He is quietly, painfully frustrated, and we can tell from the first shot. His team, the Oakland A's, has just lost to the Yankees. In an opening sequence of punctuated silence, using real footage from that game and followed up by real audio from various baseball radio pundits, we're taken to understand that his three best players have now been traded. There's little chance he'll be able to rebuild an already struggling team from that point on, much less take them to the next year's championship.
The championship is all that matters to Brad Pitt's Billy Beane, a real life draftee in his youth who, in a series of flashbacks, we discover didn't withstand the pressure during his time with the Mets. He's a present day Oakland GM now, and is increasingly obsessed with recovering those lost chances by driving his low-budget team to a championship.
If Moneyball is a baseball film in the same vein as your traditional sports team/underdog movie, it is a rare one for the sustained level of exceptional pessimism conveyed throughout. Jonah Hill's number-cruncher is recruited by Pitt. Hill introduces his mathematical analysis of player stats and picks an underdog roster to replace the traded team members. This does not go over well with the old, sun-browned, grizzly scouts in the room, who fight Pitt through the whole process ("he can't throw!" "he's too old!").
There are multiple battles between Pitt and his team coach, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who wants more than a one year contract and will "make the decisions that will be easiest to explain in interviews next year". Hoffman has studied the body language down to the last detail of sports coaches, the way they carry themselves, right down to the way they wear their watches. Beyond that this is kind of a thankless role, but certainly a contrast with his previous role for Bennett Miller in Capote.
If you've read Michael Lewis's book or have followed baseball at all, you probably know about the ensuing 20 game streak Oakland Athletics had once the pieces were finally put into place with Hill and Pitt's numerical team structuring. What's interesting about this story is how little that ultimately mattered to Billy Beane. Many might think this newer, colder way of building teams and putting them on the path to victory was exactly how Beane changed the game, for better or worse. Beane could've cared less, and turned down serious money to prove it.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Monday, September 05, 2011
Casually Idiotic Movie Parenting
The first of this summer's entry into the annals of unfortunate parenting skills features a compelling twist via the Don't-Mess-With-Nature theme, in this summer's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Most reviewers completely disregard this most surreal aspect of the film, choosing to focus on the rather beautifully executed motion-capture performance of Andy Serkis in the guise of the young chimpanzee, Caesar. Caesar moves through his early childhood on through the late stages of ape adolescence, developing a deep bond with James Franco's scientist. Due to his rapidly advancing intelligence, Caesar is even less suited to be paired with human companions than a normal chimpanzee would be by that point.
Once Caesar has been cast out for committing an act of violence (interpreted by the chimp as the defense of a loved one), he makes contact with other imprisoned apes, finds one that can also perform and understand sign language, and well, a few more steps from that and you've got yourself an ape tea party (would that both of these factions would head to the hills together).
That's the plot, as most people choose to see it, avoiding much conversation about the Splice-like father-child relationship here between Caesar and James Franco's character. You would think after working with chimpanzees this long Franco'd accept the obvious, that no matter how many injections of smarty serum you give 'em, they're still chimps, they're still going to reach a point where they're going to be well out of your control. If things had happened a little differently, we might've seen any of the truly unsettling scenarios such an odd relationship would produce. We'd have a much stranger film, for better or worse. Prequels are prequels, however, so the show must go on, humanity must eventually die, and eventually apes must rule (and fracture politically into a enough factions to include nuclear warhead worshippers).
The second film to debut in as many months focusing on the mistakes of embarrassingly stupid parents is the moderately compelling, Guillermo Del Toro scripted Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Guy Pierce and Katie Holmes play a New England couple who bring Pierce's estranged (and largely ignored) 8 year old daughter to the old house Pierce is restoring for Architectural Design. Caught up with his young girlfriend and obsessed with getting a great cover for the magazine, Pierce doesn't notice in the slightest that dark forces exist within the bowels of the estate. Holmes, the less dumb of the two (perhaps because she's not actually the little girl's mother?) investigates the history of the William Blake inspired painter who lived in the house, and basically tracks down the history of the little tooth fairy monsters, almost too late.
Pierce determines that his girlfriend's various ripped up dresses are the fault of his daughter, brought about by jealousy. He doesn't really ask questions when the grounds keeper shows up stabbed by various tools and sharp objects, all over his body, more likely the result of a tiny monster attack than a fall down the cellar stairs. He refuses to believe that sinister creatures are plotting to steal his daughter and eat her teeth (a premise introduced to the audience in the most gruesome way possible, in the first few minutes of the film). Scene by scene we (from the honed Del Torian point of view of the little girl) grow convinced that Pierce is very stupid indeed. Holmes, who catches up with the viewers just in time, takes on a decent, heroic role in the film. Her character becomes more sympathetic than we'd expect.
Fright Night has Toni Collette playing an un-stupid parent, which in movie suburbia-land means she's playing an actual character. The new film, as well as the original, share enough of each other's plots that the characters all gradually discover that without a doubt, yes, the man next door is a vampire. Once Collette's house is ignited from the inside by Colin Farrel's sexy vampire ripping the gas-line from under the backyard and lighting it with a zippo, there's very little doubt of the danger he poses. This remake is fairly inventive, pretty funny throughout, brilliantly cast, and having just the right cocktail of suspense and cheeky creepiness, deserves its place next to the silly eighties classic. It also uses one real-estate sign very, very effectively.
People who enjoyed the original film probably had a cynical reaction to the announcement of the remake. They'd probably be surprised to hear that the movie we got is almost as good. The box-office punished this particular remake for being good, or perhaps just for being obscure enough to teenagers nowadays that it didn't register at all what it was, except for it being one more vampire flick. The less than $20 million box-office gross is possibly revenue from David Tenant fans. Serves Hollywood right for making something entertaining.
Once Caesar has been cast out for committing an act of violence (interpreted by the chimp as the defense of a loved one), he makes contact with other imprisoned apes, finds one that can also perform and understand sign language, and well, a few more steps from that and you've got yourself an ape tea party (would that both of these factions would head to the hills together).
That's the plot, as most people choose to see it, avoiding much conversation about the Splice-like father-child relationship here between Caesar and James Franco's character. You would think after working with chimpanzees this long Franco'd accept the obvious, that no matter how many injections of smarty serum you give 'em, they're still chimps, they're still going to reach a point where they're going to be well out of your control. If things had happened a little differently, we might've seen any of the truly unsettling scenarios such an odd relationship would produce. We'd have a much stranger film, for better or worse. Prequels are prequels, however, so the show must go on, humanity must eventually die, and eventually apes must rule (and fracture politically into a enough factions to include nuclear warhead worshippers).
The second film to debut in as many months focusing on the mistakes of embarrassingly stupid parents is the moderately compelling, Guillermo Del Toro scripted Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Guy Pierce and Katie Holmes play a New England couple who bring Pierce's estranged (and largely ignored) 8 year old daughter to the old house Pierce is restoring for Architectural Design. Caught up with his young girlfriend and obsessed with getting a great cover for the magazine, Pierce doesn't notice in the slightest that dark forces exist within the bowels of the estate. Holmes, the less dumb of the two (perhaps because she's not actually the little girl's mother?) investigates the history of the William Blake inspired painter who lived in the house, and basically tracks down the history of the little tooth fairy monsters, almost too late.
Pierce determines that his girlfriend's various ripped up dresses are the fault of his daughter, brought about by jealousy. He doesn't really ask questions when the grounds keeper shows up stabbed by various tools and sharp objects, all over his body, more likely the result of a tiny monster attack than a fall down the cellar stairs. He refuses to believe that sinister creatures are plotting to steal his daughter and eat her teeth (a premise introduced to the audience in the most gruesome way possible, in the first few minutes of the film). Scene by scene we (from the honed Del Torian point of view of the little girl) grow convinced that Pierce is very stupid indeed. Holmes, who catches up with the viewers just in time, takes on a decent, heroic role in the film. Her character becomes more sympathetic than we'd expect.
Fright Night has Toni Collette playing an un-stupid parent, which in movie suburbia-land means she's playing an actual character. The new film, as well as the original, share enough of each other's plots that the characters all gradually discover that without a doubt, yes, the man next door is a vampire. Once Collette's house is ignited from the inside by Colin Farrel's sexy vampire ripping the gas-line from under the backyard and lighting it with a zippo, there's very little doubt of the danger he poses. This remake is fairly inventive, pretty funny throughout, brilliantly cast, and having just the right cocktail of suspense and cheeky creepiness, deserves its place next to the silly eighties classic. It also uses one real-estate sign very, very effectively.
