Monthly Archive for March, 2009

I Love the Smell of Cinematography in the Morning

Published on March 27, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Sup, Dear Reader? It’s been a long day, but a good one, so I’m in a relatively peppy mood. I was on a shoot today from 7 AM (which is kid’s stuff compared to some of the call times this business demands) to 7:30 PM, serving as the director of photography. While I’m far from experienced in this position, I must admit I find myself enjoying it way more than I thought I would. It’s fun, in a way, to disengage from the director’s worries and focus on pretty pictures, evocative lighting, good framing. It’s a highly technical, insanely busy job, and it always leaves you feeling important.

The project was interesting, since it did not feature any actors. My director had recently lost his grandmother, and her house remained untouched, so he decided to do an experimental documentary about the memories associated with things we leave behind. The topic sounds a little dry until you see the house: vintage 70s architecture, absolutely wall-to-wall pack rat clutter, and a gorgeous view of the ocean and the mountains. There were spare engine parts sitting around in the alleys, dozens of paintings all over the walls, and all kinds of visually evocative things like that.

On budget and time constraints such as ours, my preferred method of color control is lying to the white balance, which is basically the same as deliberately choosing exterior film stock to shoot inside. It’s an easy trick, you just show the camera a blue piece of paper (or in this case, a white sheet of paper with a blue gel over the lens) and press white balance, thus telling the EX-1 that “This is white.” Of course, it isn’t white, but now your colors get adjusted, and the light around you begins to look like its opposite on the color wheel. Give the camera a blue sheet, you get orange light, or vice versa. There are many subtleties to this trick, in particular being careful not to overdo it and playing with shades of color, but in the broad strokes that’s how it goes. The result was a pleasing golden hue that my producer jokingly called, “Looking through a glass of iced tea.”

The day honestly flew by, it was a blast getting to work exclusively with locations and not actors. Nothing against our dear thespians, we love them, but from a technical standpoint it was the perfect training exercise for a person like me. I got a chance to play with rooms, giving them different emotions by manipulating the fundamentals of photography. I also had a gaffer who moved my lights for me, while I shouted out, “More…more…less!” and I’m always up for that.

We got stuck in a wall of traffic on the way back, and I can definitively say that’s the first time I’ve experienced any such event in Los Angeles. It doesn’t occur naturally here, traffic always moves no matter how bad it is, but a quick glance at SigAlert.Com (which is wonderful) revealed that there had been three accidents on the 110 about a mile ahead of us, and it was already Friday night, so there wasn’t much way around it.

Anyway,

In my research for various projects, I decided to read Albert Einstein’s “Relativity.” I do not recommend it. In the course of a few minutes, that son of a gun will destroy your most basic assumptions about time and space with perfect scientific logic. He will crush your head in. I put the book down at page 45 when I realized I was raising and lowering my hands in front of my face, trying to understand that their movement was only relative, and could never have absolute trajectory. Ouch.

As far as I understand it, which is not very, he argues that time is not a solid thing we’re all forced through, but a system of ordering that our minds necessarily produce to understand things passing in front of them. Therefore, time is not an absolute thing in the way you might assume, but an independently rendered phenomenon from brain to brain that syncs up; it’s a lot like the internet, I think. Spacetime, on the other hand, is kind of a different thing, but I’m not going to get into that. You don’t even want to hear his crap about people walking backwards on a moving train, it will make your face melt.

Interestingly, Einstein goes out of his way to proclaim that he has made many mistakes, and that one in particular is his “greatest blunder.” The idea, which he so callously dismissed, was that there might be some kind of anti-gravity force, some kind of repulsive energy that pushed things away from each other while gravity tried to bring them closer. He came up with it while trying to defend a static universe, then discarded it with some amount of embarrassment.

Flash forward a few years,

Scientists are studying the Big Bang. Stephen Hawking, in his book “The Theory of Everything,” postulates that the universe has been expanding ever since its creation, like ripples in a pond, and that at some point it will reach a point where the momentum of cosmic genesis will propel it no longer and it will contract, much the same way a stone tossed in the air reaches a peak, holds for a moment, then descends. In the 1990s, scientists decided to start studying this rate of decline, to try and figure out when the universe would stop moving.

Problem was, they came to believe they were doing their math wrong, because the answers came out negative every time. That just couldn’t be right, so they kept re-checking, until a bizarre kind of desperation set in where they were forced to stare up at the sky and go, “What the hell?” Eventually, someone finally pointed out the obvious:

The universe’s expansion is not slowing down, it is speeding up. A lot. Not only is existence getting larger, it’s getting larger at a faster and faster rate. Whoops. After some serious head-scratching, our smartest sky-watchers concluded with a shrug that there must be some kind of repulsive energy up there, something that gravity overcame while matter was all closer together, but had since been getting its foot in the door inch by inch and finally started winning the arm wrestling match. A little later, someone remembered that ol’ Albert had suggested this idea decades ago, then tossed it off. One physicist concluded with a chuckle, “His blunders are our great discoveries.”

Cool, huh?

This Time It’s War

Published on March 25, 2009 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Hello to all from a bubbling, excited film nut who just returned from an exquisite screening of “Aliens” at the Arclight Cinemas in Sherman Oaks. Using one of the original 35mm prints (drool), the good folks at this wonderful movie theater loaded us up with liquor and plopped us down in their comfiest chairs for a delicious evening with one of the classic science fiction films. “Aliens” is a peculiar movie in terms of reputation; it sits eternally on the cusp of being underrated, overshadowed by Ridley Scott’s original, while its Rotten Tomatoes-meter sits squarely at 100% and many of the greatest film critics list it within their top 25 of all time. It is a film everyone knows, yet is in constant need of defending.

