As the global warming house of cards tumbles, it's time to revisit my views on oil.
Like the real estate bubble, which I was vigorously assuring people would pop (I mean honestly, anyone who can afford to pay $750,000 for a house is pulling down six-figures minimum, and not that many households are doing that), I've also stated that as soon as we start sinking money into alternative fuels, the price of oil will drop to the point where those fuels are not financially feasible.
Behold! According to this, oil is below $70 per barrel. The most feasible of the alternatives I've read about is shale oil. (Still oil, but in crunchy form.) According to this, shale costs more than $60 per barrel, though I've seen estimates that it can be brought in slightly cheaper.
Russia's slap-happy waking bear dreams aside, I would suggest that oil can't be kept higher than the price that encourages alternatives. I mean, obviously, if you have magic car-moving goo for $90 barrel then oil can't go higher than that, or people will buy MCMG.
But also, the higher the price of a barrel, the more the alternatives can cost, and therefore the greater the interest in providing those alternatives.
Simple, eh?
Oil producers are simply motivated: They want as much money as they can get for what they have for as long as possible. By reducing output, they raise the prices and extend the longevity of their supply. But people will simply use less, on the one hand, and look for alternatives on the other.
The oilmen know this and act accordingly.
Eventually, I'm sure, we'll get to that better form of fuel. But it'll probably be something we don't even see now, maybe taking advantage of physics we don't even understand yet, say, at the quark or sub-quark level.
That would be cool. In the mean time, enjoy your oil. How low will it go? Think it might go back to sub-$50? Sub-$20?
That, I cannot say. I do like to point out that the peak oil people assured us it could only go up from here, much like the global warming people.
I'm petty that way.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Tall (but not Dark) Stranger
If I've not been enamored of Western movies, it's even fairer to say I'm nigh totally ignorant on Western novels. ("Read about a...cowboy?")
This will probably lead to hilarity in my upcoming novel. But to be honest, I've never been good with genre conventions. I tried writing Romance novels in my youth, but my model was more a mixture of literature (like Jane Austen) and '40s-style romcoms. I really wanted to establish the female character and her life before introducing the love interest.
So, when someone says, "Oh, this movie is based on a Louis L'amour story," the only thing it means to me is that I know who the guy is and that he wrote a metric buttload of Westerns.
Which brings us to The Tall Stranger
with Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo. Mr. McCrea, whom I hilariously confuse with Joel Grey, plays Ned Bannon, a guy beaten, robbed and left for dead, until picked up by a wagon train.
The wagon train is heading west for Californ-eye-aye but being led astray by the unctuous Mort Harper (George Neise). He's leading them into Bishop's Valley, which is already owned and operated by Bannon's half-brother, Hardy Bishop (Barry Kelly). Harper's plan is to stir up some trouble, with the help of his sleazy Mexican sidekick, Zarata (Michael Ansara).
In the ensuing battle with the settlers, Harper figures Bishop will be weak enough to be completely wiped out by Harper's own band of desperados. It's up to Bannon to unravel the mystery and save the day.
The beauty of the Western, as a genre, is that you always know who the good guys are, and they're really good. They'll be tough.They might even be harsh, because the world is harsh and the sooner you face up to that, the better. But they have a code, and it's going to be a combination of protecting the weak while building them up to be strong, and meting out rough (but fair) justice.
The bad guys are going to be villanous. Snakes who hide their intentions and manipulate people to their own ends. They might not be complete cowards, but they'll exploit any weakness and show little respect for some important aspect of common decency and society.
In the end the good guy will win, however great the cost, and (generally speaking) the truth will be known about the villany of the bad guys.
I take comfort in that.
A commenter over on Althouse was saying that his mother, who had been in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation in WWII had a distinct preference for escapist fantasy to historical tragedy, and made a point I think is probably pretty valid: When times are tough, we want escapism at the movies. When times are good, we enjoy the risk-taking and even tragedy of stories set in hard times.
Of course, the West was tough--tougher than most of us can appreciate--but the Western offers a kind of moral clarity and straightforwardness that a lot of people seem to enjoy muddying up in real life.
In other words, I don't doubt that part of my enjoyment of this movie had to do with the election and recent financial crisis. But, whatever the reason, I liked it.
This will probably lead to hilarity in my upcoming novel. But to be honest, I've never been good with genre conventions. I tried writing Romance novels in my youth, but my model was more a mixture of literature (like Jane Austen) and '40s-style romcoms. I really wanted to establish the female character and her life before introducing the love interest.
So, when someone says, "Oh, this movie is based on a Louis L'amour story," the only thing it means to me is that I know who the guy is and that he wrote a metric buttload of Westerns.
Which brings us to The Tall Stranger
with Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo. Mr. McCrea, whom I hilariously confuse with Joel Grey, plays Ned Bannon, a guy beaten, robbed and left for dead, until picked up by a wagon train.The wagon train is heading west for Californ-eye-aye but being led astray by the unctuous Mort Harper (George Neise). He's leading them into Bishop's Valley, which is already owned and operated by Bannon's half-brother, Hardy Bishop (Barry Kelly). Harper's plan is to stir up some trouble, with the help of his sleazy Mexican sidekick, Zarata (Michael Ansara).
In the ensuing battle with the settlers, Harper figures Bishop will be weak enough to be completely wiped out by Harper's own band of desperados. It's up to Bannon to unravel the mystery and save the day.
Anyway, this isn't what you'd call a great Western but I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed it. I found myself both really engaged and highly reassured. When the bad guys framed the good guy and things were looking bleak, I still knew that everything was going to turn out all right.
The Syrian born Ansara is quite the television marvel, actually. He's played Mexicans, American Indians, Non-American Indians, Hittites, Klingons, Babylonians in history and a technomage on "Babylon 5". He played Mr. Freeze in the campy '60s "Batman" series--but also in the '90s art-deco style cartoon, and on the video game.
He got to utter the phrase "Only a fool fights in a burning building" in "Star Trek" and then was one of three actors to reprise the same character in "Star Trek: Deep Space 9". (The other two being the also great Bill Campbell and John Colicos.)
No lightweight, as Walter Sobcheck would say.
He also had three guest shots on "I Dream of Jeannie" and was actually married for 15 years to Barbara Eden during the salad days (late '50s through early '70s). Tragically, Ansara stopped working in 2001, the same year their son died of an accidental heroin overdose.
I don't know that that's why he stopped--he was nearly 80 after all--but I do know it's hard for me to look at this picture (IMDB) without tearing up.
The beauty of the Western, as a genre, is that you always know who the good guys are, and they're really good. They'll be tough.They might even be harsh, because the world is harsh and the sooner you face up to that, the better. But they have a code, and it's going to be a combination of protecting the weak while building them up to be strong, and meting out rough (but fair) justice.
The bad guys are going to be villanous. Snakes who hide their intentions and manipulate people to their own ends. They might not be complete cowards, but they'll exploit any weakness and show little respect for some important aspect of common decency and society.
In the end the good guy will win, however great the cost, and (generally speaking) the truth will be known about the villany of the bad guys.
I take comfort in that.
A commenter over on Althouse was saying that his mother, who had been in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation in WWII had a distinct preference for escapist fantasy to historical tragedy, and made a point I think is probably pretty valid: When times are tough, we want escapism at the movies. When times are good, we enjoy the risk-taking and even tragedy of stories set in hard times.
