This blog is dedicated to all things film-related, be it the art, the business, or the technology that we're talking about. Discussions will often branch into related media, such as the internet, or videogames, or television, or Slim Pickens riding to his triumphant death on the back of a giant nuclear phallus. Also come here for the latest updates concerning my own personal film projects!
I don't know what the source of this quote is, but I hope it's legit because it's marvelous:
There were twomore quotes concerning Jennifer Lawrence's purported penchant for making bizarrely frank first impressions circling the interwebs this week, but this was by far my favorite, because I think it reveals more about Woody Harrelson than it does Lawrence. He would own a bus, and it would have a yoga-swing on it, wouldn't it?
The St. Crispin's Day Speech is the speech that comes at the end of Henry V, wherein King Henry rallies his troops together for the coming battle. It's the greatest speech ever written. Now, whenever somebody in fiction makes a stirring speech, it's called the St. Crispin's Day Speech -- and they can make or break entire films. We'll start with the actual St. Crispin's Day Speech, and then move on from there:
Hey, how come there aren't more women making these speeches in cinema?
When I introduced Topical Tuesdays about a year ago on the blog, I inadvertently booted out Top Ten Tuesdays, and dammit if I don't think top ten lists are awesome. I hereby declare Thursdays on the blog to be Top Ten Thursdays.
Lately, my brain has been occupied with thoughts of the Almighty, and, what with Easter coming up, I thought it would be cool to list the ten best films ever made about God. The thing is, films about the life of Christ are pretty boring, and I haven't seen a whole lot of them. So you're getting a list of the ten most heretical films about Christ, instead.
For the record, we're talking about the Judeo-Christian God, so no dice, Clash of the Titans.
10. Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) -- Technically, this film isn't heretical in the slightest, because it's not actually about the Messiah. It's about Brian, a Roman Jew who is mistaken for the Messiah at about the same time that Jesus's ministry is in full swing. Jesus only makes one brief appearance in the whole film, to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, and what we're presented with there is perfectly Biblical.
9. Bruce Almighty (2003) -- Also not very heretical, as it seems the most heretical thing presented in the whole film is simply the premise that God grants his powers to various mortals from time to time, and the screenwriters only did that in order to tell the whole gorram story in the first place. Nearly everything else follows Biblical teachings. They even made a point of indicating that God doesn't mess with people's free will! It's also a pretty awesome movie to boot.
8. Dogma (1999) -- Again, irreverent as hell, but not a lot of it goes against Biblical canon. Why couldn't there have been a thirteenth black disciple? Why couldn't God take the form of a mute Alanis Morrissette if He wanted? Couldn't two fallen angels try to regain entry into heaven and subsequently kick-start a grand spiritual war? And isn't Salma Hayek the world's best muse? Sorry, I'm not seeing a whole lot here that would upset Christ.
7. It's a Wonderful Life (1945) -- I know what you're thinking. This is one of the most heartwarming religious tales ever told! An angel descends from heaven on Christmas Eve to show a disheartened George Bailey what the world would be like without him! What's so heretical about that? Well, because despair is supposed to be the World's Worst Sin, the unforgivable one that isn't "rejection of the Holy Spirit," and here it gets George Bailey a free ticket to ride!
6. The Da Vinci Code (2006) -- Again, not strictly heretical (the notion that Jesus married and had children is uncharacteristic and entirely speculative but certainly not out of the question), but it's such an awful film that I feel it should be publicly maligned as often as possible.
5. Jesus miniseries (1999) -- Ok, again, this one isn't heretical, either. In fact, it's about as straight an adaptation of the gospels anyone could make. But it's so gorram awful that I feel it's got to be mentioned here. They've got Jeremy Sisto playing Jesus in all his doe-eyed glory, stooping before the adulterous woman to draw fish in the sand, presumably to sell key-chains at the Lifeway Christian Bookstore.
4. Intolerance (1916) -- It's a supposed four-hour indictment against racism, but it's written and directed by the guy who made Birth of a Nation. Jesus makes appearances in both films. Something tells me that the Prince of Peace would endorse neither.
3. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) -- Director Pier Paolo Pasolini presented Jesus as a communist, which is actually probably the most canonical thing about this film. Pasolini was a professed atheist and homosexual who was expelled from the Communist Party and murdered under mysterious circumstances in 1975, shortly after completing The 120 Days of Sodom, an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade novel of the same name, perhaps the most controversial film ever made. Heretical, sure, but with that kind of interpreter at the helm, wouldn't you want to see it?
2. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) -- So Jesus built crosses for the Romans, doubted his status as the Messiah, and almost took two wives in lieu of the cross. Oh, and Judas was his most loyal disciple. A fantastic hypothetical question, Last Temptation isn't insanely entertaining per se but it's extremely thought-provoking. And heretical enough for at least one screening in France to get fire-bombed when it premiered.
1. The Passion of the Christ (2004) -- Jesus wasn't white.
A Night to Remember (1958) Directed by Roy Ward Baker Written by Eric Ambler, based on the book by Walter Lord Releases March 27th
The sinking of the RMS Titanic has been committed to film three significant times in the form of fiction: first in the Jean Negulesco melodrama Titanic (1953), and lastly in the James Cameron melodrama of the same name.
In the middle there came A Night to Remember, which is, according to the back of the Criterion release, "cinema's subtlest and best dramatization" of the tragedy.
And a tragedy it was. 1514 people (68.2% of its total passengers) died the night the Titanic sank on April 15th, 1912 after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic, due in large part not only because there weren't enough lifeboats on-board to hold all of her passengers, but because many of them weren't even loaded to their full capacities.
Titanic was supposed to be the "unsinkable ship," and it was touted as such in all the media of the day. It was partly due to this unsinkable image that other ships in the area failed to take the Titanic's distress calls as seriously as they should've. The ship was filled to capacity with a vivid cross-section of social classes and cultures. She wound up sinking on her maiden voyage, before she was even christened.
These are the ironies that bolster the public's fascination with the sinking of the Titanic even one hundred years after the fact. Indeed, there have certainly been other maritime disasters that were just as tragic, but none so ironic as the sinking of the Titanic, which makes it the tale most-suited to drama.
And here we are with three vivid adaptations, one century later. But what of their quality?
A Night to Remember is indeed the subtlest of the bunch. It's a movie for people who want to watch an actual movie rather than a blubber-show. A Night to Remember lets the ironies of that night speak for themselves, rather than concoct fictional backstories for estranged spouses (Negulesco's Titanic) or -- are you freaking kidding me? -- gunfights (Cameron's Titanic).
The most affecting moment in A Night to Remember is not the death of the doomed lover set to a Celine Dion song; rather, it's when the rich woman politely asks to be put into the same lifeboat as her friend farther down the bow, not realizing that over 1,500 people were going to die that night.
The heartbreaking ironies abound at every turn: the executive butler who scolds the adolescent bell hops for smoking when they ask if they might be allowed to board the lifeboats themselves, the maid who refuses to wear her life-jacket, lest she worry the passengers, the third-class passengers playing soccer with chunks of the fatal iceberg that would kill them all, the SS Californian watching the Titanic's distress flares going up and deciding that they're "probably some company thing."
The list goes on.
This is a film chock-full of drama, and devoid of melodrama. It was jarring for me, as I've come to expect rousing scores and low-blow emotional appeals from the story of the sinking of the Titanic.
As it turns out, A Night to Remember represents what I believe to be the very best way to tell the story of a real-life tragedy: straightforward, without a lot of pomp and show. We remember the event for its own tragic ironies. Hollywood doesn't have to bolster them for us.
Titanic (1953) nor Titanic (1997) understood that, World Trade Center didn't understand that, but the Brits and their muted sense of cinematic showmanship nailed it.
In addition to the new digital restoration, which is absolutely phenomenal, the Criterion release has included a plethora of supplemental material, and more of it is about the actual sinking than the film itself (as has been much of this post, actually).
There is a sixty-minute documentary on the making of the film, in addition to an archival interview with Eva Hart, a Titanic survivor, a half-hour Swedish documentary which features more interviews with survivors, a fifty minute BBC documentary on the sinking of the Titanic, a trailer for the film, and an audio commentary by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, the author of "Titanic: An Illustrated History."
James Cameron has earned enough money making us cry. His weepy vision is being re-released this coming April (in 3D, no less). I believe your money is better spent on this fantastic Criterion release.
I've said on this blog that evolution is not unbiblical, that it doesn't directly negate the teachings of the Bible, that it says nothing about the divinity of Jesus, and so Christians shouldn't have any problem with it. But if that were true, then they wouldn't have any problem with it, and yet most of them clearly do.
And while I'd never hesitate to tell someone that they're wrong to deny what is demonstrably true, far be it from me to declare that their reasons for denying it aren't good enough even for themselves.