Like its peppier genre cousin, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” James Cameron’s follow-up to “Terminator” is a masterpiece, an ultimate achievement nearly spotless in design and execution. While the original was essentially a haunted house film in space, “Aliens” is more of a combat thriller: there are more explosions, more deaths, more aliens, and while this does make it less frightening in the strictest sense, there’s no question that any sane person will arrive at the credits crawling on their knees, begging for mercy. “Aliens” is an adrenaline-soaked roller-coaster ride, a film that utterly earns its famous tag line: “This time it’s war.”

Interestingly, I’ve always found this movie and “Raiders” to be kind of long lost family members, maybe cousins or even stepbrothers. They were made at separate times with almost no crew in common, but their deftness at crafting such excellence from the action thriller genre makes them feel kindred to me. Also, both are about reluctant heroes taking journeys into peril, constantly outnumbered, just barely surviving, scrapping together resources. “Aliens” is a much darker film, but ironically, it’s ending is far more upbeat than “Raiders’.” It’s funny how that goes.

The original “Alien” is a great film, no question, but I think the sequel overcomes it on grounds of story. So palpable is the atmosphere in Ridley Scott’s original that the viewer scarecly has time to think, but once you do start thinking as you head for your car, it becomes clear that there really wasn’t much of an emotional journey going on. “Alien” is a cold, nihilistic film about the inevitability of death; its one survivor is more lucky than anything else, and aside from severe trauma neither she nor anyone else has much of an arc.

“Aliens” is quite different. Our Ripley starts from a battered, destroyed emotional state and, in facing her demons again, comes to grips with them and triumphs over her fear. That is a character with a real journey. As Cameron himself once pointed out: “Ripley physically survived the first film, but she emotionally survives this one.” The subtexts at play here are also tremendous, the most obvious (I think) being a sly comparison to the Vietnam War: we have better technology, so why are we losing? Also striking is the recurring motif of motherhood: Ripley de facto adopts a traumatized little girl named Newt, and must fight the Alien Queen, who feels maternal instincts towards her entire species, to protect her. This theme is also present in the original: the artificial intelligence that guides the Nostromo is called “Mother.” Of course, in the first picture, parental figures are misleading, untrustworthy, and at best impartial. In “Aliens,” mothers are protectors and fighters.

Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley is, I think, the feminist Holy Grail. She is a character and a woman at the same time, neither at the expense of the other. This difficult mark is hit with excruciating infrequency: women are either sexed up morons, whores, or icy, masculine popsicles. Nothing frustrates me more than supposedly “liberated” female characters who are basically men with boobs, because this slyly suggests that tough women are more like men, but Ripley is strong and determined without ever ceasing to be feminine. There are precious few other examples of this, and it’s worth savoring.

Anyway.

I haven’t talked about video games in awhile, so let me weigh in on a few things here. For those of you who don’t play, stick around! You might learn somethin’!

-I played the demo for “Wanted: Weapons of Fate.” It sucks, like most movie-to-game adaptations (and vice versa, come to think of it). The cover system is aped from Gears of War, the sl0-mo from “Max Payne” or “FEAR,” and the “bending bullets” thing is not that cool. On top of that, your character moves in a really clumsy way: his legs are like twigs, and his movement is so quick that it’s unnatural, it’s like someone pressed fast forward. He has no weight whatsoever, which drives me crazy.

-”Halo Wars” continues to stun, proving to me that it’s positive-but-not-astronomical ratings come exclusively from reviewer bias; namely, these guys are all geeks and have played more complex RTS games, and they grade this one down for keeping it simple. I find this highly unfair. Not being like other games you’ve played is not a flaw if that decision benefits the experience.

-I picked up “MadWorld” for the Wii, which is probably the most gruesome game I’ve ever experienced, and I’m not wild about that fact, but its unique art direction was just too compelling to pass up. Fortunately, the characters are all highly stylized cartoons, so the violence has about as much impact as Looney Tunes. The gameplay is smooth and enjoyable, the boss battles are epic, so by and large I’m pretty pleased. If you’re in the mood for a brawler and don’t mind a little goofy brutality, you should look it up.

Anyway.

I had a crazy dream last night. Want to hear it? Of course you do, Dear Reader, you sick, curious monster.

It starts with me trying to catch a bus, the 200 to be exact (which I ride to school). There were dozens of them everywhere, except they were like yellow school buses, and I kept missing them. In front of me was a girl I knew in high school, running around trying to catch them as well. When we eventually got on one, I sat down and next to her and introduced myself. She informed me that we had never known each other, and she was born and raised in South Carolina.

After class, I was picked up in another bus (but this one wasn’t a school bus) by mom, dad and Caroline (sorry Brady and Holly, no dice). We drove out on a freeway at dusk towards an area that looked like Kennedy Space Center in Florida: lots of swamp and greenery, and a huge shuttle station off in the distance. I kept mentioning to everyone how it freaked me out a little to look at something as massive as the space shuttle, because it was so big, and every now and then I would have to look away. I said I was scared to ride in one. Caroline turned around (she was sitting in shotgun) and emphatically disagreed, saying she would love to.

A moment later, I was laying down inside a high-tech-looking coffin made of steel, with a pool of water that just barely did not cover my mouth or nose. I had some kind of plastic mask on my face. I somehow knew I was riding in a space shuttle. After a few minutes, it was time to get out, so I opened my casing, took the mask off, and got out. Next to me was dad, who had also just emerged. “How do you like that?” he said, “Perfect imprints.” I turned around and saw that the plastic mask I was wearing now looked exactly like my face, skin color and all, minus any eyes. Dad’s was also a perfect match. I stared at this.

End of dream.

All right, you amateur Freuds: explain that one!

Spring Break Draws to a Close

Published on March 20, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Goodness gracious I need a haircut. It’s disgusting, people. The only way I’ve been able to keep it under control is by adoptiong much more rigorous standards of washing and conditioning than I normally have to, but even that is not going to hold out forever.

