...we can finally turn our full attention to Oscar. The awards will be announced on February 25th, and even though thats still two weeks away, why not just jump the gun and start speculating about who's gonna win right now?
I figure that if the media is so ADD they get to start covering the 2008 presidential race a whole fucking year early, two weeks notice on the academy awards is hardly premature. I mean, right?
Most people like to guess who will actually win, but I prefer to do Oscar predictions in three catagories: who will actually win, who deserves to win, and who I would personally vote for. I find it more interesting to break it down that way, rather than trying to guess exactly how cynical the academy's mood is this year. It is also a cheap and obscenely transparent attempt at bet-hedging, for which I, admittedly, have much shame...or rather not....
BEST PICTURE
Gonna Win: Babel
Should Win: The Departed
God Win: The Departed
I really want The Departed to win Best Picture, I really do, but I think the academy is going to snub it and go with Babel. I think this because its very likely that the old-school, establishment wing of the academy is going to split their vote between loyalty to scorsese and loyalty to eastwood, while those (the majority) in the middle who care more about sheer quality than politics will very likely go for Babel. Its topical, its smart, its moving, its in several different languages, and these are all traits best picture winners often have. If the academy is willing to go for Crash, they will go for Babel. Its like the international clusterfuck version of Crash, only with less Mexicans, and less Canadians directing it. Letters from Iwo Jima is the Dark Horse here, and it too has a really good shot. Eastwood + Speilberg + Asian "Saving Private Ryan" = Oscar, usually, but there isn't a clear frontrunner, so this could turn out to be a huge suprise.
BEST ACTOR
Gonna Win: Peter O'Toole
Should Win: Peter O'Toole
God Win: Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole got his first Oscar nomination when JFK was president, for "Lawrence of Arabia", and in the nearly half century since, he has been nominated now a total of 8 times. This includes his nomination this year for his leading role in "Venus", an independant film that got almost no publicity and was seen by six or seven people who weren't academy voters. In 2003, he recieved an honorary award for his lifetime committment to the craft of acting from the academy for simply being Peter O'Toole. This nomination was no mistake of fate. He was nominated, and will win, because frankly, he's not getting any younger, and its becoming less and less likely he'll ever make another movie, much less one with a legitamately rewardable performance. This is probably the last shot the academy will have to honor him in life, and if they are wise, they will take it. Leo and Will Smith have plenty of time to make another appearence. If Peter weren't in this race, I'd say watch out for Will Smith as the dark horse. He played the kind of part in "The Pursuit of Happiness" that would normally be Oscar gold, but he's got enough time left on the clock that the academy will pass on his second, and probably not last, academy award nomination. Ryan Gosling...puh-leeze...
BEST ACTRESS
Gonna Win: Meryl Streep
Should Win: Helen Mirren
God Win: Helen Mirren
Yeah, so Meryl Streep plays a really convincing bitch. So what? It was a good movie (a way better book), the performances were spectacular, and don't get me wrong, I love Meryl Streep. But Helen Mirren's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in "The Queen" was exemplary and a work of pure, genuine, acting. Mirren had the task of portraying one of the most recognizable figures on Earth, knowing that every nuance of her performance would be picked apart to death by both the American and British medias, and dissect her they did. The vast majority of even the toughest critics, even Kenny Turan from the LA Times, were blown away by her honest and simple approach to an insanely complex role. Streep had to play a woman who was so charicaturish and loony that any obnoxious upper east side debutante with white hair, a semblence of fashion sense, and a dog serving as an outfit accessory, could achieve the same soul-crushing bombast that earned Streep the nomination. Really, the character was itself greatly limiting in terms of growth potential, so she didn't have much room for nuance, which is no fault of her own. But with 14 previous nominations, (two wins), three decades of fame, and a darling repore with establishment academy members, Mirren doesn't have a snowballs chance in Satan's asshole of winning. On the other hand, never underestimate the academy's love for surprises in this category.
BEST DIRECTOR
Gonna Win: Clint Eastwood
Should Win: Martin Scorsese
God Win: Martin Scorsese
Nothing gives the academy a fatter collective chubby than shitting all over Marty Scorsese. We know this because he has a perfect losing record at the academy awards. Its their revenge for embarassing the Hollywood establishment by refusing to base his operations in LA. This year could be more interesting. Scorsese won the DGA award this year for best achievement in directing for the first time in his career. He's been nominated seven times for both the DGA award and the Oscar and until that win, he'd won neither (one academy award nomination was for writing, not directing, "The Age of Innocence"). Its possible that the academy might finally give scorsese his due, considering that the winner of the DGA award almost always wins the oscar for directing, but I wouldn't put any kind of money on it...they really hate him... Also, Eastwood already beat Scorsese once before, and given the choice, most academy voters would stick with him. The Departed, however is now the highest grossing film scorsese has ever made, and a lot of that money went to Warner Brothers. Letters from Iwo Jima was partly WB too, and it only made $43.5 million to Departed's $268 million in gross box office. On the other hand, Eastwood's got Speilberg, the weight of Dreamworks, Amblin, probably half of paramount and almost everyone who lives on mulholland drive or in Beverly Hills. This is going to be the most interesting part of the show. Inarritu is the Dark Horse, especially if Babel starts to pick up steam early on.
Supporting Actor/Actress, Cinematography, Editing, Sound, blah blah blah all to come in the days ahead.
Any thoughts?
Cheers
Monday, February 12, 2007
Friday, February 2, 2007
Things We Are Ashamed to Like: 2 Feb. 2007
I love cartoons. Love 'em. As I write this, I'm checking out John K.'s blog and watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Debates on Paul Dini, Bruce Timm and the resurrection of the Fleischer style were prevalent in my nerdy-film debates at college, and I am ready on a moment's notice to tell you why exactly Family Guy sucks nards. (Seth McFarlane is a cool dude, though, so I feel really bad saying that.) I'm an animation junkie, and I'm not afraid to say it.
What I am ashamed of, though, is that I'd watch anything which came anywhere close to my field of interest. When cartoons met video games, I was hooked. When cartoons and video games employed a main character who played video games (just like me!), it became destination television. Ladies and gentlemen, I was an avid watcher of Captain N: The Game Master.
Before you ask, I will tell you that I'm ashamed of this. Of course I am; the program was a thirty-minute commercial for whichever game was hot on the NES that week. The heroes would meet a new character, they would have adventures, and the commercials in between each act would remind us to go out and buy the game in which this new character was featured. It was advertising at its finest, and the exact reason why cartoons of the 1980s have earned their dubious reputation.
But I still love it, even to this day. It was obviously written by disgruntled writers who had come to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune, but had settled for a decent paycheck to make ends meet. It led to the occasional moment where the humor got really, really screwy; after all, kids are stupid, and adults aren't watching. What's it going to matter if the episode doesn't make sense? This feeling only intensified after the introduction of Game Boy, a character who was, get this, a sentient Gameboy. When one of the characters is a grey box who yells punchlines as loud as possible, then narrative coherency is no longer a priority.
Perhaps I'm giving the writers too much credit, or perhaps my judgement has been impaired by a hellish week. But when I found out earlier this week that the series is being prepared for a DVD release, my heart just about jumped into my throat. Blame nostalgia, because I can't find any other good reason to be excited about a shoddily-produced commercial. The thrill of seeing Simon Belmont and Kid Icarus in the same frame again, no matter how badly produced, written or animated, fills me with joy. Sometimes you just have to be that indiscriminate kid again.
What I am ashamed of, though, is that I'd watch anything which came anywhere close to my field of interest. When cartoons met video games, I was hooked. When cartoons and video games employed a main character who played video games (just like me!), it became destination television. Ladies and gentlemen, I was an avid watcher of Captain N: The Game Master.
Before you ask, I will tell you that I'm ashamed of this. Of course I am; the program was a thirty-minute commercial for whichever game was hot on the NES that week. The heroes would meet a new character, they would have adventures, and the commercials in between each act would remind us to go out and buy the game in which this new character was featured. It was advertising at its finest, and the exact reason why cartoons of the 1980s have earned their dubious reputation.
