Johnny/Ben. And the phone call that interrupts Reed and Sue's third attempt at a wedding at the film's close is a brief moment of pure comic genius, a hilariously ludicrous scenario which the cast plays straight to end the film on a wonderfully memorable note.
I'm going to be a presumptuous cynic here and suggest that another reason Rise of the Silver Surfer didn't do well with Canadian/U.S. audiences may be that there was no significant action occurring in major Can-Am cities, or affecting major Can-Am attractions (aside from a crack in the Washington monument), and I wouldn't be surprised if this led to a lot of people not caring about damage or peril occurring on-screen simply by virtue of being disconnected from the locations. The first major peril of the film involves the Surfer dislodging the ferris wheel at Central Pier in Blackpool, Englad, a major tourist attraction and point of significance - but only if you know that it's more than just another ferris wheel in the first place, and you think about it in relation to the movie's main theme. In the context of the film's primary sub-plot, in which Reed and Sue's wedding is constantly postponed because they can't have a 'normal life', I thought it was a brilliant decision to imperil/have an assault on a monument that represents, well, a pleasant and normal life instead of the usual imperiled government or patriotic monument, which though more globally, recognizable, wouldn't have much impact in this film. There's also a lot of potential for audience disconnection in the film's climax, in which a) the Four don't defeat Galactus, and b) the parts taking place on the ground take place in what looks like a small residential area in (I believe) Hong Kong. When the lights go on again, signifying victory, it really is stunning and effective to see a city so densely lit as Hong Kong come back on-line. In the average Hollywood film this scenario would probably take place in Times Square, but with a small and unassuming Hong Kong street comes not only commercial/entertainment neon advertising, but more emphasis of the theme of a normal life: lights burst on in corner groceries, laundromats, office buildings, real run-of-the-mill, everyday sort of places. It's a small touch, but a big reinforcement.
Also, a lot of people were upset about having a non-corporeal villain, complaining that he wasn't scary. I don't think he was supposed to be. Galactus, and defeating him, is the main plot of the film - but it's not the point. It's a character-driven story, and Galactus is merely a backdrop for giving the characters new situations to interact in.
Honestly, the only thing I had a hard time rolling with in 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer was the fact that Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, whose characters are brother and sister by birth, share absolutely no discernable genetic markers, by which I mean I was starting to wonder if my memory of the comics failed me and the characters were supposed to be adopted. Alba is a lovely lady, but whoever decided to dye her hair blonde and bronze her skin for this film succeeded only in making her look very strange, very fake, and ultimately, very distracting, and not in the good way. What can I say, I'm an artist. Strange visual discrepancies distract and bother me far more than their plot equivalents. Yes, yes, I know that Sue Storm is a blonde in the comics, but this is one area in which a little revisionism wouldn't have hurt.
4 Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is enough good (mostly) clean fun that I wouldn't mind having it on my shelf if I ever find it in the cheap bin. It's a great way to spend a fun and relaxing evening, as long as you're willing to accept it for what it is.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
"But in eighteen-hundred and twelve, they burned your White House!"
Speaking of that CNN article on District 9 being recently banned in Nigeria until all scenes involving the crimelord and his shaman are removed, it must be said that the article in question contains the finest bit of propaganda I've seen that wasn't directly related
to WWII.
This is CNN's first on-line District 9 print feature to include a photo of its writer-director, South African native Neill Blomkamp, and what a photo it is. Not only does this baby serve to silently yet purposefully emphasize that this is situation in which a white man has offended black men, but of all the photos taken on District 9 press junkets, CNN picks one of Blomkamp smirking, which strongly suggests deliberate, sinister, and racistly superior intentions.
My hat is off the the photo editor. This is absolutely brilliant, perfect propaganda - so subtle, but only if you're thinking about it, which is what makes good propaganda effective. As stupid, insulting, and inflammatory as I think this particular bit of propaganda is, in a weird way it has greatly increased my respect for CNN as an organization that is extremely good at what it does.
to WWII. This is CNN's first on-line District 9 print feature to include a photo of its writer-director, South African native Neill Blomkamp, and what a photo it is. Not only does this baby serve to silently yet purposefully emphasize that this is situation in which a white man has offended black men, but of all the photos taken on District 9 press junkets, CNN picks one of Blomkamp smirking, which strongly suggests deliberate, sinister, and racistly superior intentions.
My hat is off the the photo editor. This is absolutely brilliant, perfect propaganda - so subtle, but only if you're thinking about it, which is what makes good propaganda effective. As stupid, insulting, and inflammatory as I think this particular bit of propaganda is, in a weird way it has greatly increased my respect for CNN as an organization that is extremely good at what it does.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Head, meet sand. I have a feeling you two are going to become good friends.
Yesterday, CNN.com put up an article about how the depiction of Nigerians in District 9 offends some Nigerians. For those who haven't seen the film, there is a sub-plot involving a Nigerian crimelord and his shaman, who have seized the opportunity to exploit the helpless Prawns as they're evicted from Johannesburg while also killing them and eating their hearts (and other body parts) because they believe that they'll be imbued with the aliens power upon doing so (i.e. become able to use their bio-engineered weaponry; the Prawns are also much physically stronger than humans).
Let's ignore for a moment the question of why CNN is just now running a story about controversy over a film that's been in international release for over a month. The bigger issue is that writer/director Neill Blomkamp didn't just pull this idea out of his ear. I don't know what the stats are for Nigeria in particular, but cannibalizing enemies, rivals, or physically unusual persons for the purpose of gaining special powers is a very, very old practice which remains an active problem in many parts of the African continent. The day The National Post ran a review of District 9, in which the reviewer criticized this aspect of the film as being offensive and culturally insensitive, the back page of that issue's 'A' section was devoted to an ongoing series of articles about how the abduction, dismemberment, and murder of albinos for the purpose of gaining supernatural power through cannibalization has reached a critical mass in Tanzania. If Blomkamp was stereotyping anyone with his depiction of this practice, it was crimelords and criminals, because the film very carefully establishes that the Nigerian villains are not Joe Average citizens.
