Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Iron Man 2 is Going to Suck

Published on April 29, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

You heard me. I’m putting that prediction out there in ether right now. I’ve had a bad feeling about this thing ever since I saw the first trailer. I don’t think I’m the only one, but I do think that far too many of you are still glowing from the first one, and you’re not thinking clearly about what’s coming. Now maybe the producers of said summertime sequel scoff derisively at me for even caring, but I think it does matter that this film might not satisfy its audience. I think it does matter that the parking lot consensus is going to be, “The first one was better.”

First, let me tell you why I think it’s going to be bad. Then, we’ll discuss what that badness will and won’t mean.

Why:

1. Mickey Rourke looks stupid. What the crap? This is the best they could come up with? You seriously cannot play this B-movie crap in the post-Heath-Ledger-Joker world. It doesn’t work. You people got ahold of one of the hottest actors, attached him to the biggest possible summer event movie, and ruined both of those good things with the stupidest costume I’ve ever seen. Those electric whips of his are not even a little frightening. Stick with Sam Rockwell in a dapper suit and a Congressional hearing. I’ll bet you twenty bucks those two things are twice as frightening to Tony Stark as anything Whiplash throws out.

2. ScarJo. Putting a popular actress in a skin tight black suit and calling that a “costume,” no matter how faithful to the comics, is a failure of imagination. Prepare to yawn your way through every scene she’s in. Also I don’t like her.

3. Too many damned characters. The problem with a movie like “Iron Man 2″ is that it’s more designed for lunch boxes than DVDs. This is a franchise machine, trying to pump out as many action figures and theme park rides as it can possibly stuff into two hours. Did we really need Whiplash, Black Widow, Sam Rockwell and Samuel L Jackson with an eye patch? Superhero movies with far fewer characters than that have died a horrible, bloated death. Yes, “Spider Man 3,” I am looking at you.

4. Underdog no longer. When Jon Favreau and company made the original “Iron Man,” no one was paying attention. Robert Downey Jr, his career still a question mark, had nothing to lose and blazed an interesting new trail through the lead role. The script, and I use that term loosely, was perpetually unfinished. The whole thing was shot in a loose, collaborative style more akin to “Ocean’s Eleven” than “Spider Man.” That was its magic.

That magic is dead. The Man has caught on. Iron Man is now an A-character, and now he has to sponsor sports cars and appease the widest possible demographic. Whatever careless frivolity exists in the sequel will be a processed, fraudulent version of the original. Picture that studio executive from “Barton Fink” talking about how he can get a dozen writers to give him that “Barton Fink feel.” That’s what you’ve got here.

5. Hindsight. Let’s be real, Dear Reader: the first one wasn’t that good. In fact it was quite flawed. It was fun because it surprised everyone, and the novelty of it was strong, but go watch the thing again and you might be surprised. The third act is weak sauce, and has nothing bordering on believable characters or emotional resonance. The action in the film is an afterthought; the climax is so tepid that Favreau himself has admitted his displeasure with it. It’s a fun movie, it’s an original movie, and it’s an exceedingly lovable movie. But be honest with yourself, none of those things make it a great movie. It’s not. And whatever was good about it lacks the horsepower necessary to project a sufficiently warming glow over the sequel.

Okay. So that’s why I’m skeptical. And now what it means…

1. The movie will kill on opening weekend. And I’m not debating that. I could blather like an idiot for two days, I know you’re all still going to see this thing. And so am I, most likely. That’s fine. But…

2. They’re shooting themselves in the foot. Once you trade a franchise’s artistic credibility, it is usually gone forever. Nothing short of a full reboot will bring your Tomato-Meter back once you sideline it. Hollywood likes to think they can use marketing budgets to control people, and to a certain extent they can, but their victory is short-lived, and I’m surprised they still haven’t learned the value of a satisfied customer. The first time you put an audience in the theater and make them feel tricked, you permanently change the product you’re selling. After “Iron Man 2″ becomes thought of as a disappointment, the franchise’s value will drop. And one way or the next, that will mean less money for everyone.