Of course, the West was tough--tougher than most of us can appreciate--but the Western offers a kind of moral clarity and straightforwardness that a lot of people seem to enjoy muddying up in real life.
In other words, I don't doubt that part of my enjoyment of this movie had to do with the election and recent financial crisis. But, whatever the reason, I liked it.
Drive Them SUVs, People!
Via Instawhatsit, a roundup of climate change heresy at Fabius Maximus.
He entitles it "Good news", but it's only good news if it counters the flow of stupidity. The fact that the data contradicts the global warming model--well, what will happen is that we'll get a lot of quiet on the topic. You may have noticed less of a "global warming" drumbeat lately.
It'll get quieter while the socialists latch on to the "free market failure" idea. Presuming they don't destroy the economy, when things get better, they'll go back to the environmental football.
The other reason it's not good news is that we could really use the planet to be a few degrees warmer. A huge chunk of Canada and Russia could be turned into arable farmland with a 5-10 degree hike. (Maybe not even that much.)
Plus, a lot of people are cold. And they like to put their cold feet on my warm belly or back. This has to stop.
He entitles it "Good news", but it's only good news if it counters the flow of stupidity. The fact that the data contradicts the global warming model--well, what will happen is that we'll get a lot of quiet on the topic. You may have noticed less of a "global warming" drumbeat lately.
It'll get quieter while the socialists latch on to the "free market failure" idea. Presuming they don't destroy the economy, when things get better, they'll go back to the environmental football.
The other reason it's not good news is that we could really use the planet to be a few degrees warmer. A huge chunk of Canada and Russia could be turned into arable farmland with a 5-10 degree hike. (Maybe not even that much.)
Plus, a lot of people are cold. And they like to put their cold feet on my warm belly or back. This has to stop.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Manic Monday Apocalypso: I Am Legend
Omega Man, part of the Charlton Heston apocalyptic trilogy (along with Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes) was a regular fixture on TV when I was a kid. (Apes was, too, but not Soylent Green which, I suppose, is the weakest of the three.)
Of course, probably around the time I was 11-12 I had familiarized myself with the name of Richard Matheson, the author of "I Am Legend", the story on which the movie was based. Not too long ago, I saw the Vincent Price version--the original movie take, which is rather talky and low-budget. And then a week or so ago, I saw the big budget Will Smith movie which, like most of Mr. Smiths' movies, relies heavily on his own charm to keep it watchable.
So I figured it was high time to read the book and ordered it up off one of Amazon's sellers that uses their shipping. (That's great because not only do you get a low price, you don't have to pay for shipping if you have Amazon's $79/year shipping deal.) It's a novella, 150 pages long, and perhaps surprisingly, a very introspective work. (Not that surprising, though: Matheson has always had a talent for getting inside of his characters heads extensively without dragging the action down.)
The story concerns Robert Neville, the last man on earth. Vampires have taken over the world and Neville is, for some reason, immune. He spends his nights barricaded inside his house while the vampires taunt him outside. He spends his days trying to figure out what these vampires are--or killing them in their sleep.
The book is a combination of Neville's grieving, his attempts to put this vampirism into a comprehensible form. When the book opens, we discover that the vampires: can't come out in the day, are allergic to garlic, are repulsed by mirrors and holy symbols, and can only be killed with a stake through the heart.
Neville's transformation from grief-stricken husband and father to remorseless killing machine is interesting and, unlike the movie versions, you're left wanting more at the end of the 150 pages.
Of the three movies, each captures a different part of the story. The first one, the Vincent Price Last Man on Earth, captures the sort-of claustrophobia of the story: Not of space, but of mobility. (Wherever Neville goes, he has to be back well before dark.) But it doesn't deliver on the intensity.
Charlton Heston's Neville in Omega Man best captures the feel of being the only normal one in an abnormal world. This is paralleled with the counter-culture movement, of course, and so can feel pretty dated on modern viewings.
The latest I Am Legend, the first to use the real title, is more conventionally an action film with the prequesite explosion ending required of summer blockbusters. Smith does the grieving father well, and a captures a little bit of the book Neville's sociopathy.
But Smith is, in a big sense, the problem with the new version: No one's going to waste an opportunity by putting him in a faithful adapation of the original story. Ultimately, "I Am Legend" is a horror story and trucks in that genre's nihilism. What makes for a great ending on pulp isn't necessasrily going to work on celluloid--and certainly isn't going to be a crowd-pleaser.
Thus we have extremely inhuman vampires--animalistic vampires, really, and while we're at it, we won't call them vampires at all. (The novella's distinction between types of vampires--central to its story--is non-existent.) Any humanity has to be removed, or we might lose sympathy for Smith.
As I pointed out in my Dark Knight review, a lot of the best Batman stories were low-key mysteries, but there was zero chance of WB releasing a movie that reflected on that aspect of the Caped Crusader. "I Am Legend" is probably a victim of its own success in that regard, too: Nobody wants to see it as the brooding intimate horror that it is, so we'll probably never see a really faithful adaptation.
Matheson is said (by various sources) to have helped with the first screenplay, or not, and the third screenplay (though he has no credit). Worse than not being faithful, however, is that all the changes serve to make the whole thing a blander experience, particularly in the most recent iteration. The monsters look generic, however well done the CGI is. And the ending is a perversion of the story, the very thing that gives it its punch is gone.
But then, we always have the story to read.
Of course, probably around the time I was 11-12 I had familiarized myself with the name of Richard Matheson, the author of "I Am Legend", the story on which the movie was based. Not too long ago, I saw the Vincent Price version--the original movie take, which is rather talky and low-budget. And then a week or so ago, I saw the big budget Will Smith movie which, like most of Mr. Smiths' movies, relies heavily on his own charm to keep it watchable.
So I figured it was high time to read the book and ordered it up off one of Amazon's sellers that uses their shipping. (That's great because not only do you get a low price, you don't have to pay for shipping if you have Amazon's $79/year shipping deal.) It's a novella, 150 pages long, and perhaps surprisingly, a very introspective work. (Not that surprising, though: Matheson has always had a talent for getting inside of his characters heads extensively without dragging the action down.)
The story concerns Robert Neville, the last man on earth. Vampires have taken over the world and Neville is, for some reason, immune. He spends his nights barricaded inside his house while the vampires taunt him outside. He spends his days trying to figure out what these vampires are--or killing them in their sleep.
The book is a combination of Neville's grieving, his attempts to put this vampirism into a comprehensible form. When the book opens, we discover that the vampires: can't come out in the day, are allergic to garlic, are repulsed by mirrors and holy symbols, and can only be killed with a stake through the heart.
Neville's transformation from grief-stricken husband and father to remorseless killing machine is interesting and, unlike the movie versions, you're left wanting more at the end of the 150 pages.
Of the three movies, each captures a different part of the story. The first one, the Vincent Price Last Man on Earth, captures the sort-of claustrophobia of the story: Not of space, but of mobility. (Wherever Neville goes, he has to be back well before dark.) But it doesn't deliver on the intensity.
Charlton Heston's Neville in Omega Man best captures the feel of being the only normal one in an abnormal world. This is paralleled with the counter-culture movement, of course, and so can feel pretty dated on modern viewings.
The latest I Am Legend, the first to use the real title, is more conventionally an action film with the prequesite explosion ending required of summer blockbusters. Smith does the grieving father well, and a captures a little bit of the book Neville's sociopathy.
