I've been trying to come up with a way to discuss with some cohesion the so called 'serial killer' films of David Fincher, a category in which Se7en and Zodiac are now joined by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But there is no way to do that because these 3 films could not be less alike. Se7en is considered by many (myself included) to be a modern classic of the crime genre. Its dark, foreboding portrait of urban and moral decay is the setting for a fascinating investigation in to the nature of sin. Zodiac is about obsession, about the way some mysteries have no solution, but some poor folks can't stop searching for one regardless.
And so what is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo about? 'What was the book about' might be a better jumping off point, and from there we can leap to lingering anti-semitism in Sweden, or that children really get their values from their parents, or perhaps simply that sometimes, one bad turn deserves another. Oh and violence against women is bad, both because, well it just is but also because god help you if Lizbeth Salander finds out. As the heroine of this story, Lizbeth draws our complete attention, no matter the terrible circumstance.
If you've read the novel, then you know this already: rape figures centrally as a crime committed and then revenged. You will see rape, more than once, if you sit down and watch this, and I won't bother saying whether you should or shouldn't shield your eyes - that is irrelevant. We've all got different thresholds for this kind of thing. I can say that I don't pale easily at the movies, and some of the scenes here made me profoundly upset and uncomfortable. That was clearly the intention, no punches pulled.
Fincher has cast this take on Stieg Larsson's novel wisely. The subject matter has the potential to be pulpy, but the stars here are just too credible to conduct the current of the story in any way that other than earnestly. It's no surprise that Daniel Craig, Stellan Skarsgard or Christopher Plummer are up to the task, so the question lies with whether relative newcomer Rooney Mara can match the chops. The answer is: And then some. I said Lizbeth holds our attention, and playing her, Mara immediately has pushed herself into a deserving spotlight. We last saw her portraying Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend in the rapier opening scene of Fincher's The Social Network and it's an understatement to say she has completely transformed herself here. She is more than capable of all the ferocity and vulnerability demanded of the character, no small feat.
That is the best reason to see this film. So overwhelming is the character of Lizbeth Salander that it makes the main plot of solving a 40-year old missing person case, and tracking down a serial killer seem like mere window dressing. Having not read the novels, I think I might now understand some of the fascination.
As for other elements of the film - it is breathlessly paced, and thoroughly well realized from top to bottom. The feel is consistently cold and lonely, and the score, once more a collaboration between Nine Inch Nails front man (or only man I guess) Trent Reznor and producer Atticus Ross is another great addition to the recent increase in non-traditional scores. This is electronic, but also somehow organic, and the textures all suit this story well - it's all short moments of warmth amidst horrible expanses of cold.
Like most David Fincher films, this is easy to recommend or to not recommend - those who read the novel or who typically like his style will find lots to like. For some, though, this is certainly unpalatable.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Review: Shame
Professionals cannot agree on what constitutes sex addiction, or whether it is a real disorder, but don't tell that to Brandon (Michael Fassbender) - he's not a well-adjusted man, no matter how you might label what's wrong with him. Sex is meaningless for him, just a means to an end - and even the ends are joyless here. Shame concerns itself with the way Brandon lives day to day, if you can call it living, and what happens when his private world is infringed upon by his younger sister (Carey Mulligan).
Another film about addiction might look very similar to this one - with a central character who sneaks away on breaks at the office to do a line in the men's room, to stay out late shoving chemicals into his body, whose personal relationships are perfunctory or else nonexistant. But the vice here is sex. So Brandon is at all times preoccupied with getting his next 'hit' - he does sneak off at work - to the men's room - but to masturbate. He chums around with his boss (James Badge Dale) to troll for his next lay. He is out all night, screwing wherever and whoever he can. At one point this is not limited to women, and only in this film would that not be a comment on homosexuality. To Brandon, sex has no character, let alone orientation.
Fassbender has been described as courageous for taking on his role in Shame, a second collaboration between himself and director Steve McQueen, and that may be an understatement. There are long, long takes of him doing little, but they gradually steep the audience in his colourless, soulless existence. Fassbender is nude a lot, having sex a lot, and it never ever looks like fun, even a little. He clashes painfully with his sister because she is as much extroverted as he isn't. She interrupts his life of hiding and he deals with it badly. We have seen flashes of this type of performance from him in films like Jane Eyre, or (surprisingly) X-Men: First Class - he's a terrific choice for a tormented anti-hero. He pairs very well with Carey Mulligan, whose performance is not angry, but frustrated. She perfectly captures the way you can love family, the way you have to, because who else will? Of course she needs her brother, too.
These siblings are implied to have shared a past responsible for their deep sadness and dysfunction - Brandon, more quietly, while Sissy stands in lounges and sings her pain aloud. Never will you hear the lines 'I wanna be part of it, New York, New York', with more heartbreak. Their past isn't illuminated for us, the film isn't concerned with that.
The emotions Brandon exhibits, as barely as he does, inform the shape and colour of every scene as executed in camera, editing, and direction. Long takes where the camera barely moves for 7 minutes arrest us while Brandon goes through his day. Similarly, a single shot follows him while he goes for a late night run. We get no reprieve. That contrasts sharply with the moments when he is manic, frustrated and unfulfilled. The editing jumps, suddenly nothing can be done fast enough. The whole experience pulls your feelings around with detachment and volatility. McQueen traps us with Brandon, doesn't let us look away.
If your good moods are fragile, this is impossible to recommend. Roger Ebert put it best when he gave the film four stars then said he could never watch it again.
For more on Shame, listen to this week's Sticks + Stones Podcast, available on the internet (which is everywhere!!) - Also discussed: The Muppets, Take Shelter, Melancholia, and the films we're looking forward to this month. Listen here!
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Review: Contagion
Contagion is a scary movie because it depicts a situation that could happen. I'm no scientist, but I was left thinking that while the virus depicted here isn't real, one like it could be, and there's little comfort in that. It's also scary because as a pandemic takes hold through the film, we see many people die, and many more become frightened and violent. Social services are weakened and in some cases collapse, there are looters, and the social contract generally goes out the window for a while. The scariest part is how close it all is to reality; Contagion is one of those films that transcends science fiction and becomes science possibility.
The film has been described as 'Traffic, but with a virus' which is apt mostly because Steven Soderbergh directed this, too, and lends it his detached view, and his complex interweaving of multiple story threads. The narrative jumps about from person to person and gives us information at a steady, manageable pace, despite its relative complexity - relative to a film like Outbreak, which I also enjoyed, but which took contrived pains to explain viruses to the audience in layman's terms. In Contagion, no one slows down to say things twice, or to say them with great clarity, other than to deal with those characters who aren't scientists - thank god for them because the WHO and CDC only ever speak in shorter words to deal with Homeland Security, and the odd press conference. These scenes play genuinely - when news of a virus is on the real CNN - we may not understand everything (or anything) the talking head says about the science, but there is inevitably that part of their commentary explaining how likely we are to catch the disease, how likely it is to kill us, what the numbers are in the big picture. The gravity of the whole thing shines through like a terrible beacon.
Contagion is close to being documentary in its style - it depicts situations which are difficult, emotional, impossible - but it does not overdo it, it does not tap us on the shoulder with music cues or loose editing to emphasize the tragedy or the panic. The narrative is well-balanced between the grand view of things as they unfold worldwide and the intimate way it affects the characters and the people they love. A surprising number of A-listers are in this film, but it speaks very highly of its execution that despite excellent, underplayed performances from just about everyone, this film would not have been worse off for casting nobodies and newcomers. The big names are just here to sell the package.
Matt Damon is the most human thread running through the film - he loses his wife and step-son early on and struggles to make sure he doesn't also lose his daughter. Much of the plot unfolding around him speaks to our immediate concerns about family when a calamity like this unfolds - parents trying to protect their children while society is falling apart around them. Most of the major characters, even the ones like Lawrence Fishburne who serve to lead us through the institutional procedure of dealing with the virus, have a strong human element that more than anything allows us to trust them and like them. We need to have something to latch on to because the plot is constantly presenting a bleak landscape - the virus spreads fast, kills fast, contracts through touch and air, and is a mystery to medical science when it shows up.
A great deal of research and consultation fuels the way the plot unfolds - Soderbergh and writer Scott Burns do not create drama by contorting the science or the realities of how governments work - they instead keep things grounded by finding the stories that would certainly take place at a time like this. Again, it compares favourably to something like Outbreak - there is no showdown here where one person risks his life by flying a plane or making a big speech - the heroism in Contagion is mostly quiet, patient. Characters take risks, but they are played matter-of-factly, not sensationally.
The detached style of the film won't appeal to everyone, so be warned that there are no car chases or convenient twists. This is an unnerving, steady take on how we all might experience such a disaster - maybe one day, but we hope never.
The film has been described as 'Traffic, but with a virus' which is apt mostly because Steven Soderbergh directed this, too, and lends it his detached view, and his complex interweaving of multiple story threads. The narrative jumps about from person to person and gives us information at a steady, manageable pace, despite its relative complexity - relative to a film like Outbreak, which I also enjoyed, but which took contrived pains to explain viruses to the audience in layman's terms. In Contagion, no one slows down to say things twice, or to say them with great clarity, other than to deal with those characters who aren't scientists - thank god for them because the WHO and CDC only ever speak in shorter words to deal with Homeland Security, and the odd press conference. These scenes play genuinely - when news of a virus is on the real CNN - we may not understand everything (or anything) the talking head says about the science, but there is inevitably that part of their commentary explaining how likely we are to catch the disease, how likely it is to kill us, what the numbers are in the big picture. The gravity of the whole thing shines through like a terrible beacon.
Contagion is close to being documentary in its style - it depicts situations which are difficult, emotional, impossible - but it does not overdo it, it does not tap us on the shoulder with music cues or loose editing to emphasize the tragedy or the panic. The narrative is well-balanced between the grand view of things as they unfold worldwide and the intimate way it affects the characters and the people they love. A surprising number of A-listers are in this film, but it speaks very highly of its execution that despite excellent, underplayed performances from just about everyone, this film would not have been worse off for casting nobodies and newcomers. The big names are just here to sell the package.
Matt Damon is the most human thread running through the film - he loses his wife and step-son early on and struggles to make sure he doesn't also lose his daughter. Much of the plot unfolding around him speaks to our immediate concerns about family when a calamity like this unfolds - parents trying to protect their children while society is falling apart around them. Most of the major characters, even the ones like Lawrence Fishburne who serve to lead us through the institutional procedure of dealing with the virus, have a strong human element that more than anything allows us to trust them and like them. We need to have something to latch on to because the plot is constantly presenting a bleak landscape - the virus spreads fast, kills fast, contracts through touch and air, and is a mystery to medical science when it shows up.