But I still love it, even to this day. It was obviously written by disgruntled writers who had come to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune, but had settled for a decent paycheck to make ends meet. It led to the occasional moment where the humor got really, really screwy; after all, kids are stupid, and adults aren't watching. What's it going to matter if the episode doesn't make sense? This feeling only intensified after the introduction of Game Boy, a character who was, get this, a sentient Gameboy. When one of the characters is a grey box who yells punchlines as loud as possible, then narrative coherency is no longer a priority.
Perhaps I'm giving the writers too much credit, or perhaps my judgement has been impaired by a hellish week. But when I found out earlier this week that the series is being prepared for a DVD release, my heart just about jumped into my throat. Blame nostalgia, because I can't find any other good reason to be excited about a shoddily-produced commercial. The thrill of seeing Simon Belmont and Kid Icarus in the same frame again, no matter how badly produced, written or animated, fills me with joy. Sometimes you just have to be that indiscriminate kid again.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Everyone's Got a Top Ten List...
You can ignore all the other ones. Everybody with an opinion and a Top Ten list got it wrong, except for me. Here, with explanations, are the ten best movies of 2006, presented just in time for you to mock the awards season. Netflix links are provided for those films which have already made it to DVD, so you can seek out these incredible films. What made this year so wonderful, though, is that there was no struggle to draft up this list; indeed, I could have continued with a Top Thirty or so. I'll continue with other posts to fill in the movies that didn't quite make this list, but right now, without further ado...
10. Monster House
Occasionally a genre film will so thoroughly break from conventions that one cannot help but take notice. Leave it to Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, creators of Scud: Disposable Assassin, Channel 101, and Heat Vision & Jack to craft such a film out of a tired, boring genre like the animated kids film. Recalling the kids-in-peril adventures from the 1980s like The Goonies or Flight of the Navigator, Monster House returns us to a point in time where films entertained children by scaring them. It’s a dangerous world out there, but the recent movies for children have attempted to obscure it and shelter children within an ultra-safe fantasy land. Harmon and Schrab are products of a media culture which never once backed down from the unpleasantness of the world outside, and they both realize that kids want to know about that world. The catharsis within films for children comes not from characters reacting to a utopia, but rather from those characters surmounting the difficulties of a harsh and unforgiving reality. Every kid knows that life is hard, and they want their heroes to tell them it’s possible to rise above. Monster House returns us to that grand tradition, pitting its adolescent protagonists against impossible odds, and letting them work their own way out of them. It’s what films for kids should be.
9. Rocky Balboa
Defying all odds, Rocky once again goes the distance in a big way, erasing any bad memories of Rocky V that any of us may have still been harboring. The film works because it’s not a carbon copy of the Rocky formula we’ve come to know. Instead of focusing on a bad guy like Ivan Drago or Clubber Lang, it’s Rocky’s fears and regrets that drive the action. This is an old man’s picture, the story of what happens after the good times have gone and the glory has faded. Only an icon like Stallone could have delivered this film with the necessary weight that the story deserves, tying it to the Balboa we’ve seen move through five previous movies. After several films of over-the-top sprawl, Rocky returns to its original moral: life doesn’t end like a fairy tale. All that we can ask is that we surmount life’s trials, and come out of them with respect for ourselves. In conveying that message, in showing that even a man haunted by the ghosts of his past can regain his dignity, Rocky Balboa is an unmitigated triumph.
8. Wordplay
Like Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom, both of which made my list in previous years, Wordplay is a competitor’s documentary. It brings us the kind of visceral thrill that any sort of fabricated effects picture can’t, pitting real people against each other in arcane contests that should not be half as entertaining as they are. Focused on word puzzles, specifically the New York Times Crossword, Wordplay brings excitement and vitality to these challenges that do not exist in the printed page.
The first half, interviewing everyone from Jon Stewart to President Clinton, crafts a wonderful explanation as to why these puzzles are so addictive, while the second brings us to a competition where the greatest puzzle-solvers on Earth finish crosswords in record time. The film is pure documentary at its finest, and also a great template for the inspirational sports film. You’ll probably find yourself trying to beat the puzzle masters to solving the hardest clues in the film, and you’ll probably be wrong. That’s just it, though; despite its rather mundane subject matter, the film gets you to pick favorites and cheer along with its word mavens. I can’t think of a greater success for a documentary than that.
7. Idiocracy
There’s no doubt about it: 20th Century Fox totally pussied out. Why else would most of America only get to see this film five months after its initial release in six (six!) theaters? It’s because this is the most all-encompassing satire ever made. It doesn’t single out the tobacco industry, like Thank You for Smoking, or just go after intolerant honkeys like Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan. No, Idiocracy hates all of you, and makes no bones about stating it over and over again. One-man band Mike Judge thinks every person in America is a lazy, ignorant, stupid slob, and he’s none too happy about that. Judge theorizes that, on our current trend, America will become a place that waters its crops with Gatorade, holds childrens’ parties at a restaurant called “Buttfuckers,” and watches a television program entitled OW! My Balls! This is the intellectual nightmare scenario that Luke Wilson, playing appropriately the world’s most average man, is thrust into, and for eighty glorious minutes we can indulge in the insane sight gags and rambunctious drivel that spews forth from the mouths of the dumbasses who inhabit the world of 2505. It’s absolutely terrifying, because this future is incredibly plausible. It’s also very funny. And if you don’t love it, then your shit’s retarded, and you talk like a fag.
6. Thank You for Smoking
Do you want to know why this film did so well on the independent circuit? It had nothing to do with artistry, starpower, or message. It was a hit because this picture has balls the size of Wisconsin. After so many films end up pulling their punches and wimping out with a socially acceptable ending, it was refreshing to see a film which was unbelievably mean from beginning to end. Some characters don’t have any soft edges, and back in the studio era these were often called heroes. Nick Naylor is human scum, but it doesn’t make him any more unrepentantly nasty than Sam Spade or Rhett Butler. Audiences go to movies to see something new and exciting, and then live it vicariously through the characters. If a film pulls the rug out from under the audience and changes what the characters are all about, then the overall impact of the film is cheapened. There is no such thing as the third-act repentance in Thank You for Smoking, and the film reaches a coherent and thoughtful end by never reaching for one. It’s honest in its convictions, and more than willing to kick the audience around in search of a good time.
5. The Fountain
Years after the project was originally announced, The Fountain limped into theaters with a new lead actor and a severely diminished budget, after which it promptly disappeared. This short theatrical run with hopefully one day be regarded as one of cinema’s greatest crimes; The Fountain deserves to be seen in the biggest theater possible.
Darren Aronofsky has proven that he has total control over his aesthetic and storytelling abilities, crafting a beautiful and original film. It is also one of the few true science-fiction pictures to make its way into theaters in recent years, joining Serenity and Solaris in advancing sci-fi themes into filmic constructs. The storyline, bouncing the viewer between three time periods and three startlingly different performances by Hugh Jackman, echoes the best works of mid-fifties science fiction in its concept. Each of Jackman’s characters are struggling with the possibility of eternal life in one fashion or another, and the reoccurring motifs in each time period reflect this eternity. Every inanimate object exists within each of the three stories in one form or another, drawing visual clues about the way that each of these characters are intertwined. There is no twist ending to this tale, because the twists are spread all around the picture. At ninety-six minutes, the film seems like more of an epic than the three-hour major behemoths, because Aronofsky knows how to pack more information into a single frame than most of his peers. The picture is dense, complicated, and mesmerizing. I expect that I will be returning to it many times over the years.
4. The Illusionist
Like some strange relic from the past, The Illusionist is the film that F.W. Murnau would have made if he had survived the car crash in 1931. Heavily based in the tenets of German Expressionism, the film is gorgeous and astonishing, looking completely different that any work that has made it to theaters since the end of World War II. Cinematographer Dick Pope, who has garnered an Oscar nomination for his work here, uses the iris control system which was retired when Fritz Lang fled Germany, and which became an evolutionary dead-end when the jump was made to Technicolor.