But Smith is, in a big sense, the problem with the new version: No one's going to waste an opportunity by putting him in a faithful adapation of the original story. Ultimately, "I Am Legend" is a horror story and trucks in that genre's nihilism. What makes for a great ending on pulp isn't necessasrily going to work on celluloid--and certainly isn't going to be a crowd-pleaser.
Thus we have extremely inhuman vampires--animalistic vampires, really, and while we're at it, we won't call them vampires at all. (The novella's distinction between types of vampires--central to its story--is non-existent.) Any humanity has to be removed, or we might lose sympathy for Smith.
As I pointed out in my Dark Knight review, a lot of the best Batman stories were low-key mysteries, but there was zero chance of WB releasing a movie that reflected on that aspect of the Caped Crusader. "I Am Legend" is probably a victim of its own success in that regard, too: Nobody wants to see it as the brooding intimate horror that it is, so we'll probably never see a really faithful adaptation.
Matheson is said (by various sources) to have helped with the first screenplay, or not, and the third screenplay (though he has no credit). Worse than not being faithful, however, is that all the changes serve to make the whole thing a blander experience, particularly in the most recent iteration. The monsters look generic, however well done the CGI is. And the ending is a perversion of the story, the very thing that gives it its punch is gone.
But then, we always have the story to read.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Taylon Doon and Appaloosa
Watching Ed Harris' character in Appaloosa was interesting. There were a lot of similarities between his Cole and my own Taylon Doon. (Note the slight spelling change. I've always been pronouncing it that way and had violated my "Berlitz" rule.)
Cole is a polite man, even a friendly man, but besides being a stone-cold killer, he's completely guileless. He's so straightforward that even light teasing prompts him to be the crap out of someone who doesn't really deserve it.
That's sort of how I envisioned Taylon, but I see a character arc for him that requires him to be a little less sensitive to his intellectual limitations. In fact, he's born of political guile, after a fashion. The way I have the story worked out in my had, that happens before Chapter 1, though.
Chapter 1 begins (barring some change) with the narrator's first encounter with Taylon.
The NaNoWriMo begins in less than two weeks, so we'll see how it goes.
Cole is a polite man, even a friendly man, but besides being a stone-cold killer, he's completely guileless. He's so straightforward that even light teasing prompts him to be the crap out of someone who doesn't really deserve it.
That's sort of how I envisioned Taylon, but I see a character arc for him that requires him to be a little less sensitive to his intellectual limitations. In fact, he's born of political guile, after a fashion. The way I have the story worked out in my had, that happens before Chapter 1, though.
Chapter 1 begins (barring some change) with the narrator's first encounter with Taylon.
The NaNoWriMo begins in less than two weeks, so we'll see how it goes.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Kiss Me Deadly
I'm not really familiar with Mickey Spillane's work, being more a Hammett or Chandler guy myself. I rather liked the short-lived '80s series with Stacey Keach, but since I'd heard good things about this particular film--and I knew about the "whatsit" from somewhere (maybe the '80s cult classic Repo Man)--I queued it up and gave it a view.
It's...well, it's solid enough as a detective noir film, but Bezzerides script is subversive and Aldrich's direction plays that aspect of it up. So, Ralph Meeker's Hammer isn't just tough, he's sadistic and misogynistic. Life isn't just hard, it's cruel and isolating.
Bleah.
Part of the charm of the hard-boiled detective is that he's a good man, but he knows that a white hat will get him killed. He's not a sucker for dames but he's got a code. He'll think nothing of getting rough, but it has to achieve something.
So, the great photography, nuanced performances (Cloris Leachman in her first film role!) and intriguing story are marred by this misanthropic world view.
I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked, therefore.
It's...well, it's solid enough as a detective noir film, but Bezzerides script is subversive and Aldrich's direction plays that aspect of it up. So, Ralph Meeker's Hammer isn't just tough, he's sadistic and misogynistic. Life isn't just hard, it's cruel and isolating.
Bleah.
Part of the charm of the hard-boiled detective is that he's a good man, but he knows that a white hat will get him killed. He's not a sucker for dames but he's got a code. He'll think nothing of getting rough, but it has to achieve something.
So, the great photography, nuanced performances (Cloris Leachman in her first film role!) and intriguing story are marred by this misanthropic world view.
I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked, therefore.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Treadmill Desk, Week 8
Saturday: 270 minutes. A lot for a Saturday. What up wid dat?
Sunday: 70 minutes.
Monday: 100 minutes
Tuesday: 480 minutes
Wednesday: 373 minutes
I haven't really been keeping track of my weekly time this week, but I think I'll beat last week pretty easily.
Thursday: 390 minutes
So, I'm up to 1,683 which passes last week already. Good, I guess.
Friday: 240 minutes.
A little over 32 hours--a big jump from last week and pretty close to my target of 35 hours. I may end up going lighter next week because I have to tighten up the Sole, The Flower's got a performance or two I need to see, I've got a day in the office, and a lot of away-from-the-desk work to do.
Plus, "at the desk" usually means either working (good) or reading up on the day's events (bad, depressing).
Sunday: 70 minutes.
Monday: 100 minutes
Tuesday: 480 minutes
Wednesday: 373 minutes
I haven't really been keeping track of my weekly time this week, but I think I'll beat last week pretty easily.
Thursday: 390 minutes
So, I'm up to 1,683 which passes last week already. Good, I guess.
Friday: 240 minutes.
A little over 32 hours--a big jump from last week and pretty close to my target of 35 hours. I may end up going lighter next week because I have to tighten up the Sole, The Flower's got a performance or two I need to see, I've got a day in the office, and a lot of away-from-the-desk work to do.
Plus, "at the desk" usually means either working (good) or reading up on the day's events (bad, depressing).
The Fall of the Fall of the House of Usher
During the first After Dark Horror Fest, I dropped out after movie five, The Abandoned
.
This was the one movie that got a release (albeit a limited one), the one they felt was most worth the risk of distribution costs. And it was the one that, within the first five minutes, I knew was exactly the sort of film I hate.
I call them "House of Usher" films, and they're a specific genre that roughly follow the pattern of Poe's story.
Basically, it's when the characters are doomed, typically by a supernatural force, and nothing they can do will change the outcome.
It's a lazy writer's genre. The Blair Witch Project was like that, though I didn't hate that as much as most. (Nobody would've noticed that movie without the William Castle-like ad campaign, though.) But it doesn't matter that they lost the map or followed the stream--good or bad, they're doomed. And, really, if you're paying attention, you know this very early on. (It's actually a lot like a slasher flick, only generally with a very static feel.)
But there's a fine line. Quarantine doesn't count, in my book, because mostly it's the characters' failure to apprehend their situation that causes the problem. Everything follows logically from their actions (which are not, themselves, logical).
The "Usher" movie refuses to reward the characters for any logical or effective action. The deck is stacked against them from the get-go and the exercise borders on the sadistic. Fatalism, despair and nihilism are the primary themes. The only kind of hope is false.
Ultimately, of course, this is a matter of taste. I just don't like that sort of thing. I also don't like the self-destruction genre that the movie critics are so fond of. (See Leaving Las Vegas and Under The Volcano.) This is almost a sub-genre of the "Usher"-type movies, except the forces aren't supernatural, they're psychological. (Although it's a question of taste, I'm perfectly willing to entertain the notion that people who like the self-destruction genre have serious emotional issues.)
