She Hate Me

Yesterday I watched Spike Lee's latest 'joint,' She Hate Me, a film that got some of the worst reviews of any film made by a well respected director. The film was savaged and disappeared from theaters, but, it sounded bad in a really interesting way, so I decided to give it a look and what I'll say about the film is that it's never boring, but I would say it's a long distance from being a good film.

A lot of Lee's stuff sufers when he emphasizes his editorializing over the narrative. The 25th Hour is a great film, its one misfire being a sequence in which the main character complains about the various ethnic groups in the city, something that was already done in Spike's Do The Right Thing. According to the commentary, this sequence was in the book, but considering Spike had already done the exact same thing, it would have been something good to drop. Bamboozled is a film that I liked, but the message of the film is so well integrated into the story itself, there's no need for the montage of clips at the end, which gives you the feeling that the film is more a two hour long editorial than a story. Is there anything wrong with making a film just to prove a point? No, but I think the point was conveyed by the story, you don't need to break the artifice to reenforce it.

The film that's widely considered his masterpiece, Do the Right Thing, works because it doesn't tell you what to think. You're left with a moral conundrum at the end of the film, it's frustrating, but forces you to think about what the events of the film mean. Lee doesn't interrupt the film to tell you what to think about things.

She Hate Me is a film that's filled with so many problematic scenes, you're really left wondering what Spike was thinking. The main plot of the film revolves around Jack Armstrong, a corporate executive who gets fired and begins a scheme to impregnate lesbians for ten thousand dollars a *ahem* pop. So, the film goes into a really bizarre sequence in which we watch Jack in the process of impregnating the women, and despite being lesbians, they all seem to be experiencing this sort of sexual ecstasy. So, it's basically Jack having passionate sex with a parade of beautiful women and being paid ten thousand dollars each to do it. I just couldn't imagine lesbians really paying ten thousand dollars to be impregnated this way, the whole sequence feels like the setup for a porn film. A lot of that is do to the editing, rather than present these encounters as a staid business transaction, the women really seem to be enjoying it, basically implying that lesbians really would like to have sex with men. I'm not saying they should be in pain, but only one woman seemed to have any objections about what they have to do to get pregnant.

Then there's a question I'm really surprised Lee didn't bring to the table, which is the fact that these women are all getting a black man to father their child. Maybe this is a really forward minded bunch, but I'd imagine if you could have your pick of man, many of these women would not choose to have a mixed race child. The only reference to this issuecomes with the mafia subplot, and the don seems very cool with the fact that a black man impregnated his daughter. Now, from what I know of the mafia, it's not a very accepting society, so I'd question whether he would so openly endorse his lesbian daughter, let alone agree with her using a black man to impregnate herself. It's not like you couldn't find someone to have sex with Monica Bellucci if this was the route she wanted to take to get pregnant.

Now, maybe all the characters are fine with it, more power to them in that case, but considering Spike's film in particular deal with issues of race in society, I'm stunned he didn't address it in this case, not to mention the fact that he turns this character into the stereotypical highly sexualized black man. Was this done intentionally? I can't imagine Spike is not aware of what he's doing, but the film is so self serious, you don't get any indication that things should be read on a satirical level.

So, besides this problematic plot, we've got a whole bunch of other things thrown in. The opening of the film is an extended riff about corporate scandals, as Jack finds his company becoming the new Enron. There's definitely an interesting film there, about a whistleblower coming under fire from a corporation, but that plot is abandoned for the middle of the film, and when it returns, it's just an excuse for more editorializing. There's no real dramatic tension in the resolution of this plot because it disappears from the film for so long. Then, Spike breaks the artifice to show us a cover of Time Magazine about real corporate whistleblowers, something that's just unneccesary. We get the point, they'd mentioned Enron before, this just takes you out of the story.

Then the ending of the film presents us with a new vision of family, as Jack becomes the father to the children he fathered with a lesbian couple, and they all live together. This seems like an absurdly fantasy ending, everything works out for Jack, he gets the family he wants, gets his girlfriend back, and throws another girlfriend in there.

So much of the film is so absurd, it's got to be considered satire, Spike can't be expecting us to accept this as it is on the surface. The film works best when you look at it as just a journey that goes from place to place and just accept the absurdity that emerges along the way. A flashback to Watergate, a George Bush campaign commercial, a Time Magazine cover cut in, animated sperm, you can't expect this film to be a coherent narrative, but it's still an entertaining film. I was never bored, and despite the array of problems, the film is quite well shot, with a lot of cool handheld, jump cut stuff.

So, you're left wondering what Spike was thinking. This film really feels like he had a couple of decent story ideas and just threw them together into one film. At 138 minutes, the film was a bit long, if he drops the corporate whistleblower stuff, you could bring the film down to 100 minutes or so, and go a bit more in depth into the implications of what Jack was doing.

Another issue I have with the film is the idea that Jack is neglecting his fatherly duties by impregnating these women and then signing away his custody rights. He's basically a live version of a sperm bank, these women aren't expecting anything, and he doesn't really have to give them anything. I could understand being morally repulsed by what he does, just because he's basically selling his body to these women, and that could be degrading, but these kids aren't his responsibility. It's not the same as impregnating a woman you're in a relationship and then cutting out.

But, if you go over every problematic thing about this film, you'd be here until the end of time. Ultimately, there's some laughs, some good ideas, and a lot of challenging content. Sometimes it's better to watch a flawed film that aims high and leaves you thinking than to watch something that's not flawed, but doesn't do anything new or interesting. So, if nothing else, at least Spike created a film that makes people question things, even if that question is only 'What the hell was he thinking?'

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Other than Revenge of the Sith, this has been a pretty lackluster summer movie season. However, things may be turning around. Last week, I saw a sneak preview of The Island, which was surprisingly good. Michael Bay isn't a director I'm usually a fan of, but this is by far his best film, featuring not only great photography and action sequences, but also some really interesting plot stuff, as well as solid acting from Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. I really respect Bay's visual sense, particularly when shooting Dijmon Honshu's character, I feel like Dijmon must have slipped him some money because he's shot in an unbelievably cool way.

And after seeing that, I knew that over the next two weeks, two of my favorite directors would be bringing out new films. On July 22, Richard Linklater's new Bad News Bears drops and yesterday I saw the new film from Tim Burton, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Now, the one thing these two films have in common is the fact that I really have to question what each of these directors is doing. For two people with such unique artistic voices, it seems like a waste of talent to remake anything, let alone family films from the 70s. But I respect the two of them enough that I'll see anything they put out, and these two films are no exception.

So, after seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I'm left with sort of a mixed feeling. I can see why Burton would want to make the film, because it's an incredible visual showcase, but it's also the one film where the criticism frequently leveled against him, that he's merely a visual showman with no storytelling ability, may be true. This is a film that's basically an hour long jaunt through a visual wonderland, bookended by some marginally developed story.

The film is reduced to the level of pure cinema, just music and visual, quite frequently. In a mainstream Hollywood film, this sort of narrative abstraction is quite admirable. Burton succeeds in making a film where the narrative consists solely of a tour of visual spectacle. The whole tour of the factory consists of showing us a room, and then a spectacular act of violence directed towards a child. I love the enjoyment the film lets us take in the suffering of the children. Sure, they're set up as unlikable characters, but you don't frequently see kids eaten by squirrels, without any consequences whatsoever.

The thing I love about the film is the visuals. Burton's two most recent films, Planet of the Apes and Big Fish, did have some interesting visual stuff going on, but they weren't particularly 'Burton.' This film is definitely a return to the visual excess of films like Beetlejuice and Batman Returns, this film is more visually centered than anything else in Burton's career. It reminds me a lot of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, in the way that it's about this wacky guy going through a series of visually spectacular moments.

The environments in the film were incredible looking. I particularly loved the TV room, and those great sunglasses, as well as the cartoon-techno excess of the gum room. Another really cool visual moment was the puppet intro to the factory.

The other person who returned with this film is Danny Elfman. Elfman is one of my favorite film composers, and in Burton's best films, his music is integral to making the film work. His scores for Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns are arguably the two best film scores ever written, fully integrated into the storytelling. The ending sequence of Batman Returns is operatic, relying solely on visuals and music to tell the story. And of course there's his phenomenal work on Nightmare Before Christmas, where he may deserve even more credit than Burton for making it such a great film.

Sadly, Elfman has been, quite frankly, sucking lately. His work on Spider-Man was nonexistent, and Hulk wasn't much better. His score made absolutely no impact on the viewer, and Planet of the Apes and Big Fish weren't much better. When you hire a composer as great as Elfman, his work should be brought front and center, not used as merely background accompaniment.

Luckily, with this film, his music is spotlighted right from the beginning. His opening cue is phenomenal, with great choral bits and the nice integration of some crazy electronic sounds. It's his best work for Burton since Mars Attacks! And once we get into the factory, Elfman really steps into the spotlight, with the crazy songs he writes for the Oompa Loompas. These songs harken back to Elfman's days in the rock band, Oingo Boingo, but move through all sorts of musical styles. My favorite is the folk song style number done when Violet is put down the garbage chute, but all the songs are great. Elfman needs to do another musical, he's a musical genius.

These musical sequences provide Burton with some of the best visual material in the film. He does some cool Busby Berkley allusions, including one really cool shot where the camera is down a chute and people are rotating around above it, creating a reverse Busby. I really liked the use of one actor to portray all the Oompa Loompas, the effects there are seamless, and make everything seem really surreal. These musical sequences were definitely the highlight of the movie.

