I saw Wall-E again, and was wondering to myself why I didn't hate it. (This actually triggered a long rant on the nature of multiple viewings, but it's such a mess I can't bring myself to publish it.)
Anyway, conceptually, this Pixar movie contains pretty much all the elements of the crappy enviro-dystopic children's "entertainment" of my youth, which may have something to do with my current hobby of deconstructing post-apocalyptic scenarios.
I mean, look at it: Wall-E posits a future--just 100 years away, mind you--where we've consumed and disposed of so much that we've actually destroyed the planet, and covered it with so much trash that we have to keep it in the cities that we lived in. And there's enough to make cities with itself.
People have no sense of the scale of this planet, it's just too big for people to grasp. We throw trash on the ground and weep like a fake Indian, but the impact is personal and aesthetic. (Likewise, the planet cares not whether it's warmer or colder.) It is not "global".
At the same time, we have an alternate utopic dystopia, if that makes sense, on board the Axiom. All human needs are taken care of, to the extent that humans themselves are totally incompetent. Yet despite this, the market structure seems to be unchanged. In other words, in a world where robots do all the work, people are still "buying" stuff somehow, and there's an implication of exploitation, even though there's nothing to actually exploit.
Meanwhile, the ship itself jettisons massive amounts of garbage out of itself--but from where is all the raw material for this garbage coming? Given that energy seems to be no problem, why wouldn't this solution have worked on earth?
We won't even talk about the whole babies thing. None of the people seemed to actually have ever had any physical contact with each other, and there are no children on the ship, only adults and babies. This suggests that the babies are gestated in some mechanical fashion and raised by machines until adult. I'm pretty sure this would create psychopaths.
Did I mention that a group of humans who were so physically underdeveloped and so conditioned to a trouble-free life would have zero chance of fixing anything? I mean, seriously, they'd have no hip sockets! (I bet you didn't know that we're not born with hip sockets, we make them by crawling and walking!)
Actually, they'd also be insane. If you've never noticed this, as society removes more and more real survival problems from people's lives, they get crazier and crazier. Did you ever hear of a neurotic barbarian? Neuroses are a luxury of civilization.
Nope, Wall-E makes no sense, structurally. On top of that, it's a story about robots with feelings, and there are few premises I find more annoying.
So, why didn't I hate it?
First, it's Pixar. Which means that it was executed at the highest level of artistic quality. You don't hear talk of Lasseter retiring Pixar into the Disney brand; I think it's clear that "Pixar" is going to maintain the premium brand.
Second, it's Pixar, which means that there is a whole 'nother movie's worth of interesting, entertaining and funny details.
Third, it's a kid's movie. Director Stanton (A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo) makes kiddie movies, and he does so very well, by simplifying and streamlining things. Wall-E reverses the trend of kiddie movies getting longer and longer, so we can forgive him not showing the electro-re-programming machines that turn angry, psychotic teens into passive consumers. (Compare this to Brad Bird of Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Iron Giant, whose work tends to have a hard edge.)
Fourth, it's very gentle, steering strongly away from the misanthropy that usually characterizes such films. The theme isn't "evil humans destroyed the earth" so much as "we got kind of carried away and let things go, but it's up to us to fix it". The former message is a pretty crappy trick to play on kids, the latter a reminder to look at the real world once in a while, and to take care of it.
Finally, and this became apparent on a second viewing, Wall-E is first and foremost a love story. Like a Charlie Chaplin movie, the social commentary frames the story without changing it from boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl.
The two robots are the most human characters in the movie. And again, I have to fall back on the "Well, it's Pixar!" thing again. These are the guys that make you care about toys, bugs, rats, and a freakin' lamp. There's the triumph of animation that can bring life to everything--and indeed, we find all the robots have personalities, even the poor, doomed security robots, this movie's "stormtroopers".
It would be odd to tihnk of the robots as not real, living beings.
So, I guess, on the scale of things, while it's a message movie, the message is way more abstract than, say, Toy Story 2, which basically told your kids they were soul-destroying monsters for giving away their toys.
And I love Toy Story 2, too.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Wall-E. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Wall-E. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, July 21, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Pixar Conquers The Universe
The real problem with Wall-E is that it can't possibly live up to expectations, can it?
Maybe. Right now, this latest flick from Pixar is hovering in IMDB's top 10 of all time. I assume this will settle over time. I've already said how excited I was to see this film.
The Flower had earned herself a trip to the movies and she picked this over Get Smart. (She'll have to work hard to get back to the movies before Get Smart leaves our preferred theater, though.) I don't blame her, though.
I mentioned in the last review that the Laemmele has a 2-for-1 deal for certain movies. They also have a Wednesday $4 deal, so the four of us getting in was $16. Even with $12 for refreshment, that's a pretty good deal.
Andrew Stanton, whose previous works are considered both among Pixar's weakest (A Bug's Life) and Pixar's strongest (Finding Nemo), tackles a whole bunch of trite and dystopic clichés in this movie of a little garbage-bot who falls in love with a probe-bot on a trash-laden, dead Earth.
I mean, I grew up on environmental catastrophe movies, and the Earth-is-so-toxic-it's-unliveable thing is was old even when I was a kid. (Ark II anyone?) The earthican population is living in a nearby space station (2001 on steroids), though they have grown fat and infantile over the centuries as their robots do everything for them. (There are babies, intriguingly, but it's made pretty clear that humans never come into physical contact with each other.)
Actually, I got a serious Brave New World vibe off of it.
This really shouldn't have worked. Everything I know about kiddie-enviro flicks is that they're all preachy and about how bad Man is and so on. But it does work.
First of all, Wall-E and Eve are sort of--well, you know that lamp at the beginning of each Pixar movie? The Pixar mascot? This is them saying, "Yeah, we could make a whole movie starring that lamp and it would pwn!" This is basically a very good silent movie, though I don't think it's on a par with City Lights, necessarily.
The other reason it works is that it's so, so gentle. Humans have forgotten what it's like to be self-reliant. They aren't inherently lazy or bad, just, well, things happen. Granted, Wall-E and the strangely attractive Eve (? how is that possible?) are the most, eh, human characters in the show, apart from the increasingly deshiveled Fred Willard, but there's a kindness mixed in with some gentle slapstick that makes us root for the humans.
So, while we have the typical messages about rampant consumerism, pollution and--if I'm not mistaken, there are no polar regions left--global warming, the movie doesn't try to be about those things, and surely doesn't bludgeon you with them.
Thomas Newman provides a typically distinctinve score (called it in the first five minutes) that is both distinctly the work of the guy who did Finding Nemo and The Green Mile, and very unique to this film.
To top it all off, the movie comes in at 97 minutes and features a hilarious Pixar short at the front. And, of course, it's breathtaking, with hyper-real looking shots of Wall-E's garbage collecting and Hubble-worthy scenes of outer space.
John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy play the first two humans to wake up, with Jeff Garlin as the heroic captain who overcomes his tiny baby limb-limitations. As a special treat Sigourney Weaver--who played the crazy ship's voice in an episode of Futurama--plays the voice of the ship's computer in this film as well.
The Boy was curiously restrained in his approval at first. By the time we got home, though, he was asking about seeing it again, and when would it come out on DVD. There is no higher praise.
The Flower was quite pleased as well, as was Grandpa, who accompanied us at The Flower's request. Curiously, an older lady asked The Boy and The Flower what they liked, and I gather she didn't like what she called "the crazy parts". I was curious as to what those were, but whatever they were seemed to put her off so much that I didn't want to offend her by not knowing what (obviously!) they must have been.
It worked for us, though. I'd recommend it for anyone who didn't need dialogue in a movie. I do sort of pity the next Pixar flick--but I think that's going to be Toy Story 3, so it probably doesn't need my pity.
Maybe. Right now, this latest flick from Pixar is hovering in IMDB's top 10 of all time. I assume this will settle over time. I've already said how excited I was to see this film.
The Flower had earned herself a trip to the movies and she picked this over Get Smart. (She'll have to work hard to get back to the movies before Get Smart leaves our preferred theater, though.) I don't blame her, though.
I mentioned in the last review that the Laemmele has a 2-for-1 deal for certain movies. They also have a Wednesday $4 deal, so the four of us getting in was $16. Even with $12 for refreshment, that's a pretty good deal.
Andrew Stanton, whose previous works are considered both among Pixar's weakest (A Bug's Life) and Pixar's strongest (Finding Nemo), tackles a whole bunch of trite and dystopic clichés in this movie of a little garbage-bot who falls in love with a probe-bot on a trash-laden, dead Earth.
I mean, I grew up on environmental catastrophe movies, and the Earth-is-so-toxic-it's-unliveable thing is was old even when I was a kid. (Ark II anyone?) The earthican population is living in a nearby space station (2001 on steroids), though they have grown fat and infantile over the centuries as their robots do everything for them. (There are babies, intriguingly, but it's made pretty clear that humans never come into physical contact with each other.)
Actually, I got a serious Brave New World vibe off of it.
This really shouldn't have worked. Everything I know about kiddie-enviro flicks is that they're all preachy and about how bad Man is and so on. But it does work.
First of all, Wall-E and Eve are sort of--well, you know that lamp at the beginning of each Pixar movie? The Pixar mascot? This is them saying, "Yeah, we could make a whole movie starring that lamp and it would pwn!" This is basically a very good silent movie, though I don't think it's on a par with City Lights, necessarily.
The other reason it works is that it's so, so gentle. Humans have forgotten what it's like to be self-reliant. They aren't inherently lazy or bad, just, well, things happen. Granted, Wall-E and the strangely attractive Eve (? how is that possible?) are the most, eh, human characters in the show, apart from the increasingly deshiveled Fred Willard, but there's a kindness mixed in with some gentle slapstick that makes us root for the humans.
So, while we have the typical messages about rampant consumerism, pollution and--if I'm not mistaken, there are no polar regions left--global warming, the movie doesn't try to be about those things, and surely doesn't bludgeon you with them.
Thomas Newman provides a typically distinctinve score (called it in the first five minutes) that is both distinctly the work of the guy who did Finding Nemo and The Green Mile, and very unique to this film.
To top it all off, the movie comes in at 97 minutes and features a hilarious Pixar short at the front. And, of course, it's breathtaking, with hyper-real looking shots of Wall-E's garbage collecting and Hubble-worthy scenes of outer space.
John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy play the first two humans to wake up, with Jeff Garlin as the heroic captain who overcomes his tiny baby limb-limitations. As a special treat Sigourney Weaver--who played the crazy ship's voice in an episode of Futurama--plays the voice of the ship's computer in this film as well.
The Boy was curiously restrained in his approval at first. By the time we got home, though, he was asking about seeing it again, and when would it come out on DVD. There is no higher praise.
The Flower was quite pleased as well, as was Grandpa, who accompanied us at The Flower's request. Curiously, an older lady asked The Boy and The Flower what they liked, and I gather she didn't like what she called "the crazy parts". I was curious as to what those were, but whatever they were seemed to put her off so much that I didn't want to offend her by not knowing what (obviously!) they must have been.
It worked for us, though. I'd recommend it for anyone who didn't need dialogue in a movie. I do sort of pity the next Pixar flick--but I think that's going to be Toy Story 3, so it probably doesn't need my pity.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Best of 2008
It's hard for me to pick a "best" film of 2008 because, the truth is, the term has very little meaning beyond a certain level. As Woody Allen supposedly said, "On what basis are you going to compare my film with Star Wars?"