Anyway, on to other things. I want to have an interesting discussion with you, dear reader, about violence in entertainment. How does it affect us? Some studies I’ve read suggest that young children are highly influenced by things they see on a TV screen, and will emulate them very precisely, and although I doubt that adults have this same problem, in what way does this tendency survive into a grown person?

I ask because I am puzzled by my own nature. It occurs to me recently how bizarre my rules of discomfort are. For example: I have absolutely no stomach for torture scenes of any kind, and most of the time they are in a movie they severely diminish my enjoyment of what I’m watching. On the other hand, if a movie depicts combat between two opponents, I can watch almost anything (although my limits have been discovered even in this regard) without minding. Now is this a ludicrous, contradictory position to have? I can’t ever figure it out.

Tone also plays a large role in things. Many horror movies, for example, are intended to have a strong leaning of dark comedy which off-sets the grotesqueness of what happens in them, but only rarely does this actually work on me. I watch people sit through slasher films and laugh their heads off, unable to disconnect from what’s happening and “enjoy” it. And then even if I can sit back and giggle, I’m not sure why.

For instance, I find Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” to be a hilariously good time. I found Jamie Gunn’s recent “Slither” incredibly disturbing. Now these are both gross-out horror films which set a tone more like Looney Tunes than reality, they are both intensely comedic, and they’re both very well made, so why does one work and the other doesn’t? Why does one feel more like Wile E Coyote sticking dynamite in his mouth than the other? I have a few theories on things that instantly turn me off the “whee!” bandwagon:

1. Begging for Life. I think this is a major one for me, I cannot possibly “have fun” while someone realistically pleads for mercy and then does not receive it. This bothers me more than all the gore in the world, I just can’t stand it, because it makes me feel pity, then anguish, then remorse, none of which are a “good time.” If two people are hacking each other up, that’s gross, but at least they’re highly-motivated combatants who are fighting for something. That I don’t mind. Human beings stripped of agency and humiliated does.

2. Realistic Gore. I feel like the problem with these “it’s just for fun!” horror movies is they do too good a job with the corn syrup. I mean let’s be honest, Bugs Bunny has technically committed some serious atrocities on hapless victims, but they never feel that way, do they? The reason is that the consequences are always unrealistic. The problem with comedic horror is too often it wants to have its cake and eat it, too: playing incredibly realistic butcherings for “laughs.” Some live-action movies have achieved this: Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” has a few death scenes where blood behaves in a way so utterly ridiculous that it actually is funny instead of being gross. If you want me “laughing,” then don’t make this crap look real!

I think sometimes this is just an honest mistake. When you’re making a movie, splattering fake blood everywhere, you’re constantly more aware that this is all just pretend, and in your eyes it is funny, because there is just no way you’re mistaking this for reality. But if you’ve done a good job, the audience doesn’t benefit from that detachment. Yes, we could detach ourselves forcibly, we could do that with “Schindler’s List” if we wanted to, but it should be your job to help us do that if comedy is what you want.

3. Only Killing Women and Black People. Red flag, guys. No good. It’s not that women or African-Americans can’t be killed in a horror movie, far from it, but when they’re the only ones biting the dust, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Yuck.

4. Overly Realistic Emotion. If you want to make a comedy-horror flick, the emotional range of your characters needs to be completely committed to this. Your characters can be “scared,” absolutely, but as we discussed above, if that crosses a line into anguish, it’s going to pull me out. The quintessential master of this is Bruce Campbell’s Ash from the “Evil Dead” series. Here is a guy who saws his own hand off with a chainsaw and makes it funny. It’s all in the acting, in the tone set by the director. Again, allow me to reference Looney Tunes, where there were amputations of almost any body part, and often horrified reactions to boot, but if you play it correctly, we know what you’re getting at.

5. Lack of Scares. Honestly, this is a big problem I had with “Slither,” and one of the reasons it didn’t feel fun to me: it just wasn’t scary at all, which left me to concentrate on how gross it was. Keeping some fear in the mix is necessary: it heightens the adrenaline level, which makes the audience a ticking time bomb of either screams or uproarious laughter. When you pay off a “joke” in a comedy-horror flick, our laugh should be a mix of “that’s funny” and “oh thank God because I was terrified.” If we have too much time to really look at what’s happening, I think it’s going to stop being funny.

Anyway, those are a few thoughts. I know these may not hold true for everyone, because tolerances are different, but for me, these are the essential steps. Movies like “Evil Dead” and “Shaun of the Dead” really nail this experience for me, they keep me laughing and gripping my seat at the same time. Honestly, comedy-horror might be one of the hardest genres to perfect, since it combines two of the most unforgiving realms of storytelling.

I don’t even know how I got started on that.

Wow

Published on March 18, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

So I just watched the “Kings” premiere on Hulu.com. I really think it’s terrific, I whole-heartedly endorse it. Word around the campfire is that it had a really rocky start in the ratings department, which doesn’t surprise me, because the ad campaign did little to inform potential viewers of the brilliant concept (modernization of the Book of Kings) at play, nor of the inspired, elegant execution. I fear for the future of this compelling series, but oh well, some of the greatest television of all time was prematurely canceled. It is the way of things.

Mom and dad, Brady and Holly, Caroline, anyone else with a love for the Word, you in particular need to watch this. As avid Bible readers, like myself, you will get an absolute thrill from seeing the source material treated with such reverence and creativity. They’re loyal to the original story, but also playful and inspired, creating a delightful spin on a classic. I have little but positive things to say. Here’s the link. Watch it.

And to answer your question before you ask it: Yes, they maintain God’s primary role in the story. Incredible.

Diminishing Returns

Published on March 18, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Returning again to the topic of the “Watchmen” movie, I saw it again today and was less impressed than the first go-round. Not a good sign. The graphic novel is practically built on repeat customers, but I feel the drastic weekend fall-off the film experienced last weekend suggests something my experience today corroborates: this thing doesn’t age, or improve with closer examination. That’s disappointing, and an obvious sign that they missed something. I will leap to the defense, however, of British thesp Matthew Goode, who plays Ozymandias. Many people have derided his performance, but I though it was mesmerizing, exactly the kind of acting I see in my mind when I write things. I love film acting, it’s so intimate that you can turn the smallest flickers into gigantic expressions.