Of course seeing this on film would be viscerally offensive to the tens of millions of Nigerians who aren't cannibals. It's a horrific, evil practice, and its depiction in District 9 should make anyone want to puke long before the hand-held camera action starts. But banning its portrayal on the grounds of cultural insensitivity or offense, or fear of stereotypes - as the Nigerian government is now doing due to increasing complaints from the citizenry - isn't going to do anyone much good. As a Christian, I have spent a lot of (stereotyped) time being reminded of the evils the institutional Church has perpetrated, both in my lifetime and long before. I have seen lots of Christians behaving very badly on film. I could consider it personally offensive to see something in a film such as a priest sexually abusing children, and (somewhat) rationally argue that this portrayal promotes a negative stereotype or condemnation of the Church as a whole. While successfully preventing that film from showing a priest abusing a child may make some people feel good or righteous about themselves in the short run, maintaining the illusion that nothing's amiss, it is a selfish, useless exercise that does no good. The wrongs must be faced, and set right; the house must be cleaned. When there are still an unbelievable amount of people ready to hold you personally responsible for all innocent blood spilled during King Richard's Crusades, you learn pretty quickly that ignoring or denying a shameful practice - especially one that's actually ongoing - doesn't make it go away.
It's a hard thing to face and own up to, being a part of a culture or body in whose name other parts are committing great evil. It's a source of great grief. But problems of this scale can't be fixed until they're recognized and condemned by enough people who are willing to fix them, and Neill Blomkamp has done nothing wrong by drawing attention to this particular problem in a very public way while being very careful not to indict the general populace in the process.
Let's ignore for a moment the question of why CNN is just now running a story about controversy over a film that's been in international release for over a month. The bigger issue is that writer/director Neill Blomkamp didn't just pull this idea out of his ear. I don't know what the stats are for Nigeria in particular, but cannibalizing enemies, rivals, or physically unusual persons for the purpose of gaining special powers is a very, very old practice which remains an active problem in many parts of the African continent. The day The National Post ran a review of District 9, in which the reviewer criticized this aspect of the film as being offensive and culturally insensitive, the back page of that issue's 'A' section was devoted to an ongoing series of articles about how the abduction, dismemberment, and murder of albinos for the purpose of gaining supernatural power through cannibalization has reached a critical mass in Tanzania. If Blomkamp was stereotyping anyone with his depiction of this practice, it was crimelords and criminals, because the film very carefully establishes that the Nigerian villains are not Joe Average citizens.
Of course seeing this on film would be viscerally offensive to the tens of millions of Nigerians who aren't cannibals. It's a horrific, evil practice, and its depiction in District 9 should make anyone want to puke long before the hand-held camera action starts. But banning its portrayal on the grounds of cultural insensitivity or offense, or fear of stereotypes - as the Nigerian government is now doing due to increasing complaints from the citizenry - isn't going to do anyone much good. As a Christian, I have spent a lot of (stereotyped) time being reminded of the evils the institutional Church has perpetrated, both in my lifetime and long before. I have seen lots of Christians behaving very badly on film. I could consider it personally offensive to see something in a film such as a priest sexually abusing children, and (somewhat) rationally argue that this portrayal promotes a negative stereotype or condemnation of the Church as a whole. While successfully preventing that film from showing a priest abusing a child may make some people feel good or righteous about themselves in the short run, maintaining the illusion that nothing's amiss, it is a selfish, useless exercise that does no good. The wrongs must be faced, and set right; the house must be cleaned. When there are still an unbelievable amount of people ready to hold you personally responsible for all innocent blood spilled during King Richard's Crusades, you learn pretty quickly that ignoring or denying a shameful practice - especially one that's actually ongoing - doesn't make it go away.
It's a hard thing to face and own up to, being a part of a culture or body in whose name other parts are committing great evil. It's a source of great grief. But problems of this scale can't be fixed until they're recognized and condemned by enough people who are willing to fix them, and Neill Blomkamp has done nothing wrong by drawing attention to this particular problem in a very public way while being very careful not to indict the general populace in the process.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The Sand Pebbles
Talk about art imitating life, a life which obsesses over the nature of art. The Sand Pebbles (1966), starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, and Candace Bergen, is a film about issues whose hilarious tagline happens to be "THE STORY OF MEN...men who disturbed the sleeping dragon of China as the world watched in terror!". In light of my recent comments on women, film, and "issues", and some of the responses those comments have garnered, I can't begin to explain what a perfectly funny coincidence it is to have watched The Sand Pebbles tonight.
Directed by Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still), The Sand Pebbles takes place in 1920's China and tells the story of U.S. Navy engineer Jake Holman (McQueen), newly transferred to a post patrolling the Yangtze River on the U.S.S. San Pablo. Jake is an uncomplicated man, and while good at his trade and far from stupid, he defines the term "military grunt". He is content with his place in the Navy, and with Jake, what you see is what you get - he's not hiding any secret strengths below his average-Joe surface. River patrol is pretty boring, but Jake gets unwelcome excitement in the form of dozens of Chinese nationals who have slowly made the San Pablo their home, filling out the holes in its crew for the price of room and board. Some of those holes are in Jake's engine room, and it's not long before this bigoted johnny-come-lately is stirring up the sleepy, comfortable rhythms the crew has grown into as it coexists with the Chinese while doing as little work as possible. Jake's first and only friend on the ship is Frenchy (Attenborough), a gentle and genial fellow who takes a shine to a local woman on his first shore leave with Jake. Jake kind of has women on the brain himself, specifically Shirley (Bergen), a missionary he met while en route to his new post. As internal conflicts on the mainland deepen, it's not long before the American gunboat's grudgingly tolerated presence becomse something far less welcome, though they remain forbidden to use force against the Chinese. Tensions skyrocket when the Chinese lay siege to the Pablo, trapping its crew aboard and forcing it to winter in the harbour as the sinking water level becomes impossible for a boat that size to navigate. What really brings everything to a head, though, is the increasingly dangerous position the crew finds themselves in after one of their own is falsely accused of the murder of a Chinese national.
Packed with heavy themes of bigotry, sexual abuse and slavery, and the many facets of Communism, the first half of The Sand Pebbles is an engaging and exquisite drama. Steve McQueen was an extraordinary talent, and his performance here is one few actors can rival; it may very well be his finest. In his hands, Jake's everyman attitudes and conflicts are real and recognizable, and selling that type of character is one of the harder things for an actor to accomplish. Richard Attenborough plays a role very different from the one he played opposite McQueen four years earlier in The Great Escape, bringing Frenchy to life as a man of shy, quiet determination who's as easy to identify with as Jake is. Captain Collins (Richard Crenna, who you may recognize as Rambo's Col. Trautman) and his first officer, Mr. Bordelles, are a rare cinematic pair in that they are both not only men of good character who make a good team, but who are excellent officers and seamen as well. Candace Bergen's Shirley doesn't have a lot of screen time, but she uses that time very well, creating a natural character who reminds me of many of the missionaries I've known. Robert Wise was an extraordinary hand at drama, and in this area The Sand Pebbles is rivaled by few other films. Looks, body language, and myriad other small but important touches make the characters and their actions and reactions natural, normal, and real.
