tron: movie starring jeff bridges as tom hanks from the polar express (cuz he was cgi'd...you're welcome)
voyage of the dawn treader: new-breed narnia movie starring someone as someone else (it's called acting)
the subtitle to this post is sexism: not just for sexist stuff anymore.
it was a product of seeing the tempest, tron, and narnia within the space of a week that really did the damage: i first became conscious that sexism isn't just for people who are concerned with the size of a lady's paycheck anymore. it's out there in the movies, and it's ANNOYING THE CRAP out of me.
now, narnia couldn't help it, even if it had wanted to. as i tried to explain in coked-out detail to my friends*, c.s. lewis was a sexist barstard. i haven't read everything he wrote, but i did get through his theolo-sci-fi trilogy. i enjoyed the third one (i can't remember the names) in part because i thought he painted a realistic and interesting character for the woman in the overly-modern marriage. i found his solution to the marital issues of the couple to be quite modern, if by modern one is referring to the philoso-critical stylings of dr. laura schlessinger (so, about 15 years out of date). what i'm trying to say is, he was sexist. like dr. laura. lewis's lady-characters are sympathetic in themselves (i mean, excepting the white queen, who's just sexy), but the solutions he derives for the problem of their femininity are recockulous. he really takes the idea of separate spheres to a new plane of fairness. aslan, in narnia, rebukes everyone with the same unpredictability and gentleness, male, female, and reepicheep alike. but it's still separate spheres; susan still gets kicked out of narnia for liking make-up and nylons, because apparently you can't like boys and god at the same time (which sounds, frankly, like a bit of over-identification on c.s.'s part [actually, i don't get a gay vibe from lewis, but i should probably wikipedia him for solid evidence as to his sexual preferences. that's a joke. i'm not going to do that]). and lucy still has to wander around a bit like an idiot, because a lady's sexual awakening is much less acceptable in the scheme of things than a man's. after all, did adam pluck the apple? no sir! i mean, it's not even an illogical sort of sexism, considering the intellectual power lewis was bringing to bear on the conundrae (probably not a word) of christianity. but it is annoying. the spice girls would have something to say to it, if he were writing in modern (or my current particular frame of modern, apparently) times.
so disney can't help but make lucy a bit ineffectual and wander-around-y. she is a sweetheart, and legitimately so. but as a role model she's not going to make a ceo out of your daughter.
the same, unfortunately, can be said for the chick in tron. props to disney if they were making a kora in hell-frame kind of reference--according to online, they weren't; it's spelled quorra, and i can't figure out what it's supposed to refer to, but i'd like to know. anyway, she's useless. as usual, no shame to olivia wilde, who i thought was as good as possible under the circumstances, not to mention super cute. but that meme of the strong pretty girl is just ballooning into something ridiculously impossible. it's like "hey, this female character has fight scenes, so she must be an individual. you're welcome, feminists everywhere!" yeah. shove it, disney. i understand that quorra had to be female, not only to provide young flynn with a love interest, but also so that the final third of the movie could literally turn into star wars (for which operation one clearly needs a princess leia surrogate, not to mention a moody bishounen [sp?] with an improbable haircut for luke). but did she have to be so "teach me, you man-god! for i am your creation!" about it? why was she always crouching subordinately whenever one of the flynns was around? according to her account, old flynn earned her self-erasing, accolyte-like devotion by standing over her when she woke up. i mean, a rescue was implied, but literally, that's how she said it in the film. the whole character is just ridiculous. her whole race was destroyed and she's a super-human manifestation of god in the machine, but don't worry about any messy emotional reactions to either of these things, unless if you count her outburst about liking jules verne, certainly the emotional center of the film. i could be cautious and go with "underwritten," but i'm choosing to go with "ridiculously misogynist skipping the point in favor of the haircut bastard filmmakers."
moral of the story: standing over a woman when she wakes will make her all kinds of haircut.
or possibly, sexism annoys me. which is what i opened with. disregard all the in-between. it's like a newman-o but with filling from chernobyl.
*coked-out due both to the quality and quantity of the detail, and the fact that i had imbibed a great deal of diet coke during the movie (i'm not actually familiar with the type of detail that people on coke [the drug] tend to produce. i am a nice girl from a suburb, which would actually argue for the non-veracity of that statement but for the fact that i am, and always have been, a nerd [see every post on this blog]).
Monday, December 27, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
the tempest: it's taymor-riffic
The Tempest: movie starring the conceptual stylings of Julie Taymor mostly
first off, the acting was FUCKING BRILLIANT. miranda was amazing, caliban was amazing, and of course doc ock (name? alfred molina, apparently) and alan cummings were fantabulous--i thought chris cooper gave a good interpretation to a difficult part, as did the ariel dude, who we didn't really get to see due to the taymoring of the film, and, yeah, in my eyes, tom conti for the win. felicity jones was brilliant in a part that one doesn't really need brilliance in, but in which brilliance is possible--djimon hounsou (hopefully spelling that right) was brilliant in a part that may be difficult to do justice to--and he did do it justice, freaking fabulous--but always has a certain amount of cachet around it. i thought tom conti took a very possibly onerous part and turned it into something really really good. i was a little conflicted about helen mirren. i thought she did an excellent job of creating a character, but i wasn't sure that the character she created was being helped by the shakespeare. the lines made sense--made painstaking sense--and were deeply felt, but it was like she was acting despite shakespeare instead of through him, and that bothered me, but it shouldn't too deeply, because she was very good. reeve carney as what's-his-face was not good, but really funny, which made up for it. apparently he was too cool to enunciate. he had the immaculately kept iggy pop hair of edgy love, and nothing more was necessary than a few shirtless moments and an entirely inappropriate rendition of "o mistress mine" (yeah, why was that there? so taymor could taymor around with more gender-political "exploration"? if so, stop it, taymor! stop it now! the line "that can sing both high and low" was not written for you to dithyramb around with [or if it was, we truly do inhabit a creepy-ass universe]).
if taymor had to do with the choices of her actors, even if she fostered an environment in which they could make their choices, then she deserves a lot of credit for having done so. but i thought the movie was a mess. it was very entertaining--very entertaining. i should give it some sort of pass for making the shakespeare so eminently filmable (a friend of mine says that the tempest really isn't filmable, and i felt like taymor turned it into an opulent feast of filmability, so i'm sure she deserves credit for that too). but BOO!!! BOO!!!
BOO!!! it's like back in the day when i read an interview with the fool who directed that wildly awful version of mansfield park with frances o'connor, the one that in the end featured fanny writing sanditon or something for susan's amusement, in which above-mentioned fool of a director said something like, "i know there will be laura ashley bitches out there who will object to this movie because we show boob." no, director fool, no. we laura ashley bitches (i'm not actually one, but would much rather be ranged on their side than her's) are not objecting to your dumbass movie because it shows boob. we are objecting to it because it neglected to capture even the tiniest particle of jane austen's intention or spirit, as well as a good third of the plot.
taymor did not go nearly to these lengths--we did see boob, but it was hermaphrodite man-boob (and, yes, it was tempting)--but she did make a mess, what with her desire to shove a special effect into every insecurity of signification. i can't really go into specifics as deeply as i'd like without driving the blood pressure up dangerously high, but, as an example, the sandcastle miranda holds at the beginning: it crumbles. in the rain. when i pointed out how STUPID this conception of...whatever the hell it's supposed to mean...was, my friend said, basically, "but prospera starts out with everything and nothing and ends up with nothing and everything," and for a minute he made it sound good. but then i thought back, and, no. i mean, yes, my friend's interpretation of the significance of the sandcastle is awesome, but the sandcastle itself? no. no. that shit could mean pretty much anything. its meaning was entirely overridden by its desire to look cool. yes, the most obvious interpretation is...uh, that prospera, by calling in a thunderstorm, has unleashed the destruction of her own castle of sand, or whatever*, but it's just such an unnecessary interpretive move. it doesn't get us any nearer to the heart of matter (as niska would say)--sure, it's a visual metaphor, but it tells rather than showing.
what would i have her put in its place? NOTHING. INTERPRETIVE SILENCE. just STOP DOING STUFF. stop tim burtoning around. shakespeare didn't make it this far because his work could be twisted into meaning--it meant in the first place. it meant so much, taymor, (i'm a shakespeare-phile, i admit it completely) that even within your self-indulgent rigmarole it still surfaced at points. but it had to struggle. why make it struggle? that's just rude, taymor. be nice to sextacentarians (??).
i'm not saying that there's some ur-interpretation of shakespeare out there that can be latched onto and drug home like a theseus by the minotaur. i'm saying that some attention to the text is required when making a movie of a play--either that, or you peter brooks it, and make sure that the fish you're boning is known to be your own fish (rrow), a move that is a bit like throwing on a flak jacket in a nuclear blast, but can at least protect you to some extent from a reasonably fair mind (which mine, on this subject, may totally not be). shakespeare is not the instrument. you are the instrument. your own interpretation is entirely correct, but only if it's coming from the work--only if you're being plucked, like a fortepiano, from the inside. don't tell me taymor isn't doing the plucking. don't tell me she's not looking for opportunities to have harpies spit oil as a metaphor for...again, something (bp spill? peace in the middle east? bunnies?) and stupid, stupid gender-bending whatnottery for ariel, prospera, and the fools in their gowns.
it's like communist russia: the tempest pluck you. taymor is clearly no candidate for an un-american activities investigation. YEOUCH, sra. what a burn!
i should apologize for a lot of this, because much of the movie was very watchable. it just lit my fire, is all. i can forgive ridiculousness, i can forgive incompetence, i can forgive idiotishness. i CANNOT forgive all the jibber-jabber that films try to put us through, and the tempest's taymoring is a really prime example of it. i am not turning the tempest into an example (my example of terrible filmic incompetence is and always will be the hours)--i am just holding it responsible for itself, which maybe nobody thought to do. what the hell, guys? come on! stop plucking around!
*one of the bizarrities of my life is that, though a dedicated musician and quasi-dedicated writer, i'm not at all good at pinning meanings to metaphors. i cling to theorists like derrida and de man for that reason--the inaccuracies of metaphoric assumption as propounded by said thinkers are like manna to my brain (but not literally), not just because they're interesting, but because they give me a leg to stand on. but i should be completely clear that it's inability, not choice, that turns me away from the assumption that metaphors mean things (though thank god i have been turned away).
first off, the acting was FUCKING BRILLIANT. miranda was amazing, caliban was amazing, and of course doc ock (name? alfred molina, apparently) and alan cummings were fantabulous--i thought chris cooper gave a good interpretation to a difficult part, as did the ariel dude, who we didn't really get to see due to the taymoring of the film, and, yeah, in my eyes, tom conti for the win. felicity jones was brilliant in a part that one doesn't really need brilliance in, but in which brilliance is possible--djimon hounsou (hopefully spelling that right) was brilliant in a part that may be difficult to do justice to--and he did do it justice, freaking fabulous--but always has a certain amount of cachet around it. i thought tom conti took a very possibly onerous part and turned it into something really really good. i was a little conflicted about helen mirren. i thought she did an excellent job of creating a character, but i wasn't sure that the character she created was being helped by the shakespeare. the lines made sense--made painstaking sense--and were deeply felt, but it was like she was acting despite shakespeare instead of through him, and that bothered me, but it shouldn't too deeply, because she was very good. reeve carney as what's-his-face was not good, but really funny, which made up for it. apparently he was too cool to enunciate. he had the immaculately kept iggy pop hair of edgy love, and nothing more was necessary than a few shirtless moments and an entirely inappropriate rendition of "o mistress mine" (yeah, why was that there? so taymor could taymor around with more gender-political "exploration"? if so, stop it, taymor! stop it now! the line "that can sing both high and low" was not written for you to dithyramb around with [or if it was, we truly do inhabit a creepy-ass universe]).
if taymor had to do with the choices of her actors, even if she fostered an environment in which they could make their choices, then she deserves a lot of credit for having done so. but i thought the movie was a mess. it was very entertaining--very entertaining. i should give it some sort of pass for making the shakespeare so eminently filmable (a friend of mine says that the tempest really isn't filmable, and i felt like taymor turned it into an opulent feast of filmability, so i'm sure she deserves credit for that too). but BOO!!! BOO!!!
