tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96688422024-03-07T21:50:55.898-05:00The Film Freak Central BlogThe Official Blog of FilmFreakCentral.netBill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.comBlogger347125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-24457944040549743162012-04-16T13:21:00.008-04:002012-04-16T13:36:59.368-04:00A Game Of Stones<div style="text-align: center;"><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2117" title=""The Hunger Games": Cornucopia" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/katniss-peeta-cornucopia-the-hunger-games.png?w=640" alt="" /></span></div> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>SPOILERS.</strong></span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">People are <a href="http://chipstreet.com/2012/03/28/the-hunger-games-review-strong-performances-win-out-over-shaky-camera/" target="_blank">bagging in force</a> on <em>The Hunger Games’</em> directorial choices, specifically the <a href="http://threatquality.com/2012/03/29/things-the-cameraman-of-the-hunger-games-might-have-been-thinking/" target="_blank">drunken cameraman</a> style of filming. Director Gary Ross has his <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/hunger-games-director-gary-ross-on-the-films-shaky-camera-and-the-franchises-future.html" target="_blank">public rationalizations</a>, but there’s something more at play. I think Ross is trying (or acting unconsciously) to fuse different elements of dystopian science fiction — different threads that have nonetheless been woven together in the public consciousness because, hey, all science fiction is the same, right?</span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">He’s abetted in large part by production designer Philip Messina (<a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/steven_soderbergh_is_doing_second_unit_shooting_on_hunger_games" target="_blank">Steven Soderbergh’s chief designer</a> since 2000) and cinematographer Tom Stern (<a href="http://www.afcinema.com/Tom-Stern-ASC-parle-de-son-travail.html?lang=fr" target="_blank">bleaching out Clint Eastwood’s movies</a> since 2002). I’d have to see it again to cite specific examples, but the disorienting shot choices and editing in the first Games skirmish, as contestants bludgeon each other to death over the goods in the Cornucopia, remind me of the kind of compositions we saw in a lot of 1960s and ’70s cinema — particularly the ones that involved handheld cameras and protagonists acting out against a bleak futuristic landscape.</span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The <a href="http://www.eerosaarinen.net/" target="_blank">Saarinen architecture</a> of the Cornucopia (above), site of <em>The Hunger Games’</em> first, middle and final battles, evokes just such landscapes.</span></p> <p style="text-align: left;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/kresgeauditoriummit.jpg"><img style="width: 540px; height: 359px;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2123" title="Kresge Auditorium, Cambridge, Mass.: Eero Saarinen, architect" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/kresgeauditoriummit.jpg?w=640&h=424" alt="" /></a></span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The film raises class questions of vast scope. The twelve subordinate Districts are poor, starving and exploited (yet Peeta has cakes to frost), sucked dry for coal and row crops, as President Snow (Donald Sutherland) outlines to Gamemaster Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley). From these resources, the ruling elite of the Capitol can power 200mph light rail, hoverships with no visible rotors or vents, and <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HardLight" target="_blank">hardlight holography</a> that can generate deadly fireballs and dog-boar-things. They genetically engineer killer LSD wasps and formulate antibacterial salves that destroy internal infection (despite being topically applied … <a href="http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/cellrepairmachines.html" target="_blank">nanotech</a>?) and heal third-degree burns and severe lacerations overnight. All these things bespeak massive resources and engineering prowess, while the attention paid to outré grooming and haberdashery is a hallmark of wealth and leisure.</span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">These class issues have their physical expression in the film’s urban design. Take the Capitol, an <a href="http://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2009/01/monster-dome.html" target="_blank">Albert Speer wet dream</a> of centralized power and martial glory.</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/capitol_3.jpg"><img style="width: 533px; height: 356px;" class="aligncenter wp-image-2118" title=""The Hunger Games": The Capitol" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/capitol_3.jpg?w=600&h=400" alt="" /></a></span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Such structures are for individual heroes to measure their own stature against, megaliths with unyielding surfaces that must nonetheless be climbed and conquered.</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><img style="width: 548px; height: 309px;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2111" title="Albert Speer's Volkshalle, 1936" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/govt.jpg?w=640&h=361" alt="" /></span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">In SF films, architectural environments began with such soaring structures, visibly optimistic testaments to human achievement. On one track of cinema, this branch of utopian urbanism — call it the Enlightened City — persisted through the 1970s.</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/364135732_4418377fa0.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2110" title=""Metropolis," 1927, Fritz Lang" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/364135732_4418377fa0.jpg?w=640" alt="" /></a></span></p> <div style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/sjff_01_img0492.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2108" title=""Things To Come," 1936, William Cameron Menzies" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/sjff_01_img0492.jpg?w=640" alt="" /></a></span></div> <div style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/logansrun01.jpg"><img style="width: 516px; height: 223px;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2109" title=""Logan's Run," 1976, Michael Anderson" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/logansrun01.jpg?w=640&h=275" alt="" /></a></span></div> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">But a subsequent school of SF city design evolved in the 1960s and paralleled the Enlightened City. This latter branch was mostly seen in dystopian SF, which employed (in a critique of the form? or a nod to budgets? or both?) the <a href="http://www.oobject.com/category/18-brutalist-buildings/" target="_blank">Brutalist locations</a> offered by contemporary business parks, office complexes and public plazas. These locations were not fanciful but inhabited by the viewers of these same movies. They evoked a time that was today, and yet not.</span></p> <p style="text-align: left;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/s01585_005.jpg"><img style="width: 563px; height: 385px;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2113" title="Filming "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes," 1972, J. Lee Thompson" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/s01585_005.jpg?w=640&h=437" alt="" /></a></span></p> <p style="text-align: left;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/c/clockwork.html"><img style="width: 558px; height: 382px;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2114" title=""A Clockwork Orange," Stanley Kubrick, 1971" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/clockwork-1.jpg?w=640" alt="" /></a></span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Between the Capitol and locations like the District 12 common plaza (below), <em>The Hunger Games</em> seeks to remarry these two schools of design.</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/hunger-games-square-02.jpg"><img style="width: 489px; height: 246px;" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2119" title=""The Hunger Games": District 12 Central Square" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/hunger-games-square-02.jpg?w=640" alt="" /></a></span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">There’s probably another whole post to be had about how Katniss begins her story living on her own terms (as best one can in an authoritarian state), but becomes absorbed by an imposed narrative as the Games progress. The warrior-girl with the bow must dress up pretty and profess to love a boy, all because the audience expects it — because that’s how the story ends — all to win a reality show.</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/thg-stills-the-hunger-games-movie-29947851-500-350.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2125" title="" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/thg-stills-the-hunger-games-movie-29947851-500-350.png?w=640" alt="" /></a></span></p> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Oh, pop culture, how you own us.</span></p><p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XTSmZx1B2YE?feature=player_embedded" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640"></iframe></span></p><p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Cross-posted from <a href="http://soulsmithy.com/2012/04/06/a-game-of-stones/">Soul Smithy</a>.</span><br /></span></p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align: center; display: block;"></span></span>Jefferson Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356665406917571985noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-15794482502252951632012-03-20T09:51:00.011-04:002012-03-20T13:59:36.436-04:00The Chatterley Effect<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Spoilers? NSFW? I can't tell anymore.</span></span><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XkAfT6LpEuk" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I fell down a psychic wormhole recently while writing about Luis Buñuel's </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/belledejour.htm" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Belle De Jour</span></span></a></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> (1967) for </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Film Freak Central</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">. It was one of those </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.verbotomy.com/verbottle.php?jargonism_id=6334&definition_id=150" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">chrono-synclastic infundibula</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> that can convince a potheaded college student he's living out the </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.carl-jung.net/synchronicity.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">theories of Carl Jung</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, or at least the lyrics of </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbQd3jxth5k" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">later Police songs</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> from before Sting went Adult Contemporary. Fortunately for science, it's a long time since I was a potheaded college student, but since all time is now I'm gonna just roll with that vibe.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Belle De Jour</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> is about Séverine, a moneyed Paris housewife whose sexual frigidity with her husband leads her to explore her fantasies of sexual submission in secret — as an afternoon prostitute in a fairly exclusive brothel. She also fantasizes at length about being abused, bound, raped, and otherwise sexually humiliated. Here's what I wrote for FFC, with select video scenes interspersed:</span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3em;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Belle De Jour</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> occupies one of those strange synchronistic points of literature and history, which intrigues me almost as much as the film itself. The source novel, by Joseph Kessel, appeared in 1928, the same year as D.H. Lawrence's<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Lady Chatterley's Lover</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">.</span></span></span></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mmym0sbR8O8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3em;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The two novels bear striking similarities, or rather, reflect each other in striking ways. Constance Chatterley acts on sexual frustrations after her husband is paralyzed; Séverine's decision to act </span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">results</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> in her husband becoming paralyzed. Prior to this, the young prostitute Mathilde (Maria Latour) says she entered the oldest profession because (like Constance) her beloved was injured and couldn't work; and Pierre contemplates an empty wheelchair with the air of a man whose grave has been trodden.</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/avTg113xiMw" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3em;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">In </span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Chatterley</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> and </span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Belle De Jour</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, there's a surrender of a high-class woman to a lower-class man (or, for Séverine, more than one). In each, there's a fetishization of nature, mud, ordure. (Most of Séverine's fantasy abasements take place outdoors.)</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="https://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/belledejour-cd-mud-03.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-1937" title="Fantasy sequence from Belle De Jour, 1967" src="https://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/belledejour-cd-mud-03.jpg" alt="" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-width: 0px; cursor: default; margin: 0px auto 12px; display: block; clear: both;" height="314" width="512" /></a></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3em;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">… In terms of sex as psychology, both Lawrence and Kessler's novels were preceded by Arthur Schnitzler's </span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><a href="http://writing4all.ie/writings/non-fiction/psychology-schnitzlers-traumnovelle-dream-story" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Traumnovelle</span></span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, later the source for Stanley Kubrick's </span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><a href="http://lovepile.tripod.com/ewsx.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Eyes Wide Shut</span></span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, which finds a man </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPZ-X8PLOIM"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">exploring sexual abandon</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> in hopes of assuaging his marital conflict.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">"Traumnovelle" means "dream story," and while there are no dream or fantasy segments in Kessler's </span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Belle De Jour</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://theopenend.com/2009/02/08/a-window-into-the-mind-luis-bunuels-surrealism/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Buñuel the great surrealist</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> injected them into the screenplay he developed with Jean-Claude Carrière. All these literary and cinematic monuments were built in the shadow of Freud, of course, who tore down the sexual prisons of the past century. Séverine becomes, then, a Freudian adventuress, a lineage she shares with dear Constance Chatterley.</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I went on in a later paragraph to mention Buñuel's producers on this project: "Robert and Raymond Hakim, past financiers of Jean Renoir and Claude Chabrol and, just prior to Belle de jour, Roger Vadim's </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">La Ronde</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">." A bit of judicious IMDbing, and who pops up as the source author of </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><a href="http://depts.washington.edu/vienna/documents/Schnitzler/Schnitzler_la_ronde.htm" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">La Ronde</span></span></a></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">? Arthur Schnitzler, that crazy Viennese (like Freud) who wrote the 1897 play </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Reigen</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> on which it was based.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;font-size:100%;" ><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/entjYyDVRlE" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;font-size:100%;" >This was after I'd moved on to other ideas and thought I was done with Schnitzler entirely. Brrrrr.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Belle De Jour</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">'s parallels with </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Chatterley</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> — published the same year, both proceeding from a woman's sexual dreads and desires, both involving an incapacitated male partner — led me to think about the other areas of film where the Chatterley effect came into play. Since pop culture and literary studies are often a process of working backwards, I first encountered the paradigm in Lars von Trier's </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Breaking the Waves</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> (1996).</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Von Trier's </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/43/trier.htm" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">delvings into sexuality</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> are well-explored, much-admired and frequently reviled by now, but in 1996 he was a new force. New bride Bess McNeill, a Scottish lass who believes herself divinely inspired, is coaxed by her husband into sexual trysts with other men after he's paralyzed in an oil-rig accident. It's prurient interest on his part, a belief that by hearing her accounts of illicit sex he may continue to experience something like a carnal life with her. Bess, drunk with fleshly desire for her husband and directed by "the voice of God," believes this is a sacred duty. As in </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Chatterley</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, we have a man symbolically crippled with a wife who plunges into earthy, even violent sex. Only the motivations (and the upshot, with a spiritual reward for Bess' carnal martyrdom) are different.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tKT5jCZyKOg" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=6439" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Romance</span></span></em></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> (1999) was director </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/1999/oct/09/lindagrant" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Catherine Breillat</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">'s breakthrough. It can be seen as a legacy of </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;color:inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Belle de Jour</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, much more frank in its heroine's migration toward masochism — even pornographic, to the point of employing porn juggernaut </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0797382/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Rocco Siffredi</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> in a dramatic role.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JuVKhJ8kjOo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The male motivator in </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; font-style: italic;color:inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Romance</span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> is crippled in a different way: Paul (Sagamore Stévenin), a beautiful male model, is sexually disinterested in his girlfriend Marie (Caroline Ducey), cruelly withholding himself from her. He claims to be uninterested, even repulsed, by the entire idea of sex, but that doesn't stop him from flaunting his gorgeous wares to nameless women in clubs while Marie watches, and in his worst moments even bragging of the desire he arouses.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; font-style: italic;color:inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/evG1E7Hn4B8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></span></span></em></span></p><p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; font-style: italic;color:inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">“He dances because he wants to seduce. He seduces because he wants to conquer. He wants to conquer because he’s a man.”</span></span></em></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">(I don't know if Breillat intended this to mean anything in terms of character or symbolism, and I'm going to hell for bringing it up, but Stévenin also has a cinematically unimpressive penis. Most guys suffer by comparison with Siffredi, but the contrast is quite stark. Bless everyone involved in this movie for their willingness to share their bodies for art.)</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Like Buñuel's Séverine, Marie indulges in at least one artfully directed flight of fantasy, especially after Paul impregnates her in an embarrassing, abbreviated tryst:</span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding: 0px 3em;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The experience of pregnancy in the medical system increases </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/video/review/masochism.