A great deal of research and consultation fuels the way the plot unfolds - Soderbergh and writer Scott Burns do not create drama by contorting the science or the realities of how governments work - they instead keep things grounded by finding the stories that would certainly take place at a time like this. Again, it compares favourably to something like Outbreak - there is no showdown here where one person risks his life by flying a plane or making a big speech - the heroism in Contagion is mostly quiet, patient. Characters take risks, but they are played matter-of-factly, not sensationally.
The detached style of the film won't appeal to everyone, so be warned that there are no car chases or convenient twists. This is an unnerving, steady take on how we all might experience such a disaster - maybe one day, but we hope never.
Monday, July 11, 2011
A young journalist implodes (or maybe he just quit)
This is what I'm talking about.
I couldn't possibly get behind a lot of what Kai Nagata has to say, or else I'd be ready to take my hat and go, too. But I understand. He's even younger than me, but to him the state of TV news is untenable, and in quitting with this very public dispatch, he's articulated what many of us might feel in our most cynical moments. Cynicism in this industry is peculiar because, as Nagata demonstrates, it runs hand in hand with a kind of idealism for what it could be.
A lot of good can come when someone with promise tips out the door so early, and so loudly, reminding us that the status quo is not mandatory. I hope a lot of people with pay grades higher than mine take his criticisms and at least ponder them a while.
I couldn't possibly get behind a lot of what Kai Nagata has to say, or else I'd be ready to take my hat and go, too. But I understand. He's even younger than me, but to him the state of TV news is untenable, and in quitting with this very public dispatch, he's articulated what many of us might feel in our most cynical moments. Cynicism in this industry is peculiar because, as Nagata demonstrates, it runs hand in hand with a kind of idealism for what it could be.
A lot of good can come when someone with promise tips out the door so early, and so loudly, reminding us that the status quo is not mandatory. I hope a lot of people with pay grades higher than mine take his criticisms and at least ponder them a while.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Review: Transformers - Dark of the Moon
Strike three, Harry Knowles.
His perspective on film being entirely dependent on the screening's circumstances, Knowles winds up with some weird conclusions about the movies sometimes. Last year, I read in disbelief as he tried to pass off the credibility of a negative review of Inception with the caveat that he hadn't slept the night before and was barely mentally present during the screening. Still, that was last year, so 2011 was a clean slate. Briefly.
This year, he gave a glowing pass to X-Men First Class, which was not a bad movie, but also not a great movie, and not even the best of the X-Men films (for me, that title still belongs to X2). Prior to that, a review that came down favourably on what I thought would be the worst movie I'd see this year - Sucker Punch. But it's still 2011, and I'm now hard pressed to say which Harry Knowles-approved film was worse - Sucker Punch or Transformers 3.
It's subtitled 'Dark of the Moon', which ties into the plot, but I think some better names might have been 'the third, longer, one' or 'Frances McDormand needs a new summerhouse'. Michael Bay has a way of getting good actors into terrible films - I can't believe that Ewan MacGregor is at once the actor who starred in The Island in 2005 and also the one who starred in Beginners this year. I know Bay also casts bad actors - or models, when actors point out how bad his movies are and have to be cut loose.
Transformers 3 takes a problem I experienced with X-Men First Class and amplifies it considerably. Lurking within the over 2.5 hour chore of this movie is some good entertainment. Not great, but certainly the entertainment I had hoped to find once again, it having been missing from this series since the first film in '07. The original managed to be way more fun than either sequel, possibly because the first level of exposition in this universe is way less convoluted than the plotting developed since. But here, even worse than in the previous sequel, whatever good fun was to be had is utterly buried. There is about an hour of this movie that could have been left on the cutting room floor. An HOUR. That means that you could have taken, say, $70 million of this movie's near $200 million budget and just made another, big budget film.
All that is to say that by the time this movie made it to the setpiece destruction/occupation of Chicago, I was already checked out. As one friend pointed out to me, this is going to give a number of people exactly what they want from a trip to the big robot show - there are robots, and they're big, and it's all very showy. In a very un-Michael-Bay style, a great number of the shots in this film's action sequences are longer, to allow the eye time for the much-insisted upon 3D effect (someone must be insisting on it, but it's not me, and it's not anyone I know). The result is that you have many more opportunities to stare at the lavish, almost impossible to conceive effects.
Along that point, my last point, I guess I should thank Michael Bay - he has completely quenched my appetite for mindless effects pictures. I haven't walked out of a movie feeling this exhausted in - ever. In the whole run time of Transformers 3, there was not one second where I cared about any character, ever. That has become completely required for me to enjoy this kind of thing on any level. Not that long ago, I caught Super 8, and that movie was full of spectacle - but it also had a ton of character in it, and was magical in that way that requires you to have a sense of wonder, to share it with someone on screen. Maybe that's what's so tiring about Transformers now - in the past two movies, no one's ever stopped to go 'wow! - huge talking robots!' - it's all been there, done that.
His perspective on film being entirely dependent on the screening's circumstances, Knowles winds up with some weird conclusions about the movies sometimes. Last year, I read in disbelief as he tried to pass off the credibility of a negative review of Inception with the caveat that he hadn't slept the night before and was barely mentally present during the screening. Still, that was last year, so 2011 was a clean slate. Briefly.
This year, he gave a glowing pass to X-Men First Class, which was not a bad movie, but also not a great movie, and not even the best of the X-Men films (for me, that title still belongs to X2). Prior to that, a review that came down favourably on what I thought would be the worst movie I'd see this year - Sucker Punch. But it's still 2011, and I'm now hard pressed to say which Harry Knowles-approved film was worse - Sucker Punch or Transformers 3.
It's subtitled 'Dark of the Moon', which ties into the plot, but I think some better names might have been 'the third, longer, one' or 'Frances McDormand needs a new summerhouse'. Michael Bay has a way of getting good actors into terrible films - I can't believe that Ewan MacGregor is at once the actor who starred in The Island in 2005 and also the one who starred in Beginners this year. I know Bay also casts bad actors - or models, when actors point out how bad his movies are and have to be cut loose.
Transformers 3 takes a problem I experienced with X-Men First Class and amplifies it considerably. Lurking within the over 2.5 hour chore of this movie is some good entertainment. Not great, but certainly the entertainment I had hoped to find once again, it having been missing from this series since the first film in '07. The original managed to be way more fun than either sequel, possibly because the first level of exposition in this universe is way less convoluted than the plotting developed since. But here, even worse than in the previous sequel, whatever good fun was to be had is utterly buried. There is about an hour of this movie that could have been left on the cutting room floor. An HOUR. That means that you could have taken, say, $70 million of this movie's near $200 million budget and just made another, big budget film.
All that is to say that by the time this movie made it to the setpiece destruction/occupation of Chicago, I was already checked out. As one friend pointed out to me, this is going to give a number of people exactly what they want from a trip to the big robot show - there are robots, and they're big, and it's all very showy. In a very un-Michael-Bay style, a great number of the shots in this film's action sequences are longer, to allow the eye time for the much-insisted upon 3D effect (someone must be insisting on it, but it's not me, and it's not anyone I know). The result is that you have many more opportunities to stare at the lavish, almost impossible to conceive effects.
Along that point, my last point, I guess I should thank Michael Bay - he has completely quenched my appetite for mindless effects pictures. I haven't walked out of a movie feeling this exhausted in - ever. In the whole run time of Transformers 3, there was not one second where I cared about any character, ever. That has become completely required for me to enjoy this kind of thing on any level. Not that long ago, I caught Super 8, and that movie was full of spectacle - but it also had a ton of character in it, and was magical in that way that requires you to have a sense of wonder, to share it with someone on screen. Maybe that's what's so tiring about Transformers now - in the past two movies, no one's ever stopped to go 'wow! - huge talking robots!' - it's all been there, done that.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Break the Cycle
I promise this will be a short hop on the soapbox.
Canada has found itself in a federal election this spring. It will be the fourth since 2004. That fact alone paints a very divisive picture of our country. So it's no surprise that a lot of people are tuned out. The reasons I hear are common and, in a way, not unreasonable; none of the major party leaders resonate, unfamiliarity with the issues, a sense that heir vote is unimportant (because after all, the big parties aren't THAT different - the last government led by the Liberal Party fell due largely in part to the sponsorship scandal, and this Conservative government has been found in contempt of parliament).
I wouldn't throw my endorsement behind anyone at this stage, for many reasons. But I would like to make a recommendation, especially if you've found yourself deeply unmotivated by this election.
As important as it is to get familiar with the platforms of each federal party, for the people who aren't finding much to get excited about there, I implore you to visit the websites of, or otherwise learn about, the candidates running in your riding. Learn as much as you can, and give your vote to the person - the MP - who you believe will best represent you in Ottawa.
Many people simply vote for a party when it comes to these things - meaning they don't pay much attention to their local representation, just the big debates and issues of the party leaders. But that's not how a robust democracy should work. More emphasis needs to be placed on the person who represents you - because it is their job to convey what you want out of your government to their party leader.
I've spouted a lot of the criticisms that I hear coming from most people these days - especially younger voters who sense a lot of disconnection in the major party leaders. Party politics will figure into your decisions, but please try and factor in your local MP. I may be an idealist - but I strongly believe that if more voters did this, and did so honestly, then the make-up of our parliament wold change drastically. And that would be a very good thing, no matter what party you favour.
(Every major news outlet will have their election coverage running at full throttle now - so just pick your flavour, really. If you have the time, read or watch more than one source of news, since every outlet is biased, in one way or another)
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Tron: Legacy
Quick notes about Tron: Legacy, in case you're looking for the speedy version:
1. It's worth checking out.
2. If you decide to shell out your hard-earned dollars, IMAX 3D is the way to do it (if you're already spending $12, why not another $5) - not only is the sound superior, but like The Dark Knight, sections of this film were actually shot in the IMAX format, which means they fill up that entire, insanely large screen.
3. Check your brain at the door and enjoy the light-cycle battles, music, and general ooh-ah factor. Over-thinking this one left me in a pile of trouble.
I think I'll begin every review like this from now on! Especially on the blockbuster types, which to me are getting to a point where they're only worth it if they offer something at least a little unique. This one does, without a doubt. Still, it's far from perfect, so let's have a look.
About 20 years ago, as the story goes, Kevin Flynn disappeared from his role as the big boss at a world-renowned software company, called Encom. He also disappeared off the face of the earth - leaving his son Sam an orphan, and his company in the hands of greedy, evil board-member types (the only good one asks, "what is different about our product this year?" "This time we put a 12 on the box", is the reply). That one good guy is Kevin's old pal, who tells Sam he's gotten word from his absent father - go to the arcade and check it out. We get to watch Sam do the 1-minute reversal from his flat-out no to a reluctant yes, and soon enough he's at the arcade getting beamed up, or in, or however it works, and WHAM. He's in Narnia on a circuit board. Here's where Dad's been hanging out all this time.