Unrelated to this, I also watched “P2″ last night on Netflix Instant Streaming. It’s a fairly low-radar horror flick that came out a couple of years ago and mostly passed by unnoticed. I have no major problem with that, although I will admit it’s not really half-bad. It’s about a career-oriented young woman who gets stuck in a parking garage on Christmas Eve with a psychopathic parking attendant. The good news here is that the antagonist is an actual character, we get a real sense of his motives, and they have little to do with actually harming our protagonist, which makes the story more unique than the trailers wanted you to believe. Also in the positives is Wes Bentley as the attendant, who does a fantastic job creating layers in his character, especially during the first two acts; as the movie runs out of clever things to say, he is reduced to frothing at the mouth, but this is far from Wes’ fault. Nice job, dude. Some props also to Rachel Nichols, who does the best she can with an absolutely nothing character. I’m getting to that.

As for the not-so-great column, the movie’s not scary enough, but for a very noble reason. Steering mostly clear of standard slasher fare, “P2″ wants to be more of a psychological thing, and I’m totally down for that, but the sense of threat is not well-sustained. Also problematic is that the bad guy is a far more interesting character than our “hero,” who is mostly predictable and dull, save for a nice spark of righteous fury at the very end. If I had written this movie, I seriously doubt I would have told it from Nichols’ character’s point of view, since she’s really kind of an object to Thomas (the bad guy), and there’s not much to do with her. Several characters receive a healthy dose of Thomas’ wrath for doing things he perceives as slights to Angela (the hero), and I might have centered the story more on them, since they have much more to fear, and their perspective on these events would be totally unique to the horror genre so far. Also, there’s a grisly death in the beginning that does not work. I mean they take the gore way over the top for this thing, and all I could think about was corn syrup and set dressing (and may I remind you I’m a total wimp). It wasn’t even really shocking, it was just pointless; it felt like grabbing at straws.

Movie gore is interesting. Correctly employed, it’s a powerful tool, but it takes only the most adroit filmmaker to understand when this is. Rob Zombie movies come up with more ways to slaughter imaginary people than you can possibly imagine, but no one remembers them, no one is haunted by them, because they’re hatchet jobs. Take, on the other hand, the shower scene in “Psycho.” Here is a scene with maybe five seconds of on-screen gore that is still buried in the American psyche to this day. Alfred Hitchcock, because he was Alfred Hitchcock, knew that you needed to see blood, you needed to feel the reality of the murder, and he didn’t shy away from this. However, he also understood that his job was not to depict the murder anatomically, but to give your mind the ingredients to create it yourself, which is always infinitely more shocking. So, he gave us only glimpses of blood, only a hint of the knife going in and coming out, only a few moments of Janet Leigh’s scream. He gave his audience the raw materials of fear, and only the bare minimum of what we needed. Anything more was not serving the story. Anything more was pointless. This is what offends me so much about this torture porn stuff: not only is it sick and disgusting, it’s not even good filmmaking.

Ah, but I’m off on a rant again. Let’s talk about something else.

I’m just about to go watch the Series Premier of that new show “Kings,” which I’ve heard is a modern re-telling of the Biblical book of the same name. I have really, really high hopes for its success, as that is a genius idea. I’m not reading any reviews, I don’t want to be biased at all, let’s just…see where it goes…

Curse You, Sam Raimi!

Published on March 15, 2009 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

Yes, I said it! A pox on the house of Raimi! Why did he choose to release the utterly terrifying trailer for his new horror movie, “Drag Me To Hell,” on this quiet March evening when I am completely by myself? Why did he do it? Does he like to torment me? I’ve been hearing about this project for awhile, so I didn’t hesitate in scooping up a little preview when I saw it on Variety.com. Little did I know I was in for a pretty spine-tingling two minutes which would cause me to strain my neck from looking over my shoulder for the rest of the evening.

I think the reason Sam Raimi is often so good at horror films when other guys languish is because he doesn’t take them too seriously. The tone of his films is always unpredictable, veering quietly from seriousness to absurdity, and such a light-on-its-feet disposition can serve a thriller quite well by keeping the audience off-balance. Yes, we all know that it’s great to go all Ridley Scott and make something super-serious like “Alien,” but there’s quite a bit to be said for pinches of comedy actually making horror flicks scarier. It’s almost as if the viewer stops trusting the director, thinking, “If this guy will take such a scary scene and make it campy, he’ll do anything! He’s a wild man!”

Go watch it, it really is pretty creepy.

http://www.dragmetohell.net/

In unrelated news, I’ve also been watching a Kung Fu masterpiece called “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.” Pretty much your stereotypical cheesy martial arts flick, but it’s all part of the charm, and the rigorous training the protagonist endures at the titular Kung Fu temple is extraordinary, as good as any training sequence ever filmed. The fight choreography is also magnificent, and I sincerely mean that; it’s held back only slightly by the conspicuously fake “blades” sometimes wielded by the characters.

I’m beginning to have a real fondness for these kinds of movies, and the wide-eyed earnestness that makes them so appealing. Their B-movie veneer betrays compelling, if melodramatic, narratives that are easy to get wrapped up in. The action scenes are lovingly constructed, a far cry from the crass cut-and-paste jobs typically displayed in Western cinema, and there’s a real art to how the performers carry them out. On the whole, Kung Fu movies are just fun: fun to watch, fun to think about later, fun to talk about. Other types of action movies will split your head open with gore and ear-piercing sound effects, but this stuff is a total delight. Good times.

Guest Author

Published on March 15, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Although my wife is not technically writing this next part, I am transcribing a speech that she gave me pretty much verbatim. I found it so hilarious I had her tell it to me a few times, so I could memorize it.