The fact that Pope was able to find a way for this to work in a full-color environment is astonishing, and should revitalize this school of cinematography. He was not the only one reaching back into the past, as each of the main performances channels a great actor of Hollywood’s golden age. Imagine this film made in 1936, with Robert Donat and Claude Rains replacing Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, and you will get an idea of the feel of these performances.
This is not a slight towards the actors, all of whom exceed their previous career high points (especially Jessica Biel, who needs a better agent), nor is it any kind of criticism. It is brought up here only to demonstrate that this film deosn’t feel like it belongs in this era. This should be a movie that students have poured over for decades, picking the scenes apart and wondering exactly why it works. Instead, we receive it now, having to play years of catchup. No matter the decade in which it was released, The Illusionist is grand entertainment, clear and consise where The Prestige, a near-identical film in plot and tone, was muddled and overblown. More films could learn from its example, returning to early age of movies to figure out what really works.
3. Stranger than Fiction
Meanwhile, somewhere in between fact and fiction, a less-than-extraordinary man named Harold Crick is attempting to avoid a death which is swift, merciless, and meant to immortalize someone totally other. Harold, you see, is a character in a novel, and he is heading towards what’s referred to as an “imminent demise.” The problem here is that Harold is also very real, and he has just broken out of his mundane life and figured out his reasons for living. He’s trying to be extraordinary, but the last step in that process is blocked by the writer, a woman who is also fumbling towards historical legitimacy. What happens when the paths of these two individuals cross, and they find that one path to greatness will most obviously result in a languishing obscurity for the other? Working like some kind of demented cousin of this year’s Robert Altman entry, Fiction takes a quicker route to solving the central problem of that film: no one is going to be told to remember you, so you must write the legacy for yourself. Live for now, love who you want to, and do what you have to in order to secure your place in history. If you think you know how the story must end, then think again. An inspiring and constantly inventive tale, Fiction is also filled to the brim with great performances.
2. A Prairie Home Companion
Robert Altman, a man of tenacious will and uncompromising vision, made thoroughly unconventional films. He went in the public’s mind from classic (MASH) to forgotten (Quintet) to utterly disastrous (Popeye). It really didn’t matter how his films were received, though, because there would always be another one in a year or two to completely redefine what we thought about the man. Unlike the other auteurs who left their mark upon every project they touched, Altman never let his camera and style rule over the material, instead letting the subject dictate where his camera was going. He was fond of the tracking shots, of ensemble casts, of overlapping dialogue, and these traits served his final film well.
A fictionalized look behind the scenes of Garrison Keillor’s fantastic radio program, A Prairie Home Companion is in many respects the quintessential Altman film. A microcosm of interesting people in incredible situations, Keillor’s script is full of meandering conversations which at first appear to go nowhere before reaching a moment of epiphany that rivals any big-budget explosion or overreaching plot twist. Every character is interesting, and we’d be glad to follow any of them through their own film. The performances, too, not only recall Altman’s classic Nashville but also demonstrate the director’s fascination with the captured moment. These are unique performances, one time only, and the director feels it is duty to record them for posterity. The most fascinating thing about the film, though, is the central theme of death that encompasses the narrative: the broadcast is going off the air, a performer has croaked backstage, and a woman who claims to be the Angel of Death continually shows up at the theater. One line of dialogue resonates through all of these points: “I don’t want people to have to be told to remember me.” At its core, A Prairie Home Companion is all about what is left of us after we die. Have we led a life worth remembering? All of us can hope so, but there is no way to dictate how we are memorialized after death. When we are gone, all that is left of us are the works we complete and the memories our friends and neighbors carry with them. We do not write our own eulogies; all we can hope to do is achieve our goals, to do so thorough a job with our life’s work that the world cannot help but look back and take notice of our place in society. At the end of one of the most storied careers in film history, Robert Altman had undoubtedly achieved that. No one will have to be told to remember him.
1. Children of Men
Every once in a while we are privy to a film which actually daring. Now, I’m not referring to the milquetoast Hollywood daring which permeates every award season (Saving Private Ryan, Crash, Pleasantville, Million Dollar Baby, and about a thousand others), but rather a quiet daring which, while unassuming, completely annihilates the way we think about film. It’s happened once more with Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron’s reworking of P.D. James’ novel. Children is to film what Let It Bleed was to the rock album or Hill Street Blues was to television, as it presents a soaring and confrontational alternative of the accepted conventions of the genre. Cuaron’s vision of a dying world is remarkably assured, planned unto the last detail and presented in a style which is choreographed within an inch of its life. Take, for example, the action scenes: in a move which is sure to be imitated ad infinitum for the next five years, Cuaron presents these sequences in one fluid shot, never once allowing for a change in perspective to break the tension. The whole film follows this style, building upon building for its entire running time, giving the movie the sensation of a ninety-minute panic attack. Even if one knows the ending going in, and I would suggest going into the theater knowing as little as possible, the desperation of the surroundings forces the viewer into a hypnotic state of shock, gripping at the edge of the seat and praying that everything’s going to turn out all right. Time may allow me to write about the film at length, providing this forum with a more complex rendering of my thoughts instead of the jumbled words which preceded. Right now, though, I can only pay the highest compliment possible to Children of Men: I believed. Not one thought was paid to plot contrivances, stylistic flourishes, or performance mannerisms. As far as I was concerned, these were real people in real trouble. I left the theater in a daze, still enveloped by the world of the film and nearly worn out by the ride on which I had been taken. Perfectly conceived and executed, Children of Men is great beyond reason.
10. Monster House
Occasionally a genre film will so thoroughly break from conventions that one cannot help but take notice. Leave it to Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, creators of Scud: Disposable Assassin, Channel 101, and Heat Vision & Jack to craft such a film out of a tired, boring genre like the animated kids film. Recalling the kids-in-peril adventures from the 1980s like The Goonies or Flight of the Navigator, Monster House returns us to a point in time where films entertained children by scaring them. It’s a dangerous world out there, but the recent movies for children have attempted to obscure it and shelter children within an ultra-safe fantasy land. Harmon and Schrab are products of a media culture which never once backed down from the unpleasantness of the world outside, and they both realize that kids want to know about that world. The catharsis within films for children comes not from characters reacting to a utopia, but rather from those characters surmounting the difficulties of a harsh and unforgiving reality. Every kid knows that life is hard, and they want their heroes to tell them it’s possible to rise above. Monster House returns us to that grand tradition, pitting its adolescent protagonists against impossible odds, and letting them work their own way out of them. It’s what films for kids should be.9. Rocky Balboa
Defying all odds, Rocky once again goes the distance in a big way, erasing any bad memories of Rocky V that any of us may have still been harboring. The film works because it’s not a carbon copy of the Rocky formula we’ve come to know. Instead of focusing on a bad guy like Ivan Drago or Clubber Lang, it’s Rocky’s fears and regrets that drive the action. This is an old man’s picture, the story of what happens after the good times have gone and the glory has faded. Only an icon like Stallone could have delivered this film with the necessary weight that the story deserves, tying it to the Balboa we’ve seen move through five previous movies. After several films of over-the-top sprawl, Rocky returns to its original moral: life doesn’t end like a fairy tale. All that we can ask is that we surmount life’s trials, and come out of them with respect for ourselves. In conveying that message, in showing that even a man haunted by the ghosts of his past can regain his dignity, Rocky Balboa is an unmitigated triumph.
8. Wordplay
Like Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom, both of which made my list in previous years, Wordplay is a competitor’s documentary. It brings us the kind of visceral thrill that any sort of fabricated effects picture can’t, pitting real people against each other in arcane contests that should not be half as entertaining as they are. Focused on word puzzles, specifically the New York Times Crossword, Wordplay brings excitement and vitality to these challenges that do not exist in the printed page.
The first half, interviewing everyone from Jon Stewart to President Clinton, crafts a wonderful explanation as to why these puzzles are so addictive, while the second brings us to a competition where the greatest puzzle-solvers on Earth finish crosswords in record time. The film is pure documentary at its finest, and also a great template for the inspirational sports film. You’ll probably find yourself trying to beat the puzzle masters to solving the hardest clues in the film, and you’ll probably be wrong. That’s just it, though; despite its rather mundane subject matter, the film gets you to pick favorites and cheer along with its word mavens. I can’t think of a greater success for a documentary than that.