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">the disjunction she feels between sex and love, body and mind</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">. This is most overtly represented when Breillat cuts from a close-up of a cumshot on a woman’s belly to a nurse squirting a similar-looking gel onto Marie’s belly for an ultrasound. ... The most outrageous and perhaps overly didactic representation of this is Marie’s fantasy of a hellish brothel where women’s top halves are indoors, treated to a pristine white heaven of chaste love and affection, while their bottom halves are outside, protruding from a red-lit hellish fortress where anonymous, dirty men fuck them without a care. This scene emphasizes that Marie’s struggle is widespread, and not only an individual problem. She is just one of many women here. — </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none;color:inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">"Masochism in Michael Haneke’s </span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">La Pianiste</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; font-style: normal;color:inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"> & Catherine Breillat’s </span></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Romance</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style="line-height: 1.5; border-style: none; font-style: normal;color:inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">," Jon Davies</span></span></em></span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="https://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/lawrence-chapel012.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5;"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-1929" title="D.H. Lawrence Burial Chapel, near San Cristobal, New Mexico, July 23, 1998" src="https://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/lawrence-chapel012.jpg?w=1024" alt="" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-width: 0px; cursor: default; margin: 0px auto 12px; display: block; clear: both;" height="308" width="458" /></a></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Year ago I visited D.H. Lawrence's burial chapel, in northern New Mexico. The tubercular British artist bought a ranch near Taos in 1924, and lived there just two years before returning to Europe. He died in Italy in 1930, but his ashes are interred here, brought back the the United States by his widow. This writer, who tried so hard to interpret a woman's erotic mind, was branded a pornographer for it by everyone save E.M. Forster. But his "pornography" already walked abroad in the waking world, in Kessler, in Schnitzler. Now it's our cinema, and those carnal thoughts that overflowed onto the page en masse circa 1926 are ours, unashamed. Lady Chatterley lives, and loves.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>(Cross-posted from </i><a href="http://soulsmithy.wordpress.com/"><i>Soul Smithy</i></a><i>.)</i></span></span></p><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></p>Jefferson Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356665406917571985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-47813030017668223212012-03-06T02:58:00.013-05:002012-03-06T09:26:35.016-05:00The Man In The Box<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/source-code-jake-gyllenhaal-duncan-jones-vera-farm4.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 1.5; "><img class="size-full wp-image-1869 alignleft" title="SOURCE CODE (2011): Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/source-code-jake-gyllenhaal-duncan-jones-vera-farm4.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="205" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 4px; margin-right: 24px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; float: left; display: inline; max-width: 100%; height: auto; " /></a></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: bold; "><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">SPOILER ALERT</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> for the film </span></span><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border- font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Source Code</span></span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, the Many Worlds hypothesis of quantum mechanics, and fiction by Dalton Trumbo and Ambrose Bierce. Bet you wanna read this now, dontcha?</span></span></strong></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Colter Stevens is living proof. A living proof of several things, actually, when you really take apart Duncan Jones' film </span></span><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border- font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Source Code</span></span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (2011, scr: Ben Ripley) and the protagonist's place in it. In proving these concepts, he inhabits several contradictory states at once. He has the freedom to go anywhere, yet he will never leave his prison.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) awakens, shorn of memory, in metal pod of some kind. From here, he's repeatedly plunged back in time to inhabit the body of another man. He is told little by his remote handler Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), except that his consciousness is being hurled into an eight-minute window before a terrorist bomb destroys a Chicago-bound commuter train — a train that was, in his current reality, destroyed that same morning. He dies in the effort to prevent the blast, repeatedly, and each time is yanked back to his pod to try again.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1844" title="Michelle Monaghan, Jake Gyllenhaal" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/source-code-michelle-monaghan-jake-gyllenhaal-photo.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="258" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; display: block; clear: both; max-width: 100%; height: auto; " /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">No one will miss him. Reported KIA in a helicopter sortie over Afghanistan, Stevens is in fact a limbless lump of flesh in a sealed box, his internal organs held in place by a plastic sheath. His pod, emulating a pilot's cockpit, is just his psychological projection of space. His last glimmer of consciousness — call it his soul — is a tool in a project to change the recent past. </span></span><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In his box, unseen by the world, Colter Stevens is simultaneously alive and dead.</span></span></strong></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; "><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/cat.gif" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><img class="size-medium wp-image-1824 alignright" title="from http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/ardlouis/dissipative/Schrcat.html" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/cat.gif?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="241" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 4px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 24px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; float: right; display: inline; max-width: 100%; height: auto; " /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><a href="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2815" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "></a></span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><a href="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2815" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; ">In his original thought experiment</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Schrödinger imagined that a cat is locked in a box, along with a radioactive atom that is connected to a vial containing a deadly poison. If the atom decays, it causes the vial to smash and the cat to be killed. When the box is closed we do not know if the atom has decayed or not, which means that it can be in both the decayed state and the non-decayed state at the same time. Therefore, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time — which clearly does not happen in classical physics.</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">For injection into the past, Stevens' preserved psyche is wrapped into a spacetime field called the Source Code. The informational set that comprises his personality is shot back to the moments before the train's destruction. Essentially, he becomes a packet of data, overwriting the brain (soul?) of rail passenger Sean Fentress, who's doomed to die in the bombing.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/sccode1.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1834" title="Inside the Code." src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/sccode1.jpg" alt="" width="610" height="300" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; display: block; clear: both; max-width: 100%; height: auto; " /></a></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In </span></span><a href="http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/source-code" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">programming terms</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, "source code" is the </span></span><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">raw commands for a piece of software</span></span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, written in text language. Change any character of the text and you change the operation of the software. (Indeed, Goodwin sees Stevens' responses to her commands entirely as text on a screen.) The Source Code project is, in essence, </span></span><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">rewriting informational space</span></span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> to put Colter Stevens in another man's body, several hours ago.</span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; "><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/02/gravity-demoted-entropy-rules-the-roost.ars" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Space is the set of dimensions</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> that allows motion to take place, but it also stores information via its configuration. ... Space that has information stored in it has some entropy. Since there is more information stored in some parts of space — for instance, in </span></span><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">highly curved parts of space</span></span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> — then the entropy is not uniform. ... Looking specifically at a black hole, space is curved sharply around it — so sharply that, from the inside, it is closed off from the rest of the universe. As objects fall into the black hole, the event horizon expands (this is the spherical surface that, from the inside, is perceived as a closed surface). That sphere now has more surface area, and so can accommodate more information, all of which remains on the surface of the object.</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/anish_kapoor-cloud_gate.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><img class=" wp-image-1836 alignright" title="Anish Kapoor, "Cloud Gate," Millennium Park, Chicago" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/anish_kapoor-cloud_gate.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="237" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 4px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 24px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; float: right; display: inline; " /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the transitions from his box to his hijacked body, Stevens frequently glimpses a </span></span><a href="http://explorechicago.org/city/en/things_see_do/attractions/dca_tourism/MP_orinigal.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">huge, curved, reflective surface</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, gleaming in the sun like an alien craft. Its presence echos the General Relativity </span></span><a href="http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/cosmology/geometry.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">notion of spacetime</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, through which Stevens is whiplashing back and forth, as a curvature. It also reminds one of the "magic mirror" frequently encountered in Grant Morrison's graphic novel series </span></span><em color="initial" style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border- font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- "><a href="http://www.barbelith.com/bomb/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Invisibles</span></span></a></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> — the physical manifestation of spacetime, through which enlightened operatives may travel or observe other points in their various continua.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/invisibles-10-magic-mirror.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1837" title="from The Invisibles No. 10, wr: Grant Morrison, art: Chris Weston" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/invisibles-10-magic-mirror.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="514" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; display: block; clear: both; max-width: 100%; height: auto; " /></a></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stevens is deeply cut off from the material world and his own physical self, relying on Goodwin's input to make sense of what's happening to him. As they work together — over the course of a single day — Goodwin grows more sympathetic to her subject's plight, becoming the only person in the Source Code program to treat Stevens as a human being, rather than an experiment or an implement. Maimed and only debatably alive, he can only act in the material here-and-now, and can only understand what he's become, through surreal interactions with his caregivers.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DcVB02hFCaM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; "><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The door of the room jarred open and the nurse's footsteps came up to the bed. He began to tap out more frantically now. Here he was right on the brink of finding people of finding the world of finding a big part of life itself. Tap tap tap. He was waiting for her tap tap tap in response. A tap against his forehead or his chest. Even if she didn't know the code she could tap just to let him know she understood what he was doing. Then she could rush away for someone who could help her get what he was saying. SOS. SOS. SOS. Help. He felt the nurse standing there looking down at him trying to figure out what he was doing. The mere possibility that she didn't understand after all he had gone through before discovering it himself shocked him into such excitement and fear that he began to grunt again. He lay grunting and tapping grunting and tapping until the muscles in the back of his neck ached until his head ached until he felt that his chest would burst from his eagerness to shout out to explain to her what he was trying to do. And still he felt her standing motionless beside his bed looking down and wondering.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: normal; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">— Dalton Trumbo, </span></span><a href="http://forgottenclassicsofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2011/02/johnny-got-his-gun.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Johnny Got His Gun</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (1939)</span></span></em></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Because Stevens and Sean Fentress are essentially frozen in the moments before death — and because the Source Code intervention creates a potential for something like survival for both — another text rises to mind.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/M7n4LeRB6js" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; "><p style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms.<br />— </span></span><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: normal; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ambrose Bierce, "</span></span><a href="http://fiction.eserver.org/short/occurrence_at_owl_creek.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"</span></span></em></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/hugh-everett-iii.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><img class="alignleft wp-image-1855" title="Hugh Everett III" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/hugh-everett-iii.jpg" alt="" width="105" height="112" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 4px; margin-right: 24px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; float: left; display: inline; " /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">These trapped protagonists all spend time in alternate realities, whether psychological/spiritual in the case of Trumbo and Bierce's work, or (we are led to believe) physical in Stevens' misadventures. They are experiencing dimensions in which other ends are possible; Stevens is, in fact, </span></span><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">creating</span></span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> those new dimensions by his actions on the train. In a dramatic sense, he is enacting Hugh Everett's </span></span><a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Many Worlds Interpretation</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of quantum physics, in which subatomic behaviors are explained by </span></span><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">parceling them out to parallel universes</span></span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></span></p><blockquote style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; font-style: italic; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 3em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; "><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/many-worlds.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><img class="alignright wp-image-1851" title="Nature, Many Worlds interpretations 50th anniversary edition, 2007" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/many-worlds.jpg" alt="" width="258" height="330" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 4px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 24px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; float: right; display: inline; " /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">... </span></span><a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/many-worlds-theory-today.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The upshot of the Many Worlds theory</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> is that this universal wave function describes a series of branching universes that make up what [physicist] David Deutsch calls the "multiverse," and that in these branching universes, there are beyond </span></span><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: normal; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">trillions</span></span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of copies of you, of me, of Everett. There are branches in which Everett is still alive. There are branches in which we did things that we don't want to talk about, that we may have thought about but we never did. Well, guess what? I'm sorry to tell you, in Everett's theory, you actually did it, because </span></span><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">everything that is physically possible happens in some branch of the multiverse</span></span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">None of this can be realized, though, so long as Stevens exists in a state of improbability — shut away, channeled, the truth of him unconfronted. Like Schrödinger's cat, Stevens' condition is only theoretical. Like the cat, his condition inspires compassion. Goodwin, </span></span><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">the observer of these quantum events</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, is the determinant for whether Colter Stevens is alive or dead, and whether he will live or die again. She is the one who must open the box, if his unbearable half-life is to end.</span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><a href="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/source_code_movie_image_jake_gyllenhaal_031.jpg" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1867" title="" src="http://soulsmithy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/source_code_movie_image_jake_gyllenhaal_031.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="338" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; cursor: default; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; display: block; clear: both; max-width: 100%; height: auto; " /></a></p><p style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The crucial plot questions of </span></span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Source Code</span></span><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> are teased apart at length — and diagrammed! — in an excellent piece by Brad Brevet at </span></span><a href="http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/spoiler-talk-is-the-ending-of-source-code-open-to-interpretation/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204); line-height: 1.5; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Rope of Silicon</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, published the week of the film's release.</span></span></em></p><p style="text-align: center;color: rgb(68, 68, 68); line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px; "><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"></span></span></em><em style="color: inherit; line-height: 1.5; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; font-style: italic; border-width: initial; border- color:initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Cross-posted from </span></span><a href="http://soulsmithy.wordpress.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Soul Smithy</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.)</span></span></em></p></span>Jefferson Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356665406917571985noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-85829130654525148242012-01-18T18:15:00.003-05:002012-01-18T20:08:18.403-05:00The Long Goodbye- Part 2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuw4sjfHBmquFtqVyclcl1cLj5iVNBFCEIc7z-mknUOWY8aQEPuOsGkZeCZCS9esKXT6HIUUrMl-djHzVtsVCoaBPEd2pMaTW8S8S0EVUnHqx0IFbLUWK8wyF0bYVKcKvQSrbfLA/s1600/goodbye.