Tron: Legacy is much like a fairy tale, but rather than being set in a fantastic world of lush, otherworldly beauty, it's set inside a computer. Never mind that most people have no romantic sentiment whatsoever for technology - the film works hard enough to depict the real world as more appealing than 'the grid', the specific system where this story takes place. The grid is beautiful in its own way - it has a cool, clean, neon sheen, and we're mostly supposed to find it dazzling, not cozy.
The actors, too, are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing - the ones who aren't strictly speaking human do a good job of acting that way - Olivia Wilde in particular has a great knack for behaving just outside of normalcy - I wonder if the direction given to her was 'act like you're 8 years old, and have never seen another real person before'. The relatively new Garrett Hedlund is a good leading man for us to follow through it all, and Jeff Bridges is fun to watch as both a deeply patient Kevin Flynn and am evil program bent on taking over the world. Yes. Yes, that's what it was...
That lands us at the part of this whole thing that didn't work for me. I found myself thinking back to The Matrix, wishing for a little clarity as far how this world is supposed to work, what the rules are, etc. Technically, The Matrix had an advantage, in that it was a world within a computer designed and programmed to be indistinguishable from reality. People may not have thought about it, but MAN does that cut down on time. Characters in that film and its sequels only ever had to slow down to explain that rules can be bent or broken, but by and large, as the audience watches, most of the questions they have are answered - why is there gravity, sunlight, why can people die, and how. The Matrix got complex enough to allow for the distinction between people and programs, and we understood that clearly enough.
Tron: Legacy kept me at arm's length, because I always had questions. And I am normally a film goer who is eager to suspend my disbelief, but for some reason, this one just asked too much of me. That is not to say there weren't large stretches of this film that I enjoyed a lot - as I pointed out above, light-cycle battles, the whole aesthetic, daft punk's score, and all the performers had me going, but - well. There's a point in the middle of this picture at which Jeff Bridges has to deliver a lot of exposition about what has happened to keep him trapped in this world all this time. He speaks long enough to bring up something called 'isomorphic algorithms' and then stopped before he explained what they were. Sam's reactions informed me that they are special, and it's inferred that they are alive (they better be, or else the ending makes even less sense). Still, when characters have to get out some necessary exposition, you should be less confused than when they started talking, not more.
Those characters also have to work pretty hard to step through some of the clunky scripting while still appearing to have much life in them, and there were a few missed opportunities. For one thing, it's suggested that time moves more quickly in the grid, relative to the real word - and while they gave a solid figure somewhere, the real revelation that they blew past, and that Sam never seemed to register, was that the 20 years he experienced without his dad may have seemed like hundreds or thousands to Kevin. I would have greatly enjoyed a moment or two on that point, rather then more talk of isomorphic so-and-so's.
The film's knack for being obtuse aside, I'm still glad I saw it. There is a tradition being carried forwards here that I may be reading in to a little too deeply - but it strikes me that somewhere at its core, Tron films are about the reverence for all the good things that technology can do. There are lines about the potential to change just about every aspect of human life in here, and I only wish this film's reach equaled its rhetoric. Oh well, enjoy a fresh ride on the light-cycle.
Black Swan
It's taken me a little while to digest the experience of watching Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. Fortunately, I write things like this to satisfy my own desire to sketch out my thoughts, rather than meet deadlines, because of course I'm a little late to the party here.
To rewind a little before getting into Black Swan, I should note that Aronofsky has always been able to craft work that I want to return to, again and again. This has even been true of Requiem for a Dream, which I can easily rank as one of the best films I've ever seen, and also one of the most heart-wrenching. There is a piece of trivia from Requiem about Matthew Libatique, the film's DP, letting the camera drift on Ellen Burstyn's beautiful and crushing monologue - because he was crying. This has always stood as a great representation of that film to me - it is about relatively pedestrian characters and problems, told with operatic intensity.
That is one of Aronofsky's gifts, I think - the ability to place us so close to his characters that we have the opportunity to feel what they do, to care for them even when they make choices we don't agree with. It's the sort of care one normally spares for family - those you love despite all the flaws.
So, we arrive at Black Swan, in which we will follow Natalie Portman as Nina. She is a quiet, fragile dancer, a completely adequate member of a New York ballet company. She is pursuing the role of the Swan Queen in their upcoming production of Swan Lake, and her director has flatly told her that while he believes she can represent the clean goodness, the tidy chaste beauty of the White Swan, she doesn't have it in her to play the seductive nature of the Black Swan.
There is more plot than that, of course, but that is enough to inform everything that happens in the film. A supporting cast that includes Nina's past-her-prime ex-dancer of a mother (Barbara Hershey), the lecherous company director (Vincent Cassel) and last but not least, Lily - a girl who embodies everything Nina needs to become the Black Swan.
Lily is played by Mila Kunis, who I had already believed to be very capable. She turns in a performance that makes me giddy to contemplate the career she may have ahead of her. Kunis pairs remarkably well with Portman, whose looks are enough to let me consistently underestimate her. I should know better. This might be the best of her career to date - and I say that not having forgotten about Closer. Portman is in full, remarkable control of her craft here, steering a performance between the extremes of silent shyness and deafening madness and uncertainty. It takes a grand performer to perfectly compose the appearance of losing your grip.
As I said, there is more plot to Black Swan that I've mentioned, but the real delight is in watching the realization of this world - which is half the real world of Manhattan ballet and half Nina's mind. This was another stroke that reminded me strongly of Requiem, which was situated with great attention to detail and texture in Brooklyn. Here, Aronofsky leads us in to the world of ballet - and not that of the glitzy performances, but instead of the back stage, the relentless practice, the harsh criticism, the punishments on the body, and overall, the sacrifices made not only to become a part of it, but to become the best.
In the broad strokes, that's what Black Swan is about - what you lose in growing, and so I suppose that makes it a loss of innocence story. It's magnified to epic volume here, since Nina changes in nearly every way from where she starts the story off. We have the pleasure of living in her heads as events unfold, which means we're never given a grasp on reality. What happens in the film could be called a descent into madness, but a better term might be a revelation of madness. Factors and forces push Nina into an eruption of energy she didn't even know she had, bursting from her as though it had been percolating for years. Maybe it had.
It's strongly recommended viewing - and please, go see this with an audience, don't just wait for the DVD. If you're the kind of person that can feel the energy in the room, it'll help the whole experience as the tension builds and things get more and more extreme. This will easily rank amongst my favourites from 2010.
To rewind a little before getting into Black Swan, I should note that Aronofsky has always been able to craft work that I want to return to, again and again. This has even been true of Requiem for a Dream, which I can easily rank as one of the best films I've ever seen, and also one of the most heart-wrenching. There is a piece of trivia from Requiem about Matthew Libatique, the film's DP, letting the camera drift on Ellen Burstyn's beautiful and crushing monologue - because he was crying. This has always stood as a great representation of that film to me - it is about relatively pedestrian characters and problems, told with operatic intensity.
That is one of Aronofsky's gifts, I think - the ability to place us so close to his characters that we have the opportunity to feel what they do, to care for them even when they make choices we don't agree with. It's the sort of care one normally spares for family - those you love despite all the flaws.
So, we arrive at Black Swan, in which we will follow Natalie Portman as Nina. She is a quiet, fragile dancer, a completely adequate member of a New York ballet company. She is pursuing the role of the Swan Queen in their upcoming production of Swan Lake, and her director has flatly told her that while he believes she can represent the clean goodness, the tidy chaste beauty of the White Swan, she doesn't have it in her to play the seductive nature of the Black Swan.
There is more plot than that, of course, but that is enough to inform everything that happens in the film. A supporting cast that includes Nina's past-her-prime ex-dancer of a mother (Barbara Hershey), the lecherous company director (Vincent Cassel) and last but not least, Lily - a girl who embodies everything Nina needs to become the Black Swan.
Lily is played by Mila Kunis, who I had already believed to be very capable. She turns in a performance that makes me giddy to contemplate the career she may have ahead of her. Kunis pairs remarkably well with Portman, whose looks are enough to let me consistently underestimate her. I should know better. This might be the best of her career to date - and I say that not having forgotten about Closer. Portman is in full, remarkable control of her craft here, steering a performance between the extremes of silent shyness and deafening madness and uncertainty. It takes a grand performer to perfectly compose the appearance of losing your grip.
As I said, there is more plot to Black Swan that I've mentioned, but the real delight is in watching the realization of this world - which is half the real world of Manhattan ballet and half Nina's mind. This was another stroke that reminded me strongly of Requiem, which was situated with great attention to detail and texture in Brooklyn. Here, Aronofsky leads us in to the world of ballet - and not that of the glitzy performances, but instead of the back stage, the relentless practice, the harsh criticism, the punishments on the body, and overall, the sacrifices made not only to become a part of it, but to become the best.
In the broad strokes, that's what Black Swan is about - what you lose in growing, and so I suppose that makes it a loss of innocence story. It's magnified to epic volume here, since Nina changes in nearly every way from where she starts the story off. We have the pleasure of living in her heads as events unfold, which means we're never given a grasp on reality. What happens in the film could be called a descent into madness, but a better term might be a revelation of madness. Factors and forces push Nina into an eruption of energy she didn't even know she had, bursting from her as though it had been percolating for years. Maybe it had.
It's strongly recommended viewing - and please, go see this with an audience, don't just wait for the DVD. If you're the kind of person that can feel the energy in the room, it'll help the whole experience as the tension builds and things get more and more extreme. This will easily rank amongst my favourites from 2010.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Review: Easy A
Haven't teenagers got anything better to do? Gossip is a central preoccupation for the entire student body in Easy A, a new comedy / satire / social tut-tut film that works very well, despite its adherance to high school movie cliches. The 'teens' are all certainly in their 20s, the dialogue is impossibly too convenient, and everything wraps up very tidily. But that's ok, because the film operates at a high level within those confines, like Mean Girls did a few years ago (it even bests the Tina Fey-scripted film by omitting the 'let's show the audience all the subcultural divides by panning around the cafeteria').
Emma Stone plays Olive, who will discover by accident the film's main idea: don't have sex, but say you did. It's a simple lie, at first told to get her best friend off her back, but then later for a more compassionate reason. Olive lies a lot in this film - there is a healthy dose of both absolute lies and lies of omission, but as mentioned, we are quickly given a reason to get on her side. This is a big role for Stone, who has delivered before, really every time I can think of having seen her - this time she gets the spotlight to herself and squeezes all the juice out of it she can. There are times when Olive makes choices that we have trouble with, but Stone beckons us along and makes us care. Her performance leverages all the right stuff at all the right moments - and she gets vulnerability and strength across as not being mutually exclusive.