People who enjoyed the original film probably had a cynical reaction to the announcement of the remake. They'd probably be surprised to hear that the movie we got is almost as good. The box-office punished this particular remake for being good, or perhaps just for being obscure enough to teenagers nowadays that it didn't register at all what it was, except for it being one more vampire flick. The less than $20 million box-office gross is possibly revenue from David Tenant fans. Serves Hollywood right for making something entertaining.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Summer '11
The summer belongs to pop the way the fall belongs to (sometimes) loftier fare. The rules of bad and good still apply to summer movies, and there is no reason why blockbuster summers can't give us plausible great movie candidates. There's also no certainty that the Oscar season will always give us splendor or profundity. With that in mind, and with apologies for missing Bridesmades, Bad Teacher, Cars 2, Pirates 4.0 and Green Lantern:
X-Men: First Class
This clunker of a reboot, fun in spite of its obvious flaws, is actually a period piece (obligatory costume design nomination in sight?). Set in 1961, the flick gets in front of the incipient 1960s chic that's being brought on by Mad Men. To drive this home, it even has January Jones inhabiting the role of Emma Frost (perhaps too icily for general audiences, who, unfamiliar with her Betty Draper, have unfairly mocked her "dry" delivery). The plot materializes X-Men younglings in front of our very eyes much the way the Star Trek reboot did, only this new cast barely has time to really stand out from each other, save for maybe Nicholas Hoult's Hank McCoy/Beast. James McAvoy has little to do but debate Michael Fassbender's Magneto throughout the movie, puzzlingly urging Erik at one point to show mercy to the two warring armies he's lobbing missiles at, actually saying to this Holocaust survivor, "they are just following orders." The X-Men race against time to halt nuclear war during the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an interesting thing to include in a film aimed at teenagers, who may have vaguely heard of Kennedy and Castro at this point in their lives. If there's one great thing in the movie, it's Michael Fassbender, whose Magneto is sympathetic, fearsome, completely awesome, and as much hero as anti-hero.
Thor
The second Marvel movie in as many weeks, this summer, Thor is probably the goofiest of all big-budget superhero movies, but still falls short of the goofiness a Thor movie really deserves. This in spite of direction by Kenneth Branagh and production design by Bo Welch. That ought to give us something either brilliant or ghastly, but instead we get middling, Marvel micro-managed good behavior. Shame, really. A complete brat before expulsion from Asgard, a fish out-of-water who meets three useless humans midway through, and a perfectly boring day-saver by the end, Thor himself really hasn't got much to offer aside from his Rocky Horror-style sex-ness. The mid-section of this movie has been unfavorably compared to the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe, as they share essentially the same plot. Asgard is beautifully designed, the rainbow bridge is worth every penny they spent on it, I enjoyed Loki, and Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba's Asgardian turns, and hey look, it's Rene Russo! She's still in movies!
Super 8
Is it the destination or the journey? Is the MacGuffin really what we want to discover? There were two different movies going on with Super 8, one that was non-existent, throbbing in the heads of moviegoers expecting to have their minds blown (no doubt influenced by the marketing), and the other, the film we got, a loving tribute to Amblin Entertainment, produced by Amblin and J.J. Abrams, who himself was just the right age when E.T., Close Encounters and The Goonies came out in the late seventies and early eighties. For those who have positive associations with multiple bright blue lense-flares and children throttling through the suburbs on their bicycles, saving the day, this movie had plenty to keep your heart aflutter. To those expecting a mind-bender, you no doubt left disappointed. It's interesting that I haven't seen anyone state the obvious, that J.J. Abrams is doing for Spielberg here essentially the same thing that Todd Haynes did in honor of Douglas Sirk with Far From Heaven. Both films couldn't be more different in style or tone, but both pay loving tribute to very specific kinds of films, made by very specific kinds of directors.
(Note: This is the most child-endangeringest movie in many years)
Tranformers: Dark of the Moon
Did you spend nearly three hours oppressed under the mighty weight of yet another dull, incoherent, homophobic paean to what's dead inside us all? I did too, it sucked, but it sucked in that big American way that only Michael Bay's big clanging truck nutz can be sucked on. It's just a movie, critics, a movie borne of the equivalent of the GDPs of two or three developing nations, all so we could watch Optimus hide while humans suffer and die, Bumblebee could be traipsed in front of a firing squad only to triumph at the last minute, and all so Shia LaBeouf could be castrated in the most homophobic way possible by Ken Jeong. We became Rome long before the production of these movies. We'll likely have a few more like these before the fall.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2:
This one ties everything together about as well as you could expect, leaving out plenty, but following the best due course it could, which was to include all the bullet points so as to not incur the wrath of millions of die-hard Rowling fans. That being said, this movie is often rousing, closing out a series that was already on par with Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones for serving us high adventure and serving it well. There are times when this series has left out crucial structural character details, like Molly Weasley going to clean out the Boggart in Order of the Phoenix, only to have it turn into the rotating bodies of her beloved children, Harry as well. We get her payoff in this last flick, but it's more of a payoff if you've read the books. Still, one can forgive the filmmakers for leaving out much of the plot minutiae, rules of Harry and Voldemort's connection, etc. This series has more MacGuffins than any eight films could possibly include. What works in books makes for anti-narrative in films, sometimes. We'll never know if what was excluded would work if filmed, so to enjoy the movies is really to enjoy the full immersion of this beautiful world, and revel in the absolutely revelatory acting of its expansive British cast, of which much has been said, but of which Alan Rickman above all deserves Oscar attention later this year. His work is beautiful, as was Rowling's in creating his character, and while every character shines in the movies at one point or another, Rickman's Severus Snape (not forgetting Ralph Fiennes's amazing Voldemort), really dominates my memory of this wonderful film.
The Tree of Life
Terence Malick's Full-blown American Opera and Book of Job is a summer movie too. It's really far more ambitious than anything that's come out this summer, this year, or in many years. That's been the focus of much discussion of the movie, but for now, I'll focus on its astonishing, absorbing, painstakingly detailed account of a childhood. The scenes in Texas from the point of view of the young Sean Penn character (Brad Pitt playing his father), the slow, often quiet, sometimes jolting, sometime dangerous life of a pre-teen boy against a backdrop of a fifties small town, is really one of the best pieces of out-of-body-experience Americana I've ever seen. As he deals with a domineering, austere father, an outdoor life more compelling than television, a hair-raising trip into a stranger's house that was all the more plausible in the fifties than it ever would be in our time of locked doors, a receptive audience is taken on a journey in those scenes as well as the now famous dawn-of-time scenes, which rightly anoint the film as a peer with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Captain America: The First Avenger
This whole summer has been a time machine, hasn't it? So much Americana, whether it's the 40s, 50s, 60s, or a J.J. Abrams remembered 1979, America seems to be turning back the clock in its fiction, pedalling as fast as it can away from our uncertain future. But Captain America is not sad, not depressing, even when comparing its old-fashioned heroic outlook to that of our current morass. It's fun, a little exciting, and full of rich performances by Toby Jones, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanly Tucci and our dependable leads, perhaps not so rich, but still serviceable, Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell. It's directed with wit and good humor by Joe Johnston, will remind you more than once of his splendid The Rocketeer, and is the last stop on the road to next summer's The Avengers, which for all this lead-up and stretched-out origin-story excess from recent Marvel films, better be a rapturous outburst of owning.
I'm still on board for Cowboys & Aliens, will remain open-minded about that damned dirty ape movie, and am going nowhere near a smurf if I can help it. Stay tuned.
X-Men: First Class
This clunker of a reboot, fun in spite of its obvious flaws, is actually a period piece (obligatory costume design nomination in sight?). Set in 1961, the flick gets in front of the incipient 1960s chic that's being brought on by Mad Men. To drive this home, it even has January Jones inhabiting the role of Emma Frost (perhaps too icily for general audiences, who, unfamiliar with her Betty Draper, have unfairly mocked her "dry" delivery). The plot materializes X-Men younglings in front of our very eyes much the way the Star Trek reboot did, only this new cast barely has time to really stand out from each other, save for maybe Nicholas Hoult's Hank McCoy/Beast. James McAvoy has little to do but debate Michael Fassbender's Magneto throughout the movie, puzzlingly urging Erik at one point to show mercy to the two warring armies he's lobbing missiles at, actually saying to this Holocaust survivor, "they are just following orders." The X-Men race against time to halt nuclear war during the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an interesting thing to include in a film aimed at teenagers, who may have vaguely heard of Kennedy and Castro at this point in their lives. If there's one great thing in the movie, it's Michael Fassbender, whose Magneto is sympathetic, fearsome, completely awesome, and as much hero as anti-hero.