BOO!!! it's like back in the day when i read an interview with the fool who directed that wildly awful version of mansfield park with frances o'connor, the one that in the end featured fanny writing sanditon or something for susan's amusement, in which above-mentioned fool of a director said something like, "i know there will be laura ashley bitches out there who will object to this movie because we show boob." no, director fool, no. we laura ashley bitches (i'm not actually one, but would much rather be ranged on their side than her's) are not objecting to your dumbass movie because it shows boob. we are objecting to it because it neglected to capture even the tiniest particle of jane austen's intention or spirit, as well as a good third of the plot.
taymor did not go nearly to these lengths--we did see boob, but it was hermaphrodite man-boob (and, yes, it was tempting)--but she did make a mess, what with her desire to shove a special effect into every insecurity of signification. i can't really go into specifics as deeply as i'd like without driving the blood pressure up dangerously high, but, as an example, the sandcastle miranda holds at the beginning: it crumbles. in the rain. when i pointed out how STUPID this conception of...whatever the hell it's supposed to mean...was, my friend said, basically, "but prospera starts out with everything and nothing and ends up with nothing and everything," and for a minute he made it sound good. but then i thought back, and, no. i mean, yes, my friend's interpretation of the significance of the sandcastle is awesome, but the sandcastle itself? no. no. that shit could mean pretty much anything. its meaning was entirely overridden by its desire to look cool. yes, the most obvious interpretation is...uh, that prospera, by calling in a thunderstorm, has unleashed the destruction of her own castle of sand, or whatever*, but it's just such an unnecessary interpretive move. it doesn't get us any nearer to the heart of matter (as niska would say)--sure, it's a visual metaphor, but it tells rather than showing.
what would i have her put in its place? NOTHING. INTERPRETIVE SILENCE. just STOP DOING STUFF. stop tim burtoning around. shakespeare didn't make it this far because his work could be twisted into meaning--it meant in the first place. it meant so much, taymor, (i'm a shakespeare-phile, i admit it completely) that even within your self-indulgent rigmarole it still surfaced at points. but it had to struggle. why make it struggle? that's just rude, taymor. be nice to sextacentarians (??).
i'm not saying that there's some ur-interpretation of shakespeare out there that can be latched onto and drug home like a theseus by the minotaur. i'm saying that some attention to the text is required when making a movie of a play--either that, or you peter brooks it, and make sure that the fish you're boning is known to be your own fish (rrow), a move that is a bit like throwing on a flak jacket in a nuclear blast, but can at least protect you to some extent from a reasonably fair mind (which mine, on this subject, may totally not be). shakespeare is not the instrument. you are the instrument. your own interpretation is entirely correct, but only if it's coming from the work--only if you're being plucked, like a fortepiano, from the inside. don't tell me taymor isn't doing the plucking. don't tell me she's not looking for opportunities to have harpies spit oil as a metaphor for...again, something (bp spill? peace in the middle east? bunnies?) and stupid, stupid gender-bending whatnottery for ariel, prospera, and the fools in their gowns.
it's like communist russia: the tempest pluck you. taymor is clearly no candidate for an un-american activities investigation. YEOUCH, sra. what a burn!
i should apologize for a lot of this, because much of the movie was very watchable. it just lit my fire, is all. i can forgive ridiculousness, i can forgive incompetence, i can forgive idiotishness. i CANNOT forgive all the jibber-jabber that films try to put us through, and the tempest's taymoring is a really prime example of it. i am not turning the tempest into an example (my example of terrible filmic incompetence is and always will be the hours)--i am just holding it responsible for itself, which maybe nobody thought to do. what the hell, guys? come on! stop plucking around!
*one of the bizarrities of my life is that, though a dedicated musician and quasi-dedicated writer, i'm not at all good at pinning meanings to metaphors. i cling to theorists like derrida and de man for that reason--the inaccuracies of metaphoric assumption as propounded by said thinkers are like manna to my brain (but not literally), not just because they're interesting, but because they give me a leg to stand on. but i should be completely clear that it's inability, not choice, that turns me away from the assumption that metaphors mean things (though thank god i have been turned away).
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
for colored girls: is it me, or...
For Colored Girls: tyler perry film starring whoopi and some other perhaps distractingly attractive ladies
...are my tastes changing?
normally, a movie taking itself this seriously with this much intensity would have made me want to curl up and die. and don't get me wrong, i did want to curl up and die. but in the good way. dear god it was so good.
my friend, though he liked it, said that if the camera had focused one more time on a woman's face, getting blair witch up-close-and-personal with her expelling facial fluids, he would have abdicated the theater, like edward VII for wallis simpson*. and though, again, i normally would agree with him, in this case, no. no. that particular camera move, i thought, was something like a strophe in a poem, a rhyme scheme: a symbol of movement in vision. besides, that camera shot provided the actresses with the correct frame in which to get their acting done. no other frame was either possible or necessary. it was beautiful, what all of them did within that painfully intimate space. i couldn't take my eyes off it. i see on imdb (never read others' reviews, sra) that people felt like the poems' readings slowed the movie down, juxtaposed too strangely with the other dialogue. but i kind of feel like expectations might be getting in the way of a really thrilling reality: those poems are beautiful. and they are said beautifully. some of them are more seamlessly interwoven than others, but even if they hadn't been acted so well, the poems would have been worth hearing, period, and i thought that all of them were acted just wonderfully.
i can't say how affective the film was--i've run into this problem before. with anything that i don't like, it's often just sheer catharsis (as well as one hell of a good time) to rip and tear and maim, and call down my petty thunderings like isabella's jove. and with stuff i do like but am not "supposed to" like, defending my opinion becomes matter for discussion. but with something that moved me so much--that i think was felt so truly by its actors and its director--there's kind of nothing to say.
aside from, uh, "see it," i guess. SEE IT, YOU GLORIOUS BASTARDS!!! it's magnificent. hey, here's a thing: if kimberly elise actually gets nominated and/or wins best actress for this, my faith in the academy awards (absolutely destroyed like post-Gojiro box-tokyo by the multiple wins of Titanic) will be either partially or completely restored. she is so good. so many of the actresses are magnificent, but her part is...unbelievable, and she takes it and goes where it goes--she takes on the body of her part, which is so horrifying and amazing. of all the moments she has, i think i got first wrapped up in the way she says "i've loved you since i was fourteen" to her abusive alcoholic husband, and you see the resistance in her to what's in front of her, and some of its cause... i can't. i have no words.
of course, if she doesn't get nominated, then good bye academy forever and ever. yeah! i'm threatening the academy! i'll believe in you jagweeds even less if kimberly elise doesn't get nominated for best actress! grumble grumble...("i'll never let go, jack"--let go, kate! just let go! what the hell are you doing getting back on that boat??? another 125 minutes of my life, james cameron, really? spent on watching some people who we all know are going to die get wetter but not in a fun way? why of course i'll let you have those precious hours! what would i have spent them on, anyway? fighting cancer? writing my novel? washing the dishes? window shopping? microwaving a hot pocket and then eating only half of it? really anything else in the entire universe? why would i want to do that? curse you, academy! and your eleven wasted statuettes too!!! lord knows i am not as much of a fan of the sweet heareafter as some i could mention [really, sarah polley? you're just going to take that dude's dead wife's clothes?], but atom egoyan certainly deserved that statuette more than cameron, or whatever hung-over flunky directed kate and leo through those love scenes [love kate; love leo. hate titanic]).
oh, there was one thing. i thought the part just before the...uh, no spoilers? main event of the plot, should i say?--was overdone. i totally acknowledge that it was pretty dang difficult moment to do, but it didn't capture much of a feeling. though in a way, that kind of worked to the film's advantage, because the story even more clearly wasn't about the events of these womens' lives--it was about what they did with them, how they thought of them, and how, in the end, they turned them into poetry. it made me want to read the book. that, in this case, was the mark of a good film.
*it took a significant amount of wikipedia-ing to get that reference correct. i thought it was archduke franz ferdinand who abdicated, which had always confused me because i was like, well, what's even the point of assassinating him then? symbolic protest? don't like the hit single "take me out?" (really really dumb joke, sra.) but i was wrong. franz married a lady he shouldn't have, but he still got to be archduke. which did him a world of good. it was edward VII who abdicated. that wallis must have been something something.
...are my tastes changing?
normally, a movie taking itself this seriously with this much intensity would have made me want to curl up and die. and don't get me wrong, i did want to curl up and die. but in the good way. dear god it was so good.
my friend, though he liked it, said that if the camera had focused one more time on a woman's face, getting blair witch up-close-and-personal with her expelling facial fluids, he would have abdicated the theater, like edward VII for wallis simpson*. and though, again, i normally would agree with him, in this case, no. no. that particular camera move, i thought, was something like a strophe in a poem, a rhyme scheme: a symbol of movement in vision. besides, that camera shot provided the actresses with the correct frame in which to get their acting done. no other frame was either possible or necessary. it was beautiful, what all of them did within that painfully intimate space. i couldn't take my eyes off it. i see on imdb (never read others' reviews, sra) that people felt like the poems' readings slowed the movie down, juxtaposed too strangely with the other dialogue. but i kind of feel like expectations might be getting in the way of a really thrilling reality: those poems are beautiful. and they are said beautifully. some of them are more seamlessly interwoven than others, but even if they hadn't been acted so well, the poems would have been worth hearing, period, and i thought that all of them were acted just wonderfully.
i can't say how affective the film was--i've run into this problem before. with anything that i don't like, it's often just sheer catharsis (as well as one hell of a good time) to rip and tear and maim, and call down my petty thunderings like isabella's jove. and with stuff i do like but am not "supposed to" like, defending my opinion becomes matter for discussion. but with something that moved me so much--that i think was felt so truly by its actors and its director--there's kind of nothing to say.
aside from, uh, "see it," i guess. SEE IT, YOU GLORIOUS BASTARDS!!! it's magnificent. hey, here's a thing: if kimberly elise actually gets nominated and/or wins best actress for this, my faith in the academy awards (absolutely destroyed like post-Gojiro box-tokyo by the multiple wins of Titanic) will be either partially or completely restored. she is so good. so many of the actresses are magnificent, but her part is...unbelievable, and she takes it and goes where it goes--she takes on the body of her part, which is so horrifying and amazing. of all the moments she has, i think i got first wrapped up in the way she says "i've loved you since i was fourteen" to her abusive alcoholic husband, and you see the resistance in her to what's in front of her, and some of its cause... i can't. i have no words.
of course, if she doesn't get nominated, then good bye academy forever and ever. yeah! i'm threatening the academy! i'll believe in you jagweeds even less if kimberly elise doesn't get nominated for best actress! grumble grumble...("i'll never let go, jack"--let go, kate! just let go! what the hell are you doing getting back on that boat??? another 125 minutes of my life, james cameron, really? spent on watching some people who we all know are going to die get wetter but not in a fun way? why of course i'll let you have those precious hours! what would i have spent them on, anyway? fighting cancer? writing my novel? washing the dishes? window shopping? microwaving a hot pocket and then eating only half of it? really anything else in the entire universe? why would i want to do that? curse you, academy! and your eleven wasted statuettes too!!! lord knows i am not as much of a fan of the sweet heareafter as some i could mention [really, sarah polley? you're just going to take that dude's dead wife's clothes?], but atom egoyan certainly deserved that statuette more than cameron, or whatever hung-over flunky directed kate and leo through those love scenes [love kate; love leo. hate titanic]).
oh, there was one thing. i thought the part just before the...uh, no spoilers? main event of the plot, should i say?--was overdone. i totally acknowledge that it was pretty dang difficult moment to do, but it didn't capture much of a feeling. though in a way, that kind of worked to the film's advantage, because the story even more clearly wasn't about the events of these womens' lives--it was about what they did with them, how they thought of them, and how, in the end, they turned them into poetry. it made me want to read the book. that, in this case, was the mark of a good film.
*it took a significant amount of wikipedia-ing to get that reference correct. i thought it was archduke franz ferdinand who abdicated, which had always confused me because i was like, well, what's even the point of assassinating him then? symbolic protest? don't like the hit single "take me out?" (really really dumb joke, sra.) but i was wrong. franz married a lady he shouldn't have, but he still got to be archduke. which did him a world of good. it was edward VII who abdicated. that wallis must have been something something.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
neowolf: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Neowolf: movie to-be-starring the next generation's equivalent of tom servo, crow, and mike/joel
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA.
whyyy? why the enormous but malodorous bouquet of film editorial techniques? why did the entire movie take place with a fog machine working its little heart out? obviously the characters were smokin'--their looks were pretty much all they had going for them--but did they also give off such an intense bodily heat due to their werewolfiness that they literally generated whiffs of steam in all situations?
it was ba-ha-had. the only thing it had going for it was kevin, and he died.
oh, spoiler, sorry.
also the girl band was cute, but their music was te-he-he-herrible. not as a-ha-hawful as neowolf's music, but...not...great.
and oh my god, the sheer amount of slow-mo kissing that should have been sexy but COMPLETELY WAS NOT. here's a tip, guys: kissing is awesome; bare flesh is awesome; but neither kissing nor flesh can carry your movie when they are completely in a vacuum. sort of in the same manner that amplification alone cannot make a heavy metal song much better than it already wasn't. the movie was the antithesis of awesome, to the point that even its medium-copious amounts of slow makeout and nonspecific nudity could not make it awesome. neowolf was the black hole of awesomeness, and even the awesomeness of naked people and kissing was annihilated in its suckage.
the best-worst part was definitely the relationships, which made no sense. the directions the characters gave each other came in at a very close best-worst second, however: "that hotel on the edge of town" (a direction that gay boy gives to main girl) does not appear to me to be uber-specific. it may just be me. maybe there IS only one edge to the town, and one hotel ON said edge--i don't live in santa wherever-the-heck-ica, i can't judge. i mean, this direction apparently conveyed something pretty exact to main girl, because not only did she find the hotel, but she found main guy's steam-filled hotel room without any appreciable effort. or maybe the NAME of the hotel she was directed to was "That Hotel on the Edge of Town hotel." catering to all edge-of-town stayers, The Hotel at the Edge of Town hotel is ironically situated in the main shopping area--get the comforts of center-of-town-ness without sacrificing your raucous living-town-on-the-edge vibe!
the other good-bad direction (from alpha wolf to gay guy) was something like, "turn off at the exit near to where our next show will be--you can't miss it."
yeah. bet i can.
i'll just type that one into mapquest.
mapquest is asking for a city or a zipcode.
what the hell, i'll give it one.
the first five results of looking up "the exit near to where our next show will be, san francisco, california" on mapquest are as follows:
1. New Leaf Service for Our Community
2. Church-The Nativity-Our Lord
3. EXIT 434A/DUBOCE/N
4. Our City (it's apparently located on howard)
6. Lance Shows Photographer
ok, lance shows photographer was 7th on the mapquest list, but 5 and 6 were just more freeway exits.
i know what the problem is here! i should have used googlemaps!
looking up "the exit near to where our next show will be" on googlemaps resulted in locations in oregon and tennessee. i guess the band neowolf owns a really fast tour bus. or perhaps their "next gig" was a temporal anomaly, and they were in two disparate places at the same space-time. a temporal anomaly that has had unspeakable ramifications. those ramifications being the unleashing of the movie neowolf. it is upon us, america! noooooo!! the gods of the threshold are angry!!! the spiky laughing idiot gods are released!!!!! QUICK, SOMEONE GET THE PORCUPONICON*!!!
anyway, don't watch neowolf unless you're interested in seeing a how's how of film editing--from slo-mo to oh hell no. or you're interested in a very cursory and somewhat (according to my friend) fictitious history of wolfsbane. or you want to watch action silver bullet forging! now with 47% less action for your ease of delugtition!
or you want to see actors who look, respectively, like rebecca gayheart, johnny depp, zac efron, brendan fehr, and james callis. but aren't.
