League of Extraordinary Gentemen Volume II

A couple of years ago, a movie was released entitled League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, aka LXG. This movie was rather bad, with generic black trenchcoat, dark alley production design, zero character development, and a convoluted, and ultimately unsatisfying plot. However, the movie was based on a comic series by Alan Moore, one of the medium's greatest writers. League was not anywhere near his best work, but it was an extremely entertaining romp, that mined the pulp tradition in a way that recalls Indiana Jones or Warren Ellis' Planetary.

I liked the first volume of League, but it spent so much time setting up the premise and assembling the characters that it never quite made it to greatness. The second volume picks up pretty much where the first left off, and in the first issue, sets up the basic plot, that martians are invading England, and it's up to the League to stop them. However, rather than going for a huge, epic type confrontation with martians, Moore takes the focus off plot and puts it firmly on character. The three characters who get the most development are Mina, Quatermain and Mr. Hyde.

A lot of the stuff with Mina in this volume relates to her encounter with Dracula back in the book Dracula. In grabbing a pre-existing character, Moore is able to take full advantage of her backstory, through the reader's knowledge of it. I don't think there is ever specific reference to her encounters with a vampire, or that she was in Dracula, but by the context, it becomes pretty obvious. Mina and Quatermain had a really interesting relationship here. The scene where they're having sex and she asks him to bite her was so twisted, and the payoff with the reveal of her neck was genius. I love the fact that Moore is able to create a clearly flawed character and still have her be a hero. She's got a lot of issues, but that doesn't stop her from doing the right thing. The final panels are a really tough ending, and make you sympathize with Quatermain.

The other really interesting character here is Hyde. In the first volume, the focus was mainly on Jekyll, and his attempts to keep the monster in check. What happens here is much more interesting. Jekyll basically vanishes and we get much more character development on Hyde. He clearly is in love with Mina and that makes for a really interesting dynamic. It's almost a Spike/Buffy dynamic, where he's trying to do the right thing to please her, even she clearly has no attraction to him. But, this is played a bit more twisted than that. Before going off to fight the martians, he asks her for a kiss and to feel her breast, which I found hilarious. It was at once so tender a moment, and so clearly wrong what he's doing.

But, despite clear sympathy for the character, the violent streak is far from gone. Hyde's treatment of Griffin was brutal, incredibly wrong, yet perfect for the story. The irony of the very thing that Griffin did to the girls' school back in Volume I being done to him was great, and the reveal of Griffin's fate made for the most awkward dinner scene since Darth Vader and Han Solo ate at Cloud City. I love the moral ambiguity of what Hyde did. He thought he was acting in the right, and Moore at once sympathizes with it and clearly rejects it.

I love the fact that the volume was more character oriented. Very little was seen of the actual martians, they were only a device to explore the characters. It felt much more intimate than the first volume, and also more surreal. The Dr. Moreau stuff was extremely bizarre, and was perfectly illustrated. If I had one complaint, it would be that the first issue is basically indechipherable, and completely unrelated from what happens later on.

So, I'm hoping for a volume III soon. Considering the end of II, it would be very different from what's come before, but I have the feeling Moore knows what he's doing.

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Wong Kar-Wai

I watched the movie Fallen Angels yesterday, a film by Wong Kar-Wai, a brilliant director, who did the movies Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love. Fallen Angels contains a story that was originally going to be the third part of Chungking Express, but instead was cut out, and put into its own movie, along with another story. The movie concerns a hitman and his partner, who is in love with him, even though she never says so, as well as a mute guy, who "re-opens" stores after they close for the night. It feels a lot like Chungking Express, in that there isn't an overarching plot, it's more just a bunch of events that happen, contributing to a feeling, rather than a story.

In this way, the film functions in a similar way to how David Lynch works. The emphasis isn't on constructing any sort of linear narrative, it's on moving through the film in a way that feels right, using techniques to convey character emotions. Wong Kar-Wai doesn't play with the narrative structure, like Lynch does in his third period, but he operates with a similar disregard for the strict logic of plot. Within the multiple stories in this film, and the stories in Chungking Express, there are a ton of emotional connections and parallel story elements. The expired pineapple reference is the most obvious, as well as the presence of the Midnight Express food stand from Chungking at the close of this film. Another major connecting element is Charlie's frequent references to a woman named Blondie, which recall the woman in the blond wig from Chungking Express, as well as the woman in the blond wig the hitman in this film takes up with. Thus, the situation of Charlie's jealousy of her blondie is paralleled with that of the partner's jealousy of the hitman's blond woman. Much like Magnolia, there a ton of parallels in the different stories.

Wong Kar-Wai makes great characters, but he's most notably a visual filmmaker. While I don't thlink everything in Fallen Angels hangs together, the movie is so beautiful that it doesn't really matter. Practically every shot seems perfectly composed, both from an aesthetic point of view and as a means of telling the story. The use of grainy black and white is striking, as is the incorporation of video. The video sequences provide some of the best emotional moments in the film. The use of distorted, wide-angle lenses makes for some phenomenal shots, notably at the end when the partner is sitting in a noodle bar, framedon the right, extremely close to the camera, as a brawl goes on in the distance on the left side of the frame. It's an amazing composition, and tells us everything we need to know about her.

The motorcyle sequences in the film were also brilliantly done. The sense of speed is perfectly conveyed, and Hong Kong looks very Blade Runneresque, a city of the future almost. The way the lights blur as the bike moves, but the characters stay perfectly still was genius. I also love the shooting in the bar scene, when the characters have a kind of blur about them, as if we're seeing them through a haze.

Wong's most successful movies are the ones where he has the most to work with visually. Days of Being Wild is a good movie, but it isn't great, because the settings just aren't as interesting, and the potential for interesting shots is not as large. The semi-sequel to Days, In the Mood for Love, is a much stronger movie, becuase Wong creates much more striking visuals. Clearly, he had massive growth as a filmmaker between Days and Chungking, and continued to grow, culminating in In the Mood for Love, which is absolutely gorgeous.

His next movie, 2046, is part sci-fi, part 60s, so I'm really looking forward to it. The stills I've seen have been extremely striking, with really interesting costumes and settings. In his best movies, Wong makes the setting into an extension of the characters, and this film seems to have the most interesting setting of any of his stuff yet.

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Finding Meaning in Discussion: On Linklater and the Before Duology

Yesterday I was talking about Before Sunset, and I feel the need to talk about it again, because it's both an amazing movie and a movie that means a lot to me personally. In 1995, a movie called Before Sunrise was released. It was about Jesse and Celine, two strangers who meet on a train, and spend a night wandering about Europe, talking about philosophy, society and many big issues. Nine years later, they meet again, and Before Sunset chronicles the eighty minute discussion they have after meeting each other.

The reason I saw Before Sunrise was because it was directed by Richard Linklater, who made School of Rock, but more importantly, he also made Waking Life, which is another of my favorite movies. Waking Life actually features an appearance from Jesse and Celine and their dialogue in the movie, about her idea that she is an old woman looking back on her life, is lifted from Before Sunrise. Waking Life had a nominal main character, but it was really, much like Linklater's debut film Slacker, a collection of short thoughts from a large variety of people. We don't stay on anyone too long, and each of them gets just enough time to give us a little speech on what they're interested in.

While it's tough to say which is the better film, because Waking Life has so much I love in it, the Before movies do something that no other Linklater movies does, and that's spend a lot of time developing the characters. I don't think either of the Before movies have the sheer variety of interesting concepts presented in Waking Life, but when the characters talk about something, it's a lot more interesting, because you know who these people are, and the experiences that they bring to the discussion.

The two most influential pieces of fiction I've ingested in the past couple of years, probably even since Star Wars, have been The Invisibles and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What Before Sunset does is combine the intellectual questioning and exploration of ideas and thoughts of The Invisibles with the emotional drama of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In doing so, Before Sunset represents where I'd like to be, and in a lot of ways where I am now.

Waking Life, for all its passion, is ultimately a movie of the brain. You watch it and your mind is challenged, but emotionally, it doesn't really hit you. Before Sunset is emotionally overwhelming. One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Jesse is talking in the car, and we see Celine reach out to touch him, only to pull her hand back. We can see her longing, but she just can't quite make the connection.

The movie's primary emotional temperature is frustration. Both characters are frustrated with the fact that they want something more from life, they want to live out what their night in Vienna, in Sunrise, promised them, and no matter what they do, there'll always be the specter of that hanging over their heads, their younger, more romantic selves, the people they can never be again. Rewatching Sunrise after seeing Sunset, one exchange really stands out, and that's what Jesse says to get Celine off the train and into the city with him. He says "Alright, alright. Think of it like this. Um, uh, jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, you know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life, and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me, you know. So think of this as time travel, from then, to now, uh, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband, to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy"

So, in Sunset, it is the fact that they did go to Vienna that leaves them thinking. Jesse is married, and it's not going well, and a large part of that is probably due to the fact that he can not fully commit himself to his wife as long as the idea of Celine remains in his memory. The years of separation only build up this legend of her in his mind, and the night becomes legendary. It's like she was his true love, and to accept his marriage would be settling for something less than what he really wants.