Thor
The second Marvel movie in as many weeks, this summer, Thor is probably the goofiest of all big-budget superhero movies, but still falls short of the goofiness a Thor movie really deserves. This in spite of direction by Kenneth Branagh and production design by Bo Welch. That ought to give us something either brilliant or ghastly, but instead we get middling, Marvel micro-managed good behavior. Shame, really. A complete brat before expulsion from Asgard, a fish out-of-water who meets three useless humans midway through, and a perfectly boring day-saver by the end, Thor himself really hasn't got much to offer aside from his Rocky Horror-style sex-ness. The mid-section of this movie has been unfavorably compared to the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe, as they share essentially the same plot. Asgard is beautifully designed, the rainbow bridge is worth every penny they spent on it, I enjoyed Loki, and Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba's Asgardian turns, and hey look, it's Rene Russo! She's still in movies!
Super 8
Is it the destination or the journey? Is the MacGuffin really what we want to discover? There were two different movies going on with Super 8, one that was non-existent, throbbing in the heads of moviegoers expecting to have their minds blown (no doubt influenced by the marketing), and the other, the film we got, a loving tribute to Amblin Entertainment, produced by Amblin and J.J. Abrams, who himself was just the right age when E.T., Close Encounters and The Goonies came out in the late seventies and early eighties. For those who have positive associations with multiple bright blue lense-flares and children throttling through the suburbs on their bicycles, saving the day, this movie had plenty to keep your heart aflutter. To those expecting a mind-bender, you no doubt left disappointed. It's interesting that I haven't seen anyone state the obvious, that J.J. Abrams is doing for Spielberg here essentially the same thing that Todd Haynes did in honor of Douglas Sirk with Far From Heaven. Both films couldn't be more different in style or tone, but both pay loving tribute to very specific kinds of films, made by very specific kinds of directors.
(Note: This is the most child-endangeringest movie in many years)
Tranformers: Dark of the Moon
Did you spend nearly three hours oppressed under the mighty weight of yet another dull, incoherent, homophobic paean to what's dead inside us all? I did too, it sucked, but it sucked in that big American way that only Michael Bay's big clanging truck nutz can be sucked on. It's just a movie, critics, a movie borne of the equivalent of the GDPs of two or three developing nations, all so we could watch Optimus hide while humans suffer and die, Bumblebee could be traipsed in front of a firing squad only to triumph at the last minute, and all so Shia LaBeouf could be castrated in the most homophobic way possible by Ken Jeong. We became Rome long before the production of these movies. We'll likely have a few more like these before the fall.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2:
This one ties everything together about as well as you could expect, leaving out plenty, but following the best due course it could, which was to include all the bullet points so as to not incur the wrath of millions of die-hard Rowling fans. That being said, this movie is often rousing, closing out a series that was already on par with Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones for serving us high adventure and serving it well. There are times when this series has left out crucial structural character details, like Molly Weasley going to clean out the Boggart in Order of the Phoenix, only to have it turn into the rotating bodies of her beloved children, Harry as well. We get her payoff in this last flick, but it's more of a payoff if you've read the books. Still, one can forgive the filmmakers for leaving out much of the plot minutiae, rules of Harry and Voldemort's connection, etc. This series has more MacGuffins than any eight films could possibly include. What works in books makes for anti-narrative in films, sometimes. We'll never know if what was excluded would work if filmed, so to enjoy the movies is really to enjoy the full immersion of this beautiful world, and revel in the absolutely revelatory acting of its expansive British cast, of which much has been said, but of which Alan Rickman above all deserves Oscar attention later this year. His work is beautiful, as was Rowling's in creating his character, and while every character shines in the movies at one point or another, Rickman's Severus Snape (not forgetting Ralph Fiennes's amazing Voldemort), really dominates my memory of this wonderful film.
The Tree of Life
Terence Malick's Full-blown American Opera and Book of Job is a summer movie too. It's really far more ambitious than anything that's come out this summer, this year, or in many years. That's been the focus of much discussion of the movie, but for now, I'll focus on its astonishing, absorbing, painstakingly detailed account of a childhood. The scenes in Texas from the point of view of the young Sean Penn character (Brad Pitt playing his father), the slow, often quiet, sometimes jolting, sometime dangerous life of a pre-teen boy against a backdrop of a fifties small town, is really one of the best pieces of out-of-body-experience Americana I've ever seen. As he deals with a domineering, austere father, an outdoor life more compelling than television, a hair-raising trip into a stranger's house that was all the more plausible in the fifties than it ever would be in our time of locked doors, a receptive audience is taken on a journey in those scenes as well as the now famous dawn-of-time scenes, which rightly anoint the film as a peer with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Captain America: The First Avenger
This whole summer has been a time machine, hasn't it? So much Americana, whether it's the 40s, 50s, 60s, or a J.J. Abrams remembered 1979, America seems to be turning back the clock in its fiction, pedalling as fast as it can away from our uncertain future. But Captain America is not sad, not depressing, even when comparing its old-fashioned heroic outlook to that of our current morass. It's fun, a little exciting, and full of rich performances by Toby Jones, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanly Tucci and our dependable leads, perhaps not so rich, but still serviceable, Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell. It's directed with wit and good humor by Joe Johnston, will remind you more than once of his splendid The Rocketeer, and is the last stop on the road to next summer's The Avengers, which for all this lead-up and stretched-out origin-story excess from recent Marvel films, better be a rapturous outburst of owning.
I'm still on board for Cowboys & Aliens, will remain open-minded about that damned dirty ape movie, and am going nowhere near a smurf if I can help it. Stay tuned.
Monday, July 04, 2011
More Than Meets the Eye (No Homo)
The movie critic tropes in service of hating Michael Bay films are as self-perpetuating as his movies. I have tried to approach each Transformers film with a ritual shedding of my film critic skin. After all, where else am I going to see a spectacle of this magnitude, in service of pure action picture id and technological worshipfulness? I really have, each time, tried to localize my thoughts and feelings into another part of my brain and see if my reptilian side can just tap into whatever collective unconscious instinct of ours has boosted the box office receipts for these films into the stratosphere. There I was this go-around, doing a smart-thoughts squelching mind-keigel, when what happened? The summer of 2011 fanboy-movie interjection into the events of the early 1960's pulled me right back out of my parietal lobe.
The movie begins in 1961, and traces its events with the run-up to the moon-landing, positing that we discovered signs of extra-terrestrial life on the moon and that the sole purpose of the mission was to discover what was there before the Russians did. Cut to the landing, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin discover a wrecked Autobot spacecraft. This is all recreated with stock footage and digitally altered historical scenes. It's a ten or fifteen minute opener, requiring more patience from the audience than I ever expected Michael Bay to ask of us.
The mild goodwill that this engenders is spent rapidly as the film returns us to what has to be the worst collection of human characters in a sci-fi/fantasy picture I've ever encountered. The Witwicky family, spazzes all, Megan Fox's replacement model, who serves only to distract the heteros in the audience from their own impatience with the presence of dialogue, and John Turturro's purely awful ex-CIA agent, all are basically useless for the two hours or so we spend with them. The cartoon movie from 1986 didn't rely so heavily on its human characters. Its Autobots and Decepticons were themselves imbued with human characteristics of bravery, self-sacrifice, heroism, a sense of humor, sympathy, or outright ruthless evilness, and the human characters were relegated to the sidelines. I prefer that approach to imbuing no characters, human or machine, with any appealing or believable characteristics whatsoever.
Still my real complaint with these films has been less to do with the appalling tone or values on display, or the casual racism and homophobia (more on that in a moment), but more with the fact that I grew up with the Transformers, and here they just don't feel right. There's too many gears and crap flying around their bodies when they transform, too much detail on each of them, to the point where they often seem formless and indistinct, whether in close-up or longshot. Put them in a remotely cybertronian environment, especially in the case of Decepticons, and the effect is practically camouflage. I wish I could say the editing restraints of 3-D (perhaps the only restraint Michael Bay has encountered to his filmmaking in some fifteen years) make the transformers' scenes more comprehensible, but I don't really think they do.
This is the first film in this series to contain a dramatic plot of some kind, and it deals with Sam Witwicky's emergence into manhood and independence after terrible emasculation. At the start, he has the hottest girlfriend imaginable, but he can't find a job and is forced into a mailroom at some vaguely fascist corporation. It is at this job that an Asian scientist and conspiracy theorist corners him and all but homosexually rapes him in a bathroom stall to get him to admit to being in league with the autobots. I don't know how to adequately describe this scene. It's the most homophobic trash I've seen in a movie aimed at children in, perhaps my entire life. It's like Takeshi Miike done very poorly. After being gay-raped in a bathroom stall and his girlfriend dominated by Patrick Dempsey's evil Decepticon lieutenant character, he flails through the next hour or so until, after the apocalypse starts in Chicago, a marine (Josh Duhamel) hands him a gun. He is now a man. Arc achieved.
A central plot point involves an Autobot act of subterfuge that fools the Decepticons into thinking they've left Earth. They then take over Chicago and start murdering thousands of people, incinerating them like it's Spielberg's War of the Worlds. This is a film aimed at little kids, right? What are they (or we) to make of the Autobots allowing so many humans to lose their lives, just to convince us humans how much we need them? That's not the Optimus I grew up with. He then repeatedly says, arriving just a few moments after several innocent bystanders are annihilated, with regard to Decepticons, "We will kill them all". A far cry from the selfless heroism of "One shall stand, one shall fall".