Sadly, while the oompa loompa effects were seamless, the film was too reliant on CG set pieces. The opening sequence was pretty solid CG, but you could still tell it was CG and that took me out of the movie. If you compare that factory press sequence to the one that opens Pee-Wee's Big Adventure or Edward Scissorhands, I think it's obvious that sometimes is better to create a convincing effect than to have the excess visual spectacle of that sequence. I know 'it's all not not real,' so it's pointless to criticize CG, but that sort of obvious CG takes me out of the reality of the film. Similarly, there's some parts during the factory tour that are obvious CG, such as the boat ride bit, and they're much less visually dazzling than the sets.

I guess the problem here is that the CG is being presented purely as visual spectacle, so you're forced to examine the irreality of it, whereas in something like Revenge of the Sith, the CG is used in service of a narrative, so you're consumed in the narrative and accept the CG as a part of the world. I still feel like even in the best CG, there's something a bit artificial about it. A well designed model is better than the best CG, look at the space battle in Return of the Jedi, or all of Blade Runner, a film that looks so real, a reality that, at least today, could not be matched in CG.

But, on the whole, this is still one of the most exciting visual films I've seen in a long time. It always offers you something new and interesting to look at, and the sets are nicely integrated into the film's thematic development, notably with the Buckets' house. One of the coolest visual moments was when Wonka's father moves his house out of a block and into the middle of nowhere. That's one of those classic moments that makes no sense in real world terms, but somehow works.

The actual plot of this film is Burton going back to his classic theme, the outsider struggling to come to terms with society. Wonka lives on his own in a castle atop a town, much like Edward Scissorhands. The narrative structure here is also drawn from Edward Scissorhands, with Wonka flashing back to his experience with his father over the course of the narrative, in the same way that Edward did.

The difference between this film and his best work is that each of those films did something different with the outsider theme. Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns tell almost identical stories, but with totally different tones and generic signifiers. Factory just presents the classic theme, without going any further or developing it in any new way.

I think it's difficult for artists who have pet themes to create new films, because people have certain expectations of what they should be. I criticized Big Fish and Planet of the Apes because they weren't 'Burton' enough, but here I'm saying that Factory is just Burton on autopilot, so it's nearly impossible for him to find the right balance. I think it's same criticism that Lynch got on Mulholland Dr. or Wong Kar-Wai on 2046, they're just going back to the same themes and visual motifs, without developing them further. Is this film just Burton doing Burton, as MD is Lynch doing Lynch?

The problem with Factory is that it just has no substance. The character conflicts are only marginally developed, and the ending seems a bit trite. That's because so much of the film focuses on the purely visual, and those are by far the best moments. So, the question this film raises is, are great visuals and music enough to make a great film? I would argue in this case, it makes a good film, but not a great one.

Most films have the opposite problem, they have a competent story, but nothing interesting visually. Burton has always been criticized for his lack of storytelling ability, and on his other films, I would stronly dispute that claim. Beetlejuice has phenomenal characters and a really interesting story, and Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns are so thematically rich, you could analyze them for years. If Factory didn't exist within Burton's canon, there'd really be nothing to analyze. Storywise, it's only interesting looking at it from the perspective of auteur criticism.

And, this is a film where nearly everyone going to see it already knows what happens, the joy is purely in seeing how things happen, and since there's not much story, the how is all in the visual. The story itself is designed to be a visual showcase, so from the moment he chose this project, Burton was basically destined to make a film that's solely a visual experience.

The question this film leaves is, can a film be successful solely as a visual creation, with minimal narrative or thematic substance? The answer I would give is yes, but without those things a film can never be truly great. A film needs to have both a story, or at least thematic issues or character development, and interesting visuals to be a great film. Burton has made a really fun movie that's visually dazzling, but it's not a great film. Burton's problem right now is that he's done so many variations on the same theme, it's tough to come up with a new approach, yet when he branches out, his films don't feel 'Burton' enough. It's definitely a conundrum. The stop motion film, Corpse Bride, definitely has potential, but Burton's only co-directing. However, he didn't direct The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it's still phenomenal, if Corpse Bride is half as good, it'll be Tim's best film since Ed Wood.

If I was to advise Tim, I would say his next live action film should be a musical based on an original story he creates, with music by Danny Elfman. The best moments of Charlie are the songs, both musically and visually, so why not go all out, and create something as visually crazy as Nightmare, but in live action, and fully integrating the songs into the plot. Maybe that would be the best way to keep developing his favorite themes, and still create a very new, fresh film.

Zooropa: At the Crossroads of Rock's Future

I listened to U2's Zooropa today, their second best album, behind only their masterpiece Achtung Baby. Zooropa is interesting because despite its brilliance, it's the only U2 album not to yield a hit single. Your average person would recognize stuff off of almost all their other albums, but Zooropa has no songs that make it big in the cultural mainstream, nothing you'd hear on the radio. However, that doesn't mean it's not great, I would argue Zooropa represents a reach into a new world of music, creating a new type of sound, a sound that could have defined the 1990s, but sadly never made the cultural impact it deserved to make.

Throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 80s, there were constant innovation and evolution in terms of what rock music could do. The 50s started rock and roll, and it matured in the 60s, with the album rock masterpieces of The Beatles. In the 70s, prog and the heavy, blues rock sound of Led Zeppelin represented steps forward in creating a new rock sound. This excess was countered by the minimalism of the punk scene. In the 80s, hair metal and synthesizers, regardless of your opinions on them, created a unique new sound.

However, there's nothing I would consider the 90s sound. You could call a song very 80s or very 70s, but I'd hesitate to call any rock very 90s. There's some bands who you could definitely identify with the early 90s alternative sound, your Pearl Jam or Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I don't think there was anything that was as culturally pervasive as in previous decades.

As the 90s began, U2 released Achtung Baby, an album which, at the time, was praised for its bold leap into a new type of sound. Listening to the album today, the leap doesn't seem that big, Achtung Baby is an album of fairly conventional songs with the well chosen incorporation of some electronic sounds, along with slight dance influence. I think it's one of the best albums ever made, nearly every song is a work of genius, and could have served as a single. Acrobat and Ultraviolet, my two favorite U2 songs, both hail from this album.

However, I don't think Achtung Baby is that radical. The album that followed it, Zooropa, is the massive leap that Achtung Baby was purported to be. If each decade is to be defined by new leaps in music, I would argue that Zooropa should have been that leap for the 90s. It features songs that are liberated from traditional chrous/verse structure, frequently jumping between different sections that could be considered equally chorus worthy. For example, on 'Lemon,' there are three distinct sections of the song, one in which Bono sings "She wore lemon...," another in which he sings "Midnight, it's where the day begins," and then a third part in which some other guy speak-sings "Man paints a picture, a moving picture..." So, all these pieces are combined with a an amazing electronic loop and some cool guitar stuff.

So, this song is in someways a throw back to prog rock, and Pink Floyd's electronic rambling songs. However, it uses much more repitition than the frequently improvisatory Floyd, and I think that's where the dance music influence comes in. What the song does is take a bunch of cool elements and combine them on rotating loops, just like a dance song would. This is evident on 'Numb,' which is a driving vocal loop by The Edge, with the chorus from Bono coming in over the top.

I'd consider this rock music made with dance rules the lost music of the 90s. This was the new sound, the bold step forward that could have been the reinvention of rock for the 90s. U2's Pop was noted for their embrace of dance music, but I would argue that's actually a step back towards more traditional song structures and anthemtic music. While I love the album, it's got a lot more traditional song structures, and even the song called 'Discotheque' isn't that dance driven.

As time has passed, the 90s alternative movement has basically disbanded, and rock has been totally displaced as the dominant form of mainstream music. Your average person hasn't heard a song by Radiohead, despite the massive critical acclaim for their albums. And each new 'it' band, like The Strokes or The White Stripes, have some hit songs, but generally speaking don't make a huge cultural impact. Part of the reason for this is that nearly every band out now is a throwback to something in the past. A huge number of bands out now draw influence from the 70s New York indie scene, generally speaking, bands seem to be reinventing stuff from the past, rather than creating something new. This is one of the primary reasons for the 'death of rock,' hip hop is actually doing new things, while rock is just reliving its history. Now, this isn't every band, but there's definitely more focus on updating the past than creating something completely new.

Now, there's definitely a place for giving respect to the past. One of my favorite albums ever, Daft Punk's 'Discovery' is an update of music from the 70s and 80s to fit today's style. It works brilliantly, and I would argue is actually a new sort of music, born out of the ashes of 70s and 80s stuff. This is different from The Strokes who are just doing songs in the style of 70s rock, not updating it in any way to reflect the changes in music since.

Even U2 have retreated from their push to create a new type of music. On 'All that You Can't Leave Behind,' they returned to the anthemic rock they were known for during the 80s, and despite the fact that it's a great album, 'How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb' is not a major step forward either. Now, sometimes making a great song is enough, but when a band makes such bold steps forward as U2 did on Achtung and Zooropa, it seems counteractive to go backwards. It's like Richard Linklater directing Bad News Bears, he might make a good movie, but I'd rather see him do something original than do something that's been done before.

So, this brings up back to Zooropa, which offers us a view of a new type of rock, a vision that was never realized. Just listening to it, you can hear how different is from other U2 records. The songs are all centered around these driving instrumental loops, and it's the change in the loops that signal shifts in the song's mood more than changes in the vocal. The vocals are just one part of the musical mix, rather than being the central focus. This is evident in 'Dirty Day,' which ends with a vocal loop that repeats so much as to become abstract. You don't hear the words so much as the music in the vocal.

It's interesting to hear the way U2 integrates their previous trademarks into the new style. The title track opens with a traditional Edge delay guitar riff, but it's placed into a swirling electronic environment, with vocal samples serving as the driving element in the song until it reaches a Bono vocal.

