July 2009 Archives

Wiley Wiggins has some beautifully phrased thoughts on why monster movies aren't scary anymore:

Now we no longer populate these movies with humans but with fodder. We've learned how to show the Monster but forgotten how to show people, and they become increasingly flimsy, predictable and mawkish -- to stare at them too long is to get bored while waiting for them to be eaten. Instead we fetishize the Monster, and in staring at it too long, it loses its power too -- everything has its depth stripped away, nothing means anything, and we've diffused or at least ignored our fears by shining a flashlight on every menacing shadow in the room. These movies have lost the capacity to connect to any real fear, and instead only appeal to our infantile desire to break our toys against each other.

Spectacle has been diminished in the name of "showing everything." Just because it can be shown, doesn't mean it should be. A movie with all "money shots" has no climaxes. It just neutralizes itself. The rules of storytelling apply to CGI: if anything can happen, then what's the significance? Today's CGI, when noticeable as a "special effect," plummets fatally into the uncanny valley. It's so pristinely close to photo-"real" it looks utterly fake.

(image by Till Nowak)

We've all worked with her -- the clueless exec who feels compelled to point out the trivially, irrelevantly obvious, or who loves to exercise her talent by changing things unnecessarily (usually by introducing mistakes) just to put her fingerprints on them. We encounter him at the movies all the time -- the guy who asks (out loud) "Why is she doing that?" or wants everyone to acknowledge that he noticed the color of the sky just changed from one shot to another (as if none of us had ever seen a movie before, or knew how they're filmed and assembled). And, of course, they're all over the Internet and the media and politics -- staying focused on the inconsequential, the mundane, the superficial at all cost.

Here's a tribute to the geniuses behind the dumbing down of practically everything.

(tip: Ken Levine)

Don't forget: The protests continue. This was forwarded by Farid, a friend in Iran. Nice 'stache. Is Ahmadinejad now "The Filthiest Person Alive"? I have some other candidates...

The Onion again proves superiority to American media. Important stories include:

Well, I've Sold The Paper To The Chinese

The Internet Allows For A Free Exchange Of Unmitigated Information

Potato-Faced Youngster Lauded For Memorizing Primitive 26-Character Alphabet

Weakling President Asks Imaginary Man In Sky to Bless Nation

Internet Adds 12th Website

Nothing At All Happens To 28 Tibetan Protesters, Their Families

Why Did No One Inform Us Of The Imminent Death Of The American Newspaper Industry?

"500 Days of Summer will own you."
-- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

I have not been able to find the context in which the cutesy ad blurb above originally appeared. It's not in Travers' review at RollingStone.com. Maybe he spoke it, or something like it ("It will own you"), in video or podcast remarks. I've seen it used in web ads and TV spots. But, really, what was Travers trying to communicate by employing this phrase? That the movie vanquishes you, the viewer? (At least he didn't say "pwn.")

What's the adjectival form of "n00b"?

When people ask me why I don't particularly feel obligated to keep up with, say, the new "Transformers" movie or the latest Hanna Montana installment (really, they're the same thing aimed at slightly different constituencies), I don't change the subject. I just reply with a counter-challenge: "Which animated Barbie movie do you think is better-directed: 'Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus' (2004), 'Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia' (2006) or 'Barbie As the Island Princess' (2007)?" Or: "How often do you play with your Chia Pet these days? Does it satisfy your imagination, engage your interest, and provide hours of amusement?" Watching infantilized movies can be almost as exciting as watching a Chia Pet grow.

When you become an adult, sometimes you find that even products you loved as a child no longer provide the kind of stimulation they once did. You outgrow them, you move on to other toys. After all, these playthings were not designed with your adult self, your developed brain, in mind. Since most movies are made for the immature brain (inside the skulls of people with a maximum mental age of 14), there's no shame in finding them less than engaging or entertaining if you should happen to be so lucky as to live beyond that age. Because the simple fact is, these products were never intended to be consumed by persons over 30. Frankly, I don't play with Fisher-Price toys much anymore, either.