The twice repeated mockery of Barack Obama, the flick's absolute militarism, its desperate attempt to tack on feelings of victory even after the Lincoln Memorial is destroyed and Chicago is left in ruins, is all just base pandering to a whole section of this country that can't accept that we've lost two wars and are in serious disrepair, as a nation. That we beat the Decepticons is really cold comfort, right?
The set-pieces are fearsome, large, and kind of amazing, particularly an extended sequence of a building falling over while our human protagonists are inside it (which goes on for nearly half an hour). The last hour and a half is so extensive indeed in its action sequences that we are ourselves cowed by its might, and perhaps many of us led to believe this is what an "awesome" movie looks like. In reality it's a cold, empty film, committed to distracting us from our own directionless present.
And with all that dudgeon I seemed to have felt and expressed, it's still just a movie, somehow marginally better than the second one. Someone asked me why John Malkovich and Frances McDormand would accept work in garbage like this (to say nothing of Alan Tudyk!). The reason should be obvious. Add up the total gross of the last five Coen Brothers or Spike Jonze films, and a Miss Pettigrew film, your total won't come close to one of these. I say bless them, all of them, may they each have been paid many riches.
The movie begins in 1961, and traces its events with the run-up to the moon-landing, positing that we discovered signs of extra-terrestrial life on the moon and that the sole purpose of the mission was to discover what was there before the Russians did. Cut to the landing, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin discover a wrecked Autobot spacecraft. This is all recreated with stock footage and digitally altered historical scenes. It's a ten or fifteen minute opener, requiring more patience from the audience than I ever expected Michael Bay to ask of us.
The mild goodwill that this engenders is spent rapidly as the film returns us to what has to be the worst collection of human characters in a sci-fi/fantasy picture I've ever encountered. The Witwicky family, spazzes all, Megan Fox's replacement model, who serves only to distract the heteros in the audience from their own impatience with the presence of dialogue, and John Turturro's purely awful ex-CIA agent, all are basically useless for the two hours or so we spend with them. The cartoon movie from 1986 didn't rely so heavily on its human characters. Its Autobots and Decepticons were themselves imbued with human characteristics of bravery, self-sacrifice, heroism, a sense of humor, sympathy, or outright ruthless evilness, and the human characters were relegated to the sidelines. I prefer that approach to imbuing no characters, human or machine, with any appealing or believable characteristics whatsoever.
Still my real complaint with these films has been less to do with the appalling tone or values on display, or the casual racism and homophobia (more on that in a moment), but more with the fact that I grew up with the Transformers, and here they just don't feel right. There's too many gears and crap flying around their bodies when they transform, too much detail on each of them, to the point where they often seem formless and indistinct, whether in close-up or longshot. Put them in a remotely cybertronian environment, especially in the case of Decepticons, and the effect is practically camouflage. I wish I could say the editing restraints of 3-D (perhaps the only restraint Michael Bay has encountered to his filmmaking in some fifteen years) make the transformers' scenes more comprehensible, but I don't really think they do.
This is the first film in this series to contain a dramatic plot of some kind, and it deals with Sam Witwicky's emergence into manhood and independence after terrible emasculation. At the start, he has the hottest girlfriend imaginable, but he can't find a job and is forced into a mailroom at some vaguely fascist corporation. It is at this job that an Asian scientist and conspiracy theorist corners him and all but homosexually rapes him in a bathroom stall to get him to admit to being in league with the autobots. I don't know how to adequately describe this scene. It's the most homophobic trash I've seen in a movie aimed at children in, perhaps my entire life. It's like Takeshi Miike done very poorly. After being gay-raped in a bathroom stall and his girlfriend dominated by Patrick Dempsey's evil Decepticon lieutenant character, he flails through the next hour or so until, after the apocalypse starts in Chicago, a marine (Josh Duhamel) hands him a gun. He is now a man. Arc achieved.
A central plot point involves an Autobot act of subterfuge that fools the Decepticons into thinking they've left Earth. They then take over Chicago and start murdering thousands of people, incinerating them like it's Spielberg's War of the Worlds. This is a film aimed at little kids, right? What are they (or we) to make of the Autobots allowing so many humans to lose their lives, just to convince us humans how much we need them? That's not the Optimus I grew up with. He then repeatedly says, arriving just a few moments after several innocent bystanders are annihilated, with regard to Decepticons, "We will kill them all". A far cry from the selfless heroism of "One shall stand, one shall fall".
The twice repeated mockery of Barack Obama, the flick's absolute militarism, its desperate attempt to tack on feelings of victory even after the Lincoln Memorial is destroyed and Chicago is left in ruins, is all just base pandering to a whole section of this country that can't accept that we've lost two wars and are in serious disrepair, as a nation. That we beat the Decepticons is really cold comfort, right?
The set-pieces are fearsome, large, and kind of amazing, particularly an extended sequence of a building falling over while our human protagonists are inside it (which goes on for nearly half an hour). The last hour and a half is so extensive indeed in its action sequences that we are ourselves cowed by its might, and perhaps many of us led to believe this is what an "awesome" movie looks like. In reality it's a cold, empty film, committed to distracting us from our own directionless present.
And with all that dudgeon I seemed to have felt and expressed, it's still just a movie, somehow marginally better than the second one. Someone asked me why John Malkovich and Frances McDormand would accept work in garbage like this (to say nothing of Alan Tudyk!). The reason should be obvious. Add up the total gross of the last five Coen Brothers or Spike Jonze films, and a Miss Pettigrew film, your total won't come close to one of these. I say bless them, all of them, may they each have been paid many riches.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Norse Gods and Monsters
The Thor of comic-dom is the most risible character in the Marvel canon, the campiest of all their roster, second only in oafishness to the Hulk (who, of course, can’t help it). He’s given to aggressive histrionics, is silly to his core, and still somehow never draws too much attention to himself in Kenneth Branagh’s uneven, at times entertaining volume in the new Marvel Movie-verse.
Chris Hemsworth is perfectly adequate for Thor’s looks, but isn’t given much room to enunciate from a script that seems to want to cover only the basic ground of the story while never really having much fun. It’s mostly the clever, sometimes beautiful production design, and Kenneth Branagh’s light, barely noticeable direction that achieves the movie’s fairly blithe tone.
Branagh is man-for-hire here, and it’s easy to forget he’s involved in this at all. His films of Shakespeare’s plays have made him a good choice to handle the high mythology and lineal conflicts, but methinks total creative control of this franchise, handed to this director, would’ve been a high-camp experience to put the previous Wolverine entry to shame.
If Marvel has exerted its creative control, that hasn’t produced a movie that takes itself too seriously, either. The film is at its most entertaining in its God-out-of-Asgard scenes set in New Mexico, where Natalie Portman portrays a hunter for signals of extra-terrestrial life, assisted by her stock character/Juno wannabe, and Stellan Skarsgard (whom it was decreed had to be in a Thor movie with that name and lineage). The three main human characters frame the story of Thor’s banishment from Asgard when they discover his fallen body, only to have their backed up evidence taken from them by S.H.I.E.L.D. (Clark Gregg’s cameo here, to frame everything with the upcoming Avengers movie, is welcome and dependable)
The story also involves the ages old conflict between the gods of Asgard and the snow-giants of Jotunheim (or somesuch realm). Anthony Hopkins plays Odin more or less in his sleep, until of course he’s literally put to sleep later on. There’s a trusty team of Thor’s Power-Ranger-like sidekicks who eventually escape to Earth during Loki’s ascendance to the throne, and Idris Elba plays Heimdall (a name I had to look up), guard of the realm.
That’s right, Idris Elba. Squint and you’ll see him through the armor. The true nature of Loki (Tom HIddleston) is revealed soon after Thor’s banishment by Odin, which sets in motion a plot that you will barely remember upon leaving the theater, unless you’re one of a handful of truly committed Thor fans.
The images of Asgard, the mystical (and kind of mystifying) interplanetary transport device, stood guard with dignified authority by Elba’s Hiemdall, the surprising inclusion of Rene Russo, and the general high-adventure feeling of this undertaking, make it better than you might expect. The rainbow bridge, the golden towers, the glinting armor, the not-overlong battle scenes, are all visually very beautiful and engaging. Asgard might be an excitingly memorable place in the movies.
It is possible that Thor has never been made into a film before due to technology being insufficient until recent times to render the final product something not laughably unwatchable. The awesome success of Marvel movies and the impending Avengers film have made this entry altogether inevitable. Hard to say whether more camp would’ve made it even more memorable, but then maybe after the experience of Wolverine, toeing the line was a good choice. In the direction of camp, this installment doesn't even come close.