The second half of the film brings with it military action, and these sequences are not up to par with the film's strong dramatic scenes. Not only is the direction less deft, resulting in one of the more unengaging cinematic naval battles in recent memory, but the second half is also where the film starts becoming engulfed by its primary political message. This is not to say that wasn't clear from the start. While the final ten minutes should be terrifying, and similar scenes in other films have left me unable to sleep, I found the terror here was overshadowed by the message. About thirty minutes before the end, the film's politics become cemented to its emotions, and after over two hours of identifying with Jake, his last scenes left me unaffected by his predicament because I'd been firmly told why I should feel what he feels in those last moments, whereas up until then the film had simply made a good argument for what it thought was the best reason for Jake to feel as he does. The first problem with this is that I'm very stubborn and stupidly proud, and have an automatic negative gut reaction to emotional instructions. The second, wider problem with this is that, while well-presented, I couldn't relate to or identify with the film's reasons for its feelings, which is why they worked well as a preferred option to consider, but not as an absolute. After two hours of restrained yet very effective presentation, this lessened the message somehow. In this way, The Sand Pebbles is very similar to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: the first half is a perfect, incredible example of its genre and filmmaking in general that also brings a powerful, thought-provoking message; the second half gives all that up for a soapbox.
On a separate note, I would feel remiss to not mention that the shortest available version of The Sand Pebbles clocks in at three hours and three minutes, and doesn't really have what many filmgoers including myself would consider to be an "ending" . It stops rather than ends, an important distinction for any story, but one you may find especially frustrating for a story of this legnth. A more recent example of a film that finishes instead of ending is No Country For Old Men, which uses that device in a fuller, more effective fashion than the film in question. If you don't like getting that kind of sass from your movies, you may prefer watching the first half of The Sand Pebbles and then paying a visit to Moviepooper.com to fill in the rest (or just ask me how it ends).
On a very separate note, for some reason I'm convinced that Robert Wise was one of the few McCarthy-era directors to be an actual, card-carrying member of the Communist party, but I can't seem to find any corroboration of that, so I'm starting to doubt that this conviction/memory is correct. If it's not, who am I confusing him with?
First half good, second half less good, The Sand Pebbles is as perfect an example as I could've asked for of the difference between a good film about issues and a bad or not so good film about issues - because it's both! No one will ever accuse me of being efficient, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the virtue. :D
Directed by Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still), The Sand Pebbles takes place in 1920's China and tells the story of U.S. Navy engineer Jake Holman (McQueen), newly transferred to a post patrolling the Yangtze River on the U.S.S. San Pablo. Jake is an uncomplicated man, and while good at his trade and far from stupid, he defines the term "military grunt". He is content with his place in the Navy, and with Jake, what you see is what you get - he's not hiding any secret strengths below his average-Joe surface. River patrol is pretty boring, but Jake gets unwelcome excitement in the form of dozens of Chinese nationals who have slowly made the San Pablo their home, filling out the holes in its crew for the price of room and board. Some of those holes are in Jake's engine room, and it's not long before this bigoted johnny-come-lately is stirring up the sleepy, comfortable rhythms the crew has grown into as it coexists with the Chinese while doing as little work as possible. Jake's first and only friend on the ship is Frenchy (Attenborough), a gentle and genial fellow who takes a shine to a local woman on his first shore leave with Jake. Jake kind of has women on the brain himself, specifically Shirley (Bergen), a missionary he met while en route to his new post. As internal conflicts on the mainland deepen, it's not long before the American gunboat's grudgingly tolerated presence becomse something far less welcome, though they remain forbidden to use force against the Chinese. Tensions skyrocket when the Chinese lay siege to the Pablo, trapping its crew aboard and forcing it to winter in the harbour as the sinking water level becomes impossible for a boat that size to navigate. What really brings everything to a head, though, is the increasingly dangerous position the crew finds themselves in after one of their own is falsely accused of the murder of a Chinese national.
Packed with heavy themes of bigotry, sexual abuse and slavery, and the many facets of Communism, the first half of The Sand Pebbles is an engaging and exquisite drama. Steve McQueen was an extraordinary talent, and his performance here is one few actors can rival; it may very well be his finest. In his hands, Jake's everyman attitudes and conflicts are real and recognizable, and selling that type of character is one of the harder things for an actor to accomplish. Richard Attenborough plays a role very different from the one he played opposite McQueen four years earlier in The Great Escape, bringing Frenchy to life as a man of shy, quiet determination who's as easy to identify with as Jake is. Captain Collins (Richard Crenna, who you may recognize as Rambo's Col. Trautman) and his first officer, Mr. Bordelles, are a rare cinematic pair in that they are both not only men of good character who make a good team, but who are excellent officers and seamen as well. Candace Bergen's Shirley doesn't have a lot of screen time, but she uses that time very well, creating a natural character who reminds me of many of the missionaries I've known. Robert Wise was an extraordinary hand at drama, and in this area The Sand Pebbles is rivaled by few other films. Looks, body language, and myriad other small but important touches make the characters and their actions and reactions natural, normal, and real.
The second half of the film brings with it military action, and these sequences are not up to par with the film's strong dramatic scenes. Not only is the direction less deft, resulting in one of the more unengaging cinematic naval battles in recent memory, but the second half is also where the film starts becoming engulfed by its primary political message. This is not to say that wasn't clear from the start. While the final ten minutes should be terrifying, and similar scenes in other films have left me unable to sleep, I found the terror here was overshadowed by the message. About thirty minutes before the end, the film's politics become cemented to its emotions, and after over two hours of identifying with Jake, his last scenes left me unaffected by his predicament because I'd been firmly told why I should feel what he feels in those last moments, whereas up until then the film had simply made a good argument for what it thought was the best reason for Jake to feel as he does. The first problem with this is that I'm very stubborn and stupidly proud, and have an automatic negative gut reaction to emotional instructions. The second, wider problem with this is that, while well-presented, I couldn't relate to or identify with the film's reasons for its feelings, which is why they worked well as a preferred option to consider, but not as an absolute. After two hours of restrained yet very effective presentation, this lessened the message somehow. In this way, The Sand Pebbles is very similar to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: the first half is a perfect, incredible example of its genre and filmmaking in general that also brings a powerful, thought-provoking message; the second half gives all that up for a soapbox.