And while it is very innovative, it still pays tribute back to the past. Much like Led Zeppelin takes blues and reinvents it for the times, 'Stay (Faraway, So Close)' takes a ballad and places it into a really interesting musical environment. This is my favorite song on the album, and one of my favorite ever, so much so that I watched the movie Faraway, So Close just for its association with the song. Anyway, the vocals are fairly standard, but on the chorus, there's a guitar line following "If the night won't give you up," that's amazing. I'd argue that guitar line is so crucial to the chorus, the song is essentially a duet. It makes the song unique. So, the music becomes just as important as the vocal here, the two are interchangable, I can't imagine the song without that guitar part. Another reinvention takes place on the final track, as Johnny Cash sings 'The Wanderer,' a song notable for its driving electronic loop, and the repeating rhythmic vocals from Cash.

Zooropa is an album that's sadly unappreciated. I think it's because most people still see U2 as the band from The Joshua Tree era, 'Where the Streets have No Name,' being their archetypal song. So, U2 fans aren't fans of this incarnation of the band, and the general public wouldn't pick up a U2 album expecting something radical like this. But, if you give the album a chance, you'll find something incredibly rewarding. 'Lemon' is great partially because it's so completely unique, you've never heard a song like this. The song gave us a vision of what rock could be, but it never really came to pass, electronic music was a bust here, and rock slowly moves toward obsolesence, at least in terms of the cultural mainstream. There might be hit songs, but I couldn't see rock ever having the exclusive hold over popular music it held in the 50s-80s.

However, there is some good news. Recently, I've heard a couple of albums that seem to follow up on the electronic, dance inspired rock that this album promised. United State of Electronica are a bit more dance than Zooropa, but they definitely follow the same dance inspired rock formula, as does Bob Mould's new album, Body of Song, which is a bit more rock, but sounds fresh and new. Then, there's N.E.R.D, who are a bit more hip hop, but a lot of their songs follow up on the promise of Zooropa, which is to dancify a rock song and mix in a bunch of electronic stuff. Listen to 'Lapdance' and you can hear how a traditional rock song is made new through the combination of driving instrumental parts and interesting vocal loops.

So, perhaps it just took ten years for the promise of Zooropa to be realized, and in the near future, we will see this new form of music finally enter the mainstream.

Films of 2005 (So Far)

Here's something I posted on alt.tv.twin-peaks, but I'll throw on here too because it's pretty relevant. This is a list of all the films I've seen this year, 178 in total, all ranked on a five star scale. Now, one note on this. The scale is comparative among the films here, not film in general. I do like most of the films here, even most of the ones had something decent. So, a two is a good movie, three is really good, four is great, five is transcendent genius. The star indicates it's a film I've seen before this year.

5 stars
In the Mood for Love (Wong)*
Oldboy (Park)*
Chungking Express (Wong)*
School of Rock (Linklater)*
2046 (Wong)
Fallen Angels (Wong)*
House of Flying Daggers (Zhang)
Hero (Zhang)*
Garden State (Braff)*
Irma Vep (Assayas)
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: Extended Edition (Jackson)
Leon: The Professional (Besson)*
Donnie Darko (Kelly)*
Infernal Affairs (Lau/Mak)
Infernal Affairs II (Lau/Mak)
Jackie Brown (Tarantino)*
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)*
Satyricon (Fellini)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
Far From Heaven (Haynes)
Safe (Haynes)
Irreversible (Noe)*
Gone with the Wind
American Beauty (Mendes)*
Dazed and Confused (Linklater)*
Amelie (Jeunet)*
The 25th Hour (Lee)*
Sin City (Rodriguez)
Batman Returns (Burton)*
Unbreakable (Shyamalan)*
Heat (Mann)*
Edward Scissorhands (Burton)*
Ashes of Time (Wong)*
Aliens (Cameron)*
Days of Being Wild (Wong)*
Happy Together (Wong)*
Run Lola Run (Tykwer)*
Boogie Nights (Anderson)*
Attack of the Clones (Lucas)*
Revenge of the Sith (Lucas)*
The Big Lebowski (Coen)*
Velvet Goldmine (Haynes)
The Virgin Suicides (Coppola)*
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)*
Paris, Texas (Wenders)
Clean (Assayas)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)*
Bonnie and Clyde (Hill)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
The Shining (Kubrick)*

4 stars
Sideways (Payne)
Bad Santa (Zwigoff)
A Very Long Engagement (Jeunet)
The Ice Storm (Lee)
Mean Girls
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (Kim)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
The Aviator (Scorsese)
Captain Blood
8 1/2 (Fellini)
The Isle (Kim)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz)
Delicatessan (Jeunet)
Bullitt
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron)*
Infernal Affairs III (Lau/Mak)
Happiness (Solondz)
Bulworth (Beatty)*
Lolita (Kubrick)*
The Heroic Trio (To)*
The Incredibles (Bird)*
Crash (Haggis)
subUrbia (Linklater)
The Phantom Menace (Lucas)*
Breaking the Waves (Von Trier)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
Three Kings (O'Russell)
The Killing (Kubrick)
Cabaret
Short Cuts (Altman)
12 Angry Men (Lumet)
The Dreamers (Bertolucci)
Midnight Cowboy (Schlessinger)
Being There (Ashby)

3 stars
JSA (Park)
Walkabout (Roeg)
Safety Last
The Black Pirate
Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
Pirates of the Caribbean (Verbinski)*
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park)
Audition (Miike)
Casino (Scorsese)
We Don't Live Here Anymore
Maria, Full of Grace
The Road Home (Zhang)
The Jacket
To Live (Zhang)
Coffy (Hill)
Radiance (Perkins)
Goldfinger*
I Stand Alone (Noe)
Mars Attacks! (Burton)*
The Maltese Falcon
The Tracker
A Touch of Zen
Masters of the Flying Guillotine
Spiderman 2 (Raimi)*
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg)*
The Apartment (Wilder)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Man Who Wasn't There (Coen)*
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Spartacus (Kubrick)
One From the Heart (Coppola)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
Princess Raccoon (Suzuki)
The Doors (Stone)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Forman)
Straw Dogs (Peckinpah)
War of the Worlds (Spielberg)
Breathless (Godard)
Forrest Gump (Zemeckis)

2 stars
Mystic River (Eastwood)
Finding Nemo
Assault on Precinct 13
Identity
Rabbit Proof Fence (Noyce)
The Last Wave (Weir)
The Vikings
Existenz (Cronenberg)
Blanc
Intolerable Cruelty (Coen)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Beneath Clouds
Die Hard
Kung-Fu Hustle (Chow)
Amarcord (Fellini)
Miller's Crossing (Coen)
La Strada (Fellini)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Liman)
The Quiet American (Noyce)
Mean Streets (Scorsese)
Batman Begins (Nolan)
Grave of the Fireflies
New York, New York (Scorsese)

1 star
Speed
Napoleon Dynamite
The Mark of Zorro
Ong-Bak
Ghostbusters II (Reitman)*
Be Cool
What the Bleep Do You Know
The Newton Boys (Linklater)
Dead Heart
Dirty Harry
Black and White
Yonglu Boys
The Player (Altman)

Trailers

Talking about The Shining yesterday I forgot to mention one of the coolest things on the DVD, the theatrical trailer. Kubrick was always involved with the marketing of his films, designing the campaign for A Clockwork Orange as well as selecting the infamous Eyes Wide Shut marketing footage. The trailer for The Shining is just the shot of the elevators opening and blood flowing out of them, with the names of the principles involved with the film scrolling over it. You don't know what the film is about, but it gives you a good idea of the tone and the image of the blood coming out of the elevators is incredibly effective at making you want to see more.

This trailer's brilliance shows how easy it is to pique the audience's interest with a really strong image, as opposed to telling them the entire plot. The best trailer I've seen, and one of the most effective, was the teaser for Garden State. It had no dialogue, just images backed by Frou Frou's 'Let Go,' it doesn't tell you what the film is about, but the images perfectly capture the mood, and in my case made a film I had read a couple of festival reviews of into something I had to see as soon as possible.

I think the main problem with trailers today is that they give away way too much plot. This is not an original observation, but the thing is, trailers now always gave away the setup of the movie. Look at The Sixth Sense, this is a film where it takes a half hour or so to get to the big revelation, that this kid sees dead people, however, if you've seen the trailer, you're just waiting for it to come up in the movie. So, all the subtle buildup is for naught, since you go in knowing so much information.

But, this is something that has to be done. You can't market a movie on the idea that this kid has a mysterious, nondescript power. However, when you say this kid sees dead people, you've got people hooked. My problem is with trailers that give away the second act twist, spoiling an hour, hour and a half of the film for you. One of the worst trailers I've seen recently is for Stealth, a trailer that sets up the first conflict of the movie, a robotic plane that's going to replace real pilots, and then sets up its second conflict, that the plane becomes sentient and goes rogue, attacking people. This would probably take at least an hour of movie to get to, but the trailer shows it all.

After seeing the trailer, I feel like I don't even have to see the movie. I don't think showing more entices you into the movie, instead the best teasers give you a taste and leave you wanting more. The reason Garden State's trailer works is because it shows you all these amazing images, and then leaves you wondering, how do they fit together to form a film. Similarly, The Shining gives you just one image and it's enough to make the audience curious about the film.

There's a whole bunch of other more standard trailers that also work really well. Sin City's trailer owned, a great music choice, cool looking clips, it made me need to see the film, much like the equally brilliant trailer for Kill Bill.

But, complaining about trailers today shouldn't imply that they're necessarily worse than those of years before. On the whole, trailers today are so much more evolved than those old ones which were mostly a collection of random scenes. One exception was Alfred Hitchcock, who did a brilliant trailer for The Birds, which actually might be the best explanation of that film's central mystery, and besides being a film promo, is a really funny short piece on its own.