Chris Hemsworth is perfectly adequate for Thor’s looks, but isn’t given much room to enunciate from a script that seems to want to cover only the basic ground of the story while never really having much fun. It’s mostly the clever, sometimes beautiful production design, and Kenneth Branagh’s light, barely noticeable direction that achieves the movie’s fairly blithe tone.
Branagh is man-for-hire here, and it’s easy to forget he’s involved in this at all. His films of Shakespeare’s plays have made him a good choice to handle the high mythology and lineal conflicts, but methinks total creative control of this franchise, handed to this director, would’ve been a high-camp experience to put the previous Wolverine entry to shame.
If Marvel has exerted its creative control, that hasn’t produced a movie that takes itself too seriously, either. The film is at its most entertaining in its God-out-of-Asgard scenes set in New Mexico, where Natalie Portman portrays a hunter for signals of extra-terrestrial life, assisted by her stock character/Juno wannabe, and Stellan Skarsgard (whom it was decreed had to be in a Thor movie with that name and lineage). The three main human characters frame the story of Thor’s banishment from Asgard when they discover his fallen body, only to have their backed up evidence taken from them by S.H.I.E.L.D. (Clark Gregg’s cameo here, to frame everything with the upcoming Avengers movie, is welcome and dependable)
The story also involves the ages old conflict between the gods of Asgard and the snow-giants of Jotunheim (or somesuch realm). Anthony Hopkins plays Odin more or less in his sleep, until of course he’s literally put to sleep later on. There’s a trusty team of Thor’s Power-Ranger-like sidekicks who eventually escape to Earth during Loki’s ascendance to the throne, and Idris Elba plays Heimdall (a name I had to look up), guard of the realm.
That’s right, Idris Elba. Squint and you’ll see him through the armor. The true nature of Loki (Tom HIddleston) is revealed soon after Thor’s banishment by Odin, which sets in motion a plot that you will barely remember upon leaving the theater, unless you’re one of a handful of truly committed Thor fans.
The images of Asgard, the mystical (and kind of mystifying) interplanetary transport device, stood guard with dignified authority by Elba’s Hiemdall, the surprising inclusion of Rene Russo, and the general high-adventure feeling of this undertaking, make it better than you might expect. The rainbow bridge, the golden towers, the glinting armor, the not-overlong battle scenes, are all visually very beautiful and engaging. Asgard might be an excitingly memorable place in the movies.
It is possible that Thor has never been made into a film before due to technology being insufficient until recent times to render the final product something not laughably unwatchable. The awesome success of Marvel movies and the impending Avengers film have made this entry altogether inevitable. Hard to say whether more camp would’ve made it even more memorable, but then maybe after the experience of Wolverine, toeing the line was a good choice. In the direction of camp, this installment doesn't even come close.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Brrrrreakbeat
I have never seen this video's antecedent, but I'm guessing it sums that all up:
(Other goodies from the Stantons' new album are supplemental with this healthy dose of bass!)
(Other goodies from the Stantons' new album are supplemental with this healthy dose of bass!)
Friday, January 28, 2011
Ffffact Vs Fiction
Most people aren’t born a king or a queen. Woe to those who want not the burden. Consider, in Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, poor George VI, unable even to complete a simple public reading due to his speech impediment. Were he not played with such reasonable humor and simple goodness by Colin Firth, American audiences would be turning their noses at him, as do most of this film’s detractors. Now is not a fashionable time for our thoughts to turn to royalty, certainly not a time to whitewash German appeasement.
Good thing then that our protagonist here is neither the humble Firth or certainly Timothy Spall’s glaring Winston Churchill, but Geoffrey Rush’s perspicacious speech therapist. Yes, we have here the story of a Duke who inherits the throne on account of Edward VIII’s moral turpitude, a story awash in both scandalous palace intrigue and sudden realignment of the throne to the public’s full support against the Nazis (never minding of course the actual turn of events in history outlined here, in what could not reasonably be called a review of the film in question).
That these events all lead to Neville Chamerlain’s and King George’s appeasement to the Nazis and the surrender of the Sudetenland is something we can all look up for ourselves (would Europe have fared better under Edward VIII?).
These may be questions for a film to ask, but they are not central to the action of this film. The King's Speech isn't celebrating the glories of the Monarchy, and indeed, the concept of divine right is nothing if not mocked by Rush’s speech therapist, and still more subtly skewered by Derek Jacobi’s portrayal of a pompous sycophant of an archbishop.
The joy of the film is in the deep friendship between George and Lionel, eventually transcending their different stations in life, and indeed, lasting the rest of their lives. Rush’s Lionel is the sharpest character here, the fool (who loves Shakespeare), who needles and disarms the King until the bond they share becomes the ultimate authority in the room. In order to unlock the key to Firth's stammer, he must first reduce him to vulnerabilities. The Australian insouciance with which he must dismantle royal airs is barely masked mischief for him.
If we are expected by some observers to view this film as an apology for appeasement and a bad reading of history, the actual experience proves that feeling difficult to achieve. It’s an electric thrill, terrifically exciting, more fun than the best action flick this year. The King’s Speech has reached the number two slot at the box office this week, and is this year's most successful indie besides Black Swan and the Coens’ True Grit. This is not because Americans are by and large sympathetic to the Monarchy.
Good thing then that our protagonist here is neither the humble Firth or certainly Timothy Spall’s glaring Winston Churchill, but Geoffrey Rush’s perspicacious speech therapist. Yes, we have here the story of a Duke who inherits the throne on account of Edward VIII’s moral turpitude, a story awash in both scandalous palace intrigue and sudden realignment of the throne to the public’s full support against the Nazis (never minding of course the actual turn of events in history outlined here, in what could not reasonably be called a review of the film in question).
That these events all lead to Neville Chamerlain’s and King George’s appeasement to the Nazis and the surrender of the Sudetenland is something we can all look up for ourselves (would Europe have fared better under Edward VIII?).
These may be questions for a film to ask, but they are not central to the action of this film. The King's Speech isn't celebrating the glories of the Monarchy, and indeed, the concept of divine right is nothing if not mocked by Rush’s speech therapist, and still more subtly skewered by Derek Jacobi’s portrayal of a pompous sycophant of an archbishop.
The joy of the film is in the deep friendship between George and Lionel, eventually transcending their different stations in life, and indeed, lasting the rest of their lives. Rush’s Lionel is the sharpest character here, the fool (who loves Shakespeare), who needles and disarms the King until the bond they share becomes the ultimate authority in the room. In order to unlock the key to Firth's stammer, he must first reduce him to vulnerabilities. The Australian insouciance with which he must dismantle royal airs is barely masked mischief for him.
If we are expected by some observers to view this film as an apology for appeasement and a bad reading of history, the actual experience proves that feeling difficult to achieve. It’s an electric thrill, terrifically exciting, more fun than the best action flick this year. The King’s Speech has reached the number two slot at the box office this week, and is this year's most successful indie besides Black Swan and the Coens’ True Grit. This is not because Americans are by and large sympathetic to the Monarchy.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Beats and Breaks of 2010
2010 began in a "chillwave", or at least that's what the kids were calling it. Dubstep was either in ascendancy or decline, depending on who you talked to, and either way, high energy sounds (especially rock-centric ones) were on the way out. For the most part, the trend away from rock and roll continued (my hetero-lifemate and I defied the trend, perhaps giving it a good send-off down south with this mix), early in the year.
The electro-banger persisted, in spite of those of us on the other side of that Geiger-counter begging people to stop remaking Pon De Floor with a 4/4 (or morse-code).
What follows then is an off-year list, one in which narrative builds gave way to experimentation rather than the search for climactic moments. What did I look for in my sets? The same things I always do, stuff that's good on or off the floor, with or without pills, of the moment but not a slave to it, and quite possibly crossover music for the bleep-blop resistant.
Here goes, in no particular order:
Jamie Lidell - I Wanna Be Your Telephone (Tiga's Party like it's 19909 mix)
Smooth, instrumentally spare, loquacious and surprisingly epic, this is a down, slow and dirty groove good for catchin' 'em unawares. Only for adventurous DJs (DO NOT SPEED THIS UP! 118bpm is just right, don't ruin it):
Scissor Sisters - Invisible Light (Siriusmo mix)
From the Teutonic wonder-kid, this remix is harmonious with the original, able to stand on its own, and just absolutely smashes it, through and through:
BT - Le Nocturne de Lumiere
Go ahead, count the notes. Count the edits. Count the sheer number of sounds. I dare you. Or just take it in. This is what BT does. These Hopeful Machines is as much an attempt at mainstream success as BT has tried since Emotional Technology, and as such it is a beautiful, powerfully earnest, but genuinely emotional and frankly transcendent record of electronic music. The man writes music for healing that works as dance music. I don't care what style you're into, you simply must hear BT, whatever he's doing. This is the most "underground" cut on the record, deep into the second disc, but even at his most anthemic, he could make the most hardened dance-music cynic sit up. As well we all should:
Om Unit - Searching (Adam Freeland mix)
Adam Freeland has had an amazing year, and he's done it on the DL. After two years working on and touring from his Freeland album Cope, he's turned back to DJ sets, touring and trainspotting. His ears manage to find un-charted records that yearn to be heard, making him a DJ in the classical sense. Do yourself a favor, and go download his most recent set here. My goodness, new things you will hear. The set also includes this bangarang fucking remix of Om Unit from late summer:
TWR72 - Shock
The Walk & Rogerseventytwo are two Dutch guys with wild imaginations. To me, this record is breaks. Period. It's the boom-tap, baby, just wobbly, and then that build and release? Flawless. Listen here.