Well, you could compare acting. Half of the acting in Star Wars is laughably bad, and 2/3rds of the dialogue. But in the lighting and sound editing departments, there's no contest, right? But, of course, we're not talking production values per se when we talk about "best".
You could compare subject matter: A love story about trivial, neurotic people, no matter how good, maybe isn't worthy of the same consideration as an epic story of good versus evil. Or perhaps a childish fantasy isn't worth comparing to a realistic look at modern life. Take your pick.
You could factor in popularity, and Star Wars would finish only behind Gone With The Wind--and if you factored popularity over time, Star Wars would almost certainly end up the winner. The fun-factor seldom seems to get considered at the Oscars, either. Or you could look at the difficulty factor: Star Wars was a harder movie to make, and it attempted (successfully!) things that had never been done.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences generally factor in all these things to come up with uniquely wrong answers. In '77, it's hard to say what good movies might've been passed over, except perhaps Soldier of Orange. (And I probably would've picked Close Encounters of the Third Kind as my favorite movie that year.)
With that in mind, let me make my uniquely wrong choice. First, my top nine, which met my criteria mixing subject matter, entertainment value, and the various other factors.
(The above paragraph, by the way, is basically nonsense. I'm not really figuring anything out; I've decided well in advance and am making silly arguments to justify it.)
My pic, then, is Defiance, which I hinted at in my previous post. It's been growing on me since I saw it, at least in part because I think director Edward Zwick is increasingly able to avoid the sort of facile treatments he's given earlier films (he has an Oscar for Shakespeare In Love!) to present a more complex subject in a clear fashion.
Maybe timeliness is a factor, too. Defiance is, essentially, about the breakdown of society and how survival requires a brutal adherence to a system of ethics, but also how we have (many of us) the necessary toughness to endure the worst and survive even when the forces against us seem insurmountable.
It resonates.
Even though it takes place 65 years ago, it's not a fantasy or ancient history. It still resonates--which is part of the reason a lot of the critics downgraded it, I think. Though to be fair, when I read the critics' reviews, I keep asking myself if they saw the same movie. Maybe history will prove me wrong, but I think it's the under-rated gem of the year.
More seriously, for whatever reason Changeling didn't quite hit home for me. And while I love Wall-E and have seen it many times by this point, it's basically just another great Pixar film. The Pixar film in any year is worth considering for "best picture", but I think WALL-E gets an (incidental) boost because it's so politically correct. Even so, I think it's a safe bet to say that this (and all Pixar films) are going to be the most viewed films in future generations: classic children's tales always have the longest life.
I asked one other moviegoing guy his best and he said Frost/Nixon, a choice I would be hard-pressed to deny. Interestingly, he said he probably favored it because of the overlap with his own life, where to me, I like it precisely because of the (call it) "fantasy" element.
So, as always: Your mileage may vary.
Well, you could compare acting. Half of the acting in Star Wars is laughably bad, and 2/3rds of the dialogue. But in the lighting and sound editing departments, there's no contest, right? But, of course, we're not talking production values per se when we talk about "best".
You could compare subject matter: A love story about trivial, neurotic people, no matter how good, maybe isn't worthy of the same consideration as an epic story of good versus evil. Or perhaps a childish fantasy isn't worth comparing to a realistic look at modern life. Take your pick.
You could factor in popularity, and Star Wars would finish only behind Gone With The Wind--and if you factored popularity over time, Star Wars would almost certainly end up the winner. The fun-factor seldom seems to get considered at the Oscars, either. Or you could look at the difficulty factor: Star Wars was a harder movie to make, and it attempted (successfully!) things that had never been done.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences generally factor in all these things to come up with uniquely wrong answers. In '77, it's hard to say what good movies might've been passed over, except perhaps Soldier of Orange. (And I probably would've picked Close Encounters of the Third Kind as my favorite movie that year.)
With that in mind, let me make my uniquely wrong choice. First, my top nine, which met my criteria mixing subject matter, entertainment value, and the various other factors.
- Changeling
- Let The Right One In
- Rachel Getting Married
- Slumdog Millionaire
- Tropic Thunder
- Wall-E
- Defiance
- Frost/Nixon
- Gran Torino
(The above paragraph, by the way, is basically nonsense. I'm not really figuring anything out; I've decided well in advance and am making silly arguments to justify it.)
My pic, then, is Defiance, which I hinted at in my previous post. It's been growing on me since I saw it, at least in part because I think director Edward Zwick is increasingly able to avoid the sort of facile treatments he's given earlier films (he has an Oscar for Shakespeare In Love!) to present a more complex subject in a clear fashion.
Maybe timeliness is a factor, too. Defiance is, essentially, about the breakdown of society and how survival requires a brutal adherence to a system of ethics, but also how we have (many of us) the necessary toughness to endure the worst and survive even when the forces against us seem insurmountable.
It resonates.
Even though it takes place 65 years ago, it's not a fantasy or ancient history. It still resonates--which is part of the reason a lot of the critics downgraded it, I think. Though to be fair, when I read the critics' reviews, I keep asking myself if they saw the same movie. Maybe history will prove me wrong, but I think it's the under-rated gem of the year.
More seriously, for whatever reason Changeling didn't quite hit home for me. And while I love Wall-E and have seen it many times by this point, it's basically just another great Pixar film. The Pixar film in any year is worth considering for "best picture", but I think WALL-E gets an (incidental) boost because it's so politically correct. Even so, I think it's a safe bet to say that this (and all Pixar films) are going to be the most viewed films in future generations: classic children's tales always have the longest life.
I asked one other moviegoing guy his best and he said Frost/Nixon, a choice I would be hard-pressed to deny. Interestingly, he said he probably favored it because of the overlap with his own life, where to me, I like it precisely because of the (call it) "fantasy" element.
So, as always: Your mileage may vary.
Now, Who's Going To Win?
UPDATE: Wow, that was as bad as I thought it was going to be. Not the show, which I didn't watch--I was too busy drawing with The Flower--but my guesses. I didn't really see the Slumdog sweep; I thought there'd be more Milk. I'm almost totally indifferent, but I'm glad that Danny Boyle got an award. I think he's good and has been overlooked.
So, I hit: Picture, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor. I missed Supporting Actress and Director. I got both original and adapted screenplay, and best animated feature, but missed both documentary and animated short. I totally botched the tech awards, missing Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes--and Costumes should've been a gimme, with the historical epic Duchess up there. But honestly, who saw that? Anyone at all?
I hit editing and missed makeup, because I put Button's makeup in the SFX category, though it won both. So...11 out of 21. I'm going to give myself extra props for hitting some of the obscure ones.
Of course, the instant Slumdog won for sound, I knew it was going to grab the big awards (Picture and Director). The way the voting works is that the tech guys pick the nominees, but everyone votes for the winner, and a lot of the Academy doesn't understand the distinction between "sound" and "sound editing", or "sound" and "gee, I liked this movie and it sounded pretty good."
But congrats to the winner. Condolences to the losers. I hope Jenkins and Langella and the other really great ones who missed get another shot at it. I'm sure Penn, Winslet and Cruz will have plenty of opportunities in the future. (Penn has five noms and two wins, Winslet has six noms and one win: Do you ever get the idea the Academy just keeps nominating the same people until they win?)
(Original guesses below.)
--------
Usually, I'm pretty good at picking Oscar winners. But I have no good sense of who's going to do what this year. So here are my WAGs:
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire. Socially relevant, but not overly so.
Actor: Sean Penn. He'd be my penultimate choice, behind Langella, Jenkins and Rourke. Normally I'd say Rourke, but I kind of think this Oscars is going to be a battle between wanting to reward Milk and more sensibly promoting movies that have a chance to make money. (There's a real basis for this, by the way: A lot of voters are businessfolk voting their pocketbooks.
Actress: Kate Winslet. Is anyone else running? Nah, it's a good field, as always. I'd probably pick Hathaway myself: She's the Jenkins of this class, who did a fine, subtle job in a little movie. But she has lots of chances in her future.
Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger. If he were alive, they'd give it to Downey, Jr.--they owe him for Chaplin--or Brolin.
Supporting Actress: Viola Davis. With Henson, the only black person on the roster. I'm not saying that's why she's going to win, I'm just observing. But seriously, Tomei's not getting another one after My Cousin Vinnie, Adams and Cruz are in Oscar-bait movies every year, and Davis' part speaks to how horrible life was for black people.
Gus Van Sant: Best Director. Yeah. I'm guessing they'll split the picture/director award this year, though I suppose they could give best picture to Milk and best director to Boyle. But I don't think so.
Original Screenplay: Milk or Wall-E. I'm guessing Milk.
Adapted Screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire.
Cinematography: Dark Knight. Another WAG: They're going to honor the biggest movie since The Phantom Menace with technical awards. Maybe not this one, but....
Editing: Slumdog Millionaire. Eh. The editing in this movie was truly excellent and important to the film. Ha! Just another WAG.
Art Direction: Benjamin Button. Their sop to the movie that would otherwise be shut out.
Costumes: Benjamin Button. Their other sop.
Makeup: Dark Knight.
Music: Thomas Newman for WALL-E. No, wait, Danny Elfman for Milk. I think Newman probably should win, and he has the most noms, but Elfman defined the movie score of the '90s and never got so much as a nomination for Batman (1989) or Edward Scissorhands! They owe him some recognition.
Song: WALL-E. Well, yeah, the English Language pop song sung by Peter Gabriel, or some Hindi something or other?
Sound: Dark Knight
Sound Edit: Dark Knight
Visual FX: Benjamin Button. For make Cate Blanchett look 20 years younger, and like a different woman.
Animated: WALL-E.
Documentary: Betrayal. I'm guessing. This is all about how America acted badly so...
Animated Short: Presto. Maybe not, but it should be: It's one of the greatest cartoons made in the past 50 years.
Well, my usual live co-blogger/chat partner (Kelly) is absent tonight, so I probably won't even watch the show. Enjoy!
So, I hit: Picture, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor. I missed Supporting Actress and Director. I got both original and adapted screenplay, and best animated feature, but missed both documentary and animated short. I totally botched the tech awards, missing Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes--and Costumes should've been a gimme, with the historical epic Duchess up there. But honestly, who saw that? Anyone at all?
I hit editing and missed makeup, because I put Button's makeup in the SFX category, though it won both. So...11 out of 21. I'm going to give myself extra props for hitting some of the obscure ones.
Of course, the instant Slumdog won for sound, I knew it was going to grab the big awards (Picture and Director). The way the voting works is that the tech guys pick the nominees, but everyone votes for the winner, and a lot of the Academy doesn't understand the distinction between "sound" and "sound editing", or "sound" and "gee, I liked this movie and it sounded pretty good."
But congrats to the winner. Condolences to the losers. I hope Jenkins and Langella and the other really great ones who missed get another shot at it. I'm sure Penn, Winslet and Cruz will have plenty of opportunities in the future. (Penn has five noms and two wins, Winslet has six noms and one win: Do you ever get the idea the Academy just keeps nominating the same people until they win?)
(Original guesses below.)
--------
Usually, I'm pretty good at picking Oscar winners. But I have no good sense of who's going to do what this year. So here are my WAGs:
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire. Socially relevant, but not overly so.
Actor: Sean Penn. He'd be my penultimate choice, behind Langella, Jenkins and Rourke. Normally I'd say Rourke, but I kind of think this Oscars is going to be a battle between wanting to reward Milk and more sensibly promoting movies that have a chance to make money. (There's a real basis for this, by the way: A lot of voters are businessfolk voting their pocketbooks.