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; height: 170px; float: left; cursor: pointer;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5699143518669734562" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuw4sjfHBmquFtqVyclcl1cLj5iVNBFCEIc7z-mknUOWY8aQEPuOsGkZeCZCS9esKXT6HIUUrMl-djHzVtsVCoaBPEd2pMaTW8S8S0EVUnHqx0IFbLUWK8wyF0bYVKcKvQSrbfLA/s320/goodbye.jpg" /></a><br />I'll confess, with no shortage of shame, that I had been putting this off for more than three months and am only writing it now because the Sundance Film Festival is starting tomorrow and some may be wondering why I won't be covering it. You see, I have retired from film writing; for Film Freak Central and a little less definitely for my personal website I Viddied it on the Screen. I had been going in this direction for a while, I fear. It’s too difficult for me to get up at five in the morning, work all day, and then come home to write. Furthermore, it became too difficult to justify spending my free time writing. This work is rewarding, but it is work and I guess that I reached the point where the payoff didn’t really warrant the effort. Most of the time, it’s a struggle knowing that my wife was in the other room watching television and instead of joining her I was on the Word Processor trying to sort through my feelings about THE BABYSITTERS.<br /><br />I tried, but never could figure a way to balance work, family, and this. But the actual cataclysmic event was being accepted into a part-time Master’s program for social work. I’ve always seen film criticism as kind of a romantic dream job, not all that different from wanting to be an actor or director actually. Or a painter or novelist. Social work was kind of a synthesis between that romance, the social worker is at heart a kind of bohemian after all, and some kind of grounded pragmatism. No, it doesn’t really pay all that well, but it IS a real career. But social work really isn’t a compromise for me. All those years I covered Sundance, I came to realize that the people I was really jealous about weren’t paid film critics, but LCSWs. After only one semester, I’ve realized that this isn’t even just a career for me. It’s making feel... whole in a way that no other career ever could. When I die, I don’t know if I will look back on this life as being one of accomplishment. But I do know that I will be able to say that I was there when other people were at their worst , I was there when I was at my worst, and I never hid from any of it.<br /><br />Maybe that was what I was trying to get at in writing about movies. I was trying to be honest and develop a real set of values that spoke truthfully of my own feelings and attitudes. And maybe I felt that I wasn’t getting anywhere because I was dealing with the shadow of reality instead of the reality itself. That’s just my best guess at this point. You could probably argue me down from it.<br /><br />I feel pretty confident in saying that Korine and Morrissey have a more accurate understanding of poverty than DeSica or Rossellini. It’s not a tragedy, it’s a tragicomedy. To some extent, it’s a cartoon. There was one boy I worked with that I don’t think I will forget. He was a tall, skinny, “African-American” was lazy eyelids and big donkey teeth. He was always talking. He talked so much that you could see white stuff form in the corners of his mouth. He would ask female staff if they “had any black in them” and said that he was going to go into porn because you don’t need to be good looking you just need to be well-hung. When the patients were allowed to make their own pizza he asked for one with chicken wings. At one point he asked me if “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was based on a true story. I am not making any of this up. None of it. I occupied the same physical space as this person. Am I racist for noticing him? Obviously, he is not representative of all black people and obviously he is an outlier. But I tell you that he exists and I’m not going to pretend that he didn’t exist. I wonder though, maybe it’s not political correctness that keeps people from acknowledging his existence. Maybe most people aren’t very film literate and don’t understand the tradition that he comes from or they haven’t learned how to regard other people as abstractions. See, I don’t really know. I’m still working through this.<br /><br />This really does feel like I’m breaking up. I have written about movies for almost half my life and it’s hard to think that I’m really giving it up. It’s been part of my life for so long and I don’t think that it will really ever fully get out of my system. These last three months I’ve felt the itch quite a few times, but I’ve notably never quite worked my way to scratching it. I think this is all for the best.Alex Jacksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13028946403342782184noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-41609434410515004832011-11-07T22:54:00.014-05:002011-11-08T14:20:43.601-05:00Props<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Watching <i><a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/attackthesuper8.htm">Super 8</a></i> this morning, I grew nostalgic for those pre-film school days when I made movies with my weird friends the way other kids got a band together and jammed. But what it made me nostalgic for was mainly the idea of writing with an ambition--if not a skill--that wildly exceeded my resources and expertise. Really, <a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/attackthesuper8.htm"><i>Super 8</i></a> augmented a bittersweet feeling that came over me recently when I stumbled upon a relic that was the product of ingenuity and a fire in my belly that's only embers at this point.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I actually shot a few things on super8 as a kid, mostly glorified home movies, but it wasn't until my parents bought me my first video camera, in 1990, that the directing bug became incurable. That was the year of the <i>Miller's Crossing</i>/<i>Goodfellas</i>/<i>The Godfather Part III</i> hat-trick, and I wrote my own gangster movie--<i>The Gentlemen</i>--that dutifully ripped them all off. A brief summary of the production: the 19-page script we started with ballooned to about 60 pages by the time we were done; and we shot virtually every weekend and school holiday for two years straight.<br />
<br />
Due to the genre we were working in, the creative demands weren't that extravagant. We realized early on that we could get away with painted-on facial hair--moustaches seemed essential in aging us up--because of the generally shitty picture quality. We wanted rain in one scene, just hitting the window, so my friend sent his sister outside on a November night to spray his bedroom window with a hose. It flooded his basement. Looked great, though. There was an easy solution to the many scenes that called for us to smoke: buy cigarettes and smoke them. At one point, we needed a City Hall stand-in. My friend's/the star's mother was an alderwoman, so the mayor <i>gave us the keys to his office</i> for the weekend. (Come Monday, he was not happy to find an ashtray full of cigarette butts and a script page littered with profanity--but hey, we had everything we needed by then.) And we somehow talked a gorgeous teenaged model into playing the female lead, who might as well have been called Helen of Troy.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But as time wore on, I started getting self-conscious about the guns. As we had cap guns and an effeminate little starter pistol filled with police-issue blanks (my two closest friends working on the production were sons of cops), the choice was a cool-looking gun with no muzzle flash or vice-versa. Enter Dave F., a guy I nicknamed Pockets because he had everything you could ever need somewhere on his person. A savant with power tools, Dave would assume the role of my fairy godmother on this and subsequent projects.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So I says to Pockets, I says, "These guns suck." He borrows a dummy gun we had on hand and proceeds to drill a hole through the hollow handle, thread a wire up through the barrel, and secure a charge fashioned from cherry bombs to the tip of it. He rigs the other end of the wire so that it can connect with the batteries we use for the camera; all someone has to do off screen is touch the contacts together while someone on screen pretends to pull the trigger, and <i>voilà!</i>: muzzle flash. It wasn't exactly practical (you couldn't really get more than one take out of it), but still.<br />
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I found one of the many guns he set up for this the other day. And before tossing it, I took pictures.</span><br />
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</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQmcrJDolscmf72Ox2kunloeV9fQyee9QJl5LZyPAkayvJec3UfpBpKygtOv6DUWe5XQ4a-iSjWnvjnP_V0Ed5mD3BYw9cI07pcZ9gB8CcaTBfQdiJNeQEvQjLrRquVSJ1Cj2x/s1600/gunsmall1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQmcrJDolscmf72Ox2kunloeV9fQyee9QJl5LZyPAkayvJec3UfpBpKygtOv6DUWe5XQ4a-iSjWnvjnP_V0Ed5mD3BYw9cI07pcZ9gB8CcaTBfQdiJNeQEvQjLrRquVSJ1Cj2x/s320/gunsmall1.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1s818Ujz5r_y3Fr8CW0kxoNBZS6iRofKzrn_R8eE4Nna1ar9Jb8UrfUgftS0xD8TR6rF84qJFOBEfTQ1nvY5pA5haOM5wBmMONyDHtOaKUUjE8I7YDUDl_P3DeE80Zdsh-ywU/s1600/gunsmall3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1s818Ujz5r_y3Fr8CW0kxoNBZS6iRofKzrn_R8eE4Nna1ar9Jb8UrfUgftS0xD8TR6rF84qJFOBEfTQ1nvY5pA5haOM5wBmMONyDHtOaKUUjE8I7YDUDl_P3DeE80Zdsh-ywU/s320/gunsmall3.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This gag inspired me to ask for the moon, by the way, and probably our most impressive achievement was a shot of a helicopter coming to pick up our main character. Dave built a model helicopter and motorized the propellers; in order to have it move without obstructing the blades, we suspended it upside-down on a makeshift zipline and turned the camera upside-down to match. For added realism, we shot it against a grey sky--I blew out the exposure (erasing the fishing line) and zoomed in from far away to flatten out the image.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Unfortunately, that scene was cut out of <i>The Gentlemen</i> and this helicopter footage now only exists on a Hi8 tape I can't access, or I'd put that fucker up on YouTube right now.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Anyone here have similar misadventures in Sweding to share?</span>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-1209763096454754642011-10-30T10:31:00.022-04:002011-10-30T16:53:45.094-04:00Halloween Horror: Abominable, Adorable, Indelible<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><u><br /></u></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL936As2zuTMKQnZFpqQmvLUbEQrSVyAbDnNQHZ-R_sQMrxV8qxkr7n7BvXj2oDZfYHuTX5_v3hqtGgKKjecWABZNHLF8U-wegirqzj-9WPY6soT4fbEQbP3I5g4xnhPGj_3GL3w/s1600/abominabledrphibes_tubes.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL936As2zuTMKQnZFpqQmvLUbEQrSVyAbDnNQHZ-R_sQMrxV8qxkr7n7BvXj2oDZfYHuTX5_v3hqtGgKKjecWABZNHLF8U-wegirqzj-9WPY6soT4fbEQbP3I5g4xnhPGj_3GL3w/s400/abominabledrphibes_tubes.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5669296410467752274" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Nobody ever dresses up as Dr. Anton Phibes for Halloween, and I need an explanation of why that is. Underexposure? An allergy to camp? The death of the UHF groovy-movie marathon channels? Whatever, the man needs more respect. He demands it. Or he will set a plague of boils upon thee.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"></span></span><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Abominable Dr. Phibes</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (1971) is a great helping of late-period Vincent Price on a ham platter. It's also the rotten little B-horror treasure that foretold at least two mass mainstream successes. And it's a Halloween movie to its marrow, with masks, hooded robes, dark kitsch, deathly allure, and (tasteful '70s) gore. The Doctor of the title -- wealthy polymath, gifted musician, fiendish plotter of deathtraps and riddles -- is a dead man, burned to a crisp in a Swiss car accident as he rushed to the side of his dying wife. Alas, she too would die, despite a nine-person medical team's best efforts. As far as the not-so-dead Dr. Phibes is concerned, their best wasn't good enough; in fact, it was tantamount to murder.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">From just this side of the grave, courtesy of the great Sam Arkoff's </span><a href="http://www.houseofhorrors.com/aip.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">American International</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> genre factory, Phibes reaches out to destroy those surgeons, syncing his murders with the Ten Biblical Plagues of Egypt. On screen, his victims are consumed by locusts, frozen into mansicles, bitten to death by bats, choked to death by mechanical frog masks, exsanguinated by hot ladies, and impaled with a brass unicorn.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHXiLD9jKeuxypBMVGW9ILIZFIqqBUPtkEEHih_TRPBu6LONcEAv-hlf52TZ0jB2W2uFdXurgh43LTmdjCEurBGssW42L5fo3S-uBhIufXbe2SOu9upM2rmjYzQpLXdqgDw9QFJA/s320/abominabledrphibes_unicorn.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5669294056529461442" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">No, I don't think that last bit was in the Bible either.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If you can't be arsed to hunt it down and watch it -- and I'm indebted to scholar and genre-film fan </span><a href="http://danhf.wordpress.com/author/danhf/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dan Hassler-Forest</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> for my DVD copy -- find an excellent scene-by-scene recap at </span><a href="http://www.stomptokyo.com/badmoviereport/reviews/A/drphibes.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Bad Movie Report</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and a solid appreciation at Mark Bourne's </span><a href="http://markbourne.blogspot.com/2011/10/octoberfilms-abominable-dr-phibes-dr.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. But if you've any appreciation at all of David Fincher's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Seven</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> or the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Saw</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> films, you're missing out on their progenitor. By his efforts, Phibes marks himself as the granddaddy of John Doe (the Seven Deadly Sins vs. the Hebrew plagues) and Jigsaw (psychologically significant deathtraps). Take that legacy for what it's worth ($327 million and $848 million </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">respectively), but acknowledge that mainstream film culture has scraped the strata of schlock and polished the gems there to a new shine.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Abominable Dr. Phibes</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> is a camp carnival that must be seen to be believed. The antihero is a Phantom of the Opera given new life in a kind of mod Agatha Christie dreamscape, pursued by bumbling Scotland Yard detectives named Trout and Crow (Peter Jeffrey and Derek Godfrey) to absolutely no effect. Humor and horror, intertwined and balanced by </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">former "Avengers" director Robert Fuest, expertly acted by a seasoned star who never once opens his mouth to speak, surprise-guest-starring the great Joseph Cotten as the Final Girl, and speaking elegantly to matters of loss, death, madness, and the survival of love.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 171px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM8ilRJ99o8vPrKe6gwwW_kDfdyMvpLUqf72SLsv71XpjJExEuMivTAoCbUmzfj5dSvFTQhFNMm2p_HmkvenPzIdAgcGcp_Zn0JZkKehx9y112B8-7ELmyPrld2QTgNjB-CJv3Rg/s320/dr-phibes1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5669296639065849298" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />And please don't let that sequel fool you. Dr. Phibes never rose again. The last scene of this movie, with love and death fulfilled, is the last of the magnificent musician-mastermind. AIP is history; Vincent Price is gone. We may see his like again, but we'll nevermore meet Dr. Phibes himself.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yBo0H3oYSoo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></span></span></div>Jefferson Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356665406917571985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-10858906686449806612011-10-24T17:02:00.007-04:002011-10-26T03:17:39.086-04:00Yeah, nice slogan, Harvey.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vy7X3OsKkGQ/TqXUzIfQ8xI/AAAAAAAAAUg/CQ_brVoJGCw/s1600/thesis-cover-bn.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 310px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vy7X3OsKkGQ/TqXUzIfQ8xI/AAAAAAAAAUg/CQ_brVoJGCw/s400/thesis-cover-bn.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5667169681032672018" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">For those who haven't heard, I went and wrote a scene-by-scene analysis of a little film called </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The Dark Knight. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Would you be interested in an in-depth thematic discussion backed up by thorough research and third-party quotations? In that case, </span><u style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The Faces of Gotham: Myth and Morality in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Dark Knight</span></u><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> is available </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">exclusively </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">as an ebook, and can be purchased at </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005UGL814">Amazon</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> and </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Faces-of-Gotham/Ian-Pugh/e/2940013277182">Barnes & Noble</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> for an all-too-affordable $7.49.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">And don't forget--if you don't own a physical e-reader, both </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_352814002_3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-6&pf_rd_r=0H73K7010NCNWBXARKSP&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=1279039382&pf_rd_i=1000426311">Amazon</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> and </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/free-nook-apps/379002321/">B&N</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> have free programs for download on the computer/phone/iMachine of your choice.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So give it a read! And hey, if you liked it, spread the word, and write a review on the book's storefront page, whydoncha.</span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-40166110375653111472011-09-09T09:29:00.000-04:002011-09-09T09:29:22.889-04:00TIFF 2011<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">TIFF 2011 coverage <a href="http://filmfreakcentraltiffblog.blogspot.com/">here</a>.</span>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-33461874875654774922011-07-24T20:34:00.011-04:002011-07-25T03:57:46.722-04:00Charging Star<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YlBTi9XtU2Q/Tiy7Q7BpWNI/AAAAAAAAAT8/ShmaN7dGzi4/s1600/hydra-logo.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 239px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YlBTi9XtU2Q/Tiy7Q7BpWNI/AAAAAAAAAT8/ShmaN7dGzi4/s400/hydra-logo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633083133330544850" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">I wasn't quite sure what bothered me about <span style="font-style: italic;">Captain America</span>. It took me forty-five minutes to really warm up to the thing, and even as I left the theater with a handful of moments that screamed <span style="font-style: italic;">do not forget about this film in December!</span>, something else stuck around to nag at the back of my mind. At first I thought </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">it was because the film lacked moral dimension, but no--it's a Saturday morning serial straight o</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">utta 1944. It's supposed to be </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >operatic, </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">goddamn it, and it certainly accomplished that. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">But my inability to comprehend that first act soon forced me to question the parts that I <span style="font-style: italic;">did </span>enjoy--even as </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">I recognized it as a faithful mock-up of Allied propaganda, I couldn't help but think, "Didn't </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Inglourious Basterds</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> already dissect this kind of wartime fiction?"</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> <a href="http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/captainamerica.htm">Walter's review</a> helped immensely in understanding and appreciating the film, but a second screening was inevitable, and I soon knew that my reluctance could be traced back to a single moment. Halfway through the movie, the Red Skull denounces Hitler as his cronies belt out an emphatic "Hail HYDRA," throwing out their arms in a ridiculous parody of the Nazi salute. The fi</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">rst time through, I giggled derisively, because seriously, what is this Mickey Mouse shit?