So what are the sticking complaints leveled against evolution, despite all the nagging evidence that the theory is true? The short answer is sex.
Natural selection, which, when coupled with genetic change over time, is the main driving force of speciation, doesn't build creatures that live a long time. It builds creatures that are good at disseminating their gametes. And that's all. Anything that gets preserved in an animal's body plan over time through successive generations -- from bigger muscles to brighter colors to longer claws -- is either reproductively-neutral, or conducive to baby-making.
That's it. That's everything. There's nothing else at stake. Not longevity, not morality, not ability -- just baby-making. That's all that natural selection selects. Evolution says that our whole biology is dependent on the ability to efficiently bump uglies.
That includes our behavior.
Ever wonder why men (as a population) tend to want to get it on more often than women (again, as a population)? It's because reproduction is incredibly simple for males and horrifically complicated for females. Males who fail to copulate prodigiously don't pass on as many gametes as their hornier peers, and females who don't discern between their sexual partners waste more resources on undesirable partners than their coy peers.
As if things couldn't get any more confusing for a Creationist, God gave Bonobos the missionary position.
Great, now I have to clear my search-history.
So evolution provides explanations for our sinful sexual proclivities without ascribing sin to them. Worse yet: it says they're natural.
There's another big "problem" with evolution fitting in with the Bible as well, and it concerns the origin of Homo sapiens as a species.
Some Christians are willing to accept the reality of macroevolution just so long as they get to say that God had to have directed the process, with some of them even going so far as to say that Genesis is not actually a literal account of creation -- but that still doesn't change the fact that humans arose from non-human ancestors, and, for the religious crowd, that's a problem.
What evolution teaches is that there was no moment in time where "non-humans" suddenly birthed "humans." That there was no clearly-delineated genesis of man. And Christianity, which is a big fan of absolutes, has a problem with that.
I've heard some Christian apologists actually define "human" as any hominid with a soul, and that "Adam" must've been the first ape bestowed with such a thing, but therein lies the problem: this hypothetical Adam would've been the exact same creature (biologically speaking) as his parents -- so why does he get a soul and his parents don't?
Rather than confront the problem and reform their beliefs, most Christians simply deny evolution as a way to get around the problem.
So the sex stuff, and the human origins stuff, is what I think most-fundamentally conflicts with even the loosest interpretations of the Bible, despite the best efforts of we evolutionists to inform otherwise.
There the Christian apologists sit, with a letter from the New York Sun in hand, swearing that there is indeed a Santa Claus, in front a parent's closet suspiciously full of Christmas presents addressed from Santa, not knowing what to believe anymore.
They could either use the evidence to re-evaluate their preconceived notions about the world, or they could ignore the evidence.
But far be it from me to claim that they should be willing to rectify both the evidence and their beliefs in their own minds just to make me happy.
I'm not saying that the evidence and certain interpretations of the Bible aren't compatible, but for some people they aren't, and who am I to say otherwise?
Stephen King put the Roland Emmerich disaster-flick 2012 at number ten on his list of the ten best films of 2009. He said that "no filmgoing diet is complete without some cheese."
While I agree with the general sentiment, there are some things that 2012 does that I'm just not willing to forgive -- why the hell is Arnold Schwarzenegger still the governor of California a full year after his term would have ended?
But besides the political inconsistencies, the major problem of 2012 in particular, and disaster films in general, is generally shared by all of them, to some degree or another: melodrama.
Melodrama is kind of like porn in that you only really know it when you see it. Melodrama is unhelpfully, nearly tautologically defined as "excessive or exploitative drama," and who knows where those lines are drawn?
We humans instinctively respond to disaster films because the stakes are always necessarily high. That's something that even a decent film like John Carter can learn from a crap film like 2012: the stakes need to be clarified, and the goal needs to be clear.
In a typical disaster film, what we know going into it is that the fate of mankind is up for grabs, and that humanity needs to figure out how to save itself from ultimate destruction.
But with so little work to be done to establish the problem, it would seem that screenwriters slack off in the character and plot departments (you'd think it would make them work harder). Simply put, disaster films tend to say absolutely nothing about the human heart, preferring rather to coast along on the audience's natural inclination to sympathize with people facing their ultimate destruction.
A disaster flick may then be tempted to amp up the "drama" by wallowing in the emotions -- and that's where the trouble starts.
This post is kind of a warm-up for Wednesday's review of A Night to Remember, which is being touted as the least-sensationalist depiction of the sinking of the Titanic ever put to film. Most members of my generation have never even heard of it, with all mention of the RMS Titanic going to that über-hit of 1997.