Actress: Kate Winslet. Is anyone else running? Nah, it's a good field, as always. I'd probably pick Hathaway myself: She's the Jenkins of this class, who did a fine, subtle job in a little movie. But she has lots of chances in her future.
Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger. If he were alive, they'd give it to Downey, Jr.--they owe him for Chaplin--or Brolin.
Supporting Actress: Viola Davis. With Henson, the only black person on the roster. I'm not saying that's why she's going to win, I'm just observing. But seriously, Tomei's not getting another one after My Cousin Vinnie, Adams and Cruz are in Oscar-bait movies every year, and Davis' part speaks to how horrible life was for black people.
Gus Van Sant: Best Director. Yeah. I'm guessing they'll split the picture/director award this year, though I suppose they could give best picture to Milk and best director to Boyle. But I don't think so.
Original Screenplay: Milk or Wall-E. I'm guessing Milk.
Adapted Screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire.
Cinematography: Dark Knight. Another WAG: They're going to honor the biggest movie since The Phantom Menace with technical awards. Maybe not this one, but....
Editing: Slumdog Millionaire. Eh. The editing in this movie was truly excellent and important to the film. Ha! Just another WAG.
Art Direction: Benjamin Button. Their sop to the movie that would otherwise be shut out.
Costumes: Benjamin Button. Their other sop.
Makeup: Dark Knight.
Music: Thomas Newman for WALL-E. No, wait, Danny Elfman for Milk. I think Newman probably should win, and he has the most noms, but Elfman defined the movie score of the '90s and never got so much as a nomination for Batman (1989) or Edward Scissorhands! They owe him some recognition.
Song: WALL-E. Well, yeah, the English Language pop song sung by Peter Gabriel, or some Hindi something or other?
Sound: Dark Knight
Sound Edit: Dark Knight
Visual FX: Benjamin Button. For make Cate Blanchett look 20 years younger, and like a different woman.
Animated: WALL-E.
Documentary: Betrayal. I'm guessing. This is all about how America acted badly so...
Animated Short: Presto. Maybe not, but it should be: It's one of the greatest cartoons made in the past 50 years.
Well, my usual live co-blogger/chat partner (Kelly) is absent tonight, so I probably won't even watch the show. Enjoy!
Thursday, June 21, 2012
The Lorax
"I am the Geisel! Everyone speaks for me!" There's a good reason you're only seeing Dr. Seuss movies now that he's dead. The crusty old bugger was very particular about how his stories were used. And so we have The Lorax, the latest interpretation of his short works blown up into a feature-length film.
The problem with turning these stories into features is that there's not enough content, and so the proceedings must be padded out. This can be disastrous, as in The Cat in the Hat and particularly How The Grinch Stole Christmas, where the pure-of-heart Whos were twisted into service to make the Grinch a victim. Horton Hears A Who! worked by preserving the essential character of Horton and his Who pals, and padding mostly through entertaining comic bits.
But Geisel's genius was largely that he told simple stories based on the purest of truths. Horton and his fidelity, the power of "something more" in The Grinch, the status seeking Sneetches, the stubborn Zaxs—they all run the risk of being corrupted by "nuance". I can't even watch the live action Grinch, it's such a perversion of the original.
It's probably not fair to say that Seuss was never making a political statement. It's difficult to imagine that The Butter Battle Book, published in 1984, isn't about the arms race. But if it is, it's a terrible, nihilistic story where the slavery of Communism is no different from a free-market society. As a story of people fighting to utter annihilation over a trivial difference, however, it holds up very well indeed.
"A person's a person no matter how small" makes a great slogan for pro-life—but Geisel got lawyery when a group tried to use it that way. And if Thidwick, The Big-Hearted Moose isn't a story about the Occupy movement, I don't know what is. (I don't care if it was written 60 years ago.)
The point of all this being that, if you want to make a good Dr. Seuss movie, stay far away from any political statement and focus heavily on the characters—the depiction of human nature.
Which brings us roundabout to The Lorax, which takes a very faithful adaptation of an uncharacteristically soft-headed Geisel book, and wraps it thick in a bizarre anti-consumerist, wake-up-sheeple dystopia.
The Lorax speaks for the trees, y'see. He's a mystical character and that's what he does. We don't know by what authority he does this, but he does, and that's about the extent of his power. Again, even as not one of Seuss's stronger stories, what's presented is very reasonable: In a landscape bereft of trees, maybe it's not a good idea cut the few trees you have down.
The movie double-downs on this: The trees don't even need to be cut down. Their tufts can be harvested to make the prized thneeds that give the Once-ler his wealth. So, the Once-ler, a largely sympathetic character, gets so greedy he gives the okay to kill his golden goose.
Not that this doesn't happen from time-to-time, but it tends to be a tragedy-of-the-commons thing more than a big business thing. I'm pretty sure the lumber industry plants trees like crazy. Big agriculture farms re-fertilize the soil. Etc.
This strained tale would probably be a little too one-sided to ever be very good, but the producers wrapped the story in a bizarre, Wall-E-esque dystopia, where the Once-ler has robbed the world of its clean air, and another character (looking like Edna Mole from The Incredibles) became successful selling people clean air, ultimately encasing the entire city of Thneedville in a protective dome.
This uber-plot goes completely off the rails. The movie is actually the story of a boy who wants to find one of these truffula trees to impress a girl, and in doing so he escapes his Logan's Run-esque world and discovers the Once-ler and the story of the Lorax.
Never explained is how the citizens of Thneedville came to be okay with this guy closing their city up and having apparently limitless power over things. There's no government to speak of, so this is all an evil corporatocracy in which every one seems happy and satisfied—except of course they're not really.
This is an aspect of anti-bourgeois evangelism that's difficult to overlook. If Wall-E is a warning or a parody of what we might become, The Lorax is a condemnation of what we are. We only think we're happy or are forced to pretend we're happy because of peer pressure or something.
This isn't a child's movie, made by parents, so much as a teenage fantasy about what things are really like, man.
Sigh.
It's clunky, too. The music is occasionally awful (which is weird, because John Powell is typically quite good, having done Chicken Run, Evolution, Kung Fu Panda and dozens more). It occasionally makes you go "Huhhh?" Betty freakin' White plays the freakin' fesity grandmother. Jenny Slate, as the protagonist's mother, inexplicably seems Jewish. (I can't remember why I think that, whether she affected a Yiddish or what it was, but it seemed tired.)
The animation is okay. There are some good extrapolations on Seussian visual motifs.
The Barbarienne liked it. It was colorful and there was popcorn.
But they missed the point. And, in fairness, so did Dr. Seuss. Had they not put propaganda over telling a story, The Lorax would be a classic.
The real story should have been the Once-ler's. His redemption. In the book and movie, the Once-ler holds on to the last Truffler seed, and lives in regret—and he never takes a single step to repair what he's done. But why? Well, that's the propaganda part: The kids have to do it. And the kids never say "Do it your own damn self, you made this mess in the first place."
And...hey, then the Once-ler could've kept his thneed business going and there'd be more tuffler trees than ever and—well, crap, there goes the narrative. Of course, it'd be a better story.
So I started out talking about the dangers of extending Dr. Seuss stories and ended up saying it'd have been an improvement if they did just that, only differently.
Hey, if the movie doesn't have to make sense, neither do I.
The problem with turning these stories into features is that there's not enough content, and so the proceedings must be padded out. This can be disastrous, as in The Cat in the Hat and particularly How The Grinch Stole Christmas, where the pure-of-heart Whos were twisted into service to make the Grinch a victim. Horton Hears A Who! worked by preserving the essential character of Horton and his Who pals, and padding mostly through entertaining comic bits.
But Geisel's genius was largely that he told simple stories based on the purest of truths. Horton and his fidelity, the power of "something more" in The Grinch, the status seeking Sneetches, the stubborn Zaxs—they all run the risk of being corrupted by "nuance". I can't even watch the live action Grinch, it's such a perversion of the original.
It's probably not fair to say that Seuss was never making a political statement. It's difficult to imagine that The Butter Battle Book, published in 1984, isn't about the arms race. But if it is, it's a terrible, nihilistic story where the slavery of Communism is no different from a free-market society. As a story of people fighting to utter annihilation over a trivial difference, however, it holds up very well indeed.
"A person's a person no matter how small" makes a great slogan for pro-life—but Geisel got lawyery when a group tried to use it that way. And if Thidwick, The Big-Hearted Moose isn't a story about the Occupy movement, I don't know what is. (I don't care if it was written 60 years ago.)
The point of all this being that, if you want to make a good Dr. Seuss movie, stay far away from any political statement and focus heavily on the characters—the depiction of human nature.
Which brings us roundabout to The Lorax, which takes a very faithful adaptation of an uncharacteristically soft-headed Geisel book, and wraps it thick in a bizarre anti-consumerist, wake-up-sheeple dystopia.
The Lorax speaks for the trees, y'see. He's a mystical character and that's what he does. We don't know by what authority he does this, but he does, and that's about the extent of his power. Again, even as not one of Seuss's stronger stories, what's presented is very reasonable: In a landscape bereft of trees, maybe it's not a good idea cut the few trees you have down.
The movie double-downs on this: The trees don't even need to be cut down. Their tufts can be harvested to make the prized thneeds that give the Once-ler his wealth. So, the Once-ler, a largely sympathetic character, gets so greedy he gives the okay to kill his golden goose.
Not that this doesn't happen from time-to-time, but it tends to be a tragedy-of-the-commons thing more than a big business thing. I'm pretty sure the lumber industry plants trees like crazy. Big agriculture farms re-fertilize the soil. Etc.
This strained tale would probably be a little too one-sided to ever be very good, but the producers wrapped the story in a bizarre, Wall-E-esque dystopia, where the Once-ler has robbed the world of its clean air, and another character (looking like Edna Mole from The Incredibles) became successful selling people clean air, ultimately encasing the entire city of Thneedville in a protective dome.
This uber-plot goes completely off the rails. The movie is actually the story of a boy who wants to find one of these truffula trees to impress a girl, and in doing so he escapes his Logan's Run-esque world and discovers the Once-ler and the story of the Lorax.
Never explained is how the citizens of Thneedville came to be okay with this guy closing their city up and having apparently limitless power over things. There's no government to speak of, so this is all an evil corporatocracy in which every one seems happy and satisfied—except of course they're not really.
This is an aspect of anti-bourgeois evangelism that's difficult to overlook. If Wall-E is a warning or a parody of what we might become, The Lorax is a condemnation of what we are. We only think we're happy or are forced to pretend we're happy because of peer pressure or something.
This isn't a child's movie, made by parents, so much as a teenage fantasy about what things are really like, man.
Sigh.
It's clunky, too. The music is occasionally awful (which is weird, because John Powell is typically quite good, having done Chicken Run, Evolution, Kung Fu Panda and dozens more). It occasionally makes you go "Huhhh?" Betty freakin' White plays the freakin' fesity grandmother. Jenny Slate, as the protagonist's mother, inexplicably seems Jewish. (I can't remember why I think that, whether she affected a Yiddish or what it was, but it seemed tired.)
The animation is okay. There are some good extrapolations on Seussian visual motifs.
The Barbarienne liked it. It was colorful and there was popcorn.