*the porcuponicon is, i think, pete abrams' intellectual property, and is entirely awesome. sluggy freelance 4-eva.
i have a fever. blame the previous version of this blog post (much less lucid even than this one--which is saying something) on illness.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA.
whyyy? why the enormous but malodorous bouquet of film editorial techniques? why did the entire movie take place with a fog machine working its little heart out? obviously the characters were smokin'--their looks were pretty much all they had going for them--but did they also give off such an intense bodily heat due to their werewolfiness that they literally generated whiffs of steam in all situations?
it was ba-ha-had. the only thing it had going for it was kevin, and he died.
oh, spoiler, sorry.
also the girl band was cute, but their music was te-he-he-herrible. not as a-ha-hawful as neowolf's music, but...not...great.
and oh my god, the sheer amount of slow-mo kissing that should have been sexy but COMPLETELY WAS NOT. here's a tip, guys: kissing is awesome; bare flesh is awesome; but neither kissing nor flesh can carry your movie when they are completely in a vacuum. sort of in the same manner that amplification alone cannot make a heavy metal song much better than it already wasn't. the movie was the antithesis of awesome, to the point that even its medium-copious amounts of slow makeout and nonspecific nudity could not make it awesome. neowolf was the black hole of awesomeness, and even the awesomeness of naked people and kissing was annihilated in its suckage.
the best-worst part was definitely the relationships, which made no sense. the directions the characters gave each other came in at a very close best-worst second, however: "that hotel on the edge of town" (a direction that gay boy gives to main girl) does not appear to me to be uber-specific. it may just be me. maybe there IS only one edge to the town, and one hotel ON said edge--i don't live in santa wherever-the-heck-ica, i can't judge. i mean, this direction apparently conveyed something pretty exact to main girl, because not only did she find the hotel, but she found main guy's steam-filled hotel room without any appreciable effort. or maybe the NAME of the hotel she was directed to was "That Hotel on the Edge of Town hotel." catering to all edge-of-town stayers, The Hotel at the Edge of Town hotel is ironically situated in the main shopping area--get the comforts of center-of-town-ness without sacrificing your raucous living-town-on-the-edge vibe!
the other good-bad direction (from alpha wolf to gay guy) was something like, "turn off at the exit near to where our next show will be--you can't miss it."
yeah. bet i can.
i'll just type that one into mapquest.
mapquest is asking for a city or a zipcode.
what the hell, i'll give it one.
the first five results of looking up "the exit near to where our next show will be, san francisco, california" on mapquest are as follows:
1. New Leaf Service for Our Community
2. Church-The Nativity-Our Lord
3. EXIT 434A/DUBOCE/N
4. Our City (it's apparently located on howard)
6. Lance Shows Photographer
ok, lance shows photographer was 7th on the mapquest list, but 5 and 6 were just more freeway exits.
i know what the problem is here! i should have used googlemaps!
looking up "the exit near to where our next show will be" on googlemaps resulted in locations in oregon and tennessee. i guess the band neowolf owns a really fast tour bus. or perhaps their "next gig" was a temporal anomaly, and they were in two disparate places at the same space-time. a temporal anomaly that has had unspeakable ramifications. those ramifications being the unleashing of the movie neowolf. it is upon us, america! noooooo!! the gods of the threshold are angry!!! the spiky laughing idiot gods are released!!!!! QUICK, SOMEONE GET THE PORCUPONICON*!!!
anyway, don't watch neowolf unless you're interested in seeing a how's how of film editing--from slo-mo to oh hell no. or you're interested in a very cursory and somewhat (according to my friend) fictitious history of wolfsbane. or you want to watch action silver bullet forging! now with 47% less action for your ease of delugtition!
or you want to see actors who look, respectively, like rebecca gayheart, johnny depp, zac efron, brendan fehr, and james callis. but aren't.
*the porcuponicon is, i think, pete abrams' intellectual property, and is entirely awesome. sluggy freelance 4-eva.
i have a fever. blame the previous version of this blog post (much less lucid even than this one--which is saying something) on illness.
hannah montana: goooo, pop cultural capital! gooooo!
Hannah Montana: the Movie: movie starring miley cyrus AS hannah montana!! or hannah montana as miley cyrus...whoah.
i've never seen the show (i SWEAR! no, i really haven't! don't you trust me?), and perhaps snobbishly, i was surprised by how much i liked this movie. or maybe it's not snobbish, because of the embarrassing amount of experience i've had with disney channel-style joints, from life-size to bratz.... the point is, having had some experience with the TERRIBLE AWESOMENESS that can result from bad bad bad marketed-to-children films, hannah montana: the movie was pretty much legitimately awesome. surprising? possibly. i don't know, because i haven't seen the show (really, i haven't. i really haven't).
first of all, miley cyrus is pretty fantastic. not sure i like her voice, but i really like the way she uses it. or used it in this movie. that's not a damning with faint praise, by the way. as a singer myself (you know, sort of), i think it's much more important how you sing that what you're working with--and that's been proved time and again. callas, for example. or johnny rotten. i like both of those singers better than miley cyrus, but that's a matter of personal taste. don't like most of the songs, but the way she sang "climb" was...good. really good. and i was completely into her acting. i thought all her choices were full of character, personal and original--i felt like she was really present in what she was doing.
not having seen the show (really, i totally haven't), i don't know if that was a product of the product of hannah montana: the franchise, or a product of some combination of the script and direction. again, i'm ABSOLUTELY NOT saying that some uber-talented director managed to draw a performance from miley cyrus that she never would have been able to accomplish without him--i felt like she was totally steering her own boat on the acting end of things. but the performances were pretty universally good, which, again, because i have experience with such things, i am qualified to say, is not always the case with disney-style movies.
allow me to stretch my imagination for a minute and say that what i feel like happened was:
a., the director came upon a quasi-ready-made cast, because of the show being a longstanding sort of thing.
b., the director was like, okay, let's get into these roles!
c., the director was maybe somewhat surprised by what the cast was capable of bringing to their parts.
d., the director was like, "let's go with this. you guys are totally awesome."
does that sound condescending? i don't have as much experience with tween t.v. as i do with tween movies, so it's so very possible i'm totally wrong about the way hannah montana: the t.v. show carries itself. but, like, even the friends of the skateboard girl who blew up the cake had, like, a lot of depth to them--more depth than you'd necessarily find in the beta-female sidekick of the lead girl in a romantic comedy (oh, you know exactly what i'm talking about)--and they only got, like, five minutes of screen time, and i wasn't wild about the stuff they had to do.
maybe it's a t.v.-to-movie thing, when t.v.-to-movie is done right. like serenity. not all of the NINE main characters got as much time as one would have liked (kaylee and simon spring to mind), but there was a certain vibrancy about all of them, perhaps caused by their having had lives previous to the movie.
this also might explain why melora hardin character fell a little flat. usually i freaking ADORE melora hardin (17 again??? totally amazing performance! and that one episode of the office where she and michael go to the party together and she's kind of drunk and talking to the camera and you can see her coming apart at the seams because of the sharp-edged way she laughs--just so good), but in hannah montana: the movie, she didn't seem to be as grounded of a character as the rest of them (even billy ray cyrus, who i liked, but thought was pretty bad as an actor--again, liked what he did, just didn't think it was good acting), and it fell kind of flat. which was too bad. because she's so good.
anyway, i may not go straight to target and buy hannah montana: the sheet set or hannah montana: the waffle iron, but i really liked this movie. it was neat. it gives me faith in this miley cyrus-obsessed next generation. in my day we had britney spears, who was always pretty much a disaster (sorry if this seems harsh; i do root for her personally, and feel like fame has given her a REALLY tough time. but there are two pretty much irrefutable arguments as to her not-so-greatness: "email my heart," and crossroads. though i like her work on how i met your mother. i suppose, like everything, it's a delicate balance). whether or not you think miley cyrus has talent, she has heart, and a spark, which is more than can be said of a whole lot of cultural icons, pop or otherwise (i am talking to you, elvis costello. i am always talking to you. "i don't want to go to chelsea!" bah! get off the train!).
and if she doesn't actually have the heart or the spark, she at least knows the value of faking such things, which, again, is more than can be said for some.
but just to clarify, i personally think that she is talented and she does have heart and spark.
which is surprising in one whose face can be bought on bright pink bathroom towels.
and i think i might go rent the show now.
oh, god, the embarrassing confessions made possible by the interweb.
not sure who might find it ironic that i like hannah montana the movie but not billy eliot, and who might find it typical...and who would agree with me. thank you, by the way, one person in the universe who would agree with me. maybe we'll meet someday.
i've never seen the show (i SWEAR! no, i really haven't! don't you trust me?), and perhaps snobbishly, i was surprised by how much i liked this movie. or maybe it's not snobbish, because of the embarrassing amount of experience i've had with disney channel-style joints, from life-size to bratz.... the point is, having had some experience with the TERRIBLE AWESOMENESS that can result from bad bad bad marketed-to-children films, hannah montana: the movie was pretty much legitimately awesome. surprising? possibly. i don't know, because i haven't seen the show (really, i haven't. i really haven't).
first of all, miley cyrus is pretty fantastic. not sure i like her voice, but i really like the way she uses it. or used it in this movie. that's not a damning with faint praise, by the way. as a singer myself (you know, sort of), i think it's much more important how you sing that what you're working with--and that's been proved time and again. callas, for example. or johnny rotten. i like both of those singers better than miley cyrus, but that's a matter of personal taste. don't like most of the songs, but the way she sang "climb" was...good. really good. and i was completely into her acting. i thought all her choices were full of character, personal and original--i felt like she was really present in what she was doing.
not having seen the show (really, i totally haven't), i don't know if that was a product of the product of hannah montana: the franchise, or a product of some combination of the script and direction. again, i'm ABSOLUTELY NOT saying that some uber-talented director managed to draw a performance from miley cyrus that she never would have been able to accomplish without him--i felt like she was totally steering her own boat on the acting end of things. but the performances were pretty universally good, which, again, because i have experience with such things, i am qualified to say, is not always the case with disney-style movies.
allow me to stretch my imagination for a minute and say that what i feel like happened was:
a., the director came upon a quasi-ready-made cast, because of the show being a longstanding sort of thing.
b., the director was like, okay, let's get into these roles!
c., the director was maybe somewhat surprised by what the cast was capable of bringing to their parts.
d., the director was like, "let's go with this. you guys are totally awesome."
does that sound condescending? i don't have as much experience with tween t.v. as i do with tween movies, so it's so very possible i'm totally wrong about the way hannah montana: the t.v. show carries itself. but, like, even the friends of the skateboard girl who blew up the cake had, like, a lot of depth to them--more depth than you'd necessarily find in the beta-female sidekick of the lead girl in a romantic comedy (oh, you know exactly what i'm talking about)--and they only got, like, five minutes of screen time, and i wasn't wild about the stuff they had to do.
maybe it's a t.v.-to-movie thing, when t.v.-to-movie is done right. like serenity. not all of the NINE main characters got as much time as one would have liked (kaylee and simon spring to mind), but there was a certain vibrancy about all of them, perhaps caused by their having had lives previous to the movie.
this also might explain why melora hardin character fell a little flat. usually i freaking ADORE melora hardin (17 again??? totally amazing performance! and that one episode of the office where she and michael go to the party together and she's kind of drunk and talking to the camera and you can see her coming apart at the seams because of the sharp-edged way she laughs--just so good), but in hannah montana: the movie, she didn't seem to be as grounded of a character as the rest of them (even billy ray cyrus, who i liked, but thought was pretty bad as an actor--again, liked what he did, just didn't think it was good acting), and it fell kind of flat. which was too bad. because she's so good.
anyway, i may not go straight to target and buy hannah montana: the sheet set or hannah montana: the waffle iron, but i really liked this movie. it was neat. it gives me faith in this miley cyrus-obsessed next generation. in my day we had britney spears, who was always pretty much a disaster (sorry if this seems harsh; i do root for her personally, and feel like fame has given her a REALLY tough time. but there are two pretty much irrefutable arguments as to her not-so-greatness: "email my heart," and crossroads. though i like her work on how i met your mother. i suppose, like everything, it's a delicate balance). whether or not you think miley cyrus has talent, she has heart, and a spark, which is more than can be said of a whole lot of cultural icons, pop or otherwise (i am talking to you, elvis costello. i am always talking to you. "i don't want to go to chelsea!" bah! get off the train!).
and if she doesn't actually have the heart or the spark, she at least knows the value of faking such things, which, again, is more than can be said for some.
but just to clarify, i personally think that she is talented and she does have heart and spark.
which is surprising in one whose face can be bought on bright pink bathroom towels.
and i think i might go rent the show now.
oh, god, the embarrassing confessions made possible by the interweb.
not sure who might find it ironic that i like hannah montana the movie but not billy eliot, and who might find it typical...and who would agree with me. thank you, by the way, one person in the universe who would agree with me. maybe we'll meet someday.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
the last exorcism, or, how ELSE to give that "the creeping terror" monster indigestion
The Last Exorcism: movie starring the hand cam of a palsied man
before i go into a lot of material (which i'm going to enjoy doing, b-t-dub, so much) about the documentary style of filming a horror movie, i'm going to say what i thought of the movie. this is quite simple: i liked it. very much. i thought it was quite sympathetic, and the acting was great. NOT a "set 'em up, knock 'em down," this was more of a "when you are a linen-suited preacher looking into the void, the void is looking into your linen suited self as well" kind of thing. it was real good.
i think. i did have to skip about half of it, either through bodily absence or else by closing my eyes, because the camera WOULD NOT STAY STILL. in normal circumstances, even when i haven't eaten a whole passel of mall food and topped it off with reese's pieces, this style of cinematography isn't the kindest to my intestines. but in this case, it was just such an extra-special experience.