But when compared to other disaster films, is Titanic really that bad?
I'll admit, I've spent more time laboring the point than I'd care to admit. On the one hand, Titanic (the film) is unapologetically engineered to break our hearts, courtesy of a doomed romance which was running on little more than endorphins and parental resentment when it was cut short.
On the other hand, the sinking of the RMS Titanic was an undeniably horrific tragedy, an event which unfolded rather like that which occurred in the film.
What's more, I can imagine a young couple falling in love on board and then never getting the chance to explore or develop their relationship before one of them freezes to death in the North Atlantic (spoiler alert, I suppose).
Additionally, I rather like writer/director James Cameron's decision to stay on the Titanic from the moment it strikes the iceberg to the moment it sinks. He's treating the sinking of the Titanic as if it were a powerful statement on the inevitability of death. Sad indeed.
But is it wallowing in grief?
I don't know. I thought I'd know it when I see it, but it seems melodrama is even harder to pin down than those pesky pornographers.
This issue will be settled once and for all (at least to my satisfaction) when I finally sit down to watch A Night to Remember tomorrow night, which promises to be just as dramatic as Cameron's film, but far less weepy.
Why worry about disaster flicks in the first place? What's ultimately at stake in this silly debate? The value of survival, that's what. Is it enough simply to survive? What stories about the human heart are to be told in our continuation on Planet Earth? We're all going to die one day: how do we reconcile such knowledge with our lofty plans for the future?
Disaster flicks are our means of sorting these questions out, and I want to know which of them are saying the most interesting things.
Still no permanent work, but spirits are semi-high as I apply for jobs at both the University of Miami and Zoo Miami (formerly Miami Metro Zoo). I've got four scripts completed now, and once I'm done with that Red Dead Redemption video review I will begin a fifth. I don't care if writing on spec is so futile, it makes me happy.
But if you know any agents, by all means, let me know....
This week on the blog, you can expect a post on some stellar (and not so stellar) films I just recently saw, a review of the upcoming Criterion blu-ray release of A Night to Remember, and one more rant against Young-Earth Creationism (for old time's sake), in addition to whatever else I can think to write about, which might include various superhero thoughts and/or a post on trailer-cutting.
There's no easy way to say this: last week, a Kazakhstan athlete in Kuwait was "accidentally" "serenaded" with the version of the Kazahkstan national anthem presented in Borat, rather than the actual thing. This, I can't even, I, wut...?
You can look up the lyrics yourself if you're really that interested, but rest assured, they are less than flattering. Judging by the athlete's relative composure, I'd say that she's either the most easy-going person on the planet, or she doesn't understand a word of English.
Yes, it's the return of that thing I did once that kind of amused me when I did it. Now, instead of spoiling a crap film, I've gone and spoiled an awesome film: Jurassic Park.
The fact that I've finally figured out how to post in HD, and that I'm a big fan of the concept of spoilers, probably means that you'll get more of these on a semi-regular (bi-weekly?) basis. Enjoy!
Trying to define postmodernism is like trying to define pornography: you kind of only know it when you see it. Here's a crash-course in what to look for. All I can tell you is that everything presented below is showcasing some form of it.
Oscar Wilde once said that the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting it.
In my current state of professional frustration, which is breeding in me either an outpouring of profound wisdom or just some well-worded whining, I would add that the only thing worse than not knowing what you want is knowing precisely.
(I promise I had no alcohol either before or during the production of this post, but I did have a lot of homemade olive oil bread, which has a lot of yeast in it)
I'm no good at self-marketing. If ever someone needed a manager, it's me. I've had ill-advised conversations with other budding "writers" who offered up none of their ideas while I gushed about all mine. I've handed out scripts to people who promised to send me theirs in return, only to get nothing in reply. I've had to remove several posts from this very blog wherein I exposed the most intimate details of all my most marketable scripts.
Additionally, I have no clue how to get people to read my scripts.
What I do is I hand them out to people who express interest in them. I honestly would have to brainstorm another way to do it. Any script of mine that ever got read was simply asked for, and subsequently emailed over.
I said I'd talk about the importance of canon, right? Canon (not to be confused with "cannon") is defined as any conceptual material accepted as "official." Canon is what makes people read the scripts of people they don't know. It's why nobody wants to read fanfiction but everybody wants to read the Dark Knight Rises shooting script. One is official, the other isn't.