But they missed the point. And, in fairness, so did Dr. Seuss. Had they not put propaganda over telling a story, The Lorax would be a classic.
The real story should have been the Once-ler's. His redemption. In the book and movie, the Once-ler holds on to the last Truffler seed, and lives in regret—and he never takes a single step to repair what he's done. But why? Well, that's the propaganda part: The kids have to do it. And the kids never say "Do it your own damn self, you made this mess in the first place."
And...hey, then the Once-ler could've kept his thneed business going and there'd be more tuffler trees than ever and—well, crap, there goes the narrative. Of course, it'd be a better story.
So I started out talking about the dangers of extending Dr. Seuss stories and ended up saying it'd have been an improvement if they did just that, only differently.
Hey, if the movie doesn't have to make sense, neither do I.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Bit Maelstrom's Top 10 Movies of 2008
OK, The Boy decided, after much deliberation, that The Dark Knight was his favorite for 2008. He finally made up his mind based on the movie's characters which were, undoubtedly, among the best drawn this year.
I had a harder time because I felt this year had a lot of very good movies but not a lot of truly great movies. Let's try to narrow my "very good" list down a bit.
You know, weird as it sounds I might be leaning toward Defiance as my best of 2008.
I had a harder time because I felt this year had a lot of very good movies but not a lot of truly great movies. Let's try to narrow my "very good" list down a bit.
- Among the movies I saw this year that were really good, but weren't from this year: The Fall (2006), Live And Become (2005), A Man Named Pearl (2006) and Young @ Heart (2007).
- Appaloosa was the best (and possibly only) western I saw this year. I think it will weather well but it doesn't stand right now as a great movie.
- Cloverfield was the best English language horror I saw this year, though I also really enjoyed The Ruins and Quarantine. Truly great horror is very rare, though, and I'm just pleased there were solid entries this year.
- Hellboy 2 was probably my favorite summer movie. I loved Iron Man and enjoyed Incredible Hulk, and I'm not sure Dark Knight was all that summery a movie. Hulk doesn't quite realize its potential and Iron Man peters out at the end; Hellboy is so near excellence it's hard for me to leave it out, but there's some real weaknesses in the story.
- Kung Fu Panda was an unexpected delight that holds up excellently under multiple viewings.
- In Bruges was my favorite dark comedy and Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day my favorite light comedy.
- I'll mention The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Reader because they're critic's darlings and nominated for Oscars. Both have extraordinary features but I wouldn't put either in my "best of". I can say this, sight unseen of Revolutionary Road and Milk, too.
- Changeling
- Let The Right One In
- Rachel Getting Married
- Slumdog Millionaire
- Tropic Thunder
- Wall-E
- Defiance
- Doubt
- Frost/Nixon
- Gran Torino
You know, weird as it sounds I might be leaning toward Defiance as my best of 2008.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
New Blog Link: Simply Skimming
ReaderIam provides a sort of thinking man's Instapundit over at Simply Skimming.
That's probably an awful description but it came to me in a flash and I like it.
A less nerdy Instapundit? (I can't prove that, though.) A less nano/longevity/alt-history-centered Instapundit?
Basically, it's one of those sites that offers mostly light commentary alongside of links to the stories of the day. Like this great one about Wall-E being a copyright violator.
It tastes great and is less filling.
And if ReaderIam shows up, maybe we can discuss why she doesn't think that envy is what drives people to go after "overpaid" execs....
That's probably an awful description but it came to me in a flash and I like it.
A less nerdy Instapundit? (I can't prove that, though.) A less nano/longevity/alt-history-centered Instapundit?
Basically, it's one of those sites that offers mostly light commentary alongside of links to the stories of the day. Like this great one about Wall-E being a copyright violator.
It tastes great and is less filling.
And if ReaderIam shows up, maybe we can discuss why she doesn't think that envy is what drives people to go after "overpaid" execs....
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Brain Download coming...
I've been wanting to follow up on Wall-E, abortion, alternative energy, global warming, real estate, perils of remodeling etc.
It's just been crazy around here.
I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
Later tonight.
It's just been crazy around here.
I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
Later tonight.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Summer Movies
A site called First Showings has a list of a bunch of summer movies.
The first five have come out: Iron Man, Speed Racer, Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and Sex in the City. (Cliff's Note Reviews: Great, Awful, Pretty Good, OK for the nostalgic, and OK for chicks.) And, for those keeping score, I've seen just Iron Man and Caspian.
There are a lot of cringe-worthy titles remaining on the list. A lot seem like they might be really horrible or possibly really great, but most will land squarely in mediocrity-ville. For example, the Get Smart cast looks as good as it could possibly be, but is it likely to recapture any of the magic of the series?
I can't think of a single comedy remake in my lifetime that has worked. Not a one, unless you count the campy update of Brady Bunch--which was a spoof, not a remake. I may be overlooking one, mind you, but mostly, they're just not funny.
I think the Hellboy sequel will be better than the original. Just a hunch. And the original was not great.
There's a scene in Ratatouille where a food experience takes one of the characters back to his childhood, and reignites the passion he once had for food. When I was a kid, I absolutely loved trailers: There's always something hopeful about an upcoming movie that used to excite me tremendously--though keep in mind that they used to make a lot fewer movies (and TV and games and...) so to have a movie preview that actually piqued your interest was quite thrilling.
I've seen many previews in recent weeks and only one gives me that Ratatouille experience of throwing me back to my childhood is, fittingly, the Pixar film Wall-E. It looks like a gentle yet slapsticky film of little dialog and simple themes. And the trailers make me laugh. (Pixar has a tradition of having original material for the trailers, and it's usually top-notch.)
Anything you're looking forward to this summer?
The first five have come out: Iron Man, Speed Racer, Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and Sex in the City. (Cliff's Note Reviews: Great, Awful, Pretty Good, OK for the nostalgic, and OK for chicks.) And, for those keeping score, I've seen just Iron Man and Caspian.
There are a lot of cringe-worthy titles remaining on the list. A lot seem like they might be really horrible or possibly really great, but most will land squarely in mediocrity-ville. For example, the Get Smart cast looks as good as it could possibly be, but is it likely to recapture any of the magic of the series?
I can't think of a single comedy remake in my lifetime that has worked. Not a one, unless you count the campy update of Brady Bunch--which was a spoof, not a remake. I may be overlooking one, mind you, but mostly, they're just not funny.
I think the Hellboy sequel will be better than the original. Just a hunch. And the original was not great.
There's a scene in Ratatouille where a food experience takes one of the characters back to his childhood, and reignites the passion he once had for food. When I was a kid, I absolutely loved trailers: There's always something hopeful about an upcoming movie that used to excite me tremendously--though keep in mind that they used to make a lot fewer movies (and TV and games and...) so to have a movie preview that actually piqued your interest was quite thrilling.
I've seen many previews in recent weeks and only one gives me that Ratatouille experience of throwing me back to my childhood is, fittingly, the Pixar film Wall-E. It looks like a gentle yet slapsticky film of little dialog and simple themes. And the trailers make me laugh. (Pixar has a tradition of having original material for the trailers, and it's usually top-notch.)
Anything you're looking forward to this summer?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Irony? Or Karma?
One of my pet formulations is that environmentalism (or ecology as it was drummed into me as a child) is a luxury. Poverty starves environmentalism like [some random fat celebrity] starves the other customers at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
To a man without shelter, a two-thousand year old redwood looks like a roof, some walls, maybe even a floor.
To a man without food, a spotted owl is a feast.
Now, one of the more obvious ramifications from environmental policies is poverty. Energy is more expensive because it's too difficult to produce more of it, owing to various environmental restrictions, just for example. The Kyoto protocols would've cost us enormously even though, without them, we came closer to its goals than the nations that actually agreed to it, and those nations are dropping Kyoto like a hot potato in the face of serious economic problems.
Environmentalists are obsessed with our footprints. Not just our carbon footprints, but every resource we "consume" in our existence. This year's Wall-E (a shoo-in for the animation Oscar) took as given the idea that consumerism would lead to the destruction of earth and our own near extinciton. But the lives led aboard the space station by the remaining humans didn't really affect the earth, and I have to believe that most green-types would approve of that. (Although there was the curious issue of the space station making tons of trash, and no explanation of where the raw materials were coming from.)
Wealth is anathema to this crowd.
Their policies create poverty.
Poverty leads to resistance to their policies.
I just can't figure out if that's ironic or karmic.
To a man without shelter, a two-thousand year old redwood looks like a roof, some walls, maybe even a floor.
To a man without food, a spotted owl is a feast.
Now, one of the more obvious ramifications from environmental policies is poverty. Energy is more expensive because it's too difficult to produce more of it, owing to various environmental restrictions, just for example. The Kyoto protocols would've cost us enormously even though, without them, we came closer to its goals than the nations that actually agreed to it, and those nations are dropping Kyoto like a hot potato in the face of serious economic problems.
Environmentalists are obsessed with our footprints. Not just our carbon footprints, but every resource we "consume" in our existence. This year's Wall-E (a shoo-in for the animation Oscar) took as given the idea that consumerism would lead to the destruction of earth and our own near extinciton. But the lives led aboard the space station by the remaining humans didn't really affect the earth, and I have to believe that most green-types would approve of that. (Although there was the curious issue of the space station making tons of trash, and no explanation of where the raw materials were coming from.)
Wealth is anathema to this crowd.
Their policies create poverty.
Poverty leads to resistance to their policies.
I just can't figure out if that's ironic or karmic.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
John Carter and A Princess of Mars
This movie might as well have been called "Don't Go See This. You Don't Even Know What It's About. It's Just More CGI Crap." for all the marketing campaign did for it.
And that's tragic.
This is a really, really good movie. Almost great.
It's a bit long. But that works because it's epic in scope.
Despite the material having been plundered over a century (from the original), John Carter feels amazingly fresh. From the story A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs first book in his Barsoom series, the story is that of a former confederate soldier who ends up on Mars, and in the middle of a planetary civil war.
Because of the lesser gravity—and pre-dating Superman by 20 years—Carter is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and able to withstand what is, in Martian terms, tremendous damage. Circumstances arising from his super-strength result in him becoming an accidental hero of the barbarous six-limbed Tharks.
The Tharks are occasional players in the Martian civil war, which primarily concerns the efforts of the jerky Sab Thon to conquer Mars, a task in which he is aided by the creepy Thern, a super-advanced race who manipulate Martian life to their liking.
The Thern have managed to coerce a wedding of Sab Thon to the titular Princess of Mars, Dejah Thoris, who is, like, totally not interested. Also, she soon develops a thing for the super-Martian John Carter.
Classic pulp, which while it includes elements of the first three Barsoom novels, is very true to the Burroughs spirit.
I was prepared to be bored. I figured there'd be a lot of cheesy CGI—the commercials really make it look generic. But the CGI is as close to flawless as I've ever seen. (Though we'll see if it holds up.)
Well, look, The Boy loved it. And he hates this kind of crap. The Flower, too.
I expect critics to hate this kind of story. They hated the novels—everything Burroughs ever wrote, really. (I lived next door to Tarzana growing up and it was commonly said that you couldn't find a Tarzan book at the Tarzana library.) As for audiences, there are a lot of reasons why this wouldn't catch fire.
The last is sad but it's true that Burroughs' stories were square before I was born, and our love of "cool"—dispassionate, uninvolved, apathetic, anti-enthusiasm "cool" has only grown since then, at least in some circles.