“Being married to you is a weird experience. I came home last night hoping we could spend some time together, because we’d had so many guests in town and you’d been so busy with school, but when I got in the door I knew that was not going to happen.”

But why, I queried, not really remembering anything specific about this day?

“Because when I walked in, you were sitting at the computer, listening to 15th century Gregorian Chants. You had ‘Paradise Lost’ open on your left, The Bible on your right, Dante’s ‘Inferno’ was on the floor, and you were staring at a picture of Bob Dylan.”

Why didn’t you say hello?

“I did.”

Didn’t I respond?

“No. You turned around in your chair, said ‘I’m onto something,’ then spun back around.”

She would later tell me, as she has many times, that my lifelong avoidance of substance abuse only makes this kind of behavior even harder to explain. I sympathize with her, I really do, but I have no idea what to tell her. She put on that ring, she agreed to come through the looking glass, so she’d best prepare herself for Wonderland.

So! I finally acquired a DVD of one of my favorite movies, “A Bronx Tale.” It is an utter travesty that this thing is so hard to find. For those of you who don’t know, this masterpiece is the directorial debut of Robert De Niro, starring Bob himself and Chazz Palminteri. A gripping coming-of-age story, “A Bronx Tale” centers on Calogero Anello, a young Italian-American growing up in the heart of New York City. Calogero’s father, played by De Niro, is a hard-working bus driver, devout Catholic, and committed family man; he knows his neighborhood is crawling with mafia, but his strong sense of right and wrong keeps their influence out of his home. Young Calogero, on the other hand, is romanced by the respect and power these mobsters command, especially the local boss, Sonny (played by Palminteri). After a chance encounter, Sonny befriends the boy (much to his father’s dismay), and so begins the story of two competing father figures, and the choices that decide what kind of man a child will become.

The magic of this movie is in the three-dimensional characters. Sonny is not a cold-blooded killer, he’s a Machiavellian survivor, and he loves young Calogero like a son. The debate is never whether Cee (his nickname) will become a gangster himself, because Sonny expressly forbids this: “This is my life. It’s not for you.” Nor is Lorenzo (the father) an unblemished saint: he can barely put food on the table for his family, and while his religious views make him accepting, he still wrestles with prejudice in a way that Sonny does not, especially against the black community. These two men are not vague metaphors, they are real people from whom real life lessons must be learned. And when they come to blows with one another, fighting for the soul of this young man they both care about, it’s like watching titans facing off.

Here is a film about the importance of family values, doing the right thing, living a clean life so you can look at yourself in the mirror at night. Here is a film about the kind of wisdom that only life imparts, about the difference between a kid and a man, and why you must never forget that you have a choice. A lesser film would cast mobsters as mindless thugs, but “A Bronx Tale” shows us that even criminals have hearts. It lets us see the compassion and wisdom of Sonny, not because that makes his path the right one, but because it’s the truth. If anything, “A Bronx Tale” makes itself an even more ardent defense of clean living by demonstrating how good people can be destroyed by the little compromises they negotiate with their values.

You probably won’t be terribly shocked to discover that “A Bronx Tale” is a true story, and that the man who really lived it is none other than Chazz Palminteri himself. Chazz originally debuted the story of his childhood as a play, which was met with huge success, but he wouldn’t agree to a movie deal until someone promised him he could portray Sonny. Watching the finished film, I can’t imagine anyone else doing it justice; Palminteri is graceful and menacing, tough as a coffin nail and sharp as a tack. What an experience it must have been for him to step into the shoes of a man who shaped his life when he was young. There are some early scenes in the film where young Calogero does his best to imitate Sonny’s every movie; I wonder if Chazz ever smiled to himself on set, and realized he was still doing the same thing.

Didn’t See That Coming

Published on March 8, 2009 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Weird. “Watchmen” only grossed about $55 million this weekend. That’s far from a flop, but the same director took in over $70 million two years ago around the same month with “300,” and that IP was far less known than this one. I’m particularly baffled at this because the flick seemed to have a lot of appeal across age and gender demographics, so how could the receipts be so modest?

Of course, Warner Bros. official statement is that “expectations were met,” but in an age where opening weekends are king, that is code for, “What the hell just happened?” These guys want their press releases to be full of, “Blown away” and “Exceeded estimates,” and when they’re not, you can bet they have some board meetings. I wouldn’t be too worried about it, honestly: the movie’ word of mouth isn’t fabulous, but it’s good enough to sustain a modest little BO run and then it’ll slaughter DVD and Blu-Ray sales.

I hope against hope that “Watchmen’s” slight disappointment may originate in the movie simply not being good enough. I’ve always longed for a theater-going culture that led the major studios about with a carrot and a stick, punishing shoddiness and rewarding quality, but the obscene profits turned by the “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequels and “Twilight” seem to counter the idea. Lately, though, this kind of thing has kept happening. Little gems like Liam Neeson’s “Taken” keep destroying the competition and baffling the analysts, and their only fuel is satisfied customers (“Taken,” by the way, is no masterpiece, but it’s better than most of the Jason Statham crap in the same genre).

Anyway, it would make sense: “Watchmen” was sort of good but not wonderful, and it made decent money but not a ton of it, so the relationship seems logical.

But moving right along…

One of the things seeing that movie gave me was an overwhelming reminder of my love for Bob Dylan. I think I first bought a Dylan record when I was in high school, I’m pretty sure it was “Blonde on Blonde,” and I absolutely hated it. It takes a long time to get past his singing voice, particularly on that album, which I think features his weakest vocal performances. It was a textbook example of me trying to like something because I was so regularly informed of its greatness. I’m not sure I ever gave up, per se, but I definitely stuffed the CD in a corner and ignored it for awhile.