7. Idiocracy
There’s no doubt about it: 20th Century Fox totally pussied out. Why else would most of America only get to see this film five months after its initial release in six (six!) theaters? It’s because this is the most all-encompassing satire ever made. It doesn’t single out the tobacco industry, like Thank You for Smoking, or just go after intolerant honkeys like Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakstan. No, Idiocracy hates all of you, and makes no bones about stating it over and over again. One-man band Mike Judge thinks every person in America is a lazy, ignorant, stupid slob, and he’s none too happy about that. Judge theorizes that, on our current trend, America will become a place that waters its crops with Gatorade, holds childrens’ parties at a restaurant called “Buttfuckers,” and watches a television program entitled OW! My Balls! This is the intellectual nightmare scenario that Luke Wilson, playing appropriately the world’s most average man, is thrust into, and for eighty glorious minutes we can indulge in the insane sight gags and rambunctious drivel that spews forth from the mouths of the dumbasses who inhabit the world of 2505. It’s absolutely terrifying, because this future is incredibly plausible. It’s also very funny. And if you don’t love it, then your shit’s retarded, and you talk like a fag.
6. Thank You for Smoking
Do you want to know why this film did so well on the independent circuit? It had nothing to do with artistry, starpower, or message. It was a hit because this picture has balls the size of Wisconsin. After so many films end up pulling their punches and wimping out with a socially acceptable ending, it was refreshing to see a film which was unbelievably mean from beginning to end. Some characters don’t have any soft edges, and back in the studio era these were often called heroes. Nick Naylor is human scum, but it doesn’t make him any more unrepentantly nasty than Sam Spade or Rhett Butler. Audiences go to movies to see something new and exciting, and then live it vicariously through the characters. If a film pulls the rug out from under the audience and changes what the characters are all about, then the overall impact of the film is cheapened. There is no such thing as the third-act repentance in Thank You for Smoking, and the film reaches a coherent and thoughtful end by never reaching for one. It’s honest in its convictions, and more than willing to kick the audience around in search of a good time.
5. The Fountain
Years after the project was originally announced, The Fountain limped into theaters with a new lead actor and a severely diminished budget, after which it promptly disappeared. This short theatrical run with hopefully one day be regarded as one of cinema’s greatest crimes; The Fountain deserves to be seen in the biggest theater possible.
Darren Aronofsky has proven that he has total control over his aesthetic and storytelling abilities, crafting a beautiful and original film. It is also one of the few true science-fiction pictures to make its way into theaters in recent years, joining Serenity and Solaris in advancing sci-fi themes into filmic constructs. The storyline, bouncing the viewer between three time periods and three startlingly different performances by Hugh Jackman, echoes the best works of mid-fifties science fiction in its concept. Each of Jackman’s characters are struggling with the possibility of eternal life in one fashion or another, and the reoccurring motifs in each time period reflect this eternity. Every inanimate object exists within each of the three stories in one form or another, drawing visual clues about the way that each of these characters are intertwined. There is no twist ending to this tale, because the twists are spread all around the picture. At ninety-six minutes, the film seems like more of an epic than the three-hour major behemoths, because Aronofsky knows how to pack more information into a single frame than most of his peers. The picture is dense, complicated, and mesmerizing. I expect that I will be returning to it many times over the years.4. The Illusionist
Like some strange relic from the past, The Illusionist is the film that F.W. Murnau would have made if he had survived the car crash in 1931. Heavily based in the tenets of German Expressionism, the film is gorgeous and astonishing, looking completely different that any work that has made it to theaters since the end of World War II. Cinematographer Dick Pope, who has garnered an Oscar nomination for his work here, uses the iris control system which was retired when Fritz Lang fled Germany, and which became an evolutionary dead-end when the jump was made to Technicolor.
The fact that Pope was able to find a way for this to work in a full-color environment is astonishing, and should revitalize this school of cinematography. He was not the only one reaching back into the past, as each of the main performances channels a great actor of Hollywood’s golden age. Imagine this film made in 1936, with Robert Donat and Claude Rains replacing Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, and you will get an idea of the feel of these performances. This is not a slight towards the actors, all of whom exceed their previous career high points (especially Jessica Biel, who needs a better agent), nor is it any kind of criticism. It is brought up here only to demonstrate that this film deosn’t feel like it belongs in this era. This should be a movie that students have poured over for decades, picking the scenes apart and wondering exactly why it works. Instead, we receive it now, having to play years of catchup. No matter the decade in which it was released, The Illusionist is grand entertainment, clear and consise where The Prestige, a near-identical film in plot and tone, was muddled and overblown. More films could learn from its example, returning to early age of movies to figure out what really works.
3. Stranger than Fiction
Meanwhile, somewhere in between fact and fiction, a less-than-extraordinary man named Harold Crick is attempting to avoid a death which is swift, merciless, and meant to immortalize someone totally other. Harold, you see, is a character in a novel, and he is heading towards what’s referred to as an “imminent demise.” The problem here is that Harold is also very real, and he has just broken out of his mundane life and figured out his reasons for living. He’s trying to be extraordinary, but the last step in that process is blocked by the writer, a woman who is also fumbling towards historical legitimacy. What happens when the paths of these two individuals cross, and they find that one path to greatness will most obviously result in a languishing obscurity for the other? Working like some kind of demented cousin of this year’s Robert Altman entry, Fiction takes a quicker route to solving the central problem of that film: no one is going to be told to remember you, so you must write the legacy for yourself. Live for now, love who you want to, and do what you have to in order to secure your place in history. If you think you know how the story must end, then think again. An inspiring and constantly inventive tale, Fiction is also filled to the brim with great performances.
2. A Prairie Home Companion
Robert Altman, a man of tenacious will and uncompromising vision, made thoroughly unconventional films. He went in the public’s mind from classic (MASH) to forgotten (Quintet) to utterly disastrous (Popeye). It really didn’t matter how his films were received, though, because there would always be another one in a year or two to completely redefine what we thought about the man. Unlike the other auteurs who left their mark upon every project they touched, Altman never let his camera and style rule over the material, instead letting the subject dictate where his camera was going. He was fond of the tracking shots, of ensemble casts, of overlapping dialogue, and these traits served his final film well.
A fictionalized look behind the scenes of Garrison Keillor’s fantastic radio program, A Prairie Home Companion is in many respects the quintessential Altman film. A microcosm of interesting people in incredible situations, Keillor’s script is full of meandering conversations which at first appear to go nowhere before reaching a moment of epiphany that rivals any big-budget explosion or overreaching plot twist. Every character is interesting, and we’d be glad to follow any of them through their own film. The performances, too, not only recall Altman’s classic Nashville but also demonstrate the director’s fascination with the captured moment. These are unique performances, one time only, and the director feels it is duty to record them for posterity. The most fascinating thing about the film, though, is the central theme of death that encompasses the narrative: the broadcast is going off the air, a performer has croaked backstage, and a woman who claims to be the Angel of Death continually shows up at the theater. One line of dialogue resonates through all of these points: “I don’t want people to have to be told to remember me.” At its core, A Prairie Home Companion is all about what is left of us after we die. Have we led a life worth remembering? All of us can hope so, but there is no way to dictate how we are memorialized after death. When we are gone, all that is left of us are the works we complete and the memories our friends and neighbors carry with them. We do not write our own eulogies; all we can hope to do is achieve our goals, to do so thorough a job with our life’s work that the world cannot help but look back and take notice of our place in society. At the end of one of the most storied careers in film history, Robert Altman had undoubtedly achieved that. No one will have to be told to remember him.