Ramadanman - Work Them
This kid is twelve or some shit. And he has this kind of rhythm structure in his brain. Whatever, he's the closest thing to dubstep I'm really embracing right now, though there are others. This guy won me over with this song, slowly and gradually, and then I began to discover his other work, which is really impressive for a young-un. He's the most accessible experimenter of 2010. Also, this track is definitely breaks, not dub, in case you wanna fight about it:
Coin Operated Boy - Trust Me (Clouds mix)
Heard this track in an Evil Nine set, really contrasted the disco-vibe of theirs, in a good way. Gnarly, that's what this is, and that's what Clouds is. Just sick as fuck:
Evil Nine - Auto
Speaking of their disco-vibe, they've really rocked it out with that. Their brand new label For Lovers and three sets of long-form DJ mixes have really changed their direction for them in the past year. Still, don't fret, they remain, as ever, Evil Nine. Here's a clip previewing their new three-track EP, Auto being the track one:
Sandro Silva & Anjiro Rijo - Fifty What (Dem Slackers mix)
Every DJ needs a good Hattori Hanzo sword, and here's one crafted by Dem Slackers, another ridiculously young producer, this time out of the Netherlands:
Cassius - I <3 U So
We're gonna finish it off with some elder statesmen, the classic duo you may remember from the time of Fatboy Slim and Basement Jaxx (as if now isn't also their time), here's some remarkable and gorgeous stuff from Cassius, producing perhaps the first instance of "Frenchstep" I'm aware of. Take it away, 2010:
The electro-banger persisted, in spite of those of us on the other side of that Geiger-counter begging people to stop remaking Pon De Floor with a 4/4 (or morse-code).
What follows then is an off-year list, one in which narrative builds gave way to experimentation rather than the search for climactic moments. What did I look for in my sets? The same things I always do, stuff that's good on or off the floor, with or without pills, of the moment but not a slave to it, and quite possibly crossover music for the bleep-blop resistant.
Here goes, in no particular order:
Jamie Lidell - I Wanna Be Your Telephone (Tiga's Party like it's 19909 mix)
Smooth, instrumentally spare, loquacious and surprisingly epic, this is a down, slow and dirty groove good for catchin' 'em unawares. Only for adventurous DJs (DO NOT SPEED THIS UP! 118bpm is just right, don't ruin it):
Scissor Sisters - Invisible Light (Siriusmo mix)
From the Teutonic wonder-kid, this remix is harmonious with the original, able to stand on its own, and just absolutely smashes it, through and through:
BT - Le Nocturne de Lumiere
Go ahead, count the notes. Count the edits. Count the sheer number of sounds. I dare you. Or just take it in. This is what BT does. These Hopeful Machines is as much an attempt at mainstream success as BT has tried since Emotional Technology, and as such it is a beautiful, powerfully earnest, but genuinely emotional and frankly transcendent record of electronic music. The man writes music for healing that works as dance music. I don't care what style you're into, you simply must hear BT, whatever he's doing. This is the most "underground" cut on the record, deep into the second disc, but even at his most anthemic, he could make the most hardened dance-music cynic sit up. As well we all should:
Om Unit - Searching (Adam Freeland mix)
Adam Freeland has had an amazing year, and he's done it on the DL. After two years working on and touring from his Freeland album Cope, he's turned back to DJ sets, touring and trainspotting. His ears manage to find un-charted records that yearn to be heard, making him a DJ in the classical sense. Do yourself a favor, and go download his most recent set here. My goodness, new things you will hear. The set also includes this bangarang fucking remix of Om Unit from late summer:
TWR72 - Shock
The Walk & Rogerseventytwo are two Dutch guys with wild imaginations. To me, this record is breaks. Period. It's the boom-tap, baby, just wobbly, and then that build and release? Flawless. Listen here.
Ramadanman - Work Them
This kid is twelve or some shit. And he has this kind of rhythm structure in his brain. Whatever, he's the closest thing to dubstep I'm really embracing right now, though there are others. This guy won me over with this song, slowly and gradually, and then I began to discover his other work, which is really impressive for a young-un. He's the most accessible experimenter of 2010. Also, this track is definitely breaks, not dub, in case you wanna fight about it:
Coin Operated Boy - Trust Me (Clouds mix)
Heard this track in an Evil Nine set, really contrasted the disco-vibe of theirs, in a good way. Gnarly, that's what this is, and that's what Clouds is. Just sick as fuck:
Evil Nine - Auto
Speaking of their disco-vibe, they've really rocked it out with that. Their brand new label For Lovers and three sets of long-form DJ mixes have really changed their direction for them in the past year. Still, don't fret, they remain, as ever, Evil Nine. Here's a clip previewing their new three-track EP, Auto being the track one:
Sandro Silva & Anjiro Rijo - Fifty What (Dem Slackers mix)
Every DJ needs a good Hattori Hanzo sword, and here's one crafted by Dem Slackers, another ridiculously young producer, this time out of the Netherlands:
Cassius - I <3 U So
We're gonna finish it off with some elder statesmen, the classic duo you may remember from the time of Fatboy Slim and Basement Jaxx (as if now isn't also their time), here's some remarkable and gorgeous stuff from Cassius, producing perhaps the first instance of "Frenchstep" I'm aware of. Take it away, 2010:
Monday, November 29, 2010
Fair Game
Neither agitprop nor Jason Bourne-esque spycraft lie at the heart of Doug Liman's Valerie Plame thriller Fair Game. Few attempts are made to elevate your heartrate on the way to a well-known conclusion, and no attempt is made to heavily propagandize the events that lead to that well-known conclusion. Instead, what we have is a strange, thoroughly implausible domestic drama, wherein a hot-headed husband's big mouth gets his wife fired, forcing him to hit the road to clear her name (not to mention provide for their family). Were it not for the events depicted centering so closely on the actual, real world outing of Plame, none of what transpires in the film would have the slightest verisimilitude.
That conflict between the pragmatic, good soldier Plame and the truth-seeking, jusice demanding Wilson is really the main-thread of the movie, which is doubtless an improvement over the Michael Moore speechifying or Oliver Stone psychodrama you might be expecting.
Naomi Watts's Plame and Sean Penn's Joe Wilson are each a workmanlike rendition of a type we've seen lately, the Mr and Mrs. Smith couple, a la Prizzi's Honor (and played out in five or six other films this year). The difference here is they're not superhuman or smug or overtly comical (or assassins). They're real people, extraordinary public servants or not. Things are most interesting here when we see Plame's matter-of-fact approach to concealing her identity, going on the job, interrogating people and collecting intelligence, and finally dealing with her exposure to the limelight.
Watts has a resume filled with serious, difficult roles, and a nack for playing them flawlessly. Penn's close-to-the-heart portrayal of Wilson as a boorish, passionate blow-hard, pursuing the truth at great peril to both of their livelihoods, is as you would imagine it. He's quite good, as usual, and plays the character without over-playing his own personal politics.
The film is not distractingly partisan, save for finding us the fattest Karl Rove in Hollywood. It depicts the Cheney underlings who cooked the books on WMD and then revealed Valerie Plame's identity to the world as thuggish, incompetent and treasonous, which of course, they were.
That conflict between the pragmatic, good soldier Plame and the truth-seeking, jusice demanding Wilson is really the main-thread of the movie, which is doubtless an improvement over the Michael Moore speechifying or Oliver Stone psychodrama you might be expecting.
Naomi Watts's Plame and Sean Penn's Joe Wilson are each a workmanlike rendition of a type we've seen lately, the Mr and Mrs. Smith couple, a la Prizzi's Honor (and played out in five or six other films this year). The difference here is they're not superhuman or smug or overtly comical (or assassins). They're real people, extraordinary public servants or not. Things are most interesting here when we see Plame's matter-of-fact approach to concealing her identity, going on the job, interrogating people and collecting intelligence, and finally dealing with her exposure to the limelight.