Everyone else here is pitch-perfect - well-cast and performing well, too. Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are Olive's parents, who are loving, supportive, funny, and make it all the more believable that their daughter could be so clever. They are the kind of parents the real world should have more of. Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow are here to lend plausible evidence that teachers are people, too (something most high school kids seem to forget).
Easy A clips along nicely through its plot, aided greatly by consistent and well-devised wit. Though the beats are mostly predictable (escalation of the lie works out for a while, until it doesn't, then watch out), we enjoy seeing it all unravel because the script is witty and because the film is clear about its subject - this movie is not about sex, but more about how teenagers swirl around it, around the scandal and intrigue they believe it carries. I must not have a clue what California high schools are like, because I found myself surprised by the level of shock people have at a 17-year-old losing her virginity.
In keeping its message clear, the film avoids making too many implied comments about actual teenaged sexual escapades, and has a go at the judgmental nature of the high school crowd instead. John Hughes is very deliberately invoked, more than once, to great effect - Olive is sad that her life is not going the way of Pretty in Pink or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, except that then it kind of does. This movie and those are of course fiction - but their points are real - large groups of (young) people have a habit of isolating those different from them and ostrasizing them. That's not likely to change, ever, so the references to not only Hughes' films but also Nathaniel Hawthorne will stand the test of time.
The subtle message also carried through is that despite all the trouble it causes, sex isn't bad, but that it is a kind of connection between two people, and those (connections) can be all kinds of wonderful or terrible, so make your choices wisely. There is, I won't say an anti-religious message, but an indictment of the sort of people who use God to excuse their own opinions and judgments - that's always ok by me, especially in this case in which the character who mostly embodies that is given a chance for some depth along the way.
So, the trappings of high school films aside, if you can buy the permise that as the film opens, Emma Stone's character is unremarkable, then I highly recommend this.
Emma Stone plays Olive, who will discover by accident the film's main idea: don't have sex, but say you did. It's a simple lie, at first told to get her best friend off her back, but then later for a more compassionate reason. Olive lies a lot in this film - there is a healthy dose of both absolute lies and lies of omission, but as mentioned, we are quickly given a reason to get on her side. This is a big role for Stone, who has delivered before, really every time I can think of having seen her - this time she gets the spotlight to herself and squeezes all the juice out of it she can. There are times when Olive makes choices that we have trouble with, but Stone beckons us along and makes us care. Her performance leverages all the right stuff at all the right moments - and she gets vulnerability and strength across as not being mutually exclusive.
Everyone else here is pitch-perfect - well-cast and performing well, too. Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are Olive's parents, who are loving, supportive, funny, and make it all the more believable that their daughter could be so clever. They are the kind of parents the real world should have more of. Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow are here to lend plausible evidence that teachers are people, too (something most high school kids seem to forget).
Easy A clips along nicely through its plot, aided greatly by consistent and well-devised wit. Though the beats are mostly predictable (escalation of the lie works out for a while, until it doesn't, then watch out), we enjoy seeing it all unravel because the script is witty and because the film is clear about its subject - this movie is not about sex, but more about how teenagers swirl around it, around the scandal and intrigue they believe it carries. I must not have a clue what California high schools are like, because I found myself surprised by the level of shock people have at a 17-year-old losing her virginity.
In keeping its message clear, the film avoids making too many implied comments about actual teenaged sexual escapades, and has a go at the judgmental nature of the high school crowd instead. John Hughes is very deliberately invoked, more than once, to great effect - Olive is sad that her life is not going the way of Pretty in Pink or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, except that then it kind of does. This movie and those are of course fiction - but their points are real - large groups of (young) people have a habit of isolating those different from them and ostrasizing them. That's not likely to change, ever, so the references to not only Hughes' films but also Nathaniel Hawthorne will stand the test of time.
The subtle message also carried through is that despite all the trouble it causes, sex isn't bad, but that it is a kind of connection between two people, and those (connections) can be all kinds of wonderful or terrible, so make your choices wisely. There is, I won't say an anti-religious message, but an indictment of the sort of people who use God to excuse their own opinions and judgments - that's always ok by me, especially in this case in which the character who mostly embodies that is given a chance for some depth along the way.
So, the trappings of high school films aside, if you can buy the permise that as the film opens, Emma Stone's character is unremarkable, then I highly recommend this.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Are you kidding? Just fill it out.
If you aren't familiar with what's going on, check out this or this or this (The last is, I believe, a very well-balanced editorial).
There are a couple things going on here that really bother me. The first is that the Conservative government is making a very important policy decision while ignoring those whose professional opinions are directly relevant, and ignoring overwhelming opposition. They are doing this as a minority government, meaning the opposition actually represents the majority of represented Canadians. In terms of the professional opposition, the now-former head of Statistics Canada has resigned as a direct result of this decision.
The issue has revolved around the essential differences between the reliability of data gathered from a voluntary census versus a mandatory one, and the excessive nature of the penalty for not filling out the mandatory census. I'll admit, I had no idea that you could go to jail for failing to fill out the census. But that might be because no one ever has. All the same, the notion of removing that penalty is one I'd support. One official also pointed out that in the past 20 years, only 50 complaints about the census have been received. An average of a little more than two per year, in a country of over 30 million.
That being said, the census isn't something everyone has to do, and it's a very infrequent inconvenience. That brings to mind one of my largest concerns about this entire issue. The notion that all people are willing to do for their country is pay their taxes is quite frankly offensive to me (and 'willing' is a generous term in that sentence as it is). This country has its problems, but we're sure as hell not going to solve any of them by complaining about providing policy makers with accurate information. Or by refusing to fill out a form once in a while. There is an issue of privacy that has been attached to this debate but in listening to the questions given as examples, I cannot imagine why anyone would have a problem giving up that information.
Still, few people were complaining at all. The sitting government is pushing through a reform that few constituents, if any, wanted, needed or care about. And they are wasting everyone's time by doing so. They have caused, perhaps indirectly, one dedicated public servant to abandon his post, because he could not in good conscience to his profession carry on.
I'll echo the Globe in one respect - do away with the threat of jail time and leave the rest as is. I would like to hear some citizens first-hand who would find it so unbearable in that state.
There are a couple things going on here that really bother me. The first is that the Conservative government is making a very important policy decision while ignoring those whose professional opinions are directly relevant, and ignoring overwhelming opposition. They are doing this as a minority government, meaning the opposition actually represents the majority of represented Canadians. In terms of the professional opposition, the now-former head of Statistics Canada has resigned as a direct result of this decision.
The issue has revolved around the essential differences between the reliability of data gathered from a voluntary census versus a mandatory one, and the excessive nature of the penalty for not filling out the mandatory census. I'll admit, I had no idea that you could go to jail for failing to fill out the census. But that might be because no one ever has. All the same, the notion of removing that penalty is one I'd support. One official also pointed out that in the past 20 years, only 50 complaints about the census have been received. An average of a little more than two per year, in a country of over 30 million.
That being said, the census isn't something everyone has to do, and it's a very infrequent inconvenience. That brings to mind one of my largest concerns about this entire issue. The notion that all people are willing to do for their country is pay their taxes is quite frankly offensive to me (and 'willing' is a generous term in that sentence as it is). This country has its problems, but we're sure as hell not going to solve any of them by complaining about providing policy makers with accurate information. Or by refusing to fill out a form once in a while. There is an issue of privacy that has been attached to this debate but in listening to the questions given as examples, I cannot imagine why anyone would have a problem giving up that information.
Still, few people were complaining at all. The sitting government is pushing through a reform that few constituents, if any, wanted, needed or care about. And they are wasting everyone's time by doing so. They have caused, perhaps indirectly, one dedicated public servant to abandon his post, because he could not in good conscience to his profession carry on.
I'll echo the Globe in one respect - do away with the threat of jail time and leave the rest as is. I would like to hear some citizens first-hand who would find it so unbearable in that state.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Inception
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Christopher Nolan may have made a deliberate nod to Poe's 'A Dream Within a Dream' in staging the opening of Inception, his most challenging work to date - or else Poe's poem planted that virulant idea in his head. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) wakes up on a beach, soaked, his face planted in the sand as we meet him. He has lost much, we discover. It is the cost of infiltrating the dreams of his marks, stealing their secrets, and selling them. What a thief, what a crimescene.
It comes as no surprise that Nolan began writing this film while making Memento ten years ago. It was pitched to the studio during the making of Insomnia, and subsequently took another eight years to write. That's no surprise either. Though some will criticize the characterizations overall, the plot is myriad and absorbing. It is driven truly by just one man - Cobb - and everyone else reacts believably to his actions. they are, reasonably, the support characters in his story. That is all about rejoining his family after exile, the details of which I will not reveal here.
It's just as well this film took a while coming to us. Nolan has had some time to up his game in reviving the Batman franchise, among his other projects. He was trusted with a formidable budget, one large enough to meet the demands of creating a world bound only by the limits of human imagination. And we must trust him to guide us through these dreams and their rules, which are all well explained and lend needed structure to a grandiose open world.
This is, in one sense, a heist film, which by itself endeared it to me, but aside from that it is a story about a criminal whose craft has cost him the most important thing in his life. Nolan appears to be fascinated by the bending of reality and perception - Insomnia was largely about trying to shape the way people see and remember not just ourselves but the people and events we have been party to. Memento was about seeing the world in a way that's truncated and backwards, but still with purpose. And it's clear from watching The Prestige that he is interested in tricks and deception and the extent to which people are willing to take those illusions to get what they want.
Much of that comes together here - there are constant warnings about the confusion of dreams versus reality, the real versus the fake. How the audience chooses to react to all of it will depend strongly on one's opinion about how important those distinctions are. And while there are sections of the film that sound laboured in discussing its themes, Nolan thankfully does not attempt to resolve any of the questions raised. Those questions are asked loudly and forcefully, but we are meant to ponder the answers.
You could dissect the ideas for years, making this a rewarding watch. The cast, composed entirely of the deeply talented and mostly of the A-list, is very well suited to the material. DiCaprio is the anchor, and we care for him and the fate of his wife (Marion Cotillard). The team Cobb assembles is a great mixture of smooth operators. Each is so well matched to their role that it's surprising the production trivia reveals there were ever any other choices.
Inception is a big, brilliant package of ideas. Its plot somewhat outstrips its characters, but not nearly enough to detract from the enjoyment of watching it, and them. Opinions may vary, but to me, Nolan has solidified himself as one of the smartest, most original directors working today. And like all good storytellers, he respects his audience enough to trust them with the depth and complexity of his words, his pictures - his dreams.