1. Children of Men
Every once in a while we are privy to a film which actually daring. Now, I’m not referring to the milquetoast Hollywood daring which permeates every award season (Saving Private Ryan, Crash, Pleasantville, Million Dollar Baby, and about a thousand others), but rather a quiet daring which, while unassuming, completely annihilates the way we think about film. It’s happened once more with Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron’s reworking of P.D. James’ novel. Children is to film what Let It Bleed was to the rock album or Hill Street Blues was to television, as it presents a soaring and confrontational alternative of the accepted conventions of the genre. Cuaron’s vision of a dying world is remarkably assured, planned unto the last detail and presented in a style which is choreographed within an inch of its life. Take, for example, the action scenes: in a move which is sure to be imitated ad infinitum for the next five years, Cuaron presents these sequences in one fluid shot, never once allowing for a change in perspective to break the tension. The whole film follows this style, building upon building for its entire running time, giving the movie the sensation of a ninety-minute panic attack. Even if one knows the ending going in, and I would suggest going into the theater knowing as little as possible, the desperation of the surroundings forces the viewer into a hypnotic state of shock, gripping at the edge of the seat and praying that everything’s going to turn out all right. Time may allow me to write about the film at length, providing this forum with a more complex rendering of my thoughts instead of the jumbled words which preceded. Right now, though, I can only pay the highest compliment possible to Children of Men: I believed. Not one thought was paid to plot contrivances, stylistic flourishes, or performance mannerisms. As far as I was concerned, these were real people in real trouble. I left the theater in a daze, still enveloped by the world of the film and nearly worn out by the ride on which I had been taken. Perfectly conceived and executed, Children of Men is great beyond reason.
Monday, January 29, 2007
B-A-Start
Let’s take a moment to talk about one of the great traditions of film: the crappy video game license.
These days it almost seems like a given. A popcorn movie hits theaters, a huge marketing blitz follows, and a video game limps into stores to the joy of no one. Uniformly awful, it sells few copies, banished instead to the five-dollar bin at your local Best Buy. It’s a routine that Hollywood can’t appear to shake.
It wasn’t always this way, though. Time was, fifteen or twenty years ago, that developers seemed to take great pride in making their movie tie-ins the worst possible game imaginable. Meaningless obscurity wasn’t enough for these intrepid creators; no, they would not stop until new terrible heights had been scaled in the field of game design. Their lives were not complete until every good memory you had of a film was negated, and bad films were turned into terrible atrocities against mankind. At one point these games were simply wastes of a good two weeks’ allowance, but now they take on a classical significance, giving us insight into a time when people still worked up the enthusiasm to create a truly awful game to accompany a film.
Think, for example, on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Not only did it miss the release date of the movie by nearly six months, but the game itself was filled with roughly a thousand anachronisms and absurdities. What does one say about a game which features a spontaneously combusting Kevin Costner avatar? Or one that requires you to search dead bodies for apples they may have been carrying when they expired?
If this game is to be believed, every man in Mediaeval England had a satchel of apples with him at all times, just in case it came up. Be prepared to collect a lot of apples, fight mustachioed gentlemen, and investigate many trees. I spent many hours with the game, and I only encountered something resembling the plot of the film right before I gave up and beat my friend’s NES to death.
“Maybe it was the fact that it was only a marginally-successful film,” you say. “What about the mega-hits? Surely they are impervious to poor game design?” I tell you in reply that we are going to take a quick look at all of the games made for Jurassic Park. This film made over a billion dollars in its initial theatrical release, spawning a devotion not often seen in movies. Some of the tie-ins, such as the line of dinosaur toy replicas or the myriad books about the making of the film, were well-produced and lived up to the film’s high quality. The games, however, were as useless as a warm blanket in a Manhattan summer. There were definitely two camps to the awfulness, the both of which dictated which sort of suffering you would endure throughout 1993 and into 1995.
Nintendo gave its loyal subjects a cavalcade of Zelda-esque crawlers, emphasizing finding objects and traveling through large buildings over actual dinosaur encounters. Sega offered a busted and unplayable view of every boy’s fantasy: making the raptor the lead character. Both of these systems gave us startlingly bad renditions of what should have been a simple concept to execute. Jurassic Park was every bit a triumph of popular entertainment, but the success apparently let the programmers think that anything with the Jurassic Park name would sell. Instead of a game which let the player throw themselves into the film’s incredible action sequences, Sega provided a game which allowed the player to become irrevocably stuck in a tree if they happened to hit the C Button as the game was starting. Nintendo, capitalizing on this failure, made a dungeon crawl so appallingly boring that not even the most fervent Phantasy Star player could stand it. Our reaction as children in the early 1990s was to flip the system off and find another game to power through. Nearly fifteen years on, we can view the game through the hazy lens of nostalgia, but still none of us want to play the damn thing.
As bad as the video trips inside the Park were, they were nothing compared to the horror wrought by a truly pitiful film. It turned out that it took a complete failure of a movie, a turkey of epic proportions, to create a game worse than possibly all the other bad games combined. Ladies and gentlemen, you can blame Bruce Willis, because Hudson Hawk is that game. In the words of noted online critic Seanbaby, Hudson Hawk is “notably shitty.” In a world filled with uninspired or lacking video game adaptations, here was a game that failed on all levels. Your guy looked nothing like Bruce Willis, the backgrounds gave you no idea of where you were, and your controller didn’t seem to do anything. I was fully convinced that I had accidentally plugged the toaster into the controller port for several minutes as I struggled to get my little Willis to understand the concept of jumping. It turns out that I was indeed holding the correct implement and that the system was working perfectly; the designers of this particular game had forgotten to program any game into this game.
They must have been clairvoyant, as they were the only people to anticipate the staggering failure that the film would suffer in theaters. I found the ten minute cycle of Hawk jumping from the roof of a New York auction house time and time again rather soothing, and more entertaining than the smirking lounge-act in-joke that was the film. Amazingly, the game was almost hypnotizing in its awfulness, enjoyable in how unenjoyable it was. I’m sure that, if I had figured out how to actually play the game, that I would have eventually found a veritable black hole of awfulness somewhere around the third level. Although I doubt that a third level existed, given the state of the first.
Where have these days gone? Why must the Game Boy Advance suffer a slow death at the hands of innumerable games based upon Disney Channel shows, ones that are programmed by designers who may well be trying their hardest? No, there is no need for these games. What we need are games based on Stealth, Flyboys, The Island, and other big-budget monstrosities which are bound to be hoisted by their own petard when the public gets ahold of them. There’s three months until the popcorn season kicks in, Hollywood, so get the game companies ready. We need a new Fantastic Four game! Die Hard is making its triumphant return to a noncommittal audience, and lord knows that Bruce Willis has terrorized gamers before! And I’m issuing a challenge to you: let’s see how bad you can mess up a Bourne Ultimatum video game. Don’t let me down.
These days it almost seems like a given. A popcorn movie hits theaters, a huge marketing blitz follows, and a video game limps into stores to the joy of no one. Uniformly awful, it sells few copies, banished instead to the five-dollar bin at your local Best Buy. It’s a routine that Hollywood can’t appear to shake.
It wasn’t always this way, though. Time was, fifteen or twenty years ago, that developers seemed to take great pride in making their movie tie-ins the worst possible game imaginable. Meaningless obscurity wasn’t enough for these intrepid creators; no, they would not stop until new terrible heights had been scaled in the field of game design. Their lives were not complete until every good memory you had of a film was negated, and bad films were turned into terrible atrocities against mankind. At one point these games were simply wastes of a good two weeks’ allowance, but now they take on a classical significance, giving us insight into a time when people still worked up the enthusiasm to create a truly awful game to accompany a film.
Think, for example, on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Not only did it miss the release date of the movie by nearly six months, but the game itself was filled with roughly a thousand anachronisms and absurdities. What does one say about a game which features a spontaneously combusting Kevin Costner avatar? Or one that requires you to search dead bodies for apples they may have been carrying when they expired?