Watts has a resume filled with serious, difficult roles, and a nack for playing them flawlessly. Penn's close-to-the-heart portrayal of Wilson as a boorish, passionate blow-hard, pursuing the truth at great peril to both of their livelihoods, is as you would imagine it. He's quite good, as usual, and plays the character without over-playing his own personal politics.
The film is not distractingly partisan, save for finding us the fattest Karl Rove in Hollywood. It depicts the Cheney underlings who cooked the books on WMD and then revealed Valerie Plame's identity to the world as thuggish, incompetent and treasonous, which of course, they were.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Hunting Season
Powerful yearning, for escape from one’s roots, the love of a good woman, and an abandonment of violence as a way of life are all boiling to the rim of Ben Affleck’s comeback in The Town. Here we have, as with the superior Gone Baby Gone, a return to the working-class Bostonian roots of Affleck’s breakout role, as co-star and co-author (with Matt Damon, and most certainly Kevin Smith, respectively) in Good Will Hunting. Affleck takes the starring role this time, and the box-office receipts have proven that to be a decent gambit. Here is a star well past his phony tabloid meltdown and a string of bad pictures, clearly having spent the last five years figuring out where to go from there. His two most recent films suggest he’s back in the game, and would very much like you to consider an end to the backlash against him.
It is, first of all, a good and absorbing film. It’s a heist-movie, co-starring an apparently fat(?) Jeremy Renner and a reliably one-step-behind FBI agent Jon Hamm. It is in many ways a standard one-last-job/shoot-out-with-the-cops flick (To call it a cat-and-mouse game would be to give the cat too much credit). It’s a film of lean, physical toughness and swagger. With any good heist or streets picture, you go for the window dressing, not the frame.
Jeremy Renner plays Affleck’s lifelong friend recently released from prison on a stint that kept Affleck from going there himself. Renner is the wild-card, like his character in The Hurt Locker, only with a self-preservation instinct that won’t outpace the death one. He’s predictable only in the sense that you can easily expect violence from him. At what point it will emerge is anyone’s guess.
The more crucial force in the picture is Jon Hamm’s FBI agent, who, though smart enough to know he has his guys, can’t quite keep up with Affleck. He throws around the word omerta in a strong-arming interrogation session, knows what it means, and knows the guys he’s tailing are bound by it (but doesn’t understand quickly enough how deeply another character becomes bound by it).
The film, while not as great as Gone Baby Gone, speaks to how deeply we may have ourselves underestimated Affleck. In salvaging his career, he has now made two of his best pictures. He’s currently filming his next project for Terrence Malick. People can surprise you from out of the holes they pull themselves.
It is, first of all, a good and absorbing film. It’s a heist-movie, co-starring an apparently fat(?) Jeremy Renner and a reliably one-step-behind FBI agent Jon Hamm. It is in many ways a standard one-last-job/shoot-out-with-the-cops flick (To call it a cat-and-mouse game would be to give the cat too much credit). It’s a film of lean, physical toughness and swagger. With any good heist or streets picture, you go for the window dressing, not the frame.
Jeremy Renner plays Affleck’s lifelong friend recently released from prison on a stint that kept Affleck from going there himself. Renner is the wild-card, like his character in The Hurt Locker, only with a self-preservation instinct that won’t outpace the death one. He’s predictable only in the sense that you can easily expect violence from him. At what point it will emerge is anyone’s guess.
The more crucial force in the picture is Jon Hamm’s FBI agent, who, though smart enough to know he has his guys, can’t quite keep up with Affleck. He throws around the word omerta in a strong-arming interrogation session, knows what it means, and knows the guys he’s tailing are bound by it (but doesn’t understand quickly enough how deeply another character becomes bound by it).
The film, while not as great as Gone Baby Gone, speaks to how deeply we may have ourselves underestimated Affleck. In salvaging his career, he has now made two of his best pictures. He’s currently filming his next project for Terrence Malick. People can surprise you from out of the holes they pull themselves.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
The Soci(opath)al Network
“That’s got to be the land-speed record for talking”
David Fincher’s Facebook "exposé” opens to a roller-coaster of words, no faster in terms of pacing and screw-ball velocity than ones spoken during the set-matches of the rest of the film, but they feel faster. Your ears sit up. The first exchange is between Mark Zuckerberg and his Boston University girlfriend, and it’s more densely packed than an episode of House (if not The West Wing). It reels you in, makes you adjust to the pitch and timbre of the film, and may well be the interaction you’ll need to review the most to get the entire movie. It’s all right there at the start.
Recorded from the perpetual-motion-machine of Aaron Sorkin’s brain, it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether or not what occurs from thereon is even remotely true. We’re witnessing history re-written from the heights. A few facts are certainly inescapable, being that Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, settled out of court with two different parties (or many, many more), and went on to become Charles Foster Kane (in a hoodie).
For those who both snickered at the notion of a Facebook movie being made and at the prospect of Jesse Eisenberg starring in it, you are offered Eisenberg's scrutinizing, contemptuous face, for two whole hours. And, while he’s flaunting your small-mindedness with his pitch-perfect performance, he’d like to thank you now in advance for never again comparing him to Michael Cera. There are fine performances here, particularly from Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield (our incipient Spider Man). What’s more of a surprise is how surely Justin Timberlake takes over the movie halfway through. He fares more than well enough with the speaking of Sorkinese.
David Fincher’s film presents what most people would be convinced are mundane affairs, through his usual shadowy, sepia-lensed viewfinder. In this, he gets the tone of Zuckerberg’s resentment-filled coming-of-age just right. He also takes us deep into the world of the elite Harvard establishment and power-drunk tweener-preneurs. It’s a very interesting film for our resentful times.
It’s also a classic tale of an almost Nixonian triangulator. Spurned from his lack of social and practical acceptance in the highest echelons and clubs, not to mention his puny ineligibility for the rowing team, Zuckerberg is forced to outdo them all.
That starts a war. We see the testimony of the three major parties, the Winklevoss twins, Eduardo Saverin (Garfield) and Zuckerberg, the first two suing the latter for theft of intellectual property, and quite literal disenfranchisement, respectively. The official line of the filmmakers is that they’re presenting a “Rashomon” scenario for the viewers. They claim they don’t know which version of events is correct.
The movie seems to know, however. The entire film flashbacks from its deposition frame-story to a narrative in motion that leads inexorably down Zuckerberg’s byzantine maneuvering and cut-throat deal-making. The endgame is your typical lonely man in a tower, loveless, friendless, and rich.
We’ve seen that movie before, a few times. What we don’t usually see is a protagonist who might not realize what he’s lost; the price of being the world’s youngest billionaire. One is led to believe he didn’t even know he was so Machiavellian, but it’s all right there in the first scene.
It’s a break-up movie, set to Trent Reznor, filmed in Se7en-vision. And it’s the best film made from a Sorkin screenplay yet. Go see it.
David Fincher’s Facebook "exposé” opens to a roller-coaster of words, no faster in terms of pacing and screw-ball velocity than ones spoken during the set-matches of the rest of the film, but they feel faster. Your ears sit up. The first exchange is between Mark Zuckerberg and his Boston University girlfriend, and it’s more densely packed than an episode of House (if not The West Wing). It reels you in, makes you adjust to the pitch and timbre of the film, and may well be the interaction you’ll need to review the most to get the entire movie. It’s all right there at the start.
Recorded from the perpetual-motion-machine of Aaron Sorkin’s brain, it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether or not what occurs from thereon is even remotely true. We’re witnessing history re-written from the heights. A few facts are certainly inescapable, being that Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, settled out of court with two different parties (or many, many more), and went on to become Charles Foster Kane (in a hoodie).
For those who both snickered at the notion of a Facebook movie being made and at the prospect of Jesse Eisenberg starring in it, you are offered Eisenberg's scrutinizing, contemptuous face, for two whole hours. And, while he’s flaunting your small-mindedness with his pitch-perfect performance, he’d like to thank you now in advance for never again comparing him to Michael Cera. There are fine performances here, particularly from Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield (our incipient Spider Man). What’s more of a surprise is how surely Justin Timberlake takes over the movie halfway through. He fares more than well enough with the speaking of Sorkinese.
David Fincher’s film presents what most people would be convinced are mundane affairs, through his usual shadowy, sepia-lensed viewfinder. In this, he gets the tone of Zuckerberg’s resentment-filled coming-of-age just right. He also takes us deep into the world of the elite Harvard establishment and power-drunk tweener-preneurs. It’s a very interesting film for our resentful times.
It’s also a classic tale of an almost Nixonian triangulator. Spurned from his lack of social and practical acceptance in the highest echelons and clubs, not to mention his puny ineligibility for the rowing team, Zuckerberg is forced to outdo them all.