I’m not positive what turned me around, it was a slow process, but it probably began when I started writing lyrics of my own. One of the things you quickly realize if you try your hand at songwriting is that clarity is usually your enemy, because it narrows the listener’s experience and makes it corny. Being too oblique is also bad, of course, so the goal is to hit somewhere in the middle: to evoke strongly, but not too specifically, so your audience can bring something of themselves to the music and have a more personal experience. The wonderful thing about this method is that every person will find something different, but each interpretation will be part of a cohesive whole. It’s an amazing thing.

Now where did this style come from? Bob Dylan, more than any other one person. He is the first and, unfortunately, still by the far the best. In my first draft of this entry, I made a list of every emotion or tone that Dylan had mastered, and which song he did it with, but the thing took forever to read so I canned it. Suffice to say that if you’ve felt it, Bob has constructed a masterpiece about it.

Over time, the power of his lyrics and the conviction with which they were sung won me over, creeping into my heart whether I liked it or not. The apocalyptic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” reminds me of the prophets of the Old Testament, crying out warnings and signs with a breathless fury. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is a delicate, tender lyrical masterpiece, softly weaving threads of bitterness and forgiveness into the standard break-up song. “Masters of War” is probably the angriest song I’ve ever heard, a seething ocean of righteous fury. The enigmatic “Ballad of a Thin Man” evokes a cold, mean narrator mocking a helpless target, deliberately confusing his attempts to understand him and spitting poison in his face. Nothing new can possibly be said about “Like A Rolling Stone.”

And then there’s Dylan the man, maybe the hardest part of this whole equation. It would be too simple to call him a “jerk,” but he’s earned the title many times. He’s distant, cold, off-putting, impossible to pin down, constantly angering the people who thought they knew him. Roger Ebert once wrote that the problem is his music: the stuff is good at capturing how we feel, we logically insist that the man who made it must also do the same. He just doesn’t. Bob Dylan may be one of the most lost human beings in existence, the same incredible sensitivity that lifts his music into greatness also casts him on the waves of time, searching for an identity. Googling pictures of Bob Dylan produces a myriad of outfits and hair-dos, none of which look like they could possibly belong to the same man.

As an artist, I think I’m better equipped to understand this than most. Creating worthwhile art requires the nurturing of a personality that is hostile to well-adjusted living. You have to feel the tiniest tremors within yourself and others, and opening yourself up like that makes you unstable. The defining struggle of my life has been to have my cake and eat it too, to walk on both sides of the fence, and it’s only remotely possible because of the grace of God. Watching Bob careen wildly through his existence, I know exactly what it feels like, because some part of me is doing it with him.

Review: “Watchmen”

Published on March 7, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

My favorite little stat to spout at people about Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” the 12-issue comic series upon which Zack Snyder’s new movie is based, is that it is listed as one of Time Magazine’s “100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.” Not graphic novels, mind you, just novels. I think this gives people an idea of the seriousness this piece of literature achieves. Adapting this unruly beast was never going to be easy; Moore and artist Dave Gibbons took a page from J.R.R. Tolkien in their painstaking construction of a deep, rich backstory which informs every action on the page, far too much material for three hours. On top of that, the characters are subversive parodies of superheroes, often little more than paranoid outcasts or bored bourgeios.

I won’t give you the standard speech you’ve been reading in every review about how “countless directors have tried” and “unfilmable material” and “Paul Greengrass spent $7 million in preproduction,” blah blah blah. The point is, “Watchmen” did finally get made, here it is, how did they do? The answer is complicated: sometimes this thing is brilliant, sometimes it’s okay, sometimes it’s almost terrible. As the credits rolled, I realized that the movie’s mildly bewildering aftertaste was not entirely removed from the feeling the source material produced after the first read-through. That can be fairly credited to Zack Snyder, for ably and lovingly reproducing much of the book’s core spirit onto celluloid.

The difference is, when I finished Alan Moore’s comic, I knew there would be so much more to digest the next time through, not to mention I was certain there would be a next time through. With the movie…not so much. I feel I’ve seen, in one pass, everything this film can show me, and it’s not calling my name for another go-round. This failure, and it is a failure, must also fall on Zack’s head, because “Watchmen” as a story is built on the foundation of revisiting, reanalyzing, rethinking; it’s what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons intended, and without it, this strung-out and occasionally ridiculous narrative does not bear fruit. By painting every scene with an emotionally deliberate brush, because that’s what Snyder always does, he keeps the story from finding the tone it needs. He passes judgments on everything, labeling some of the characters “good” and others “bad,” some of the scenes “scary” and some of them “sexy,” and this is fundamentally agaist what the novel is about. “Watchmen” dictates nothing to its reader,  that is the secret to its staying power, and I fear that the celluloid addition will not share this legacy.

I won’t talk about the plot, it’s way too long and complex to “summarize.” I will tell you that both versions are centered around an alternative universe in the late 1980s, where costumed heroes without super powers are a part of society’s mesh work. The plot is essentially an excuse to examine who decides to wear these costumes, what they do once they’re in them, and how society reacts. There, that’s enough of that, now let’s discuss what works and what doesn’t.

The movie definitely starts out incredibly strong, even the credit sequence is deft and brilliantly done. The murder of Edward Blake, AKA “The Comedian,” is filmed just about as perfectly as it ever could have been, and I was thrilled to watch it. A lot of credit has to be paid to the makers of this movie, because I knew the outcome of the fight, and yet I was still grimacing at each landed punch. That is impressive.

I also enjoyed a lot of the casting. Patrick Wilson, a terrific actor, gives an inspired turn as Dan Dreiberg (the alter-ego of the Batman-like Nite Owl), which is hard because it’s one of the least showy roles one could possibly play. Billy Crudup’s voice and face are perfect matches for the god-like Dr. Manhattan. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is great as the Comedian. Malin Ackerman is passible as Silk Spectre, although hers is not an easy role to make sympatethic. And of course, Jackie Earle Haley is a revelation as Rorschach, bringing the character into stunning life, and probably single-handedly igniting his career.