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Christopher Nolan may have made a deliberate nod to Poe's 'A Dream Within a Dream' in staging the opening of Inception, his most challenging work to date - or else Poe's poem planted that virulant idea in his head. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) wakes up on a beach, soaked, his face planted in the sand as we meet him. He has lost much, we discover. It is the cost of infiltrating the dreams of his marks, stealing their secrets, and selling them. What a thief, what a crimescene.
It comes as no surprise that Nolan began writing this film while making Memento ten years ago. It was pitched to the studio during the making of Insomnia, and subsequently took another eight years to write. That's no surprise either. Though some will criticize the characterizations overall, the plot is myriad and absorbing. It is driven truly by just one man - Cobb - and everyone else reacts believably to his actions. they are, reasonably, the support characters in his story. That is all about rejoining his family after exile, the details of which I will not reveal here.
It's just as well this film took a while coming to us. Nolan has had some time to up his game in reviving the Batman franchise, among his other projects. He was trusted with a formidable budget, one large enough to meet the demands of creating a world bound only by the limits of human imagination. And we must trust him to guide us through these dreams and their rules, which are all well explained and lend needed structure to a grandiose open world.
This is, in one sense, a heist film, which by itself endeared it to me, but aside from that it is a story about a criminal whose craft has cost him the most important thing in his life. Nolan appears to be fascinated by the bending of reality and perception - Insomnia was largely about trying to shape the way people see and remember not just ourselves but the people and events we have been party to. Memento was about seeing the world in a way that's truncated and backwards, but still with purpose. And it's clear from watching The Prestige that he is interested in tricks and deception and the extent to which people are willing to take those illusions to get what they want.
Much of that comes together here - there are constant warnings about the confusion of dreams versus reality, the real versus the fake. How the audience chooses to react to all of it will depend strongly on one's opinion about how important those distinctions are. And while there are sections of the film that sound laboured in discussing its themes, Nolan thankfully does not attempt to resolve any of the questions raised. Those questions are asked loudly and forcefully, but we are meant to ponder the answers.
You could dissect the ideas for years, making this a rewarding watch. The cast, composed entirely of the deeply talented and mostly of the A-list, is very well suited to the material. DiCaprio is the anchor, and we care for him and the fate of his wife (Marion Cotillard). The team Cobb assembles is a great mixture of smooth operators. Each is so well matched to their role that it's surprising the production trivia reveals there were ever any other choices.
Inception is a big, brilliant package of ideas. Its plot somewhat outstrips its characters, but not nearly enough to detract from the enjoyment of watching it, and them. Opinions may vary, but to me, Nolan has solidified himself as one of the smartest, most original directors working today. And like all good storytellers, he respects his audience enough to trust them with the depth and complexity of his words, his pictures - his dreams.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
You Might Have Missed...
This day, on which I have started work for the second day in a row at 4am, I have had some time to think - and though lately, no time to go out and see new movies, I have had time to revisit some old ones - not necessarily all-time favourites, but maybe ones you haven't seen.
1. The Rundown
Yes, the one with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. And Stifler. Honestly, if you dismissed this movie because of who was in it, give it a shot. It's fun as hell, and features in one scene a guy getting a record player tossed at his back. Also, Rosario Dawson looking phenomenal, and Christopher Walken attempting to explain the tooth fairy to Brazilians. Recommended.
2. War of the Worlds
Another one I suspect some folks may have skipped over thanks to Tom 'I'm going to mention placenta during an interview' Cruise. I've never had an issue with him, beyond that his range is limited. But here, he's used in utterly unsympathetic light to begin with, barely functioning as the patriarch guiding his kids through the alien attack on earth. The tripods, visualized long ago in illustrations for the H.G. Wells original, are brought to graceful and terrifying life here by ILM. I'd say this is worth checking out just to see the mise en scene. Also Tim Robbins digs a tunnel, which, hopefully someone will remember, is not the only thing he can do.
3. Wet Hot American Summer
Get stoned and watch this. And cry laughing. I saw this when I was much younger (for those of us in our mid-twenties, much-younger is anything below 18 I guess) and didn't get it. But then, I didn't get Rushmore the first time I saw it either. Summer is amazingly absurd, just the right amount of random, and light enough to watch during the summer (it's been raining, so there's something you can do).
4. Brick
This is an all-time favourite. Everyone I know, well, they've heard me talk about Brick, but I never get tired of it. It's the detective novel goes to high school story of drugs and a murder, revealed in dialogue that couldn't possibly have been common in the 30s, let alone now. It's awesome, despite this. I have an admitted dude crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is good enough to play this material straight as an arrow, despite a couple scenes where the writing clearly winks at some of the inherent absurdity. The film's world sticks to its conventions, and to that end, you get a backdrop of broken rules, sidestepped law, and femme fatales. This, combined with TV's Veronica Mars, is my noir template for the new millenium.
5. Spirited Away
Honestly, the more I think about it, I think I either wasn't paying attention when I first saw this, or fell asleep, because upon re-watching it, I had the kind of experience you only get when you have not seen what you're seeing, ever before. I would never claim to be an expert on Japanese animation, so this film really blew my brain up. It is vibrant and imaginative and bold in a way (and with a tone) that doesn't exist on this continent. Mesmerizing.
6. The Insider
This, too, is one that has never left me since the first time I watched it. A little research reveals that the story as told in this film is skewed against CBS more than a little, and knowing that doesn't affect my enjoyment at all. This is the story of a corporate whistle-blower, the first to openly and with inside-knowledge, out the addictive quality of cigarettes. A producer for 60 Minutes draws the story out of him against great resistance and inevitably high stakes, then has to deal with corporate maneuvaring to make sure it even gets aired. Al Pacino and Russell Crowe play very well together, lending dimension and completely understandable motivation to their characters. Michael Mann directs, pulling everything together in a phenomenally sober, nimble and elegant package. It's his best movie, and I do love Heat, as well.
That's it for now, god willing I'll be reviewing something new soon.
1. The Rundown
Yes, the one with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. And Stifler. Honestly, if you dismissed this movie because of who was in it, give it a shot. It's fun as hell, and features in one scene a guy getting a record player tossed at his back. Also, Rosario Dawson looking phenomenal, and Christopher Walken attempting to explain the tooth fairy to Brazilians. Recommended.
2. War of the Worlds
Another one I suspect some folks may have skipped over thanks to Tom 'I'm going to mention placenta during an interview' Cruise. I've never had an issue with him, beyond that his range is limited. But here, he's used in utterly unsympathetic light to begin with, barely functioning as the patriarch guiding his kids through the alien attack on earth. The tripods, visualized long ago in illustrations for the H.G. Wells original, are brought to graceful and terrifying life here by ILM. I'd say this is worth checking out just to see the mise en scene. Also Tim Robbins digs a tunnel, which, hopefully someone will remember, is not the only thing he can do.
3. Wet Hot American Summer
Get stoned and watch this. And cry laughing. I saw this when I was much younger (for those of us in our mid-twenties, much-younger is anything below 18 I guess) and didn't get it. But then, I didn't get Rushmore the first time I saw it either. Summer is amazingly absurd, just the right amount of random, and light enough to watch during the summer (it's been raining, so there's something you can do).
4. Brick
This is an all-time favourite. Everyone I know, well, they've heard me talk about Brick, but I never get tired of it. It's the detective novel goes to high school story of drugs and a murder, revealed in dialogue that couldn't possibly have been common in the 30s, let alone now. It's awesome, despite this. I have an admitted dude crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is good enough to play this material straight as an arrow, despite a couple scenes where the writing clearly winks at some of the inherent absurdity. The film's world sticks to its conventions, and to that end, you get a backdrop of broken rules, sidestepped law, and femme fatales. This, combined with TV's Veronica Mars, is my noir template for the new millenium.
5. Spirited Away
Honestly, the more I think about it, I think I either wasn't paying attention when I first saw this, or fell asleep, because upon re-watching it, I had the kind of experience you only get when you have not seen what you're seeing, ever before. I would never claim to be an expert on Japanese animation, so this film really blew my brain up. It is vibrant and imaginative and bold in a way (and with a tone) that doesn't exist on this continent. Mesmerizing.
6. The Insider
This, too, is one that has never left me since the first time I watched it. A little research reveals that the story as told in this film is skewed against CBS more than a little, and knowing that doesn't affect my enjoyment at all. This is the story of a corporate whistle-blower, the first to openly and with inside-knowledge, out the addictive quality of cigarettes. A producer for 60 Minutes draws the story out of him against great resistance and inevitably high stakes, then has to deal with corporate maneuvaring to make sure it even gets aired. Al Pacino and Russell Crowe play very well together, lending dimension and completely understandable motivation to their characters. Michael Mann directs, pulling everything together in a phenomenally sober, nimble and elegant package. It's his best movie, and I do love Heat, as well.
That's it for now, god willing I'll be reviewing something new soon.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Kick-Ass! (Don't bring the kids)
Oh my god, don't bring ANY kids, ever.
Sorry to jump right in there, but don't do it. I remember the tone and imagery of the trailer for this film being very poppy and fun - and in a way, it is. But this is fun for adults, comic origins and all. Think Sin City. But, if you can picture it - violent-er.
My overall impression of Kick-Ass is that I liked it - it was well-crafted, tightly executed storytelling that delivered, far more viscerally than expected, on all the notes one hopes for when seeing a superhero film. It isn't trying for the kind of verisimilitude found in M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, but instead, as the narration suggests, occupies the territory of 'what if'? What if some normal people decided to be super heroes? The answer seems to be a zero-sum game for morality.
Roger Ebert, whose opinions of film I find at least fascinating, and with whom I normally find common ground, has written off Kick-Ass as morally bankrupt - an exercise in peverse brutality whose messages, satirical or otherwise, cannot redeem it. Harry Knowles at AICN defended the film, citing mostly generational differences as the reason why Ebert can't look past the admittedly thick layer of explicit mayhem to identify the point. Ebert acknowledged that indeed, the film is satire - but of what?
I would argue that Kick-Ass is a satire of our obsession with tragedy and wrong-doing, but with seeing it and not necessarily trying to change it. The film seems to suggest that is because of the cost. The only people here who actively do good get done in - or nearly done in, 11-year-olds notwithstanding. And they kill the bad guys, rather than tying them up, Spidey-style for the cops. And when I say kill, I mean it. Dudes get murdered. As comic-violence goes, this is not. It's pretty much just violence-violence, beginning with the main character getting knifed in the stomach and escalating from there. That 11-year-old I mentioned kills about as viciously as the bride did in Kill Bill. She was trained to do so by her own father. Ebert isn't wrong - that is nearly impossible to swallow.