How can they not see that this is true? Look at how “Shrek” went from one of the highest-grossers in existence to an afterthought with one mildly disappointing sequel. Look at the “Matrix” sequels. And even if “Spider Man 3″ made money, it was a Pyrrhic victory and everyone involved knows it. Is this rule always true? No. “Pirates of the Caribbean” imploded ten minutes into the first sequel and still made untold millions. You can thank your kids for that, who stubbornly refused to stop seeing the damned things.

But even if it isn’t always true, it’s true enough. If these people want to treat storytelling like a business and nothing else, do they really want to bet $200 million and not eliminate a 50% chance of abject failure? Who knows what kind of ridiculous crap they do to keep Robert Downey Jr happy, why can’t they bend over backwards a little for an emotionally involving story?

And before you get too depressed by Jack Sparrow and his terrible films, remember that franchises like “Bourne,” “Lord of the Rings,” and Nolan’s “Batman” can outpace them any day. And why? Because they made their customers happy. I don’t understand how you can get away from the basic truth that disappointing movies are bad for business.

So yes. “Iron Man 2″ will make tons of money. For a few weeks. But “Iron Man 3″ will be in a different boat entirely. People won’t be waiting for it in the same way, because the franchise will have changed in their eyes. It’s ironic to me that they’re going to ruin “Iron Man 2″ in order to build the franchise, and yet the value of the franchise is the price they will pay for it.

Whoa. Do I have a blog?

Published on April 26, 2010 in Uncategorized. 13 Comments

Ahem.

Okay, look…I know it’s been awhile. I’ve been busy. I also have a confession to make: I’ve been writing on another website. I know, I know, and I’m sorry for being unfaithful to you, but here’s the problem Dear Reader: who in the heck are you? The struggle I have with this blog is knowing what to write. I don’t want to write about my daily life, that’s just automatically out. I’d love to write about video games, but only some of you care. I’d love to write about movies, and I regularly do, but I don’t like the notion of this being a one-topic enterprise.

The problem is, you’re too diverse, Dear Reader. Made up of too many different walks of life and attitudes. And since I can monitor this page’s viewership, I know which posts are tickling your fancy and which aren’t. I know, I should just write what I want and not mind, but we both know I’m an entertainer. I like to please my audience, and you are my audience.

The point is, I’m sorry I’ve kept away from you. Can’t we take it back to the way it was? When we first began? Oh how I miss those days.

Anyway,

I’m Now Into Electronic Music.

I’ve experienced the biggest tidal shift in my musical taste since I did away with country music in the seventh grade (I’ll always owe you for that, Offspring). Unlike that first change, this one is not exclusionary: it does not alter what I loved before, it simply adds a whole new limb to the body of my iTunes library.

Now “electronic music” is not a good name for what I listen to, it’s better to call it IDM, which apparently stands for “intelligent dance music.” I know some of you are thinking, “Oh no, not that terrible techno crap, why does he like that stuff?” Let me reassure you: it’s not that. That genre is referred to as “house,” or “dub/dubstep.” I’m not completely impervious to house, Massive Attack and Crystal Method do some nice work, but they’re not the core of the sound.

IDM is better defined by acts like Autechre, Proem, Deru, Squarepusher, Ben Frost, Aphex Twin and Amon Tobin. There are almost never lyrics, and the running times are typically on the long side. Most of the IDM I like is very dark and stripped down, and it relies on nuanced dynamics to build momentum in the song. I especially like the melding of distortion-heavy aesthetics with a computerized, futuristic feel. If you’re into science fiction literature at all, this stuff is the best imaginable companion to a good sci-fi novel. Grab yourself some Heinlein and slap on some Autechre, you’ll think you jumped dimensions.

(FYI: Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor are interchangeable terms. NIN isn’t really a band, it’s just him plus whatever touring band he’s got on board. The creative decisions begin and end with Trent.)