The end of Sunset has a great emotional payoff, and I feel like the last half of the movie really appeals to my Buffy sense, the interest in seeing characters explore angst. Buffy's was always a bit more epic than the stuff that Jesse and Celine go through, but it's the same basic principles. These characters have issues that develop for a while under the surface and then finally break out and have to be explored. If I had to compare Before Sunset to one Buffy episode, it would be Entropy, where not too much happens, but the characters have fallings out and comings together just based on what has happened in previous episodes, and the revelation of things that they'd been feeling.

But, the thing that makes the Before movies unique from a more traditional romance movie is the high level of intellectual discussion that they engage in. Jesse and Celine, more notably in the first movie, engage in a lot of really interesting discussions on big issues. They talk about their place within the universe, within society and in relation to other people. I found the scenes in Sunset that focused on Jesse's feeling of inadaquecy because he's not out there changing the world very interesting. Jesse is the sort of person who clearly has all these grand notions, but finds it tough to put them into practice when he's stuck in the lifestyle neccesitated by his marriage. His interest in Buddhist concepts reminds me of discussions I've had with Jordan, and his feeling of wanting to do something huge and earth changing, but instead getting caught up in the frequently mundane nature of day to day life reminds me of myself sometimes. I love the contrast between Jesse of 1995, who holds all these romantic ideals, but keeps pushing them off, and the Jesse of 2004, who feels like time has past him by, and it's too late to change things. This contrast is made even more interesting at the end of Sunset, which is much more pure and romantic than the ending of Sunrise, despite the veneer of cynicism over the movie.

Richard Linklater is the most talky director of anyone working in film today, but his movies aren't talky in the same way that Kevin Smith's or Quentin Tarantino's are. His talk isn't about being cool, or dropping pop culture references it's truly about communication, the communication of ideas. Starting with Slacker, which is basically the camera following a bunch of people around, and listening to them tell someone what's important to them. In the very first scene of his filmmaking career, Linklater himself appears, talking about parallel universes, and the vast changes that little differences in someone's action could have on the universe. I've had the idea that a world exists for every single possible action we could take at any possible time, in which case there would be an infinite number of worlds, and it was really cool to hear a similar idea on screen with Linklater.

Waking Life makes explicit the thesis of all Linklater's work, which is that the most meaningful connection that people can make is in a discussion with someone else, when you reveal your ideas and inner self. The blond woman talks about it, how language can represent ideas and concepts that would have been impossible for primitive people to convey, and that it is in discussing indefinable concepts, like love, that we find meaning. In my own life, I've found this to be true. A lot of my best memories are just of talking, about the universe, anything, talking which wasn't about passing the time, but about really conveying some deeply held beliefs, and debating them with others.

That's one of the things that made The Invisibles so special to me. Not only did it create a bunch of new ideas in my head, but it also allowed me to discuss these new concepts with other people who had read the book. The Invisibles served as a base from which we could go off to discuss many other things.

When I first saw Waking Life, I loved it, but I saw it as a collection disparate scenes. On a second viewing, and after many great discussions, I realized that the film was about the act of communication through discussion, and thus, every single scene was in fact contributing to the central theme. Before Sunrise/Sunset takes this theme and plays it out on a more personal level. It's crucial to Linklater's world that Jesse and Celine's relationship is not based on the physical, that's not what made it special, it's the emotional connection that they cultivated through their discussion. They presented a deep part of themselves to each other, connecting in a way that just doesn't happen that much. Jesse says it in the coffee shop scene in Sunset, that you think you'll meet a lot of people you connect with it, but you only meet a couple, and that's why he regrets letting Celine go. Sunset is only talk, the setting doesn't matter, they barely even touch each other, it's all about meeting on a mental level, with real dialogue, rather than just waiting for your turn to speak. That's what this film is about and it's what all of Linklater's best films are about, the meeting of minds to convey ideas.

Writing People

I'm working on a movie right now, which I'll be making over winter break, only two weeks away. So, in the past week or so, I've been writing a bunch of script. I love writing script, in some respects even more than the process of actually filming, becuase you're not really held down to any rules. Actually filming can be great, but it can also be pretty annoying. That's the part of the process that in many ways feels the least like art. You have to deal with so many differnet issues, technical things, time constraints, working with people, and also the constraints of reality. When you're writing a script, if the image is in your head, it doesn't take that much to get it on the page. However, getting from script to reality is extremely tough. Even for Hollywood people, with millions of dollars at their disposal, the reality of the thing can never match the vision in your head, and as someone who doesn't really have any budget, that's doubly true.

However, the coolest thing about writing script is when you really know the characters, and can speak through them essentially. For this project, Jordan and I split the writing, and it's pretty amazing, because when I compare the stuff I wrote with the stuff he wrote, the people talk exactly the same. We both know how the characters function well enough that we can replicate their speech patterns. When you're writing dialogue, it's a lot like what is stereotypically associated with acting, the idea that you have to get into character, and find out "what's my motivation?" In some movies, there's a tendency to make every single line important to the plot, and I don't like that. I think you can reveal character traits through dialogue without having them actually talk about something that's essential to the plot. Seeing someone's opinion of current events or pop culture can tell you a lot about them. I love a really well done pop culture reference in a script, but most are really bad. Having someone say "Luke, I am your father" into a fan for the twelfth time isn't funny anymore, but if you have people talk about Star Wars in a way that actually says something about their character, more than the fact that they like Star Wars, then you've done your job. The Trio in Buffy were really defined by their love of pop culture, and the trivilaity of their discussions is brilliantly juxtaposed against the very real evil of their actions.

There's something very magical about summoning a character out of nothing, and turning him/her into a full fledged being. Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have talked about this, the idea that creating fiction is making something out of nothing, and is thus a magical act. The Invisibles was designed as a sigil, to come out of the fiction and into our reality, and while I'm not at that level yet, just to create a fully functioning fictional world, and make people interact in it is very cool. It's really tough to write something where you don't know the people. You have to understand the character's motivations, their internal selves, and the front they present to the world, and then you can write them well. Every character has a piece of yourself in it, but if you can make a character speak completely different from yourself, and yet still be a coherent, consistent person, it's very cool.

I read an interview with one of the Buffy writers, where he said that he gave a line that was Willow's to Xander, and when reading the script Joss told him, "That line's a Willow," and that says a lot about how well defined those characters are. Everyone has a specific way they speak, and even on the page, it's completely unique. All the Buffy characters do have a similar way of speaking, but clearly, there are subtle differences between the way, say, Buffy and Willow talk. The Invisibles is really unique, becuase, despite being a comic, each of the characters has a differnet sound. Dane's dialogue is written in such a way that it sounds uniquely British, even though it's just words printed on a page. Similarly, both Fanny and King Mob have distinctive styles. It's difficult to write someone like Fanny without going into caricature, but I think Morrison pulls it off.

The best written movie, dialogue wise, of recent times, and possibly even all time, is Before Sunset. The movie is one 80 minute conversation, and it's absolutely riveting. Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy wrote a script that is a perfect example of how to craft dialogue that says a ton of things at once. In the first chunk of the movie, we see Jesse and Celine wandering around the city, making small talk, when clearly they want to talk in depth with each other, but just don't know how. Jesse at first doesn't mention his marriage, however, he goes on to say it's good. It's pretty basic, jokey discussion, but we know there's a lot more going on, and that's conveyed both through the performance and through the dialogue itself.

Then, in the second chunk of the movie, everything starts to unravel. The careful guarding of emotions from the first half breaks down, as each of the characters breaks down to some extent, and talks about how unfulfilled they are in life, largely because of the amazing night they shared together back in Before Sunrise. The dialogue perfectly captures the way real people talk, though perhaps with less likes and ums, and the two characters are so fully formed, we can discern exactly when they're hiding something, or telling a white lie. The movie has so many memorable exchanges, and through the dialogue, we find out not plot events, but discover fully realized characters. The end of the movie is a little more visual, becuase we've reached the point where we know these people so well, they don't even need to talk, just looking at each other speaks volumes. And, the two words that end the movie say so much. The movie uses talk to both shield emotions and to reveal them. Linklater is the master of dialogue, as seen by his Waking Life, Slacker or this movie's predecessor, Before Sunrise, but in Sunset, he takes everything to a new level, and incorporates a really strong emotional story with the dialogue, making for one of the best movies ever made.

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What makes a TV show work?

Over the past couple of years, I've gotten really into watching long form TV shows on DVD. The late 90s into the 2000s has been an unprecedented time of quality on TV. There've been a huge number of series that I'd qualify as great literature. What makes a series great?