So again, what is the point? I have to believe that the writers of the comic itself and the makers of this film don't just think it's cool to stage and execute a story in which an 11-year-old (Mindy!) ruthlessly and brutally murders criminals with her old man. Maybe the point is that in this world - and let me be clear that I am referring to the world of Kick-Ass and not reality - this is what it has come to. The cops are inept or corrupt or simply AWOL. The normal citizenry is apathetic, or worse, utterly fascinated by the broken quality of their world, but only so far as it fuels their You-Tube enabled voyeurism. All that is left is for kids and their parents to suit up and break heads (and necks, and wow, so much other stuff).
So that seemed the necessary ethical/moral comment on a deeply satirized piece of storytelling. And if you can get on side with that, or not, it's fine. I think there is adequate room to maneuver on both sides of this argument.
The film itself, as I said, is terrifically well put together. The casting is dead on across the board. I could single someone out, but I think I'd have to single everyone out because each note was struck with just the right performance. Each character here is well-motivated and well-written, and there's a wealth of depth in the themes and ideas (clearly) to get people talking. Music, editing and cinematography also contribute to this being a very tight, exciting package.
I guess the paradign shift here is this - People read comics and watch films about heroes to have their sense of heroism and riteousness provoked and energized. They love conflict, too, and a good bad guy is deeply compelling. So Kick-Ass gives us a world between comics and reality - where real people try to be heroes and have to lose some heroism in the process - they really become bad good-guys. It's the cost, I guess.
Notes on extra, random thoughts:
- Chloe Moretz has a Clint Eastwood sneer. She's going places, based on just this and 500 Days of Summer.
- The way Nicholas Cage spoke while in costume rested on a perfect line between funny and irritating.
- The sequences in the youtube video with the strobe light, and the sequence that begins by passing into the warehouse surveillance footage were tremendous.
- Mark Strong plays every role I've seen him in with amazing conviction and so I'd like to see him play a good guy soon - even as this dangerous, murdering mob man, he clearly loved his kid, and that kind of subtlety has potential beyond playing baddies.
Sorry to jump right in there, but don't do it. I remember the tone and imagery of the trailer for this film being very poppy and fun - and in a way, it is. But this is fun for adults, comic origins and all. Think Sin City. But, if you can picture it - violent-er.
My overall impression of Kick-Ass is that I liked it - it was well-crafted, tightly executed storytelling that delivered, far more viscerally than expected, on all the notes one hopes for when seeing a superhero film. It isn't trying for the kind of verisimilitude found in M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, but instead, as the narration suggests, occupies the territory of 'what if'? What if some normal people decided to be super heroes? The answer seems to be a zero-sum game for morality.
Roger Ebert, whose opinions of film I find at least fascinating, and with whom I normally find common ground, has written off Kick-Ass as morally bankrupt - an exercise in peverse brutality whose messages, satirical or otherwise, cannot redeem it. Harry Knowles at AICN defended the film, citing mostly generational differences as the reason why Ebert can't look past the admittedly thick layer of explicit mayhem to identify the point. Ebert acknowledged that indeed, the film is satire - but of what?
I would argue that Kick-Ass is a satire of our obsession with tragedy and wrong-doing, but with seeing it and not necessarily trying to change it. The film seems to suggest that is because of the cost. The only people here who actively do good get done in - or nearly done in, 11-year-olds notwithstanding. And they kill the bad guys, rather than tying them up, Spidey-style for the cops. And when I say kill, I mean it. Dudes get murdered. As comic-violence goes, this is not. It's pretty much just violence-violence, beginning with the main character getting knifed in the stomach and escalating from there. That 11-year-old I mentioned kills about as viciously as the bride did in Kill Bill. She was trained to do so by her own father. Ebert isn't wrong - that is nearly impossible to swallow.
So again, what is the point? I have to believe that the writers of the comic itself and the makers of this film don't just think it's cool to stage and execute a story in which an 11-year-old (Mindy!) ruthlessly and brutally murders criminals with her old man. Maybe the point is that in this world - and let me be clear that I am referring to the world of Kick-Ass and not reality - this is what it has come to. The cops are inept or corrupt or simply AWOL. The normal citizenry is apathetic, or worse, utterly fascinated by the broken quality of their world, but only so far as it fuels their You-Tube enabled voyeurism. All that is left is for kids and their parents to suit up and break heads (and necks, and wow, so much other stuff).
So that seemed the necessary ethical/moral comment on a deeply satirized piece of storytelling. And if you can get on side with that, or not, it's fine. I think there is adequate room to maneuver on both sides of this argument.
The film itself, as I said, is terrifically well put together. The casting is dead on across the board. I could single someone out, but I think I'd have to single everyone out because each note was struck with just the right performance. Each character here is well-motivated and well-written, and there's a wealth of depth in the themes and ideas (clearly) to get people talking. Music, editing and cinematography also contribute to this being a very tight, exciting package.
I guess the paradign shift here is this - People read comics and watch films about heroes to have their sense of heroism and riteousness provoked and energized. They love conflict, too, and a good bad guy is deeply compelling. So Kick-Ass gives us a world between comics and reality - where real people try to be heroes and have to lose some heroism in the process - they really become bad good-guys. It's the cost, I guess.
Notes on extra, random thoughts:
- Chloe Moretz has a Clint Eastwood sneer. She's going places, based on just this and 500 Days of Summer.
- The way Nicholas Cage spoke while in costume rested on a perfect line between funny and irritating.
- The sequences in the youtube video with the strobe light, and the sequence that begins by passing into the warehouse surveillance footage were tremendous.
- Mark Strong plays every role I've seen him in with amazing conviction and so I'd like to see him play a good guy soon - even as this dangerous, murdering mob man, he clearly loved his kid, and that kind of subtlety has potential beyond playing baddies.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
One Day I Will Post Something Timely
Or, as an alternative title, I considered, "Review: She's Out of My League". Because, well, that's what I'm doing. Late.
A good analogy lept to mind today - relationships rot from the inside. If they're going to rot, that is. And if they do, that seed of disharmony begins in there somewhere and spreads until neither person (nor both) can contain the decay, and it falls apart. There is truth to that. It happens all the time. It can happen when people have good, supportive friends and family, people who try to help hold things up with you. I've seen even these ideal situations fail because inside the skin of that pairing, there was something wrong.
She's Out of My League isn't about this phenomenon, but instead about the opposite - the failures that can befall two essentially compatible people and their relationship because the people and circumstances surrounding them seem set against them at every turn. It's a compelling way to approach the telling of a love story, and it makes you wish that the rest of the world would just leave them alone, no matter how unrealistic that is.
Canadian Jay Baruchel is Kirk, an airport security worker (officer?) who does a kind deed for Molly. Molly (Alice Eve) is a stunning well-to-do event planner, and thanks to being mistreated by her last boyfriend, she's drawn to the safe, nice guy quality of Kirk. To his amazement, they begin dating, and that's where the trouble starts. The fact that they are in any way associated becomes the guffaw of their friends and family. Slowly, the firm belief seeps inside the walls and the only two people whose feelings should matter begin to listen to the feelings of everyone else.
Overall, this is a fun movie to watch, and it had a lot more meat on its bones than I expected. I've discussed all that now, so the only other thing you need to know is that it's worth seeing - it's funny, and surprisingly genuine. A competent, amusing supporting cast surrounds the leads nicely. Recommended for people who want a little more brain to their rom com.
A good analogy lept to mind today - relationships rot from the inside. If they're going to rot, that is. And if they do, that seed of disharmony begins in there somewhere and spreads until neither person (nor both) can contain the decay, and it falls apart. There is truth to that. It happens all the time. It can happen when people have good, supportive friends and family, people who try to help hold things up with you. I've seen even these ideal situations fail because inside the skin of that pairing, there was something wrong.
She's Out of My League isn't about this phenomenon, but instead about the opposite - the failures that can befall two essentially compatible people and their relationship because the people and circumstances surrounding them seem set against them at every turn. It's a compelling way to approach the telling of a love story, and it makes you wish that the rest of the world would just leave them alone, no matter how unrealistic that is.
Canadian Jay Baruchel is Kirk, an airport security worker (officer?) who does a kind deed for Molly. Molly (Alice Eve) is a stunning well-to-do event planner, and thanks to being mistreated by her last boyfriend, she's drawn to the safe, nice guy quality of Kirk. To his amazement, they begin dating, and that's where the trouble starts. The fact that they are in any way associated becomes the guffaw of their friends and family. Slowly, the firm belief seeps inside the walls and the only two people whose feelings should matter begin to listen to the feelings of everyone else.
Overall, this is a fun movie to watch, and it had a lot more meat on its bones than I expected. I've discussed all that now, so the only other thing you need to know is that it's worth seeing - it's funny, and surprisingly genuine. A competent, amusing supporting cast surrounds the leads nicely. Recommended for people who want a little more brain to their rom com.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Beautiful
well I met you at the blood bank
we were looking at the bags
wondering if any of the colours
matched any of the names
we knew on the tags
you said see look at that - that's yours
stacked on top with your brother's
see how they resemble one another
even in their plastic little covers
and I said I know it well
that secret that you know
that you don't know how to tell
it fucks with your honour
and it teases your head
but you know that it's good girl
'cause it's running you with red
then the snow started falling
we were stuck out in your car
you were rubbing both my hands
chewing on a candy bar
you said ain't this just like the present
to be showing up like this
as the moon waned to crescent
we started to kiss
and I said I know you well
that secret that we know
that we don't know how to tell
I'm in love with your honour
I'm in love with your cheeks
what's that noise up the stairs, love
is that christmas morning that creaks
and I said I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
-Bon Iver
we were looking at the bags
wondering if any of the colours
matched any of the names
we knew on the tags
you said see look at that - that's yours
stacked on top with your brother's
see how they resemble one another
even in their plastic little covers
and I said I know it well
that secret that you know
that you don't know how to tell
it fucks with your honour
and it teases your head
but you know that it's good girl
'cause it's running you with red
then the snow started falling
we were stuck out in your car
you were rubbing both my hands
chewing on a candy bar
you said ain't this just like the present
to be showing up like this
as the moon waned to crescent
we started to kiss
and I said I know you well
that secret that we know
that we don't know how to tell
I'm in love with your honour
I'm in love with your cheeks
what's that noise up the stairs, love
is that christmas morning that creaks
and I said I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
and I know it well
-Bon Iver
Friday, January 15, 2010
Oh, Joss. How you play with our hearts.
This post will be rife with Joss Whedon fan discussion (or commentary, since I think you need some kind of two-way conversation to qualify as discussion) and also spoilers regarding all episodes of Dollhouse (of which only one remains to air next week) and also of Firefly. I'll try not to really talk about Buffy or Angel very specifically because I'd like to keep this whole thing under a million words.
But seriously, if you aren't all Whedon-current, bail out now.