I suppose it's possible that people looked at a lot of this stuff and said, "Eh. Saw it in Star Wars." but I find that a little hard to believe. These movies have no Jar Jar. There is a story, and character development and all the other things that go into making a good movie.
So, why would I hesitate to call it "great"? I'm not entirely sure. The pacing may be a little off. It's kind of breakneck. Some people complained about the non-action scenes but I thought they had a real depth and kind of naturalness we didn't get in Star Wars. I suspect because the people making it were familiar with all eleven books in the series.
I know that I won't hesitate to watch it again more closely.
And that's tragic.
This is a really, really good movie. Almost great.
It's a bit long. But that works because it's epic in scope.
Despite the material having been plundered over a century (from the original), John Carter feels amazingly fresh. From the story A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs first book in his Barsoom series, the story is that of a former confederate soldier who ends up on Mars, and in the middle of a planetary civil war.
Because of the lesser gravity—and pre-dating Superman by 20 years—Carter is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and able to withstand what is, in Martian terms, tremendous damage. Circumstances arising from his super-strength result in him becoming an accidental hero of the barbarous six-limbed Tharks.
The Tharks are occasional players in the Martian civil war, which primarily concerns the efforts of the jerky Sab Thon to conquer Mars, a task in which he is aided by the creepy Thern, a super-advanced race who manipulate Martian life to their liking.
The Thern have managed to coerce a wedding of Sab Thon to the titular Princess of Mars, Dejah Thoris, who is, like, totally not interested. Also, she soon develops a thing for the super-Martian John Carter.
Classic pulp, which while it includes elements of the first three Barsoom novels, is very true to the Burroughs spirit.
I was prepared to be bored. I figured there'd be a lot of cheesy CGI—the commercials really make it look generic. But the CGI is as close to flawless as I've ever seen. (Though we'll see if it holds up.)
Well, look, The Boy loved it. And he hates this kind of crap. The Flower, too.
I expect critics to hate this kind of story. They hated the novels—everything Burroughs ever wrote, really. (I lived next door to Tarzana growing up and it was commonly said that you couldn't find a Tarzan book at the Tarzana library.) As for audiences, there are a lot of reasons why this wouldn't catch fire.
- The marketing is awful. The title says nothing—means nothing to most people these days. The trailers were boring and murky and put the focus on some not very interesting special effects.
Well, I won't dwell on this point much more except to say The Flower came up with the title mentioned here ("John Carter and a Princess of Mars"), which we think would have been a more interesting title. ("John Carter? You mean that doctor from 'E.R.'? Wait, is this about that 'Falling Skies' show?")
I nearly had to drag the kids to see this.
- The movie had a rep before it came out. It was expensive. People love to see expensive things fail. For example, Ishtar was not, on the merits, utterly flopworthy. Worthy of a tepid reception? Sure. But a great big heaping helping of schadenfreude can drag a film down.
I think a lot of people are blindingly envious of Pixar's success and chortle in glee at any mis-step by the studio or its talent. I have no doubt that many eager to see Director Andrew Stanton (A Bug's Life, Wall-E, Finding Nemo) fail spread some poison about this.
There was so much talk of Stanton reshooting scenes, as if he were unaware of the difference between an animated feature and a live action one, it strains credibility. But you know what? The cinematography in this movie is flawless.
- It doesn't try to be cool. This is an old school swashbuckling adventure, and even Carter's jaundiced view of war ultimately gives way to the fact that there are good guys and they are worth fighting for.
The last is sad but it's true that Burroughs' stories were square before I was born, and our love of "cool"—dispassionate, uninvolved, apathetic, anti-enthusiasm "cool" has only grown since then, at least in some circles.
I suppose it's possible that people looked at a lot of this stuff and said, "Eh. Saw it in Star Wars." but I find that a little hard to believe. These movies have no Jar Jar. There is a story, and character development and all the other things that go into making a good movie.
So, why would I hesitate to call it "great"? I'm not entirely sure. The pacing may be a little off. It's kind of breakneck. Some people complained about the non-action scenes but I thought they had a real depth and kind of naturalness we didn't get in Star Wars. I suspect because the people making it were familiar with all eleven books in the series.
I know that I won't hesitate to watch it again more closely.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Go, Live and Become
We were going to try to hit the free showing of Live and Become at the locale Laemmele but it's basketball season again for The Flower and that tends to cut into the movie nights. The games are great, though.
We were itching to see something, though, and The Flower called dibs on both Wall-E and Get Smart, so we went down to Encino to see Live and Become there. The Encino theater is both more expensive and smaller than the West Hills theater, and the staff is a little more standoffish (though still a billion times more alert than most theater chains around here), but we do venture down there at night because the local Laemmele has its last show in the 8pm range.
Extra bonus: Live and Become was the designated "movie of the week", so one ticket paid for both of us. Cool.
Anyway. Live and Become (Va, vis et deviens) is a French-ish film directed by a Romanian and featuring predominately French, Hebrew and Amharic languages (with a smattering of Yiddish), about an Ethiopian boy raised in Israel. I had more occasion than I cared to muse over this since the subtitles were all too frequently white-on-white.
During the '80s Ethiopian--have to struggle not to type Ethernopian, after "South Park"--famine, Jewish Ethiopians, the Falasha (children of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, I think) were allowed to escape into Israel. When a Jewish woman's son dies, a nearby Christian mother sees an opportunity for her son to escape.
Once in Israel, the Jewish mother also dies, and the boy ("christened", heh, "Schlomo") ends up orphaned and forced to carry his secret alone.
The movie follows Schlomo from here to his adulthood, and manages to have a truly epic feel. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it actually felt much faster than the slightly shorter Mongol.
We see the amazing country of Israel, generous enough to accept Ethiopians and petty enough to start little witch hunts to route out the fake Jews, or to treat the blacks badly out of fear of AIDS, an oasis in a truly forbidding desert, but not simple.
And the people are not simple, either. We see good and bad in the same people, though even when the bad comes up, there's a strong sense of family.
Most fascinating, however, is Schlomo's journey from ostensible Christian to Jew. He goes to schul (?), has a bar-mitzvah, enters into a formal debate about the color of Adam's skin in front of the community and rabbis ("the controversies", they called it), and yet constantly feels like a fraud. And he constantly yearns for his mother while puzzling over her last message to him: "Go, live and become". But become what?
He tries on several occasions to tell the truth, but somehow it never works out for him.
His journey takes him in several directions, and all three actors (a child, a teen and a young adult) carry the role well. (The teen and the adult didn't look that much like each other to me, but it was only momentarily disturbing.)
There's a recurring theme with the moon, which the NYT reviewer calls mawkish, but which I thought were appropriate for the character's age. Schlomo talks to the moon, and whenever something personal emerges, it's in the form of one of these monologues. He even incorporates it (inappropriately, I think) into his debate. I rather liked that because, as children and teens, especially that's what we tend to do: Put things that resonate with us out in public thinking everyone will relate to them.
Also, the same review (which is quite good and more focused than my usual rambling) refers to the movie not diving into Schlomo's internal struggle enough. Again, I'd consider this a positive attribute. Rather than have him wail about his conflict, the conflict emerges, often in ways even Schlomo doesn't clearly understand.
What's particularly interesting about this struggle, at least to me, is Schlomo's sense of being a fraud. There can be no doubt that from the get-go he studies Judaism with a passion and never once can be seen as just going through the motions. (His Christianity seems to be something he learned by rote.) But by virtue of being in Israel on false pretenses, he never feels right.
And that, along with the struggle to understand (in his heart, surely intellectual he quickly grasps) his mother's actions, is what gives the movie its focus. I love this aspect of the film: It isn't about the Falasha in Israel, it's not about racism and politics, it's about one person, and how he creates and comes to terms with who he is.
The Boy approved heartily.
We were itching to see something, though, and The Flower called dibs on both Wall-E and Get Smart, so we went down to Encino to see Live and Become there. The Encino theater is both more expensive and smaller than the West Hills theater, and the staff is a little more standoffish (though still a billion times more alert than most theater chains around here), but we do venture down there at night because the local Laemmele has its last show in the 8pm range.
Extra bonus: Live and Become was the designated "movie of the week", so one ticket paid for both of us. Cool.
Anyway. Live and Become (Va, vis et deviens) is a French-ish film directed by a Romanian and featuring predominately French, Hebrew and Amharic languages (with a smattering of Yiddish), about an Ethiopian boy raised in Israel. I had more occasion than I cared to muse over this since the subtitles were all too frequently white-on-white.
During the '80s Ethiopian--have to struggle not to type Ethernopian, after "South Park"--famine, Jewish Ethiopians, the Falasha (children of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, I think) were allowed to escape into Israel. When a Jewish woman's son dies, a nearby Christian mother sees an opportunity for her son to escape.
Once in Israel, the Jewish mother also dies, and the boy ("christened", heh, "Schlomo") ends up orphaned and forced to carry his secret alone.
The movie follows Schlomo from here to his adulthood, and manages to have a truly epic feel. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, it actually felt much faster than the slightly shorter Mongol.
We see the amazing country of Israel, generous enough to accept Ethiopians and petty enough to start little witch hunts to route out the fake Jews, or to treat the blacks badly out of fear of AIDS, an oasis in a truly forbidding desert, but not simple.
And the people are not simple, either. We see good and bad in the same people, though even when the bad comes up, there's a strong sense of family.
Most fascinating, however, is Schlomo's journey from ostensible Christian to Jew. He goes to schul (?), has a bar-mitzvah, enters into a formal debate about the color of Adam's skin in front of the community and rabbis ("the controversies", they called it), and yet constantly feels like a fraud. And he constantly yearns for his mother while puzzling over her last message to him: "Go, live and become". But become what?
He tries on several occasions to tell the truth, but somehow it never works out for him.
His journey takes him in several directions, and all three actors (a child, a teen and a young adult) carry the role well. (The teen and the adult didn't look that much like each other to me, but it was only momentarily disturbing.)
There's a recurring theme with the moon, which the NYT reviewer calls mawkish, but which I thought were appropriate for the character's age. Schlomo talks to the moon, and whenever something personal emerges, it's in the form of one of these monologues. He even incorporates it (inappropriately, I think) into his debate. I rather liked that because, as children and teens, especially that's what we tend to do: Put things that resonate with us out in public thinking everyone will relate to them.
Also, the same review (which is quite good and more focused than my usual rambling) refers to the movie not diving into Schlomo's internal struggle enough. Again, I'd consider this a positive attribute. Rather than have him wail about his conflict, the conflict emerges, often in ways even Schlomo doesn't clearly understand.
What's particularly interesting about this struggle, at least to me, is Schlomo's sense of being a fraud. There can be no doubt that from the get-go he studies Judaism with a passion and never once can be seen as just going through the motions. (His Christianity seems to be something he learned by rote.) But by virtue of being in Israel on false pretenses, he never feels right.
And that, along with the struggle to understand (in his heart, surely intellectual he quickly grasps) his mother's actions, is what gives the movie its focus. I love this aspect of the film: It isn't about the Falasha in Israel, it's not about racism and politics, it's about one person, and how he creates and comes to terms with who he is.
The Boy approved heartily.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Second Chances
I ended up seeing Wall-E a second time, and wanted to post on that, but got caught up thinking about multiple viewings.