The most important thing for me is great characters who develop and change. The thing that most people don't get is that if you make interesting enough characters, you could have them sitting around a room for an hour and it would still be riveting. Seinfeld took advantage of this to some extent, as did Buffy in season six. The episode Entropy features very little plot development, but is the culmination of a host of character threads that had been developing over the season. The Buffy/Spike relationship is exposed to her friends, Tara and Willow reconcile, and Xander suffers the fallout of leaving Anya the altar. Not too much happens, and to a new viewer it would probably be a really boring episode, but becuase the characters are so interesting at that point, the plot is irrelevant, we're watching for them. The best shows don't make you want to know what happens next in the plot, though that certainly doesn't hurt, they make you need to see where the characters will go. The Office is an entirely character based series, very little actually happens, but all the comedy and drama come from seeing the characters interact and change.

Another thing that's needed for a great series is a respect for continuity. The X-Files has some phenomenal episodes, and probably the best concept of any TV show in history, but ultimately, I can't consider it a successful series becuase it has no respect for the viewer, and does not work as an overarching story. Probably the best example of series continuity is The Sopranos, which not only maintains character and plot arcs, single lines from an episode are crucial to explaining what's going on, and the writers never forget anything that happens to Tony. The character has come about because of what's happened to him in the past five years, each episode clearly follows the next, and there's no aritifical conclusions. Buffy also does continuity brilliantly, and the character development is perfectly executed throughout the series. Even on a show like Cowboy Bebop, most of the episodes are standalone, but you can tell that the events that happen do change the characters, and everything pays off at the end.

While I'm more inclined to like a sci-fi show, any show that respects its characters and continuity can appeal to me. Six Feet Under is basically a soap opera, but it's so well made, and the characters so well developed, the premise doesn't matter. The hook of Buffy is the supernatural world, but I don't think anyone who's a big fan of the show was actually watching to see her slay vampires, it's all about the characters interacting. That's the thing that TV has over film. You can make a great character in a movie, and they can change, but not that much. TV characters can have many more layers and go through more subtle evolution. You'll get more specific artistry watching a movie, becuase more time can be spent on each shot, but TV can give you the big picture better, and there's really no experience like watching the culmination of a five year story arc that pays off beautifully.

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Thoughts on Trigun

I watched the anime series Trigun over the past couple of weeks, and finished it on Tuesday. It wasn't the greatest series ever, but towards the end, it got pretty great, and more importantly, thematically deep. The series discusses the same basic issue as The Invisibles, which is, what is the best tactic for fighting your enemies?

For the whole first chunk of the series, Vash the Stampede refuses to kill people. Despite frequently using guns, and always getting into fights, he will not take the lives of others. This is at times implausible, and leads to greater problems and destruction than taking one life would have caused, but we accept it, because he's the central character of the series, and as a result, is the series' moral compass. I had a lot of problems with the first ten or so episodes of the series, becuase they present Vash as an incredibly goofy character, and the not killing people just seemed to be an extension of that. Miraculously, he could get into all of these firefights, not get injured, and still not resort to having to kill anyone. His motto at this point is "Love and Peace," which he says frequently.

As the series moves along, Vash runs into Wolfwood, a priest, who serves as a counterpoint to Vash. Whereas Vash strictly refuses to kill, Wolfwood has a somewhat compromised morality. He feels that killing bad people is good in the long run, and as a result has no qualms about it. He's extremely frustrated by Vash's methods, and this frustration also causes the audience to question what Vash is doing.

Everything comes to a head in Out of Time, when Vash and Wolfwood have to fight two gung ho guns. Earlier in this episode, we see Vash talking with Wolfwood about how if he's a preacher, he should follow the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." So, Wolfwood decides to follow Vash's advice and not kill the apple man. However, this backfires, and Wolfwood ends up getting shot and dying, which causes Vash a great deal of guilt, and puts into question the basic moral point of the series. With Wolfwood's death, Vash's moral standpoint is proven inadaquete. Whereas Vash is able to take getting shot, because of his superior body, for a human, it will eventually lead to death. If Wolfwood had killed the apple man, he would not have died.

So, Vash's strict moral stance is upended, leading to the next major event, the confrontation between Vash and Legato. Legato is controlling the townspeople with his mind, causing them to attack Meryl and Millie. They will die, but Legato leaves it open to Vash to save them. He will let Vash kill him to save them, but this would require Vash compromising his morals and taking a life, even if it is the detestable Legato. Ultimately, Vash chooses to kill Legato, the choice that seems sensible, but it causes him a great amount of mental angst.

Much of Vash's moral militance comes from Rem, who taught him that it's not worth killing a spider to save a butterfly, there is no justification for taking life. The spider and butterfly analogy is clearly echoed in the confrontation with Legato and Meryl/Millie, but here Vash seemingly has no choice. He has to kill Legato.

The death of Legato leads to the final arc of the series, in which Vash prepare to, and fights Knives, his brother. Knives believed that humanity was a cancer of the planet, and needed to be destroyed. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice the spider to save the butterfly, and to him, only he and Vash would qualify as butterflies. Knives represents the extreme of Wolfwood's morality, he is willing to sacrifice anything to get what he wants.

Earlier in the series, Wolfwood had asked Vash what he would do when he finally got to Knives, would he kill him? And, at the time, there's no real answer. This uncertainty lasts right up to episode 25, the penultamate episode of the series. Vash spends his time thinking about what he will do to Knives, and by the end of the episode, he realizes what he has to do. Rem had told Vash to take care of Knives, and earlier in the series, this had been hinted at as a need to kill him, but here Vash reinterprets the statement, and realizes that what he literally has to do is take care of Knives, to help him, and save him, with love.

They fight in episode 26, and after some battle, Vash defeats him, but rather than killing him, he takes Knives over his shoulder and carries him back to town. He realizes that just not killing is not enough, you have to actively work to save people. This is extremely similar to the themes developed in The Invisibles, it's the idea that if you keep fighting your enemy, you may win the battle, but you'll always have to fight another. The only way to win a war is to change your opponent, and that's what Vash plans to do with Knives. If he killed Knives, it would torment and destroy him. If he lets Knives go, Knives will create more problems around the world. However, by saving Knives, he would eliminate the problem.

This message is rather prescient, someone needs to show George Bush this series. We can't win the war on terror by killing all the terrorists, nor by just ignoring the problem. We need to change the way we are perceived by the Arab world, and take care of them. The rhetoric of calling nations evil, and Kerry's constant promise to "hunt and kill" terrorists completely misses the point. You can kill a thousand terrorists, but that leaves a thousand families whose sons have been killed, and want revenge. Bush has such a one sided view of events, he just doesn't understand that terrorists are people too, and we need to be able to understand their perspective if we ever really want to elimiante terrorism.

But back to Trigun. Clearly, the show has a very positive message, and it's earned. You go through the moral dilemmas that Vash experiences, and you come out on the other side having learned the same lessons that he has. There's a lot of problems with the series, it's certainly not as strong as Cowboy Bebop, but that doesn't mean it's not a great watch.

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Bunch of Stuff

I've been listening to the new U2 album and I'm really impressed. I'm a huge U2 fan, mostly of the more recent stuff. My favorite albums by them are Achtung Baby and Zooropa. Achtung is one of my top five albums all time, and is one of the few albums where every single track is amazing. One is the most famous song off the album, but Until the End of the World, The Fly, and the last three tracks Ultraviolet/Acrobat/Love is Blindess are all brilliant songs.

How to Dismantle isn't as strong as that album, but it's definitely one of U2's better albums. Even after just two listens, I like all the songs, and love City of Blinding Lights. City is on par with anything that U2 has done in the past. I love the sound of Edge's guitar, no one else plays the way he does, and he breaks out some solos that see him more unhinged than any of his previous stuff. Bono's soaring voice, and the Edge guitar clipping away under it is what makes U2 so good, and so unique.

What else is up with me? Thanksgiving break was pretty good, it felt like I was back in the summer. Last year, Thanksgiving was amazing, becuase I was seeing most of my friends for the first time since we had gone to college, and there seemed to be some change. However, everything basically went back to summer mode when we were back, which isn't bad, but it just didn't feel as special as last year. But, I think that may be because things seem to be going so fast. I go home and I completely forget about the previous three months, and it feels like just yesterday it was August. But, then I'm back here, and despite being home earlier today, that feels like a long time ago. I guess it's just I adapt to wherever I am at the time. Two spheres, and they usually don't cross.

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Dogville

I wrote this up right after I saw the movie Dogville. There are spoilers below, so if you haven't seen the movie, see it. If you have, read on.

I completely loved the film, both story-wise and production wise. The stage setting was a gimmick, but it wasn't gimmicky, in the negative sense of the word, as in, just relying on something outlandish as a way to get the audience interested, it worked in the way that the best Buffy "gimmick" episodes worked, using the style as a means of exploring the story and characters. I don't think the movie would have worked had it not been set on a stage. It made the town feel much smaller, and increased the feeling of paranoia as the movie went on. The rape scene was very powerful, and different, because of the gimmick. The shot towards the end, when Grace is in her house, the rest of the town is meeting, and Tom is outside, was brilliant, because we were able to see the choice he has to make, and the community vs. individual theme was driven home.