In fact, today's trailers have become such an art form that in some cases they make the film itself obsolete. In the case of action movies in particular, what you really want is the orgiastic two minute presentation of visual spectacle set to a cool music track. XXX was a movie with an awesome trailer that actually got me to the movie, which turned out to be awful, the moments of coolness punctuated by excessively long, dull action sequences. Still, that two minute trailer is a fine piece of work. It does everything the movie sets out to do, and there's just nowhere left to go from there.

So, what I'm asking for is trailers that give you a hint of the movie, the basic plot setup, but mainly focus on the visual of the film. Always leave the audience wanting more,

The Shining

I've been watching a lot of Kubrick lately and a few days ago, I did a rewatch of The Shining. I've gotten a lot more appreciation for Kubrick's stuff as I've watched more of it. I always loved 2001, and seeing Barry Lyndon a few months ago gave me an appreciation of just how controlled his films are. That was a film where every frame seemed perfect, just totally under control and when you look over his other movies, they're like that too.

The Shining is a bit different because it's not a movie in which Kubrick has to create a whole world. Before this, he had done Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange and 2001, all movies set in either the future or the past, in a wide range of locations, necesitating the creation of alternate worlds, which facilitates his absolute control over the content of each frame. With The Shining, rather than building an entire world, he creates a self contained world within the hotel. The film is a variation on the classic isolated house, things start to go wrong story. What makes this film much more interesting is two things, one is how well developed the characters are, second is the mysterious time fluctuations.

I'm not a fan of most horror films because of the generic requirement of creating scares. Trying to scare the audience frequently means that filmmakers will neglect traditional storytelling and character development in favor of just showing gore or having a bunch of 'jump moments.' If you look at The Grudge, all the scares are meant to come from people suddenly appearing, accompanied by a loud noise. It may startle you, but it's not actually scary. Similarly, gore isn't really scary, it can be disgusting, but watching a Jason movie is more about enjoying the sport of the kill than getting scared.

The Shining isn't a film I would actually consider that scary, but the last hour or so is extremely intense and I think what it does that's most interesting is to show things from both Jack and Wendy's perspective, so we can see him simultaneously as someone who's lost in a haze of visions and uncertainty, and at the same time as a monster, threatening the lives of his wife and son.

Jack Nicholson isn't someone you'd consider the picture of stability, and while I've heard the book is mainly about how spending all this time isolated turns an ordinary guy into a maniac, the film is more about someone who's always this tendency to kill inside him getting it brought to the surface by his time in the Overlook. There's clearly something about the place that does this to people, and the place destroys Jack.

I find Jack very threatening, and a large part of that is because of the vulnerability of the other characters. Danny, even though there's something mysterious about him, is a helpless child when put up against the power of Jack. It's interesting that the two of them almost never interact in the film. They both have to confront the mysterious forces in the Overlook, but their journeys very rarely connect. Then there's Wendy who is an utterly helpless character. Shelley Duvall looks extremely thin, gaunt even, and seems so powerless, especially when put up against the juggernaut that is Jack.

Jack spends most of the movie either alone or hanging out with the characters from his hallucination. This leads to the dual perspective I mentioned earlier, there's the story of Danny and the story of Jack, with Wendy serving as the bridge. One of the things I have a problem with in the film is the fact that Danny's story essentially stops developing about halfway through the movie. His ability to shine never really pays off in any dramatic way. There's definitely a lot more than could be done with it. I suspect a lot of the reason for that is the fact that the film is based on a novel, which makes it more likely than there will be some unresolved loose ends.

If nothing else, I admire the fact that the film leaves you with some questions to ponder. The final shot calls into question everything that's come before and has no clear explanation. I've come up with an explanation for 2001 that works for me, but I'm still struggling to figure out what the end of The Shining means, or at least to work out an explanation that works for me.

I think the most important scene to unwrapping this enigma is the scene with Grady and Jack in the bathroom. Grady says that "You've always been the caretaker" and yet Grady himself, or at least some incarnation of him, was the caretaker in 1970 and he too killed his family. I think the Overlook is 'haunted' in the sense that it brings out things into people and forces them into certain roles. The person taking care of the place will end up going crazy and his family will be killed as a result. When Danny encounters the twins they say "Come play with us, Danny," inviting him to join them in the role of murder victim. Danny resists, but by staying at the Overlook, he is placing himself in this victim role. It's much like the events of 'I Only Have Eyes for You' in Buffy, where a new series of people are possessed by ghosts and re-enact a murder that happened fifty years ago.

We don't know what happened to Grady's wife, other than she died, so it's difficult to see where Wendy fits into this. She's an outsider because she has gotten caught up in Jack's destiny, she doesn't have her own. Jack is the one carrying the burden of being the caretaker, he's always been the caretaker, according to Grady. What does this mean? I think it implies that some version of him is reincarnated as time passes and he is always pushed towards the Overlook. He talks about the weird deja vu he had walking in, fitting because he was there in the 1920s, a different version of him, but he was somehow there nonetheless.

He's essentially a trapped soul, forever destined to enact the same series of events. He talks about how he lost control and pulled Danny's arm in Vermont, that happened because he had to go to the Overlook, all these small events occurred in such a way that they would lead him to the hotel and the role as manager. Once at the Overlook, the destined events begin to occur and because this is a timeless cycle, we see time start to break down. First it's only Jack who goes into these time warps, as in the party scene, but by the end, Wendy is there too. One of the most confusing scenes for me was the scene where she sees some guy in a bear costume and another guy in a hotel room. Apparently, in the book, these two were partygoers from the 1920s. She also sees Grady, post-suicide. All time is breaking down at this point, as the Overlook finally enacts its destiny and claims another victim. So, a series of Jacks will recur over time, as will a series of Gradys. All these people who worked there in the 1920s have become subject to some kind of loop that leads them to be forever stuck in their role, unable to move on. I take it that's what "You've always been the caretaker" means, and the picture supports it. Basically, Jack will be reborn other places, and live other lives, but will always wind up back at the Overlook, and will always try to murder his family, as will Grady.

Now, the question comes up why did this happen? That's what I'm not sure about. I read an essay online stipulating that The Shining was all about the destruction of native Americans, and while I'd hesitate to go that far, I think the fact that it was build on an Indian burial ground implies that something is up with the Overlook. I'll need to rewatch again, but I couldn't find mention of any sort of major event from the 1920s that would lead these people to be trapped in the Overlook forever.

So, in the film the 'Shiners' seem to be set up as a kind of defense force against the Overlook Hotel. Dick Halleran seems to be the first line, I'd suspect the only reason he works at the Hotel is because he knows something is wrong there and he wants to keep an eye out. The only thing that saves Danny and his mother from the fate of the girls is the fact that he is able to shine Halleran and bring him to the hotel. Halleran ended up dead, but it was his snowcat that allowed Danny to survive.

Ultimately, the picture at the end creates an interesting riddle, I presented my suggestion, but I'm sure there's others, and if people have them, please leave them on the comments below. Any film that causes the audience to do this much work is doing something right. That's the genius of Kubrick, his films leave you with so much to consider, it almost makes up for the huge gaps between projects.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Yesterday I watched Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Last summer, I watched The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and I liked it, but felt it was a bit too long, not quite engaging enough to justify a two and a half hour running time. Still, a year later, I decided to check out the critically beloved Once Upon a Time in the West and I'm glad I did.

Lately, both online and out in the world, I've been having a lot of discussions about the direction of the film industry, particularly what's happening in blockbuster filmmaking. I'm seeing Batman Begins get a ton of love, when it's an incredibly flawed film. This article on Ninthart covers a lot of my feelings on the film, most notably here:

The direction was lacklustre and utterly bland, cutting to close-up during any fight and rendering it intelligible. The utterly pointless addition of Katie Holmes was far more intrusive than I had expected. The film sagged horribly in what should have been the most exciting part, the 'Becoming Batman' section. The dialogue was appallingly bad and in a year when George Lucas has been getting such bad press for his own dialogue, I'm shocked this film has been given a free pass. And Christian Bale's Batman was just trying too hard.

Anyway, I've probably said enough about Batman Begins, it's not the film's fault, it's the time it was born into. Nolan created a film that's one day going to be noted for just how "00s" the film is, in terms of pacing, action sequences and character roles. But, alas, the 00s is not the best time for action filmmaking, here in the States at least. I think people making films today could learn a lot by looking at what works in Once Upon a Time in the West.

Start this movie up and the first thing you'll notice is just how different the pacing is. The credits roll over people just standing around a train station, waiting for something to happen. The sequence is admittedly a bit long, but it does a good job of building your anticipation about what's to happen. The first real shock in this movie for me was seeing the family get killed. It's a really well done scene, culminating in one of the most incredible shots I've seen in any movie: Frank's men emerging from the bush as the young boy looks on. The music there is phenomenal, creating a really unique visual moment.

This film is all about the combination of the visual and music to create stunning moments. Ennio Morricone's score here is even better than his more iconic work on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The cutting guitars on Harmonica's theme and the female chorus over lush strings for Jill are the most notable cues, rearranged throughout the film to suit the scene.

In TGTB&TU, it was the music that kept me interested in the movie. Here, the visuals are so good that they match or eclipse Morricone's work. The best sequence in the film is the showdown between Harmonica and Frank at the end. Suspense is built up over a very long preamble in which they circle each other, have a flashback and just stare at each other before the single shot that decides the contest is fired. Leone's trademark extreme closeups work wonderfully here, Bronson and Fonda both look aged and worn down, believable warriors. In action sequences, it's usually the build up that's more important than the sequence itself, and that's certainly the case here. The actual action takes a couple of seconds, but the buildup is quite long, and it's the most enjoyable thing in the film. The combination of music and visual is perfect.