I guess there are two relevant things to address here: how I came to love it, and why I came to love it. The first one is easy: Nine Inch Nails. I was working on a very dark spy thriller a few years back, and needed some mood music to help me build the tension in my mind. I stumbled across a NIN instrumental called “A Warm Place” and liked it, perhaps against my better judgment. I mentioned this off-hand to a friend, who confessed that he too had been surprised by how palatable Reznor’s music seemed. I had always associated NIN with Marilyn Manson, seeing as the two were on the same label and aimed for a similar audience, and since I deeply hated every piece of music the latter ever made, it didn’t bode well for Trent. I had also always hated electronic music, although I don’t really know why. Something eventually compelled me to buy “The Downward Spiral.” The opening track was called “Mr. Self Destruct,” and it was the biggest smack in the face I had heard from rock music since Rage Against the Machine opened up “Killing in the Name” on me.

It took me days to figure out what I liked about “Destruct,” which seemed little more than a wall of angry noise. Upon repeated listens, it dawned on me that Trent Reznor was actually molding harsh industrial music into pop song structures; he is famous for stubbornly referring to himself as a “pop musician.” This gave the music a “diamond in the rough” taste with just the right ratio of sweet to bitter. I had gobbled up his entire discography within months, and never met an album I didn’t love. From that point on, electronic music was waiting to happen.

A year or two later, Trent Reznor released “Year Zero,” a post-apocalyptic concept album that he promised would be a massive divergence from his other work. Each song would be written in a character from some over-arching story he had planned out, and the sound would no longer be “metal” by any reasonable standard. When it came out, I discovered two things about it immediately: the lyrics were forgettable, and the music was breathtaking. Trent has never been an exceptional lyricist; he’s certainly not bad, and he hits something real a few times each album, but a lot of it just functions well to be ignored. “Zero” was a brave attempt to make the lyrics a much more key player, and while it wasn’t enormously successful, the risk did force him to craft a new audio environment that was mind-bending. This bold new sound-scape was constructed from wave upon wave of rhythm, synthesizer and noise, crunched together and blasted from every direction, creating a sound that felt…deep. You couldn’t just listen to it, you had to listen inside of it. It wasn’t even bordering on metal, in fact sometimes it didn’t even feel like rock, it was…electronic. Shortly after, NIN developed the sound further when he released a massive compilation of instrumental tracks called “Ghosts,” and I was hooked.

I’m not sure if it clicked right away that other musicians might be doing something similar. I had the Chemical Brothers album “Dig Your Own Hole” and quite enjoyed it, but that was explicitly dance music which happened to be appreciable through earphones. The concept of electronic music made for introspective listening did not occur to me for quite some time. According to my iTunes purchasing history, it officially hit me on November 11th, 2008, when I purchased a song called “Overand” by a two-man outfit called Autechre. I don’t remember how I stumbled on them, but I knew they were a big deal, and I went ahead and purchased an album of theirs called “LP 5.” This turned out to be a minor mistake: while very good music, “LP 5″ was deliberately clean and mechanical in its tone, and I wanted something dark and grimy. A browse through their back catalog revealed a song called “Dael,” which hit right on the money. Now I was intrigued. What in the heck was this stuff?

I next stumbled on Proem, who proved to be the landslide artist. Proem was not necessarily dark or grungy, but he was incredibly minimal and foreboding, and he accomplished something that surprised me: he infused hard line, stripped down IDM with a real sense of emotion. This is harder than it sounds, because synthesizers are always in danger of sounding ridiculous, especially since the horrible new wave crap of the 1980s. Richard Bailey (his actual name) had a gift for creating dynamics and mood without sacrificing that tight, satisfying sensation electronic music can only achieve when it remains austere. He could sweeten a bass line at just the right moment while sustaining an ominous, threadbare aesthetic. I descended on this guy’s albums like a wolf on fresh meat, and after that IDM became a thing I knew about. The rest is history.

The next question is why, and that’s much shorter: the stuff is great to write to, and I’m always writing. Wherever I’m going, whatever I’m doing, my mind is spitting images at me, trying to find triggers that spin me off in a new direction. IDM is graceful enough to lubricate this process and stimulate me without getting in my way. It’s a hard target to hit, and no other music I’ve encountered can do it: if it’s too direct it draws attention to itself, but if it’s too remote then what the hell am I listening to? Any good IDM song must stand up to precise scrutiny, must work when you listen to it while doing nothing else, and then also fade into the background when needed. No simple task.