If this game is to be believed, every man in Mediaeval England had a satchel of apples with him at all times, just in case it came up. Be prepared to collect a lot of apples, fight mustachioed gentlemen, and investigate many trees. I spent many hours with the game, and I only encountered something resembling the plot of the film right before I gave up and beat my friend’s NES to death.“Maybe it was the fact that it was only a marginally-successful film,” you say. “What about the mega-hits? Surely they are impervious to poor game design?” I tell you in reply that we are going to take a quick look at all of the games made for Jurassic Park. This film made over a billion dollars in its initial theatrical release, spawning a devotion not often seen in movies. Some of the tie-ins, such as the line of dinosaur toy replicas or the myriad books about the making of the film, were well-produced and lived up to the film’s high quality. The games, however, were as useless as a warm blanket in a Manhattan summer. There were definitely two camps to the awfulness, the both of which dictated which sort of suffering you would endure throughout 1993 and into 1995.
Nintendo gave its loyal subjects a cavalcade of Zelda-esque crawlers, emphasizing finding objects and traveling through large buildings over actual dinosaur encounters. Sega offered a busted and unplayable view of every boy’s fantasy: making the raptor the lead character. Both of these systems gave us startlingly bad renditions of what should have been a simple concept to execute. Jurassic Park was every bit a triumph of popular entertainment, but the success apparently let the programmers think that anything with the Jurassic Park name would sell. Instead of a game which let the player throw themselves into the film’s incredible action sequences, Sega provided a game which allowed the player to become irrevocably stuck in a tree if they happened to hit the C Button as the game was starting. Nintendo, capitalizing on this failure, made a dungeon crawl so appallingly boring that not even the most fervent Phantasy Star player could stand it. Our reaction as children in the early 1990s was to flip the system off and find another game to power through. Nearly fifteen years on, we can view the game through the hazy lens of nostalgia, but still none of us want to play the damn thing.
As bad as the video trips inside the Park were, they were nothing compared to the horror wrought by a truly pitiful film. It turned out that it took a complete failure of a movie, a turkey of epic proportions, to create a game worse than possibly all the other bad games combined. Ladies and gentlemen, you can blame Bruce Willis, because Hudson Hawk is that game. In the words of noted online critic Seanbaby, Hudson Hawk is “notably shitty.” In a world filled with uninspired or lacking video game adaptations, here was a game that failed on all levels. Your guy looked nothing like Bruce Willis, the backgrounds gave you no idea of where you were, and your controller didn’t seem to do anything. I was fully convinced that I had accidentally plugged the toaster into the controller port for several minutes as I struggled to get my little Willis to understand the concept of jumping. It turns out that I was indeed holding the correct implement and that the system was working perfectly; the designers of this particular game had forgotten to program any game into this game.
They must have been clairvoyant, as they were the only people to anticipate the staggering failure that the film would suffer in theaters. I found the ten minute cycle of Hawk jumping from the roof of a New York auction house time and time again rather soothing, and more entertaining than the smirking lounge-act in-joke that was the film. Amazingly, the game was almost hypnotizing in its awfulness, enjoyable in how unenjoyable it was. I’m sure that, if I had figured out how to actually play the game, that I would have eventually found a veritable black hole of awfulness somewhere around the third level. Although I doubt that a third level existed, given the state of the first.Where have these days gone? Why must the Game Boy Advance suffer a slow death at the hands of innumerable games based upon Disney Channel shows, ones that are programmed by designers who may well be trying their hardest? No, there is no need for these games. What we need are games based on Stealth, Flyboys, The Island, and other big-budget monstrosities which are bound to be hoisted by their own petard when the public gets ahold of them. There’s three months until the popcorn season kicks in, Hollywood, so get the game companies ready. We need a new Fantastic Four game! Die Hard is making its triumphant return to a noncommittal audience, and lord knows that Bruce Willis has terrorized gamers before! And I’m issuing a challenge to you: let’s see how bad you can mess up a Bourne Ultimatum video game. Don’t let me down.
Battlestar Galactica is the Future of Science Fiction
Before I begin explaining the title of this blog, I think its time for me to come out of the closet. Yes, for ten years now I've known it to be true...that's right...I'm a Star Trek fan.
I know it might be hard for my friends and family to accept, but I just don't want to hide it anymore. While most people like crime drama, I like seeing space ships shooting lasers at each other. Some people like the villains to be muslim terrorists, I prefer Romulans. There are lots of people like me out there, and I think its time for us to come screaming out of the closet and own our identity instead of running away from it...
Ok, now that I've beaten the gay-star trek analogy to death, its time to move on...
It's true I love Star Trek, but I've always loved Star Trek because of its humanity, not because of its outrageous storylines or spectacular feats of technology. I love science fiction in a more general sense for the same reason. There is no greater ironic way of examining ourselves, in detail, at the most basic level, than doing it through sci-fi. Call me crazy, call me insane, call me a trekkie, whatever, but I would challenge anyone to prove me wrong.
By the end of last year, I had become almost totally indifferent to popular science fiction. I'd seen all the Star Trek there was to see, Andromeda sucks, Stargate: SG-1 (and Stargate: Atlantis) suck worse, and new sci-fi movies were either comic-book-esque or parodied the genre right out of intellectual credibility. I know I'm pretty much alone on this, but I had thought Enterprise was about the closest thing out there to science fiction learning how to evolve and become aware of itself and understand itself. The writers were exploring new ways of producing stories, and the characters were all reasonably well developed and interesting. The captain watching college water polo, for exampe, lent the characters some real-world identification that made the story feel more alive and, more importantly, relevant.
Then I was introduced to Battlestar Galactica. Not the 1978 version starring Richard Hatch. The new one, starring Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama, Jamie Bamber as Lee Adama, Katie Sackoff as Starbuck and James Callis as Baltar. Over Christmas of last year, my brother's friend Frank gave me a stack of DVDs with the demand that I watch them all, and one of them was the Mini-Series. Now, I had heard a lot about this show being the best on television, but when people told me that I'd say "Yeah, well, no one can make good sci-fi anymore, the genre is totally over, lets just not kid ourselves anymore." Then i saw the mini-series.
To give you, the unconverted, an idea of just how awesome this show is, while I was visiting my parents over Christmas, I made them watch it. My parents hate science fiction, and hate even more that I love science fiction (I could take the gay analogy SO much farther right now, but I won't in the interest of remaining on-topic). They are now both obsessed with it. They used to love 24, now Battlestar Galactica is their number one favorite show. My roomate, also a sci-fi-hater, watched the entire series in two and a half days. Mostly, admittedly, because he has no job.
Why all this outside-the-circle interest in a show with the words "battle" "star" and "galactica" in the title? I have a theory.
Battlestar Galactica, as envisioned by Ronald D. Moore, is less of a sci-fi specticle and more of a drama set in space. Having come from Star Trek, Moore learned all the important lessons to be learned from the now 41 year old franchise, most imporant of which is that the new science fiction fan wants their show to be written in serial format. This might not sound like a big deal, but it lies at the root of how Battlestar gets away with having 10 storylines going on all at once. Star Trek was always beholden by Paramount to strive for new audiences, so even long term storylines had to be interspersed with episodes that had nothing to do with anything else in the time-line. They got better at this over the years, but even by the end of Enterprise, they still couldn't stick with a truely serial story, and it hurt them with the fan base.
Moore saw this, and designed Battlestar, I believe, to counter that mistake. Battlestar Galactica is not just serial in its writing style, but brutally so. If you miss two episodes in a row, you won't have a damn clue whats going on. But thats almost part of the fun. This is the perfect show to get into once its on DVD, because watching them all back to back makes the experience more enjoyable.
The show itself is shot with as though it were a surreal documentary, with rough camera movement and seemingly shoddy rack-focus work by the camera-person a mainstay, especially during the occasional space battle. The photography syle evolves over the course of now two and a half seasons, and by the beginning of season three, it looks so un-polished and rough that you'd think you were watching a docu-drama on A&E of something that actually happened. the incorporation of CG to this style of camera work would have you believe that the show's villains, Cylons, were realistic and dangerous. The show doesn't have to kid itself with the fake barriers of Star Trek, like the bad make-up, all-humanoid aliens, everyone knowing english (show Enterprise ALMOST got that right), laser weapons or transporters.