The plot here is less important, but it's still interesting. I liked Jill's story, and it was interesting to see such a strong female character in what's traditionally a male-dominated genre. The film is paced in a very strange way, you don't really become aware of the main story until about 45 minutes into the movie. This makes it a bit tough to follow the beginning, because you're sort of drifting. Even after seeing the rest of the movie, I'm a bit unclear on how the opening sequence tied into the rest of the plot. Events are sometimes a bit unnecessarily convoluted, and that can make it difficult to lose yourself in the filmmaking. Though, I think that's a problem that will be lessened on repeat viewings. Much like a Wong Kar-Wai film, on the first viewing, I got more of a feeling, an atmosphere, and on subsequent viewings I'll be able to pick up more of the plot.

One interesting thing in this film was seeing Jason Robards in his prime. The only thing I'd seen him in previously was Magnolia, he's looking a bit more spry here. Bronson's not the best actor, but his face is so good, he does what he needs to to fit the role.

So, what the film's ultimately about is the end of the archetypal gunslinger. Men like Harmonica and Frank have no place in the new world that Jill is building, that's why Frank must die and Harmonica has to leave at the end. They'll keep racing beyond the railroad, eventually running out of room to run, and that's when the archetypal west will be gone. The film's closing shot covers this, starting on Jill bringing water to the workers building her town, then panning over to the still untouched landscape, a landscape that will eventually also be civilized.

From a personal point of view, it was cool to see one of the works that influenced Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It gives you a better picture of the sort of guy he had in mind when he created Roland, a character who shares the values of a Harmonica or Cheyenne, especially in the early books.

On the whole, this was a fabulous film. It might have been a bit too long, but I was never bored despite the 165 minute running time. This film is one of the best marriages of visual to music that I've ever seen. I love the way that the film's style draws you deeper into the diegesis, rather than serving solely as its own attraction. You usually don't see a period film that's so bold with its stylistic innovation, but Leone pulls it off and creates a film that's still riveting to watch today.

Live8

It's been a bit of a slow start today, I've pretty much just been sitting around watching the Live8 conecrt event on AOL streaming media. The coverage of this event is really embelmatic of the changes going on in the way big events are covered by the media. I started watching the London conecert on TV, and they show U2 and Paul McCartney play Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band then cut away to Will Smith just as U2's set wsa about to start. So, I hopped online and got the London stream, where I was able to watch the U2 set. The TV coverage throughout the day is apalling, there's so many commercials and prepackaged segments, you barely see any of the music. But online has been great, I've seen The Who, Jay-Z, Brian Wilson, a-ha and a whole bunch of other acts.

But the whole reason I'm watching is for the reunited Pink Floyd, who are going on in about ten minutes. I'll be back with a report then, I never thought I'd see the real Pink Floyd perform togethere, but it's happened, and hopefully this'll lead to a tour or at least a few NYC gigs I can get to.

UPDATE: Well, I saw the performance and it was quite amazing. They sounded just like the album, but with enough interesting instrumental variations to make it a cool live experience. One thing that surprised me was just how good Gilmour is on the guitar, the solos on the record are unparalleled, so good that I couldn't imagine them being replicated, but he comes out and drops Comfortably Numb. Great stuff, and besides the songs, it was nice to see Roger reach out to Gilmour at the end. I don't know if there ever will be any sort of follow up tour, if there's not, this is an amazing way to go out, and for Floyd fans, this gig is going to be on the level of the rooftop Beatles farewell.

Coming soon on the blog, I'll hopefully get Six Feet Under episodes 3 and 4 soon, so I can review those. Also, I just saw Once Upon a Time in the West which rocked so damn hard, more on that tomorrow.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Yesterday, I rewatched 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the best movies ever made and #7 on my personal top 100 list. This is a film that's completely unique, an almost completely visual experience that uses the medium like no other movie. What movies are at their core is the fusion of visual and sound, that sound can be dialogue, but the medium is really best suited to moments that reliant more on music or sound effects to support strong visual storytelling. 2001's visual storytelling means that its narrative is more ambiguous than your average movie. Without dialogue to clarify things, it can be difficult to understand what is going on at the end of the movie. I know that the first time I saw the film, eight years ago when I was twelve, I immediately dashed onto the internet seeking some clarification of what I had just seen. After seeing it a bunch more times, I think I have an understanding of the movie that works for me, and more importantly, recognize that there is no definitive explanation for the end of the film, it's more about what you bring to it and finding what works for you.

But, besides the narrative, the most remarkable thing about the film is the visual storytelling. The first twenty-five minutes are dialogue free, and yet we are able to follow the story of these apes. The ape suits are still phenomenal, and this primordial world seems completely realistic. The use of music here is quite legendary, particularly in the sequence where the ape first discovers tools and his reverie is intercut with the animal bodies hitting the ground, the cuts making us aware of how the implications of his discovery.

The visual storytelling continues all through the film, and nearly every sequence in the movie has something amazing about it. I think Kubrick may have been a bit too much in love with the world he created, because the film does move at a very slow pace. I think it works well for most of the film, allowing you to get lost in the world, but the Heywood Floyd sequence could probably be speeded up a bit. Still, that's semantics, it works for me, but I know others who found the pace just too slow.

The whole HAL sequence is great, I love the production design throughout. The stark white environments and the streamlined suits, it's very visually appealing. It's astonishing how Kubrick is able to create a fully realized character out of just a camera and a voice, HAL is the most developed character in the film and even though he's the villain, you can't help but feel a bit sorry for him as he's disconnected, singing 'Daisy.' Basically, everything after the intermission is absolutely brilliant. Dave's slow journey to disconnect HAL, and then that video teasing you about what's to come. That sets up such anticipation, even on later viewings, because it signals the beginning of what I'd consider the best half hour of any film ever, the journey beyond the infinite.

The thing I love about that sequence is the way that it's purely visual storytelling, the only thing I can think of that rivals it is the last half hour of the final episode of Twin Peaks. The film becomes briefly abstract, presenting images soley for their aesthetic value, with questionable connection to the narrative. Rather than serving a specific narrative purpose, the images serve as a rorshach test for the viewer, you can see what you want in them. On this viewing, there were a lot of images that looked to me like the star child in utero, the colors were the same and the loose shape was much like what you see in photos of embryos in the womb. My favorite images in the sequence are in the journey through space sequences, the colors are so vivid and still dazzling. I love the diamonds of light that appear at one point.

Then, the 'hotel room' sequence is the type of sequence I love more than anything else, purely symbolic, drawing off what we know of a narrative, but totally open to interpretation. It's like the Twin Peaks red room, something where every single object has a meaning and it's up to the viewer to discern what that meaning is. I'm a huge fan of the way time passes, Bowman looking over and seeing an older version of himself. The entire sequence is so stately, and you get the strangest feeling watching it. This culminates in the incredible image of the star child, so simple, yet incredibly powerful. The ending of this movie absolutely owns and leaves you so alive with ideas to explore and discuss.

The most I've seen Kubrick say to describe the end of the film is this:

No, I don't mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there's a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.

When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny.

What's notable for me is that this pretty much jives with my thoughts on the film, and I feel like I was on the right path in my analysis. Still, as Kubrick intended, I came away with my own interpretation of what happened in the film, an interpretation that's largely influenced by reading and analyzing The Invisibles a few years ago. I think 2001 was a huge influence on Grant's work, particuarly in the creation of Barbelith. In the Invisibles, Barbelith was a sattelite on the dark side of the moon that sent messages to select humans to help them evolve to the next stage of consciousness. In 2001, the monolith serves basically the same function. It appears at crucial times to provide guidance for humanity and help them progress forward evolutionarily.

The sequence that seems most periphery at first, but in retrospect is absolutely essential is the ape sequence. This is a microcosm of everything that happens later and is a good guide for understanding later events. Here, we see ape beings on the verge of evolution, but unable to make that leap. They are visited by a mysterious alien force, incarnated in the monolith, and this force gives them the impetus to use tools. This creates a schism in the ape community, the tool users go on the path to evolution, while those who don't use tools head for extinction. The use of tools is such a mind blowing leap for these beings, what seems commonplace for us is compeletely alien to them, but with this little nudge, they find their way to a higher mental plane.

Leaping forward thousands of years, we once again find ourselves with a humanity on the verge of a major evolutionary breakthrough, this time moving out into the stars. The Heywood Floyd sequence doesn't add that much to the thematic development, the most interesting thing is comparing the reaction of humans there with the apes in the past. There's still the same wariness about the monolith, but there's much more angst over what to do here, and when they finally do get there, the technological leap is less clear.

The HAL sequence is the most famous from the film and for good reason. HAL represents the limits of man's current evolutionary paradigm. What began with a bone has turned into a computer whose intellect arguably surpasses man's own. So, now rather than tools aiding man in his progress forward, it is actually limiting him, HAL sabotages the mission and this sabotage is indicative of the fact that man has lost control of what once aided him. This is why man needs to evolve, because the tools have become too powerful. This menace is implied in the cuts to the dying animal during the first sequence where the ape figures out how to use the bone as a destructive tool.

So, Dave uses his ingenuity to defeat HAL and in essence kills man of the present. Man has advanced beyond using tools, where can he go now? The answer lies beyond the infinite. What is it that happens during this sequence? I think Dave is transported to an alien planet, a completely different world, the light show is this journey, as he leaves behind earth and finds himself on another world. According to Kubrick, this is a 'zoo,' I see it more as a holding area, Dave must first leave behind his body before the alien intelligence can transform him into the new version of humanity. He sees his life passing quickly, and by extension, humanity itself grows older, eventually dying and transforming into a new younger version of itself, the starchild, a new type of being. This leap is as great as the intelligence leap between man and ape and the implications for humanity's future potential as great. I think we can only understand this jump by considering the leap from the bone to the spacecraft, that sort of advancement will be replicated. What this entails we can only speculate upon, apes couldn't guess what we'd be doing today, and we can't guess what this new Starchild race will be doing in the future.