But who decides what's "official?"
Money spent, and popular consensus, that's what. And I don't mean to sound like I'm griping; I believe that that's the way it should be. I believe Chris Nolan should be allowed to ignore the Bane presented in Batman & Robin so that he can present a more intelligent rendition of the character in TDKR.
Who says that that's ok to do? Everybody who loves Batman, that's who.
But if you've written a spec script, with no established characters, and no franchise rights, and no four-quadrant awareness, when precisely does it become canon? When someone decides to read it, and then tell a friend to read it, who then tells another friend to read it -- that's when.
Stated simply: the first step in creating canon would be to write an amazing script. The second step would be to get people to read it.
People do read my scripts. They're called personal heroes.
There is a hell of a lot of inertia to overcome when being handed a 120-page document to read for which no one has vouched (save its progenitor). I've been there. It can take me months to sit down and finally read someone's script. But that's one of the beauties of script-reading: it's never too late to read it. You could even wait until the movie actually gets made (though you'd probably rather just watch the film at that point -- I know I would).
I hope I've escaped melodrama in the composition of this post. I really, really hope so, because my intention is, as always, to sort out my film-related thoughts, not to plead for sympathy.
I'm also not entirely ready to deny all that I'm feeling right now, either: a mixture of fear and frustration and doubt and excitement and pride and fear and fear. Those are as much a part of this post as the thoughts on canon and self-marketing are.
Or: the olive oil bread is delicious but there isn't any alcohol in it.
It's a zoological pet peeve of mine when Hollywood filmmakers present alien life that is as unimaginative and rote as a hammerhead shark crossed with a rhino. There's no reason why life on other planets should look anything like the life we find on Earth. Just how little should it look like life on Earth? We're about to find out!
3.Alien life doesn't have to be carbon-based. Ok, so we're starting with the very basics here. Life on Earth requires carbon in order to assemble itself. Carbon is unique in that it is relatively abundant on Earth and it can bond with as many as four separate atoms, which allows for all kinds of molecular configurations that life on Earth finds extremely useful.
The thing is, carbon-configurations aren't the only ways in which complex self-assembling molecules can form. Scientists have theorized that crystalline organisms and even silicon-based lifeforms can be waiting for us out there in the void. What would life like that be like?
Some fanboys with more scientific training than I have speculated that the titular xenomorph of the Alien franchise is in fact silicon-based, which would explain its ability to grow incredibly quickly with next to no organic food sources, and its ability to survive on a planet as seemingly inhospitable as LV-426. The Andromeda Strain presents a crystallized virus devoid of protein, and in the novel Sphere, a whole chapter is dedicated to discussing the various kinds of evolutionary pathways that life can take on other planets.
2. There isn't much about our own bodies that didn't arise via happenstance over two billion years ago. Our skeletal structure, the ways in which our five senses operate, all of our organs -- none of it was predestined. For aliens to sport eyes -- or even the ability to register changes in light -- is assuming way too much about their evolution.
Yes, an organism that evolved in the presence of light would probably be able to register changes in light, seeing as how photons are pretty much the most common subatomic particle in the universe, (somebody check wikipedia for me), and so many organisms utilize them directly for energy production, but there are no guarantees. With every Earth-like alien presented on TV, Intelligent Design gains a foothold. I don't think I exaggerate. Any film that presents life as inevitable, uniform, or familiar, is lending voice to a tiresome debate.
So any time an alien shows up in a film sporting anything precisely analogous to human anatomy -- eyes, ears, a mouth, fingers, a torso -- it gets on my nerves, especially when it's got basically all of them. Which leads me to our number one:
1. The sympathetic aliens don't always have to be humanoid, do they? Oh, G-d, which sci-fi film doesn't violate this rule? It's always the same, whether it's Avatar, John Carter, ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Star Wars, they all present the same gorram alien for us to root for: two arms, two legs (sometimes four), a cephalic brain, big doe eyes, fingers, toes, and bilateral symmetry. It's like they're not even trying.
District 9 shook things up a bit. It gave us eight-foot-tall bugs and told us to root for them -- and you know what? The script was so good, we totally did.
In the end, I'd say there are three films (just off the top of my head, mind you) which present alien life in ways that the presentation itself is worthy of note. District 9 and Alien, you know. I would also add Evolution, which is, for those who haven't had the pleasure, the story of a single alien cell which comes to Earth and quickly evolves into a whole ecosystem of plants and macrofauna. The reason it gets a free pass for all its Earth-like monsters is because all of them evolved on Earth, which would make them all reasonably Earth-like.