Many movies straddle that line, of course. Cube is an example of a movie where the characters might survive, even though the forces working on them are virtually supernatural and all powerful. (And I think one or two do survive, or at least potentially survive and the movie leaves it ambiguous.)
Somewhat ironically, The House of Usher itself is not an "Usher" movie, really. The lead character is really the non-Usher guy, and he's not doomed. Richard Matheson wrote a story focused on the young man wooing the young Usher woman, and it's not even clear that she's doomed in his story.
'60s and '70s horror is rife with examples of this kind of movie, because nihilism was very trendy back then. The infamous Manos: The Hands of Fate feels like that kind of movie, but maybe only because the movie spends about 20 minutes doing nothing but driving.
Many of the current Asian horrors have that feel, but sometimes they get around it by making a convincing ploy for hope. The Ring, for example: Is there hope? There seems to be, though it's a rather dark one. That one worked because the actions taken by the lead to discover the truth have an impact, just not the expected one. The Grudge, on the other hand--well, once you're in the house, you're just plain screwed.
Curioiusly, one of my favorite of the After Dark films, the Japanese Rinne (Reincarnation) could probably fit into the Usher category. It basically concerns a young woman who's on a movie set making a movie about a decades-old massacre, and through some unknown force, everyone on the set was actually part of the massacre, and have been reborn. As people start dying, there's a definite Usher feel, but we are at least engaged in the mystery.
Rinne violates Blake's rule of filmed reincarnation, which is that audiences will reject movies about people who die and come back as completely different looking characters (see What Dreams May Come, Dead Again). Although it's a perfectly sensible idea of how such a thing might work, movie audiences identify character too strongly with physical presence for it work.
I found it to be an engaging mystery, since there's a mystery: Which of the people working on the movie is the new incarnation of the murderer? So, for me, this works, even if it does fit into my hated Usher category.
You can read the original Poe story online here.
.This was the one movie that got a release (albeit a limited one), the one they felt was most worth the risk of distribution costs. And it was the one that, within the first five minutes, I knew was exactly the sort of film I hate.
I call them "House of Usher" films, and they're a specific genre that roughly follow the pattern of Poe's story.
Basically, it's when the characters are doomed, typically by a supernatural force, and nothing they can do will change the outcome.
It's a lazy writer's genre. The Blair Witch Project was like that, though I didn't hate that as much as most. (Nobody would've noticed that movie without the William Castle-like ad campaign, though.) But it doesn't matter that they lost the map or followed the stream--good or bad, they're doomed. And, really, if you're paying attention, you know this very early on. (It's actually a lot like a slasher flick, only generally with a very static feel.)
But there's a fine line. Quarantine doesn't count, in my book, because mostly it's the characters' failure to apprehend their situation that causes the problem. Everything follows logically from their actions (which are not, themselves, logical).
The "Usher" movie refuses to reward the characters for any logical or effective action. The deck is stacked against them from the get-go and the exercise borders on the sadistic. Fatalism, despair and nihilism are the primary themes. The only kind of hope is false.
Ultimately, of course, this is a matter of taste. I just don't like that sort of thing. I also don't like the self-destruction genre that the movie critics are so fond of. (See Leaving Las Vegas and Under The Volcano.) This is almost a sub-genre of the "Usher"-type movies, except the forces aren't supernatural, they're psychological. (Although it's a question of taste, I'm perfectly willing to entertain the notion that people who like the self-destruction genre have serious emotional issues.)
Many movies straddle that line, of course. Cube is an example of a movie where the characters might survive, even though the forces working on them are virtually supernatural and all powerful. (And I think one or two do survive, or at least potentially survive and the movie leaves it ambiguous.)
Somewhat ironically, The House of Usher itself is not an "Usher" movie, really. The lead character is really the non-Usher guy, and he's not doomed. Richard Matheson wrote a story focused on the young man wooing the young Usher woman, and it's not even clear that she's doomed in his story.
'60s and '70s horror is rife with examples of this kind of movie, because nihilism was very trendy back then. The infamous Manos: The Hands of Fate feels like that kind of movie, but maybe only because the movie spends about 20 minutes doing nothing but driving.
Many of the current Asian horrors have that feel, but sometimes they get around it by making a convincing ploy for hope. The Ring, for example: Is there hope? There seems to be, though it's a rather dark one. That one worked because the actions taken by the lead to discover the truth have an impact, just not the expected one. The Grudge, on the other hand--well, once you're in the house, you're just plain screwed.
Curioiusly, one of my favorite of the After Dark films, the Japanese Rinne (Reincarnation) could probably fit into the Usher category. It basically concerns a young woman who's on a movie set making a movie about a decades-old massacre, and through some unknown force, everyone on the set was actually part of the massacre, and have been reborn. As people start dying, there's a definite Usher feel, but we are at least engaged in the mystery.
Rinne violates Blake's rule of filmed reincarnation, which is that audiences will reject movies about people who die and come back as completely different looking characters (see What Dreams May Come, Dead Again). Although it's a perfectly sensible idea of how such a thing might work, movie audiences identify character too strongly with physical presence for it work.
I found it to be an engaging mystery, since there's a mystery: Which of the people working on the movie is the new incarnation of the murderer? So, for me, this works, even if it does fit into my hated Usher category.
You can read the original Poe story online here.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Q is for Quarantine
A few months ago I mocked an article lamenting the state of the horror movie, and pointing to the Spanish-language films The Orphanage and Rec as showing the way to--oh, hell, I don't even know what the guy was going on about.
But here we are seven months later and we have the American remake of Rec called Quarantine.
It's not bad.
Viewing it touched on a lot of themes that have been bubbling in my head since I've been computer-free at night.
Quarantine is a good balance of terror and horror, with suspense connecting the scenes. The actors are not super-famous (there's Dexter's sister in lead--you see her getting killed in the commercials and on the movie poster, hence no real question of how this movie turns out, even before the movie starts, and there's the wattle-fetish guy from "Ally McBeal") which works in the movie's favor.
So, some firemen go to investigate a problem at a small L.A. apartment building and find tenants suffering from a mysterious disease. But when they try to get out, they can't.
Where most horror movies have the victims hoping to hold out until help arrives, in this move help arrives--and makes everything far, far worse. The idea is that the CDC has locked everyone in to contain the disease, and they've got SWAT to kill anyone who tries to escape.
How's that for a kick in the krotch?
One of the reasons this is not an "Usher" movie is that it's perfectly reasonable that the people could survive the situation, but they do a whole lot of stupid things. Like everyone sits together in the lobby with the infected. It might be understandable why the CDC would kill the outgoing phones, but it's less comprehensible why they cut the incoming cable and the power.
Also, I'm not clear on why they wouldn't try to route everyone out of the house, one at a time, since there's still a chance of escape of the disease if nothing else. I think you'd route everyone out and then burn the place down, if you were worried. Or maybe chemical bomb it. (I wonder what the actual CDC protocols are, come to think of it.)
Anyhoo. We got the standard trapped-inside-a-house deal with a little Blair Witch thrown in: We only get to see the events that transpire because Dexter's sister (heh, okay, her name is Jennifer Carpenter in real life) is a documentarian doing a story on firemen who tags along with her cameraman, expecting a routine call.
The camera is less shaky than usual, thankfully, but if you get the nausea or carsickness, you're not going to like the end at all. The camera, sensibly but annoyingly, gets shakier and shakier as the movie goes on.