Something else that should be addressed in the 'hotel room' is the breakdown of linear time. This is another idea that's quite similar to The Invisibles, the idea that when we evolve we will become 4D beings who are able to view our lives from a detached perspective, taking in the entirety of life all at once. In that room, Dave has that perspective. He finds himself aged by his journey, but then he ages a lot more, not in a linear fashion, rather he sees older versions of himself and then we transfer over to them. A question that lingers is whether the cut to the new version indicates a transfer of the current Dave's consciousness to an older body or if it's a leap through time. Dave himself may live thirty years in that room, but because he, and by extension us, are no longer bound by the conventions of linear time, we can just move through his passing much quicker. We don't get enough information to make a definitive statement, but that's what works best for me, the idea that the thirty years are there, but we don't have to see them because we have moved beyond the need to stay within time, it's just a part of the evolution into a higher form, first we're not bound by time, then we're not bound by a physical body.

The entire film is about this evolution, showing us man's roots, his present status and then his future. It's about our journey as a species towards higher and higher planes, leading to this eventual massive evolutionary jump. It's the same thing as The Invisibles 2012 event or the Promethea 'apocalypse,' they're all describing a move beyond simple physical reality towards a heightened existence.

There are very few films so ripe for analysis as 2001 and that's a large part of the reason that I love it. I think it's the sort of film that is a great reflection what your beliefs are, if you're looking for something in this film, you can probably find it, which isn't to say that it has no intended meaning, it's just that Kubrick created a film that is much about what the viewer brings to it as it is what's contained in the text.

As much as I love Kubrick's other films, I sometimes wish he would have made another film as abstract and cosmically concerned as this. Each of his projects is completely unique, but I think this is such a vital, pure filmmaking, I can't help but want more. Nearly forty years later, 2001 the year has come and gone, but 2001 the movie is more relevant to the world we live in than ever before, providing a vision of a humanity that could be if we finally get our act together and evolve.

Clean

Yesterday I watched the film Clean, which reunites the team behind the brilliant Irma Vep, director Olivier Assayas and lead actress Maggie Cheung. This is a film with quite a backstory. Sometime after filming Irma Vep, Assayas and Cheung got married, and he was writing this film as a present to her, but they ended up getting divorced, and while they were in the process of working out that divorce, they made this film together.

So, the film is prescient in its depiction of a woman struggling to make it on her own after her marriage falls apart, in the film, it's the death of her rock star husband that sets things in motion, and as the film goes on, she has to kick her heroin addiction, in the hopes that she will one day regain custody of her son.

What makes the film great is Maggie Cheung's performance as Emily. At the start of the film, she's a Yoko Ono type character, a woman who is blamed for her husband's musical decline. So, she is fiery and defiant, fending off criticism. But once he dies, she goes through a humbling process, we see her in jail, and even when she gets out, she's forced to give her son away and work through a series of menial jobs, all the time struggling with breaking her addiction. It's a totally different role than anything else I've seen Cheung in, that was a major reason why Assayas made the film, to give her a chance to play someone closer to herself in real life.

In most of the Asian films she's in, she plays a sort of chaste, idealized woman, regal and slightly removed from the dirty nastiness of reality. I would compare her to Nicole Kidman over here, someone who may play characters that may suffer, but always seems a bit ethereal, above normalcy. So, here, Assayas gives her a character who is inundated with problems, and unable to make things work. It's a stretch for her, but she completely pulls it off, she's utterly convincing in her role, all the more surprising considering she has to speak in three languages. I said it when I saw Irma Vep, I'll say it again, American directors are missing out on such a talent by not using her. Her English is great, and as an actress, she's one of the best in the world today. And even if you're not talking about the art, her presence would be a huge help in increasing international box office revenue.

In addition to Cheung, Nick Nolte as Albrect puts in a great performance. Most of his scenes are with a kid, but both he and the kid are great, and you really understand what he's feeling. Cinema isn't always dependent on an emotional connection, but the fact that you care about Emily, Albrecht and Jay makes the events much more meaningful. You want Emily to have her son, but at the same time, you want him to stay with Albrecht. The arrangement they work out at the end gives the film a great happy ending while staying within the bounds of realism.

Assayas' films always look good and are interestingly made; this is no exception. He uses a lot of handheld camera, with frequent jump cuts, and that does a good job of conveying Emily's mental instability. I really like the use of music, particularly the last scene.

This is the sort of film that works because it creates fully realized, sympathetic characters and then lets you follow them around as they struggle to find something more in their lives. I think that's a resonant struggle, even if you're not trying to ditch heroin, you can relate to Emily's struggle to make a better life, to improve her station in the world. The film doesn't judge the character, or become moralizing about the drugs, it's something that happened and now she has to move on. So, great performances, interesting filmmaking, emotional engagement with the characters, you've got yourself a great film right there.

Batman Begins

It's been some busy times lately, my sister graduated on Wednesday and I've been doing a bunch of work over at LMC to get ready for the camp. However, before this busy stuff happened, I was still guilty of one major film/comics related sin and that was not seeing Batman Begins until nearly a week after its release. The film was getting amazing reviews and everyone I talked to who saw it seemed to love it, so I was expecting something pretty good. However, I was still wary because I'm such a huge fan of the Tim Burton Batman films, particularly Returns, which is #8 on my top 100 films list. I think I might be the film's biggest fan in the whole world, it's just a transcendent piece of cinema, and I wrote a bit about it here, as well as in a 23 page paper on the film for my action cinema class.

Anyway, in that piece, I also wrote about my thoughts on the upcoming Batman Begins, saying:

And I feel like this film makes the upcoming Batman Begins seem so irrelevant. There's no way Nolan can top this film, and in making a Spider-Man style blockbuster out of Batman, he'll just embrace the commodification of Hollywood that is preventing really personal films from being made. Batman Returns is so unique because it's one of the most personal blockbusters I've ever seen. You can sense Burton's involvement in every level of this project, and maybe that's why the film wasn't successful. To make a film that some people will really love, you're going to alienate others. But, I'd rather have a film that a few people absoultely love than one that everyone likes.

Now that I've seen the film, I think I was a bit off in my assessment of it. It's a film that has actually ended up being pretty much loved en masse. The reviews are not of the grudgingly positive variety, they're raves and people out in the world seem to absolutely love the film. I would not qualify the film as a Spider-Man style accessible blockbuster, it's darker and less pop than that film. However, what it is not is a personal film, or a good film.

Watching Batman Begins, I admittedly went in with a bit of resistance, due to my love of Burton's films, but I was open enough to the film to love it if the quality was there. Then I watched the film, waiting for it to get good, to see what made people love it so much, and it just wasn't there. The whole movie went by and I was unmoved and unimpressed by a fairly generic post-Se7en neo-noir, that features a guy who dresses up in a bat suit instead of a newbie young detective.

This film really falls prey to the problems that mar so many contemporary action movies. The most important is in the pacing. I hate the idea that Hollywood executives like to lock a story into a three act structure with set emotional beats and character arcs, but this misguided rigidity is drawn from the basic storytelling principles that have worked for centuries. In order to keep the audience's emotional involvement, you have to put your hero through trials and have them changed 'by the fire.' The events of a movie should make an impact on the characters. In this film, Bruce Wayne has a pretty solid character arc for the first hour or so, he goes through changes and eventually decides to become Batman. This is a big step, but there, his journey basically ends. Once he is Batman, his problems basically stop, and other than a few minor injuries, everything goes extremely well for him at the end. There's no struggle, no sense that he earns the victory, and while this may have been intentional, it means that the entire second half of the movie is devoid of emotional stakes.

Even though it's not technically based off a comic, the definitive superhero narrative of recent years is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The key here is that she has all these powers, so fighting people isn't that tough, but when you bring emotions into the battle, it becomes much more complex. So, beating the Master in year one, very easy, beating Angelus in year two, agonizing, and the leap in quality is enormous. You need to have your hero in danger, and emotional consequences are actually better than physical danger, because the movie is called Batman Begins, we know he won't die. Admittedly, it's a bit unfair to compare a TV series, with so many more hours to build up the characters, to a film, but the basic storytelling principles are the same.

The entire movie is paced at roughly the same speed and emotional level. We get none of the ups and downs, there's no moment where we think Batman might lose. Cheesy and cliche though it may be, you really need your hero to have some problems and between his money and physical prowess, Batman can do whatever he wants. We never doubt him and that makes for bad storytelling. This movie really needed the moment where Batman is beaten, almost dead, then a swell of music starts and we see him pulling himself up, somehow mustering the strength to finish the job. Those scenes are in movies because they work on an emotional level, it may be cliche, but it's better than nothing. It reminds me of Terminator 3 in the way that a lot of events happen in the movie, but at the end you don't get the feeling that you actually watched anything of substance, it all just sort of passed in front of you in one block of footage.

The last battle between Batman and Ra's Al Ghul is completely devoid of tension, because Batman has no real conflict with the villain. Yes, they had the mentor relationship in the beginning, but he has no reason not to kill Ra's. So, without any emotional tension, we'd need Batman to be in some physical danger, and we don't get that either, or more accurately, we can't tell if he is because of the way the fight is edited. You have no clue what's going on because cuts are used to convey action rather than the actors actually fighting. The best action scenes rely on us knowing exactly what's going and being able to easily follow things. Look at the lightsaber duel in The Phantom Menace, wide shots make it easy to follow the action. Here, it's all quick cuts and then somehow Batman has won, we don't know how. But, that's not just this movie, it's a problem with many action movies today.