About half of the stuff they chose to take from the book works perfectly well, most of the bigger successes occurring around Rorschach and Nite Owl. The former has a wonderful and complete character arc, generating tremendous sympathy with a stunning efficiency, despite the character’s many rough edges. Ditto for Nite Owl, who is a convincing everyman, and I applaud that they retained his struggles with impotence from the original story. The action scenes are well choregraphed, if a little too gory (Note to Zack: “Watchmen” was not written by Frank Miller). I also approved of the changes they made to the ending, because I thought they achieved the same goal with less fuss. That’s not to suggest the original’s ending was flawed, but simply that it was wise to adjust things a little for this version.

Dr. Manhattan is more iffy; sometimes he looks good and it works, sometimes he glows too much and stops being convincing. They definitely do not give him enough of a sense of weight, especially when he walks, and there’s a conspicuously “CG” quality to many of his scenes. Occasionally there was so much blue bias when he was around that it hurt my eyes, and I got the sense that cracks in the visual effects work were being covered up. I’m sure Zack Snyder would tell you that this character was supposed to feel aloof, and that’s true, but before such emotional distance can mean anything, he needs to be a little more corporeal.

The single biggest road block “Watchmen” kept hitting was tone. The book is eclectic, jumping haphazardly from violent and ominous to ridiculous and satirical, and for some reason Zack Snyder does not follow this example. It’s a schizophrenic loyalty that this director has to his source material: his left hand copies dialogue word for word, but his right completely ignores the bright color palette and spurts of deliberate zaniness, drenching the whole thing in a David Fincher/Christopher Nolan seriousness. Snyder seems almost desperate to legitimize the story, to make us take it seriously, and when that instinct comes up against his blind loyalty to certain exact phrases, or plot points, or visuals, the results are a mess. The sex scenes were a perfect example. When Alan Moore wrote these moments into the book, they were allowed to be absurd, they even mocked their characters a little, but here they’re basically softcore pornography with no sense of humor. The Comedian also falls victim to this new weighty style, because his cackling way of looking at life’s horrors doesn’t resonate in a movie that can’t tolerate even a smirk in its direction.

And then there’s the gore, almost all of which is not in the comic. Some of it, like the extra anatomical detail in Jon Osterman’s transformation into Dr. Manhattan, is a good addition, but many of the fight scenes are too brutal to function correctly. This is especially true when the kind-spirited Dan Dreiberg mutilates some hapless thug’s arm in three places, or when the similarly mild-mannered Silk Spectre snaps someone’s neck three seconds into a fight. It just feels wrong for both of these characters to be this ruthless, especially since Rorscharch is supposed to be the cold-blooded one, and few of the things he does are that intense.

I said above that the Comedian was well-played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and that’s true, but sometimes the character doesn’t work anyway, because his lines are dictated to him by a book written two decades ago. More than any other character, this poor guy has to utter a bunch of crap that just sounds wrong, and it stumbles out of him more like a religious chant than an enlightening character moment. This dialogue should have been rethought and rewritten with a new artistic medium in mind, so the character could come off every inch as loathsome, crass and tragic as he did in Moore’s hands. It is always, and I mean always, a mistake to do anything in a movie for externally philosophical reasons, and we learn why watching this film. Snyder didn’t export the original wording verbatim because the story needed it, he did it because he is emotionally attached to the source material, and this costs him dearly in pivotal moments. I hope it was worth it to hear the “smartest guy on the cinder” speech in real time, Zack, because it ruined the scene.

But okay, enough negative stuff for awhile, let’s talk about some more positives.

I’m sure someone’s told you how great the opening credits are, gorgeously set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” This is one of the moments where the movie lifts off, achieving every inch of the original’s impact, constructing an entire world in little snippets. If only the rest of the movie had stayed this course, using the music to mix apocalyptic imagery with wit and irony, cross-breeding humour and tragedy, going right for the gut and landing every blow. Similar success is achieved with the prison break scene. Here, Snyder’s fondness for action serves him well: he makes the scene visceral and exciting, then gets a great punchline from Rorscharch’s indifference at being rescued.

The Comedian’s funeral, a scene I know Zack Snyder campaigned hard to keep in the theatrical cut, is a rousing success, and even though some of the flashbacks fall victim to the religious dictation we talked about above, the overall effect is still in place. Rorschach’s origin story, as dictated in the prison interrogation scene, is well-handled if a bit gruesome, and I admire that the movie managed to make us love this guy even though we have no reason to, just like the book did. The climax is a little exhausting and ridiculous, but in fairness to Kurtzman, Orci and company, it wasn’t much better in the book, and they just didn’t have time to fix it.

I read a story in some magazine recently where Zack Snyder was touring a journalist through the inside of “Archie,” Dan Drieberg’s flying mode of transportation. He pointed out that the buttons all worked, the coffee dispenser was genuine, things of this nature, and the journalist was impressed with how faithfully the thing had been reconstructed. “This is cool,” Snyder enthused, suggesting that even if all else fails, he at least achieved this.

And that is why he was not the right man to direct this movie. “Watchmen” is about subverting and destroying superheroes, but Zack Snyder is still too in love with them, too enamored with the spectacle of the story. He is consciously aware of Alan Moore’s intentions, but in his heart he can never really accept them; he’s a big kid with a wide grin, not the cynical doomsday prophet this material needs.

I won’t say that “Watchmen” is bad, nor will I claim I didn’t like it. I have the greatest affection for films who reach for the stars and miss, I begrudge them far less than some crass piece of Hollywood junk that aspires to nothing. I also think that large chunks of this movie were masterfully done, and I’m glad it was made. But this easily could have been a much stronger motion picture, if a few simple pointers had been heeded during production. I don’t think “Watchmen” the graphic novel is even close to unfilmable, it’s always had the potential for a fascinating movie inside of it, and it’s frustrating to see that capacity for greatness denied.