On a separate note, I would feel remiss to not mention that the shortest available version of The Sand Pebbles clocks in at three hours and three minutes, and doesn't really have what many filmgoers including myself would consider to be an "ending" . It stops rather than ends, an important distinction for any story, but one you may find especially frustrating for a story of this legnth. A more recent example of a film that finishes instead of ending is No Country For Old Men, which uses that device in a fuller, more effective fashion than the film in question. If you don't like getting that kind of sass from your movies, you may prefer watching the first half of The Sand Pebbles and then paying a visit to Moviepooper.com to fill in the rest (or just ask me how it ends).
On a very separate note, for some reason I'm convinced that Robert Wise was one of the few McCarthy-era directors to be an actual, card-carrying member of the Communist party, but I can't seem to find any corroboration of that, so I'm starting to doubt that this conviction/memory is correct. If it's not, who am I confusing him with?
First half good, second half less good, The Sand Pebbles is as perfect an example as I could've asked for of the difference between a good film about issues and a bad or not so good film about issues - because it's both! No one will ever accuse me of being efficient, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the virtue. :D
Friday, September 18, 2009
Movies For Women, and The End of Internet Anonymity Syndrome
While I was letting this post stew for a few days as I put my thoughts together, I left a half-formed comment on Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch Blog (www.popwatch.ew.com), a micro-version of my argument for why there are few well-known female directors. One of the Popwatch writers took half of that half-formed comment and posted in in their "makes us think" article, inviting other EW readers to comment on, um, my (half-) comment. I discovered this not due to my daily jaunt over to ew.com, but by Googling "Jane Campion interviews" and finding my name crop up at a publication called Bitch Magazine, commenting on how stupid my comment was (I can now say that I've been bitch-slapped by Bitch Magazine. Tell me that's not entertaining). The Lesson? People do in fact read what you write on the Internet, so be smarter about it, and remember that anything can be misquoted. So here's the whole argument, fully-pondered, fully-rendered, for your consideration.
The Toronto International Film Festival has been upon us for several days now, and with it a new piece (the Keats bio-pic Bright Star) from Oscar-nominated director Jane Campion (The Piano). Campion's presence at the festival brings with it an expected spree of interviews in which both interviewer and interviewee at some point complain about the lack of female directors, lack of films for women, and the need for more female empowerment (whatever that really means. I haven't figured it out yet. EW.com film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum describes Bright Star as "womanly-wise." I haven't figured that one out yet, either.
Now, this rubs me the wrong way for two reasons. First of all, it would appear that when people complain about a lack of female directors, what they're really complaining about is a lack of female directors who are also household names. The thing is, the number of male directors who are household names - i.e., who you can name-drop in conversation with anyone you know regardless of their film knowledge and get an "oh yeah, him!" in return - is very small number indeed. Spielberg...Lucas...Michael Bay...Clint Eastwood...maybe Cameron or Scorsese or the Cohen brothers. Out of the huge number of men who direct films, a very small number succeed in directing films that go on to see cinematic distribution, and within that very small number, very few make big waves in the general public mind. Which leads to the question of how many female directors there are to begin with by comparison, because that does matter in such a conversation. If, in a sampling of a hundred film school students, fifty men and fifty women, fourty-five of those men want to be directors, but fourty-five of those women are more interested in cinematography and screenwriting, bemoaning the significantly larger number of male directors is meaningless. Now, if fourty-five men and fourty-five women all want to direct professionally, all work equally hard at perfecting their craft and making connections, and all want to make high-quality, interesting films that reach a broad audience (or crappy films that also reach a broad audience, like Transformers or Cold Mountain), it would be a bit strange, yea even suspicious if thirty men but only two women wound up directing widely-distributed films. But this conversation means nothing without a grasp of how the number of directors seeking to make films for broad audiences is divided across gender lines in the first place.
That idea of "broad audiences" is my second point, and a big part of my theory on the lack of household-name female directors. In my experiences as an artist, and a life-long big consumer of art, be it film, literature, music, or video games, an overwhelming number of female artists tend to focus their art on "women's issues." The result is often a work that is made strictly for consumers with the same approach to feminism as the artist, and has little concern for actual art. One of the most famous female fantasy authors to date is Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose The Mists of Avalon (1982) is a highly influential tome that female fantasy authors like Mercedes Lackey have taken their cues from since. I may have read way too many Bradley imitators in junior high; let's just say they didn't leave a mark in the good way. The Mists of Avalon is a re-telling of the Arthurian myth based on, well, the premise that all men are patriarchal pigs whose sole apparent purpose in life is to make women miserable, and that girls rule and boys drool. The story is merely a vehicle for Bradley's manifesto, and as such its quality is a secondary concern, by which I mean it's a rather bad book. In general, any book or film whose focus on "issues" supersedes its concern for making quality art tends to be shoddy, regardless of the artist's gender. I think the American feminist movement is one of the worst things to happen to art, because its message of "empowerment" also promotes the message that it's every female artist's solemn duty to make art about women's issues and only women's issues. There's nothing wrong with niche art - one of my favourite films, Brick, is a bizarre production that I can't imagine appealing to anyone other than a film geek, a Dashiell Hammett fan, or someone so obsessed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt that they'd watch him wash the dishes and consider it time well-spent - but if the art is bad, and never moves past the paradoxical attention-seeking/navel-gazing nature of niche art, who the audience is doesn't matter. I personally feel that making a great movie is far more useful than obsessing over the fact that there are still sexist men roaming free even in today's enlightened society.
What do directors like Jane Campion think about female directors who make films for wider audiences? Beats me, because the pro-empowerment directors never mention these ladies in their interviews. Everyone's favourite manly-man high-octane thrill ride, Point Break, was directed by one Ms. Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed everyone's less-favourite manly-man high-octane thrill ride, K-19: The Widowmaker (featuring Harrison Ford doing his best "Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October" impression), as well as James Cameron's Strange Days. There are also a lot of women doing great work behind the camera other than directing. Veteran film editor Thelma Schoonmaker has been assembling Martin Scorsese's films since before Taxi Driver, and won an Oscar for The Departed - but since she's not the boss, she and women like her don't seem to count as "women behind the camera". In the world of fantasy literature, former Neverwinter Nights game-writer Naomi Novik recently burst into the scene with her Temeraire novels, entertaining and well-done historical fantasy that has something for everyone and seeks to tell an engaging story (though in fairness, I can only apply that description to the first three; her two most recent ones have faltered a bit).