</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><br /><br />My friend <a href="http://moviebob.blogspot.com/">Bob Chipman</a> made the excellent point that Joe Johnston and </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Captain America </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">didn't need to expound upon </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">the mytho-religious implications of the Cosmic Cube because </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Thor </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">had already done that job for them. (To which I responded that I would now only accept </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Thor </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">as a direct prequel to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Cap</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">.) His astute observation eventually made me realize that the universe was my problem. Continuity was my problem. Now, I still firmly believe that <span style="font-style: italic;">Iron Man 2</span> erased any and all need to throw <span style="font-style: italic;">The Avengers</span> at us, but this time the fictional timeline interferes with our own. Before I recognized </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Captain America</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> for what it was, I wasn't sure</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> how to feel about Marvel sidestepping the Nazis in favor of its own villainous organization. But why? People have been doing this for years. This company's been doing this for years--Adolf Hitler met his end in Marvel Comics when the Human Torch burned his ass to death in the bunker... only to be resurrected as the "Hate-Monger" some twenty years later. That's fiction for you, man, and I've argued over and over and over again that superheroes are capable of handling the headiest of topics. But </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Captain America </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">appeared to be somewhat gun-shy when it came to the icons of Nazism. As Walter mentioned, the Red Skull states that he "no longer reflect[s] Hitler's ideal of Aryan perfection," and you'll see plenty of armbands and red flags and what have you, but swastikas are mostly obscured--HYDRA's tentacled skull is the fetishistically omnipresent symbol in this universe. Cap spends the majority of the war on a campaign against HYDRA, and I couldn't help but think, "So the actual <span style="font-style: italic;">war </span>is still on, right? We're still fighting the Axis?" You can call it an attempt to keep the movie viable on the international market, but in the wrong hands, it could have been twisted into an extreme example of <a href="http://filmfreakcentral.blogspot.com/2010/10/watch-out-where-wehrmacht-goes.html">what bothered Jefferson about <span style="font-style: italic;">Dead Snow</span></a>: at first glance, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Captain America</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> seems too squeamish to truly approach ideology <span style="font-style: italic;">or </span>iconography.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HziRgCX_Mnk/Tiy6361zMJI/AAAAAAAAAT0/Ft6j04E34RQ/s1600/mvc2-captain-america.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 178px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HziRgCX_Mnk/Tiy6361zMJI/AAAAAAAAAT0/Ft6j04E34RQ/s320/mvc2-captain-america.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633082703784128658" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">Thankfully, Johnston knows what he's doing. What makes </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Captain America</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> such a great movie is how it understands the components of propaganda, and, moreover, the power they carry. I got that the first time through, but the second time forced me to really <span style="font-style: italic;">contemplate </span>it: the ultimate soldier becomes a film star/comic book hero/inspirational symbol before he feels compelled to join the action--to live up to his name, his image and his potential--with an "A" helmet stolen from a USO showgirl. The symbol gathers up a few more trinkets from popular entertainment and becomes <span style="font-style: italic;">tangible</span>. Watch how Cap's role changes between newsreels and wonder how many layers of fiction and documentary we'll have to traverse before we finally make it t</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">o </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">2011, to the present-day schmoes sitting in a movie theater. You want a moral dimension? Johnston doesn't ignore the influence that Goebbels and Riefenstahl had over the Third Reich--he simply refuses to give the Nazis any more power by indulging them in their cult of icons. I'm reminded of Oliver Hirschbiegel's <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html">bemused reaction</a> to those </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Downfall</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> parodies on YouTube:</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"> "The point of this film</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality. I think it's only fair if now it's taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like." If an icon is to defeat another icon, it must be accomplished metatextually. Despite all indications that the man is basically a walking flag/bullseye, Captain America can sneak around a HYDRA base with impunity; meanwhile, the swastika has difficulty showing its face in the war that it instigated. But even with all that in mind, the dangers inherent to this identity are never ignored. (Consider how the image can swallow the individual whole--how often Steve Rogers is addressed as "the Captain," even when it's not a particularly relevant point.) Call it a moment of patriotic self-awareness born from seventy years of retrospection.</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">Great stuff, man. Can't wait to see it again.</span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-86496639288854808582011-06-23T21:50:00.019-04:002011-06-24T14:04:05.297-04:00Those Tapes I Made For You<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Do me a favor and watch this episode of "Street Fighter". Be forewarned, however, that this </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >is</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > a Saturday morning cartoon based on a video game franchise, so you know what you're in for.</span><br /><br /><iframe style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SFFYlFwD0f4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe><br /><br /><iframe style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/V_U0BBGYiAU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Nonsensical pap, produced on the cheap and aimed squarely at American children--the sequel series to the original </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Street Fighter</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> movie that no one particularly cared to see. However, search online and you're more likely to find thirty isolated seconds that have since become subject to an internet meme:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p0j0lO7uQBo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe><br /><br />And search for "Bison yes" and this little baby will be your first destination:<br /></span><br /><iframe style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/P3ALwKeSEYs" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="560"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I don't really think of this reduction as hostile in any sense of the word. Sure, you can't get around the <span style="font-style: italic;">reduction</span> itself, but the blaring, "dramatic" horn section, the bizarro camera movement, and the fact that one recording of "YES!!" was so obviously doubled--this is an ancient Saturday morning distilled to perfection. I think it's a little wonderful, actually, that I can consider this six-second clip as part of a mutual language. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There are several points I want to tackle from here, and they all involve ideas removed from their original context. (Appropriate, I suppose, that the now-largely-forgotten episode of "Street Fighter" is entitled "The Medium is the Message.") I've <a href="http://filmfreakcentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/saturday-morning-nihilism.html">talked about that before</a>, but this video has the odd distinction of simultaneously forging assumptions about the source material and creating something new from those ashes. Maybe I can believe that the rest of the series falls in step with that four seconds. But that's kind of silly, isn't it? I can assume all I want and I won't know until I actually sit down and watch the damned thing. But after that, what am I left with beyond the desire to keep "Yes!! Yes!!" outside of its original narrative boundaries?</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />One thing to consider is that this is a "widescreen, HD reupload" of the "Yes!! Yes!!" clip. This is a short clip posted by a fan, but it's fair indication that the whole world's going widescreen, baby. Cartoon Network's website has an annoying habit when it comes to posting full episodes of their pre-widescreen cartoons: for shows like <a href="http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/dexter/video/">"Dexter's Laboratory,"</a> they stretch the borders of the image to fit a 16:9 frame, which gives it an awful fish-eye effect. Ironically, Genndy Tartakovsky and his crew already operated by a cinematic sensibility, and stretching the picture becomes a serious problem when the series indulges in one of its many pans and zooms. "Street Fighter" is too flat to entertain such concerns, especially from this infinitesimal scope--and, what's more, the widescreen clip keeps its silliness intact. (Note that the edges of the image have been chopped, rather than stretched.) But it's still not in its original format, and it's still stripped completely bare. Isn't it like "MST3K" in that regard--I'm geared to laugh simply because there are familiar shadows at the bottom of the screen? If we're not looking at the source seriously, should we really concern ourselves with such particulars? Why aren't we looking at it seriously, anyway? Why am I laughing at all?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Now, when I talk about the <span style="font-style: italic;">official</span> mangling of television, I don't want to paint Cartoon Network as some villainous entity. (Indeed, they're not averse to exploring the very nature of their business: J. G. Quintel's "Regular Show" is a keen exploration of how popular culture tends to fracture our worldview.) I just find the reasoning a little difficult to decipher. Individual clips are shown on the website in the correct "standard" format. The Looney Tunes are also shown in their original aspect ratio, though not always in their original form: a few weeks ago I caught </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Show Biz Bugs</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> on television, and the infamous finale--Daffy guzzles nitro and gasoline, lights a match and performs the trick that he can "only do once"--had been inelegantly chopped out. But I suffered from the same limited perspective growing up--before the advent of YouTube, when was the last time anyone had seen the minstrel show that ended </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Fresh Hare</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">?</span><br /><br /><iframe style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2Uah9ZY9YOw" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So, obviously, it's not a new problem. But it's easier to argue for the complete visions of Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, to forgive the unsavory material, because we admire these men as geniuses and we want a more complete understanding of the era. How do we apply that same attitude to a genuine piece of shit? </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The only reason anyone watches </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Bedtime for Bonzo </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">anymore is because Ronald Reagan is in it--and the convenient presidential punchline is why it remains in popular thought. And, hey, if that's the way it goes, that's the way it goes. But here's what I want to know--did they ever bother to colorize the movie? We're naturally repelled by the concept of colorization but if they </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >did</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, I doubt that anyone cared, because the movie is just so goddamn bland. Do it to <span style="font-style: italic;">Casablanca</span> and it's inexcusable. Do it to <span style="font-style: italic;">Bedtime for Bonzo </span>and you'll change the channel faster than you'll complain. Is that <span style="font-style: italic;">right? </span>We lost a couple of Hitchcocks to the flaws of nitrate stock, and we lost a lot of television history to the networks' habit of taping over obsolete broadcasts, but between the masterpieces we must have jettisoned a lot of tone-deaf crap. How far down the totem pole do we have to go before we stop caring? When does culture become a game of breaking-and-entering?</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Of course, "value" is a relative term. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Everything</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> is preserved now, which I consider more of a blessing than a curse. We may be dealing with a more cacophonous playing field, but beyond the obvious historical value that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >any </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">sort of record can provide, lame/mediocre properties can inspire great works just like any other. Without </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Dr. No</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, there'd be no </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >From Russia with Love<span style="font-style: italic;">.</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> But w<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">henever something, anything, catches my intellectual fancy, I want to know the context. And if that's the case, what do I retain from that journey? </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://twitter.com/#%21/paperlung">On his Twitter page</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, Matt Prigge just posted a quote from Richard Leacock: </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">"Film is terrible at giving a lot of information, but it's great at giving a feel for a place."</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > I get that feeling, but I'm still picking it apart. Maybe I want to understand it to its logical conclusion.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Sometimes I catch myself watching Tarantino's pictures in piecemeal fashion--not because I don't want to watch the entire thing, but they contain a multitude of different tones and the chapter divisions give them a natural bookmark to revisit. Tarantino is himself a pop plunderer of the highest order, but should I really indulge that desire so often? I mean, that's YouTube for you. (David Lynch would throw a fit, I know.) I guess what I'm asking here is whether a complete picture is always better than a fractured one--whether this concept of a media democracy will sometimes produce long-term benefits, now that everything will be preserved in some form or another. Is it really possible to pick and choose what we take from certain media? Are there any legitimate instances in which more context is unnecessary or distracting?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But now I'm getting into the very nature of mass communication, and hell, you don't need me to tell you that media is changing--I'm just curious as to how it's all going to play out. For me, the best movie news this week is Valve's long-anticipated release of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Meet the Medic</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/36lSzUMBJnc" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Which is great, y'know, because it touches on the inherent ridiculousness of the character's role <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">on the team--and how we integrate atrocity into popular entertainment. (Not to mention that those final </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">ÜberCharge</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">d moments are made of pure, giddy excitement.) Oh, and by the way, did I mention that "Team Fortress 2" recently introduce</span>d an <a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Team_Captain">M. Bison hat</a> that makes reference to the meme in question? Culture changes, culture spreads. Welcome to the party.<br /></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-8008111884225967402011-05-06T01:10:00.008-04:002011-05-06T11:42:29.850-04:00Hanna and Her Brothers<span class="Apple-style-span" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5599941744944526354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmOOp5R4lGr4mwt9pI6eT5MrisLl2RkS_ibPylaML-kPGlS8dDVjSFrgpqjUbrUrFCsOPP6zR4VYLPESWYqBAOy00d2BEQA33tafDEhASlEflRhd4XKI8x59yt5VnojjMKA-tLg/s320/350.jpg" style="height: 204px; margin-top: 0pt; width: 286px;" /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"></span>Hanna was raised in the woods by her beloved Papa, a hunter and woodcutter (both trades undertaken for the simple matter of survival). Her nemesis is also her Grandma, in a sense, with an oral hygiene compulsion so fierce she scrubs her teeth till they bleed. (She's sharpening them, see?) When the green-slippered foe confronts Hanna, she steps forth from the maw of a wolf. (Nor is this the last transformation she'll undergo before the end.)</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Joe Wright's <i>Hanna</i> is an espionage quest which, like all such riffs post-Bourne, is really a search for identity. Hanna — no ordinary girl, but a Chosen One just as surely as Harry Potter is — has been shaped one way, but her emerging individuality demands she sculpt herself anew. It's at just such points that our forebears turned to the folktales of their culture, like those collected by <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/grimm/index2.html">Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm</a>, to illustrate the perils of straying from the path or trusting in the wrong authority figure. The root wisdom of these tales, we are told, have resonance for the ages, and we do well to heed them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The film's own distributor tried hard to make such a point, publishing an <a href="http://www.focusfeatures.com/article/wickeds_gregory_maguire_on_what_turns_a_story_into_a_fairy_tal">interview</a> with highly-paid fairytale inverter Gregory Maguire. But just as <i>Hanna</i> sets out to <a href="http://opinionessoftheworld.com/2011/04/14/hanna-film-review/">refashion those myths</a> to its own ends, I'm not convinced there's anything more to be done with Grimm-era fairytales <i>but</i> invert them. We don't read them to our kids nowadays, but we all know their gist — at least their bastardized versions, filtered once by the Grimms, <a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/tangled.htm">once by Disney</a>. So they remain a kind of irrelevant background hum of easy reference and surface psychology.</span></span><br />
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</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 21px;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603458100729615154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghAlBjKY76pjUGV4nesD2abK13wfq7AB-7zP_KgMvyrlEocVBhHf8-hFHvyLiizMlZ64WhyphenhyphenAojzBmqdT5Trk-thMUOY5WXefVuZx2dRtLCsZijibY6fnXU_-3MEF3c-X1rsSzRPQ/s400/Beasts.png" style="display: block; height: 228px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Yet how often they're employed when filmmakers turn their lenses on young female heroines! Catherine Hardwicke's recent </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Red Riding Hood</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, Matthew Bright's 1996 </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Freeway</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> — have we no other overlay to apply when making a film about a young woman's transition to sexual maturity or worldly wisdom? Neil Jordan's </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>The Company of Wolves</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> remains the best contemporary application of childhood myths to the passage into womanhood, and it won that mantle by developing its own allusive, symbolic vocabulary.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603458711530816866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFSwJgyr44XQXhWz48W5Dl1i4PjT6vcWPk4QyHuqL4qe9r9qX-4HiuIr9sC0H457Js1ooBOO5jbYAZhtWMcMcGyrIlC6KdU6ujAq6uAlu-kL2-DdPGgMGDIWuL1BdWH-6NXnpzZg/s400/company_of_wolves8.jpg" style="cursor: move; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; height: 224px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Most commonly, the palimpsest of a childhood myth is held up in order to be overwritten. The movies believe they're striking a feminist blow in this way. Riding Hood will <i>not</i> be eaten (read: raped). The princess <i>will</i> escape the tower, with minimal assistance at most. And when it comes time to kill the wolf, she don't need no stinking huntsman to do it for her. There's no instruction taken from these stories anymore, just an opportunity for postmodern mockery.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Comic books saw the opportunity long ago. After Alan Moore deconstructed the superhero, Neil Gaiman did similar for the fairytale — gently, because he respects the power of story, but his groundbreaking <i>Sandman</i> opened the door for future creators to get it wholly wrong. After Sandman and Bill Willingham's <i>Fables</i>, it's very hard to look a classical myth straight in the eye without smirking. Much easier for our young people to learn life lessons from the troubled, downtrodden Marvel heroes, who teach us that no matter how nobly endowed we might be, we're easily pricked by debt (Spider-Man), addiction (Iron Man), anger (The Hulk) and all the other ills of the modern day. But where the fairytale-derived femme flick has to do with transcending boundaries, the comic book movie has a lot of interest in reinforcing them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 21px;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603459965205215826" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8e5RZ1gDgSXFE4ZwfrH7ulzhxares-HwzVto5PS3Oun7Qk2UQjA7ydmZlSpvfTJeb51xlDkDCh9-hZCgCuJ_VwcETLSLuEfplCRYIgfySEcSEzoXFMJVuw066cDu0IELL484Q9Q/s320/thor_comic_book_image_01.jpg" style="cursor: move; display: block; height: 306px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Thor, by way of Marvel, is both a superhero comic and a folktale — a rough gloss on Norse myth that remains "classical" in the sense that pride is at the root of Thor's fall to Midgard. Once there, of course, he becomes its defender, all the while trying to live up to the standards of his distant, powerful father Odin. He can regain his status only by defending the status quo, on Earth as it is in Heaven.