This partly obscures the fact that this is a pretty tired premise used for most zombie movies, and you're really just dealing with that.
Nonetheless, it's well done. I was a little confused as to whether I was supposed to be rooting for these guys. "Yay! Get out and...infect everyone?" Isn't that the premise of the second and third Resident Evil movies?
Getting away from the fact that most horror movies are Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians", right?
I was looking for the demon baby but there really isn't one. The thing that looks like it is not a baby at all but the most recognizable guy in the movie: Doug Jones, whose miming talents (as seen in The Fantastic Four, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy I and especially II) are making him very recognizable indeed, for a guy who seldom says anything. (Kind of like how Ray Park's karate moves were so recognizable after The Phantom Menace and Sleepy Hollow.)
Anyway, it worked for me and The Boy also approved. But I don't know if it will survive the transition to small screen.
But here we are seven months later and we have the American remake of Rec called Quarantine.
It's not bad.
Viewing it touched on a lot of themes that have been bubbling in my head since I've been computer-free at night.
- A thread over at the Althouse had people singing the praises of watching movies at home, which (with the brood here) I can't relate to. And particularly not with horror movies, and even comedies. The audience was particularly chatty and laughy during this, which undermines my point a little.
- There's a certain type of film I call "House of Usher" films: A sort of film where the ending is a foregone conclusion due to circumstances that occurred before the movie started. Ironically Corman's House of Usher isn't one of those films. Neither is Quarantine, even though the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
- Horror movies try to do something very, very difficult. It's hard to be scared by a movie these days, and it's even hard to be horrified. We're all a little too "meta". As a result, a successful horror scene often results in laughter. (The famous "head-spider" scene in John Carpenter's The Thing, for example.) In Quarantine, there's a scene where the camera is used as an actual weapon.
Quarantine is a good balance of terror and horror, with suspense connecting the scenes. The actors are not super-famous (there's Dexter's sister in lead--you see her getting killed in the commercials and on the movie poster, hence no real question of how this movie turns out, even before the movie starts, and there's the wattle-fetish guy from "Ally McBeal") which works in the movie's favor.
So, some firemen go to investigate a problem at a small L.A. apartment building and find tenants suffering from a mysterious disease. But when they try to get out, they can't.
Where most horror movies have the victims hoping to hold out until help arrives, in this move help arrives--and makes everything far, far worse. The idea is that the CDC has locked everyone in to contain the disease, and they've got SWAT to kill anyone who tries to escape.
How's that for a kick in the krotch?
One of the reasons this is not an "Usher" movie is that it's perfectly reasonable that the people could survive the situation, but they do a whole lot of stupid things. Like everyone sits together in the lobby with the infected. It might be understandable why the CDC would kill the outgoing phones, but it's less comprehensible why they cut the incoming cable and the power.
Also, I'm not clear on why they wouldn't try to route everyone out of the house, one at a time, since there's still a chance of escape of the disease if nothing else. I think you'd route everyone out and then burn the place down, if you were worried. Or maybe chemical bomb it. (I wonder what the actual CDC protocols are, come to think of it.)
Anyhoo. We got the standard trapped-inside-a-house deal with a little Blair Witch thrown in: We only get to see the events that transpire because Dexter's sister (heh, okay, her name is Jennifer Carpenter in real life) is a documentarian doing a story on firemen who tags along with her cameraman, expecting a routine call.
The camera is less shaky than usual, thankfully, but if you get the nausea or carsickness, you're not going to like the end at all. The camera, sensibly but annoyingly, gets shakier and shakier as the movie goes on.
This partly obscures the fact that this is a pretty tired premise used for most zombie movies, and you're really just dealing with that.
Nonetheless, it's well done. I was a little confused as to whether I was supposed to be rooting for these guys. "Yay! Get out and...infect everyone?" Isn't that the premise of the second and third Resident Evil movies?
Getting away from the fact that most horror movies are Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians", right?
I was looking for the demon baby but there really isn't one. The thing that looks like it is not a baby at all but the most recognizable guy in the movie: Doug Jones, whose miming talents (as seen in The Fantastic Four, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy I and especially II) are making him very recognizable indeed, for a guy who seldom says anything. (Kind of like how Ray Park's karate moves were so recognizable after The Phantom Menace and Sleepy Hollow.)
Anyway, it worked for me and The Boy also approved. But I don't know if it will survive the transition to small screen.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Semi-Hiatus
Laptop's in the repair shop so I'm out of commission 'less I'm on the treadmill.
Did eight hours today at .7 mph. Pretty much non-stop. I'm a little sore.
I should be back tomorrow when I get my laptop back.
Did eight hours today at .7 mph. Pretty much non-stop. I'm a little sore.
I should be back tomorrow when I get my laptop back.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Converstaions From The Living Room 6: Yeah, Who Can't Relate To That
"Why are you naked?"
"I don't know!"
"I don't know!"
Manic Monday Apocalypso: Gas-s-s-s
There are many endings.
On the one hand, it's arguable that I've never seen Gas-s-s-s because I've only ever seen it on commercial TV, and the last time was decades ago. The opening cartoon suggests something to a child that the movie itself doesn't deliver.
On the other hand, it's arguable that no one has ever seen Gas-s-s-s. Roger Corman ran off to Europe to shoot another film while this was in editing, and lambasted AIP for their editing it down to incomprehensible hash. (I want to blame Sam Arkoff, but I can't really remember who Corman held responsible.) It was the end of the road for Corman and AIP, and curiously, the end of the road for Roger Corman as a director as well.
The movie takes the Boomer motto of "Don't trust anyone over 30" and puts it into practice. In the opening credits an accident releases a gas upon the world which kills everyone over the age of 25. (Being in the credits allows us to overlook the question of what sort of accident could spread a gas across the entire face of the planet.) Also, the nature of the apocalypse is fleeting, with way too many people being around, acting normal in some scenes.
Anyway, this was doubtless meant in the dark vein of black comedies like Little Shop of Horrors, but it's after the experimentation that Corman did for The Trip, and full of the psychedelic imagery and cuts that just annoy the crap out of sober people.
Corman, for all his reputation as an exploitation guy, didn't pander in this film. Instead of some sort of utopia that his audience might have enjoyed, the world of Gas-s-s-s is more like Lord of the Flies. There's cynicism and disillusionment and nihilism, and it ends up feeling more like a world where the adults are simply being ignored rather than dead.
Apocalyptically speaking, stories that center around wiping out a particular demographic are seldom as interesting as they should be.
This movie was also a begining, being the first filmed effort of George Armitrage. Armitrage would go on to do a couple of "nurse" movies for Corman, but his writing career probably peaked with the HBO story of the battle between Leno and Letterman, The Late Shift, and his directing career certainly peaked with Grosse Pointe Blank.
There were a handful of new, future celebs in the show as well, with Ben Vereen and Cindy Williams riding across country.
In retrospect, I wonder if Corman didn't deliberately produce a junk movie because he wanted an excuse to break away from AIP, and to get out of the directing game. It'd be interesting to see a "director's cut".
It's not something you'd want to watch in the expectations of a coherent narrative.
On the one hand, it's arguable that I've never seen Gas-s-s-s because I've only ever seen it on commercial TV, and the last time was decades ago. The opening cartoon suggests something to a child that the movie itself doesn't deliver.