Some of it was a bit questionable, like using the drawings of gooseberry bushes, and the drawing of the dog, but the acting made it feel real. I think the stage setting also gave it a timeless feel, rather than the more cliched period small town setting.

I thought the story was powerful, and a great depiction of what power does to people. When the people of Dogville, so used to the status quo, are given the opportunity to control someone, they become monsters, which is paralleled at the end when Grace, finally given the opportunity to take revenge, destroys everyone. It was a really simple story, but just told very well.

Despite being three hours for a relatively simple story, I didn't feel like any scene was unneccessary. They all added something to the story, and that's largely because of the performances. This was probably Nicole Kidman's best performance, and she was heartbreaking, as well as astonishingly beautiful. The rest of the cast was great as well, completely inhabiting the roles. Patricia Clarkson was particularly impressive, since I'd just been watching Six Feet Under season two, where she plays a role that's essentially the opposite of who she is here.

I loved the ending of the movie. The fact that he just broke out 30s style gangsters, with tommy guns and fedoras, was impressive. And then the brutal killing of the entire town. The scene where the children are killed, to parallel the smashing of the figurines was particularly notable.

That's not to say it was a perfect movie. I feel like having the entire town raping her was a bit excessive, and it really bothered me that she didn't try to defend herself or even get Tom to stay with her and stop them. The end of the movie she does fight back, but I found it odd that at the time she didn't try to do anything. Also, the DV style worked most of the time, but sometimes, the wandering shots and odd framing got annoying and distracted from things. Though, I did love the use of jump cuts.

Overall though, I thought it was spectacular. The stage thing kept the focus on the plot and characters, and really made the film work. I hated Dancer in the Dark, but this film redeemed Von Trier for me. And, I don't really see it as anti-American. It's more anti-human if anything.

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What's the deal with being depressed...

Working three hour shifts in the computer lab means I spend a lot of time wandering the internet, and I come across people's livejournals and such. There seems to be one common theme among all these journals and that's that the people writing them are writing about how depressed they are. Judging by these things, people are all aimless, without focus or direction and searching for their place in life. Now, obviously people use the livejournal as a place to vent, and I find when I write, I always focus on the problems, because you take the good things for granted.

When you think about your life, there could be a million great things going on, but I find that I still always want more. And, it's that one thing I don't have that occupies my mind, rather than all the good stuff. I mean, sometimes I can just go outside and look at the beauty of a shadow falling across a tree under a streetlight, or the majesty of a great work of fiction and get completely absorbed in it, but I eventually always go back to the things that I feel I've failed at.

This brings me back to the fact that we have to be confronted with bad things in our lives, so that we can get better. If we aren't reminded of where we've gone wrong, we're never going to try to correct the errors we've made, and improve in life. That's what The Invisibles is all about. The archons, the things that hold us back, exist to make us better. In the long run, it's better to have these problems because in confronting them we can improve and become stronger.

But, back to my original point. I think one reason people constantly feel depressed is because the media creates this image of what we should have. Like, at college, you should be having the best time of your life, you should have a girlfriend, you should have meaning in your life, a real sense of purpose, and I think most people don't. They just go along, fulfilling obligations, and I'm not sure what their ultimate aim is.

For me, the thing that simultaneously makes me happiest and saddest is my desire to be a filmmaker. This dream gives me direction. Even if I'm wasting time along the way, I have an ultimate destination, a passion that drives me. I find it difficult to think of people for whom art isn't a big part of their lives. Like, I don't see how you couldn't want a job that allows you to express what's on your mind. I don't get how you could live if your ultimate aspiration in life is just to get a boring job, and keep moving along in the way that society has prescribed you should. Everyone has to have some passion that keeps them going.

And I think it's the lack of a dream that makes people so depressed. All the aimlessness I go through, I still ultimately have this dream that I'm working towards. If you don't have that, these probably will be the best years of your life, and if you're bored, what does the rest of life hold for you?

Maybe that's a bit defeatist. I look forward to getting older. Hopefully I'll be making films, but even if I'm not, it doesn't mean I can't still enjoy myself. There are people who will have had the best time of their life in high school, some in college, and some after. I liked high school, I like college, but I'm hoping things will get even better as time goes on.

Downloaded Worlds

I bought Promethea book 4 today, haven't read it yet, I'm going to wait until the last issue comes out in February and then do a really immersive read of the whole series. But, the book got me thinking about a certain type of story. Promethea feels perfect, like every single issue was carefully thought of, and came out exactly like the creators wanted it to. There were no mistakes, and you can't really criticize anything, becasue the book is so internally consistent. It is the type of work that feels like the creator tapped into some other universe, took the book, and brought it back here.

For me, the work that feels most like this is the original Star Wars trilogy. Despite having seen and read many many things on the creation of the trilogy, I still don't view it as a movie that was filmed, it really feels like you're looking in on a piece of another universe. I can't imagine cameras being there, or the places being sets. I know the movies aren't perfect, but I can see very few specific flaws, because it doesn't feel like Lucas made up the story, it felt like it was all there already, and he had no choice in how to tell it.

Another great example of this is Lord of the Rings. The movie feels this way, but the book is perhaps the best example of this anywhere. It's so detailed, it feels like Tolkien tapped into this alternate universe.

Which brings us back to Promethea. The entire book is about the power of thought, and a sort of shared universe of thought called the Immateria. This is where stories come from, and this book really seems to be downloaded from the Immateria. The art is so brilliant, it doesn't seem like a person could make it, particularly working on the deadlines imposed by monthly comics. I can't imagine JH Williams drawing anything else, becuase to me, he is the guy that channels Promethea.

While I think The Invisibles is a much stronger comic than Promethea overall, it doesn't have that downloaded from another realm feel all the time. The Jiminez issues, notably Entropy in the UK and Black Science I do, as does Weston's run at the end of Volume II, and most of all, Quitely's absolutely brilliant issue 3.1. However, there's also the dreadful art in The Invisible Kingdom storyline, which completely takes you out of the story, and the illusion that this is a real world.

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Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild

Today I watched Days of Being Wild, a film by Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, who did the brilliant movies, Chungking Express and In the Mood For Love. Days was an early Wong Kar-Wai film, and it wasn't as strong as his later output. However, that doesn't make it a bad movie.

The movie feels very New Wave inspired. There's not much story, and a lot of what happens is just people sitting around talking about stuff. We basically see York living his life, and what happens to him. That forms the main basis of the movie. However, there are other characters on the peripherary. Maggie Cheung appears as a woman he dumps, then she goes on to meet up with a police officer. Her encounter with the police officer was my favorite chunk of the film, it felt a lot like In the Mood for Love. The movie looks beautiful. The use of color is extraordinary, and there were a number of shots that just jumped out to me as aesthetically perfect, and a great use of framing to tell the story.

If there are any problems, it's in the lack of focus. The movie kind of meanders along, and I wasn't really sure where it was going. Also, even though it looks great, 60s Hong Kong looks even better in In the Mood For Love, and in comparing the two, Days suffers.

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Boogie Nights

So, counting down my top 50 movies all time we come to 49, Boogie Nights. Now, this movie has an interesting reputation, due to its subject matter, the porn industry. This is a movie about the porn industry, but it's definitely not a porn itself, it's not even really about the porn industry, it's about a group of people who become a family for each other, and what happens to them. This movie is about porn in the same way that The Sopranos is about the mafia, yes, it's set in that world, but what makes it interesting is how their unique circumstances affect the characters. You're not watching to see Tony kill people, or to see Dirk filming, you're watching for the interactions between characters.

Boogie Nights has been compared to Goodfellas a lot, and I can see some similarities, but what Boogie Nights does that Goodfellas doesn't is create very strong characters. Paul Thomas Anderson is clearly interested in the porn industry itself, but he's more interested in creating characters. As he did in the brilliant Magnolia, this is a film that seems to be structured around character decisions rather than an artificially imposed plot. The best movies move along organically, with events occurring because of logical choices that the characters make. That's how this movie works. It's about a bunch of people, and they're all pretty interesting.

The movie feels very epic. It spans six years or so, and a ton of stuff happens. In some ways, it's the archetypal rise and fall story, but there's enough character stuff happening on the peripherary that it never feels cliche. I love movies with a lot of characters, and this movie has roughly twelve major characters. PTA's greatest talent is his ability to manage massive casts, and while this movie has a clear main character, it's still an ensemble piece, and everyone gets some interesting material to work with.

What makes the movie special is really in the way PTA makes it. The long shot that opens the movie is absolutely phenomenal, echoing and even surpassing A Touch of Evil in its scope. Another amazing shot is in the pool scene, when the camera does a five minute or so tracking shot, then follows a diver into the pool without a cut, goes underwater, then comes back up. Awe inspiring.