Rating: 70%

Evolving into a Rant

Published on March 5, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I don’t think women like “Futurama.” Katie Meyer, our esteemed guest, let curiosity get the best of her and requested that we watch a few episodes, having heard glowing things from her boyfriend. Predictably, it didn’t go over well, we were quickly onto something else. I was almost grateful, because if my wife came home and saw Lady Meyer locking eyes with Bender and Zap Brannigan, she would quickly reconstruct the following scene:

Me: Hey Katie, let’s watch Futurama.

Katie: I’d rather not.

Me: You’ll love it! Come on! It’ll be your favorite show ever!

Katie: Well, okay, sure.

Me: Now let’s watch twenty episodes in a row.

Katie: Why don’t we go do so–

Me: Futurama Futurama Futurama! And then we’ll have a six hour Batman symposium!

This, of course, is not what happened, but you can’t blame her for worrying. Her husband is, to say the least, an “enthusiast,” a person who unleashes cultural tidal waves upon anyone foolish enough to listen. I inherited from my father a wild, almost manic hobbyist personality, I’m always finding new subjects to become fascinated with on an amateur level. And like all people with this disposition, I lack a pair of human ears which can sustain the output I’m capable of delivering, so any poor soul who dances too close to the fire is going to get burned. You cannot fathom the endless monologues I have prepared on the Book of Job, John F Kennedy, Great White Sharks, the films of Akira Kurosawa, the nature of Time, Buddhism, Ancient Roman aqueducts, and so forth (not a single one of those was made up).

Nonetheless, I did not perpetrate this one! It was all her, Dear Reader, she asked and I delivered. It’s hard to tell someone to their face, “That did not impress me,” and I almost enjoyed watching Katie fumble with that problem. She marks another in a long, sad line of her gender who just don’t connect with this show. I find this very interesting, because when and how men and women can no longer emotionally identify with a fictional world is very relevant to my line of work.

“Gladiator,” you may know, was such a huge success because the majority of its audience was women. This may come as a surprise, but Russel Crowe’s Maximus is really an incredibly appealing protagonist for the average American woman. He’s a tough, masculine soldier, but he doesn’t like killing and would prefer not to; his heart is always back home with his wife and child. If I have to explain to you that “strong” and “sensitive” are highly appealing when put together, then you have a lot more to learn than I can teach you here. The same goes for the Bourne movies: Jason is handsome and masculine, but he’s totally free of arrogance and he wants to live a peaceful life. Again, massive box office returns.

Women, in general, get the short end of the stick from our culture; the movies made specifically for them are absolute drivel, lacking artistic integrity or ambition. It’s almost like we’re throwing them a bone and telling them to stay in their corner, while we hammer the 18-25 year old men until they can’t see straight. “Twilight” has proven that the female demographic is capable of being just as fanatic as any Star Trek nerd in the world, and the next logical step, I think, is to start making a wider array of cinema that speaks their language. I’d like to see what kind of action movies women might get into, what kind of thrillers, what kind of black comedies. We all basically assume that the female population isn’t going to a movie until Colin Firth is on the poster, or until someone falls in love with someone else, or whatever. We’re sure that if there’s guns or explosions or gross-out jokes or really heavy drama, the movie must be a “man” thing.

This is a ridiculous belief. It is scientific fact that women are every bit their counterpart’s equals, so why would they be naturally predisposed to a shallow, ridiculous taste in movies? Do we really expect that they want a single genre, over and over again? Of course they don’t, we just haven’t explored at all what they do want. Almost every movie or television show stars five or six men, with a single woman tossed in for good measure. Why? Why don’t more things star mostly women? Is there really only a single blonde chick for every twelve dudes on this planet?

We’ve got to shake these habits off, people, because whoever figures out that women are desperate for some cultural acknowledgment is going to make a boatload of money. Tyler Perry was smart enough to notice that his entire demographic was utterly ignored, left at the sidelines, constantly watching the black guy die first in every horror film. “Hang on a second,” he thought, “Black people have televisions. Why the hell wouldn’t they want some entertainment built to cater to them?”

A few years later, he is literally buying himself an island for his birthday.

We act like we’re all enlightened these days, but explain to me why 80 percent of the movies made in this country star white effing males. Is that 80 percent of this country? I don’t even think it’s racist, I just think it’s stupid. Mel Gibson (who is not anti-Semitic, I’m sick of hearing that) made a hard-R-rated movie with no English dialogue about the long, drawn-out torture and execution of an innocent man, and he made more money than the producers of action crap like “Eagle Eye” will ever even look at. Why? Because there is still a silent majority of Christians in this country, and an extremely liberal media just refuses to pander to them. Even the recent “Fireproof,” which allegedly sucks, raked in untold scores of money, but magazines like “Rolling Stone” conveniently ignored this fact. This is idiocy in action; so-called “businessmen” depriving themselves of millions of dollars because they’re prejudiced, and they’d rather hoist a dump truck of Caucasian, left-wing crap on the public than shut up and listen to what the ticket-buyers might actually like to see.

The problem is that the business model in play here is fat and stupid, built entirely on fear. We need dynamic, new ways of looking for our target demographics, we need to be honest about who is really in this country and what they’d like to see. Do you know how many black directors are in Hollywood? Or how many women directors? Pitifully few. They can’t get the money to finance their projects, even though there are millions of people who share their life experiences and might like to hear what they have to say. Hollywood is supposed to be greedy, but they’re not even good at it. There are huge stacks of money waiting to jump into someone’s pockets as soon as they start acknowledging this stuff, and there the movie-making engine sits, at a complete stall. They wait until someone has the balls to take a risk that works, then they ape that movie vigorously with slowly diminishing returns. It’s like a heroin addiction.

They’re so terrified of a “flop” that they’ll do almost anything. They have nightmares about Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld” and Ben Affleck in “Gigli,” and they’ll do anything to avoid that. They are missing out.