This is the future of science-fiction. This is the new Star Trek. This is the show Star Trek wishes it was cool enough to be. This is Star Trek for people who hate science fiction but love a good story about realistic people with realistic problems. Its not about spaceships or weird aliens. There are no aliens in Battlestar, only the Cylons, which are robots, created by humans, that rebelled and have turned against the human race. That sounds stupid right? Give it a chance, you won't be sorry. Its powerful story with spectacular writing, brilliant, TASTEFUL, special effects, excellent performances and stunning drama. Its a must see for anyone who fancies themselves as knowledgeable about good cinema/television, and a must-must see for people who aren't.
By the way, its criminally negligent on someone's part if James Callis doesn't win an Emmy for his performance in the third season. Just saying.
Rant over. Thanks to Mac for giving us all a place to rant about all moving images everywhere. Now that film school is over for some of us, we're thankful to have a new place to bitch about Hollywood's BS. Who's with me?
Cheers.
I know it might be hard for my friends and family to accept, but I just don't want to hide it anymore. While most people like crime drama, I like seeing space ships shooting lasers at each other. Some people like the villains to be muslim terrorists, I prefer Romulans. There are lots of people like me out there, and I think its time for us to come screaming out of the closet and own our identity instead of running away from it...
Ok, now that I've beaten the gay-star trek analogy to death, its time to move on...
It's true I love Star Trek, but I've always loved Star Trek because of its humanity, not because of its outrageous storylines or spectacular feats of technology. I love science fiction in a more general sense for the same reason. There is no greater ironic way of examining ourselves, in detail, at the most basic level, than doing it through sci-fi. Call me crazy, call me insane, call me a trekkie, whatever, but I would challenge anyone to prove me wrong.
By the end of last year, I had become almost totally indifferent to popular science fiction. I'd seen all the Star Trek there was to see, Andromeda sucks, Stargate: SG-1 (and Stargate: Atlantis) suck worse, and new sci-fi movies were either comic-book-esque or parodied the genre right out of intellectual credibility. I know I'm pretty much alone on this, but I had thought Enterprise was about the closest thing out there to science fiction learning how to evolve and become aware of itself and understand itself. The writers were exploring new ways of producing stories, and the characters were all reasonably well developed and interesting. The captain watching college water polo, for exampe, lent the characters some real-world identification that made the story feel more alive and, more importantly, relevant.
Then I was introduced to Battlestar Galactica. Not the 1978 version starring Richard Hatch. The new one, starring Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama, Jamie Bamber as Lee Adama, Katie Sackoff as Starbuck and James Callis as Baltar. Over Christmas of last year, my brother's friend Frank gave me a stack of DVDs with the demand that I watch them all, and one of them was the Mini-Series. Now, I had heard a lot about this show being the best on television, but when people told me that I'd say "Yeah, well, no one can make good sci-fi anymore, the genre is totally over, lets just not kid ourselves anymore." Then i saw the mini-series.
To give you, the unconverted, an idea of just how awesome this show is, while I was visiting my parents over Christmas, I made them watch it. My parents hate science fiction, and hate even more that I love science fiction (I could take the gay analogy SO much farther right now, but I won't in the interest of remaining on-topic). They are now both obsessed with it. They used to love 24, now Battlestar Galactica is their number one favorite show. My roomate, also a sci-fi-hater, watched the entire series in two and a half days. Mostly, admittedly, because he has no job.
Why all this outside-the-circle interest in a show with the words "battle" "star" and "galactica" in the title? I have a theory.
Battlestar Galactica, as envisioned by Ronald D. Moore, is less of a sci-fi specticle and more of a drama set in space. Having come from Star Trek, Moore learned all the important lessons to be learned from the now 41 year old franchise, most imporant of which is that the new science fiction fan wants their show to be written in serial format. This might not sound like a big deal, but it lies at the root of how Battlestar gets away with having 10 storylines going on all at once. Star Trek was always beholden by Paramount to strive for new audiences, so even long term storylines had to be interspersed with episodes that had nothing to do with anything else in the time-line. They got better at this over the years, but even by the end of Enterprise, they still couldn't stick with a truely serial story, and it hurt them with the fan base.
Moore saw this, and designed Battlestar, I believe, to counter that mistake. Battlestar Galactica is not just serial in its writing style, but brutally so. If you miss two episodes in a row, you won't have a damn clue whats going on. But thats almost part of the fun. This is the perfect show to get into once its on DVD, because watching them all back to back makes the experience more enjoyable.
The show itself is shot with as though it were a surreal documentary, with rough camera movement and seemingly shoddy rack-focus work by the camera-person a mainstay, especially during the occasional space battle. The photography syle evolves over the course of now two and a half seasons, and by the beginning of season three, it looks so un-polished and rough that you'd think you were watching a docu-drama on A&E of something that actually happened. the incorporation of CG to this style of camera work would have you believe that the show's villains, Cylons, were realistic and dangerous. The show doesn't have to kid itself with the fake barriers of Star Trek, like the bad make-up, all-humanoid aliens, everyone knowing english (show Enterprise ALMOST got that right), laser weapons or transporters.
This is the future of science-fiction. This is the new Star Trek. This is the show Star Trek wishes it was cool enough to be. This is Star Trek for people who hate science fiction but love a good story about realistic people with realistic problems. Its not about spaceships or weird aliens. There are no aliens in Battlestar, only the Cylons, which are robots, created by humans, that rebelled and have turned against the human race. That sounds stupid right? Give it a chance, you won't be sorry. Its powerful story with spectacular writing, brilliant, TASTEFUL, special effects, excellent performances and stunning drama. Its a must see for anyone who fancies themselves as knowledgeable about good cinema/television, and a must-must see for people who aren't.
By the way, its criminally negligent on someone's part if James Callis doesn't win an Emmy for his performance in the third season. Just saying.
Rant over. Thanks to Mac for giving us all a place to rant about all moving images everywhere. Now that film school is over for some of us, we're thankful to have a new place to bitch about Hollywood's BS. Who's with me?
Cheers.
My Chance at Sundance
Hey everyone. I just got back from my two days at the Sundance Film Festival and thought I'd share with you what I saw.
Since I was only there for such a short time, my mom and I only got tickets to two screenings, both of which were really cool.
The first screening we saw was actually a shorts program featuring 6 really different short films by people from all over the world. Two of them, I'm sad to say, I totally didnt get - maybe I was just being dense, but don't you hate it when afterwards you're like "What the hell did i just watch? What was the POINT?". Two of them were decent but the two worth mentioning were called BITCH (which i cant find a link for)and THE SUBSTITUTE which was my favorite and if you watch it i think you'll see why: watch me!
The second one we saw was FINISHING THE GAME, a quirky little comedy done in the same style as A MIGHTY WIND and CONFETTI (mockumentary?), was very entertaining and well-done. Not too drawn out and well-paced. I would recommend anyone who enjoys that style of film to check it out if/when it goes mainstream. Here is some info on it.
Seeing the series of shorts was definitely my favorite and i really wanted to see another one since they had over 72 shorts to show. But we could NOT get tickets to save our lives!
If you are interested, you can watch all (i think) of the short films here:
http://festival.sundance.org/2007/watch/index.aspx?guide=all&order=title
Since I was only there for such a short time, my mom and I only got tickets to two screenings, both of which were really cool.
The first screening we saw was actually a shorts program featuring 6 really different short films by people from all over the world. Two of them, I'm sad to say, I totally didnt get - maybe I was just being dense, but don't you hate it when afterwards you're like "What the hell did i just watch? What was the POINT?". Two of them were decent but the two worth mentioning were called BITCH (which i cant find a link for)and THE SUBSTITUTE which was my favorite and if you watch it i think you'll see why: watch me!
The second one we saw was FINISHING THE GAME, a quirky little comedy done in the same style as A MIGHTY WIND and CONFETTI (mockumentary?), was very entertaining and well-done. Not too drawn out and well-paced. I would recommend anyone who enjoys that style of film to check it out if/when it goes mainstream. Here is some info on it.