For those critics who don't understand how these things work.

As we all know, the films of Buster Keaton are the most profoundly funny, and profoundly beautiful, in all of cinema. (I know that, anyway.) In this terrific video, film historian and silent film accompanist Ben Model takes a close look at the various cranking speeds Keaton used as a grace note (he's all about grace), to achieve perfection in timing, tempo and fluidity of movement.

This is a lost art in the world of sound cinema, though occasionally you'll see the equivalent of "undercranking" (slowing the speed of the film through the camera to make it seem faster when projected) done badly via computer in some modern chase or action sequences. Keaton's films are essentially dance numbers, and he made film itself part of the exquisite choreography.

Once, there was journalism. Even, sometimes, on television.

"The word 'gay' [alternate spelling: 'ghey'], in addition to being used to mean 'homosexual' or 'carefree', was often now used to mean 'lame' or 'rubbish'. This is a widespread current usage of the word amongst young people... The [pejorative use of the] word 'gay' ... need not be offensive... or homophobic [...]"

-- BBC Board of Governors

gay (adj.):
1. Happy.
2. Homosexual.
3. A generic insult.

1. You are gay.
2. You are gay.
3. You are gay.

-- Urban Dictionary, definition #2

gay (adj.):
The word that appears as a tag of just about every other definition at Urban Dictionary.

-- Urban Dictionary, definition #36

If those screwball lovers Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner ever hooked up and had sex, they'd do it the way Brüno and his "pygmy" paramour do in "Brüno": with ACME slingshots, projectiles, champagne bottles and a customized Rube Goldberg device that appears to have been built with materials from Home Depot by George Clooney's character in "Burn After Reading." The matinee audience with whom I saw "Brüno," Sacha Baron Cohen's partially improvised Üniversal Pictures remake of RW Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (with a happy ending!), howled at the grossness, the perversity, the preposterousness of it -- the same way audiences laughed and groaned at the explicitly cartoony perv-sex in John Waters movies of the 1970s. "Brüno" is rather tame compared to "Pink Flamingoes" or "Female Trouble" -- in part because it's 2009 and not 1974, and the experience of "shock value" has changed considerably. Truth is, it's hard to be too terribly shocked by anything in the bland, artificial cocoon of the mall-tiplex, no matter what's playing.

Inevitably, in all comedy, the joke comes down to: What is the joke? I've had a grand old time reading bewildered critics -- amused, disgusted, even shocked -- try to puzzle out what Borat and Brüno (the characters and the movies) are really saying. The most entertaining explanations are by writers who don't necessarily know they're bewildered, or how much they're revealing about their own prejudices when they claim the movie is revealing the prejudices of the "real folks" on screen. (Hint: Even more so than in "Borat," the butt of the joke is the title character, not the "real people" with whom he interacts. Tricking people is not exactly the same as making fun of them -- and most of those who get punk'd react about the way you'd expect them to.)

Is there a more achingly resonant movie title than "The Hurt Locker"? Fortunately, the movie lives up to it. To say that Kathryn Bigelow's film is the most accomplished white-knuckle action movie of this young century, or that it is the most fully realized Hawksian picture in recent memory, is not to say that it's a movie about chases or explosions (though it features both, and puts the last several years of big-budget summer "spectaculars" to shame) or that it is anything other than a Kathryn Bigelow movie. It's all those things.