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In comics, superheroes are bound by their archetype to be defenders of the norm, not transformers. This goes for female superheroes too (unless they're named <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/dccomics/graphic_novels/?gn=1105">Promethea</a>, and there's Alan Moore again). They spring forth fully formed and go punch stuff alongside the boys. This is why Wonder Woman may never get a movie treatment, and why her latest TV show may <a href="http://wonderwomantv.com/tag/hollywood-reporter/">founder before it even airs</a>: There's nothing at stake when you start out perfect.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">To this end, if my choice of Germanic heroes come down to <i>Thor</i> or <i>Hanna</i>, give me the ice-blond girl-assassin. Hanna is made to be one thing and becomes something else; she's slotted into a design — actually two designs: that of her foes and that of her father — and then outgrows it. Thor was born to break shit with his hammer, and that's what he does, for pretty much one purpose, no matter where you put him. Hanna is a superheroine, but not in the limiting comic-book sense. She's something older than superhero tales, older even than Stan Lee.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But why must it be either/or? Surely there are other lenses through which to view film heroes, and particularly film heroines. Not every male hero needs to be a tortured Bruce Wayne, nor every female a sheltered princess awakened by a kiss. Close the book of fairytales. Put the comics back on the store rack. Think of what makes boys and girls into men and women now, today, and then tell me <i>that</i> story. I'm sitting comfortably, here in the dark, waiting to see it.</span></span></div>Jefferson Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05356665406917571985noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-4128748444075511472011-04-29T15:51:00.006-04:002011-04-29T16:48:58.443-04:00Apropos of Nothing: "Doc Hollywood"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEtJuemCbfBY5h7huD_bWenLvynUtWPR2tLv_Z3nZRxI5nlMMtLIH570mGCzE3M6x5Ef8Uavuq6TPe45bJMWQIq00RvBk7QlRtpi-0AM0FSQWzagJ8xyaLm2U8wrJSLhrqJC34/s1600/dhollywood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEtJuemCbfBY5h7huD_bWenLvynUtWPR2tLv_Z3nZRxI5nlMMtLIH570mGCzE3M6x5Ef8Uavuq6TPe45bJMWQIq00RvBk7QlRtpi-0AM0FSQWzagJ8xyaLm2U8wrJSLhrqJC34/s1600/dhollywood.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So, the other night <i>Doc Hollywood</i> was on TV. Now, every time <i>Doc Hollywood</i> is on TV, I try to time it so that I happen to channel-surf past it just as Julie Warner is making her Ursula Andress-style topless exit from a sylvan lake. But this time, I decided to keep watching, and...</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I actually saw <i>Doc Hollywood</i> a number of times during my Michael Caton-Jones phase. Back then, the Scottish director had followed up the amiable <i>Doc Hollywood</i> with the lovely <i>This Boy's Life</i> and the marvellous <i><a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/robroy.htm">Rob Roy</a></i>, and he made enough interesting decisions--like putting nudity in <i>Doc Hollywood</i> (the film that would essentially inspire Pixar's <i><a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/cars.htm">Cars</a></i>), or dropping the score for the climactic swordfight in <i><a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/robroy.htm">Rob Roy</a></i>--that he didn't seem to be so completely at the mercy of his scripts, as later films like <i>The Jackal</i> and<i> <a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/basicinstinct2.htm">Basic Instinct 2</a></i> revealed him to be.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But <i>Doc Hollywood</i>, in retrospect, already made this abundantly clear. Scripted by the decidedly low-wattage trio of Daniel Pyne (<i>Pacific Heights</i>) and partners Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman (<i>Wild Wild West</i>), the picture coasts on the charm of its actors, including Michael J. Fox (although knowing that he went into production having just been diagnosed with Parkinson's casts a shroud of melancholy over his performance), whose character's braggadocio would be unpalatable without Fox's knack for turning Alex P. Keatons into total softies.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The movie is not without merit as cinema, don't get me wrong. I'm particularly fond of a scene Caton-Jones himself came up with, if I'm remembering the publicity lore correctly, in which Fox and Warner--sounds like a corporate merger, doesn't it?--dance to Patsy Cline's "Crazy": as these would-be lovers lose themselves in each other, everyone around them momentarily vanishes into thin air. Little dashes of magic realism like that would go a long way towards keeping many of today's romcoms out of the ghetto. Still, even as far as these things go, the love story in <i>Doc Hollywood</i> is perfunctory, and there's nothing particularly original or seductive about the town of Grady, which cleanses Fox's soul like a Norman Rockwell enema. It's basically a less oppressive precursor to "Gilmore girls"' Stars Hollow.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What really ruins the movie for me today, however, is the fucking pig. More specifically, it's a sequence where Fox inherits a pig for fixing a patient's toe. (Hey! It's That Guy! <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083542/">Raye Birk</a> plays the patient, making Grady feel at once more cozy and more artificial.) Fox, desperate to get out of Grady, then barters the pig to the mechanic fixing his Porsche, only to learn that Warner's four-year-old daughter is crazy about pigs and would love it if Fox brought his porcine pal around sometime. Fox, desperate to get in Warner's pants, then tries to buy back the pig, but discovers the mechanic has turned around and sold it to the butcher. Fox frantically races to save the pig's life--and does, by putting his surgeon's hands to use cutting meat all night for the butcher. Phew!</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The trouble is, the next day, Fox shows up at Warner's, pig in tow, and Warner's daughter, sitting placidly on the stoop, doesn't react! She doesn't acknowledge the pig--doesn't pet it, doesn't smile, doesn't freak out the way kids sometimes do when confronted with the reality of an animal they've only envisioned. Nor is her apathy itself the punchline, insofar as we can tell. All that sweat-inducing set-up, no payoff.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Anyway, I think it's this lack of ruthlessness that ultimately became Caton-Jones's undoing. Does the shot establish that Fox accomplished his mission? Well, yes. <i>That'll do, pig.</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You can blink now.</span></span></div>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-72622540530078122102011-04-11T04:43:00.012-04:002011-04-11T06:20:30.781-04:00Incidentally...<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Just a little screencap game while I clear out the cobwebs. A couple of movies have been on my mind lately, and I thought I'd present them from a different angle: by giving a look-see to the incidental shots between significant moments, the midpoint of a pan, the split-second right before a cut that sends us right back into the action. (For the sake of argument, let's just say that I want to celebrate every single one of those twenty-four frames per second.) Bet you wish you had that FaceBack app now, huh? There are a few telltale hints, so you eagle-eyes should be able to identify them. No prizes, I'm afraid, but would anyone care to take a crack?</span><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ySbc8dtNl7g/TaK_2FmFfYI/AAAAAAAAAR8/YkqYyyTb-_w/s1600/inappropriate-screencap3.png"><br /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-08vECJ7-Muk/TaK_ngZNZpI/AAAAAAAAAR0/xwgXFblWOAw/s1600/inappropriate-screencap5.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 133px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-08vECJ7-Muk/TaK_ngZNZpI/AAAAAAAAAR0/xwgXFblWOAw/s320/inappropriate-screencap5.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594244372579051154" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-juZsHbxm2HE/TaLIRseSCAI/AAAAAAAAASE/hOnmQoEMd-8/s1600/inappropriate-screencap6.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 136px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-juZsHbxm2HE/TaLIRseSCAI/AAAAAAAAASE/hOnmQoEMd-8/s320/inappropriate-screencap6.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594253893469079554" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QXO1gtx5xoA/TaK_UzGZNJI/AAAAAAAAARk/tSs5CkBq0xk/s1600/inappropriate-screencap4.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QXO1gtx5xoA/TaK_UzGZNJI/AAAAAAAAARk/tSs5CkBq0xk/s320/inappropriate-screencap4.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594244051182892178" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GmIW3FlR6Uk/TaLLmJ2u4oI/AAAAAAAAASM/1s0q0X5sw3M/s1600/inappropriate-screencap7.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GmIW3FlR6Uk/TaLLmJ2u4oI/AAAAAAAAASM/1s0q0X5sw3M/s320/inappropriate-screencap7.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594257543488529026" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VJ0_94ZkGE4/TaLRJwMRDFI/AAAAAAAAASU/Cyyp5XJpBpM/s1600/inappropriate-screencap8.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 137px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VJ0_94ZkGE4/TaLRJwMRDFI/AAAAAAAAASU/Cyyp5XJpBpM/s320/inappropriate-screencap8.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594263652632955986" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JXPAJBm-Eec/TaLUAZuzNfI/AAAAAAAAASc/9dNhg_53f5s/s1600/inappropriate-screencap9.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 179px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JXPAJBm-Eec/TaLUAZuzNfI/AAAAAAAAASc/9dNhg_53f5s/s320/inappropriate-screencap9.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594266790519846386" border="0" /></a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-17620468516997712562011-03-16T21:26:00.003-04:002011-03-17T21:25:44.746-04:00COSMONAUT review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbMDfv1kmgtn_5WmIBuXLJOx_tLxHSluzweaqrqOcVxYUxbd8kKokFvh4Ntsm_-9MiMGSQcVyI-fcxc-c46pacElFo79dq04JCAJGW6PcNbQntaOucMblWaO6D3aJP_08lwAcm/s1600/cosmonaut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><img border="0" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbMDfv1kmgtn_5WmIBuXLJOx_tLxHSluzweaqrqOcVxYUxbd8kKokFvh4Ntsm_-9MiMGSQcVyI-fcxc-c46pacElFo79dq04JCAJGW6PcNbQntaOucMblWaO6D3aJP_08lwAcm/s1600/cosmonaut.jpg" /></span></a></div><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>COSMONAUT (Cosmonauta)</strong> (2009)</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">**1/2/****</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">starring Claudio Pandolfi, Sergio Rubini, Mariana Raschilla, Pietro Del Giudice</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">screenplay by Susanna Nicchiarelli, Teresa Ciabatti</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli</span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Susanna Nicchiarelli's <i>Cosmonaut (Cosmonauta)</i> opens with little Luciana fleeing Holy Communion, shedding the accoutrements of the ceremony on her sprint back home. She seems a little young to be throwing off the shackles of religious conformity, younger even than her alleged onscreen age of nine, but the punchline's priceless in its precociousness: "Because I'm a communist!" she barks when her mother asks why she left church. There's actually a bit more to her rebellion than that. With their dad gone (having died a "true communist"), she looks to her geeky older brother Arturo for guidance, and because it's 1957 and the Soviets are about to launch Sputnik, he favours the godless world of communism as well. From a North American perspective, the movie is interesting in that respect, as very rarely do our history books stop to consider the excitement that Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin must have engendered in Europe on their way to depicting America's mad rush to win the space race. Even propaganda footage showcasing the likes of Laika the Russian dog--which forms the basis of transitional montages similar to but less operatically intense than the ones that constitute a good portion of Marco Bellocchio's <i>Vincere</i>--was mostly new to me. In fact, when the moon-landing cropped up in the finale, I breathed a sigh of disappointment, though it's worth noting that it may not be such a cliché in Italy.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Arturo is diagnosed with epilepsy. <i>Cosmonaut</i> flashes forward to 1963, the year Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman--moreover, the first <i>civilian</i>--in space: Luciana's now a surly, chain-smoking fifteen-year-old (she doesn't appear to inhale, which may have been actress Mariana Raschilla's own squeamishness but suits a character who's all affectations just the same), a heavily-medicated Arturo is a social liability to her, and their mother has remarried, mainly for stability's sake. Following in her late father's footsteps, Luciana joins the Italian Federation of Young Communists, implicitly out of childhood nostalgia. While Arturo mysteriously hoards match-heads, headstrong Luciana establishes herself as a promising addition to the party, but her efforts are clearly designed to attract the attention of her handsome branch leader, who, somewhat hypocritically, has his eye on the seemingly better-heeled Fiorella. Luciana's actions then become strictly jealous and petty; proving the wisdom of a voting age, her raging hormones trump her allegiance to any political cause.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The movie has its charms, including an enticing, Almodóvarian palette and an intriguing juxtaposition of Cold War iconography and old-world architecture. Raschilla's humourless, almost joyless performance is decidedly disengaging, though, and I lost patience with <i>Cosmonaut</i> as it became an increasingly <i>pro forma</i> coming-of-age flick. Nearly every beat in the film's second half, down to Luciana's cruel rejection of Arturo's advice and Arturo subsequently running away from home without the identification he needs in the event of a seizure, finds its origins in genre convention rather than in organic storytelling. (Although Nicchiarelli elicits sympathy for Arturo by showing others marginalizing him, she ultimately marginalizes him as well (a Catch-22?), making his theatrically self-destructive gesture feel arbitrary.) And what to make of the picture's historical irony? Luciana and Arturo cling to doomed concepts (socialism, rocket ships), allegorizing the youthful ignorance of us all, yet the smartest, most humane characters are arguably a pair of middle-aged Communists, one of whom is played by Nicchiarelli herself. I haven't seen Nicchiarelli's companion piece, <i>Sputnik 5</i>, an animated short about the veritable Noah's Ark that was the titular satellite, but without all that narrative baggage perhaps it has a chance to fulfill <em>Cosmonaut</em>'s aesthetic promise.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><strong>Cosmonaut<em> begins a one-week engagement at The Royal in Toronto on March 18. Visit the <a href="http://www.filmswelike.com/releases/files/d708c45f6a5fa63228d77aa1ec2b357f-50.html">filmswelike website</a> for more details.</em></strong></span></span>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-3848452786495193052011-03-11T17:42:00.001-05:002011-03-11T17:52:21.668-05:00The SUPER 8 trailer is here!<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So let's rejoice...by watching the just-released trailer for <em>The Smurfs</em>!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><object height="324" width="576"><param name="movie" value="http://d.yimg.com/nl/movies/site/player.swf"></param><param name="flashVars" value="vid=24476987&"></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed width="576" height="324" allowFullScreen="true" src="http://d.yimg.com/nl/movies/site/player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="vid=24476987&"></embed></object></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">I watched "The Smurfs" religiously until they phased out Gargamel by introducing Johann and Peewee, and the show gave way to all sorts of inscrutable Belgian horseshit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><strong>UPDATE</strong>: I don't actually want to see this movie, just to clarify.</span></div>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-87110129139744814052011-02-16T22:42:00.004-05:002011-02-17T15:27:40.913-05:00Unfinished<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSps5SK63l9tWRrWUqHAtHdC5whbSttvEVqwoZnRXemj_28uoXMWsqk-WXTQDuXSCvG9l80bFDlV8BxLyX4iQRFehpkxo2jGb1iszRH72N58YHhq_XiaHJKAUTLIGGDbyWEtDh/s1600/barton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><img border="0" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSps5SK63l9tWRrWUqHAtHdC5whbSttvEVqwoZnRXemj_28uoXMWsqk-WXTQDuXSCvG9l80bFDlV8BxLyX4iQRFehpkxo2jGb1iszRH72N58YHhq_XiaHJKAUTLIGGDbyWEtDh/s1600/barton.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I'm Lucy operating the conveyor belt when it comes to keeping up with my review queue; here's a taste of my numerous false starts over the past few months, if for no other reason than to shame myself into finishing the two or three pieces I'm currently juggling.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span><strong><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">SMALL WONDER</span></strong><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">I was 10 when "Small Wonder" debuted, and I seem to recall it as being the first TV series I approached with anything resembling cynicism. For starters, actually landing on it while channel-surfing was a bit of a crapshoot. The vagaries of syndication not meaning much to me then, I interpreted this as corporate embarrassment in the program which transferred over to me, even with my undiscriminating latchkey palette. For another thing, "Small Wonder" marked the first time I noticed special effects as such: done by Disney, according to creator Howard Leeds, they generated more laughs for their transparency than for any sight gag they were aiming to execute--which, along with the dependably lame jokes, gave the show a certain ironic lustre. I seem to recall most often encountering "Small Wonder" at the tail end of Saturday-morning cartoons, and it was only my extraordinarily passive viewing habits--combined with a frankly bottomless appetite for sitcoms--that kept me from changing the channel. A few more things I remember about my childhood experience with the show: that I loved the theme song, or at least that it took up permanent residence in my brain almost immediately; and that Tiffany Brissette, in the title role, was one of the few child actresses I <i>didn't</i> have a crush on, for reasons that ultimately had less to do with her looks than with the uncanniness of her performance. More on this later.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><strong>THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE</strong></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Oddly enough, the worst scene in <i>The Sorcerer's Apprentice</i> is the one that apes the titular segment from <i>Fantasia/2000</i>. It's a non sequitur, for starters, its shoehorned-in feeling aggravated by a weird edit that plays like a skip in the record. For another thing, there is nothing charming about an enchanted mop in live-action. On this we might blame the Swiffer commercials, in which anthropomorphized custodial implements are sent to the gulag because the lady of the house has decided to "give cleaning a whole new meaning." (The sequence relies on the same sort of crude puppetry and self-demystifying close-ups--all your mind sees is a grip standing just outside of camera range.) And Jay Baruchel is no Mickey Mouse, so it's a long time before we even realize that <i>this</i> is supposed to be <i>that</i>.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><strong>SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE</strong></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><em>Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance</em></span><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> is not a direct translation of the original Korean title of this first instalment in Park Chanwook's "Vengeance Trilogy" (and the only one he didn't have a hand in writing--although it was clearly a huge influence on his own writing style), but it describes the film much better than the generic <i>Vengeance is Mine</i> would have. Revenge here is not biblically cathartic but rather the sort of dysfunction we aim to minimize with a cute title, because in fact we never want to experience it. Late in the picture, two good but misguided men stand in a river; one tells the other that he's sorry but he has to kill him, and we don't necessarily agree, but we're, yes, sympathetic to the impulse.</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><strong>from an abortive attempt at expanding my BACK TO THE FUTURE review</strong></span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I guess I never really realized, seeing as how I saw it before I would've seen anything that influenced it, <i>Back to the Future</i>'s playful conversation with the cinema. It's not a pastiche, but it references a gamut ranging from James Whale's <i>Frankenstein</i> ("It works!!!" is this movie's version of the similarly lightning-soaked "It's alive!!!") to, with Doc Brown's climactic dangle from Hill Valley's clock tower, Harold Lloyd/<i>Safety Last!</i>. As the background use of 1954's <i>Cattle Queen of Montana</i> to signify Ronald Reagan's silver-screen past is a little bit anachronistic, one could argue that they may as well have picked the more familiar <i>Bedtime for Bonzo</i> from 1951, but the esoteric choice suggests more respect for the audience's intellect--not to mention Reagan. And the DeLorean's introduction struck me as especially funny this time: a truck opens up to lower a ramp like E.T.'s spaceship, and, as Alan Silvestri's score bespeaks wonder and the camera rises with reverence, billowing clouds of CO2 mist part to reveal a futuristic automobile retrofitted for time travel. Then Doc Brown stumbles out of the car...having a mild coughing fit from all the smoke. Talk about taking the piss out of Spielbergian awe--something which audiences would've especially appreciated in July of '85, if you take into account that the re-release of <i>E.T.