Anderson's use of music is similarly impressive. He breaks out a lot of the best songs of the 70s and fits them organically into the film. He does a bunch of montages, but they actually move the story forward, and are hugely entertaining. The "Jesse's Girl" scene with Alfred Molina is just one amazing use of music.

Pretty much everything clicks here, and this movie serves as a good warm up for PTA's Magnolia. It's the film that gave us Chest Rockwell, that should count for something.

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Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By

Listening to the new Handsome Boy Modeling School album has prompted me to go back and listen to some of Dan the Automator's previous work, including his masterpiece, Lovage aka Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By. Now, the title is a bit doofy, and I was attracted to the album expecting something that'd be comedic. However, after listening to the album I found that it was hilarious at times, but it's actually a very dark, moody album, far removed from comedy. The album has a very specific atmosphere. It feels like it should be sung in a smoky lounge, with some neon lights, late at night.

The album has vocals by Mike Patton and Jennifer Charles, and the way they sing together is unlike anything I've heard before. It feels very intimate, particularly on the album's best tracks Book of the Month and Sex (I'm A). This is a very different sort of vocal styling from what Patton uses with Fantomas or Faith No More, and it's much more interesting.

The production just owns. Automator uses strings, horns and vocal samples to create a canvas of beats. Some of the best moments are the intro to 'To Catch a Thief' and the horn samples of 'Stroker Ace.' Another highlight of the album, which now includes basically everything about it, are the lyrics, which are both hilarious and so perfectly delivered. 'Book of Month' is a back and forth of metaphors between Patton and Charles, including classic lyrics like "You are the griddle, I am the meat" and my personal favorite lyric, in which Charles talks to Patton about her rotting body, saying "Jealous of the flies and the worms inside me"

The album is completely unique. It's lounge, but also trip hop. Just look at the cover art, clearly this is an awesome album.

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Was the Past Really Better? Part II

First, one thing about memory: everythings gets better as you become more distant from it. The bad things start to slip away, and you only remember the good things. That's why, even though I wasn't so much a fan of a lot of high school, I look back on it fondly now. We have a tendency to filter out the negative things. That's not to say that high school was bad, it's just that you tend to focus on the good things, and the boring moments slip off somewhere into the void of lost memories.

The same thing can happen with movies. If you haven't seen a movie for a while, you can build it up in your own mind, talking it up, remembering the great moments, and then when you go see it again, it's not as good as you remember it. Of course, you can be surprised by how good something is if you haven't seen it for awhile, but I'd say a slight disappointment occurs more often. Like, I saw Gladiator on Friday. Now, I hadn't seen it since 2000, and I remember it being a really great movie. However, watching it again, I was struck by how weak the dialogue was, to the point of really hurting the movie. And, the action scenes weren't as impressive either. I'm not really sure how that ended up winning the Oscar for best picture.

Anyway, you always hear people saying music wasn't as good as it used to be. Older people are more likely to say it's not as good as the 60s or 70s, sometimes you'll hear people my age talking about how the 90s were better. I'm going to go out on a limb here and concede that the popular music the 60s and 70s was better than what is popular now. Maybe it's just that I don't like most R 'n B type ballad songs that are so popular, nor do I like the noise-hard rock of bands like Korn, or even the angry rock of someone like Linkin Park. There are still some great popular songs, 'Hey Ya' was one of the absolute best pop songs of all time. However, I feel like in the 60s, bands that were breaking new ground were what was popular. That The Beatles, the most popular band in the world at the time, could put out an album as diverse and bizarre as The White Album, astonishes me. Each of their album somehow maintains a pop sound, while still goin really crazy with sonic experimentation. And it's not just The Beatles, all sorts of meaningful artists were putting out great songs that were also popular, and it was at this time that the full album length work came into vogue.

Today, music has changed a lot. It's not that it's gotten worse, it's just that the most popular bands are usually far from the best bands. The best thing about music today, as compared to the 60s, is the diversity of material available. Back then, it was mostly rock and jazz, now rock, trip hop, rap, etc. There's such a variety of stuff, and most notably, a new type of music, made by bands like Air and Massive Attack. These bands have no real stylistic equivalents in the 60s era, they're redefining music, and just because they're not popular, it doesn't mean there's not quality albums being put out. Almost all the stuff I listen to pre 1990 is rock, but I've got a huge variety of genres when it comes to recent stuff. You may have to look a little harder, but amazing albums are still being made. The Polyphonic Spree is one of my favorite bands of all time, and they didn't come about until a couple of years ago. When you look back, the crap songs slip away, and the best remains. That makes people inherently biased towards the past.

While I wouldn't say music is in a Golden Age today, comics definitely are, or if not now, have just finished one. The 1990s was the decade when the comic book became the graphic novel, and creators started to publish incredible finite series. Works like Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan and of course, The Invisibles, told some of the biggest stories ever told in any medium, and more so than even Alan Moore's 80s work constitute a bibliography that's the best in comics history. People talk about the 60s as the best era of comics, they had nothing comprable to what went on recently. With the end of Transmetropolitan, an era ended as well in a lot of ways, but I think it's more that we're in an era when a lot of new talent is emerging. This is the equivalent of the late 80s, when people like Ennis, Ellis and Morrison were proving themselves on corporate titles before starting their magnum opi. Comics have never been better than in recent years.

Film is also in a great era of films, but it's more comprable to what I was talking about in music. In the 80s, Spielberg and Lucas almost singlehandedly invented the great blockbuster. Stuff like Star Wars and Indiana Jones set a standard in terms of quality works with blockbuster appeal. Lately, I'll admit most blockbuster movies have been pretty awful, but recently, we've seen a ton of new directors coming up and producing amazing works. In the last 10 years, we've seen the emergence of PT Anderson, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Darren Aronofsky and a lot of other great directors. While there may not be as many good blockbusters, 2004 has produced some of my favorite movies of all time. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kill Bill II, Garden State, Before Sunset and Dogville were all brilliant movies, the sort of timeless works of art that will become immortal.

So, maybe popular culture is going down hill, but as long as great works are being produced, it doesn't really matter what's popular. In both comics and film, auteurs have been getting more respect, and that's a great thing. And the thing is, even if you think pop culture is crap today, we've got a backlog of thousands of movies and albums, so whatever era's to your fancy, you can enjoy as you please.

Oh, and I forgot to mention TV. Other than Twin Peaks, basically all the series I really loved were made within the last 10 years, most of them even more recently. Buffy, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Office, Spaced. The auteur driven finite TV series has emerged, just like it did in comics, and this is without a doubt, the golden age of television.

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Was the Past Really Better? Part I

Well, the short answer is no, but that doesn't explain why, and the real answer to every question that we face in life is not in the answer itself, but in why what the answer is, is in fact that answer. A bit complex, that. Even I'm not really sure what I was talking about.

Anyway, so much of what people talk about seems to be just about how good things in the past were, and this idea really bothers me. I think there's two levels of past fetishization. One is the idea that things really were better then. Like, in the 60s, music meant something, and movies were the work of auteurs, not just the tripe you see now. People will talk about Hollywood's Golden Age, or comics' silver age, and really feel that the works being done back then were better. You see it in videogames too. So many classic game compilations have come out and been embraced because people are enamored with the idea that older games were better.

I'll admit that I subscribe to this school sometimes. I would have loved to have been around when The Beatles set the tone of popular music, rather than generic hip hop song of the month, and I am sort of jealous of that era. I prefer the popular music of then to the popular music of now. Similarly, I will often wax poetic about the days of the 2D game, back when things were simpler. I'd much rather play Final Fantasy III than Final Fantasy VII, but I don't think that's just a nostalgia thing, it's more about the fact that when FFVII was made, 3D games were in their infancy.

But, I digress. There's this one strain of thought that things in the past actually were better. However, recently, another strain of thought has come up. This is one that holds that old things were better, but takes a sort of ironic approach. This is the school of thought that gives us people still constantly talking about shit like Saved by the Bell. This was an awful show, as was Full House or any number of other series people will discuss, but they still watch them, in a sort of semi-ironic way, at once reveling in the badness and actually enjoying the show, becuase they feel so above it. TV is probably where this is most prominent, people who you could never get to watch an episode of Twin Peaks or The Sopranos, and say that 144 episodes of Buffy is too big a commitment, will gladly spend hours watchin really awful sitcoms, and go on to claim that TV today is going downhill.

You see this a lot in comics too. People will either say that back in the 60s, books were so much more imaginative and fresh, or that the 80s were the Golden Age and stuff today isn't as good. Alan Moore's Supreme series is all about revisiting 60s comics, and showing love to them. Thing is, these comics weren't really that good, it's just nostalgia. That's not to say that Supreme is bad, it's a really great book, but in a lot of respects, I'd rather see Alan moving forward with original material than just rehashing old things. I think Grant Morrison has a much better approach to nostalgia, wherein he's not trying to capture the actual style of 60s comics, but rather the feeling of awe and majesty that they gave to the kids who read them. The best example of this is the brilliant Flex Mentallo.