"bon" mots related to this second aspect of the movie are as follows (and there's nothing after these, so if you want to stop reading, go ahead):
-pumas. highly endangered. don't endanger them further by renting them from the zoo and strapping cameras to their backs and then having them film your movie for you. in fact, while you're at it, don't rent those monkeys that swing from tree to tree either. and if you're going to use elephants, don't attach the camera to the trunk.
-i am familiar with the term "jazz hands" from bring it on--it may be a legitimate dance thing, but why are you applying it to cinematography, camera guy? too busy fosse-ing to mockumentarize the horror as it deserves? are you actually IN chicago? is the director using your footage to check up on how well you've learned the dances? are you going over it now? "keep that camera hand circling nice and tight," he or she is telling you. and you did. congratulations.
-it's called a tripod. paranormal activity had one. spoiler: granted, having one got that dude killed, but spoiler: not having one doesn't do you much good either.
no, it was good. but you got to treat it like that hotbox yoga.
before i go into a lot of material (which i'm going to enjoy doing, b-t-dub, so much) about the documentary style of filming a horror movie, i'm going to say what i thought of the movie. this is quite simple: i liked it. very much. i thought it was quite sympathetic, and the acting was great. NOT a "set 'em up, knock 'em down," this was more of a "when you are a linen-suited preacher looking into the void, the void is looking into your linen suited self as well" kind of thing. it was real good.
i think. i did have to skip about half of it, either through bodily absence or else by closing my eyes, because the camera WOULD NOT STAY STILL. in normal circumstances, even when i haven't eaten a whole passel of mall food and topped it off with reese's pieces, this style of cinematography isn't the kindest to my intestines. but in this case, it was just such an extra-special experience.
"bon" mots related to this second aspect of the movie are as follows (and there's nothing after these, so if you want to stop reading, go ahead):
-pumas. highly endangered. don't endanger them further by renting them from the zoo and strapping cameras to their backs and then having them film your movie for you. in fact, while you're at it, don't rent those monkeys that swing from tree to tree either. and if you're going to use elephants, don't attach the camera to the trunk.
-i am familiar with the term "jazz hands" from bring it on--it may be a legitimate dance thing, but why are you applying it to cinematography, camera guy? too busy fosse-ing to mockumentarize the horror as it deserves? are you actually IN chicago? is the director using your footage to check up on how well you've learned the dances? are you going over it now? "keep that camera hand circling nice and tight," he or she is telling you. and you did. congratulations.
-it's called a tripod. paranormal activity had one. spoiler: granted, having one got that dude killed, but spoiler: not having one doesn't do you much good either.
no, it was good. but you got to treat it like that hotbox yoga.
fighting, or, how not to enunciate ever and still get your point across
Fighting: movie starring channing tatum as a tough guy with a sensitive side and a past, and terrence howard as a man in two pairs of pants
again, probably not selling the whole "i'm NOT an octegenarian!" aspect of my internet persona, but my main problem with this movie was that i couldn't understand about two-thirds of it. i'm not talking about the plot. there were at least flashes of insight when it came to what was going on with the plot. i'm talking about the actual lines, which for the most part i couldn't make out. the subtitles helped, but my friend and i commented almost as much on how we couldn't figure out what the heck was being said as we did on how gay everything seemed.
which, considering that it was a fighting movie, and considering the way we tend to joke in the first place, is SAYING SOMETHING.
now, i'd just like to take a step back, and point out that my reaction to fighting is just as formulaic as fighting itself. guess. go on and guess what i did and didn't like.
i'll give you a hint: the plot. its existence. do you think i found it original, or otherwise? and who do you think i'm going to blame for this? the actors, the writers, or the director?
actually, in this one instance i'd fool you. i thought the direction was pretty awesome. let's all just keep in mind that i don't know the first thing about moviemaking, but i found the camera work detailed and sympathetic, kind of like how the director to youth in revolt took an otherwise fairly revolting film and made more of it than he or she had to, except i liked fighting better than youth in revolt.
i mean, in a formula film, which i'm pretty sure fighting inarguably is, there's, you know, opportunity for good stuff to happen, and because that good stuff kind of exists in a vacuum, you do notice it pretty acutely.
terrence howard, for instance. OH MY GOD. either he IS that guy, or that was one FRACKING AMAZING performance. i can put it best like this: if a formula film about dance or street fighting or whatever is kind of like an opera seria, in which the plot takes place so that we can watch the featured subject happen (fights, dancing) as if it were arias surrounded by recit, than terrence howard's performance was a sonata in the middle of the opera. it's not like he stole the show; stealing a show is pretty unprofessional, in my opinion. it's just that his performance was so good, so detailed and eerie, sad and whole*, that it drew itself together throughout its disparate time-space in the movie. he wasn't the only one who acted beautifully. channing tatum was really really good. and brian j. white was just awesome: he would come onscreen and shower this brilliance that wasn't solely an effect of how cute he is. not solely. which, considering how cute he is, is, as usual, saying something--his acting was...yeah. awesome.
i'm kind of blathering.
i mean, the plot was pretty much nonsense--but there were layers; the idea of fighting was a metaphor, not just a descriptive thingee, so that though the sequence of events only kind of made sense, the underlying idea hanged together. it had heart, or something.
i'm glad i saw it.
no, thank YOU, america.
*ha ha, talk about your doctrine of the affections.
seriously, sra? seriously?
again, probably not selling the whole "i'm NOT an octegenarian!" aspect of my internet persona, but my main problem with this movie was that i couldn't understand about two-thirds of it. i'm not talking about the plot. there were at least flashes of insight when it came to what was going on with the plot. i'm talking about the actual lines, which for the most part i couldn't make out. the subtitles helped, but my friend and i commented almost as much on how we couldn't figure out what the heck was being said as we did on how gay everything seemed.
which, considering that it was a fighting movie, and considering the way we tend to joke in the first place, is SAYING SOMETHING.
now, i'd just like to take a step back, and point out that my reaction to fighting is just as formulaic as fighting itself. guess. go on and guess what i did and didn't like.
i'll give you a hint: the plot. its existence. do you think i found it original, or otherwise? and who do you think i'm going to blame for this? the actors, the writers, or the director?
actually, in this one instance i'd fool you. i thought the direction was pretty awesome. let's all just keep in mind that i don't know the first thing about moviemaking, but i found the camera work detailed and sympathetic, kind of like how the director to youth in revolt took an otherwise fairly revolting film and made more of it than he or she had to, except i liked fighting better than youth in revolt.
i mean, in a formula film, which i'm pretty sure fighting inarguably is, there's, you know, opportunity for good stuff to happen, and because that good stuff kind of exists in a vacuum, you do notice it pretty acutely.
terrence howard, for instance. OH MY GOD. either he IS that guy, or that was one FRACKING AMAZING performance. i can put it best like this: if a formula film about dance or street fighting or whatever is kind of like an opera seria, in which the plot takes place so that we can watch the featured subject happen (fights, dancing) as if it were arias surrounded by recit, than terrence howard's performance was a sonata in the middle of the opera. it's not like he stole the show; stealing a show is pretty unprofessional, in my opinion. it's just that his performance was so good, so detailed and eerie, sad and whole*, that it drew itself together throughout its disparate time-space in the movie. he wasn't the only one who acted beautifully. channing tatum was really really good. and brian j. white was just awesome: he would come onscreen and shower this brilliance that wasn't solely an effect of how cute he is. not solely. which, considering how cute he is, is, as usual, saying something--his acting was...yeah. awesome.
i'm kind of blathering.
i mean, the plot was pretty much nonsense--but there were layers; the idea of fighting was a metaphor, not just a descriptive thingee, so that though the sequence of events only kind of made sense, the underlying idea hanged together. it had heart, or something.
i'm glad i saw it.
no, thank YOU, america.
*ha ha, talk about your doctrine of the affections.
seriously, sra? seriously?
Monday, August 16, 2010
scott pilgrim vs. the world: sra like
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: movie, starring michael cera
i enjoyed the SHIT out of this. before making it clear that i'm not going to go much deeper into analysis of my reaction to it than what i've just stated, i should point out that i realize that "i enjoyed the SHIT out of this" is a pretty lame, nonspecific--in short, critically flabby--reaction. reasons i should be exerting more judgment on this movie are as follows:
1. i haven't finished the comic, but did read and enjoy about 4 of the books, before getting too weighted down with guilt about not returning them to the friend i'd borrowed them from. ergo my reaction should encompass various aspects of whether or not the movie represented the source material, etc.
2. i'm always an asshole, except about stuff i like. why is that? why can't i be more of an asshole about stuff i like, and less of an asshole about stuff i don't? wouldn't the world be a better place if people were more assholes about what they liked and less about what they didn't? ergo my critique should acknowledge that, even when i like something, i have an obligation to be critical of my enjoyment, so as not to employ a double standard. i owe this attempt at acuity, not just to america, but the WORLD(-orld-orld-orld).
3. i can be pretty harsh with movies that don't manage what this one did--that is, ones that are all slick bits of fluff with a lot of modern things in them (that whole clause could be read, by the eager mind, as a double entendre. the mind would have to be pretty eager, though). just cuz scott pilgrim vs. the world was a slick bit of fluff with modern stuff in it that i enjoyed the SHIT out of, doesn't mean that i get a pass in calling it out for its slick bit of modern fluffery (getting worse and worse, sra). or, at least, if i CAN give myself a pass in calling it out, i should explain WHY.
bah. screw 1 through 3. reasons why scott pilgrim vs. the world was an awesome movie and 'nuff said are as follows:
4. it managed its cameos with grace. there are some movies where i'm like, "if you shove a single 'nother pop culture movie actor reference down my throat i will scream--i promise you," which is an empty threat, but it makes me feel better. but scott pilgrim vs. the world's cameos were fun. they were kind of just there so that we could all say, "hey, there that is," and it was awesome.
5. the day after seeing it, i don't feel bad about liking it. at a distance, the plot does get a little more hole-filled, but not in a way that makes me feel duped exactly. i didn't like the ending...but i didn't like it in the theater either.
6. okay, and then the fun stuff was awesome! the cinematography and the fights and michael cera, who again i thought was wonderful, and the jokes and all the actors esp. knives chau (ellen wong, who has beautiful eyes) and MAE WHITMAN IS BACK!!! and i really liked mary elizabeth winstead's understated performance (i bet she's getting that "understated performance" bit a lot) and i freaking REALLY ENJOYED THE SOUNDTRACK which could have gone beyond wrong and did not.
it was like sin city, which i also enjoyed the shit out of, except i think i will object to having liked it less in the future than i object currently to having liked sin city.
hmm. it was like sin city, except without alexis bledel being sooooo from the south.
okay, no, i've got it. if sin city is the sin city version of, say, the adventures of food boy (watch it and you'll see what i mean--the adventures of food boy puts the "ur?" back in "disturbing"), then scott pilgrim vs. the world is the sin city version of the apartment.
oh, i said it. because nobody else has the...(uh, insert pertinent noun here...[i don't know what it is]) to do so!
i enjoyed the SHIT out of this. before making it clear that i'm not going to go much deeper into analysis of my reaction to it than what i've just stated, i should point out that i realize that "i enjoyed the SHIT out of this" is a pretty lame, nonspecific--in short, critically flabby--reaction. reasons i should be exerting more judgment on this movie are as follows:
1. i haven't finished the comic, but did read and enjoy about 4 of the books, before getting too weighted down with guilt about not returning them to the friend i'd borrowed them from. ergo my reaction should encompass various aspects of whether or not the movie represented the source material, etc.