Imagine a world where all the Joss Whedon shows are merely teased and never realized. All of them. As in, imagine for a moment that Buffy ended, say, when Angel went to hell. Or that Angel ended when the Irish half-demon guy died. Doyle! I liked Doyle, man, why did he have to die? Because he's in Joss' world, and that is a damned unsafe place. It's not like other showrunners have never killed off a character or two, but seriously. Oh, Wash.
Dollhouse, the Whedon show whose destiny seemed doomed from the first episode, joins Firefly as something very unique, very niche, and very short lived. I want to be clear that Firefly stands in my mind as the pinnacle of missed opportunities, as in, given the choice I'd save it and not the ever weirder Dollhouse. Alas, neither was to be for more than the exact amount of time necessary to get people invested. Oh, the episodes that never were.
Both of these Whedon shows really make me sad because I have watched the OTHER two to their conclusion. And, damn it. Because remember what happens to Giles as Buffy went on? Willow? SPIKE? Remember the growth? And on Angel, the line was a little squiggly, but it got us all to Fred's arc. To Wesley's. These are the moments we'll miss. Who knows where Dollhouse would have gone eventually. I assume still the apocalypse, but I also assume it would have taken longer to get there.
For an interim amusement, please go here and laugh hysterically at other commentary regarding a certain broadcaster and their handling of other beloved 'properties'. Honestly, it's like watching a belligerent drunk try and wrestle a pig.
Moving along, Whedon and Co have managed to retain their crown not only in producing shows that resist wide interest while simultaneously being awesome at best and merely unique at worst, BUT also - writing just the best villains!
I can't think of a villain that was ever made central in a Joss Whedon show that was not totally engaging. I'm sure there have been ones that weren't quite as terrific, but each one I can some up with is memorable (obviously) and delicious to watch. Most recently, Boyd, who is crazy and driven by a choice that is less crazy by far. Alpha - the flip side of Echo's coin who Alan Tudyk made both scary and funny. Angel, Spike, Drusilla, The Mayor. Oh, The Mayor! He was just so nuts and yet so much the doting Dad. Plus I think there was a witch in there somewhere and some flaying which left an impression.
Whedon's stuff doesn't always land on two feet, or four feet, but man do they make cool leaps. Here's a not-insane idea, Joss: try and make your next idea something that can be put together more cheaply. You can do plenty with little money. And get Enver Gjokaj. That dude is the SHARK FROM JAWS.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Up In the Air
This is a late post, both because I haven't posted since August and because this film came out on Christmas Day. But what do I care, I just want to write a review. Maybe one day I'll write one on time, but dreams are so fleeting.
Up In the Air is a film for the times. The way I felt Fight Club was a film for the turn of the millennium, this is a film for now. Countless news stories fly around like loose sheets of paper in a cold draft - they all have figures about unemployment rates, percentages of cuts to budgets and payrolls, about the struggle of the everyman and woman just to make end's meet - but they are abstractions of the situation. Up In the Air tells the story on the ground. It's a tough story to watch.
While others are grounded by the obligations of their lives, Ryan lives everywhere, owing no loyalty to anyone save his frequent flyer program. He likes it that way, and even if we do not share the desire to live like him, we can believe as we look on that he is happy. Mostly.
George Clooney plays Ryan, who is hired to fire those people whose superiors don't have the guts to do so themselves, and he doesn't take the job lightly. He may enjoy the lifestyle of detachment this job affords him, but he doesn't enjoy dismissing people from their work - instead he focuses on genuinely pushing these people towards the opportunities now open to them in the light of unemployment. An easier sell coming from a man who believes in the unencumbered life. During seminars held in tiny hotel conference rooms all over America, Ryan asks that his audience imagine the components of their lives - things AND people - stuffed into a backpack that they must tote around; the straps, he points out, weigh heavily.
Clooney plays a potentially unlikable character very sympathetically, and he is supported and complimented by Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. Farmiga's Alex does a lot to draw Ryan back to ground level, and Kendrick arrives as Natalie - the new blood at work who pitches firings over webcam to save airfare. Ryan protests so Natalie has to go on the road with him to see what the job is really like.
Not surprisingly, it's bleak. Especially now. It's a testament to the performances in this film that you can feel the contrast between the desperation of the world versus the connections, even momentary or midguided ones, as bright candles grouped in a large, cold room. Hope is in short supply, and though we know this having lived through the world ourselves lately, this film really puts you in front of the locomotive. Still when characters are looking at one another in the eye, they are sharing something real, very nearly holding each other for warmth, and we can feel it.
Ryan, to me, becomes more admirable as the film develops - he demonstrates the desire to be there for others even though he is doing his best to fly safely above all human drama. A credit to the screenplay is that the reasons for Ryan being this way are only (maybe) hinted at - we are left to assume he was either hurt or just was always this way - either explanation would be fine. Ryan is no less caring for his past, whatever it is, and he takes risks that we want him to take and we go with him in feeling vulnerable.
This is Jason Reitman's third film, and he has solidified himself as one of the best directors working today (before this he helmed Thank You for Smoking and Juno). This is stark, engaging filmmaking that will demand repeat viewings in the future, perhaps after this climate shifts. For now, it is too real - a credit to everyone involved.
Friday, August 28, 2009
True patriot love, in all thy sons command
Here is a case a bit long in the can now - this is a story broken some time ago, but it's been carrying on for a while thanks to a court case related to some threats uttered by a parent towards the principal at the heart of this storm. Catch up here and here.
Canada's national identity, and specifically the way in which we are inclusive of the traditions, practices and habits of our incredibly multicultural population, is of great interest to me. A quick perusal of the comments left by readers of these stories reveals a very bipolar set of attitudes in this country; be a Canadian or get out, or else be whatever you are and Canada will accomodate. Those arguments form the hard extremes but it's the softer, stickier middle in which we find reality, made up of all the players trying like hell to make sense of who we are in a rapidly changing world.
Canada, unlike the United States, is a country which I understand to have a rich tradition of immigration that we acknowledge. While our neighbours to the south leave out the 'u' from 'neighbour' and leave out identity other than 'American', we are more inclusive of heritage that isn't realy ours. Mine is Scottish for example - it's the answer people want when they ask you where you're from, you see. I'm not from there, but my mother is and Canada isn't really a place you can be from just yet - right?
It's cheeky, indeed. But everyone in my generation - by which I mean first generation - is complicit in this lack of identity, and it's going to change one way or another. Canada is a young country, and part of growing up is figuring out who you are - a process not lacking for drama and strife.
And so we are party to these conflicts, Mr. Millet's a prime example. What's a guy to do in a country such as this, but try to accomodate everyone? It's an approach that's found enemies in the more traditional, who value practices like the singing of the anthem as symbols. As some of our symbols have already fallen by the wayside - the Lord's Prayer was a change lamented, too - then those who find them to be crucial to our identity will fight to keep them. And it's their right to. It was also Millet's right to make a decision he felt was in the best interest of his community. It was the right of parents to level complaints at the decision, and so on, in a fashion that overall represents a healthy, mature dialogue.
No one had a right to stand up in parliament, either in ignorance or definance of fact, state that Millet had banned outright the anthem from his school. No one had a right to email and telephone Millet to issue death threats. And Bradley Howland did not have the right to walk into Millet's office and threaten to beat him senseless in the school parking lot. But all these things have happened now, and this is the price we pay for being confused as a ntion about who we are. I should say it's the price Millet has paid - his days of being a principal are, at least for the moment, done.
For the record, though I personally take issue with anyone who wants to live in this country and yet doesn't want to make themseles a part of the Canadian community, I don't feel Millet acted in a way that was not patriotic. The opposite is true, I think, because one thing that has made up the reality of this nation has been it's multiplicty of voices, and Millet was doing his best to address them all. Still, mother was right - you can't please everyone.
In some cases, the people who arrive to live here in Canada have come from wildly difficult circumstances. The rest of the world not being like Canada, I'm sure it's an attractive option to come to a place where you can be Canadian in title and remain anything else in practice. But this is a way of living in Canada that should be carefully thought on. That way of thinking will never foster the maturity of a nation - and we have difficult times ahead as we struggle with the question of where to draw the line in our 'tossed salad' population. I would never advocate the States' melting pot scenario, but their approach is not lacking for spirit, even if it is lacking perspective.
My personal opinion is that some traditions should be held up as the symbols they are - the national anthem perhaps being one of the most important. It's a song and verse that exists to be sung in unity, has lines about unity, about inclusion. In this context, it is being sung or at least heard by children, who, whether their parents are from Canada or not, are attending school in Canada, the nation furnishing their education - a right guaranteed in this nation to all children.
So no matter where you're from, even if you're not a Christian and you're not totally sure about that 'God keep our land' line, sing the damn anthem, because glorious and free is what this nation is, and you don't need to have a crucifix on your wall to wish it kept that way.
Some people living in this country have to be told 'no' once in a while. It's not a vindictive 'no', and it's not a divisive or restricting 'no'. But, no, you cannot send your kinds to public school and insist they don't sing our national anthem because your religion prohibits it. No, you cannot tell me it isn't a Christmas tree, etc. This is one of the most tolerant, accepting nations in the world, but Canada, never being able to say no, will become nothing if we can never insist that we are something. We are a nation. And if you live here, be a Canadian. We welcome you. And you in turn might welcome others by having diversity in heritage as your common ground.
I hope everyone does contemplate this from time to time. It's tough to live next to the cultural dominance of the United States, to be a Commonwealth member of the Queen's maternal United Kingdom, and to have such a multitude of voices within our own borders - and still know what we want to see when we look in the mirror.
Canada's national identity, and specifically the way in which we are inclusive of the traditions, practices and habits of our incredibly multicultural population, is of great interest to me. A quick perusal of the comments left by readers of these stories reveals a very bipolar set of attitudes in this country; be a Canadian or get out, or else be whatever you are and Canada will accomodate. Those arguments form the hard extremes but it's the softer, stickier middle in which we find reality, made up of all the players trying like hell to make sense of who we are in a rapidly changing world.
Canada, unlike the United States, is a country which I understand to have a rich tradition of immigration that we acknowledge. While our neighbours to the south leave out the 'u' from 'neighbour' and leave out identity other than 'American', we are more inclusive of heritage that isn't realy ours. Mine is Scottish for example - it's the answer people want when they ask you where you're from, you see. I'm not from there, but my mother is and Canada isn't really a place you can be from just yet - right?
It's cheeky, indeed. But everyone in my generation - by which I mean first generation - is complicit in this lack of identity, and it's going to change one way or another. Canada is a young country, and part of growing up is figuring out who you are - a process not lacking for drama and strife.