On "My Life as a Blog," Reid Rosefelt recalls how he became friends with Bigelow in the late 1970s (that's him below, after the jump, between Hannah Schygulla and Bigelow!) and how he knew from the beginning that she was destined to make intelligent, gut-wrenching, boundary-bursting, medium-expanding movies:

She had a tremendous fascination with how violence could be portrayed in the cinema, particularly as seen through the filter of a French writer and philosopher I had never heard of named George Bataille. I got the sense that Bataille was some kind of mélange of surrealism and eroticism and de Sade-like cruelty, but the precise way he blended them and what he put in of his own was vague to me then, and even more vague to me now. But what I did understand was that Kathy wasn't just looking back to the styles and techniques of Hitchcock, Peckinpah, Romero, Argento, etc.--she was attempting to build on a highly aestheticized foundation. She didn't want to ape anybody else, she wanted to make a kind of movie that hadn't been made before. This I understood well, as it was a commonplace in European cinema for filmmakers like Godard and Resnais to use literary ideas as a means to "reinvent" cinema. The difference, and it was a huge one, is that Kathy was reading different books. What she wanted to create was more visceral and stomach-churning--more of a punch to the stomach and a battering of the subconscious than a detached and modish Brechtian challenge for the mind. [...]

"Those who think "Transformers" is a great or even a good film are, may I tactfully suggest, not sufficiently evolved. Film by film, I hope they climb a personal ladder into the realm of better films, until their standards improve."

-- Roger Ebert, "I'm a proud Brainiac"

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is the "Dark Knight" of 2009. In what way? It's the pop-smash action picture that has excited a bunch of fanboys fans who don't usually read movie critics to howl with inarticulate rage about movie critics who don't like their movie. Of course, "The Dark Knight" was met with considerable mainstream critical acclaim, and "ROTFL" with equally considerable mainstream critical disdain, but the important thing to remember is: critics had nothing to do with making these movies hits.

Want to see critics made completely superfluous? Bestow upon them the magical power to predict box-office success. Instead of awarding thumbs or stars or letter grades, they can just provide ticket sales projections that can be quoted in the ads: "I give it $109 million in its opening weekend!" Voila! Instant redundancy, instant irrelevance. Why do you need critics to gauge grosses when you already have tracking reports, followed by the actual grosses themselves?

From an interview with "Transformers: ROTFL" director Michael Bay at Wall Street Journal Online:

Megan Fox, one of the leads in "Transformers" has criticized your films for being special-effects-driven and not offering so many acting opportunities. Do you agree?

Well, that's Megan Fox for you. She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, "Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it." But I 100% disagree with her. Nick Cage wasn't a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in "Armageddon." Shia LaBeouf wasn't a big movie star before he did "Transformers" -- and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from "Bad Boys." Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in "Transformers." I like to think that I've had some luck in building actors' careers with my films.

So there! But what did Fox actually say about being in "Transformers"? Here are some excerpts from her cover interview in Entertainment Weekly:

"Saturday Night Live" piece from 1978 by Walter Williams ("The Mr. Bill Show").

UPDATE 7/09/09: From Time Online:

Michael Jackson would have turned 51 on Aug. 29, and the promoters of his planned This Is It tour are hoping to celebrate with a concert. It would take place in London and feature Jackson's rehearsal footage and appearances by members of his family. In other words, it would be a Michael Jackson concert -- with all the ingredients except the King of Pop himself.

As we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, here's a fun exercise in critical thinking and visual interpretation. This photo of Sarah Palin, taken by Brian Adams for a spread in Runner's World magazine, represents a veritable firecracker-explosion of patriotic and political symbolism. (Likewise the use of familiar props in this photo and this one.) Given Palin's views and background, how would you interpret it?

Click on photo to enlarge.

JULY 4 UPDATE: Since this post went up, Palin announced her resignation as governor of Alaska. Some say she wants to concentrate on running for president in 2012. Others say that a scandal is about to break, something even she cannot ignore or deny, thus raising the question: What sort of scandal could damage Sarah Palin's reputation? My guess: She has a lucrative talk show deal lined up. Her competition isn't Obama and Biden, it's Limbaugh and O'Reilly, Maher and Coulter.

JULY 6 UPDATE: OK, here's an image that baffles me. What do you make of it?