2. i'm always an asshole, except about stuff i like. why is that? why can't i be more of an asshole about stuff i like, and less of an asshole about stuff i don't? wouldn't the world be a better place if people were more assholes about what they liked and less about what they didn't? ergo my critique should acknowledge that, even when i like something, i have an obligation to be critical of my enjoyment, so as not to employ a double standard. i owe this attempt at acuity, not just to america, but the WORLD(-orld-orld-orld).
3. i can be pretty harsh with movies that don't manage what this one did--that is, ones that are all slick bits of fluff with a lot of modern things in them (that whole clause could be read, by the eager mind, as a double entendre. the mind would have to be pretty eager, though). just cuz scott pilgrim vs. the world was a slick bit of fluff with modern stuff in it that i enjoyed the SHIT out of, doesn't mean that i get a pass in calling it out for its slick bit of modern fluffery (getting worse and worse, sra). or, at least, if i CAN give myself a pass in calling it out, i should explain WHY.
bah. screw 1 through 3. reasons why scott pilgrim vs. the world was an awesome movie and 'nuff said are as follows:
4. it managed its cameos with grace. there are some movies where i'm like, "if you shove a single 'nother pop culture movie actor reference down my throat i will scream--i promise you," which is an empty threat, but it makes me feel better. but scott pilgrim vs. the world's cameos were fun. they were kind of just there so that we could all say, "hey, there that is," and it was awesome.
5. the day after seeing it, i don't feel bad about liking it. at a distance, the plot does get a little more hole-filled, but not in a way that makes me feel duped exactly. i didn't like the ending...but i didn't like it in the theater either.
6. okay, and then the fun stuff was awesome! the cinematography and the fights and michael cera, who again i thought was wonderful, and the jokes and all the actors esp. knives chau (ellen wong, who has beautiful eyes) and MAE WHITMAN IS BACK!!! and i really liked mary elizabeth winstead's understated performance (i bet she's getting that "understated performance" bit a lot) and i freaking REALLY ENJOYED THE SOUNDTRACK which could have gone beyond wrong and did not.
it was like sin city, which i also enjoyed the shit out of, except i think i will object to having liked it less in the future than i object currently to having liked sin city.
hmm. it was like sin city, except without alexis bledel being sooooo from the south.
okay, no, i've got it. if sin city is the sin city version of, say, the adventures of food boy (watch it and you'll see what i mean--the adventures of food boy puts the "ur?" back in "disturbing"), then scott pilgrim vs. the world is the sin city version of the apartment.
oh, i said it. because nobody else has the...(uh, insert pertinent noun here...[i don't know what it is]) to do so!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
billy elliot: ARGH!!!!
Billy Elliot: movie starring the kid from jumper
...i liked him (imdb tells me he'll be playing st. john in a new version of jane eyre...okay, a., what's this version of jane eyre, and b., um, i would need to see this to believe it--not that i don't think he can do it, just that i'd like to see it)--i liked him and his brother and father and both the kids who have crushes on him, and i feel like the plot was handled delicately, and--
ARRRRGH!!! i don't even know what it is; just ARRRRGH! why did this movie give me such a pain? is it because i've turned my face against goodness and decency in movies? i want expostulation, rapidfire verbiage, and easily explicable plotlines with pre-recognizable emotional arcs?
probably.
i mean, as far as i could tell, it totally had a soul--and not just a soul within parameters, as some of these movies that i object so violently to do (the virgin suicides...just as an example). it had a respect for billy's process of self-expression; it showed us the way that he danced as himself, if you see what i'm getting at. i really liked that. not that i'm, like, the thoth of soul-in-movies-judging, no matter how much i like to pretend otherwise. i find myself humbled before billy elliot; i didn't like it, but i want to have. i'm capable of rejecting so many things so cruelly because of imagined slights or half-intentions, things not well thought out, too generic, or what have you. but none of these excuses for dislike apply in this case. hell, billy elliot even has marc bolan.
well, here we go--and prepare to be impressed with my audience paranoia manifesting itself yet again: i think maybe billy elliot highlights the fact (in my eyes, anyway) that cinematography itself can be a trap. i wonder if i can get away with saying that a visual, no matter how lovingly crafted, beautifully created, and germane to the point, can't tell a story.
i'm more than willing to concede that this claim may not be solid. but go with me for the moment. a visual, in its usual state, can capture an essence--and in the case of billy elliot, sometimes, the visual goes beyond the essential to, for lack of a better-established term, a sort of wild nights self-identification* (which, i'd argue, a moment captured in any medium can do--singing, pain, whatevs). this is of an awesomeness: not just the filmmaker's skill with visual representation, but his characterization of billy, are impressively bodied out by such moments.
but it's not storytelling.
yeah. arrgh, right? great characterization and beautiful depiction of states of uber-being are not storytelling, apparently. thanks, brain. i reeeally appreciate your opinions on this.
i guess what i'm trying to say is that without storytelling, with only atmosphere, i don't feel like the film survives. but it's just my opinion, and i rarely know what i'm talking about. i think it should be seen because of the things it has going for it being really great...
it's just that in the absence of an arc, even a strong characterization boils down to a bunch of beautiful and painful moments--extremely painful, because pointless. now, is this a reflection of the experience of life itself? possibly, but i don't think so. i've set my face against dub-cee williams** in this respect--i do think that every moment builds from a previous moment, and that that's why words in the end are a reflection of reality, rather than an imposition on reality (though they might not be the only reflection, and may to some extent be something of an imposition). more importantly, i don't think billy elliot provides an effective counter-argument to the above-stated. maybe nothing could, for me, except, like, something really bad, such as catalina caper. billy elliot doesn't touch me, except to hurt me. the hurt doesn't bring identification, but alienation. and i would argue (again, possibly untenably) that artistic stuff does carry the burden of hurting its audience in order to make said audience identify.
okay, i'm way out there now, and, if asked, would probably not be able to bring the argument back to anything specific to billy elliot, so should probably stop.
*jouissance? i don't think so...but i also may never have understood the term properly.
**william carlos williams' me-appointed '90's emcee name.
...i liked him (imdb tells me he'll be playing st. john in a new version of jane eyre...okay, a., what's this version of jane eyre, and b., um, i would need to see this to believe it--not that i don't think he can do it, just that i'd like to see it)--i liked him and his brother and father and both the kids who have crushes on him, and i feel like the plot was handled delicately, and--
ARRRRGH!!! i don't even know what it is; just ARRRRGH! why did this movie give me such a pain? is it because i've turned my face against goodness and decency in movies? i want expostulation, rapidfire verbiage, and easily explicable plotlines with pre-recognizable emotional arcs?
probably.
i mean, as far as i could tell, it totally had a soul--and not just a soul within parameters, as some of these movies that i object so violently to do (the virgin suicides...just as an example). it had a respect for billy's process of self-expression; it showed us the way that he danced as himself, if you see what i'm getting at. i really liked that. not that i'm, like, the thoth of soul-in-movies-judging, no matter how much i like to pretend otherwise. i find myself humbled before billy elliot; i didn't like it, but i want to have. i'm capable of rejecting so many things so cruelly because of imagined slights or half-intentions, things not well thought out, too generic, or what have you. but none of these excuses for dislike apply in this case. hell, billy elliot even has marc bolan.
well, here we go--and prepare to be impressed with my audience paranoia manifesting itself yet again: i think maybe billy elliot highlights the fact (in my eyes, anyway) that cinematography itself can be a trap. i wonder if i can get away with saying that a visual, no matter how lovingly crafted, beautifully created, and germane to the point, can't tell a story.
i'm more than willing to concede that this claim may not be solid. but go with me for the moment. a visual, in its usual state, can capture an essence--and in the case of billy elliot, sometimes, the visual goes beyond the essential to, for lack of a better-established term, a sort of wild nights self-identification* (which, i'd argue, a moment captured in any medium can do--singing, pain, whatevs). this is of an awesomeness: not just the filmmaker's skill with visual representation, but his characterization of billy, are impressively bodied out by such moments.
but it's not storytelling.
yeah. arrgh, right? great characterization and beautiful depiction of states of uber-being are not storytelling, apparently. thanks, brain. i reeeally appreciate your opinions on this.
i guess what i'm trying to say is that without storytelling, with only atmosphere, i don't feel like the film survives. but it's just my opinion, and i rarely know what i'm talking about. i think it should be seen because of the things it has going for it being really great...
it's just that in the absence of an arc, even a strong characterization boils down to a bunch of beautiful and painful moments--extremely painful, because pointless. now, is this a reflection of the experience of life itself? possibly, but i don't think so. i've set my face against dub-cee williams** in this respect--i do think that every moment builds from a previous moment, and that that's why words in the end are a reflection of reality, rather than an imposition on reality (though they might not be the only reflection, and may to some extent be something of an imposition). more importantly, i don't think billy elliot provides an effective counter-argument to the above-stated. maybe nothing could, for me, except, like, something really bad, such as catalina caper. billy elliot doesn't touch me, except to hurt me. the hurt doesn't bring identification, but alienation. and i would argue (again, possibly untenably) that artistic stuff does carry the burden of hurting its audience in order to make said audience identify.
okay, i'm way out there now, and, if asked, would probably not be able to bring the argument back to anything specific to billy elliot, so should probably stop.
*jouissance? i don't think so...but i also may never have understood the term properly.
**william carlos williams' me-appointed '90's emcee name.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
the big sleep, or when a classic's a classic, it's classic!
The Big Sleep: black and white starring...let's go with regis toomey as chief inspector bernie ohls
i think i could watch howard hawks' direction of paint drying. that dude kicks frank capra's ass out the door, as far as i am concerned. it happened one night? come on, what is there to write home about in that? clark gable's trumpet solo? hawks is the man for my money. i mean, capra comes up with these gorgeous shots that, ironically enough, end up with the same kind of aesthetic as '30's russian propaganda posters. cinematographic might makes right. the beauty of mr. deeds goes to washington is, for me, implicated by the judgmental, pixillated values of its storyline: the pictures so lushly captured by the film take on the same shape as its morals, become corrupted by their own desperate simplicity.
with hawks, you don't need to worry about anything being too simple. there's always a lot going on, and if one doesn't condone all of it (not that one has to, per se), it's okay, because there are so many other things that one can watch going on instead. for instance, i'm not too sure about all these random "sweethearts" and "dolls" that make philip marlowe so obviously the man of the hour...but i can let that go, because there was a lot of awesome crowding in around what i found objectionable.
i liked--fairly well--that it stuck pretty close to the book. there were more african americans, gay people, and nudes in the book, but, yeah, what can one expect? my main problem and yet delight was the bacall/bogart relationship, because it's what one wants from the book and does not get...but at the same time the book gives one something--well, okay, here's the final paragraph from the book:
"On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they made me do was think of Silver-Wig [that's Eddie Mars' wife], and I never saw her again."
this, after one of chandler's bizarre, tight, lush diatribes about death, is pretty much genius. It clings to the brain; it captures, you know, something (not sure quite what--some emotional state of loss and hard dreaming, maybe) exactly. it's like, in making the good parts version of the big sleep, the screenwriters lost the great parts version, which is the book. but on the other hand, i see what they were doing, because you can't just deny a '40's audience its bogey and bacall ending. you have to make allowances for the medium and for expectations. i guess '40's cinema is kind of like ours today--everything gets candy-coated because the consumer is king, or something like that. i mean, the big sleep has a big old edge to it--it's downright wicked within parameters (bacall singing "and her tears flowed like wine," the whole horse racing metaphor), but, as with movies today, there are certain things that just can't be depicted, can't be questioned. in the movie. the book is a slightly different story (one which leaves me questioning, among other things, raymond chandler's sexuality...but that's yet another story), but it was intended for a different audience (i think). chandler could write for pulp readers; hollywood couldn't produce movies for pulp watchers. or that's how it feels.
the above is a small sampling of my to-be famous "history by intuition." irving stone, i am not.
anyway, it's interesting to think about. all the acting is awesome, and the movie moves itself along. and the soundtrack is so cool. all those lush, almost formulaic developments, and the quasi-quixotic details...it's neat. it's keen.
yes. i've weighed in on the big sleep. because it was obvious that there needed to be yet another opinion on this classic available to the internet-having public. no need to thank me, america.
i think i could watch howard hawks' direction of paint drying. that dude kicks frank capra's ass out the door, as far as i am concerned. it happened one night? come on, what is there to write home about in that? clark gable's trumpet solo? hawks is the man for my money. i mean, capra comes up with these gorgeous shots that, ironically enough, end up with the same kind of aesthetic as '30's russian propaganda posters. cinematographic might makes right. the beauty of mr. deeds goes to washington is, for me, implicated by the judgmental, pixillated values of its storyline: the pictures so lushly captured by the film take on the same shape as its morals, become corrupted by their own desperate simplicity.
with hawks, you don't need to worry about anything being too simple. there's always a lot going on, and if one doesn't condone all of it (not that one has to, per se), it's okay, because there are so many other things that one can watch going on instead. for instance, i'm not too sure about all these random "sweethearts" and "dolls" that make philip marlowe so obviously the man of the hour...but i can let that go, because there was a lot of awesome crowding in around what i found objectionable.