(This is another from my discarded file. I never posted it because it just rambles. But what the hell)
When I was a child, say 8 years old or so, seeing a movie for a second time was sheer torture. The sense of boredom was overwhelming. (I did it on a few occasions anyway, which should tell you something about how bored I was.) When I hit my teens, I could see a really excellent movie twice and not be completely restless, I noticed. Even then, it was hard. (I saw Witness and Road Warrior twice.) I saw Star Wars twice and disliked it even more the second time. (Really, it probably wasn't until 10-15 years later that I began to appreciate that series for what it was.)
Seeing them on TV was different. I remember, for example, watching Alien on TV while eating spaghetti and realizing I wasn't particularly squeamish. I think because I could look at particular scenes without investing all my attention in the movie, I found it less offensive (let's use that word) to see a movie more than once. The idea of buying a movie to watch over and over again completely confounded me. VCRs were for time-shifting. (And for recording music videos, which were the only exposure to pop music apart from other people's loud radios and record players that I've had.)
I never quoted from movies back then, either, at least partly because it was a momentary experience, disposable. Someone said to me "These aren't the droids you're looking for" and I stared at them blankly.
Somewhere in there, that changed, and I'm not entirely sure why. If anything, with the greater volume of available material, there should be no excuse for ever repeating a viewing.
It might have to do with the human brain. At the Institutes, they talk about the need for fresh material all the time. A child's brain constantly wants new information. That's why the progression for children's toys goes something like "play with it correctly, play with it incorrectly, break it to see how it works, move on to the next toy". You need a high volume of new info to keep a child's brain engaged.
Paradoxically, however, it's children who like to watch the same programs over and over again. The Boy was extremely fond of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (and, no, I'm not sure that was appropriate) and Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book (and I'm not sure about that one, either, really). Indeed, it was having children that introduced me to repeat viewings for pleasure.
As a side note, having spent a lot of time in "after day" care, there was a point where you were literally forced to stop playing outside and watch TV. Even if you didn't watch it directly, there was no escape. (This developed two things: My current encyclopedic knowledge of certain abhorrent '60s sitcoms, as well as the bowdlerized versions of every Warner Bros. cartoon from the '40s and '50s; my abiding hatred of TV-as-noise through the years.)
One thing I can identify, is that I view things radically differently now. You can call it "growing up" but I'm not sure if that's a correct differentiation. As a child, I was concerned with plot and story mechanics. I read the thought balloons in comic strips without looking at the pictures at all. I burned through picture books. Actually, with comic books, I note that I filled in the visuals with far greater detail than was actually there. (On going back and looking at old comic books of that era, I'm always surprised how little detail work actually made it to the page.)
The appeal of the visual arts were almost completely unknown to me. (I was hugely moved by Michelangelo's Pieta, but that was a rare occurrence, and I didn't--and maybe don't still--understand why that particular piece had such an affect on me.)
I was, in modern parlance, very left-brained. When I drew a picture, it had a plot, .e.g.
At some point, with considerable effort, I started paying more attention to the visual. I also started paying attention to the hows and whys. A lot of bad movies--especially big budget bad movies of today--are packed with high quality craftsmanship, wrapped around a turd of a story. I can entertain myself if the movie doesn't pick up the gauntlet.
One factor in there may have been the formal training in music. All musicians listen to music differently from non-musicians (which is why they like different things from normal people), but having historical perspective makes it apparent how taste is shaped and not the fixed "I know what I like" kind of thing that most people experience.
If you immerse yourself in early Gregorian chant, where only one note is ever sung at a time, and the figures are simple--and it only takes a few weeks of listening to a lot of this--when the second note gets added, it's like the skies opening up and showing heaven. You can really get a sense of how wondrous and controversial that second note was at the time.
You can repeat this process for many points in music history. And if you love music--I mean, if you really love music, not just the current iterations of pop--you owe it to yourself to embark on some part of that journey.
This is actually harder to apply to movies, but not impossible. It's very hard to watch Frankenstein (1931) and realize that people had nightmares from that. Someone famously called up the exhibitor in the middle of the night and said "Since you made it impossible for me to sleep, I'm going to make it impossible for you!" or something along those lines.
Hell, it's hard to do that with The Thing (1982), and I remember being both floored by the movie and the huge outrage over it. People called it "pornography", the advertising was yanked for it, and John Carpenter's never been the same. 25 years later and it's almost quaint. (But then, horror particularly ages quickly.)
But early on I realized, with movies, the key wasn't who was in it: You're a chump if you go to a movie with a particular actor--no matter how great--expecting it to be good because the actor is in it. A star (like Will Smith) can carry a weak movie and a great actor can provide good moments in an otherwise bad film, but every great actor ultimately appears in a number of dogs.
It's not impossible to rediscover . I couldn't relate to Westerns as a kid at all. It was all sci-fi and horror, if you could get it. I did finally get to a Western film series, where they showed 30 years of westerns, about four movies per decade. And I began to pick up the tropes and symbols pretty quickly--though it was funny to me how many of the movies simply required you to assume the guy in the white hat was the good guy, even if his actions were objectively identical to the guy in the black hat. (Postmodern deconstructionism at work?)
I guess, wrapping this up, the key differences between then and now, barring whatever neurological factors may be at play, are that: 1) I don't expect to be the passive effect of movies that I watch now; 2) I'm not so heavily invested in the narrative structure for my enjoyment of movies, and have a much greater appreciation for and interest in the technical details that make individual moments in movies work.
Similar experiences anyone?
(This is another from my discarded file. I never posted it because it just rambles. But what the hell)
When I was a child, say 8 years old or so, seeing a movie for a second time was sheer torture. The sense of boredom was overwhelming. (I did it on a few occasions anyway, which should tell you something about how bored I was.) When I hit my teens, I could see a really excellent movie twice and not be completely restless, I noticed. Even then, it was hard. (I saw Witness and Road Warrior twice.) I saw Star Wars twice and disliked it even more the second time. (Really, it probably wasn't until 10-15 years later that I began to appreciate that series for what it was.)
Seeing them on TV was different. I remember, for example, watching Alien on TV while eating spaghetti and realizing I wasn't particularly squeamish. I think because I could look at particular scenes without investing all my attention in the movie, I found it less offensive (let's use that word) to see a movie more than once. The idea of buying a movie to watch over and over again completely confounded me. VCRs were for time-shifting. (And for recording music videos, which were the only exposure to pop music apart from other people's loud radios and record players that I've had.)
I never quoted from movies back then, either, at least partly because it was a momentary experience, disposable. Someone said to me "These aren't the droids you're looking for" and I stared at them blankly.
Somewhere in there, that changed, and I'm not entirely sure why. If anything, with the greater volume of available material, there should be no excuse for ever repeating a viewing.
It might have to do with the human brain. At the Institutes, they talk about the need for fresh material all the time. A child's brain constantly wants new information. That's why the progression for children's toys goes something like "play with it correctly, play with it incorrectly, break it to see how it works, move on to the next toy". You need a high volume of new info to keep a child's brain engaged.
Paradoxically, however, it's children who like to watch the same programs over and over again. The Boy was extremely fond of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (and, no, I'm not sure that was appropriate) and Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book (and I'm not sure about that one, either, really). Indeed, it was having children that introduced me to repeat viewings for pleasure.
As a side note, having spent a lot of time in "after day" care, there was a point where you were literally forced to stop playing outside and watch TV. Even if you didn't watch it directly, there was no escape. (This developed two things: My current encyclopedic knowledge of certain abhorrent '60s sitcoms, as well as the bowdlerized versions of every Warner Bros. cartoon from the '40s and '50s; my abiding hatred of TV-as-noise through the years.)
One thing I can identify, is that I view things radically differently now. You can call it "growing up" but I'm not sure if that's a correct differentiation. As a child, I was concerned with plot and story mechanics. I read the thought balloons in comic strips without looking at the pictures at all. I burned through picture books. Actually, with comic books, I note that I filled in the visuals with far greater detail than was actually there. (On going back and looking at old comic books of that era, I'm always surprised how little detail work actually made it to the page.)
The appeal of the visual arts were almost completely unknown to me. (I was hugely moved by Michelangelo's Pieta, but that was a rare occurrence, and I didn't--and maybe don't still--understand why that particular piece had such an affect on me.)
I was, in modern parlance, very left-brained. When I drew a picture, it had a plot, .e.g.
At some point, with considerable effort, I started paying more attention to the visual. I also started paying attention to the hows and whys. A lot of bad movies--especially big budget bad movies of today--are packed with high quality craftsmanship, wrapped around a turd of a story. I can entertain myself if the movie doesn't pick up the gauntlet.
One factor in there may have been the formal training in music. All musicians listen to music differently from non-musicians (which is why they like different things from normal people), but having historical perspective makes it apparent how taste is shaped and not the fixed "I know what I like" kind of thing that most people experience.
If you immerse yourself in early Gregorian chant, where only one note is ever sung at a time, and the figures are simple--and it only takes a few weeks of listening to a lot of this--when the second note gets added, it's like the skies opening up and showing heaven. You can really get a sense of how wondrous and controversial that second note was at the time.
You can repeat this process for many points in music history. And if you love music--I mean, if you really love music, not just the current iterations of pop--you owe it to yourself to embark on some part of that journey.
This is actually harder to apply to movies, but not impossible. It's very hard to watch Frankenstein (1931) and realize that people had nightmares from that. Someone famously called up the exhibitor in the middle of the night and said "Since you made it impossible for me to sleep, I'm going to make it impossible for you!" or something along those lines.
Hell, it's hard to do that with The Thing (1982), and I remember being both floored by the movie and the huge outrage over it. People called it "pornography", the advertising was yanked for it, and John Carpenter's never been the same. 25 years later and it's almost quaint. (But then, horror particularly ages quickly.)
But early on I realized, with movies, the key wasn't who was in it: You're a chump if you go to a movie with a particular actor--no matter how great--expecting it to be good because the actor is in it. A star (like Will Smith) can carry a weak movie and a great actor can provide good moments in an otherwise bad film, but every great actor ultimately appears in a number of dogs.
It's not impossible to rediscover . I couldn't relate to Westerns as a kid at all. It was all sci-fi and horror, if you could get it. I did finally get to a Western film series, where they showed 30 years of westerns, about four movies per decade. And I began to pick up the tropes and symbols pretty quickly--though it was funny to me how many of the movies simply required you to assume the guy in the white hat was the good guy, even if his actions were objectively identical to the guy in the black hat. (Postmodern deconstructionism at work?)
I guess, wrapping this up, the key differences between then and now, barring whatever neurological factors may be at play, are that: 1) I don't expect to be the passive effect of movies that I watch now; 2) I'm not so heavily invested in the narrative structure for my enjoyment of movies, and have a much greater appreciation for and interest in the technical details that make individual moments in movies work.
Similar experiences anyone?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Movies and TV Shows
Good Post Apocalyptic movies are rare. Every dime store wannabe Roger Corman (including Roger Corman) makes a post-apocalyptic movie because it's cheap. All you need is a handful of actors and a desolate shooting location and, voila, it's the end of the world as we know it (and I'm not feeling so good).
I didn't count the Terminator movies since they actually take place, for the most part, in the pre-apocalypso. I also don't count Planet of the Apes, since for all intents and purposes it takes place on a different planet. The same goes for Time Machine. In other words, if it's so far post-apocalyptic that there's nothing left of the original civilization, it doesn't really count.
You won't find that first serious post-nuke movie, On The Beach, on this list, because two hours of "Waltzing Matilda" makes waterboarding seem humane by comparison. And it's really "mid-apocalyptic" like The Day After. And, for the record, Glass's Einstein on the Beach defines "inane".