I think what offends and entertains me the most about this whole business is the thoughtless sexism of "empowered" women promoting the bizarre idea that movies not made specifically for women are lesser films that we tolerate, that we cannot identify with these films, and that we all secretly crave and prefer "women's films" above all others. I guess I must be a man trapped in a woman's body, because my favourite films include The Seven Samurai, The Big Lebowski, The Great Escape, John Carpenter's The Thing, Stargate, Escape from New York, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the Rock, Die Hard, Get Carter, and most of the films to come out of Marvel Studios in the past decade. I didn't see the A&E Pride and Prejudice until my husband convinced me that it was amazing. And there are a goodly amount of women in the video game industry, which pro-empowerment feminists tend to write off as being just for men. Alyssa Finley is the lead hand on the BioShock series, an extraordinary work of art and tech. Google "Rapture City" for a visual, and prepare to have your socks knocked. Susan O'Connor is the game writer responsible for BioShock, Gears of War, Far Cry 2 (which I've recently put my hand to, and is brilliant), and many other solid shooter titles. Those alternately funny, morbid, funnily morbid, and overall genius Vault-Boy, Vault-Tech, and skill book illustrations from Fallout 3? You can thank Natalia Smirnova, who's also responsible for the entire user interface of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bioshock, Gears, and Far Cry are all first-person shooters, to boot - the epitome of the "just for men" genre. But with the kind of credentials these ladies have, there's no good reason to assume they're not making the games they love to make. All of the titles listed above are "game of the year" winners in some way.
To blame the ratio of big-name female directors to big-name male directors on sexism is an easy out. To ignore the female directors who aren't big names but who make well-loved films that aren't just for women is humourously sexist. To ignore skilled women behind the camera who don't happen to be directing is just insulting. To attempt to write off films, books, and games that aren't made specifically for women as being just for men is sexist and insulting. To make good art, whoever you are? Now that's empowering. Whatever that means.
The Toronto International Film Festival has been upon us for several days now, and with it a new piece (the Keats bio-pic Bright Star) from Oscar-nominated director Jane Campion (The Piano). Campion's presence at the festival brings with it an expected spree of interviews in which both interviewer and interviewee at some point complain about the lack of female directors, lack of films for women, and the need for more female empowerment (whatever that really means. I haven't figured it out yet. EW.com film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum describes Bright Star as "womanly-wise." I haven't figured that one out yet, either.
Now, this rubs me the wrong way for two reasons. First of all, it would appear that when people complain about a lack of female directors, what they're really complaining about is a lack of female directors who are also household names. The thing is, the number of male directors who are household names - i.e., who you can name-drop in conversation with anyone you know regardless of their film knowledge and get an "oh yeah, him!" in return - is very small number indeed. Spielberg...Lucas...Michael Bay...Clint Eastwood...maybe Cameron or Scorsese or the Cohen brothers. Out of the huge number of men who direct films, a very small number succeed in directing films that go on to see cinematic distribution, and within that very small number, very few make big waves in the general public mind. Which leads to the question of how many female directors there are to begin with by comparison, because that does matter in such a conversation. If, in a sampling of a hundred film school students, fifty men and fifty women, fourty-five of those men want to be directors, but fourty-five of those women are more interested in cinematography and screenwriting, bemoaning the significantly larger number of male directors is meaningless. Now, if fourty-five men and fourty-five women all want to direct professionally, all work equally hard at perfecting their craft and making connections, and all want to make high-quality, interesting films that reach a broad audience (or crappy films that also reach a broad audience, like Transformers or Cold Mountain), it would be a bit strange, yea even suspicious if thirty men but only two women wound up directing widely-distributed films. But this conversation means nothing without a grasp of how the number of directors seeking to make films for broad audiences is divided across gender lines in the first place.
That idea of "broad audiences" is my second point, and a big part of my theory on the lack of household-name female directors. In my experiences as an artist, and a life-long big consumer of art, be it film, literature, music, or video games, an overwhelming number of female artists tend to focus their art on "women's issues." The result is often a work that is made strictly for consumers with the same approach to feminism as the artist, and has little concern for actual art. One of the most famous female fantasy authors to date is Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose The Mists of Avalon (1982) is a highly influential tome that female fantasy authors like Mercedes Lackey have taken their cues from since. I may have read way too many Bradley imitators in junior high; let's just say they didn't leave a mark in the good way. The Mists of Avalon is a re-telling of the Arthurian myth based on, well, the premise that all men are patriarchal pigs whose sole apparent purpose in life is to make women miserable, and that girls rule and boys drool. The story is merely a vehicle for Bradley's manifesto, and as such its quality is a secondary concern, by which I mean it's a rather bad book. In general, any book or film whose focus on "issues" supersedes its concern for making quality art tends to be shoddy, regardless of the artist's gender. I think the American feminist movement is one of the worst things to happen to art, because its message of "empowerment" also promotes the message that it's every female artist's solemn duty to make art about women's issues and only women's issues. There's nothing wrong with niche art - one of my favourite films, Brick, is a bizarre production that I can't imagine appealing to anyone other than a film geek, a Dashiell Hammett fan, or someone so obsessed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt that they'd watch him wash the dishes and consider it time well-spent - but if the art is bad, and never moves past the paradoxical attention-seeking/navel-gazing nature of niche art, who the audience is doesn't matter. I personally feel that making a great movie is far more useful than obsessing over the fact that there are still sexist men roaming free even in today's enlightened society.
What do directors like Jane Campion think about female directors who make films for wider audiences? Beats me, because the pro-empowerment directors never mention these ladies in their interviews. Everyone's favourite manly-man high-octane thrill ride, Point Break, was directed by one Ms. Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed everyone's less-favourite manly-man high-octane thrill ride, K-19: The Widowmaker (featuring Harrison Ford doing his best "Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October" impression), as well as James Cameron's Strange Days. There are also a lot of women doing great work behind the camera other than directing. Veteran film editor Thelma Schoonmaker has been assembling Martin Scorsese's films since before Taxi Driver, and won an Oscar for The Departed - but since she's not the boss, she and women like her don't seem to count as "women behind the camera". In the world of fantasy literature, former Neverwinter Nights game-writer Naomi Novik recently burst into the scene with her Temeraire novels, entertaining and well-done historical fantasy that has something for everyone and seeks to tell an engaging story (though in fairness, I can only apply that description to the first three; her two most recent ones have faltered a bit).