i liked--fairly well--that it stuck pretty close to the book. there were more african americans, gay people, and nudes in the book, but, yeah, what can one expect? my main problem and yet delight was the bacall/bogart relationship, because it's what one wants from the book and does not get...but at the same time the book gives one something--well, okay, here's the final paragraph from the book:
"On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they made me do was think of Silver-Wig [that's Eddie Mars' wife], and I never saw her again."
this, after one of chandler's bizarre, tight, lush diatribes about death, is pretty much genius. It clings to the brain; it captures, you know, something (not sure quite what--some emotional state of loss and hard dreaming, maybe) exactly. it's like, in making the good parts version of the big sleep, the screenwriters lost the great parts version, which is the book. but on the other hand, i see what they were doing, because you can't just deny a '40's audience its bogey and bacall ending. you have to make allowances for the medium and for expectations. i guess '40's cinema is kind of like ours today--everything gets candy-coated because the consumer is king, or something like that. i mean, the big sleep has a big old edge to it--it's downright wicked within parameters (bacall singing "and her tears flowed like wine," the whole horse racing metaphor), but, as with movies today, there are certain things that just can't be depicted, can't be questioned. in the movie. the book is a slightly different story (one which leaves me questioning, among other things, raymond chandler's sexuality...but that's yet another story), but it was intended for a different audience (i think). chandler could write for pulp readers; hollywood couldn't produce movies for pulp watchers. or that's how it feels.
the above is a small sampling of my to-be famous "history by intuition." irving stone, i am not.
anyway, it's interesting to think about. all the acting is awesome, and the movie moves itself along. and the soundtrack is so cool. all those lush, almost formulaic developments, and the quasi-quixotic details...it's neat. it's keen.
yes. i've weighed in on the big sleep. because it was obvious that there needed to be yet another opinion on this classic available to the internet-having public. no need to thank me, america.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
step up 3d: do not see this movie on hard drugs
Step Up 3d: sequel 3, in 3d
i'm absolutely serious about the drugs thing. i wasn't even drunk, and the 3d freaked me out. if you want to turn a dancing movie into a horror movie...yes, this is how you do it. eeeyaaa, creepy.
things i didn't like about this movie:
1. the costumes. i don't know much about hip-hop culture, and i don't want to sound like a crazy old "get off the lawn with your hula hoops and soda cans" youth-hating mr. wilson-type person, but some of these costumes were just uncalled for in their ugliness. some of them were pretty okay--but you know it's bad when the hot male lead comes onscreen and for one second you're like, "hey, he actually looks vaguely attractive in what he's wearing." you know how the stuff the girl wears in breakin' is just unbelievable? it's like that feeling...but you're watching a movie that's happening now. very bizarre.
2. uh, i don't know. there were a lot of loose ends and other such objections.
...but who cares? the leads were likeable--many of them were pretty awesome actors too--the storyline was a little scattered, but cute--and there was a point at which my friend was like, "when did this become a good movie?", because the end (until the plot got rolling again) was actually kind of awesome. i mean, the group dynamic was totally adorable.
and then there was the dancing, which is, aside from fashion tips (that was irony) and watching people hang out together, the obvious reason to see this movie. i mean, the 3d was FRIGHTENING, but the dancing was AWESOME, and i enjoyed the freak out of it. i don't think this film was attempting to be edgy. there wasn't a racial or class conflict in sight, and i don't think closeted sexual tension between the male leads counts as an edge in a film designed for the delugation of preteens cuz come on what movie aimed toward that demographic doesn't have such stuff?
actually, now that i'm thinking about it, the lack of a racial or class conflict kind of worries me. i mean, racial and class conflicts usually come to pretty fatuous conclusions in dance movies, but at least the dance movie is a ground on which said conflicts get played out. is this an indicator of the fact that america is finally truly post-racial? or is post-racial america a place where we can't even fantasize about resolving class and race conflicts?
or are there other, more intelligently expressed and explored ways to understand the meaning of the lack of race-class conflict in step up 3d? let's think about that one.
...
oh well, i guess there are always high school sports movies.
i'm absolutely serious about the drugs thing. i wasn't even drunk, and the 3d freaked me out. if you want to turn a dancing movie into a horror movie...yes, this is how you do it. eeeyaaa, creepy.
things i didn't like about this movie:
1. the costumes. i don't know much about hip-hop culture, and i don't want to sound like a crazy old "get off the lawn with your hula hoops and soda cans" youth-hating mr. wilson-type person, but some of these costumes were just uncalled for in their ugliness. some of them were pretty okay--but you know it's bad when the hot male lead comes onscreen and for one second you're like, "hey, he actually looks vaguely attractive in what he's wearing." you know how the stuff the girl wears in breakin' is just unbelievable? it's like that feeling...but you're watching a movie that's happening now. very bizarre.
2. uh, i don't know. there were a lot of loose ends and other such objections.
...but who cares? the leads were likeable--many of them were pretty awesome actors too--the storyline was a little scattered, but cute--and there was a point at which my friend was like, "when did this become a good movie?", because the end (until the plot got rolling again) was actually kind of awesome. i mean, the group dynamic was totally adorable.
and then there was the dancing, which is, aside from fashion tips (that was irony) and watching people hang out together, the obvious reason to see this movie. i mean, the 3d was FRIGHTENING, but the dancing was AWESOME, and i enjoyed the freak out of it. i don't think this film was attempting to be edgy. there wasn't a racial or class conflict in sight, and i don't think closeted sexual tension between the male leads counts as an edge in a film designed for the delugation of preteens cuz come on what movie aimed toward that demographic doesn't have such stuff?
actually, now that i'm thinking about it, the lack of a racial or class conflict kind of worries me. i mean, racial and class conflicts usually come to pretty fatuous conclusions in dance movies, but at least the dance movie is a ground on which said conflicts get played out. is this an indicator of the fact that america is finally truly post-racial? or is post-racial america a place where we can't even fantasize about resolving class and race conflicts?
or are there other, more intelligently expressed and explored ways to understand the meaning of the lack of race-class conflict in step up 3d? let's think about that one.
...
oh well, i guess there are always high school sports movies.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
water lilies: so much better than "therese and isabel"
Water Lilies: film in French, brought to me by instant Neflix
i don't think i can say anything particularly intelligent about this, but i really really liked it. there was a lot of the camera staring at pauline acquart's face--deservedly so; she was amazing.
it's just me--i admit, it's just me, but i like dialogue. i remember dialogue fondly. now, water lilies, unlike, say, the last airbender, really pulls off its lack of dialogue--i felt like water lilies does what it does so well that there's almost no need to criticize. but there is a bit of a...well, not need, of course, but desire to do so. i don't love the ending, because i feel like the overall silence of the film doesn't establish the two best friends' friendship fully enough to make the final image have the meaning it needs to to end such a good film in a fulfilling way, or even a satisfyingly un-fulfilling way.
but it's a pretty wonderful movie. i always get caught up in objections such as, "okay, you captured the heck out of the atmosphere that you're attempting to capture, film-that's-not-water lilies (for example, harry potter 6)--but why the heck do we care? YES, there's an atmosphere! YES, we can practically breathe it in! NO, an atmosphere doesn't do everything to insure yourself a meaningful movie! man cannot live by an atmosphere alone!" (though, to be fair, he can't live without it, either.) i do not have these objections about water lilies. i was like, "YES, there's an atmosphere! and the atmosphere is YES!! well done, atmosphere! i really feel like you're showing me something not just beautiful, but beautifully germane to the movie."
all the focusing on pauline acquart's face is kind of an example of this. to me, it exemplifies the feeling of claustrophobia that i remember from being fifteen--the necessity, and the intense pressure, of knowing exactly where your hands and feet are and what your face is expressing, and the inability to know, really, anything beyond said pressure. the world may be beautiful; it's also intensely outside one. that was why the whole thing with eating the garbage apple was so wonderfully illustrative (just an example out of a whole movie's worth of wonderfully illustrative moments): pauline acquart character is trying to make a connection (and pauline acquart does this beautifully, like she does the whole thing beautifully--the other actresses are also really wonderful, but the movie's about the pauline acquart character, so the whole thing rides on her, and she really carries it)... anyway, i feel like the water lilies atmosphere contributed to its storyline, as opposed to either standing in for said storyline, or floating alongside said storyline.
one might argue that the atmosphere was the storyline. i guess i wouldn't object to that reading of the film. but if so, the atmosphere was an actual story, with characters and wild nights* dynamics, as opposed to a series of "profound" metaphors or a cover for pointlessness.
so, yay. thank you, water lilies. for proving to me that i can like somewhat serious films...sometimes...provided they're about teenage lesbians (i know, i know, it's not actually a lesbian film).
*i keep using this phrase--just in case one hasn't heard the poem, it goes thusly:
"Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
Were I with Thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile--the Winds--
To a Heart in port--
Done with the Compass--
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden--
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor--Tonight--
In Thee!"
ah, emily dickinson. that's why i love the idea, and her. the reason i can remember the line (totally different proposition, of course) is because of a parody i couldn't help writing when i forgot the rest of the poem:
"Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Let me Come In!--
Not--by the Hair--
On my Chinny Chin Chin!"
the more you know.
it's just me--i admit, it's just me, but i like dialogue. i remember dialogue fondly. now, water lilies, unlike, say, the last airbender, really pulls off its lack of dialogue--i felt like water lilies does what it does so well that there's almost no need to criticize. but there is a bit of a...well, not need, of course, but desire to do so. i don't love the ending, because i feel like the overall silence of the film doesn't establish the two best friends' friendship fully enough to make the final image have the meaning it needs to to end such a good film in a fulfilling way, or even a satisfyingly un-fulfilling way.
but it's a pretty wonderful movie. i always get caught up in objections such as, "okay, you captured the heck out of the atmosphere that you're attempting to capture, film-that's-not-water lilies (for example, harry potter 6)--but why the heck do we care? YES, there's an atmosphere! YES, we can practically breathe it in! NO, an atmosphere doesn't do everything to insure yourself a meaningful movie! man cannot live by an atmosphere alone!" (though, to be fair, he can't live without it, either.) i do not have these objections about water lilies. i was like, "YES, there's an atmosphere! and the atmosphere is YES!! well done, atmosphere! i really feel like you're showing me something not just beautiful, but beautifully germane to the movie."
all the focusing on pauline acquart's face is kind of an example of this. to me, it exemplifies the feeling of claustrophobia that i remember from being fifteen--the necessity, and the intense pressure, of knowing exactly where your hands and feet are and what your face is expressing, and the inability to know, really, anything beyond said pressure. the world may be beautiful; it's also intensely outside one. that was why the whole thing with eating the garbage apple was so wonderfully illustrative (just an example out of a whole movie's worth of wonderfully illustrative moments): pauline acquart character is trying to make a connection (and pauline acquart does this beautifully, like she does the whole thing beautifully--the other actresses are also really wonderful, but the movie's about the pauline acquart character, so the whole thing rides on her, and she really carries it)... anyway, i feel like the water lilies atmosphere contributed to its storyline, as opposed to either standing in for said storyline, or floating alongside said storyline.
one might argue that the atmosphere was the storyline. i guess i wouldn't object to that reading of the film. but if so, the atmosphere was an actual story, with characters and wild nights* dynamics, as opposed to a series of "profound" metaphors or a cover for pointlessness.
so, yay. thank you, water lilies. for proving to me that i can like somewhat serious films...sometimes...provided they're about teenage lesbians (i know, i know, it's not actually a lesbian film).
*i keep using this phrase--just in case one hasn't heard the poem, it goes thusly:
"Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
Were I with Thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile--the Winds--
To a Heart in port--
Done with the Compass--
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden--
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor--Tonight--
In Thee!"
ah, emily dickinson. that's why i love the idea, and her. the reason i can remember the line (totally different proposition, of course) is because of a parody i couldn't help writing when i forgot the rest of the poem:
"Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
Let me Come In!--
Not--by the Hair--
On my Chinny Chin Chin!"
the more you know.