So, the basic rule is there has to be a complete breakdown of existing society, but enough time for some new form of rudimentary society has to have risen that recalls and clings to the old but is fragile and primitive. Scope is usually large and time is usually from ten to a hundred years or so, but that's not necessary (see the list).
Anyone remember Ark II
? It was largely forgettable SatAM moralizing about the environment but I never did actually forget it, because the Ark itself was parked in a lot visible from the 101 as you head downtown. Also, they had a jet pack.
Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Movies & TV Shows (With The Caveat That I Haven't Seen More Than A Few Minutes Of "Jericho")
1. Road Warrior: Mad Max 2
Can there be any doubt? The '80s were the glory days of action, and this movie spawned a horde of imitators. Italian teens in grungy armor running through warehouses and crap like that. But it's a solid story, with action that really holds up.
The first Mad Max was so-so--make sure you don't watch the version where Mel Gibson and the other Aussie-accented ones are dubbed--and the third one (Beyond Thunderdome) was pretty good, and arguably should be included on the list.
2. Wall-E
You know, you don't get a lot of family-oriented "post apocalyptic" movies. "I know! Let's make a movie for the kids about how the world has come to an end!" This is a unique accomplishment discussed twice on this blog already.
3. A Boy and his Dog
This is probably the only movie based on a Harlan Ellison work that actually captures the guy's cynical, misanthropic, but highly amusing attitude. A young Don Johnson cavorts around the wasteland with his telepathically linked dog, until he's given a chance to rejoin society, a weird midwestern small town ca. 1935 that happens to be underground. Jason Robards co-stars. The end features the worst pun in movie history.
You can watch this or download it free online here.
4. The Matrix
Over-rated and seriously tarnished by the two sequels, which played like movies done by people who had read and believed all the great things other people were saying about them. Nonetheless, a watershed action film that holds up well over time.
This is a somewhat dubious entry as post-apocalyptic because there is obviously a new order; it's more "alien invasion" in a lot of ways. But the underground life of the surviving humans is very typical of post-apoco movies, and the Matrix itself assures that the previous civilization is never forgotten.
5. 28 Days Later
Return of the Living Dead did it first, but director Danny Boyle made fast-moving zombies fashionable. Bonus points for animal rights terrorists causing the end of civilization. Actually, probably the only film on the list that's got a plausible post-apocalpytic story, made possible I think because it's only a month after the end of the world.
Yes, I know, it's only the British Isles that end but, while global apocalypses are the norm, any isolated area where civilization's ability to intervene is highly limited can also work. (See #9 below.) You could argue, for example, that Lord of the Flies is post-apocalyptic, in a way.
6. Dawn of the Dead
Speaking of zombies, Romero's second zombie film is still pretty funny and fast-paced, despite the heavy-handed social commentary that's as dated as a tie-dyed shirt.
Night of the Living Dead--probably the grandfather of modern horror--is mid-apocalypse (and they don't even know it). Day of the Dead and later movies get increasingly heavy-handed, resulting in things like the ludicrous Land of the Dead: A good movie with a ridiculous premise that we should learn to co-exist with zombies.
Nonetheless, Romero makes a good movie every now and again, mostly about zombies. (Knightriders is a solid picture, often overlooked.) And Dawn of the Dead is easily one of his best.
7. The Last Man On Earth
Vincent Price in the original rendition of Richard Matheson's tale, later to be remade with Charlton Heston as Omega Man, and again with Will Smith under its actual title, I Am Legend.
Omega is way too hippie, though. It has become camp over time. I Am Legend is a typically facile modern remake done up big budget with lots of CGI and not a lot of heart, riding on Smith's charisma. And I'm sure I'll feel that way even after I see it.
Yes, the Price version is very low budget, stagey and a little slow. I still prefer it. Make your own damn list if you don't like it.
8. "Day of the Triffids" (1981 BBC TV mini-series)
Low budget, shot on video, but remarkably effective telling of John Wyndham's story of alien plants run amok. Previously made in America with Janette Scott in a not very good movie, immortalized by the theme from Rocky Horror Picture Show.
9. "Twilight Zone" (various episodes)
TZ rocked so hard that they could have the pre-apocalypse, apocalypse and post-apocalypse in one episode. You know what I'm talking about: Burgess Meredith and his famous glasses. But there were other good pre-, post- and mid-apocalyptic shows. Arguably, the very first episode is post-apocalyptic. Then there's "Two" with, I think, Elizabeth Montgomery. Etc.
The famous Billy Mumy episode, "It's a Good Life", where little Billy wishes people into the cornfield, actually fits pretty well into the post-apoco category. The town is completely isolated and the order is sort of a mockery of what it was.
Tie:
10. Wizards
Wildly uneven, hippy-tastic, cheaply made and crude, Wizards is still one of my favorite films. In a post-apocalyptic world, the forces of good, represented by a magic wizard, hot faerie chicks and asian looking warriors, do battle against the forces of evil, represented by mutants and technology and lots of Nazi stuff.
Ham-handed? Sure. But it's also ridiculously accurate about the desire of some for a world where magic makes technology unnecessary.
Besides which, it's fast, funny, and--where it's not terribly hard to look at because it's so cheap--very fun to look at.
10. Death Race 2000
Sharing 10th place with Wizards is the campy '70s flick Death Race 2000 with David (heh, put "Bill" there originally) Carradine and Sylvester Stallone as racers in a future where glory comes from a cross-country road race, where points are assigned by the number and kind of pedestrians you hit.
Paul Bartel's film is not aging all that well, again having that sort of ham-handed hippy-esque anti-America feel, but maybe, for what it is--a $300K film with a relatively interesting premise made in the high '70s--it's aging pretty well after all.
Paul W.S. Anderson (whose Resident Evil series didn't make the top 10) is remaking this movie as Death Race with Jason Statham and Joan Allen. ISYN.
Honorable Mention: Korgoth of Barbaria
There's only been one episode of this funny, funny show, but it's well worth watching if you can find it, and lack any sort of good taste. It's basically a high fantasy setting, but it's post-apocalyptic (ike Wizards, which it rather resembles) and has plenty of modern references for humor and plot reasons.
This brain child of Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Clone Wars) and Aaron Springer (Spongbob Squarepants) features over-the-top violence, dumb jokes and plain ol' slapstick. Somehow, it all works.
I didn't count the Terminator movies since they actually take place, for the most part, in the pre-apocalypso. I also don't count Planet of the Apes, since for all intents and purposes it takes place on a different planet. The same goes for Time Machine. In other words, if it's so far post-apocalyptic that there's nothing left of the original civilization, it doesn't really count.
You won't find that first serious post-nuke movie, On The Beach, on this list, because two hours of "Waltzing Matilda" makes waterboarding seem humane by comparison. And it's really "mid-apocalyptic" like The Day After. And, for the record, Glass's Einstein on the Beach defines "inane".
So, the basic rule is there has to be a complete breakdown of existing society, but enough time for some new form of rudimentary society has to have risen that recalls and clings to the old but is fragile and primitive. Scope is usually large and time is usually from ten to a hundred years or so, but that's not necessary (see the list).
Anyone remember Ark II
? It was largely forgettable SatAM moralizing about the environment but I never did actually forget it, because the Ark itself was parked in a lot visible from the 101 as you head downtown. Also, they had a jet pack.Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Movies & TV Shows (With The Caveat That I Haven't Seen More Than A Few Minutes Of "Jericho")
1. Road Warrior: Mad Max 2Can there be any doubt? The '80s were the glory days of action, and this movie spawned a horde of imitators. Italian teens in grungy armor running through warehouses and crap like that. But it's a solid story, with action that really holds up.
The first Mad Max was so-so--make sure you don't watch the version where Mel Gibson and the other Aussie-accented ones are dubbed--and the third one (Beyond Thunderdome) was pretty good, and arguably should be included on the list.
2. Wall-EYou know, you don't get a lot of family-oriented "post apocalyptic" movies. "I know! Let's make a movie for the kids about how the world has come to an end!" This is a unique accomplishment discussed twice on this blog already.
3. A Boy and his DogThis is probably the only movie based on a Harlan Ellison work that actually captures the guy's cynical, misanthropic, but highly amusing attitude. A young Don Johnson cavorts around the wasteland with his telepathically linked dog, until he's given a chance to rejoin society, a weird midwestern small town ca. 1935 that happens to be underground. Jason Robards co-stars. The end features the worst pun in movie history.
You can watch this or download it free online here.
4. The MatrixOver-rated and seriously tarnished by the two sequels, which played like movies done by people who had read and believed all the great things other people were saying about them. Nonetheless, a watershed action film that holds up well over time.
This is a somewhat dubious entry as post-apocalyptic because there is obviously a new order; it's more "alien invasion" in a lot of ways. But the underground life of the surviving humans is very typical of post-apoco movies, and the Matrix itself assures that the previous civilization is never forgotten.
5. 28 Days LaterReturn of the Living Dead did it first, but director Danny Boyle made fast-moving zombies fashionable. Bonus points for animal rights terrorists causing the end of civilization. Actually, probably the only film on the list that's got a plausible post-apocalpytic story, made possible I think because it's only a month after the end of the world.
Yes, I know, it's only the British Isles that end but, while global apocalypses are the norm, any isolated area where civilization's ability to intervene is highly limited can also work. (See #9 below.) You could argue, for example, that Lord of the Flies is post-apocalyptic, in a way.
6. Dawn of the DeadSpeaking of zombies, Romero's second zombie film is still pretty funny and fast-paced, despite the heavy-handed social commentary that's as dated as a tie-dyed shirt.
Night of the Living Dead--probably the grandfather of modern horror--is mid-apocalypse (and they don't even know it). Day of the Dead and later movies get increasingly heavy-handed, resulting in things like the ludicrous Land of the Dead: A good movie with a ridiculous premise that we should learn to co-exist with zombies.
Nonetheless, Romero makes a good movie every now and again, mostly about zombies. (Knightriders is a solid picture, often overlooked.) And Dawn of the Dead is easily one of his best.
7. The Last Man On EarthVincent Price in the original rendition of Richard Matheson's tale, later to be remade with Charlton Heston as Omega Man, and again with Will Smith under its actual title, I Am Legend.
Omega is way too hippie, though. It has become camp over time. I Am Legend is a typically facile modern remake done up big budget with lots of CGI and not a lot of heart, riding on Smith's charisma. And I'm sure I'll feel that way even after I see it.
Yes, the Price version is very low budget, stagey and a little slow. I still prefer it. Make your own damn list if you don't like it.
8. "Day of the Triffids" (1981 BBC TV mini-series)Low budget, shot on video, but remarkably effective telling of John Wyndham's story of alien plants run amok. Previously made in America with Janette Scott in a not very good movie, immortalized by the theme from Rocky Horror Picture Show.
9. "Twilight Zone" (various episodes)TZ rocked so hard that they could have the pre-apocalypse, apocalypse and post-apocalypse in one episode. You know what I'm talking about: Burgess Meredith and his famous glasses. But there were other good pre-, post- and mid-apocalyptic shows. Arguably, the very first episode is post-apocalyptic. Then there's "Two" with, I think, Elizabeth Montgomery. Etc.
The famous Billy Mumy episode, "It's a Good Life", where little Billy wishes people into the cornfield, actually fits pretty well into the post-apoco category. The town is completely isolated and the order is sort of a mockery of what it was.