Seeing the series of shorts was definitely my favorite and i really wanted to see another one since they had over 72 shorts to show. But we could NOT get tickets to save our lives!
If you are interested, you can watch all (i think) of the short films here:
http://festival.sundance.org/2007/watch/index.aspx?guide=all&order=title
Refugees from the Top Ten
I spent much of December watching movies. My habits had been lacking, at best, and I wanted to make sure that I had a full picture of the year come awards season. This didn't work, as most of the films I enjoyed, or even had a casual interest in, were passed over by most of the governing bodies. But as my list grew, I found that I had genuinely loved many of the films I had seen, and that a simple top-ten countdown would not suffice. There were many which had been overlooked which I wanted to bring to the attention of the moviegoing audience, those who appeared to want to see only the new Pirates film and The Departed. While I saw and somewhat enjoyed both of those films, there had to be others worthy of attention. This is what I bring to you now: some of those movies which didn't quite make my overall top ten, but which I felt were worthy of discussion all the same. We begin with...
Slither
You didn’t see Slither in theaters. It’s okay; not many people did. You’re going to rent it now, though, and you’re going to invite over some of your buddies, because it’s all sorts of insane goodness. James Gunn, writer and director, is forgiven the two scripts he wrote for Scooby-Doo movies. An apprentice of Troma Pictures, Gunn should know from gross-out horror on a budget, and he proves here that he may be second to none in this regard. Eschewing the morbid and depressing mechanics of recent horror blockbusters such as Saw and The Ring, Gunn and his team realize that the instinctual human reaction to the scary and the unknown is to let out a terrified laugh, and then beat the hell out of the terror with a shovel. Or a two-by-four. Or a chainsaw. You know, just whatever’s handy. Killers don’t stand around pontificating about your past sins! Killers kill, preferably in the most ridiculous way possible! And heroes kill back, because that’s what heroes do! Everyone in the business has to take a step back and watch this film post haste. Slither is funny without being obnoxious, terrifying without being off-putting, and insane without even trying. The cast is game for anything, led by Nathan Fillion in yet another star-making performance in a film that was ignored by both its distributor and the general public. Well, shame on Universal, and shame on you. I’m not saying that Slither could make you rich, or make you pretty, or cure any diseases you may have (although it just might). What I am saying, though, is that Slither is a film that you have fun watching, and then have just as much fun quoting and remembering and reviewing for years.
A Scanner Darkly
When the work of author Philip K. Dick is mentioned, the word “untranslatable” often makes its way into conversation. After all, how could the stream-of-consciousness delusions of a drug addict ever make their way into a logical and codified medium like film? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep only succeeded because it was completely reinterpreted when it became Blade Runner, and Minority Report was written in one of the author’s few lucid periods. Aside from these two, Dick adaptations had failed over and over, in projects as varied as Screamers, Total Recall, and Imposter. Richard Linklater finally connects faithfully with a personal and deranged Dick novel, turning his own crazy auteur sensibilities on A Scanner Darkly. Dick wrote this novel as a parable on his own struggles with drug addiction, exploring the gradual deterioration of a DEA officer who has succumbed to drug-induced psychosis. Linklater finds a perfect outlet for this story with his rotoscope techniques, which were completely useless in the Philosophy 101 class that was Waking Life. Presented with the complexities of Dick’s novel, the animation suddenly becomes vivid, blurring the line between the real and imagined just as the author intended. There are still deficiencies, as the film leaves in the book’s open-ended cheat of a climax and occasional trips into irrelevancy. The film proves, though, that the work of this complex and occasionally insane author can be brought faithfully to the screen. Now, we can only hope that Ubik and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said get the same respectful treatment.
Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That!
Carrying possibly the best title of any film ever, Awesome! is a daring venture. The bulk of the footage was shot by patrons of a Beastie Boys’ concert at Madison Square Garden. Fifty digital cameras were given to fifty random fans, and they were told to shoot whatever they pleased during the event. What resulted are glimpses of the vagaries which will never appear in any other film: idle chatter in between songs, celebrities singing along in the balcony, and even a bathroom break for one of the cameramen. The result is sloppy and occasionally amateurish, but it is unlike any other film ever made. Awesome! is a complete reinvention of the documentary format, so expect it to be completely ignored by every award show, critic, and film historian. However, if ever a film deserved to be picked apart in film schools across the nation for decades to come, it is this one. It may not be perfect, but it is completely revolutionary. Whether a film can improve or innovate from this moment remains to be seen.
* * *
Coming up: Jet Li says goodbye, Knoxville gets punched around, and the correct director gets another shot at his franchise.
Slither
You didn’t see Slither in theaters. It’s okay; not many people did. You’re going to rent it now, though, and you’re going to invite over some of your buddies, because it’s all sorts of insane goodness. James Gunn, writer and director, is forgiven the two scripts he wrote for Scooby-Doo movies. An apprentice of Troma Pictures, Gunn should know from gross-out horror on a budget, and he proves here that he may be second to none in this regard. Eschewing the morbid and depressing mechanics of recent horror blockbusters such as Saw and The Ring, Gunn and his team realize that the instinctual human reaction to the scary and the unknown is to let out a terrified laugh, and then beat the hell out of the terror with a shovel. Or a two-by-four. Or a chainsaw. You know, just whatever’s handy. Killers don’t stand around pontificating about your past sins! Killers kill, preferably in the most ridiculous way possible! And heroes kill back, because that’s what heroes do! Everyone in the business has to take a step back and watch this film post haste. Slither is funny without being obnoxious, terrifying without being off-putting, and insane without even trying. The cast is game for anything, led by Nathan Fillion in yet another star-making performance in a film that was ignored by both its distributor and the general public. Well, shame on Universal, and shame on you. I’m not saying that Slither could make you rich, or make you pretty, or cure any diseases you may have (although it just might). What I am saying, though, is that Slither is a film that you have fun watching, and then have just as much fun quoting and remembering and reviewing for years. A Scanner Darkly
When the work of author Philip K. Dick is mentioned, the word “untranslatable” often makes its way into conversation. After all, how could the stream-of-consciousness delusions of a drug addict ever make their way into a logical and codified medium like film? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep only succeeded because it was completely reinterpreted when it became Blade Runner, and Minority Report was written in one of the author’s few lucid periods. Aside from these two, Dick adaptations had failed over and over, in projects as varied as Screamers, Total Recall, and Imposter. Richard Linklater finally connects faithfully with a personal and deranged Dick novel, turning his own crazy auteur sensibilities on A Scanner Darkly. Dick wrote this novel as a parable on his own struggles with drug addiction, exploring the gradual deterioration of a DEA officer who has succumbed to drug-induced psychosis. Linklater finds a perfect outlet for this story with his rotoscope techniques, which were completely useless in the Philosophy 101 class that was Waking Life. Presented with the complexities of Dick’s novel, the animation suddenly becomes vivid, blurring the line between the real and imagined just as the author intended. There are still deficiencies, as the film leaves in the book’s open-ended cheat of a climax and occasional trips into irrelevancy. The film proves, though, that the work of this complex and occasionally insane author can be brought faithfully to the screen. Now, we can only hope that Ubik and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said get the same respectful treatment.Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That!
Carrying possibly the best title of any film ever, Awesome! is a daring venture. The bulk of the footage was shot by patrons of a Beastie Boys’ concert at Madison Square Garden. Fifty digital cameras were given to fifty random fans, and they were told to shoot whatever they pleased during the event. What resulted are glimpses of the vagaries which will never appear in any other film: idle chatter in between songs, celebrities singing along in the balcony, and even a bathroom break for one of the cameramen. The result is sloppy and occasionally amateurish, but it is unlike any other film ever made. Awesome! is a complete reinvention of the documentary format, so expect it to be completely ignored by every award show, critic, and film historian. However, if ever a film deserved to be picked apart in film schools across the nation for decades to come, it is this one. It may not be perfect, but it is completely revolutionary. Whether a film can improve or innovate from this moment remains to be seen.* * *
Coming up: Jet Li says goodbye, Knoxville gets punched around, and the correct director gets another shot at his franchise.
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