On the other hand, it's arguable that no one has ever seen Gas-s-s-s. Roger Corman ran off to Europe to shoot another film while this was in editing, and lambasted AIP for their editing it down to incomprehensible hash. (I want to blame Sam Arkoff, but I can't really remember who Corman held responsible.) It was the end of the road for Corman and AIP, and curiously, the end of the road for Roger Corman as a director as well.
The movie takes the Boomer motto of "Don't trust anyone over 30" and puts it into practice. In the opening credits an accident releases a gas upon the world which kills everyone over the age of 25. (Being in the credits allows us to overlook the question of what sort of accident could spread a gas across the entire face of the planet.) Also, the nature of the apocalypse is fleeting, with way too many people being around, acting normal in some scenes.
Anyway, this was doubtless meant in the dark vein of black comedies like Little Shop of Horrors, but it's after the experimentation that Corman did for The Trip, and full of the psychedelic imagery and cuts that just annoy the crap out of sober people.
Corman, for all his reputation as an exploitation guy, didn't pander in this film. Instead of some sort of utopia that his audience might have enjoyed, the world of Gas-s-s-s is more like Lord of the Flies. There's cynicism and disillusionment and nihilism, and it ends up feeling more like a world where the adults are simply being ignored rather than dead.
Apocalyptically speaking, stories that center around wiping out a particular demographic are seldom as interesting as they should be.
This movie was also a begining, being the first filmed effort of George Armitrage. Armitrage would go on to do a couple of "nurse" movies for Corman, but his writing career probably peaked with the HBO story of the battle between Leno and Letterman, The Late Shift, and his directing career certainly peaked with Grosse Pointe Blank.
There were a handful of new, future celebs in the show as well, with Ben Vereen and Cindy Williams riding across country.
In retrospect, I wonder if Corman didn't deliberately produce a junk movie because he wanted an excuse to break away from AIP, and to get out of the directing game. It'd be interesting to see a "director's cut".
It's not something you'd want to watch in the expectations of a coherent narrative.
Appaloosa
There's a scene in Unforgiven where Clint Eastwood talks about how, rather than straight gunfights in the street, assassins were more likely to shoot their target coming out of the outhouse. In Ed Harris' new movie Appaloosa, Harris and co-star Viggo Mortensen kidnap Jeremy Irons after his morning, em, activities.
Cowboy movies in the past 30 years are sort of like Baroque music after Bach died. It's all been done by guys who were better at it than the modern generation, so most oaters feel warmed over and weak.
Happily, Appaloosa works and feels fresh.
Harris directs and plays Virgil Cole, a hard-nosed Have Gun Will Travel type whose sidekick Everett Hitch (Mortensen) guards his back and occasionally reins him in when he's gone too far. There's some serious good chemistry here.
Cole is straightforward and somewhat thick who only seems to be uncomfortable when made aware of his limitations, and at the same time spends time reading Emerson and asking Hitch what various words mean. Hitch is eminently practical, and respectful of Cole's abilities, almost acting as an apologist.
Cole and Hitch are hired to protect a town from the villainous Randall Bragg (Irons) who has just offed the previous sheriff's department--though he was smart enough to hide the bodies and deny it, making it impossible to bring him in.
An uneasy peace exists between Cole, Hitch and the town and Bragg and his men, who live outside of town. The peace is unsettled by a witness to the murders and, even more, the arrival of Allison French (played by Renee Zelwegger).
French dresses nicely, and plays piano (laughably badly, though no one seems to notice or care), and quickly latches on to Cole. Before you know it, though, she's making moves on Hitch. And it doesn't stop there.
As it turns out, French is one of the more interesting female characters in Westerns history. And Cole's response is equally interesting and pragmatic. This does not turn into a rather tired love triangle.
In fact, the whole movie is a bunch of interesting events framed by typical Western set-ups, but not in a contrived way either. In other words, it doesn't seem so much like they were trying to tell a story that was just contrary to Western genre clichés, but rather had a story to tell that simply hadn't been told before.
The place where a typical Western would end left about 15-20 minutes of the film; that is the action-y climax left a bunch of situations unresolved that ultimately come to a head later.
An engaging, entertaining film. I guess there's no one in it to power a big release but keep your eyes on your local indie theaters. You'll be glad you did.
The Boy liked it quite a bit, too.
Cowboy movies in the past 30 years are sort of like Baroque music after Bach died. It's all been done by guys who were better at it than the modern generation, so most oaters feel warmed over and weak.
Happily, Appaloosa works and feels fresh.
Harris directs and plays Virgil Cole, a hard-nosed Have Gun Will Travel type whose sidekick Everett Hitch (Mortensen) guards his back and occasionally reins him in when he's gone too far. There's some serious good chemistry here.
Cole is straightforward and somewhat thick who only seems to be uncomfortable when made aware of his limitations, and at the same time spends time reading Emerson and asking Hitch what various words mean. Hitch is eminently practical, and respectful of Cole's abilities, almost acting as an apologist.
Cole and Hitch are hired to protect a town from the villainous Randall Bragg (Irons) who has just offed the previous sheriff's department--though he was smart enough to hide the bodies and deny it, making it impossible to bring him in.
An uneasy peace exists between Cole, Hitch and the town and Bragg and his men, who live outside of town. The peace is unsettled by a witness to the murders and, even more, the arrival of Allison French (played by Renee Zelwegger).
French dresses nicely, and plays piano (laughably badly, though no one seems to notice or care), and quickly latches on to Cole. Before you know it, though, she's making moves on Hitch. And it doesn't stop there.
As it turns out, French is one of the more interesting female characters in Westerns history. And Cole's response is equally interesting and pragmatic. This does not turn into a rather tired love triangle.
In fact, the whole movie is a bunch of interesting events framed by typical Western set-ups, but not in a contrived way either. In other words, it doesn't seem so much like they were trying to tell a story that was just contrary to Western genre clichés, but rather had a story to tell that simply hadn't been told before.
The place where a typical Western would end left about 15-20 minutes of the film; that is the action-y climax left a bunch of situations unresolved that ultimately come to a head later.
An engaging, entertaining film. I guess there's no one in it to power a big release but keep your eyes on your local indie theaters. You'll be glad you did.
The Boy liked it quite a bit, too.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Movies Spoofed In Airplane!
I've noticed that the modern Airplane!-style movies are pretty much non-stop references to other (often far, far better and even funnier) movies. But Airplane!, while it did reference other movies, didn't rely on other movies.
The Boy hadn't seen it, so we watched it and I wrote down the movie references and compared with IMDB.
Airport, of course, provides the framework. Airport '75 specifically.
Zero Hour! for the plot and love story as well as dialogue between Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty. The brilliance of using Zero Hour! was that it was an obscure 20-year-old movie that people really weren't all that familiar with. Also, the exclamation point!
Jaws for the opening.
Saturday Night Fever's dance scene.
Since You Went Away, though, like Zero Hour! the reference is so generic (a soldier leaving on his train with his girl running alongside) I'm sure few people in the audience made the connection.
From Here To Eternity for the beach makeout scene.
Folgers (?) coffee commercials.
Pinocchio, sort of, when Leslie Nielsen lies to the passengers. Less the movie than the concept of one's nose growing.
"60 minutes" Point/Counterpoint, of course.
Knute Rockne: Win one for the Zipper.