That starts a war. We see the testimony of the three major parties, the Winklevoss twins, Eduardo Saverin (Garfield) and Zuckerberg, the first two suing the latter for theft of intellectual property, and quite literal disenfranchisement, respectively. The official line of the filmmakers is that they’re presenting a “Rashomon” scenario for the viewers. They claim they don’t know which version of events is correct.
The movie seems to know, however. The entire film flashbacks from its deposition frame-story to a narrative in motion that leads inexorably down Zuckerberg’s byzantine maneuvering and cut-throat deal-making. The endgame is your typical lonely man in a tower, loveless, friendless, and rich.
We’ve seen that movie before, a few times. What we don’t usually see is a protagonist who might not realize what he’s lost; the price of being the world’s youngest billionaire. One is led to believe he didn’t even know he was so Machiavellian, but it’s all right there in the first scene.
It’s a break-up movie, set to Trent Reznor, filmed in Se7en-vision. And it’s the best film made from a Sorkin screenplay yet. Go see it.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
A Canard
I won't be writing any sort of stabilized review of Inception until I take my boo to see it next week, and am able to sort it more clearly a second time.
Briefly, I will say, however, something I've said before about different material in the past. The complaint has been surfacing (spoiler?) that the lucid dreaming of these characters is impossible, that is, dreams just don't work like that.
I will not speak to the real world implications of this. Either the conceit of this movie is impossible or it isn't. But.....ahem:
You can't hear explosions in space. You can't bend a spoon with your mind. There are no such thing as replicants. It's almost 2015 and we don't have hoverboards yet.
Nobody talks like an Aaron Sorkin or Quentin Tarantino character in real life.
You don't accept the premise of Inception? Then you weren't paying attention to how carefully they set up the notion that our protagonists have been at this for awhile, are the special ops of the dream-world.
And you're just looking to complain, aren't you?
Briefly, I will say, however, something I've said before about different material in the past. The complaint has been surfacing (spoiler?) that the lucid dreaming of these characters is impossible, that is, dreams just don't work like that.
I will not speak to the real world implications of this. Either the conceit of this movie is impossible or it isn't. But.....ahem:
You can't hear explosions in space. You can't bend a spoon with your mind. There are no such thing as replicants. It's almost 2015 and we don't have hoverboards yet.
Nobody talks like an Aaron Sorkin or Quentin Tarantino character in real life.
You don't accept the premise of Inception? Then you weren't paying attention to how carefully they set up the notion that our protagonists have been at this for awhile, are the special ops of the dream-world.
And you're just looking to complain, aren't you?
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
OH NO NO NO
- Overheard during the Guillermo Del Toro produced recent flick, Splice
Sad, really, that this movie, in this summer of flop-sweat on executive car-seats, had to go down with the rest. It's one of maybe three or so films with any ideas in it to come out since April.
And does it ever have ideas. So many, and so casually strewn in ornamental order, and in so short procession (the themes):
Man plays god, toys with nature
Man splices (titular!) genetic hybrid rabbit/fish/slug that harbors all kinds of disease curing possibilities
Man breaks rules (because man HADN'T broken rules yet!), combines own DNA with that of rabbit, bird, bat, fish (manticore?)
Man and woman have domestic woes. Raise subsequent she-beast together as though it were child
Man reads Frankenstein, realizes things will be JUST FINE
Step back for a second, replace the word man with Sarah Polley, and you've got the real story. Adrien Brody's character is playing rear-guard here. He has to be pleaded with for a good sixty minutes of the movie to be remotely on board with raising the central creature of this film, a female straight out of The Arrival with a stinger on her tail and a longing in her heart.
The film is compulsively watchable, interesting, and deeply creepy from start to finish. It has two or three very memorable scenes and a conclusion that will make or break your willingness to re-evaluate everything that has gone before.
The creature itself is the best reason to see the film. It's called Dren, and is named suddenly and decisively by Sarah Polley's character, who does everything here suddenly and decisively. Dren can proudly stand beside our greatest movie monsters. She's an ably designed, but most of all very well acted character indeed. It's worth remembering the words of Terry Gilliam:
My problem with E.T., and I think it would be a better film, are those big Walter Keane moonstone eyes, because you immediately love that little creature. There’s a moment in the film when they’re dissecting the frogs and they do a close-up of the frogs with those alien slit eyes. Now if E.T. had those eyes, then he’s a really grotesque ugly thing and the kid has to learn to love a grotesque ugly thing. It’s easy to love E.T. It should have been difficult to love E.T.
This movie keeps those moonstone eyes and makes it at times deeply troubling to find any sympathy for this creature, who is just NOT right at all. She shouldn't be. The story's inherent flaw, for me (though I sense the film is fumbling at a comment on our incredibly blasé times), is that our protagonists here take it as a given that they can essentially create life. There is nothing of the human awe we have in Croneberg's The Fly, in his protagonist's technological breakthrough. Stealing from the gods is so old hat.
True, Brody's character (wisely) fears their creation, knows it's just plain wrong, leaving Polley motivated by wounds I'll leave for you to discover. The whole thing is a domesticated affair. Everything is neatly tied into a homemaking, child-raising bow in this movie. It's interesting, but strikingly implausible. Genetic cut-chemists in love or no, if your significant other clones a human lady-bat-scorpion-frog-princess, it's actually perfectly reasonable to protest.
Splice is a series of bad decisions, played out on too everyman a stage. Stephen King is said to populate his stories with ordinary characters in an ordinary world, and confront them with extraordinary circumstances.
The couple in this movie is anything but ordinary, but they act like they're in a late-nineties sitcom together.
Still, it's fairly even-handed, in the sense that they both make about the same number of unfortunate choices. Brody's character takes the cake, by the end, making a profoundly terrible decision, and I must say, I haven't heard an audience talk back to a movie, in this way, in years.
Sad, really, that this movie, in this summer of flop-sweat on executive car-seats, had to go down with the rest. It's one of maybe three or so films with any ideas in it to come out since April.
And does it ever have ideas. So many, and so casually strewn in ornamental order, and in so short procession (the themes):
Man plays god, toys with nature
Man splices (titular!) genetic hybrid rabbit/fish/slug that harbors all kinds of disease curing possibilities
Man breaks rules (because man HADN'T broken rules yet!), combines own DNA with that of rabbit, bird, bat, fish (manticore?)
Man and woman have domestic woes. Raise subsequent she-beast together as though it were child
Man reads Frankenstein, realizes things will be JUST FINE
Step back for a second, replace the word man with Sarah Polley, and you've got the real story. Adrien Brody's character is playing rear-guard here. He has to be pleaded with for a good sixty minutes of the movie to be remotely on board with raising the central creature of this film, a female straight out of The Arrival with a stinger on her tail and a longing in her heart.
The film is compulsively watchable, interesting, and deeply creepy from start to finish. It has two or three very memorable scenes and a conclusion that will make or break your willingness to re-evaluate everything that has gone before.
The creature itself is the best reason to see the film. It's called Dren, and is named suddenly and decisively by Sarah Polley's character, who does everything here suddenly and decisively. Dren can proudly stand beside our greatest movie monsters. She's an ably designed, but most of all very well acted character indeed. It's worth remembering the words of Terry Gilliam:
My problem with E.T., and I think it would be a better film, are those big Walter Keane moonstone eyes, because you immediately love that little creature. There’s a moment in the film when they’re dissecting the frogs and they do a close-up of the frogs with those alien slit eyes. Now if E.T. had those eyes, then he’s a really grotesque ugly thing and the kid has to learn to love a grotesque ugly thing. It’s easy to love E.T. It should have been difficult to love E.T.
This movie keeps those moonstone eyes and makes it at times deeply troubling to find any sympathy for this creature, who is just NOT right at all. She shouldn't be. The story's inherent flaw, for me (though I sense the film is fumbling at a comment on our incredibly blasé times), is that our protagonists here take it as a given that they can essentially create life. There is nothing of the human awe we have in Croneberg's The Fly, in his protagonist's technological breakthrough. Stealing from the gods is so old hat.
True, Brody's character (wisely) fears their creation, knows it's just plain wrong, leaving Polley motivated by wounds I'll leave for you to discover. The whole thing is a domesticated affair. Everything is neatly tied into a homemaking, child-raising bow in this movie. It's interesting, but strikingly implausible. Genetic cut-chemists in love or no, if your significant other clones a human lady-bat-scorpion-frog-princess, it's actually perfectly reasonable to protest.
Splice is a series of bad decisions, played out on too everyman a stage. Stephen King is said to populate his stories with ordinary characters in an ordinary world, and confront them with extraordinary circumstances.
The couple in this movie is anything but ordinary, but they act like they're in a late-nineties sitcom together.
Still, it's fairly even-handed, in the sense that they both make about the same number of unfortunate choices. Brody's character takes the cake, by the end, making a profoundly terrible decision, and I must say, I haven't heard an audience talk back to a movie, in this way, in years.
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