I think what offends and entertains me the most about this whole business is the thoughtless sexism of "empowered" women promoting the bizarre idea that movies not made specifically for women are lesser films that we tolerate, that we cannot identify with these films, and that we all secretly crave and prefer "women's films" above all others. I guess I must be a man trapped in a woman's body, because my favourite films include The Seven Samurai, The Big Lebowski, The Great Escape, John Carpenter's The Thing, Stargate, Escape from New York, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the Rock, Die Hard, Get Carter, and most of the films to come out of Marvel Studios in the past decade. I didn't see the A&E Pride and Prejudice until my husband convinced me that it was amazing. And there are a goodly amount of women in the video game industry, which pro-empowerment feminists tend to write off as being just for men. Alyssa Finley is the lead hand on the BioShock series, an extraordinary work of art and tech. Google "Rapture City" for a visual, and prepare to have your socks knocked. Susan O'Connor is the game writer responsible for BioShock, Gears of War, Far Cry 2 (which I've recently put my hand to, and is brilliant), and many other solid shooter titles. Those alternately funny, morbid, funnily morbid, and overall genius Vault-Boy, Vault-Tech, and skill book illustrations from Fallout 3? You can thank Natalia Smirnova, who's also responsible for the entire user interface of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bioshock, Gears, and Far Cry are all first-person shooters, to boot - the epitome of the "just for men" genre. But with the kind of credentials these ladies have, there's no good reason to assume they're not making the games they love to make. All of the titles listed above are "game of the year" winners in some way.
To blame the ratio of big-name female directors to big-name male directors on sexism is an easy out. To ignore the female directors who aren't big names but who make well-loved films that aren't just for women is humourously sexist. To ignore skilled women behind the camera who don't happen to be directing is just insulting. To attempt to write off films, books, and games that aren't made specifically for women as being just for men is sexist and insulting. To make good art, whoever you are? Now that's empowering. Whatever that means.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
He's Blonde! He's Pissed! He'll See You In The Lists!
"What should I say, except this miller rare
He would forgo his talk for no man there,
But told his churlish tale in his own way:
I think I'll here re-tell it, if I may.
And therefore, every gentle soul, I pray
That for God's love you'll hold not what I say
Evilly meant, but that I must rehearse,
All of their tales, the better and the worse,
Or else prove false to some of my design.
Therefore, who likes not this, let him in fine,
Turn over page and choose another tale:
For he shall find enough, both great and small,
Of stories touching on gentility,
And holiness, and on morality,
And blame me not if you do choose amiss.
The miller was a churl, you well know this;
So was the reeve, and many another more,
And ribaldry they told from plenteous store.
Be then advised, and hold me free from blame;
Men should not be too serious at a game."
He would forgo his talk for no man there,
But told his churlish tale in his own way:
I think I'll here re-tell it, if I may.
And therefore, every gentle soul, I pray
That for God's love you'll hold not what I say
Evilly meant, but that I must rehearse,
All of their tales, the better and the worse,
Or else prove false to some of my design.
Therefore, who likes not this, let him in fine,
Turn over page and choose another tale:
For he shall find enough, both great and small,
Of stories touching on gentility,
And holiness, and on morality,
And blame me not if you do choose amiss.
The miller was a churl, you well know this;
So was the reeve, and many another more,
And ribaldry they told from plenteous store.
Be then advised, and hold me free from blame;
Men should not be too serious at a game."
- "Prologue, The Miller's Tale", The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
Translation by librarius.com
Translation by librarius.com
Amongst artists and audiences alike, "anachronism" is a bit of a dirty word. Usually the unfortunate by-product of negligence (i.e Medieval ladies wearing high heels, not invented until the reign of Louis XIV), or used as a spoof (i.e. Robin Hood: Men in Tights), it's rarely welcome and gives an easy excuse to avoid the creative past. However, the first and primary idea pounded into the head of every contemporary art student is that there are no new ideas, so don't waste your time trying to come up with one. Instead, learn from what's come before, study it, translate it, use it, and figure out what unique touch or spin you can put on it to make it "new".
Writer/director Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Conspiracy Theory, Mystic River) proved that he knows this very well with 2001's A Knight's Tale, a delightful, hilarious, and utterly satisfying production that pulls anachronism into a great big bear hug and then leads it in a jig or two. When Sir Ector dies between matches at a joust with only one round left to go before winning the whole thing, his squire William (Heath Ledger) sees it as an opportunity to change his destiny. Convincing Ector's other squires, Roland and Wat (Mark Addy and Firefly's Alan Tudyk) to play along, William takes up his master's arms and armour and wins the purse, which he then convinces his friends to spend on getting him trained and equipped to compete in an upcoming tournament. With a month to improve the skills acquired from practicing with his master, and to figure out how to fool a tournament that requires proof of noble birth to compete, Will, Wat, and Roland stumble across (or, rather, are stumbled across by) none other than Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany), a little-known scribe who can forge Will some birth certificates for the price of a hot meal. Rounding out their renegade company with a widowed smith named Kate, the newly formed entourage of the newly formed Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein starts making waves on the tournament circuit, and it isn't long before "Sir Ulrich" discovers the best part about being a nobleman: the noblewomen! Lady Jocelyn is, of course, a renaissance woman, a mouthy firecracker who is also admired as a prize by the dastardly Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), a highly skilled boor with a penchant for ensuring that he never loses. Will William win the tournament, and the lady? Will his con be revealed? Will she still accept him? We've all heard this story before, and we all know the answers. It's about the journey, not the destination.
And what a journey it is. With a soundtrack featuring Queen, BTO, War, Heart, Thin Lizzy, and Sly and the Family Stone, A Knight's Tale opens by inviting the audience into its holistic fusion of Medieval and modern imagery with a tournament crowd pounding out the iconic rhythm of "We Will Rock You" as the jousters take stage. This film works because it doesn't treat anachronism as, well, anachronism. A Knight's Tale isn't the least bit serious, but it is very much in earnest, and with its happy, confident, and satisfied treatment of its story, its blatant anachronism fades into the background by the simple and impressive virtue of not feeling out of place. Will and Jocelyn's first dance, set to David Bowie's "Golden Years" (1975), seamlessly combines period dance, '70's dance, and contemporary pop dance, the result being one of the most memorable and deceptively simple dance sequences I've seen in any film. The best adjective I can come up with for this film is "holistic" - Brian Helgeland covered so many bases with ease. Paul Bettany's Chaucer - arguably the best part of the film - is a smart-ass, good-humoured addict who combines the contemporary pitiful stereotype of the educated, unemployed starving writer with a quick tongue and WWF-inspired heraldry that all provides a fantastic character for a fantastic actor. His role is made all the more funny by the fact that while The Canterbury Tales start out quite posh with - natch - "The Knight's Tale", they quickly become a one-upmanship contest with dubious rules as to what makes one story better than the last. After Chaucer's cheeky "don't shoot the messenger if the story's rude" narration, things get pretty ribald as the drunken Miller refuses to wait until he's sobered up before saying his piece. For extra film-related historical fun, Edward the Black Prince of Wales plays a small but crucial role in A Knight's Tale which mirrors a recorded incident from Chaucer's life, in which he got a helping hand from that Edward's father.