Monday, July 19, 2010
inception: one hell of a movie
Inception: written and directed by christopher nolan
anyone who reads my opinion of this movie is going to think i'm deliberately perverse. and i guess that would be one way to explain it. i like the wolfman. i hate avatar. i like zombie strippers. i hate love actually. anything good and/or popular, i hate; anything bad and/or unpopular, i love. i don't intend it to be thus, but that does seem to be how it works.
so is it any surprise that i didn't like inception, and felt like the entire movie was one long experience of being kicked in the senses?
the sensation that comes closest is that of being forced to watch anne of a thousand days in ninth grade history. no escape. just you, the entire class, and a bunch of greasy, fake fur-wearing '70's actors yelling at each other from the depths of their method training, and then an interlude, in which someone watches someone else from a window and the soundtrack features a lute. and then the screaming. and then the headache-inducing plot happening. and some messenger in tights brings a scroll of parchment and the plotting nobleman speaks lowly to himself in a wonderfully sonorous voice. more lute, and then a lifelike party scene in which more greasy '70's actors carouse by yelling, and then the king fondles some strawberry blonde while listening to another message delivered by another messenger in tights. and meanwhile, on the beach, some people yell at each other. and then more lute. and then someone recounts a memory from childhood. and then there is sexual tension with a less greasy '70's man with slightly better hair than the rest of them. and by the time the third class period-worth of watching this rolls around, you actually jump out of your seat and yell "CHOP OFF HER GODDAMN HEAD ALREADY!!!" and THAT's why you don't get a date for winter formal. or so you tell yourself.*
but i digress. like, a lot.
okay, here's the thing. dark knight? worked--so worked. why? because the emotional center was there there there. it went beyond words. it affected us. it affected us, because emotion is always a little bit like a secret, one of those secrets left in plain sight, like a scar from a wound. there is a reason behind it, and the reason is simple. now, as the audience, we don't have to know the reason behind the secret--what makes the scar a memento of a secret, as opposed to just a bodily mark. heath as the joker, with his nineteeen thousand origin stories, worked because there was one thing that tied him together. we didn't know what it was--it wasn't put into words, or not words that we could trust. but it didn't have to be, because it was fully present in every aspect of the performance. the scar evinced by his face was firmly tied to a reason for its existence, and that reason was powerful enough to make its evasion of words possible.
in inception, i would argue, this is not the case. there is a secret involving his wife and kids and possibly his father (ah, spoilers, ought i to employ you? i guess not)--a secret that drives the plot, one that may or may not be revealed at the end. but it's not a good secret--it doesn't provide enough motivation for the film itself. maybe there's something i haven't guessed about inception--some clue that i didn't catch. but it doesn't matter, as i've said, whether or not one knows the secret. what matters is whether or not the secret provides a powerful enough reason to make a plot worth sitting through.
i'm going to call it the blade runner phenomenon. it's not that there was no rhyme or reason to blade runner, it's just that a person (well, i) didn't care enough to try and figure out what said rhyme and reason were. and this might be my fault, but i think it had a lot to do with the fact that the film didn't give me much to work with. lots and lots of cool ideas, interesting visuals and hommages, but the connecting secret wasn't there--wasn't where it was supposed to be.
now, outside of this critique i could rave about inception. i'm not going to, because as awesome as the plots were, and as beautiful as the filmic world was, it all became a lot of bombastic nonsense due to the fact that there was no center. the center was supposed to be the romance between leonardo and his wife, but it didn't play. it had a lot going for it, but it didn't tie together, because it had nothing to tie around. and this unravelling, to use an inception-like metaphor, spread, and turned the really cool plot into something like a magic eye picture without the hidden picture.
the performances were brilliant. seriously, the acting was incredible. the look of the movie was amazing. the plot, as i've said, was nearly there. but when something comes that close, it only ends up being worse when it fails. at the 15 minute mark, we all were pretty damn sure we knew what the underlying plot twist of the movie was. we then spent 2 hours and 45 minutes waiting to find out if we were right. whatever we found out or not is unimportant. what's important is that those 2 hours and 45 minutes didn't contribute enough satisfaction to the end reveal to make the stomach-twisting suspense, confusing (though wildly interesting) plot, or delicately and sympathetically conveyed characterization worth the involvement of energy that they demanded. and that is a sin.
because it was a really good movie. i just couldn't stand it. it was really really well done. i just couldn't believe that it had betrayed me--not with its twist, but with its lack of meaning. nolan knows how to mean, we've seen that in the dark knight. next on the list is to figure out what it means to mean. i know i sound crazy, but meaning isn't something that you can choose. it is other than manipulatable. the meaning of his movie was there--i know that, because of how good it was--but nolan missed it, because he was too busy creating to listen.
sorry. this is pretty out there. god knows i don't hear meaning the way i want to most of the time. but that's my proscription for nolan's next movie, anyway: listen. figure it out. make it happen. you can do it.
i don't know crap.
*having a liz lemon moment here.
Monday, July 12, 2010
predators: whole planet of terror!!
Predators: in theaters; starring adrian brody as not arnold schwarzenegger
what a whimsical soundtrack. seriously. for the most part the background music was pretty standard fare, that is, but every once in a while there'd be, like, a flutey/bassoony kind of moment and i'd think, "leonard bernstein? how did they get leonard bernstein? isn't he dead?" and this music didn't take place at lighter moments, either. it took place right in the middle of all the angsty "music for them being among us" (you know, lurking orchestra plus drums). it was very confusing, this interspersal of west side story. but kind of awesome.
overall impression: i thought this movie was good. but that requires some explanation. see below.
re: the fact that i can't think of one actually good thing about it. the ideas were derivative--which makes sense, because it was a sequel, but, you know, within the sequel, the plot was pretty standard. the topher grace twist at the end was downright poorly done, characterization-wise; the characterizations were pretty much anything but special. the special effects were kind of cool, or well-integrated is maybe what i mean, but i'm not a special effects person really--i appreciate them when they're well done but it doesn't bother me when they aren't (dead alive, for example: still good!). the idea that both the predators and the prey were predators is...done. it has been done. in many other films. with much stronger metaphorical platforms. from the others to mannequin*. and, oh my god, two of the five non-caucasian characters? out, within the first, say, 20 minutes. and one of the remaining three is out within 20 minutes of his introduction. i guess being a woman, or a man wielding the blade of your ancestors**, gives you a certain amount of immunity. but thus far in an extensive mainstream movie-watching career, the man of color has survived ONCE that i remember. house on haunted hill, the 1999 version. of course maybe i'm not watching the right movies.
but. i liked it. i'm not sure why. maybe it was seeing adrian brody character try to out-hunt the hunters (that phrase sounds like it should be the name of some sort of quasi-alternative '80's album)...but that doesn't account for the whole of its appeal, though it was really fun.
it wasn't suspense that carried my involvement, for once, but enjoyment. i didn't want the movie to end--i didn't get impatient. the story was really well told, and maybe that's why it appealed to me. it was interesting in itself, not for reasons that can be added on or adduced within, such as metaphory, wild-nights identification with characters, or overly flavored cinematography (oh you know what i mean. like magnolia. magnolia was the pepper vodka of overly flavored cinematography***). you wanted to see how what was going to happen would happen, and that's pretty cool. maybe robert rodriguez is known as a good storyteller. i don't read other people's reviews, so if this discovery on my part is well understood by everyone else everywhere, i apologize, but...yeah.
yeah! if i were caught in a supervillain's lair, bound to a chair, with my eyes glued open (eew, sra), i would totally rather be forced to watch predators than manos: hands of fate. which isn't saying much. but i'd also rather be forced to watch predators than the ring two, 28 days, scent of a woman, becket, the 1966 casino royale even for kitsch value, pan's labyrinth, or runaway bride. which is, i'd say, saying something: i liked it.
and again, you're welcome america.
*mannequin does not actually have a stronger metaphorical platform than predators. gotta stop bringing up mannequin, sra.
**who apparently has the power not only to swordfight the alien to death, but to invoke oliver stone's heaven and earth, just for the length of his final scene. impressive, really.
***not sure this is true, but i really wanted to say it.
Monday, July 5, 2010
twilight: eclipse, or in the words of bruce mcculloch, "iiii liked it"
Twilight: Eclipse: new release starring dakota fanning
well, as far as burger king scratch-off purposes go, i am on team jacob. hey, it got me chicken fries.
i really liked this. i was, of course, piss drunk. but i've noticed that drunkenness does not improve a terrible movie--rather, it ups the impatience quotient. i think my standards are slightly more stringent when i'm drunk at a movie, and eclipse totally passed--i enjoyed the heck out of it.
the thing is, i've never read the books, which in the case of the twilight series pretty much ups my personal enjoyment quotient (what's with all the quotients, me?). so i don't really have an opinion on how well the characters are represented. but i like the direction the movies seem to be going in ("you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition at"). the first movie, twilight, we saw in a theater full of screaming teens in homemade shirts, which was just awesome, period. i wasn't wild about the movie, but i did think that it filled its purpose--that is, if it's a vehicle for something its whole audience is extremely excited about, then it did a really good job at being such a vehicle--it was, you know, sincere. i had certain issues with the fact that edward, having been alive for like 200 years, had only managed to come up with that one idiotic piano piece, but those are problems with the overall premise as opposed to the movie specifically, if you see what i'm getting at. plus i thought kristen stewart was really excellent as bella. the second movie, twilight 2: revenge of the twilightians was--yeah, i liked it more. the plot made no sense, but there were a lot of, like, shared moments between the director and the actors and the audience in which the film seemed to be saying, "we all know this is a little stupid, so let's give these characters some personality despite source material and genre." there was a lot of soundtrack going on. especially when bella's room was spinning. which is neither here nor there.
in eclipse, i liked that that same sort of tongue-in-cheek "personality despite characterization" thing was kind of stronger, maybe--and the plot actually seemed to be taking place at the same time as itself. it wasn't, like, playing all eleven strings of the string theory (hendecahedral dutch?? and i'm not sure there are eleven strings--and i don't know much about string theory [typical sra-ian metaphor])--instead, the plot seemed pretty linear. i liked it when edward and jacob had that conversation when jacob was warming bella with his body and edward said, "if i wasn't in love with her i could really go for you," and jacob said, "yeah, i'm not gay"*. and i feel like stewart and pattinson give the bella/edward relationship some believability. which, considering that the entire series was very obviously written as a means of gratifying the romantic desires of an author who didn't have a very fulfilling high school experience (YEOWCH, sra)**, is pretty impressive. also, i don't remember soundtrack specifics, but i do remember enjoying the music.
as always, the main draw was the audience. it wasn't opening weekend, so there were no homemade t-shirts or displays of fisticuffs between opposing team members, but there was a hard-core cadre of prepubers who must, at that point, have seen the movie like twelve times and knew exactly when to clap (the next generation is apparently very pro-vampire marriage). though nobody wolf-whistled charlie when he came onscreen, an audience reaction of which i've never had enough.
um, the end.
oh, i also really liked the tinkling noises that the vampires made when they broke (does that piece of foley info count as a spoiler?).
*this may not be a verbatim record of the verbal transaction being referenced.
**bear in mind that i haven't read the books. and that i understand--only too well--writing idiotic stories to get rid of high school hangups.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
the last airbender, or, aang: lady in the water
The Last Airbender: directed by m. night shamananana-is-my-favorite-group
mr. shyamalan had an impossible job with this film. unlike harry potter, to me it doesn't seem that anyone who hadn't seen the source cartoon would be interested in watching the movie (and if you haven't seen the cartoon, don't waste the time you might be spending watching it on this movie); like harry potter, the source material kicks ass; so even were the film decent, monsieur syhamalan would have a lot of dissatisfied viewers on his hands (see previous remarks re: harry potter on the fact that every fan of something awesome which gets made into a movie is going to have mostly the same complaints as every other devoted fanperson, plus their own special area of complaint that nobody else could have thought of because nobody else would be insane enough to care). he's got to storytell 20 24-minute anime episodes in the space of one to one-and-an-eighth hours--i'm not great at math, but i think that's a ratio of 480 to 70, or 48 to 7, or 6.86 to 1. in order to make the last airbender a good movie, senor shyamalan has got to make time for enough cgi to stun an ox; he's got to develop characters that are richly complex; he's got to establish an entire world; he's got to honor the tone of the show; and he's got to make a coherent movie.
does any of this get done by this movie? oh dear god no. the plot is nonsensical--indicative detail being the fact that at a certain point, establishing place-names written out at the bottom of the screen change about once every two minutes. the characterizations are absurd--mostly because lines just don't seem to be what the writers are interested in giving the characters. "pshaw," one writer may have spoken to another. "aang doesn't need to say anything. dialogue is so 2009. katara's voice-over already explained everything the audience needs to know. you know, the spirit world with the lanterns, and the...um, bending...tattoos...what's this movie about again?" the cgi is nothing special, but more importantly it's inaccurate. people make bending movements, but nothing happens when they do. and aang's avatarian rampage at the end of season 1 does not take place. he just gets in touch with his emotions because a dragon told him to--oh, b-t-dub, this review contains spoilers--and then holds a wave over the fire nation's technology until they decide to go away. i guess it's the beach boys' answer to nonviolence: create a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world, doo doo dee dum dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dee dum. the tone of the show is completely misrepresented--firelord ozai's entire face shows up right off the bat, sans either leaping flame-throne or impressive ponytail; the character's names are all mispronounced, not, as my friend pointed out, the original words they represent, but the way they're said in the show. and nobody can seem to agree on how to say "avatar"--it ranges from "aavatar" to "ahvatar" to my personal favorite, aang's garbled-possibly-with-embarrassment-but-i-may-be-giving-the-creators-too-much-credit "ovumtur." and the content is wiped clean from humor, wiped cleaner than that dude in flowers for algernon's mind.
but still. the show is a damn tough act to follow. it's just that (oh, here goes a metaphor i'm going to attempt), if the show avatar: the last airbender was the star that the wise men followed to baby jesus (with me so far?), then the movie avatar: the last airbender was the party of dudes that showed up fourteen months too late because they got lost because one of them forgot which star they were following but didn't want to tell the others that he had so that by the time they got to bethlehem the baby was long gone but they decided to stay and make a movie. and that movie was avatar: the last airbender. and, lo, it was quite quite bad.
not since the other avatar have i had this much fun reviewing a movie.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
bart got a room: thank you, instant netflix, for making me laugh at love...for once
Bart Got a Room: teen comedrama starring steven j. kaplan and alia shawkat
...and a kick-ass soundtrack.