Just doing a quick count on the IMDB "movie connections" page, I see 33 references and spoofs for Airplane! and a whopping 55 for the unbearable Epic Movie. Airplane!'s references include unlikely allegations such as Peter Graves' dialogue with Joey matching Alan Ladd and Brandon De Wilde's in Shane, and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" which consists of one line where Johnny says "Like Mr. Rogers?" Silver Streak and "The Big Valley" are also listed, but I don't see the connection. Most of the rest are airplane-disaster related movies, and I'm doubtful that they're all true.
Allowing for a similar share of crap in the Epic Movie entry, from what I've been able to watch of it, Epic Movie is basically a series of bits where the characters move from one movie to another and there's nothing really holding the whole thing together. In the first ten minutes, you get The Da Vinci Code, Nacho Libre, Snakes on a Plane and the X-Men, to introduce the four characters, withthem all coming together in a Willy Wonka movie. One of the characters is even killed in the Wonka scene, but it doesn't take.
Airplane! allows Zero Hour! to hold its story together and uses a whole bunch of original, non-referential sight gags, especially puns (the turkey in the range) and literalizations (the fecal matter and the ventilation device) and of course the running gags ("What is it?", "I'm not kidding", "I picked the wrong week...").
I don't think it's coincidental that Airplane! has never been surpassed (except arguably for a few episodes of the "Police Squad" show) in the genre it created, not even by the guys who created it. Part of it, especially at the time, was that it was completely unexpected. Even the subsequent Top Secret!--which in some ways I prefer to Airplane!--had to deal with the fact that the genre wasn't new any more.
David Zucker is probably the most successful at doing the same style comedies. I actually didn't like the first Scary Movies, but found myself laughing at the (largely Wayon-free) third, which I attribute to Zucker taking over the reins. And I may be the only one who liked BASEketball but it had an entirely different feel from the others in the genre.
Jerry Zucker found considerable success with his blockbuster Ghost, which wasn't intentionally funny at all, and his Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World-remake Rat Race! did all right, too.
Jim Abrahams did the amusing Ruthless People, and the touching First Do No Harm--actually, he's done a lot to make people aware of the ketogenic diet. His last foray into Airplane!-style comedy was the odd Jane Austen's Mafia! He also did the rather successful Hot Shots! movies.
It would be interesting to have the three get back together--I note that David Zucker brought Abrahams in on the Scary Movie 4 screenplay--but I wonder if, 30 years later, they're even the same people who made those original wacky flicks.
Meanwhile, Friedberg and Selzer, who've been making the "[blank] Movie" movies have been squandering the capital of the entire genre, making increasingly unsuccessful and unfunny movies.
It's probably time for a whole new genre.
UPDATE: One thing I left out in my appreciation of Airplane! is Elmer Bernstein's score. Like the rest of the movie, it's played pretty straight, which works better than a lot of goofy Mickey Mouse-ing around would have.
The Boy hadn't seen it, so we watched it and I wrote down the movie references and compared with IMDB.
Airport, of course, provides the framework. Airport '75 specifically.
Zero Hour! for the plot and love story as well as dialogue between Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty. The brilliance of using Zero Hour! was that it was an obscure 20-year-old movie that people really weren't all that familiar with. Also, the exclamation point!
Jaws for the opening.
Saturday Night Fever's dance scene.
Since You Went Away, though, like Zero Hour! the reference is so generic (a soldier leaving on his train with his girl running alongside) I'm sure few people in the audience made the connection.
From Here To Eternity for the beach makeout scene.
Folgers (?) coffee commercials.
Pinocchio, sort of, when Leslie Nielsen lies to the passengers. Less the movie than the concept of one's nose growing.
"60 minutes" Point/Counterpoint, of course.
Knute Rockne: Win one for the Zipper.
Just doing a quick count on the IMDB "movie connections" page, I see 33 references and spoofs for Airplane! and a whopping 55 for the unbearable Epic Movie. Airplane!'s references include unlikely allegations such as Peter Graves' dialogue with Joey matching Alan Ladd and Brandon De Wilde's in Shane, and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" which consists of one line where Johnny says "Like Mr. Rogers?" Silver Streak and "The Big Valley" are also listed, but I don't see the connection. Most of the rest are airplane-disaster related movies, and I'm doubtful that they're all true.
Allowing for a similar share of crap in the Epic Movie entry, from what I've been able to watch of it, Epic Movie is basically a series of bits where the characters move from one movie to another and there's nothing really holding the whole thing together. In the first ten minutes, you get The Da Vinci Code, Nacho Libre, Snakes on a Plane and the X-Men, to introduce the four characters, withthem all coming together in a Willy Wonka movie. One of the characters is even killed in the Wonka scene, but it doesn't take.
Airplane! allows Zero Hour! to hold its story together and uses a whole bunch of original, non-referential sight gags, especially puns (the turkey in the range) and literalizations (the fecal matter and the ventilation device) and of course the running gags ("What is it?", "I'm not kidding", "I picked the wrong week...").
I don't think it's coincidental that Airplane! has never been surpassed (except arguably for a few episodes of the "Police Squad" show) in the genre it created, not even by the guys who created it. Part of it, especially at the time, was that it was completely unexpected. Even the subsequent Top Secret!--which in some ways I prefer to Airplane!--had to deal with the fact that the genre wasn't new any more.
David Zucker is probably the most successful at doing the same style comedies. I actually didn't like the first Scary Movies, but found myself laughing at the (largely Wayon-free) third, which I attribute to Zucker taking over the reins. And I may be the only one who liked BASEketball but it had an entirely different feel from the others in the genre.
Jerry Zucker found considerable success with his blockbuster Ghost, which wasn't intentionally funny at all, and his Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World-remake Rat Race! did all right, too.
Jim Abrahams did the amusing Ruthless People, and the touching First Do No Harm--actually, he's done a lot to make people aware of the ketogenic diet. His last foray into Airplane!-style comedy was the odd Jane Austen's Mafia! He also did the rather successful Hot Shots! movies.
It would be interesting to have the three get back together--I note that David Zucker brought Abrahams in on the Scary Movie 4 screenplay--but I wonder if, 30 years later, they're even the same people who made those original wacky flicks.
Meanwhile, Friedberg and Selzer, who've been making the "[blank] Movie" movies have been squandering the capital of the entire genre, making increasingly unsuccessful and unfunny movies.
It's probably time for a whole new genre.
UPDATE: One thing I left out in my appreciation of Airplane! is Elmer Bernstein's score. Like the rest of the movie, it's played pretty straight, which works better than a lot of goofy Mickey Mouse-ing around would have.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Creating New Worlds
Part of the fun of writing--and a big part of the reason I gravitated to D&D, I'm sure--is the building of new worlds. Tearing down worlds can be fun and interesting, too, and any society is growing and dying at the same time, in different ways.
The USA, right now, shows incredible growth in terms of small business and a growing consciousness of independence, as well as death in its institutions and religious tradition. (In institutional terms, "death" is less about non-existence and more about atrophying in a way that strangles society.) This intricateballetmosh pit is one of the things that draws me to simulations as well.
In writing, however, the interesting part is figuring out how society would emerge given a particular set of conditions. One of my first novels was focused on robots, and how humanity would deal with a world where robots did everything and what sort of humans would interact with this world while at the same time rejecting it. This was done in a hard-boiled detective style--probably overly derivatively so--but Troop might have liked it, because one of the premises I came up with was that human servants (and particularly hookers) would be a tremendous luxury.