So, ironic nostalgia bad. You can see this a lot in music too. An entire industry has grown up around specials about bad early 90s music. Rather than focusing on albums from that era that were actually good, like U2's Acthung Baby!, they spend all their time on the same approved set of novelty songs. People always thrown on stuff like 'Ice, Ice Baby' or 'Can't Touch This' as opposed to playing a song that's actually good. Those songs were bad then and they're still bad now.

Basically, it really bothers me that people spend so much time focusing on trash culture from the past, particularly the early to mid 90s. There was some great stuff back then, it was the time that gave birth to Twin Peaks and Sandman, but that's never what's mentioned, it's always the novelty rap songs and bad sitcoms. I can see enjoying something ironically once in a while, but for a lot of people it seems they never enjoy something sincerely and fully. There's so much good stuff out there, don't waste you time watching or listening to crap.

So, what is good now, and how can love of the past be better put to use? That'll be part II.

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People Complex

People are so complex, yet we usually interact only on the surface. In your average day, you might run into a lot of people, but very rarely do you ever actually get deep and really communicate feelings and emotions. Why is this?

Back at home, Jordan, Steve, Cimmino and I frequently had "discussions" where we'd talk about all kinds of stuff and I use that as sort of my scale for judging interactions. I really got an idea of how they viewed the universe and what their priorities were. It's interesting to understand the intellectual backing that makes up a person's world view. I think we were all really influenced by The Invisibles, and even people I knew back home who didn't read it, heard so much about the concepts. The series formed sort of a base we used for exploration of metaphysics concepts.

So, it's interesting to talk about similar concepts with people here at Wesleyan, and get a completely different perspective on things. I just sort of took for granted the idea that we were moving towards some kind of major growht in consciousness, some event in which we would leap forward, transcend the physical and become purely mental beings. It might not be at 2012, but this was the direction of humanity. However, I found that idea challenged, and was forced to consider whether it really is where we're going.

Like, I talked about lucid dreaming with Jenna, and she called me a destroyer of dreams, basically implying that what dreams are supposed to do is let your mind work through the issues of the day, and lucid dreaming would instead further tax you, and prevent you from getting the rest that sleep is supposed to give you. I can see this point. Lucid dreaming is so much a dialogue with yourself, it can get you spun up in really intense self analysis, and some people probably don't want to go there. I find dream analysis really interesting because it's the closest thing you can get to an objective view of your own mind, but it's still just talking to yourself, and sometimes, it's better to get in touch with the outside world.

I guess for a lot of people the outside world is the only thing they have so that they don't, to quote Yes, "Don't surround yourself with yourself." The more you look at people, the more you see the things that have made them up, and the mental things that determine who they are. People feel obligations to do things, different things depending on what they've come from. Ultimately, I feel living life is like making a movie. Sure, you want it to be popular and critically acclaimed, and make the people you know happy, but if you're not happy with the finished product, it doesn't matter what other people think of it. It's your movie to make, your life to live.

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Taking some classes at Handsome Boy Modeling School

So, I listened to the new Handsome Boy Modeling School album, White People, today. I really liked So...How's Your Girl? It's not my favorite of Dan the Automator's albums, not as strong as Lovage, Deltron 3030, but it's probably stronger than Gorillaz. Anyway, there's not that much continuity between the two albums, because White People is mainly about spotlighting guest artists.

Del tha Funkee Homosapien returns on the track, "The World's Gone Mad," which is a really interesting mix of rap, reggae and rock. Some other standout tracks are "I've Been Thinking," "Breakdown" and "Class System," with Julee Cruise of Twin Peaks fame. Julee's track is probably the best on the album with some great, socially conscious lyrics, and a lot of the feeling of Automator's Lovage.

I love the fact that this album bounces between so many different styles. It's a hip hop album in theory, but it's got elements of all genres. I suppose a critique might be that it doesn't have any cohesion whatsoever, but all the tracks were pretty good, so I'm not complaining. Judging only from one listen, I'd say my biggest complain about the album is the rap side is lacking a bit. Del has a great verse, but there's nothing on the level of "The Projects" from the first album. Still, it's a really strong album, possibly even better than the original semester with Handsome Boy.

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So, there was an election

George Bush got reelected, which annoys me. It implies that the vast majority of people out there in the middle of the country completely ignored what he did as president and voted for him because he’s religious, and has “moral values.” He’s reactionary and the president should be guiding us into a new age, a better age, and Bush is only bringing us down. Humanity’s destiny is the stars, both literal, as in space, and metaphorical, as in the upper reaches of our mind. Bush is only pulling us down, trapping us in thousand year old conflicts, and not allowing science to move forward. Not that Kerry would have been a great leader necessarily, it’s just he wouldn’t get us embroiled in an unnecessary war, like Iraq. George Bush has a vision for the country, but it’s an awful vision, I want a president with a vision of a better country and a better world, not through fighting, but through the spreading of love and knowledge.

However, the whole thing seems impersonal and removed from me. History makes it easy to see trends, but when you’re living something, you don’t really become aware of how things work until you look at it in retrospect. A better world is easily within reach, and hopefully this is just a momentary step back before an explosion into a new world of higher consciousness. This division in the country recalls The Invisibles. Bush is essentially an archon, he’s a force for stagnation and violence. He’s not evil, just misguided. What his policies are doing is preventing us from moving forward because we’re caught up in this war in Iraq, and trying to curb the momentum of freedom in social issues. But what his presidency has done is create a whole group of people who are so disgusted by him that they have become active in trying to change things, overthrow the archons and make a better world. What the invisibles are trying to do is change the world and make it better, more forward thinking. It’s essentially a dichotomy between fear and hope, the conservatives fear a new world, while progressives are hoping to build a new and better world.

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Spaced: The First Series

So, I finished watching the first series of Spaced. This show was really brilliant, reminding me a lot of my other Brit-comedy favorite, The Office. The thing that makes these shows different from American comedy shows is the limited run. Rather than having to create a status quo that will have last for many years of 22 episodes, the Britcom is designed for a short run. The first season of Spaced was only seven episodes, and as a result they can have change happen to the characters.

The TV Comedy aka Britain shames America once again

I think it was Grant Morrison who said that after the British empire fell apart, they began to take over the world in a different way, namely by becoming the cutting edge leaders in art and culture. During the 60s, British rock groups were both popular and artistically phenomenal, from The Beatles to Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin and so on. Mod culture spread across the globe. In the 80s, the British invaded America in another medium, namely comics. Alan Moore completely redefined what comics could do, and Grant Morrison followed up, and even surpassed the pioneer. Now, most of the top writers in the comics industry are British, andd by and large they do the best work.

So, British own comics, but what about comedy? Obviously there was Python and others 60s groups, but recent British sitcoms have been putting our own to shame. In the past two days, I watched the first episode of Spaced, a Britcom, and also the first episode I'd ever seen of Family Guy, an American show you probably know all too well. Now, I'd heard a lot about both series, they're both beloved by fans, however, one is great and one makes me ashamed to be part of a culture that could love it.

Spaced, the first episode, was very impressive. The movie Shaun of the Dead, that came out a while ago came out of Spaced, and the series and the film share a writer, director and cast. Now, Shaun was pretty good, but Spaced the series is already better than it. The show is a comedy, but it's shot in a really interesting way, very feature like. It's shot with one camera, that uses a lot of complex moves and scene transitions. Director Edgar Wright uses a lot of really interesting techniques to show the passage of time. A big part of the show is paying homage to other films, and this leads to a lot of highly stylized and expressive shots. The show, despite being about two people living in a house, feels very exciting, just becuase of the way it's made. One notable sequence was that in which Tim and Daisy are going over each other's past, still images, quick cuts, and voiceover are used to convey a lot of narrative information very quickly.

As I said before, the show makes a lot of homages to movies. Subtly dropping in the Han and Luke "Same as always," "That bad, huh?" exchange from Jedi into a scene got a big laugh from me, but it's inserted so subtly into the text that it works both as an homage and as just a line of dialogue. I'll admit I can't really approach the show without bias since the characters share so many of my interests. The main character, Tim, works at a comic book shop, wants to be a graphic artist, and goes off on pretentious speeches in defense of sci-fi TV shows and comics themselves. He feels like a real person, and I actually care about his plight. This is something I saw in The Office too, a creator who doesn't want to do just comedy, he wants to make real characters. So, I'm looking forward to the rest of Spaced.

I had to watch Family Guy for class. Now, I'd never watched the show, I'd heard so many people talk about it, and how good it was, but I never really had the desire to see it. Unfortunately, this class made me have to watch it. I feel bad for the animators who drew this thing, since the 20 minutes watching it were painful enough, I would not want to have had to slave over drawing it.

So, to use the food metaphor, this show wouldn't even qualify as a bag of chips, it's more like eating some paper, you get absolutely nothing out of it. If this show were to be made physical, it would be a gas that just dissipates in the atmosphere, without enough cohesion to even hold its own molecules together. I was astonished at how bad the show was. While the possible re-election of George W. Bush makes me scared of people out in the middle of the country, watching this show made me scared about the college type smart audience that's watching this show.