The other major issue I had with the film was the score. Most movies, you notice a good score and if it's a bad score, you don't even think about it. However, with the memory of Elfman's two phenomenal Batman scores, the absence of anything musically interesting here is glaring. This is another problem with action movies today, what happened to the theme song? Recently, the idea of having one piece of music that recurs throughout a film has gone out of style and it has hurt movies so much. Look at Revenge of the Sith, the score is so thematically developed, you could watch just the music and visuals and understand the emotional beats of the film. Williams has so many developed themes, he just has to choose the right moment for each one and he's got a brilliant score. Or for a more simple example, look at any James Bond film, the best moment is always at the height of an action sequence when the Bond theme starts playing, everything seems so much cooler. The theme is such an easy shortcut to make events seem important and this film's music is so generic, I was actually playing Elfman's Batman theme in my head, just to try to improve things a bit.

Why would a filmmaker not use a big theme song? Perhaps it makes things too easy, too emotionally manipulative, but when something works, it's never too easy. Music in film is like smell in real life, it's tied into emotional memory, and just playing the music can bring up a feeling. To not use the music in aid of the film is like deciding to speak without any adjectives, you might be able to communicate, but people aren't really going to care about what you say. It's so easy to make a theme song, why not just use it? If Terminator 3 had only used the Terminator theme it would have went up in quality by at least 25 percent.

Also, the film had a really generic post Se7en look. It's dark, seedy, rather ugly, and while that may have been appropriate for the story, from an aesthetic point of view, it's uninspiring. I did really like the look of Golden Age Gotham, with that elevated train, but both Burton films show that you can do dark and seedy and still have a little zest in the look of your movie.

So, I've been pretty harsh on the film, and I think a large part of that is due to my love of the Tim Burton films. Brian Singer is making a Superman movie that's pure homage to the 1979 Superman movie and he gets respected and applauded for that, when the Burton Batman films are so much better than the decent Reeve Superman film, and they get no notice from this work. Instead Nolan creates a pretty generic, impersonal film that has for some reason been embraced widely by nearly everyone. Batman Returns was the perfect take on the character and his sort, it came out thirteen years ago, there was no need for this movie to be made, and watching the film, I don't think it did anything that Burton's Batman films didn't.

I'm not claiming to be unbiased, but watching this film, I was waiting for it come alive and it never did. I really feel like I saw a completely different film than other people did, I just don't get how people could like it so much when this is a rather boring story and totally uninteresting filmmaking. Nolan may be getting the reputation as a golden boy now, but his films all fall into this sort of dirty, dark, yet uninteresting neo-noir genre. Memento had a solid gimmick, but watching it again, it's a standard story wrapped in a cool structure. Insomnia was uninspiring and Batman falls into that same sort of not bad, but not good limbo. I think people's expectations have been so lowered by the awful crop of films released this summer (and the lingering memory of Batman and Robin) that anything that doesn't talk down the audience gets kudos. It's what makes Clint Eastwood's competent, but uninspiring films, best picture winners and Batman Begins the hit of the summer.

People crack on Revenge of the Sith for having bad dialogue, but the pure emotion of the lava duel or the intercut birth/death sequence does more both emotionally and technically than Batman does in its entire run. I guess what I'm saying is that not having anything explicitly bad doesn't make a film good, and having flaws doesn't mean that a film can't still be a masterpiece. Batman Begins is competent, but that's not enough, particularly when the shadow of one of the greatest blockbusters ever made, Batman Returns, lingers. Just compare the emotional impact of the final half hour of Returns to the dull action sequence that closes Begins and tell me which does more with film, and which gets closer to the dual nature of the Batman himself.

We3 by Morrison and Quitely

Grant Morrison is my favorite writer, and probably the best creative person in any medium right now. Frank Quitely is the best artist in comics right now, the man has drawn the best issue of any comic ever, The Invisibles 3.1, as well as the brilliant miniseries Flex Mentallo, both written by Grant Morrison. So, I was understandably excited to read their new miniseries, We3, which just came out in trade earlier this month. The two of them together are a team unparalleled in comics, and We3 pushes the medium in uncharted directions, while at the same time telling a story unlike anything else Morrison has done.

Grant Morrison has a lot of pet themes that are present in almost all his work, the boundaries between fiction and reality, the evolution of humanity to a superhuman level, exploration of the nature of reality, and while I love all those themes, it does mean that it's pretty easy to recognize and understand a Morrison work once you've done in depth study of his major opus, The Invisibles. We3 is a major departure from everything else he's done before, it's like no story I've ever experienced before, and the thrill of discovery is always something I like to experience.

The book is about a team of cyborg-animal assassins, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, who have been trained by the government to kill people. They have been augmented and given the ability to speak, however, the team has become outmoded, prompting the military to end the Weapon 3 project. However, the animals escape and go on a search for 'home,' all the time being pursued by a military that needs to destroy them to prevent evidence about the project from getting out.

The work has two really notable things about it. One is the art which is some of the most dazzling I've ever seen. Quitely's work here rivals JH Williams' on Promethea in terms of how he invents an entirely new visual language for depicting events. Quitely has always been an incredible artist, the way he draws things is very cool looking, and even when he's working on a more conventional book, like New X-Men, his stuff looks better than anyone else out there, but here, he's in experimental mode, and it's a joy to behold.

The whole work is told from the animals' point of view, and to facilitate this, Quitely depicts almost all the human characters in fragments, just a mouth or legs, to show how animals would view them. This is really notable in the first scene where we see the team. We can see the animals' faces, but not any of the government people. Similarly the silent sequence that opens the book builds so much suspense, culminating in an amazing page in which we see a man being literally split apart.

The first issue also contains a great security camera sequence, with six extremely dense pages of eighteen panels each, almost all silent, a sequence that culminates with a double page spread of the animals breaking out. After the incredibly claustrophobic tight panel layouts, the double spread gives the reader the same relief that the animals feel.

In the second issue, we see the animals fighting and these sequences are the most violent, incredibly rendered things I've ever read. Quitely does a few layouts in which there's a big main image, with a whole bunch of little panels showing detail of the violence. The rendering on these details is so brutal and tells you absolutely everything you need to know. The violence here is genuniely disturbing and you feel the consequences much more than in a book like Preacher.

The third issue features probably my favorite layout of the series. On the left is a splash page of the cat leaping through the air, an archetypal superhero pose, and he is incredibly menacing. On the next page, we see him rip into Weapon 4, tearing his eye out, then pushing him out through a brick wall. The brick wall breaks into the next panel and their fall continues onto the next page, as they both fall onto a highway. The way the panel builds a structure is what's so cool, even the shape of the panel contributes to this. You really understand how this place is laid out and can easily see the physical element of the action.

But, more than specific panels, what's most notable about Quitely's work here is the way he makes the animals into characters. You really feel for them and that's because of the incredible facial experessions he gives them. His images are so visceral they produce an incredible emotional reaction.

And that emotional content is the other thing that's so unique and amazing about the story. Grant's work always affects me, but to read this book is to be immersed in an incredibly poignant, brutal story. I don't even like animals, but seeing the characters here and their utterly pure desire to find their home, you can't help but feel for them. Really emotional works are usually accused of being manipulative and melodramatic, but this work gets you without any cheap ploys, just the nature of the characters and their plight is enough.

A lot of it comes from the way they talk. The animals can speak, but they have a limited vocabulary, and most of the things they say are very simple, but the simple experssions of emotion almost subliminally tap into something basic in all of us, or at least me. Words and higher thought sometimes get in the way, but here, we just get the purest, unfiltered emotional thought. At the end of the first issue when the cat, Tinker, says "We3 no home now" it tells you everything you need to know and with that one sentence he experesses the extent of damage that has been done to him. As the covers show us, these critters used to be regular pets, but that life is gone, they've been used and now they've got nowhere they belong.

In the harrowing sequence at the end of issue 2, we see Pirate shot, not by the government, but by a civilian who's afraid of him. Quitely's rendering of the shot is explicitly violent, and showing the violence hammers home the pain they feel. Normally in movies, showing violence of this extent forces you to distance yourself from the work, and rarely do you see a creator merging violence and emotion because that may be too much to take, but Morrison and Quitely do it here and it works so well.

The final issue is the most emotional of them all, starting with the opening in which a homeless guy finds We3 hiding in a condemnded building, Pirate spouting mechanical nonsense. The man offers them food and for the first time, the animals are loved. The man gets taken away by government troops and it's an incredible scene in which Bandits tells them to wait there for him, because he said he'd be coming back. He has such a trust in people and believes exactly what they say. It's this pure desire to help mankind, something we also see in the scene where he drags a man out of a river, saying "Gud dog, help man," and at the end of the scene we realize it's just a corpse.

So, the final issue sees all hell break loose, as Tinker and Bandit duel with the military and weapon 4. The best scene in this sequence is when Roseanne, the woman who built them meets Bandit. Bandit tells her, with the saddest look on his face, "Doc-tor Rose-anne, No Dee-Comm-Ish We3," and we can see him prepare to die, but Roseanne jumps in front of him and takes the bullet. It's an incredible panel in which we see her ripped apart with Bandit looking on. It's ultraviolent, but it serves the story and conveys the brutality of these military people.

I already talked about the battle with Weapon 4 above, but in the context of the story that's such a high point. Seeing the cat go back to help Bandit, defying his nature in favor of friendship, is the perfect fusion of emotion and action. Particularly after the emotional drain of the previous scenes, this is such a catharsis, to see our heroes finally get one back and win.

The Doctor Roseanne meeting has Bandit thinking differently and after the leg of his suit falls off, he begins to question the nature of what he is. These animals had been programmed to believe that the suit was a part of them, they are inseperable, but Bandit, crying, says "Is Coat Not We," essentially interrogating his very nature. He doesn't have to be a killing machine, he can go back to the pure animal within, and that's what he does, stripping off his suit and Tinker's, and leaving them behind to detonate, providing cover for their escape. Bandit realizing that nature of the suit is one of those moments that Morrison does so well, where all of reality comes crashing down, and a character has to create a new paradigm, live in an entirely different world than they had before.