From start to finish, A Knight's Tale is a beautiful production that looks great, sounds great, feels great, plays great, and doesn't insult the audience's intelligence. It has nice little touches, like how the knight Will and co. were squired to was a good, kind man, instead of portraying all blood nobles as idiots and boors. Its only visible weaknesses are its random use of rather vicious Christian blasphemies, and the fact that Jocelyn is an underdeveloped character with little evidence for why our good William loves her blindly - though I wonder if this wasn't done deliberately for the cliche. She's gorgeous and witty, but that's about it, except when she's being petulant and using her wit in incomprehensible ways (i.e. her nonsensical parting shot in the "no use for a flower" argument with Will).
If you're wanting some serious Medieval fiction, I can't think of anything off the top of my head; suffice it to say, A Knight's Tale would not in this case be enjoyable to you. Although, if all your experiences with anachronism have been bad or happily stupid (i.e. Men in Tights), I'd suggest watching A Knight's Tale to see what can happen when that device is used, deliberately, and not only used but reveled in - and the end result is shockingly good. Watch it for the artistic interest, stay for the fun. And be sure to watch the credits to the end.
Writer/director Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Conspiracy Theory, Mystic River) proved that he knows this very well with 2001's A Knight's Tale, a delightful, hilarious, and utterly satisfying production that pulls anachronism into a great big bear hug and then leads it in a jig or two. When Sir Ector dies between matches at a joust with only one round left to go before winning the whole thing, his squire William (Heath Ledger) sees it as an opportunity to change his destiny. Convincing Ector's other squires, Roland and Wat (Mark Addy and Firefly's Alan Tudyk) to play along, William takes up his master's arms and armour and wins the purse, which he then convinces his friends to spend on getting him trained and equipped to compete in an upcoming tournament. With a month to improve the skills acquired from practicing with his master, and to figure out how to fool a tournament that requires proof of noble birth to compete, Will, Wat, and Roland stumble across (or, rather, are stumbled across by) none other than Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany), a little-known scribe who can forge Will some birth certificates for the price of a hot meal. Rounding out their renegade company with a widowed smith named Kate, the newly formed entourage of the newly formed Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein starts making waves on the tournament circuit, and it isn't long before "Sir Ulrich" discovers the best part about being a nobleman: the noblewomen! Lady Jocelyn is, of course, a renaissance woman, a mouthy firecracker who is also admired as a prize by the dastardly Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), a highly skilled boor with a penchant for ensuring that he never loses. Will William win the tournament, and the lady? Will his con be revealed? Will she still accept him? We've all heard this story before, and we all know the answers. It's about the journey, not the destination.
And what a journey it is. With a soundtrack featuring Queen, BTO, War, Heart, Thin Lizzy, and Sly and the Family Stone, A Knight's Tale opens by inviting the audience into its holistic fusion of Medieval and modern imagery with a tournament crowd pounding out the iconic rhythm of "We Will Rock You" as the jousters take stage. This film works because it doesn't treat anachronism as, well, anachronism. A Knight's Tale isn't the least bit serious, but it is very much in earnest, and with its happy, confident, and satisfied treatment of its story, its blatant anachronism fades into the background by the simple and impressive virtue of not feeling out of place. Will and Jocelyn's first dance, set to David Bowie's "Golden Years" (1975), seamlessly combines period dance, '70's dance, and contemporary pop dance, the result being one of the most memorable and deceptively simple dance sequences I've seen in any film. The best adjective I can come up with for this film is "holistic" - Brian Helgeland covered so many bases with ease. Paul Bettany's Chaucer - arguably the best part of the film - is a smart-ass, good-humoured addict who combines the contemporary pitiful stereotype of the educated, unemployed starving writer with a quick tongue and WWF-inspired heraldry that all provides a fantastic character for a fantastic actor. His role is made all the more funny by the fact that while The Canterbury Tales start out quite posh with - natch - "The Knight's Tale", they quickly become a one-upmanship contest with dubious rules as to what makes one story better than the last. After Chaucer's cheeky "don't shoot the messenger if the story's rude" narration, things get pretty ribald as the drunken Miller refuses to wait until he's sobered up before saying his piece. For extra film-related historical fun, Edward the Black Prince of Wales plays a small but crucial role in A Knight's Tale which mirrors a recorded incident from Chaucer's life, in which he got a helping hand from that Edward's father.
From start to finish, A Knight's Tale is a beautiful production that looks great, sounds great, feels great, plays great, and doesn't insult the audience's intelligence. It has nice little touches, like how the knight Will and co. were squired to was a good, kind man, instead of portraying all blood nobles as idiots and boors. Its only visible weaknesses are its random use of rather vicious Christian blasphemies, and the fact that Jocelyn is an underdeveloped character with little evidence for why our good William loves her blindly - though I wonder if this wasn't done deliberately for the cliche. She's gorgeous and witty, but that's about it, except when she's being petulant and using her wit in incomprehensible ways (i.e. her nonsensical parting shot in the "no use for a flower" argument with Will).
If you're wanting some serious Medieval fiction, I can't think of anything off the top of my head; suffice it to say, A Knight's Tale would not in this case be enjoyable to you. Although, if all your experiences with anachronism have been bad or happily stupid (i.e. Men in Tights), I'd suggest watching A Knight's Tale to see what can happen when that device is used, deliberately, and not only used but reveled in - and the end result is shockingly good. Watch it for the artistic interest, stay for the fun. And be sure to watch the credits to the end.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
"I don't wanna be a secret weapon! I wanna be an exposed weapon!" And so you shall.
Well, this just made my day. Not only were the rumours of an offer true, but District 9 star Sharlto Copley has accepted the role of Howlin' Mad Dog Murdock in the upcoming A-Team film! Well, I'll have to watch it now. This is going to be great. I'm remembering the energetic, life-filled, slightly manic glee bubbling off of Wikus in the first act of District 9, and topped off with one of those crazy little smiles of his, I can't imagine this guy not being perfect playing everyone's favourite pilot of questionable sanity.