It was big news over the weekend, and certainly the most exciting bit about my St. Patrick's Day: the first full-length trailer for Prometheus debuted online. You can watch it here if you haven't watched it a thousand times already. You can also watch the minute-long IMAX teaser which also debuted over the weekend, but got far less press.
Now we have the UK trailer, which is a full sixteen seconds longer than its American counterpart, and cuts its footage differently. Have a look:
Co-writer Damon Lindelof stated in a recent interview just what separates this film from other franchise "prequels": the sequel to Prometheus would not be Alien. If there's any better way to put it, I'll eat my hat. Prometheus is set in the same universe as Alien, but it is its own story. I think it will all become astoundingly clear once we all see the dang film (it opens June 8th), but until then, eager interviewers will just have to keep asking the same damn questions.
I'd like to know just what the threat is in Prometheus. I get that there is the possibility of horrifically acute bodily harm, and that the fate of the Earth is somehow involved, but the trailer is stubbornly mute on specifics. This is probably for the best, seeing as how I'm going to see the movie anyway, and to name the threat would probably send my expectations off in the wrong direction.
Director Ridley Scott has stated that there are only two kinds of horror films: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which he studied extensively in preparation for Alien, and The Exorcist, which he says, quite astutely, is a story about demonic possession and corporeal invasion. If Alien is Scott's take on Texas Chainsaw, then perhaps Prometheus will be his take on The Exorcist.
But more than that, too. The film seeks to ask big questions about the origin of life on this planet, and the direction in which mankind is headed. Why other "monster" movies would fail to ask similar questions is beyond me. Asking big questions with your script is, after all, no more expensive than asking none at all. And you still get your displays of gross bodily harm.
Look at a film like Alien vs. Predator. It was total crap. The gorram sets were the best thing about that movie. And yet its plot is remarkably similar to that of Prometheus: a team of archaeologists learn that ancient civilizations had contact with aliens, and they subsequently use that information to track down said-extraterrestrials, only to discover a world of pain and suffering for it.
Something tells me that Prometheus will turn out to be the better film. What's the difference? Aspirations. And talent.
Anyhoot, I know the dangers of getting your hopes up before going to see any particular film, but Prometheus is my most-anticipated film of the year. Everything I've read about it reeks of brilliance. Did you know that the first fifteen minutes of the film will consist of a "beginning of time" sequence, shot in Iceland? Genius.
--Serge
PS: Don't think I forgot about Lockout! The movie with the world's greatest trailer opens April 20th, and as a potent whistle-whetter, the studio has released a five-minute action sequence for our viewing pleasure. View here.
I AM DONE WITH THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE NEWLY-EXPANDED THE CONTRABAND ROMANCE.
Didja hear that? I finished writing The Contraband Romance! It's DONE! After TWO AND A HALF YEARS of development, I've finally got a completed 86-PAGE SCRIPT! There are still tweaks to be made here and there, but nothing monumental. We've laid down the bones, organs, muscles, and skin. I'm basically just rearranging the facial hair right now.
Here's the logline: a disillusioned college kid who operates a contraband-smuggling ring from inside his dorm room can't help falling for the new girl at school, even when she opens her own contraband-smuggling business with the explicit purpose of running his into the ground.
Anyhoot. Not sure where all of this will lead, but the important thing is that my fourth script is the first script I've ever written that could be filmed independently. Not saying that's definitely going to happen, but we will see.
After all that writing, I'm totally beat, and I've still got to find a job. I don't want to use the word "desperate," but if anybody is looking for an unemployed writer to do anything for a living wage besides campaign work for Rick Santorum, send them my way!
I haven't thought of what to blog about this week, but rest assured, I will, and when I know, you'll know.
Dark Shadows is the story of a 17th-century playboy who is turned into a vampire by a jealous witch, buried underground, and then accidentally reawakened in the 1970s, whereupon madcap antics ensue.
So it's two period pieces in one, and it features a quirky pale-faced vampire played by Johnny Depp, and it's directed by Tim Burton, who seems to be getting even more Tim Burton-y with every passing project, and -- surprise surprise -- there's a part in it for Helena Bonham Carter.
Ugh. Can we just go ahead and skip to the part where-- wait, what? Eva Green plays the jealous witch? And she's sporting bottle-blonde hair and an American accent? All right, I'll take a look.