</i> earlier in the summer was met with picket signs that read, "E.T. Go Home!" (At least it was in my hometown, where <i>E.T.</i> had barely ended its official run before this revival.)</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Read anything good offsite lately, even only tangentially film-related? I really enjoyed </span><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/02/salinger-201102"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">this</span></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> VANITY FAIR article on the wartime experiences of J.D. Salinger.</span></span>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-85331997894291865722011-01-25T12:13:00.005-05:002011-01-25T12:25:06.475-05:00Annual Professional Commentary on the Oscar Nominations<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Motion Picture of the Year</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">127 Hours (2010): Christian Colson, Danny Boyle, John Smithson = oy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Black Swan (2010): Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver, Scott Franklin = yay, pretty much</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Fighter (2010): David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, Mark Wahlberg = barf</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas = obligatory</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Kids Are All Right (2010): Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Celine Rattray = sorry, no</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The King's Speech (2010): Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin = Miramax nostalgia</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Social Network (2010): Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, Ceán Chaffin = and the winner is</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Toy Story 3 (2010): Darla K. Anderson = yay, pretty much</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">True Grit (2010): Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Scott Rudin = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Winter's Bone (2010): Anne Rosellini, Alix Madigan = barf</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Javier Bardem for Biutiful (2010) = Julia paid 'em</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Jeff Bridges for True Grit (2010) = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network (2010) = sure</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Colin Firth for The King's Speech (2010) = whatevs</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">James Franco for 127 Hours (2010) = at Gosling's expense</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right (2010) = best thing about it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole (2010) = barf</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone (2010) = yawn</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Natalie Portman for Black Swan (2010) = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine (2010) = yay</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Christian Bale for The Fighter (2010) = the full retard</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">John Hawkes for Winter's Bone (2010) = best thing about it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Jeremy Renner for The Town (2010) = interesting</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right (2010) = shrug</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech (2010) = shrug</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Amy Adams for The Fighter (2010) = her perennial nomination; also: yum</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Helena Bonham Carter for The King's Speech (2010) = shrug</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Melissa Leo for The Fighter (2010) = oh please</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit (2010) = emoticons to express yay because she's 14</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom (2010) = yay</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Achievement in Directing</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan (2010) = won't win</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Ethan Coen, Joel Coen for True Grit (2010) = awesome</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">David Fincher for The Social Network (2010) = deserved this fifteen years ago</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Tom Hooper for The King's Speech (2010) = whatevs</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">David O. Russell for The Fighter (2010) = aw hail no</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Another Year (2010): Mike Leigh = throw the dog a bone</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Fighter (2010): Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Keith Dorrington = no no way n'uh uh no way fuggetit</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan = oh please</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Kids Are All Right (2010): Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg = see <em>Inception</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The King's Speech (2010): David Seidler = he wrote <em>Tucker</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">127 Hours (2010): Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy = <em>Slumdog</em> ass-covering</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Social Network (2010): Aaron Sorkin = rent that tux</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Toy Story 3 (2010): Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich = ok</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">True Grit (2010): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Winter's Bone (2010): Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini = barf</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Animated Feature Film of the Year</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders = ok</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Illusionist (2010): Sylvain Chomet = love-children everywhere are checking their attics</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Toy Story 3 (2010): Lee Unkrich = believe it or not</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Foreign Language Film of the Year</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Biutiful (2010): Alejandro González Iñárritu(Mexico) = or Julia would've killed everyone</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Dogtooth (2009): Giorgos Lanthimos(Greece) = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In a Better World (2010): Susanne Bier(Denmark) = didn't see, but Bier should be in movie jail</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Incendies (2010): Denis Villeneuve(Canada) = go Leafs</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Outside the Law (2010): Rachid Bouchareb(Algeria) = news to me</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Achievement in Cinematography</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Black Swan (2010): Matthew Libatique = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Inception (2010): Wally Pfister = best thing about it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The King's Speech (2010): Danny Cohen = rock me, Danny Cohen</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Social Network (2010): Jeff Cronenweth = runs in the family</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">True Grit (2010): Roger Deakins = Susan Lucci</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Achievement in Editing</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">127 Hours (2010): Jon Harris = hope he thanks Cuisinart</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Black Swan (2010): Andrew Weisblum = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Fighter (2010): Pamela Martin = whatchutalkinabout?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The King's Speech (2010): Tariq Anwar = shrug</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Social Network (2010): Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall = whatevs</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Achievement in Art Direction</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Alice in Wonderland (2010): Robert Stromberg, Karen O'Hara = barf</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010): Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan = yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Inception (2010): Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias, Douglas A. Mowat = A for effort</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The King's Speech (2010): Eve Stewart, Judy Farr = shock of shocks</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">True Grit (2010): Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh = yay</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Achievement in Costume Design</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Alice in Wonderland (2010): Colleen Atwood = first mostly-CG costume nom?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I Am Love (2009): Antonella Cannarozzi = shrug</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The King's Speech (2010): Jenny Beavan = "</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Tempest (2010/II): Sandy Powell = didn't see, but it's Julie Taymor</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">True Grit (2010): Mary Zophres = yay</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Achievement in Makeup</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Barney's Version (2010): Adrien Morot = Giamatti hasn't looked so human since <em>Planet of the Apes</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Way Back (2010): Edouard F. Henriques, Greg Funk, Yolanda Toussieng = ironic</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Wolfman (2010): Rick Baker, Dave Elsey = yay</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">127 Hours (2010): A.R. Rahman = yawn</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">How to Train Your Dragon (2010): John Powell = ok</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Inception (2010): Hans Zimmer = ok</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The King's Speech (2010): Alexandre Desplat = I like Desplat</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Social Network (2010): Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross = rooting for it</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Gonna stop there because we start getting into categories with too many blind spots for me personally. No surprises or even big huge disappointments this year, except maybe the lack of love for <em>Marwencol</em>.</span>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-62099766732667973542011-01-02T01:34:00.005-05:002011-01-02T12:41:53.424-05:00Top Ten Talkback<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Here's your chance. What'd we miss? What'd we get right? What were we smokin'? And what was the deal with all that cunnilingus? (Full lists with intro <a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/toptens/top102010.htm">here</a>.)</span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Ian's list: </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">10. Iron Man 2</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">9. Somewhere</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">8. Marwencol</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">7. Mother</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">6. The Other Guys</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">5. Valhalla Rising</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4. I'm Still Here</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3. Greenberg</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2. Black Swan</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1. True Grit</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Bill's list:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">10. The American</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">9. Black Swan</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">8. Blue Valentine</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">7. Exit Through the Gift Shop</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">6. Somewhere</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">5. Dogtooth</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4. Greenberg</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3. Marwencol</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2. Life During Wartime</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1. True Grit</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Walter's list:</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">10. The American</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">9. Marwencol</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">8. Dogtooth</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">7. Greenberg</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">6. Mother</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">5. Animal Kingdom</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4. Black Swan</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3. Somewhere</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2. True Grit</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1. Valhalla Rising</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I'll start: I'm completely unwilling to acknowledge that Iron Man 2 is anything but a turbid, often-unwatchable mess that may lend itself by its very vapidity to some read or another, but doesn't present much beyond just the fact of itself. So be it - I don't know that I've been immune to that instinct in the past (like Blue Crush, for instance) - he without sin, and all that. I lament not having seen Todd Solondz's latest as I really, and for truly, love Todd Solondz's stuff (well, except for Storytelling) - and wish I'd seen Soderbergh's latest on Spalding Gray because, as Bill has eloquently put it about things in the past, I feel like I've dreamed it already.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I want to echo Bill's Twittered pride about not any of the three of us sticking Social Network in the top ten though, yeah, I think we all liked it. It's just, you know, so blandly intelligent and well-crafted... sort of like The Ghost Writer though I fear that I don't see any connection to it and Chinatown. The Ghost Writer doesn't end with resignation... ah well. I do wonder about the venom, though, of my colleagues against Scott Pilgrim which, though it didn't touch my heart in any discernible way, I was sort of impressed by in a technical way. It was my Tron 2, I guess, and I was sort of excited by Wright's joking dedication to making a sequel to Krull in the Twitter-verse. Maybe I'm just a sap.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">And what is it with all the cunnilingus?</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I think it's interesting that I was the only of these three male critics to rank Somewhere above Greenberg... though when it came time to do the top flick, well, it couldn't be more masculine.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I noticed, too, that there were a lot of people jumping off things in movies this year; that Resnais' Wild Grass is actually sort of a twee piece of shit; and that even though I still don't think that Shutter Island is great, I'm coming around to the idea that it's not as elderly as first suspected. Here's the thing, it's been a long time since a year in pictures has boasted as many beautiful-looking films, independent of their ultimate value. Stuff like Ondine, for instance, by the always-reliable Neil Jordan, which is mostly cross-eyed badger spit and missed opportunities, but in moments flabbergastingly lovely. Like Inception, which sucks, but is a wonder to look at - even the documentaries - even the foreign flicks... I'm excited to catch up with what I missed this year; I'm thinking 2010 was a deep well.</span></div>Walter_Chawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14314737706201691225noreply@blogger.com73tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-9524631250908432322010-12-30T05:16:00.005-05:002010-12-30T12:36:50.345-05:00Real Life, Real Nudity, and the Breast Actress<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">What follows is a type of confession. By that, I'm not saying that this is the sort of thing in which I admit that Ben Affleck is actually pretty good in Surviving Christmas. No, this is the sort of thing in which I admit that I'm not a very good person and don't particularly care.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">There were two events that led me to post this. One was the brief mention of "real nudity"--the sort of nudity mentioned by Bill in which you see a featured actress' parts, and not a nameless, often faceless, stripper's. Real nudity is the sort of thing that intimately involves you in the life of a famous actress--irrevocable and invasive, it has very little to do with sex and quite a lot to do with the destruction of privacy. Also, it's awesome in every way and a few I'll never be able to articulate.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The other event is Bryant Frazer's piece on Fantasia--a leisurely and fair dissection of one of my favorite films. "Of course," you might think, "the Pastoral Symphony section is too goofy for words." What can I say? "If it accomplishes nothing else, it does seem pretty fucking 'pastoral?'" Anyhow, my band-aid having been fully removed, it's time to go for broke and tell my little story.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So I'm having a conversation about the greatest films of this era with a girl--a friend--who has just turned 21. My assignment, and hers as well, is to pick the major Academy Award categories (Picture, Director, Screenplay, and the four Acting categories), but for her lifetime instead of any particular year. I add on a pick for Foreign Film, not because pretentiousness gives me little cerebral erections, but because she came up with one first. And I try to avoid repeating films wherever possible. So here are my choices (I don't entirely remember hers, but they are non-terrible and non-interesting):</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Picture 1989-Now: Pulp Fiction</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Director: Joel & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Actress: Emily Watson, Breaking the Waves</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Supporting Actor: Samuel Jackson, Pulp Fiction</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Supporting Actress: Lara Belmont, The War Zone</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Best Foreign Film: Hero (I actually prefer Hable con ella, but she's already an Almodovar fan, and they're so close in my mind, I went with something I didn't think she had seen.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So my list, if you know me, isn't particularly surprising. I feel no responsibility to mention less common films just to seem worldly, so I find the lack of anything idiosyncratic strangely idiosyncratic. My friend told me her list, listened to mine, and nothing of any particular value was discussed. Then I started thinking about my list.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">It's not particularly interesting except for the fact that both of my best actresses play sexual victims. Lara Belmont is raped by her dad and sets her own breast on fire in front of her brother and still somehow comes out in better shape than my best actress, who basically allows her disabled husband to talk her into getting fucked to death by strangers. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis is pretty great in There Will Be Blood, but he doesn't have to take a bowling pin in the butt. No doubt Day-Lewis, the consummate professional, would set his nuts on fire if the role depended on it--one thinks about the tears jerked from a hypothetical filming of My Left Ball--but the fact is that the sexual degradation of dudes isn't interesting. Not from a plot perspective, and not from a "real nudity" perspective.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Naked tits have value, even in this Google and external hard drive culture. Readily available, not to mention the most infantile valuable object ever conceived, a previously unavailable naked boob is very possibly one of the last true currencies. This isn't the sort of thing I'd write on resumes, and it isn't exactly uncommon, but I know if it's possible to see a famous girl's boobs. Which famous girl? Pretty much all of them. Is this a creepy sexual thing? Well, it's creepy, but it's not sexual.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I don't want to fuck Zooey Deschanel. I mean, sure I'd <i>marry</i> her, but that's not the point right now. First of all, putting aside all issues of taste and decency (and feminism), wanting to fuck her would be impolite; I don't know her. Also, she's a vegan and it's difficult (though not impossible) to make fun of someone cooler than you while you're fucking them. So to recap, if you walked up to me with a faceless picture of Zooey Deschanel's vagina, I'd decline on the grounds that I have better reasons to hate myself. But.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">If you told me that there was in existence a completely authentic picture of Zooey Deschanel's face and naked boobs, I would fetishize that picture in the completely insane (and mostly asexual) way that people fetishize new photos of the Titanic under water. I mean, it's HER face and HER boobs.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">You can never undo that.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Human interaction has come a long way. People can look, hopefully, at another person's picture on a dating site, and instead of thinking, "Is the possibility of having sex with this person worth getting stabbed in the throat with the smallest and least impressive member of a terrifying collection of mail-order ceramic pastel unicorns?" they think, "Well, at least he <i>claims</i> to love his mom." There's something kind of great about the optimism with which we face relationships these days. But it's total bullshit--more people than ever before know that most every aspect of polite society is the overcorrection we publicize to make up for how damaged and deranged we are all the time.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">So I'll come right out and say it. When the film theory types talk about the voyeurism inherent in female screen nudity, they're on the wrong track. A voyeur has a goal, a point of view. That's not what happens when a girl is naked on screen. It's not about looking; it's about showing. Female nudity, real nudity, is truth--not the manufactured, italicized truth that shaky-cam and other verite techniques claim to be, and certainly not a documentary either. No, real nudity is better--more and less pure, it's theater and fiction and the girl you always wanted to see naked and a real person whose nudity can never be revoked. If you're the kind of person who'd rather see guys naked, then I apologize, but there simply isn't an analogue. A dick can be theater and fiction and desire, but no one ever thinks that to show your dick is to give away a piece of yourself. I hesitate to say that boobs--either literal boobs on display or literal boobs slightly hidden or metaphorical boobs commenting on the female experience or metaphorical boobs commenting on the nature of being an actress (metaboobs?)--are necessary aspects of any quality female performance, but my hesitation is based on shame and not analysis.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">When it comes to my choice of best actresses, I'm more than willing to call myself a misogynistic pervert and call it a day. But the fact is that women will never play Day-Lewis' part in There Will Be Blood or Jackson's part in Pulp Fiction. Oh sure, the scales will balance and all that jazz, but there have been only a handful of men asked to carry a movie like Day-Lewis carries There Will Be Blood. To expect a role like that for a woman is simply childish.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">But if our expectations of real nudity and film as a whole are a distilled and amplified concoction of theater, fiction, desire, and truth, maybe those women are the best actresses after all. How do you compete with a man who methodically rapes the country and beats a man to death? If you've seen Breaking the Waves, perhaps the analogy isn't far off.</span>O'JohnLandishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15560571840235787129noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-54759481497452923642010-12-16T17:24:00.006-05:002011-03-16T22:14:51.081-04:00UPDATED w/ANSWERS + WINNER: "Somewhere" Giveaway<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyzquEfUfLogcFmd8pmb8bspo_NBv2NeCKOHozCvssqW5RRVNd2zJeqY__eIUVdsnkOLPDyJzIE64LZf99NFRHZS5rJzWTNvd1fatsqFsSYJu807pHxnjilTXZ-tYjwU8cpjji/s1600/somewhereposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyzquEfUfLogcFmd8pmb8bspo_NBv2NeCKOHozCvssqW5RRVNd2zJeqY__eIUVdsnkOLPDyJzIE64LZf99NFRHZS5rJzWTNvd1fatsqFsSYJu807pHxnjilTXZ-tYjwU8cpjji/s1600/somewhereposter.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Want to win a <em>Somewhere</em> prize-pack featuring a $25 movie theatre gift card, a copy of <em>Lost in Translation</em> on DVD, and, best of all, a <em>Somewhere</em> poster autographed by writer-director Sofia Coppola? Of course you do. To qualify, all you have to do is submit your answers to the quiz below along with your name and address to<script type="text/javascript">