The episode I watched was about a camping trip that Peter and his son go on, which prompts them to break up. What's so bad about it? First off, all the jokes are really cliched, and predictable. Using Mr. T in a joke at this point is about as cliche as it gets. Half the jokes seemed to be a character says something ridiculous then they cut to that very thing. If you do that every single time someone says something ridiculous, it's not funny anymore, it's expected.

Also, the creators seemed to be taking such joy in "breaking the rules." There was a Little House on the Prarie parody that seemed to be trying to get a laugh by making fun of the blind. The thing is, the parody wasn't funny because it was just a blind person tripping over stuff. The Office uses parody like this, but places it in a context where people have to take responsibility for their prejudice. The humor isn't in making of a person, it's in the awkward moment when someone catches you making fun of them. The Office episode in which David is telling racist jokes, only to have a black guy interrupt him in the middle of one brilliantly illustrates this. The humor isn't in the joke itself, it's in seeing David squirm as he tries to come up with an alternate ending to the joke. Curb Your Enthusiasm's Affirmative Action episode also does this.

At the end of the episode, Peter and the son hit golfballs that apparently kill someone. It's not funny because there's no consequences. It would have worked better if they had to actually confront the death, but instead they go for shock value. To be honest, if you want to be shocking you have to go a lot further. I love humor that is politically incorrent and out of sync with society's values, but this whole show is more like what a ten year old would consider offensive than what an actual adult would be offended by.

What else doesn't work about the show? The characters are horribly cliched. All the men on the are lazy, shun intellectualism, and possibly outright retarded. The women are cliched sitcom characters. The baby and dog characters just don't work, it's another example of trying to break the rules so boldly that it ends up just going nowhere. Plus, the creators of the show have a thirty second attention span. Nothing is developed at all, it's just surface.

So, you may say, I don't watch it for depth, sometimes I like to just kick back with some comedy. However, this show is so popular, it's not just kicking back. This is all that people are watching, shows with no characters or depth, just instant fulfillment. People can justify it saying that it's not great, but it's entertaining enough. Here's the thing. You shouldn't settle for not great until you've watched at least all of Twin Peaks, Buffy, The Office, The Sopranos, Angel and Six Feet Under. These are shows that infinitely more fulfilling and entertaining than Family Guy ever could be, and they don't leave you feeling degraded.

So, what does the popularity of Family Guy indicate about our society? The show's really popular with a lot of smart people, and that bothers me, because it's symptomatic of a trend in society. People are so attracted to these shows that have no depth whatsoever. They're ironically above any notion of actually caring about things, taking such pleasure in ridiculing people who are actually doing stuff they care about, rather than just making fun of others. I don't mind criticizing and making fun of something, if you're offering something better. Joss Whedon insulting reality TV is perfectly justified becuase he's made amazing shows already, he's not just talking, he's out doing. Whereas Spaced uses reference to other works to supplement its narrative, in Family Guy, the parody is the narrative, and it's not even parody really. It's just recreating scenes and conventions from other stories and expecting people to laugh because they remember that movie.

How could people not only like the show, but actively tell others to watch it? How could you buy it on DVD when there's so much better stuff out there? There's enough stuff to not care about out here in the real world, do we really need to watch TV shows to tell us not to care about anything?

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Casablanca

I'm going to be counting down my top 50 favorite movies, writing up a little something about each of them. I have a list of 100 that I keep, but the bottom 50 changes enough so that by the time I finished writing about each of them, it would be different. However, the top 50 is pretty stable, so I can write about them. Anyway, number 50 is appropriately the classic Casablanca...

I've watched a lot of movies, and unfortunately most of the movies from before the 60s do not hold up. There's a number of reasons for this. First off, the production system back then wasn't designed to make art, it was more of an assembly line. The director didn't get a chance to really do what he wanted, there wasn't craft in the movie. The other reason these movies are tough to watch is becuase their sense of pacing is completely different from ours. A lot of movies, especially comedies, from this era just see glacial compared to today's stuff. That makes even a good movie tough to enjoy, becuase it just seems to go by so slowly.

However, there are a couple of exceptions, and one of them is Casablanca, the finest movie that the studio system produced. This movie has so many great things about it. The look takes full advantage of the black and white. It's very noir, from the expressive lighting to Humphrey Bogart's trenchcoat and fedora. The script is full of really memorable lines, and also very complex, full of interesting moral ambiguities.

The standout scene of the film is the dueling national anthems, which of a perfect example of using music and visual to convey a point rather than relying on dialogue. Props also have to be given to the flashback Paris sequence and the last scene, which is one of the most memorable in film history.

It's a really complex, challenging film, which at once transcends the studio system, and is helped by it. The AFI top 100 movies list called it the second greatest movie of all time, behind Citizen Kane. I'd give it the edge over Kane, because of the emotion of the movie. The characters are so well sketched, and set against this amazing chaotic background, you can't help but get caught up in the story.

Oldboy: Revenge Pop

Earlier today, I watched the movie Oldboy, a movie made in Korea, that's hugely popular there, but has yet to make it over here. The movie is about a man who is imprisoned for fifteen years, and when he gets out, wants revenge. Finding out who imprisoned him and why is what the movie is about, and the answers are rather surprising. I'd already had one of the big surprises of the plot sort of ruined for me, but I still loved the movie becuase it's not really a movie about plot, it's much more about style, making it a pop movie.

What's a pop movie, you ask? To me, a pop movie is something where the filmmaking itself is so cool, that you don't even need to care about the story or characters to enjoy the movie. This movie has a lot of energy, from the very first scene on. The imprisonment sequence is absolutely phenomenal, particularly the ant attack sequence. The score, voiceover and way of shooting keep you riveted. This isn't to say that it's not interesting story matter, because it is, but it's the director who is being spotlighted. Some other really pop sequences in the film include Dae-su fighting off a crowd of ten or fifteen people. Park shoots it in one take, with Dae-su on the right, and the crowd on the left. They each go to challenge him, only to be beaten, and by the end a crowd of bodies fills most of the screen, as Dae-su stands triumphant on the other side.

Another great thing about the movie was the camerawork. The camera was free of restrictions in a way that reminded me of Irreversible. Park was able to do really interesting moves, particularly during the prison sequence. He also used some great transitions, particularly during the green grass hypnosis scene. Some of the scene transitions looked a bit too obviously CG, but generally speaking, they were quite impressive and did a good job of conveying the characters' states of mind.

The movie's pretty nasty. You'll very rarely see the sort of violence in this movie here in America. There's a scene with a hammer that had me rather uncomfortable, and same for a scene with scissors at the end of the movie. Was the violence neccessary? Probably not to the degree it was present, but I think it was always motivated by the story, the violence served the story rather than the other way around.

I'll have to see this movie again before I give it a final verdict. Along the way, I had a bit of trouble following a couple of the plot points, and that took me out of the movie. I'm hoping that if I see it again, I can get completely absorbed in the story, because I already know the plot. However, the movie is almost wholly about uncovering this mystery, so I'm not sure if it will be as interesting the second time. I guess only time will tell.

But, overall, the movie was shot and scored brilliantly, and that alone makes it worth watching. Great nasty plot twist at the end, not so much the "big twist" but the very end of the movie, which leaves you very conflicted, and that is a good thing.

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The Marriage of Maria Braun

This week for class I had to watch the movie, The Marriage of Maria Braun. I actually had to watch for class last year too, so clearly it's the movie of choice for film scholars. Lately I've been watching a ton of foreign films, be it in German film class, or on my own with Wong Kar Wai's stuff and Cowboy Bebop. Well, this movie was foreign too, and it was great.

The movie's about a woman in post WWII Germany. Her husband is missing, presumed dead, and she has to go on with her life. It's a huge movie, spanning ten years, with a bunch of characters and subplots, which I love. The opening sequence is one of the most pop openings ever, especially impressive considering it's a film made in the 70s. It opens on a picture of Hitler which blown away, along with the wall it's hung on, revealing Maria getting married as the city is being bombed, papers flying in the air, buildings falling to the ground.

What makes the movie work is the direction. Fassbinder uses color brilliantly, and can expertly manipulate mood with his filmmaking. The movie feels extremely modern, despite being set in the 40s and made in the 70s. The story of the film is great, but it's the filmmaking that makes it a really special movie.

I've had to watch a lot of Fassbinder's movies for class, and this is easily the best of them. What this has that his previous movies didn't is scope. The personal relationships aren't that far removed from a movie like The Merchant of Four Seasons, but the difference is that this movie is set in a time of turmoil. When Maria seduces Oswald, it's not about feelings, it's about trying to survive. The entire movie is about seeing people dehumanized, forced to resort to their basest instincts in order to survive.