Tie:
10. WizardsWildly uneven, hippy-tastic, cheaply made and crude, Wizards is still one of my favorite films. In a post-apocalyptic world, the forces of good, represented by a magic wizard, hot faerie chicks and asian looking warriors, do battle against the forces of evil, represented by mutants and technology and lots of Nazi stuff.
Ham-handed? Sure. But it's also ridiculously accurate about the desire of some for a world where magic makes technology unnecessary.
Besides which, it's fast, funny, and--where it's not terribly hard to look at because it's so cheap--very fun to look at.
10. Death Race 2000Sharing 10th place with Wizards is the campy '70s flick Death Race 2000 with David (heh, put "Bill" there originally) Carradine and Sylvester Stallone as racers in a future where glory comes from a cross-country road race, where points are assigned by the number and kind of pedestrians you hit.
Paul Bartel's film is not aging all that well, again having that sort of ham-handed hippy-esque anti-America feel, but maybe, for what it is--a $300K film with a relatively interesting premise made in the high '70s--it's aging pretty well after all.
Paul W.S. Anderson (whose Resident Evil series didn't make the top 10) is remaking this movie as Death Race with Jason Statham and Joan Allen. ISYN.
Honorable Mention: Korgoth of Barbaria
There's only been one episode of this funny, funny show, but it's well worth watching if you can find it, and lack any sort of good taste. It's basically a high fantasy setting, but it's post-apocalyptic (ike Wizards, which it rather resembles) and has plenty of modern references for humor and plot reasons.
This brain child of Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Clone Wars) and Aaron Springer (Spongbob Squarepants) features over-the-top violence, dumb jokes and plain ol' slapstick. Somehow, it all works.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
OK, Back To The Serious Fun....
Well, with all the attention on Alex Lotorto and his band of merry Mac-wielding, terrorist-lovin' protestors, we've gotten away from what's really important on this blog: movies and pointy breasts.
Nah, unfortunately, we still got the Oscars clog. We might go see The Class (which lost for Best Foreign Language Picture) or the Joaquin Phoenix flick Two Lovers. I can't quite gin up the mojo to spend any bucks on a Friday the 13th flick. I do see that they remade(ish) the second film rather than the first, which was smart. It opened big and then dropped a whopping 80% in the next weekend.
I do need to move on to reviewing the rest of the series, tho'. After that, I'll probably fisk Wall-E. And maybe the Harry Potter series.
Also the fourth (and possibly final) Futurama "movie" arrived and that needs a looking at.
Nah, unfortunately, we still got the Oscars clog. We might go see The Class (which lost for Best Foreign Language Picture) or the Joaquin Phoenix flick Two Lovers. I can't quite gin up the mojo to spend any bucks on a Friday the 13th flick. I do see that they remade(ish) the second film rather than the first, which was smart. It opened big and then dropped a whopping 80% in the next weekend.
I do need to move on to reviewing the rest of the series, tho'. After that, I'll probably fisk Wall-E. And maybe the Harry Potter series.
Also the fourth (and possibly final) Futurama "movie" arrived and that needs a looking at.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Best of 2008 Warm Up
The Boy industriously narrowed down his many choices for movie of the year to just three: The Dark Knight, Changeling and Burn After Reading.
He's got good taste, though those probably won't be my top three. What's interesting is that all three of those movies shift gears at some point and turn into something you don't expect from the outset. The Dark Knight is pretty straightforward until Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face, at which point it becomes something else. The Changeling starts like a mystery and ends as sort-of historical muckraking. Burn After Reading starts like a light comedy and, when one of the characters is killed, turns into a dark comedy.
As I review the list, I'd say that this was a pretty good year for movies. Now, I see a skewed set of films: I see a disproportionate number of foreign movies, micro-budgeters and documentaries--though this was a bad year for distribution of those films, I think, since way fewer of 'em made it to my local theater.
I'm really not interested in seeing drab rehashes of old concepts with new stars, but if you can bring some life to an old form, like putting Robert Downey Jr. into Iron Man, I'm there.
The biggest box office movie that I didn't see this year was #4, Hancock, and that's actually a bit of a regret. I like director Peter Berg. The biggest box office movie that I would've missed was #3, Indiana Jones and the whatever.
The next big BO movie I didn't see was Twilight. Ugh. My childhood love of the vampire movie started to wane about the time Anne Rice published Interview With A Vampire. Teenage girls have basically ruined the undead for me.
There are five movies in the 11-20 range I haven't seen. And four that don't really ping a lot of interest. I've heard good things about Marley and Me (from dog people) but I'm not really knocking down the doors to see Sex and the City, Mamma Mia, Wanted and Four Christmases.
You might think that if I saw 75 movies, then I'd have about 50/50 chances of seeing the rest of the list, but of course, that's not true: A great many of the movies I saw this year didn't make the list. And I have predictive ability as far as which little movies might take off. For example, the delightful little Bottle Shock grossed just over $4M while my best documentary pick, Young @ Heart grossed just under $4M. Man on Wire grossed under $3M! RockNRolla made $5.7M, apparently not benefiting at all from Guy Ritchie's high profile divorce to that singer.
Yet any of those films is objectively better by any standard than, say, 10,000 BC, which almost made it to the $100M mark. I know this without even having seen 10,000 BC.
Heh. Enough snark.
The problem I'm having with this year is that there were many very good films, but how many were truly outstanding? What's more, I've now seen Kung-Fu Panda about a zillion times, and it holds up pretty well, but Wall-E not so much. Not that it doesn't hold up, exactly, but that it doesn't seem to be a favorite. Horton Hears A Who is actually a lot more popular here.
Seeing a movie multiple times can change your opinion of it, of course. There was a lot of competent film making, but nothing that really pinned me to the back of my seat.
He's got good taste, though those probably won't be my top three. What's interesting is that all three of those movies shift gears at some point and turn into something you don't expect from the outset. The Dark Knight is pretty straightforward until Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face, at which point it becomes something else. The Changeling starts like a mystery and ends as sort-of historical muckraking. Burn After Reading starts like a light comedy and, when one of the characters is killed, turns into a dark comedy.
As I review the list, I'd say that this was a pretty good year for movies. Now, I see a skewed set of films: I see a disproportionate number of foreign movies, micro-budgeters and documentaries--though this was a bad year for distribution of those films, I think, since way fewer of 'em made it to my local theater.
I'm really not interested in seeing drab rehashes of old concepts with new stars, but if you can bring some life to an old form, like putting Robert Downey Jr. into Iron Man, I'm there.
The biggest box office movie that I didn't see this year was #4, Hancock, and that's actually a bit of a regret. I like director Peter Berg. The biggest box office movie that I would've missed was #3, Indiana Jones and the whatever.
The next big BO movie I didn't see was Twilight. Ugh. My childhood love of the vampire movie started to wane about the time Anne Rice published Interview With A Vampire. Teenage girls have basically ruined the undead for me.
There are five movies in the 11-20 range I haven't seen. And four that don't really ping a lot of interest. I've heard good things about Marley and Me (from dog people) but I'm not really knocking down the doors to see Sex and the City, Mamma Mia, Wanted and Four Christmases.
You might think that if I saw 75 movies, then I'd have about 50/50 chances of seeing the rest of the list, but of course, that's not true: A great many of the movies I saw this year didn't make the list. And I have predictive ability as far as which little movies might take off. For example, the delightful little Bottle Shock grossed just over $4M while my best documentary pick, Young @ Heart grossed just under $4M. Man on Wire grossed under $3M! RockNRolla made $5.7M, apparently not benefiting at all from Guy Ritchie's high profile divorce to that singer.
Yet any of those films is objectively better by any standard than, say, 10,000 BC, which almost made it to the $100M mark. I know this without even having seen 10,000 BC.
Heh. Enough snark.
The problem I'm having with this year is that there were many very good films, but how many were truly outstanding? What's more, I've now seen Kung-Fu Panda about a zillion times, and it holds up pretty well, but Wall-E not so much. Not that it doesn't hold up, exactly, but that it doesn't seem to be a favorite. Horton Hears A Who is actually a lot more popular here.
Seeing a movie multiple times can change your opinion of it, of course. There was a lot of competent film making, but nothing that really pinned me to the back of my seat.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Movies Seen in 2008
Seventy-three movies in the theater in 2008. Almost none of them alone, most with popcorn. That's some cash right there. These were plucked from reviews I did for the blog; it's possible that I missed some.
You'd think moviemakers would start pandering to me but no dice, yet.
An American Carol
Appaloosa
Baghead
The Band's Visit (2007)
The Bank Job
Before the Rains (2007)
Body of Lies
Bottle Shock
The Boy In the Striped Pajamas
The Bucket List (2007)
Burn After Reading
Changeling
Cloverfield
The Counterfeiters (2007)
The Dark Knight
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
El Orfanato (2007)
The Fall (2006)
Forbidden Kingdom
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Frozen River
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
Get Smart
Ghost Town
The Hammer (2007)
Hellboy 2
Horton Hears A Who
How To Lose Friends and Alienate People
In Bruges
Incredible Hulk
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Juno (2007)
The Kite Runner (2007)
Kung Fu Panda
Let the Right One In
Live and Become (2005)
Madagascar 2: Back To Africa
A Man Named Pearl (2006)
Man On Wire
Mirrors
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day
Mongol (2007)
Moscow, Belgium
Persepolis (2007)
Pineapple Express
Priceless (2006)
Prince Caspian
Quantum of Solace
Quarantine
Rachel Getting Married
Redbelt
Refuseniks (2007)
RockNRolla
Role Models
The Ruins
The Savages (2007)
Saw V
Slumdog Millionaire
Son of Rambow (2007)
The Strangers
Sweeney Todd (2007)
Tell No One (2006)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Traitor
TransSiberian
Tropic Thunder
Trumbo (2007)
Valkyrie
The Visitor
Wall-E
Young At Heart (2007)
Zack and Miri Make A Porno
You'd think moviemakers would start pandering to me but no dice, yet.
An American Carol
Appaloosa
Baghead
The Band's Visit (2007)
The Bank Job
Before the Rains (2007)
Body of Lies
Bottle Shock
The Boy In the Striped Pajamas
The Bucket List (2007)
Burn After Reading
Changeling
Cloverfield
The Counterfeiters (2007)
The Dark Knight
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
El Orfanato (2007)
The Fall (2006)
Forbidden Kingdom
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Frozen River
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
Get Smart
Ghost Town
The Hammer (2007)
Hellboy 2
Horton Hears A Who
How To Lose Friends and Alienate People
In Bruges
Incredible Hulk
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Juno (2007)
The Kite Runner (2007)
Kung Fu Panda
Let the Right One In
Live and Become (2005)
Madagascar 2: Back To Africa
A Man Named Pearl (2006)
Man On Wire
Mirrors
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day
Mongol (2007)
Moscow, Belgium
Persepolis (2007)
Pineapple Express
Priceless (2006)
Prince Caspian
Quantum of Solace
Quarantine
Rachel Getting Married
Redbelt
Refuseniks (2007)
RockNRolla
Role Models
The Ruins
The Savages (2007)
Saw V
Slumdog Millionaire
Son of Rambow (2007)
The Strangers
Sweeney Todd (2007)
Tell No One (2006)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Traitor
TransSiberian
Tropic Thunder
Trumbo (2007)
Valkyrie
The Visitor
Wall-E
Young At Heart (2007)
Zack and Miri Make A Porno
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