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</script> by Wednesday, December 22, 2010--the day <em>Somewhere</em> opens in select cities across the U.S.. (Speaking of which, this giveaway is limited to residents of continental North America.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Alas, we only have one of these to hand out, and the winner will be drawn at random from among the correct entries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><strong><u>A COPPOLA FAMILY QUIZ</u></strong></span></div><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">1. How many Lisbon sisters are there in <em>The Virgin Suicides</em>? <span style="color: #cc0000;">FIVE</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">2. Which actress did Sofia Coppola replace in <em>The Godfather Part III</em>? <span style="color: #cc0000;">WINONA RYDER</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">3. What was the name of the magazine Francis Ford Coppola started in the 1970s?<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">CITY (though whether he started it or hijacked it is I guess open to debate)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">4. Which of the following actors is NOT a member of Sofia Coppola's family: Nicolas Cage, Alicia Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, or Talia Shire?</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Trebuchet MS;">ALICIA COPPOLA</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">5. How many Oscars do Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola have between them?<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">6 (five for Francis, one for Sofia)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">6. What did Sofia Coppola use as a stage name in the 1980s?</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">DOMINO</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">7. Which of her father's films did Sofia Coppola co-write with him?<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">"LIFE WITHOUT ZOE," from <em>New York Stories</em></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">8. Six degrees of separation: connect Stephen Dorff to Sofia Coppola pretending that <em>Somewhere</em> doesn't exist.<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">I loved reading this answer. Most of you used Stephen Dorff in <em>World Trade Center</em> to Nicolas Cage (Sofia's cousin as well as her <em>Peggy Sue Got Married</em> co-star). My personal answer to this was Stephen Dorff to Giovanni Ribisi (in <em>Public Enemies</em>), narrator of Sofia's <em>The Virgin Suicides</em>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">9. What is the pseudonym Anna Faris's character uses to check in with in <em>Lost in Translation</em>?<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">EVELYN WAUGH. (Everyone got this--I thought it'd be harder since it's not part of the film's Wikipedia entry.)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">10. Sofia Coppola played a resident of what planet in <em>Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace</em>?<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">NABOO</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Congratulations DANIEL NUNEZ of WORCESTER, MA. Your prize-pack is on the way. Daniel, for what it's worth, had the most esoteric answer to #8: Stephen Dorff to Stan Tracy (!) in <em>I Shot Andy Warhol</em>. (Veteran extra Tracy earlier drifted through Francis Coppola's <em>The Cotton Club</em>.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">My thanks to Focus Features for sponsoring this contest. In the meantime, carry on as you have been--intrigued to see something of a backlash forming against cult darling <em>Scott Pilgrim</em>. Lots of good stuff coming up, by the by, including our own Top 10 lists for the year. Any guesses?</span>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-57684389169171500542010-12-03T03:45:00.023-05:002010-12-06T13:32:19.230-05:00Spy in Our Midst<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zRXM-aOz3Eg/TPSDwMrk_fI/AAAAAAAAAQU/WxVBE4Jqqao/s1600/spybackstab.png"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 190px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zRXM-aOz3Eg/TPSDwMrk_fI/AAAAAAAAAQU/WxVBE4Jqqao/s320/spybackstab.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5545201905260887538" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">If you're wondering why <a href="http://twitter.com/quixoticideal">my Twitter avatar</a> has been stealing the identities of others, well, blame Valve's brilliant "Team Fortress 2"--one of those countless obsessions that tend to crop up at the most inconvenient moments. But hear me out, blog patrons, I'm going somewhere with this.</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zRXM-aOz3Eg/TPSDbCZvD7I/AAAAAAAAAQM/zTq-VFlOaaQ/s1600/spybackstab.png"><br /></a>For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the parameters of this game are basically identical to its prede</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">cessor: a multiplayer first-person shooter that pits two teams, comprised of nine classes (Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper and Spy), against each other in various wargames. <span style="font-style: italic;">Balance</span> is the key to success--the advantages of one class can be circumvented by the advantages of another--and that's precisely what made the original game so popular. The same dynamic carries over, but a lion's share of the the sequel's lasting appeal lies in its backdrop. "TF2" takes place in a retro-futuristic version of the early 1960s, but what's interesting about this world is that it doesn't really try to<span style="font-style: italic;"> parody</span> the era in question. The game carries no pretensions beyond a series of visual and musical cues: it never lets you forget that it is a straightforward fiction created by people born several years after the fact--their idea of contemporary culture dictated by pastel comedies, Silver Age comic books and action movies.<br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Appropriately, this mentality extends to the purely conceptual inhabitants of "TF2". The classes were updated to reflect this new landscape; the characters in the first game were little more than faceless ciphers, but their '60s counterparts are given personalities based on an Americocentric view of the world. The Heavy is a meatheaded Russian; the Spy is an obnoxious Frenchman; the Medic is a straitlaced, sadistic German--and they all comment on their enemies' performance as they kill them. In an <a href="http://gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/03/12/feature-writers-block-valve-writers-talk-portal-2.aspx">interview with <span style="font-style: italic;">Game Informer</span></a>, writer Chet Faliszek talks about writing and casting actors for the classes:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">"'Team Fortress' was fun, because we knew we wanted to make it sounds like what Americans in the '60s would have imagined these people had sounded like, not what they actually sounded like, which I think got some positive reviews and some negative reviews. Depending on what country you're from, because as we updated each nationality that nationality would be outraged that we got the accents wrong.</span>"<br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">However, in terms of <span>visual</span> influence, the creators cite Norman Rockwell, Dean Cornwell and J. C. Leyendecker, all of whom came into prominence long before this period but reflect "TF2"'s aesthetic intentions quite well. The dominant question, then, is not "where are we" but "from where have we come"--and subsequently, we must imagine what forces have led us to this point in time. How did we come to accept these stereotypes? Why do they serve as cultural signifiers for the 1960s? What are these RED and BLU corporations that hire such men to kill one another? Supplementary materials expound upon a century-long war between two obscenely-powerful brothers vying for world domination, but most the specifics are left to the imagination. (The game's production/update blog <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4608&p=1">humorously notes</a> that the </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">game was first created in 1963--the birth year of the modern conspiracy theory.)<br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />After nearly a decade of production and innumerable rebuilds, "Team Fortress 2" was released in 2007 to great fanfare, and it has maintained a steady fanbase since then--thanks in no small part to Valve's savvy marketing campaign. Which brings me to the reason why I'm sharing this game with you, my fellow cinephiles: Valve has produced several promotional videos introducing the viewer to each member of the "Team Fortress" team. They were first utilized as trailers, and now release periodically to celebrate major updates to the game. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Over the past three years, these videos have caused enough ripples across the Internet that even those who are vaguely familiar with the game might cry "old meme." But in the interests of crossover (and passing my personal obsessions on to you), here's the "Meet the Team" series. (HD and fullscreen are highly recommended.)</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br />Meet the Heavy </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2007) was the first video, released some five months before the game itself. I can't possibly imagine a better way to introduce the concept--recounting the mechanics of gameplay (can you devise a strategy to get past this bruiser?) while clearly stating that it would be driven by a deep sense of personality.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jHgZh4GV9G0?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jHgZh4GV9G0?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The dialogue flows beautifully, but pay close attention to the body language in </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Meet the Engineer </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2007)--the subtle way that this pleasant, easygoing dude shifts his shoulders and grins as you slowly come to realize what sort of man he really is.</span><br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SNgNBsCI4EA?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SNgNBsCI4EA?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span><br />Later profiles would describe the Soldier as a rabid hawk who fought the Nazis independently ("I did three goddamn tours of duty and I wasn't even asked!"), but maybe you can already infer that from </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">Meet the Soldier </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2007), which deftly intercuts two similar forms of insanity before smashing them together.</span></div></center><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/h42d0WHRSck?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/h42d0WHRSck?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span>Using a format similar to that of <span style="font-style: italic;">Meet the Soldier, </span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">Meet the Demoman </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2007) is the first video to directly acknowledge that the characters of "Team Fortress 2" are built on broad stereotypes. Describing himself as a "black Scottish cyclops," the Demoman laments that he is several times removed from the rest of his team--and by placing an angry, depressive interview against the chaos of the battlefield, the video operates as a harsh self-criticism on the use of tokenism in fiction. (The game reaches beyond the setting to further comment on the character's racial politics--a haunted sword called the "Eyelander" would later join pimp hats and afros as the Demo's accessories, further sneering at stereotypes by throwing them in our faces.)</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/han3AfjH210?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/han3AfjH210?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">Meet the Scout </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2008) also toggles between "documentary interview" and "narrative violence," but blurs the line separating them--his self-congratulatory rhetoric is just as aggressive as his assault on the Heavy. By breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera on such direct, physical terms, the video introduces the Scout as "that guy" we all know: <span style="font-style: italic;">that guy</span> who's so consumed with talking about how great he is that it becomes a part of why he's so great.<br /><br /></span><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VfXcCkxVgyM?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VfXcCkxVgyM?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Meet the Sniper </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2008) is accompanied by a lovely homage to Lalo Schifrin's title theme from </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Magnum Force</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. Most of these videos are in one way or another about the love affairs between men and their weapons of choice. But like the opening title sequence of that film, the video concludes that there are only three things that matter in this world: a man, his gun, and the job. (Whether or not the world <span style="font-style: italic;">outside</span> will understand is another matter entirely.)</span><br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9NZDwZbyDus?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9NZDwZbyDus?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We have yet to see </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Meet the Pyro </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">or </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Meet the Medic</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, but Valve filled the gap with </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Meet the Sandvich </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2008), the promo that introduced the titular health item to the Heavy's inventory. By now, the writers are confident that you can recognize their characters--and imagine their hilariously perverse scenarios--without seeing anything at all. The closing shot, functionally identical to the closing shot of <span style="font-style: italic;">Meet the Heavy</span>, establishes that "Team Fortress 2" has developed a culture unto itself.<br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_prZ0JrbQrU?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_prZ0JrbQrU?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The same goes for </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Meet the Spy </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(2009), which shoves four of its most abrasive personalities into one room without a second thought. This one appears to break the mold set by previous videos--concentrating on BLU characters in an exclusively narrative setting--but it takes an appropriate route by presenting the cutthroat Spy as a man known only by reputation. With that in mind, I like how the video lightly touches upon the fact that these mercenaries are the same characters on either side of the war.</span> Who better to deliver this monologue than the man "closest" to the subject?<br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OR4N5OhcY9s?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OR4N5OhcY9s?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /></span></span><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Valve has certainly capitalized on the potential that these wonderful short films provide, encouraging viewers to link and share them at their own discretion; while the videos themselves are technically copyrighted, their title cards are labeled with the same notice in fine print: "COPYRIGHT LOLOLOL." Further updates--new items, achievements and voice clips--make direct reference to their stories and dialogue. What's important to understand is that these additions never feel like excessive self-regard or autocannibalism. They simply add to the growing universe of "Team Fortress 2". Is it so difficult to imagine this band of mercenaries watching these videos and <a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/8/89/Scout_dominationhvy03.wav">studying up</a> on their rivals? Constantly rewriting the rules of their own meta-world, Valve sees "TF2" as as a crossroads between media--a cinematic experience as well as a playable experience.<br /><br />Because of that artistic malleability, the idea of "interactivity" must be held under close scrutiny. "Team Fortress 2" is an online strategic-multiplayer FPS, so the thing is practically built on player interaction. (Trolls notwithstanding.) Like any good enterprise, Valve pays close attention to how the fans interpret and reinterpret their work--but most interesting is how they incorporate and facilitate those interpretations. One minor example: when players found that they could contort the Spy into a bizarrely unnatural position, Valve <a href="http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Memes#Spycrab">referenced the resultant joke as a character taunt</a>.</span></span><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />Fan art has always been encouraged (and design contests have been used to introduce new items!), but one particularly notable outlet is </span></span><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima">machinima</a></span></span><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >. Through the use of sandbox tools like <a href="http://www.garrysmod.com/">Garry's Mod</a>, players can fool around with the basic elements of specific video games. </span></span><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Given free reign over character models and environments--with a library of sound clips at their disposal--</span></span><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >users can take screenshots, create their own games, and yes, make their own movies. While Garry's Mod and machinima in general have been around for a good long while, it shouldn't come as a surprise that these specific characters have inspired a wealth of fan films.</span></span><span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > Creative output ranges from the straightforward...<br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XhxODyHM2SI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XhxODyHM2SI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br />... to the parodic...<br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QRTjdjhqYDo?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QRTjdjhqYDo?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br />... to the bizarre...<br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/L2kca0g7Tfg?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/L2kca0g7Tfg?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br />... to the surreal.<br /><br /><br /><center><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zEDfY4AMMF0?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zEDfY4AMMF0?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="400" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gvdf5n-zI14?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gvdf5n-zI14?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />"Team Fortress 2" films have become an everyday occurrence on YouTube, and every time there's an update to the game, the new material is almost immediately folded into that collective. Of course, none of these concepts are exactly <span style="font-style: italic;">new</span>. Any popular artistic property will produce </span></span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">in-jokes and memes</span></span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">--the very idea of pop culture is built on these foundations. As evidenced by the movie references in those fan videos, communities aren't born in a vacuum. But what really fascinates me about "Team Fortress 2" is how it crafted something so self-contained while laying its influences out on the table. It thrives on a system of give and take. It's a '60s-mod landscape that is at once defined and unrestrained by its setting. it's a cult of personality constructed around characters who are self-admitted stereotypes but completely unique all the same. It makes perfect sense that artists and filmmakers would blossom from this particular subculture.<br /><br />Further reading/watching: Andrew Kepple's <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNnftq744I">Spy & Pyro</a> </span>(a lovely cartoon that recreates the game in its own image in service to a very silly pun); Valve's<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/sniper_vs_spy/day07_english.htm">"The Insult that Made a 'Jarate Master' Out of Sniper"</a> (a perfect spoof of the famous Charles Atlas ad that introduced a disturbing new item to the game); Joe Horan's <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdZE59eJdEw">Meet the Spy</a> </span>(a fan cartoon made before the official video was released, complete with the popular Spy memes and sound clips); FineLeatherJackets' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diavrc2Htes"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sniping's a Good Job, Mate</span></a> (something like a Kids in the Hall sketch); Scoutellite's <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRV0v8LIk08">Scout Becomes a Satellite</a> </span>(weird for the sake of weird--and kind of amazing).<br /><br />And speaking of recommendations, you damn well better have read <a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/blackswan.htm">Walter's review of <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Swan</span></a> by now--it's the most incisive analysis of Aronofsky's film that I've read thus far.<br /></span></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-66450958681866260762010-11-27T16:34:00.009-05:002011-10-14T20:31:45.051-04:00My Favourite Music Videos: "Across the Universe" (1998, d. PT Anderson)<object height="261" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x36gt?width=&theme=none&foreground=%23F7FFFD&highlight=%23FFC300&background=%23171D1B&start=&animatedTitle=&iframe=0&additionalInfos=0&autoPlay=0&hideInfos=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x36gt?width=&theme=none&foreground=%23F7FFFD&highlight=%23FFC300&background=%23171D1B&start=&animatedTitle=&iframe=0&additionalInfos=0&autoPlay=0&hideInfos=0" width="480" height="261" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object><br />