Dammit, I want to hate this so much, but it seems my ire just isn't there. Maybe I should go back and watch that Frankenweenie trailer, too.
Opening night? No way. In the Netflix queue? Sure.
Howdy, folks. Even though it's Spring Break, this has been one of the busiest weeks of 2012 for me, what with the ongoing race to find full-time employment, various social obligations (two hockey games in one week!), and the exhilarating scramble to finish The Contraband Romance.
I'll be doing all of that today instead of blogging. I hope you can forgive me. I know it's Friday and we'd all prefer a top ten list or something, but my mind is focused elsewhere right now, and I'd rather post no post at all than a half-assed stand-in.
With that said, here are some movie-news highlights from this past week:
-- Tomorrow, Saturday, March 17th, will see the debut of the first full-length trailer for Prometheus, which hits theaters June 8th! Check out the official youtube channel here.
-- Did you know that that was Taylor Kitsch in the Battleshiptrailer? I almost didn't recognize him with a shirt on.
-- Fox has apparently pulled the plug on the 24 movie, and reports indicate, rather tactfully, in that professional Hollywood-reporting kind of way, that Keifer Sutherland is "royally pissed."
-- An arrest warrant has been issued for Russell Brand in New Orleans after he reportedly threw a paparazzo's phone through a storefront window. The charge is Simple Criminal Damage, which comes with a $700 fine. I say all this because I really like Russel Brand
-- After receiving the dreaded NC-17 rating from the MPAA and failing an appeal, awareness of the small-budget hitman film Killing Joe is through the roof. Ah, sweet, delicious irony.
-- Game Change premiered on HBO with what I understand are excellent ratings, but this youtube video makes me think that the whole project is just one big sideshow act -- and didn't Tina Fey make a better version of this movie over three years ago?
Anyhoot, that's as much movie news that I could absorb in one week. Catch ya'll laters. Expect a big celebratory post when I finally get The Contraband Romance done, and/or I find a full-time job!
A common complaint I read in a lot of reviews for John Carter was that we never knew enough "backstory." The truth is, no film needs "backstory." Audiences hate it. It is defined, literally, as that which came before the plot. I'll tell you: we don't care about what came before the plot. All we care about is the plot.
Now, something every film does need is "motivation," and motivation is often revealed, quite lazily, through backstory. Apparently, it's such a common thing that audiences have conflated the two terms.
John Carter doesn't lack backstory, it lacks motivation. In any great story, the protagonist pursues one single, tangible goal -- and the eponymous John Carter doesn't have that sort of a single-minded mission for much of the movie's 132-minute run time.
John Carter is mysteriously transported to Mars after a run-in with a shape-shifting alien on Earth. He soon finds that the Red Planet is embroiled in a bitter civil war between three distinct races: the peace-loving humanoids of Helium, the war-loving humanoids of Zodanga, and the nine-feet-tall, four-armed, green-skinned Tharks, who are a mixed bag of ruthlessness and benevolence.
John spends time with all three races and ultimately decides that the peace-loving Heliumites have the hottest women noblest cause. By the end of the film, he's fighting for them, and he eventually he recruits the Tharks as allies.
But the way I've put it makes it sound way more straightforward than it's actually presented, and Carter's aforementioned motivation is nowhere to be found -- at least until the final moments of the film, when he's dead-set on saving Princess Dejah Thoris.
Up until that moment, his brain is all over the place. At times he wants to get home to his cave of gold back on Earth, and then at other times he seemingly takes up Helium's cause, only to revert back to wanting to get back to Earth. Once he finally settles on at least banging the princess saving Helium before returning to Earth, his reasons are entirely nonexistent. In fact, they're downright counter-intuitive.
All throughout the first act of the film, Carter rants on the pointlessness of war, the dishonor in it, etc, etc. Suddenly, he's picking sides in a war on a planet that isn't even his own. That would be fine if something happened to make him change his mind, but I can't say that anything does, because I'm not even sure when his mind gets changed.
Why would proven storytellers like Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) and Michael Chabon (Spider-Man 2) botch such a straightforward concern as motivation? At the risk of sounding speculative, I would guess that they were standing too close to the source-material.
Emotionally, the movie produces some nice cathartic moments, but they're all cut far too short when we're suddenly whisked on to the next scene. Carter's one-man-stand against an army of Tharks, and a few other scenes I can't name for fear of spoiling too much (the last minute is actually pretty awesome), are stand-out moments in the history of cinema -- I just wish they had lasted longer.