Just as the opening sequence is incredibly pop, the closing is too. This movie ends in such a way that you're sitting there just dazed, considering the implications of the ending. Any movie that leaves you so confused, not about what happened plotwise, but about what exactly motivated the characters to do it is worth watching. I'd rather be left thinking after a movie is over then having everything tied up perfectly neatly.

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Movie is to food as...

So, a while ago I was talking with Jordan, about movies, and he was saying something about how occasionally you just need a dumb movie, you can't always watch really high quality stuff. This prompted a lengthy discussion, in which I compared movies to food, the gist of which I'll replicate here.

Movies are like food, in that there are so many levels of quality, different types of food/movies, different ways to prepare and different ways to enjoy the movie/food. From a movie, you can get a bag of chips, which fills you up, but leaves you greasy and sort of nasty, a decent meal, or a gourmet dinner, with many courses, of impeccabe quality, the kind of meal that makes you think I've never even eaten before.

A good chunk of Hollywood movies fall into the bag of chips/fast food category. They're all basically the same, and you go in knowing what to expect. If you go to see Adam Sandler in a movie, it's like buying a bag of chips, you know exactly what you're going to get, there's no surprises, and it doesn't really fill you up. Most romantic comedies fall into this category too, very formulaic, the fast food of the movie world. Also, any Arnold/Van Damme/Stallone/Diesel type action movie falls into this category, just empty calories.
A movie like Love Actually works because it is like a buffet of fast food, you get a taste of many different foods, you're bound to find something you like. By giving you this variety, you're bound to find something you like, and the formulaic nature of some of the foods/plots is undermined by the fact that you're not only eating that one food. So, that's the bag of chips. you know what to expect, you're not surprised. Unfortunately, the vast majority of filmgoers prefer the bag of chips or fast food to a more filling meal. If you keep eating/watching this stuff, eventually you get a lot of fat on your mind, that's what happens when you don't exercise your mind.

Then, there's decent meal, maybe a diner type place. This is a movie that's pretty good, you leave fulfilled, something like Toy Story or Collateral. There's actual character development, a good story is told, and you leave the theater full. This isn't the kind of restaurant you'd neccessarily reccomend to your friends, but if it came up in conversation, you'd give it a good word. I'm usually satisfied with a meal/movie like this.

However, what any filmgoer lives for is the gourmet meal, the filet mingon of movies, something expertly prepared, with the best ingredients, and incredible presentation. When I hear that one of my favorite chefs has completed a new dish, I salivate, wondering what culinary delights have been prepared. This is the kind of meal that you tell your friends about, and if you have a dinner party, these would hopefully be the main dish. What are some gourmet meals? Magnolia is kind of my archetypal example. It's got all kinds of ingredients, brilliantly mixed together by master chef Paul Thomas Anderson. If you hang out with me for long enough, I've probably tried to serve you Magnolia at one time or another. The best meals compel you to share them with others. These are the meals that even if they aren't always to your taste, you still respect the effort put into making them.

Now, getting to the two flaws of the metaphor. One is, it costs you the same amount and takes the same amount of time to watch a great movie as it does to watch a bad one, which just isn't true of meals. It costs a lot more to go to a five star restaurant than to McDonald's. With movies you don't have that excuse. I understand that it's sometimes tough to get up for a movie like Requeim for a Dream, but it's so much more satisfying after you do watch it. So, no excuses for watching bad movies. One of the things that bothers me the most is people watching a movie that they know is not going to be any better than OK, when there's so many great ones out there.

What's the other flaw? Ironically, in food, I'm not really a fan of the gourmet meal.But, that's because I'm passionate about movies, and not about food. So, I can get people not liking the gourmet movie, it's unfortunate that they don't have the taste, but a food afficianado would probably be just as mad at me for not appreciating some higher cuisine.

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Twin Peaks

I wrote this back in May 2004, which was nearly a year after I finished the series. Twin Peaks is the best TV series of all time, you should all see it. And a side note, I'd point you to the entry on the side marked "Does liking something that's popular make you uncool?" You be the judge.

In terms of TV, Twin Peaks is definitely my favorite series. Just hearing the music and seeing the bird in the opening credits, it brings up so many emotions and associations. Similarly, seeing the sign and hearing the music in Fire Walk With Me, it’s like going home. Even though there’s a number of weak plots, the series on the whole just has an atmosphere completely its own. The music, the look of it, it’s unparalleled. And then the red room, the last episode is my favorite episode of TV ever, and my favorite David Lynch work. Similarly, with each viewing, Fire Walk With Me just gets better and better. The emotion in the film, coupled with the weird visuals, it’s exactly the sort of film I want to make. The last scenes are amazing brutal, but also beautiful. That juxtaposition is what makes Lynch’s work so unique. The first time I watched Fire Walk With Me, I was a bit disappointed by the opening sequence, which seemed completely pointless, but in recent times, I’m loving even that. The whole work is such a bold direction to take what could have been a formulaic TV movie. The ending brings everything full circle, and provides great emotional closure to the series. Though, I’m still annoyed at the series ending cliffhanger. The first time I watched it, I sat just staring at the TV for five minutes. I had read that it was a two hour series finale, so I was expecting another hour, when the tape ended, I was just in shock, and completely devastated, but also in awe of the episode I had just watched. It was one of the most affecting stories I’ve ever experienced.

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Cowboy Bebop: A Rockin' Show

So, recently I watched the show Cowboy Bebop. It's an anime, and I'm not usually a huge fan of anime, the high voices bother me, but luckily, there was only one character with an annoying voice on the show, and they acknowledged how annoying she was.

I loved the show because it had an amazing sense of style, combining Western, noir, sci-fi and action tropes into, what the show itself calls, "the show that will became a genre unto itself." It had a mainly standalone, episodic structure, which bothers me in somethings, but worked here. The reason for that is despite the fact that most of the plots were standalone, they still did a good job of developing the characters. An episode like 'My Funny Valentine,' in which a man from Faye's past appears is a good example of something that showed us a great deal about her, in what was essentially a standalone story.

I particularly liked the way that the character relationships were handled, which was really subtly. By the last episode, we can feel how close they all are, even though they never say it. You know it's killing Jet to let Spike go, and it's killing Faye too, but they don't come out and say, "I really care about you, Spike, and I think you're making a mistake." Instead they keep things internal, and I think that's much more true to life. The final episode was one of the best finales I've ever seen, recalling the brilliance of the last episode of The Prisoner. The scene where Spike goes through the syndicate building wielding grenades and guns, to the tune of "The Real Folk Blues," was pure brilliance, and the final scene was absolutely brutal.

I still think the single most brilliant sequence is Spike falling out of the building in 'Ballad of Fallen Angels.' Cutting between his memories and his fall in a way I'd never seen before, they created something completely new. And the choice of music is what made an already great scene perfect. A truly phenomenal series.

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Buffy Season Seven critique

Originally found here.

The First sucked. The things that they mocked in previous years with Spike, and his really pompous speeches they did for real with The First. It did absolutely nothing, and other than in Conversations, wasn't very threatening. It was a good idea in theory, but they had nothing to fight, and nothing to interact with on the evil front.

And Caleb was a retread of Warren, but without any of the interesting pieces. He's the most black and white villain since the Master. Seven's villains are definitely a reaction to what happened in six. It's the biggest, most evil foes the show has ever had, but also completely without personality, as well as totally impotent. The first does very little to actually hurt the group and Caleb wasn't particularly interesting. I can debate some things, but I think The First was a total failure, and the only weak villain the show ever did. Each previous villain built on what had came before in some way, the First went nowhere new.

Also, Buffy/Spike. I love what's done with the characters, it's just we have to go through so much cliffhangery bullshit to get to the real content. First, Spike is insane, so he's not himself for a while, then he might be evil, then he's under the possession of The First. I felt manipulated about what was going on with the character. When they finally get around to the frank discussion of the last few episodes of the series, it's brilliant. Spike just sleeping with Buffy is one of the most touching scenes in the show's entire run, and shows how much both he and Buffy have grown. It's also a great contrast to their scenes in season six. And, of course the discussion between them in the finale is great.

Anya. Selfless is obviously brilliant, and her sacrifice for Andrew at the end of the series is great, but for most of the middle of the season, she's without purpose and not really developed. She doesn't have much of a reason to be hanging out with Buffy and gang, but when she does get the spotlight, it's great.

Andrew makes me laugh with every line he says, and singlehandedly kept me going through the Bring on the Night/Showtime era. I love what they do with the character, particularly in Storyteller, where the comic relief becomes very serious. I really felt for the character, and I did in Chosen when he's talking about Anya too. Though I may crack on season seven, Andrew is a bright spot, and his evolution is probably my favorite thing about the season.

And, I would agree with you that Buffy is the star of season seven, but I think that's too much of a departure from where the show had been since at least season three. By six, it's a completely ensemble show, as the musical shows, each of these people has their own plot, and over the course of the season, all the stories are developed. In season seven, the other characters are reduced to sidekicks, in a way that they hadn't been for a number of years, and it just doesn't feel right.

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