I just hope they don't try to give it the Batman treatment. Chris Nolan's Batman worked because Batman wasn't meant as a joke, no one really liked Batman-as-joke except in the sense where it's so bad it's awesome - and there are some truly quotable lines in Adam West's Batman: The Movie, which does grace my shelf - and the comics and most of the cartoons were serious anyways. Whereas I assume everyone who loves The A-Team loves it because it's so much goofy, shameless, good clean fun. Also because it contractually guarantees at least one rolled or exploded vehicle per episode.
I just hope they don't try to give it the Batman treatment. Chris Nolan's Batman worked because Batman wasn't meant as a joke, no one really liked Batman-as-joke except in the sense where it's so bad it's awesome - and there are some truly quotable lines in Adam West's Batman: The Movie, which does grace my shelf - and the comics and most of the cartoons were serious anyways. Whereas I assume everyone who loves The A-Team loves it because it's so much goofy, shameless, good clean fun. Also because it contractually guarantees at least one rolled or exploded vehicle per episode.
Friday, September 11, 2009
I love the smell of revolution in the morning. It smells like hushpuppies.
There's a wild rumour going around that District 9 star Sharlto Copley has been offered the role of Mad Dog Murdock in the upcoming A-Team film.
That has got to be the most beautiful rumour I've ever heard. I shall dream at night that it comes true.
That has got to be the most beautiful rumour I've ever heard. I shall dream at night that it comes true.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
There's No Kill Like Overkill.
"Well, I won't argue that it wasn't an action-packed, adrenaline-fueled thrill ride. But there is no way you can perpetrate that kind of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork." - Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), Hot Fuzz
Last week was lousy. I was physically ill, and down in the dumps. I was in that weird place where you're not quite sick and tired enough to sleep all day, but you're still sick and tired enough to not want to do anything. All I wanted to do was watch things go boom, and what began as an innocent one-off somehow morphed into a long weekend of, well, watching things go boom....with very fun results.
First up was Hard Boiled (1992), a Hong Kong classic that pretty well sums up leading man Chow Yun-Fat's work with legendary director John Woo, the man who can be blamed (or credited) for everything subsequently made by Michael Bay. A steamy tale of undercover brothers, triad gun-runners, and office romances, Hard Boiled stars Yun-Fat as an in-your-face, lone wolf detective named - I am not making this up - Tequila. Co-starring Tony Leung (Infernal Affairs, In the Mood For Love) as Tequila's buddy, this film is the pinnacle of the genre so lovingly sent up in Hot Fuzz. Like all Hong Kong flicks I've seen, Hard Boiled bounces between over-the-top seriousness, earnest seriousness, and ribald or unintentional humour with abandon. I don't think Tony was supposed to be joking when he said the superintendent told him that Tequila never wastes bullets, and yet.... Ah, well. In my opinion, anyone with the intestinal fortitude to zip-line into a warehouse full of people armed with automatic weapons, or to zip-line down electrical wiring out of an exploding hospital while holding a baby, has the right to use as much ordinance as they please. Packed with scenes of Tequila shooting two guns whilst jumping through the air, Tequila shooting two guns whilst sliding down railings, and Tequila shooting two guns whilst dangling from a height, and, yes, lots of things going boom, the only thing Hard Boiled is missing is Woo's trademark flock of doves, substituted here with a poster in the hospital. Watching Hard Boiled is kind of like watching the complete works of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich, with The Transporter and any film starring Keanu Reeves or Steven Segal as a cop playing in the background.
Random fun fact: the scene in Hard Boiled in which Tony Leung receives a birthday gift was re-enacted virtually word for word ten years later in Infernal Affairs...with Leung again being on the receiving end of that transaction.
Next up came Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare (1968), a film I mistakenly had cause to believe was great in the way Unforgiven is great, as opposed to great in the way The A-Team is great. Fortunately, Corey insisted we have some friends over to watch it with. Friends who would've made worthy co-hosts on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I believe Where Eagles Dare was on an Entertainment Weekly list of "Manliest Movies", and it certainly wasn't made for the rest of us. For one thing, Clint excepted, this film has to have the single ugliest bunch of special forces apes this side of The Dirty Dozen, and if there's one thing I've learned from the movies, it's that the special forces only accept recruits who can make at least twelve women swoon simultaneously. Packed with double- and triple-crosses, double- and triple-agents, and the only car I've seen explode before it hit the bottom of a cliff, Where Eagles Dare is a film best watched in good company and a good mood. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it on my own - while at the higher end of the B-movie spectrum, it's no A-Team.
Then, The Transporter 2 was on TV. This may very well be the single most ridiculous non-spoof action film I've seen to date. Fortunately, it takes nothing seriously, making the film unashamedly funny and fun. Jason Statham's Frank is a champion of mid-air automobile maneuvers, launching full-on anarchic assaults on those boring laws of physics - there's a reason why he's the transporter. A classy fellow, Frank's good with kids, removes his suit jacket before every (very well-choreographed) rumble, and is the only man I've ever seen use watermelons as boxing gloves. Yes, you read that correctly. Throw in a completely gratuitous female assassin who can't actually hit anything despite wielding two machine-pistols, and spends the entire film wearing nothing but boudoir lingerie (ah, Luc Besson!), and...well...this film is absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely, positively, entertainingly ridiculous.
After that, we were at Blockbuster to buy Corey a late birthday present, and it struck me that the Wachowski brothers' live-action take on Speed Racer could really tie the whole weekend together. Perfectly nailing the show's anime style in terms of both look and storytelling, Speed Racer is supremely entertaining. However, I couldn't shake the jarring sense that something wasn't right - because it is so perfect, and I couldn't reconcile the feeling of watching anime with the presence of live actors. This film is a textbook example of why different mediums are used for conveying different visual and storytelling styles, and my enjoyment of it was tempered somewhat by the constant awareness of how much time and money was spent for the purpose of making something into something that it's not. But, it was fun, and it gave a lot of animators several years of gainful employment, no matter how much they whined about it in the featurettes. It's almost enough to give the Wachowski's clemency for their last three cinematic monstrosities. Also, Speed Racer includes a role so small it could probably be called a cameo - a cameo by the Twilight Samurai himself!
And there you have it: the most action-packed Labour Day weekend in Elly history. This is the stuff traditions are made of...
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