(IF YOU READ NO OTHER PART OF THIS POST, READ THIS UPCOMING PARAGRAPH. I LIKE IT)

I’m also more and more fascinated by topics such as technology, neurology, abstract physics, computers, philosophy, and religion (well I’ve always loved that one), and IDM always feels right for any of them. I also think it’s quite exciting to listen to a genre of music that is defiantly of its time, and no other. In other words, the guys and girls making this stuff owe nothing to the Rolling Stones, they’re not trying to recreate music as it was in the 70s or any other time. They are doing something you literally couldn’t do a few decades ago. They follow different rules of composition, rhythm, aesthetics, even song titling, and their rules work. What they’re making is complex, interesting and good, and it achieves real things that rigid song structures cannot. This is music of right now, it belongs to this time and no other. The past is great, you’ll never hear me speak ill of history, but I’m not one of those people who believes the present is always inferior to “the good old days.” I like to embrace what is, to assume I am meant to be a part of it, and to cherish everything that makes it unique.

Here are some of the cream of the crop. This is some really good stuff from my private stash, the result of a lot of iTunes gift cards and time. Now when you listen to it, let me give you one piece of advice: think of it as jazz. Real jazz, I mean. If you’ve ever enjoyed the breathless improvisations of Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk, you know how to listen to for what isn’t expected, and how to let a song carry you along instead of making it sit in front of you. That is the spirit with which IDM is best digested. I recommend you emulate it here.

-Autechre–”Dael” (ignore the video). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG6O3-_RO3Q

Autechre’s music is long, dense and unrelenting. Utterly stripped down, very minimal and sexy. Like the films of Kubrick, it’s based around patterns and repetition, it’s almost mechanical. This is a menacing track built from a sinister set of loops, and yet there’s something hypnotic and seductive about it anyway.

-Proem–”I Don’t Know How To Tell” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FbjE_jbkfo

This is what I’m talking about when I say that Proem puts real emotion into IDM. The sound is stripped and precise, and yet the melody has such warmth and longing. An exquisite meld of soul and substance. Listen for that incredible bass line that drops in at 00:58.

-Justice–”Waters of Nazareth” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJu_3CPhC4

This song captures IDM in a way. For the first ten seconds, it just repeats a horrible, grating sound over and over. The listener is just about to start worrying when the rhythm kicks in at 10 seconds, and then we never look back. This is the essence of good IDM: the threat of devolving into pure noise must ALWAYS be there. We must feel like we’re on the very edge of what music even is. That’s the thrill of it.

And also, if this thing doesn’t make you bob your head and want to drive a car very quickly with the high beams on, then you need your pulse checked.

-Nine Inch Nails “10 Ghosts II” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnY3aePtg9Q)

One of the most foreboding and sinister pieces of music ever, and an absolutely perfect IDM song. Literally it cannot be improved. Again, notice how the first 20 seconds make you wonder if buying this wasn’t a horrible mistake, before a bellowing piano line drops in at 00:28 and creates melody from discord. NIN has a gift for finding the music in chaos, the order in audio anarchy.

Bands like Slipknot can’t be half this scary with twice the number of musicians.

The Problem With “Justified”

Published on April 10, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

No one wants to love FX’s “Justified” more than me; well, maybe that isn’t true, but I really want to love it a lot. I like Timothy Olyphant, he’s a talented guy who’s worked hard to earn the measure of exposure that he has…sort of like some kind of anti-Sam Worthington. And he’s a perfect fit for this leading role: he looks good in a cowboy hat, and he plays the straight-up lawman with convincing gusto. The basic idea behind the show is great, too: I love the notion of doing an antithesis to something like “The Shield,” where the good guys are bad, and the bad guys…are also bad. An old-school righteous cop flick is like a fresh drink of water in a long desert of hand-wringing moral relativism, and I say bring it on.