I wrote another short story that prefigured The Matrix. Only the way I had it worked out, humans hadn't been enslaved by machines, they had just preferred virtual reality and retired into it. (The Matrix had a better movie plot, for sure. I had the Devil's own time creating drama out of a planet of couch potatoes.)
Since I can't put (metaphorical) pen to paper yet on my Cowboy Barbarian Sex Yogurt Unicorn novel, I've been thinking about the sorts of societies that would exist, given the conditions I've set up for the story.
I don't want to spoil too much so let's look at, say, Deadwood
. David Milch went over the top in his portrayal of the town, which was far more civil--and certainly didn't swear like that. (But I realized instantly, and have since confirmed, that the whole point of the swearing was because the actual swearing of the time would have created outright laughs at critical points.)
But the basic premise--what a lawless 19th century city would've looked like, especially with some seriously ethically impaired characters in power--was solid.
I'm looking a lot to the 19th century for the "cowboy" part of the story, and thinking of how morally rigorous the Old West was, at least in places, but also how the morality adapted to the times. For example, most people know that Mormons traditionally allowed polygamy, but few people seem to realize that one of the chief stimuli for it was the limited options a woman had when her husband died.
Another important issue: In the Old West, there was more space than anything. The Cowboy Mythology, like Horror Mythology, relies on isolation. (In Horror it's usually an isolated individual or small group.) The great empires of Europe were densely packed by comparison and had a lot of trade traffic, at least relative to the sparsely populated Old West. And America was less held together in the early years by the circulation of officials and more by the idea of America.
In other situations, the same space would yield what? Fiefdoms, I'd imagine, or small communities much like the little towns of the Old West, but perhaps with walls like medieval Europe (depending on the hostility of the surroundings and the level of technology).
But the technology is the thing, isn't it? Old West communities didn't have walls, unless they were forts. However hostile the Indians and outlaws might have been, it wasn't enough to (in most cases) keep people from settling out in wide open spaces. Guns are probably to thank for that. So what if they didn't have guns?
In D&D, magic is primarily focused on stuff that comes in handy while adventuring. But if magic technology were something that could be developed, and if there were artifacts to be found, the most prized magic would be the stuff that emulates industrial and post-industrial revolution technology: You'd have spells for more crops, disease and wound curing, transportation--well, what in D&D were largely clerical spells. (D&D and other RPGs introduce a kind of mass-market magic without ever really exploring how it changes the world.)
It's not just high fantasy, of course: If we had Superman available to us, wouldn't we use him to help bail out the economy? 10 years until we could get oil? Ha! Superman could get it in 10 days, and he'd know exactly where to drill, thank you X-ray vision!
Now, here's an interesting question for the Economics types: What are the defining circumstances of a situation? In other words, given a universe with a particular set of properties (fecundity and variety of animals, plants, humans; quality and quantity of physical space, materials, technology; nature and depth of philosophies, religions, morals), what creates a particular community?
For example, the Jews were able to do in Israel what the Arabs never cared to or were able to. The new Israelis had nothing other than a mindset--including a sense of ethnic survival risk--that the Arabs didn't, or couldn't have gotten. (The Palestinians even trashed what the Israelis had build when it was turned over to them.)
Or, the Native Americans had two huge continents to roam over, yet settled in only a few places, and evolved a bloody and pessimistic worldview. Or did they have the worldview, and that kept them from settling?
Of course, sometimes I just sit down and write without thinking of any of this kind of crap. But there are still 3 weeks to go. Heh.
The USA, right now, shows incredible growth in terms of small business and a growing consciousness of independence, as well as death in its institutions and religious tradition. (In institutional terms, "death" is less about non-existence and more about atrophying in a way that strangles society.) This intricate
In writing, however, the interesting part is figuring out how society would emerge given a particular set of conditions. One of my first novels was focused on robots, and how humanity would deal with a world where robots did everything and what sort of humans would interact with this world while at the same time rejecting it. This was done in a hard-boiled detective style--probably overly derivatively so--but Troop might have liked it, because one of the premises I came up with was that human servants (and particularly hookers) would be a tremendous luxury.
I wrote another short story that prefigured The Matrix. Only the way I had it worked out, humans hadn't been enslaved by machines, they had just preferred virtual reality and retired into it. (The Matrix had a better movie plot, for sure. I had the Devil's own time creating drama out of a planet of couch potatoes.)
Since I can't put (metaphorical) pen to paper yet on my Cowboy Barbarian Sex Yogurt Unicorn novel, I've been thinking about the sorts of societies that would exist, given the conditions I've set up for the story.
I don't want to spoil too much so let's look at, say, Deadwood
. David Milch went over the top in his portrayal of the town, which was far more civil--and certainly didn't swear like that. (But I realized instantly, and have since confirmed, that the whole point of the swearing was because the actual swearing of the time would have created outright laughs at critical points.)But the basic premise--what a lawless 19th century city would've looked like, especially with some seriously ethically impaired characters in power--was solid.
I'm looking a lot to the 19th century for the "cowboy" part of the story, and thinking of how morally rigorous the Old West was, at least in places, but also how the morality adapted to the times. For example, most people know that Mormons traditionally allowed polygamy, but few people seem to realize that one of the chief stimuli for it was the limited options a woman had when her husband died.
Another important issue: In the Old West, there was more space than anything. The Cowboy Mythology, like Horror Mythology, relies on isolation. (In Horror it's usually an isolated individual or small group.) The great empires of Europe were densely packed by comparison and had a lot of trade traffic, at least relative to the sparsely populated Old West. And America was less held together in the early years by the circulation of officials and more by the idea of America.
In other situations, the same space would yield what? Fiefdoms, I'd imagine, or small communities much like the little towns of the Old West, but perhaps with walls like medieval Europe (depending on the hostility of the surroundings and the level of technology).
But the technology is the thing, isn't it? Old West communities didn't have walls, unless they were forts. However hostile the Indians and outlaws might have been, it wasn't enough to (in most cases) keep people from settling out in wide open spaces. Guns are probably to thank for that. So what if they didn't have guns?
In D&D, magic is primarily focused on stuff that comes in handy while adventuring. But if magic technology were something that could be developed, and if there were artifacts to be found, the most prized magic would be the stuff that emulates industrial and post-industrial revolution technology: You'd have spells for more crops, disease and wound curing, transportation--well, what in D&D were largely clerical spells. (D&D and other RPGs introduce a kind of mass-market magic without ever really exploring how it changes the world.)
It's not just high fantasy, of course: If we had Superman available to us, wouldn't we use him to help bail out the economy? 10 years until we could get oil? Ha! Superman could get it in 10 days, and he'd know exactly where to drill, thank you X-ray vision!
Now, here's an interesting question for the Economics types: What are the defining circumstances of a situation? In other words, given a universe with a particular set of properties (fecundity and variety of animals, plants, humans; quality and quantity of physical space, materials, technology; nature and depth of philosophies, religions, morals), what creates a particular community?
For example, the Jews were able to do in Israel what the Arabs never cared to or were able to. The new Israelis had nothing other than a mindset--including a sense of ethnic survival risk--that the Arabs didn't, or couldn't have gotten. (The Palestinians even trashed what the Israelis had build when it was turned over to them.)
Or, the Native Americans had two huge continents to roam over, yet settled in only a few places, and evolved a bloody and pessimistic worldview. Or did they have the worldview, and that kept them from settling?
Of course, sometimes I just sit down and write without thinking of any of this kind of crap. But there are still 3 weeks to go. Heh.
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