<b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x36gt_fiona-apple-across-the-universe_creation">Fiona Apple - Across The Universe</a></b><br />
<i>Uploaded by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/samithemenace">samithemenace</a>. - <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/ca-en/channel/creation">Watch original web videos.</a></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Of the four videos Paul Thomas Anderson directed for then-girlfriend Fiona Apple, this one, their first collaboration, is by far my favourite, though "Paper Bag" is quite good and indicates that Anderson has a glitzy Hollywood musical in him--or at least a <em>Pennies from Heaven</em>-style critique of one. The other two might represent him getting some delayed student-film impulses out of his system, and consequently they're somewhat risible in their contrived artiness. He's still recognizably himself in "Across the Universe," doing relatively long takes (especially for the medium), shooting in 'scope*, and even slipping in a John C. Reilly cameo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Rejuvenating a music-video standby (fiddling while Rome burns), "Across the Universe" is a tie-in clip for <em>Pleasantville</em> that takes place in that film's soda shop and re-enacts--with a visceral impact and visual sumptuousness that makes you wish Anderson had helmed <em>Pleasantville</em> instead of Gary Ross--the riot visited upon it by the titular town's black-and-white residents, who object to the polychromatic painting decorating its glass façade. (Here, unlike in the movie proper, the park bench that goes flying through the window has the ferocious impact of Mookie's garbage can, shocking colour out of the image.) But dollying into the establishment, Anderson gets comically distracted by the pretty girl: snaking illogically but determinedly around a corner and past the looters as if following the siren song, the camera finds the mesmerizing Apple, looking for all the world like a flower child drawn by Disney. She's wearing headphones, and her presence seems to have a similar effect on Anderson, who blots out the world with blissful ignorance. Oh, he tries to zoom out or pan away from her, snatching a few choice glimpses of dreamily-choreographed mayhem in the process, but he clearly can't resist the magnetic pull of her face. While plenty of videos fetishize the hot singer chick, so few of them <em>feel</em> like this, that is to say genuinely infatuated; and those moments when Apple's not on screen suggest a bashfulness on the part of Anderson more than anything else. (The unwavering use of slo-mo is definitely a contributing factor to the sense of lovestruck awe, reminding of that cornball homily from <em><a href="http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/bigfish.htm">Big Fish</a></em>: "They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops.") Before long she engages him (or is it the other way around?) in a kind of flirtatious game of chicken, testing him as she tilts her head to the side and what we'll call his P.O.V. follows suit until both are upside-down defying gravity. It's silly, it's romantic, and it's the kind of abstract idea that lends itself to the music-video form. Behold, the stupidity of the mutually besotted.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I think of Tarantino's pastiches as letting me see all the schlock that influenced him through rose-tinted glasses. Similarly, it's hard to come away from this video not pining a little for Fiona Apple, because the piece is so palpably taken with her. That her cover of this <strong>Beatles</strong> favourite is gorgeous just adds icing to the cake.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">*<em>Unfortunately, I couldn't find a version of it in its original aspect ratio on the Internet.</em></span>Bill Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14011398543859221282noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-52371882806083787572010-11-10T20:29:00.008-05:002010-11-20T13:36:00.218-05:00Walking Dead 1:2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUnXQFvGrcdur3IXkFMWek1keqdO8SJVpZLOM4-Gu19DOFp45KaOIhtiaZK7omcibfL9j0VsJkV90BJeY7iA2ieE_PZxCoSHBm3eGbG_DBJ35jXQAAUVIrtD-ydCBemqN_k3-wA/s1600/wd.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538110464158887042" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUnXQFvGrcdur3IXkFMWek1keqdO8SJVpZLOM4-Gu19DOFp45KaOIhtiaZK7omcibfL9j0VsJkV90BJeY7iA2ieE_PZxCoSHBm3eGbG_DBJ35jXQAAUVIrtD-ydCBemqN_k3-wA/s200/wd.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 140px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 200px;" /></span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Something that's been bugging me since the first episode reveal that Officer Dipshit's slut wife was doing Ponch somewhere in the Georgia wood is the timing of everything. Let's say that the assumption was made for whatever reason that our moron hero died when the hospital was overrun - and let's say that people can survive for about a week or so without water. And then let's say that his IV ran out probably later the same day that his unit nurse got lunched on by the shambling horde... doesn't that mean that he couldn't have remained in a coma for much more than a week, and doesn't that mean that his wife decided to do the ol' protein exchange survival strategy not much more than a week after her husband maybe died?</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">That's maybe why the opening of episode two, in which the wife gets doggy-styled in the wilderness while we look at her wedding ring in extreme foreground, left such an ugly taste in my mouth. Either this fucking whore was already cheating on her husband or she's doing what she's doing to provide for her kid and really misses Officer Doofus. You can't have it both ways, Frank Darabont.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Anyway - the fact that none of these characters are worth a shit is the least of the "Walking Dead's" problems. Not when there's a speech in eps. 2 in which we're told that there's no such thing as "black" and "white" anymore, man, it's just the living and the dead. Not when ace B-man Michael Rooker is wasted completely as some slavering gomer who's the punchline to the worst CGI "oops" since that hot conehead girl ate a Subway sandwich in a few bites to the delight of Chris Farley. Not when there's a Short Round character dropping one-liners and no-time-for-love-Dr.-Jones <em>bon mots</em> before descending into the sewers for no good reason but that whatever dunce directed this episode wanted their very own matchbook-in-a-stairwell sequence.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">My fave, though, is when our heroes stand around slack-jawed as they smash into a zombie corpse (but not before Sheriff Andy delivers a soulful speech over it) and expect not to get any zombie gristle in their chops. They do that, see, because they want to roll around in it so the other zombies can't smell their freshness. And then it rains.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Bullshit.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">Stupid bullshit, besides.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">And what's the deal with the racial representation? It's like the friggin United Colors of Bennetton up there on the rooftop of the Only Department Store in Atlanta.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: small;">I'm done. This show has gone from pretty godawful to unwatchable in two weeks, and, folks, life is short.</span></span>Walter_Chawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14314737706201691225noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-25094771322575343982010-11-01T21:50:00.005-04:002010-11-01T22:30:16.796-04:00Walking Dead 1:1<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivy6y83cjS2eGFSFO4PHIpPTewv6tLUo1PsWGqIcNl-yZGPP3FFL-Z8KubSfdsW9a2pGmKr-HHcEQ1w27adZzmtkN-QpeywakAGKDHgrFgfanDwuc5vnqzIOJyKZoCnBv_ITVYvQ/s1600/WalkingDeadZombieGal_1276196189_640w.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534772397287417106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivy6y83cjS2eGFSFO4PHIpPTewv6tLUo1PsWGqIcNl-yZGPP3FFL-Z8KubSfdsW9a2pGmKr-HHcEQ1w27adZzmtkN-QpeywakAGKDHgrFgfanDwuc5vnqzIOJyKZoCnBv_ITVYvQ/s200/WalkingDeadZombieGal_1276196189_640w.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 108px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 200px;" /></span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Soooo... I was pretty geeked about this series despite Frank Darabont's involvement in it. I liked <i>The Mist</i> rather a lot but he seems regularly to squander opportunities for horror in favor of syrup and, y'know, hard to say which Darabont was gonna' show for an adaptation of Robert Kirkman's Image comic series. Jury's still out. The problem I have is that main character Deputy Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is a fucking idiot. He makes bad choices, seems inconsistent in his acceptance/comprehension of the zombie apocalypse, and, lamentably, exists in a scenario that doesn't sensibly punish him for his idiocy.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Consider that when he returns home after bumbling about in hospital (in straight ripper of 28 Days Later) and making his way through a few impressive environments, he makes quite a spectacle of himself in his house and neglects to dress and arm himself upon his departure. Immediately after, a sympathetic father/son survivor unit warn him that any excessive noise draws the "walkers" (in a world without George Romero, I guess, you call them something else) which leads to The First Night in which Deputy Grimes' suburbia is seen crawling with nocturnal baddies (in a straight ripper of I Am Legend which is, by the by, also not about zombies). The idea that zombies would be more active at night is curious to me - and to the makers of the series as well, apparently, as soon enough our moronic hero rides a horse (!) into the middle of downtown Atlanta into a horde of the hungry undead in broad daylight.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">It's not smart. It's kind of stupid, actually. Stupid being exactly what Romero's zombie movies are generally not. Honestly, whenever anyone in a deserted hospital that's obviously the scene of violence decides to go into an unlit stairwell with a pack of matches; well, son, you've already lost me - and most likely for the duration.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Like the scene where Deputy Grimes and his buddies take a hot shower at the local police station, a-whoopin' and a hollerin' in appreciation of one of modernity's luxuries: lost to the horde! But what about the noise? And what about Grimes' complete non-acceptance of the infestation despite witnessing scary hands and a half-eaten body at the hospital? And what about his failure to ask one of his former colleagues if there's any Bub in there after the "sickness" took hold? And what about the stupid cross-cutting between Grimes dispatching a cool-looking zombie chick out of... mercy (in a scene so poorly established that I did wonder for a few moments if the monster was his wife), and his buddy trying to shoot his zombied-out wife and failing in fits of unsympathetic weeping? What's it all about?</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Hoping for the nihilism of <em>The Mist</em>, I'm sort of thinking that Walking Dead is more akin to the Eisenhower-era relational melodrama of <em>The Majestic</em>. As it's written so far - with the dumbass dialogue, the wooden performance, the stupid actions of its stupid characters (the wife's hooked up with moron Ponch? who gives a shit about any of these douchebags?) - there's not much hope for me that this derivative though often handsome-looking series is going to be much more than heartfelt pap with occasional gore: zombies your mom could love (to go along with the "Dragon Tattoo" series' ugly rape-revenge-sploitation you could take your grandma's sewing circle to).</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Sure, I'll hang with it a couple more installments... but I'm just saying...</span></span>Walter_Chawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14314737706201691225noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9668842.post-70275958952068910832010-10-31T02:52:00.006-04:002010-11-20T13:27:47.966-05:00R.I.P.<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The first screening that I attended in a professional capacity was for a now-forgotten piece of quaint English shit, <i>Greenfingers</i>. It was at Denver’s historic Mayan theater, run by Landmark, and I was only the third person to arrive after the lovely publicist, who used to be on a soap opera and has since moved out of the market, and local radio show host Reggie McDaniel. I was nervous – scared, really – and he was kind. He was, in fact, the only person genuinely kind to me for the first couple of months on my new beat – my other colleagues were suspicious of me in exactly the way that I find myself suspicious of all the new faces that show up at screenings in the Denver area nowadays. Reggie passed away a couple of months ago after a long illness so long that I’d started to think of him as invincible. In a lot of ways, his congestive heart failure brought back the last two years of my father’s life for me – I was hoping to replay it, I think, with dad pulling through this time. But he didn’t, and Reggie didn’t. And it’s been hard for me to make it back to the Cineplex ever since his passing. If my output seems anemic lately, well, it has been.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Reggie called his show the “Every Day People’s Guide” and listening to him, and then reading me, you’d be hard pressed to find a lot of common ground. We both loved horror films, but where he tended to find something positive to say about everything that he saw, I tend to find something negative. It’s just the way our critical muscles attached to our public skeletons, I guess, but it didn’t stop Reggie from inviting me onto his show on a few occasions, nor from encouraging me when I was most frustrated by my treatment by an industry that, frankly, doesn’t owe you any favors and knows it. He was wiser than I am still. He told florid stories, gory with embellishment (I think), about times he tried to kill commanding officers with lab rats and his stint as a drill instructor, using them as explanation for his genuine philanthropy. Everyone noted with irritation that he seemed always to be on his phone. Not everyone knew that he was fielding calls from crack addicts, ex-whores, and assorted convicts he’d taken under his wing and into his home. Reggie said he had a lot to atone for.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The truth about Reggie is that he was a keen critic with a good eye who understood that the only way he could parlay his passion for film into something like a living wage was to bank on his expansive personality and play to the dumbest person in his audience. The thing is that he did it without condescension. It’s something that I couldn’t do – and something that I couldn’t always resist judging him for. But in private conversations, he revealed to me a depth of understanding – and a clear, precise way of expressing himself – that belied his persona as the affable buffoon; his careful presentation as the voice of the people. There’s a part of me that still doesn’t know what to feel about that. It’s the part of me that probably needs to lighten up.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I remember a screening of <em>Mulholland Drive</em> where, midway, Reggie muttered “What the hell?” in what might be the most honest initial reaction to the picture. I remember a BBQ dinner at a wonderful little hole-in-the-wall called “Blest” that has, alas, since folded and disappeared, in which a few fellow diners at first disdainful of Reggie in his purple suit were won over by the end by his good humor. I remember telling Reggie that if we were religious at all we’d ask him to be godfather to our kids and him saying that it was just about the greatest thing he could think of that it would even cross our minds – us being not religious at all, and all. I mostly remember shaking his hand and patting his shoulder at every screening, asking after his health and him asking after my “beautiful wife” and “beautiful kids.” He made me feel welcome and safe at every screening that I attended for almost a decade. I miss him.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I met George Hickenlooper after a lecture he gave at the Aspen Shorts Festival several years ago. I approached him after and expressed admiration for his thoughts and the breadth of his knowledge and he agreed to an interview the next morning in the lobby of his hotel. He was modest, unassuming, and ferociously honest about his experiences in Hollywood and the people he met there. During a fest in which I met people like Alexander Payne and Bruce Beresford, it was Hickenlooper that I stayed in contact with. Later, during the Denver Festival a couple of months later, George called to ask that I withdraw the transcript of the interview that we did together because of a possibly embarrassing revelation. I remember talking to him while I stood in a crowded upstairs hall at the filmcenter, waiting for a screening. I remember telling him “no.”</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">“Listen,” he said, “I really like you and that’s why I told you those things. You’re smart, you did your homework, and I thought we had made a connection.” I responded that I felt that we had as well and that if only he had indicated that his remarks were off the record, I surely would have respected that. I have an entire interview with Bob Rafelson that I can’t ever share because at the end of it he said to me “Oh, hey, all of this is off the record.” Ethics. I felt wounded that George would ask me to be something other than what I was because he was embarrassed that he’d told me too much. I’ve learned a lot about myself and about others doing this job that is, essentially, sitting by yourself in a dark room and then sitting by yourself in front of a little lit square and a keyboard. I’m conflicted again.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Hickenlooper was back in town this year for this year’s edition of the Denver Film Festival. I’d reached out to him through Facebook; I’d hoped that we could have a drink and put it behind us and talk again, as we had years ago, about the auteur theory, and what a boob Bogdanovich could be, and Welles, and final cuts and confederate ghosts. I saw it as a way to get back on the proverbial horse, maybe cover this fest again with the same kind of enthusiasm and gusto as I had before I lost my shit and let my frustrations with what you can’t control get the better of me. I’d even chatted with a fest director that I’d alienated some time in the past and done my best to bury the hatchet. Truth be told, I was almost moved to tears to see him.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">And then Hickenlooper was found dead at the age of 47 in his hotel room. With apologies to Nick Ray, it’s a lonely place. With apologies to Cory McAbee, this space is a lonely town. R.I.P. Reg, R.I.P. George. Welcome to the downhill side.</span></span></div>Walter_Chawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14314737706201691225noreply@blogger.com3