Problem is, the show’s not working. Oh it’s getting good ratings and what have you, but every time I watch it something feels wrong. And not little things like that horrible song they chose for the opening credits, something deeper. I’ve spent a good deal of time ruminating on this, and here’s what I offer as explanation:

1. Stakes. One of the first things you learn in a creative writing class is the concept of “stakes.” It’s been basic to good drama for as long as drama has existed. The idea is, you have an unconscious contract with your audience which assures them that whatever story you tell them, it must be of vital importance to the characters in it. Everything is superlatives: the obstacles must be the most terrible the protagonist has ever faced, and the goal must be their deepest desire. Even if a character just wants to be left alone, they must want that badly, and be willing to go to great lengths to have it, or you are boring your audience. At least 60% of the time, a movie will center on the most intense period of its characters’ lives; the moment which, if they were real people, they would always recall as the apex of strife and meaning. It’s just hard-wired into human nature to want these things from our entertainment.

“Justified” lacks stakes. The criminals that Raylan Givens pursues always want something badly, but he never does. The writers give him loads of back story: a remarried ex he seems conflicted about, a local girl he is forbidden to get involved with it might happen anyway, and a convict father he’s ashamed of. And yet for all of these plot points, none of them mean anything to us or go anywhere. The meat of any given episode is his cases, but he has no personal connection to any of them. They don’t test him, or reveal anything about him, he swaggers through them with detached amusement. We as the audience certainly like Raylan, but at this point he is more illustrative than dramatic: he exists as an idea, not a man on a journey.

2. Back-Up. There’s also the problem of Raylan’s solitude. His cohorts at the Kentucky Marshal’s Office are interchangeable and unremarkable, the writers have no idea how to make them flesh and blood people. In a cop procedural like this, it is incredibly hard to maintain protagonists who have something to lose, but one of the most reliable tricks of the trade is to give them a partner. “The X Files” could do pretty much whatever it wanted, because each case was a private argument of the highest possible importance between Mulder and Scully: is this science or something more? “Justified” leaves Raylan out in the cold, he has no one to relate to, and not a single character on the show (on either side of the law) comes close to interesting. His boss gives him tepid lectures and then inexplicably stays out of his way, which violates the number one rule of writing: “Don’t be boring.” How obvious is it that Raylan needs a boss who hates his guts? You’re doing a classic Western about a shoot-from-the-hip lawman here, and shoot-from-the-hip lawmen always need overwhelming antagonism on both sides. Don’t even get me started on the J. Crew catalog that is supposed to be his fellow FBI agents. Hollywood regularly shoots itself in the foot with casting decisions like these. You’re in the Kentucky field office, you need people who at least act a little more real.

3. Case Closed. The crimes Raylan investigates just…aren’t that interesting. Even he seems bored. I know it’s early yet to criticize that, but these cases form the bulk of each episode, so I’m well within my rights to demand that they hit the ground running. “House” would not freaking work if they couldn’t dream up the craziest illnesses you’ve ever heard of, no matter how much Hugh Laurie limped down the hallway. They get really good actors, and the dialog has punch, but you’re still riding a high-crested wave of “meh” right into the credits. I think the problem may be structure: most of the cases are crimes of passion, not intricate Rubicks Cubes that are fascinating to puzzle out. “Resolving” these things is never really that satisfying. “Justified” may claim some kind of authenticity here, but I could honestly use some suspension of disbelief in this department. Your number one obligation is to give me a gripping narrative, and right now you aren’t pulling that off.

4. The Song. That title song is terrible. I have to mention it again, it’s really that bad. I can’t understand a word of it, the melody is uninspired, and I have to wonder which genius just had to have a rap song headline a modern Western set in Kentucky. No, before you ask, it doesn’t make it better that he’s rapping to a slide guitar. Then some idiot comes in at the very end and sings for half a bar, but God only knows what he said; all I understood was “when you’re…” and I think even that is incorrect. Pick a different song, guys. “The Wire” brilliantly employed Tom Waits’ “Down in the Hole,” “CSI” struck gold with The Who’s “Who Are You,” you need to follow in this vein. Besides “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” rap songs do not normally make for good theme songs; people strain to hear the individual lyrics, get overwhelmed, and then can’t see the woods for the trees. Plus hip hop sounds really truncated in 15 seconds, you can’t introduce and develop lyrical ideas in that time frame.