And so we are party to these conflicts, Mr. Millet's a prime example. What's a guy to do in a country such as this, but try to accomodate everyone? It's an approach that's found enemies in the more traditional, who value practices like the singing of the anthem as symbols. As some of our symbols have already fallen by the wayside - the Lord's Prayer was a change lamented, too - then those who find them to be crucial to our identity will fight to keep them. And it's their right to. It was also Millet's right to make a decision he felt was in the best interest of his community. It was the right of parents to level complaints at the decision, and so on, in a fashion that overall represents a healthy, mature dialogue.
No one had a right to stand up in parliament, either in ignorance or definance of fact, state that Millet had banned outright the anthem from his school. No one had a right to email and telephone Millet to issue death threats. And Bradley Howland did not have the right to walk into Millet's office and threaten to beat him senseless in the school parking lot. But all these things have happened now, and this is the price we pay for being confused as a ntion about who we are. I should say it's the price Millet has paid - his days of being a principal are, at least for the moment, done.
For the record, though I personally take issue with anyone who wants to live in this country and yet doesn't want to make themseles a part of the Canadian community, I don't feel Millet acted in a way that was not patriotic. The opposite is true, I think, because one thing that has made up the reality of this nation has been it's multiplicty of voices, and Millet was doing his best to address them all. Still, mother was right - you can't please everyone.
In some cases, the people who arrive to live here in Canada have come from wildly difficult circumstances. The rest of the world not being like Canada, I'm sure it's an attractive option to come to a place where you can be Canadian in title and remain anything else in practice. But this is a way of living in Canada that should be carefully thought on. That way of thinking will never foster the maturity of a nation - and we have difficult times ahead as we struggle with the question of where to draw the line in our 'tossed salad' population. I would never advocate the States' melting pot scenario, but their approach is not lacking for spirit, even if it is lacking perspective.
My personal opinion is that some traditions should be held up as the symbols they are - the national anthem perhaps being one of the most important. It's a song and verse that exists to be sung in unity, has lines about unity, about inclusion. In this context, it is being sung or at least heard by children, who, whether their parents are from Canada or not, are attending school in Canada, the nation furnishing their education - a right guaranteed in this nation to all children.
So no matter where you're from, even if you're not a Christian and you're not totally sure about that 'God keep our land' line, sing the damn anthem, because glorious and free is what this nation is, and you don't need to have a crucifix on your wall to wish it kept that way.
Some people living in this country have to be told 'no' once in a while. It's not a vindictive 'no', and it's not a divisive or restricting 'no'. But, no, you cannot send your kinds to public school and insist they don't sing our national anthem because your religion prohibits it. No, you cannot tell me it isn't a Christmas tree, etc. This is one of the most tolerant, accepting nations in the world, but Canada, never being able to say no, will become nothing if we can never insist that we are something. We are a nation. And if you live here, be a Canadian. We welcome you. And you in turn might welcome others by having diversity in heritage as your common ground.
I hope everyone does contemplate this from time to time. It's tough to live next to the cultural dominance of the United States, to be a Commonwealth member of the Queen's maternal United Kingdom, and to have such a multitude of voices within our own borders - and still know what we want to see when we look in the mirror.
Friday, August 14, 2009
District 9
Earlier this week I had the chance to check out G.I. Joe over at the AMC. I think Rebecca and I agreed in the end that it was fun (and funny). I got exactly what I wanted from that picture, which was mindless, geeky entertainment. Watching District 9 within days of of that other film, though ... has given me sci-fi whiplash.
District 9 is a complex, intelligent, visceral, disrtubing film. It is emotionally self-aware, historically self-aware, and does what all great sci-fi does - it tells a story connected essentially to our humannity and hinges that story on something that doesn't really exist. It's great what-if material, so in my mind it sits very nicely next to Sunshine and Eternal Sunshine as cinema that looks deeply at human beings by way of a far-fetched premise. Children of Men comes to mind also, but that film didn't move me to discomfort as much as this one did, and that's saying something.
Over at AICN, Harry Knowles has hyperbolized a bit by glazing over mention of two of the other films above to claim that District 9 is the first great sci-fi of this new millenium. I think that's hyperbole, at any rate. Any of the three above are great in my eyes, and they're all remarkably different. District 9 is without a doubt the ugliest exploration of the human heart, however.
It isn't that there are no virtues in the frame. But the characters (the human ones, anyway) of this picture are mostly vile. And mostly self-interested. Ignorant. Power-hungry. Just plain stupid. And stupidity, even, in this film is depicted as shockingly dangerous and evil. The plot here unfolded to leave me embarrassed to be a human. The aliens, who live throughout a slum outside Johanesburg in their own filth to be ruled by gang law and who eat cat food for lack of a better option, come out looking far better. It's a comparison that just doesn't sit right.
I don't want to break down plot because I found myself in the rare position of watching this film without trailers and press coverage having ruined the overall story. It's how you should watch it to.
Mention should be made of first-time feature director Neill Blomkamp and his deft control of every aspect of this film. It turns on a dime so many times that I had no idea where we would head next. The effects were flawlessly integrated, and the action was tightly accomplished without ever being confusing. Impressive for doc-style shooting.
Also, first-time actor Sharlto Copley provides the most unlikely and well-performed protagonist that I can currently think of. Never have I so HATED a character before and yet been completely willing to follow him along as the film moves forward.
Some people will probably dislike District 9, but that's alright. It really isn't for everyone. It's great, but it's sci-fi, and it's brilliant but it's unpleasant (to put it lightly) much more than seldom. If you can stomach it, though, prepare your brain and glue your eyes to the screen. It's no G.I. Joe.
District 9 is a complex, intelligent, visceral, disrtubing film. It is emotionally self-aware, historically self-aware, and does what all great sci-fi does - it tells a story connected essentially to our humannity and hinges that story on something that doesn't really exist. It's great what-if material, so in my mind it sits very nicely next to Sunshine and Eternal Sunshine as cinema that looks deeply at human beings by way of a far-fetched premise. Children of Men comes to mind also, but that film didn't move me to discomfort as much as this one did, and that's saying something.
Over at AICN, Harry Knowles has hyperbolized a bit by glazing over mention of two of the other films above to claim that District 9 is the first great sci-fi of this new millenium. I think that's hyperbole, at any rate. Any of the three above are great in my eyes, and they're all remarkably different. District 9 is without a doubt the ugliest exploration of the human heart, however.
It isn't that there are no virtues in the frame. But the characters (the human ones, anyway) of this picture are mostly vile. And mostly self-interested. Ignorant. Power-hungry. Just plain stupid. And stupidity, even, in this film is depicted as shockingly dangerous and evil. The plot here unfolded to leave me embarrassed to be a human. The aliens, who live throughout a slum outside Johanesburg in their own filth to be ruled by gang law and who eat cat food for lack of a better option, come out looking far better. It's a comparison that just doesn't sit right.
I don't want to break down plot because I found myself in the rare position of watching this film without trailers and press coverage having ruined the overall story. It's how you should watch it to.
Mention should be made of first-time feature director Neill Blomkamp and his deft control of every aspect of this film. It turns on a dime so many times that I had no idea where we would head next. The effects were flawlessly integrated, and the action was tightly accomplished without ever being confusing. Impressive for doc-style shooting.
Also, first-time actor Sharlto Copley provides the most unlikely and well-performed protagonist that I can currently think of. Never have I so HATED a character before and yet been completely willing to follow him along as the film moves forward.
Some people will probably dislike District 9, but that's alright. It really isn't for everyone. It's great, but it's sci-fi, and it's brilliant but it's unpleasant (to put it lightly) much more than seldom. If you can stomach it, though, prepare your brain and glue your eyes to the screen. It's no G.I. Joe.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Nightmares are Upside-Down Fairy Tales
SPOILERS about DOLLHOUSE ahead:
It's been a while since I've written anything here, since not every episode of television I've watched has riveted me for a while. Until this week's Dollhouse that is. By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, get on out of here and go watch it (then come back, obviously). Fringe has been good, very good even, other Dollhouse eps have been good, Terminator's done, so is BSG, Lost has been, well, Lost.
Seriously, SPOILERS. Biggest spoiler of the season ... probably, I mean maybe the finale will top it, but we'll see. It's just one shot I'm talking about, but I'll get to that down a bit.
Seriously, I like what Whedon and company do with their metaphors, symbolism, plot parallels and so on. I like that they flip things completely on their ears and that in this show, blood seems to come out every time they do it. It's frightening, the world of Dollhouse. I thought about comparing the complete limbo of conventional morality in this show to that in Battlestar, but this is a far more decadent animal. The characters in BSG all got pushed to great heights of moral utilitarianism, doing the best they could in a situation that threatened the extinction of every human being alive. But not Dollhouse. Those stakes don't exist here, in fact ... I don't know what the stakes are having just re-read that.
In Dollhouse, so far the greatest risks have been of losing a favourite character, perhaps, or if you want to get really grand, the technology on showcase has considerable threat if you consider that it could (and has) been used against people's will. But they have complicated all the other stances. Apparenly, the dolls are volunteers, and they get paid (somehow) when their stint is done. But they have illustrated, without really getting very grand with the stakes at all this week, just how dangerous the Dollhouse is.
I was feeling apprehensive watching the top of this week's episode because I had read a synopsis stating that Alpha would reveal himself. Now, everyone who's seen a horror film knows, if you build suspense that hinges on an unseen threat, you'd better make that threat materialize in a scary, credible way. A lot or horror films and tv screw this up. I think Dollhouse just did the exact opposite. It's easy to lose your grip on what this show is - it's sometimes a detective story, drama, sci-fi, action, thriller, and so far, horror only as an afterthought or, yes, a threat. So when Alan Tudyk suddenly walked right at the camera and viciously cut into Victor's face - having spent the rest of the episode aping an agoraphobic envoronmental geek, the threat was about as credible as anything I've ever seen. And that was the shot I was talking about.
The turnaround in tone was so abrupt, it was as though you were watching a PG-rated cop drama, where people say darn and heck, and suddenly it becomes an R-rated psychological thriller in which a simple break in becomes an assault, a rape, even. I was scared shitless.
I've had some trouble with the show, partly because I don't think Dushku is up to the task (that would challenge the very best actors out there), partly because of the aformentioned multi-genre free for all that places in the show, like the dolls, in constant identity flux. But I want to know where this goes and I pray FOX lets us find out for more than one episode forward.
And finally, as though it wasn't clear enough: I always knew I liked Alan Tudyk. I knew that because I liked Wash in Firefly, and even that bit part in Knocked Up. But Christ. In what must have amounted to about 3 minutes of screen time at the end of the episode, he blew the goddamn shoes of every other character in this show. Later this week, I gather he'll be back, and we'll see if he can keep that fever pitch of absolute psychotic villany up on high. Personally, I expect he can.
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