This leads to an incredible two pages in which the cat kills a rat and brings it to Bandit. Throughout the whole book, Tinker was only looking out for himself, but he's changed, and he brings food to his dying friend. On the edge of death, Bandit asks Tinker where they are, and Tinker says "Is Home," with the most incredible expression on his face. That one panel contains so much emotion, just the happiness on this cat's face after their journey, they have achieved their dream, and after that, they finally get a happy ending.

The finale was unexpected. Halfway through issue two, I thought for sure that they were all going to die, but instead we get a happy ending, one that I think is earned. Much like The Office, this is the sort of thing that could be cheesy in another movie, but because of the hardship, you can't help but be happy for these characters who have finally found the home they were looking for.

Ultimately what the book tells us is that love is the only thing that can really save people, a classic Morrison theme. Rather than trying to destroy them, they show them that they don't have to be weapons and save them. It's breaking down the manichean view of good and evil, just like in The Invisibles. In that way, the work is very close to the rest of Morrison's canon.

So, on the whole, the greatest thing about this book is the emotional impact. I was thoroughly drawn into the story, and desperately wanted the characters to avoid being hurt. There was no distance from the events, I was right there with them, thoroughly absorbed into the fictional world. Morrison has been on an incredible role lately, New X-Men was the definitive take on that property, Seaguy was thought provoking and really fun, and then this is Morrison's most emotionally immersive work to date, not to mention his best use of the medium, and Quitely goes above and beyond his already brilliant standards to redefine what is possible with the medium.

70s Cinema, Box Office Economics and Auteur Filmmaking

So, after watching The Dreamers yesterday, a film about cinema and societal changes in the 1960s, today I watched Midnight Cowboy, a film that is actually from the 1960s, and is a prime example of the social changes that were happening then. This is a film that was rated X, but still won the best picture Oscar. Admittedly, it's definitely an R by today's standards, but still, the fact that the traditionally conservative academy rewarded this film demonstrates the sort of bold social change that was happening in the cinema.

First, a bit about the film. I loved it, it still feels very relevant, and at the same time is such a great document of 60s lifestyle. It's in line with most of the characteristic of 1960s indie/art cinema, the quick cut montages of Buck's memories/dreams reminded me of the acid trip sequence in Easy Rider, and the minimal narrative and outsider heroes are also 1960s trademarks. I think those dream/memory sequences work brilliantly, giving us a hint of what's in Joe Buck's past. We know how he feels about it, even if we don't know exactly what happened, and that's enough. I'm glad there wasn't some big reveal at the end, clarifying his past. Those scenes add psychological complexity to what could have been a caricature.

This movie avoided the art film trap of being so non-narrative you stop caring about what's happening. When Buck gets swindled, first by the woman and then by Rizzo, I really felt for him, I was really behind this guy and wanted him to succeed. The film is admirably economical in its narrative. Huge chunks of time pass, and one image, like the frozen faucet, can tell us everything we need to know.

One of the coolest scenes was the party, really visually interesting and great editing was used to show us things from both Joe and Rizzo's perspective. Throughout the film, there were a bunch of Six Feet Under style imagined scenes which are then punctured by a cut back to reality. I love the device and, particularly in a film where time is short, they give us much needed insight into how the characters think.

It's interesting how the film makes us so concerned with this guy's quest to pimp himself out to middle aged women. When he finally does acheive his 'dream,' it's a really triumphant moment and the music at that moment really drives this home. The ending is rather ambiguous, but you get the sense that Buck has really moved on, he ditches the cowboy stuff and when asked, says he is from New York City. He's reinvented himself, he isn't that boy from Texas anymore, which means he acheived what he set out to do.

So, this was a top notch movie, but perhaps more important than the film itself is the context that allowed the film to be made. In the late 1960s, the Hollywood studio system was falling apart, and the films that used to be successful, like big budget musicals and costume epics, just weren't working anymore. With the box office in decline, films like Easy Rider changed the idea of what film could do. Easy Rider, and Midnight Cowboy, draw a lot on the techniques of the French New Wave, the jump cuts, strong ambiguity in the narrative and location shooting for maximum realism. This is all chronicled in the excellent book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which discusses the era.

It's commonly held that these films paved the way for the 'Golden Age' of American cinema in the 1970s. I'm of two minds about this. I don't love that many 70s movies, and until recently, I'd always held that this idea of cinema's golden age was overstated. I would consider the late 90s, post Pulp Fiction, era of American cinema to be its high point. Directors like Tarantino, PT Anderson, Soderbergh, Jonze and others created a new template of what indie film could be in the same way that people in the 70s did. But, much of this was done in conscious homage to that 70s era, so examining those films is really a must to see why we ended up where we are now.

Obviously, I'm going on stuff I've read and deduced here, since I wasn't around in the 70s, but it seems like at that time, there really was a vibrancy in film culture and that's understandable because the medium was for the first time liberated from the very strict standards of the Hollywood studio system. I'd compare it to the shock of seeing The Sopranos for the first time, and understanding what TV could do without restrictions on content and style. There are great movies made under the studio system, but they have a layer of artifice that The Sopranos, or the films of the 70s movement don't have.

The commonly held idea is that there was a director-driven utopian era of cinema when challenging, adult-targetted films dominated the marketplace, and this was destroyed with two major events, one was the disasters filming Heaven's Gate and the other was the release of Star Wars. Heaven's Gate was a film by director Michael Cimino, who made The Deer Hunter. It was an arty Western that went way over budget and destroyed United Artists studio. The film was seen as an example of director excess, and it led to more studio involvement at all levels of the creative process, to ensure that out of control directors were not allowed to go over budget like Cimino did.

If you read a lot of arty film writing, you'll notice a high level of antipathy towards Star Wars, because of the commonly held belief that it destroyed that utopian film culture of the 70s and led to the current blockbuster based film marketplace. It created a division between art film and popular film and this is a bad thing. But, I think blaming the film for the marketplace that followed it is completely off base. First, Jaws was actually responsible for creating the blockbuster template that Star Wars is generally blamed for. That was the first movie to make more than $100 million dollars, and it caused a reassessment of how much money it was possible to make through film. However, Star Wars went way beyond that in terms of box office gross and probably is partially responsible for the box office culture we have now, but I find it disturbing that a personal, auteur film would be blamed for reviving tight studio control over movies.

George Lucas is actually the only person to achieve the dream of creating wholly independent films, free from studio influence. He put his own money on the line to pay for the Star Wars sequels and as a result, he was able to maintain tight control, and make the movies he wants, without concession to the marketplace.

In looking at Star Wars, it's crucial to consider the fact that this was a low budget movie virtually every studio passed on before one guy at Fox agreed to finance it. It wasn't a project people wanted to make, and yet, it became the biggest box office hit of all time. The tragedy of Star Wars is that studios didn't see this as a sign that the process of auteur driven films was working. Lucas was left to do his own thing and it led to a hugely successful movie. He did the same thing on the sequel and it led to an even better movie that was also a huge success.

However, the success of Star Wars, Spielberg's movies and others, put the studios on better financial footing, so the era of experimentation was over. It's widely held that big corporations are going to take the most creative risks when they're not doing well financially, just look at ABC in this past TV season for an example of this, and then they retreat to conservatism when they become successful. So, the success of Star Wars is just one small piece of the move towards financial success that ultimately doomed risky auteur filmmaking. The major thing it did was make the studio aware of the kid audience, and as a result, they began to make movies that targetted the whole family instead of just adults, as most of the major 70s films did.

Generally speaking, I'm more a fan of adult targetted movies, but I think Star Wars is a great example of the sort of film that can show younger people the power of cinema. It's not a kids movie, it doesn't talk down to the audience, but it is accessible to people of all ages, and I know in my case and for many other people, it was the gateway to a lifelong love of cinema. Look at the films in the 90s indie film renaissance, they're full of references to Star Wars, in really strong films like Clerks, Swingers and Boogie Nights. So, the film that 'destroyed' 70s auteur cinema ultimately inspired the generation that would resurect it.

But, the 90s indie film movement was quite different in that those films were never really popular. American Beauty cleared 100 million dollars, but some of the best films ever made, like Magnolia, were financial failures, and even though American Beauty won best picture, the academy generally still favored more traditional movies, like Gladiator or Titanic. I don't think those films had the huge cultural impact that The Godfather or even Easy Rider did. Those films were on the forefront of a cultural revolution, but in the late 90s, they were basically just there, and more people were talking about Godzilla than about Magnolia. So, great films were still being made, they just weren't as culturally important as they were in the 70s.

The reason this is on my mind is because of all the articles about the record box office slump that's going on right now. There's all kinds of articles about how the films that are supposed to be blockbusters just aren't performing like they should, and I think this summer's going to represent the end of the old paradigm of what works at the box office. There's such a need to presell movies that we have essentially no original films in the summer movie season. Last week was Batman Begins, a film that did get good critical notices, but is a 're-imagining' of a movie that came out in 1989, just sixteen years ago. Next week is Bewitched and Herbie: Fully Loaded, two sixties retreads. In July we've got films from two of my favorite directors, but they're both remakes of seventies movies. These films will probably have big opening weekends, but they're not going to get repeat business, because there's not going to be good word of mouth. You don't need to get word out on Herbie: Fully Loaded because everything about it is right there, whereas a film that isn't presold is going to get more repeat business as word about it gets out.

So, perhaps this summer will represent a nadir of creativity and studios will realize that perhaps audiences would be more receptive to original stories in their blockbusters. In the 90s, even though movies like Independence Day may not have been the greatest cinema, at least they were original stories, not just remakes of existing properties. But, the combination of audience apathy and the increased prominence of DVD will hopefully create a revolution in the movie business, and lead to a new Golden Age, like the 70s.