“Justified” is a young show, and right now it’s popular but soulless. If things don’t change, people will stop watching, and many of them won’t even know why. It takes time for the average American to realize that the ad campaign isn’t being fulfilled, but once they notice, they’re gone. “Fringe” was in the exact same position: it got good numbers but it wasn’t going anywhere, yet somehow it got its act together and is now halfway decent. I hope “Justified” can do better and really become something special, but only time will tell. Right now, it’s only a seed, and it won’t be long before everyone has to admit the damned flower isn’t blooming.

Number 16

Published on April 6, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

“Rashomon” (1950, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Really great art often comments on its own medium. This must be done adroitly of course, because typically you don’t want to violate the fourth wall, but if an author can perceive some truth about the world that is exemplified in his/her relationship with his/her audience, he/she would be foolish not to explore it. Cinema, being a primarily visual medium designed for a primarily visual audience, is so powerful it’s almost manipulative, and so it is uniquely able to self-critique. As we will see later on this list, notions of voyeurism, free will, and perception of reality are all easily toyed with in a movie theater. Many films have encountered these topics, but perhaps Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” is the only one to really drive them home. A masterful and unorthodox drama, “Rashomon” is concerned with the nature of the truth. What begins as a simple criminal investigation becomes a forced self-reflection for the viewer: when and how do I know something?

The set-up is straightforward: a young couple are traveling through the woods in feudal Japan, when a bandit happens upon them. What happens next is unclear, all that can be certain is that the man is killed while the woman and the bandit survive. The involved parties are all brought in for trial (including, in an eerie and wonderful scene, the ghost of the fallen man), and each recounts a vastly different story of what happened. The physical evidence restricts each narrative to a pretty narrow margin, and yet within that space, a wide assortment of possibilities unfold. In one version, the bandit is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is cruelly manipulated by a Lady Macbeth-style wife; in another, the wife is used up and discarded by both men in a cold display of sexism. Meanwhile, a group of peasants debate over the proceedings, standing in for the audience as they wonder aloud which version is the truth.

The magic of “Rashomon” is its incredible perceptiveness concerning human nature. The thesis of the film should not be mistaken as relativistic, in fact it’s quite the opposite: “Rashomon” operates on the assumption that there is a truth, but the human mind won’t let you get to it. At first, the viewer attempts to suss out which of the characters is lying, but soon the line between deceit and self-delusion gets muddy, and we realize that these three self-interested parties have lost sight of the truth like a boat loses sight of the shore. We have all experienced hearing a story we cannot believe, but “Rashomon” expands that everyday situation to its worst possible form, revealing the grim truth that the human mind’s perception of reality is all too easily bent. Lies are a poison that infect not only their victims, but their authors as well.

The only debatable aspect of “Rashomon” is the peasants, who function to do two things I’m not certain I like. Firstly, they provide us a “true version,” as dictated by an eyewitness with no particular stake in the events. On the one hand, this is clearly Kurosawa coming out in favor of the existence of absolute truth, and I certainly support that. Still, there’s something indelicate about it, perhaps because such a simple resolution is so rare in these situation in real life. Secondly, and as a side effect of that, the peasants also wrap the story up on a high note, and this I definitely feel to be a misstep. While I sympathize with Kurosawa’s desire to redeem the human race with a show of selfless devotion, the silver lining placed on the events doesn’t feel earned, and symbolically it represents a freedom from subjectivity that simply does not exist. Again, a more nuanced version of the same thing would have gone a long way.

Still, neither of these flaws kept me from including “Rashomon” where I did, because a) flaws though they are, they serve to endorse a view of humanity I agree with, and b) they are all piled up at the tail end of the movie, which makes them easier to compartmentalize and deal with. Besides, it’s hard to be too angry at a happy ending, even if it rings a little false. Kurosawa’s stunning indictment of human nature remains a powerful cautionary tale against letting personal motives obscure your view of reality. The truth, Kurosawa seems to be saying, is fragile in the human mind, and all too easily discarded. We must be on our guard at all times to cling to it, lest it slip away from us and leave us out in the dark.