yeah. it's 4:15 in the morning, and i really liked bart got a room. you may perhaps notice that anything with any of the cast of arrested development in it appears to go on my personal yes list, but it's not just alia shawkat that made me like this so much. i actually laughed out loud, a lot, because the main character was such a straight man, and the comedy sort of behaved like a series of concentric circles: the people a ring outside him were a little nutty, and then you got these pretty darn nutty people a ring away from those people, and then on the fringes were the cameos, which had more to do with perspective than actual nuttiness, but, like, the bride with the broken arm who is walking by? come on, that's funny! the fact that the dad's favorite restaurant is filled with nothing but old people, and him and his son and his series of dates? i don't know. i just liked it. the incidental comedy kind of reminds me of those sort of brief visual, random, ironic jokes that gilmore girls used to make so well. and as the situational humor gets broader the cameos get broader, until finally bart shows up with his date and his suite, and then bart and his date start dancing, so it's like somewhere outside of the main characters' world, napoleon dynamite is going on, if they only knew where to look and how to channel it, but they don't, because they're occupied with their own world. it's really good. i liked it very much.
it actually seems like that's part of the thing that the movie is doing: the miami (?) the movie is showing us isn't the "bienvenidos a miami" side of the locale. rather, it's the retirement, lizard-in-the-house side. there's a cool miami somewhere out there, but it's not the characters' miami. the characters' miami has a lot of retirees buying a single fish at 4 in the afternoon and golf balls in the pool. the main character--danny, that's his name--tries to make his reality match up with some cooler, less virginal, less family-oriented one, but it can't be done. so he accepts it, and, kind of like the kid whose bar mitzvah he crashes, becomes a man...or re-becomes a kid...or acknowledges that he's neither.
yeah. it's really good. the acting is great, the script is great. and the SOUNDTRACK!!! dixieland and klezmer, i think those are what those genres are called, and a bit of some other stuff--yeah. yess. thank you, bart got a room, for promoting such a positive auditory experience.
just one of the guys:...and back to stuff that's not in theaters
Just One of the Guys: '85 movie starring joyce hyser pretending to be a guy
there are three reasons i want to go back to high school. they are, in order, least to greatest: 1., i want to walk down the hall, for once, secure in myself and my body. i don't have to talk to anyone, and no one has to talk to me. i just want to walk down the hall. 2., i want to hit on mr. thompson--is that so wrong? and 3., i want to wear a tux to prom. like joyce hyser. in just one of the guys. ah yes, it was a lead-in all along.
the main reason to watch just one of the guys, aside from the stereotypical-yet-hilarious brother, is that joyce hyser is hot hot hot in her man's clothes. she's faaaacking smoking. she's hot in the girl's clothes, too--she's just plain hot--but, yeah, get her in drag, and she's grrr-rah. she turns the words of red-blooded bi women to jelly in their mouths and on their blogs. joyce hyser crosses the divide with aplomb. it's not every actress that looks as good as a guy as she does as a girl--joyce does do so. she is blllablllahyum.
nothing, mom, nothing! just blogging on the interweb!
there are other reasons to watch just one of the guys, too. the beginning kind of sucks--it's too slow, and all the characters start out annoying, especially hyser as the unsympathetically good-looking girl whose real-world problem with not being taken seriously by misogynists doesn't read big enough for a movie. her acting seems stale and her eyes seem mean, and the sex-obsessed brother, douchebag boyfriend, and self-pitying best friend don't make the film more watchable. but when she starts being a boy, things heat up, and not just because she looks so good...and not just because i have a thing for cesarios (not just). her reactions get more human, and though her boy-acting remains pretty painful to watch, you can see her also starting to become a different version of herself in the character of the guy she's pretending to be, so that while her swaggering and stuff is annoying, her actual character starts to become really engaging--and at the end, which i think is the hallmark of a successful crossdressing movie, she doesn't seem as much like a guy or a girl as like a person--and she and love-interest-man actually seem to have chemistry when she's a girl, which is kind of rare. which makes the film fun to watch, even if certain aspects of it are irritating. and the brother and best friend, as well as the love interest, also all get progressively more interesting as the film goes on. one couldn't exactly say how they do, but they do.
i mean, i really like stupid crossdressing movies. she's the man, for instance, because of amanda bynes, and channing tatum, especially his speech at the end: "it's just like what coach says before every game: be not afraid of greatness, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them," which is staggering genius because it's so damn wrong and amazing. just one of the guys is definitely a stupid crossdressing movie, but it's fun. after the first fifteen minutes.
as a sidebar, joyce hyser's character appears to live in the same house as geena davis did in earth girls are easy. i'm assuming it's because there was one house in the '80's, but i might be wrong.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
get him to the greek: still in theaters!
Get Him to the Greek: movie starring jonah hill and russell brand
as opposed to what i've been reviewing lately, get him to the greek is actually available on the big screen. the question of to see or not to see may have been already answered by most people, because it was released at least two weeks ago, of course, but i thought i'd weigh in now-ish, because i can.
and i think you should see it. mostly to watch p diddy eat his own head.
no, i think you should see it. for a variety of reasons. mostly because it's interesting, and it's not trying to be something other than it is--though it might not be being what it is, either, which is where things get confusing. it's not that funny, though there are funny parts--sean combs is really really hilarious, in part because you know he's acting, because he knows he's funny, but you're kind of not sure he's acting, because he's got fire in his eyes. i like it when he's on the phone and having a shouted conversation about the snak packs being next to the go-gurts or something and his kids are dressed up like the lakers. i thought russell brand was pretty fantastic, and i thought jonah hill inhabited the part well, but...
there's a but to this film (hoo boy). like, jonah hill as the kid who bought the platform boots in 40-year-old virgin? flipping fantastic. jonah hill as the gayest and most belligerent of all the housemates in knocked up? goddamn amazing. jonah hill, period, in superbad? yeah, i really like jonah hill as the crazy devotee with no moral center, and he plays the heckity heck heck out of that character. he's like the perfect piece of toast, after your first experimental toasting, when you've tweaked the toaster dial to the exact degree, where the toast comes out golden brown and still fluffy on the inside--he's the second toasting. oh, you know exactly what i'm talking about.
but jonah hill as the nice guy? i don't know. it seems like a waste of perfectly good crazy eyes. i mean, the character that he plays is likeable, and he makes said character likeable, but hill's eyes are capable of such exquisite insanity, and he really doesn't get to unleash it at all in this film. he's playing a believable person with believable personhood, and i believe it, but i think it's a bit of a waste. not NEARLY on the scale of bill murray as polonius, or, worse yet, bill murray in broken flowers, but, yeah, a bit of a waste.
the same sort of thing is true of russell brand. now, i'm not good with names, just as a disclaimer, and though i don't understand the (quantum?) mechanics of how judd apatow is involved in get him to the greek, i do realize that senor apatow is not directly responsible for it--that is, he did not write or direct it (right???). but the russell brand character shares an aesthetic with the characters of freaks and geeks, a show that i know judd apatow is responsible for, and one that admire intensely, but at the same time kind of can't get into. it's too theoretical for me. i can't really explain how, or not without taking up way more of this page than is anywhere near necessary. if anyone objects to the idea of freaks and geeks as too theoretical, i should add that it's in good company, because the second two lord of the rings-es are also too theoretical for me...and i am totally losing track of the point here. i feel like russell brand's character is very freaks and geeks-ian--a veneer behind a veneer behind a veneer, caring and self-destructive at the same time, etc. etc., which makes for good watching but not necessarily great watching. again, i think russell brand plays the hell out of the part. not since colin firth as mr. darcy have i been so involved in watching what a pair of eyes are saying while the mouth is saying something else. and that subtlety of interaction gets played out between the brand and hill characters in a way that is...uh, really cool. i liked it especially when (i'm not going to quote this right) the hill character says, like, "you keep talking nonsense, but it doesn't sound like nonsense because you're smart, but it is*." and the relationship gives you something to think about, because the russell brand character is deep.
but then the slapstick stuff, the fantasy over-the-top bro-dom that was so good in 40-year-old virgin and superbad, seems weirdly out of place. or only not out of place because one isn't sure what should be in its place. in knocked up, this amalgam between the awesomely crass and the bizarrely sweet and true was already getting a little weird, but the bro-dom was so funny** that it made up for the feeling of imbalance; in get him to the greek, however, as with forgetting sarah marshall or pineapple express (though i did think a lot of pineapple express was really funny), the crassly funny stuff isn't funny enough to carry itself. all the bad sex that jonah hill character keeps having, the scenes featuring illicit or illegal substances, and the awkwardest threesome are relatively amusing, but not amusing enough. the best joke is when they all touch the furry wall, and it's funny, but it's not funny like paul rudd's hand tasting like a rainbow.
it's like the slapstick is the excuse by which guys allow themselves to watch judd apatow-based movies, which are about non-sexual love between men. which is a pretty beautiful thing to base a story around, plus it's interesting for women because we get to see how men think they live. but in order for the judd apatow version of the formula*** to work, the slapstick has to be good. and the slapstick in get him to the greek is adequate.
i don't know what could have gone in its place, though. just like i don't know how jonah hill's character could have been improved, or how he could have done a better job with it. i don't make movies. i just critique them, at length and probably pretty unfairly.
*that really was not the line.
**for instance, the scene in vegas, which kind of really didn't need to be there, but was so hilarious that i think i actually cried in the theater.
***i'm talking "the formula" like the one for romance novels, which isn't actually a formula (check the harlequin website if you don't believe me). rather, it's a series of ingredients combined a certain way to create a certain effect. like, i love you, man is kind of an example of a judd apatow movie, but i don't think judd apatow was involved (again, i don't think, but i don't understand the [quantum] mechanics of moviemaking, so maybe he was in the mix somewhere).
Friday, June 25, 2010
loser: shut up!
Loser: film starring jason biggs and mena suvari
jason biggs is awesome in this. greg kinear is always awesome, and my theory on him is that it's pretty impressive how awesome he always is because he's handsome and so he doesn't actually have to be any good but he really is always. mena suvari is pretty awesome. and, dude, the lead macpoyle from it's always sunny in philadelphia is in this, and, as always, he is extremely funny. the plot's a little free-ranging, but not bad--it's like go, but, you know, pretty good. or like the squid and the whale, but with less dialogue. and more soundtrack.
yeah. mostly what i'm objecting to is the soundtrack. not even that the songs are terrible; it's kind of funny to go back over the excesses of the mid-'90's. it's like whenever i hear whitney houston i think middle school dance, and whenever i hear the lyric "pretty fly for a white guy" i think...well, mostly, "thank god i wasn't cool enough to listen to quasi-rock in high school." because the $7.50 i might have spent back then on the PUSA c.d. containing the song with the lyric "moving to the country going to eat a lot of peaches" has instead been spent much more recently on a music for animals c.d. containing the song with the lyric "all my bare skin is black and blue i don't know how to convince[?] you." it's perhaps a fine distinction, but one i'm proud to be able to make.
it's just that the soundtrack is so RELENTLESS. there is not a moment of soundtracklessness. we slide straight through the top hits of my high school years, from garbage to *nsync to everclear and straight on 'til morning. what really got me was the segue from whatever it was to simon and garfunkel. it just doesn't stop. it's like the producer wasn't convinced that the movie would sell, so he or she let the director do what she wanted but threw at least 85% of the budget at making sure the soundtrack was insistently up to date. "sure, the movie's a little weird," said production company hoped one just post-teen would say to another, "but the soundtrack sure makes this movie worth seeing!"
yeah, it doesn't. but the movie's pretty good.
oh, oh, it's like the whackness, but less making me want to hire an entire college marching band just so that each member can slap ben kingsley across the face with his or her respective instrument.
jason biggs is awesome in this. greg kinear is always awesome, and my theory on him is that it's pretty impressive how awesome he always is because he's handsome and so he doesn't actually have to be any good but he really is always. mena suvari is pretty awesome. and, dude, the lead macpoyle from it's always sunny in philadelphia is in this, and, as always, he is extremely funny. the plot's a little free-ranging, but not bad--it's like go, but, you know, pretty good. or like the squid and the whale, but with less dialogue. and more soundtrack.
yeah. mostly what i'm objecting to is the soundtrack. not even that the songs are terrible; it's kind of funny to go back over the excesses of the mid-'90's. it's like whenever i hear whitney houston i think middle school dance, and whenever i hear the lyric "pretty fly for a white guy" i think...well, mostly, "thank god i wasn't cool enough to listen to quasi-rock in high school." because the $7.50 i might have spent back then on the PUSA c.d. containing the song with the lyric "moving to the country going to eat a lot of peaches" has instead been spent much more recently on a music for animals c.d. containing the song with the lyric "all my bare skin is black and blue i don't know how to convince[?] you." it's perhaps a fine distinction, but one i'm proud to be able to make.
it's just that the soundtrack is so RELENTLESS. there is not a moment of soundtracklessness. we slide straight through the top hits of my high school years, from garbage to *nsync to everclear and straight on 'til morning. what really got me was the segue from whatever it was to simon and garfunkel. it just doesn't stop. it's like the producer wasn't convinced that the movie would sell, so he or she let the director do what she wanted but threw at least 85% of the budget at making sure the soundtrack was insistently up to date. "sure, the movie's a little weird," said production company hoped one just post-teen would say to another, "but the soundtrack sure makes this movie worth seeing!"
yeah, it doesn't. but the movie's pretty good.
oh, oh, it's like the whackness, but less making me want to hire an entire college marching band just so that each member can slap ben kingsley across the face with his or her respective instrument.
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