That's something the film could've learned from Avatar, which, for all its flaws, at least gave its audience ample time to experience the emotions that the story produced.
An additional problem: too much telling, not enough showing. Way too much exposition. The opening voice-over by Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) in particular is pretty egregious. We're simply told all the ongoing problems of Barsoom, and then we're launched into a derivative action scene.
Going into the film, I wondered how the film would explain the presence of a breathable atmosphere on Mars (in the book, the planet was being artificially stabilized by Helium's terra-forming efforts). In fact, in the film, the issue is simply not addressed.
This, I believe, is also a result of the writers standing way too close to the source-material, unable to predict what an unfamiliar viewer would wonder as s/he watched.
Don't get me wrong, John Carter is a Pretty Good Movie. It's just not the masterpiece it could've been. The masterpiece I could've written. The masterpiece Edgar Rice Burroughs already did.
The picture posted above is not an artist's reconstruction of Microraptor zhaoianus, but rather a scientific reconstruction, based on the latest melanosome research, which indicates that microraptor sported dark iridescent blue feathers! On all four limbs, no less!
Melanosomes are the specific pigmentation cells found in feathers, and their sizes and shapes are what determines feather-color. Scientists have cataloged the sizes and shapes of the various melanosomes present in modern-day birds, and have just recently been able to compare them to the preserved melanosomes found in some fossils.
What we get is pictured above: a true-to-life color representation of a feathered dinosaur.
What's more, microraptor was not the first dinosaur to have been studied in this way. Way back in 2010, Anchiornis huxleyi, a middle-Jurassic troodontid which holds the current record for being the smallest dinosaur known to science, also had its feathers color-mapped, which produced startling results. Another team of researchers have hypothesized that sinosauropteryx had a red-and-white ringed tail. Archaeopteryx was apparently jet-black.
Most of these animals lived in China, in the same epoch, when theropods were just starting to evolve into more recognizable birdlike ancestors. In fact, you might look at that picture of microraptor and think to yourself: "It's just a bird, but with some feathers on its legs."
In fact, there are several important distinctions.
The feathered legs, for one, mean that this animal sported four wings, not just two. Even more importantly, microraptor sported a tail, which no modern bird possesses, and teeth, which is also something no modern bird has. As with all theropods, microraptor had clawed hands, which only a handful of modern birds possess, and then, only as juveniles.
I don't mean to mince words: determining the coloration of any dinosaur will teach us absolutely nothing about its phylogenic history, its taphonomy, or its behavior -- but it's astoundingly cool. Paper by paper, the feathered dinosaurs are being colored in.
Still no word on determining the skin colorations of any dinosaurs. The billionaire eccentrics of the world need to get on that.
When I was in creative writing class, I was always told to "know the audience." I always thought it was a superfluous concern, because the audience was always me. I write to fulfill myself, and I don't know any artist who would answer otherwise.
"Know the audience" is something, then, for the viewer to consider.
Is this a movie made by someone with the same issues and priorities as me? If not, then you should probably steer clear. There may not be any faults in the film itself -- it just won't be addressing anything near and dear to your heart. Your time is subsequently better spent elsewhere.
I say all this because I don't know who The Last Temptation of Christ is supposed to be for -- except, of course, for Martin Scorsese, and fellow progressive Christian cinephiles like himself (a tiny demographic indeed).
The film isn't a contemplation of Christ so much as a contemplation of Christ-related cinema. The film doesn't seem to say "Let us consider the life and ministry of Jesus Christ," but rather: "Let us consider how one films the life and ministry of Jesus Christ."
This is perhaps no surprise, seeing as how Scorsese is such a devoted cinephile. And Catholic.
Indeed, he's probably seen The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), The Messiah (1976), Godspell (1973), The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905), The King of Kings (1927), The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), and of course, Jesus Christ, Superstar (1973). Scorsese has said that all of the previous cinematic depictions of Christ have treated Jesus as 100% divine, and the idea of creating a film wherein he's treated as 100% human was needed in order to complete the canon.
This is a really cool idea, no matter what religious opinions you hold. You might find the final cinematic treatment personally reviling (certainly, many people did, if not for Jesus questioning his status as the Son of God, then for his sleeping with Mary Magdalene), or boring, or simply not to your cinematic liking, but if you don't find the concept at least thought-provoking, then I don't know what to do for you.
So after all of that build-up, what's the film actually like?
Well: it's very lyrical. "Meandering," you might say. And not very literal. When Jesus returns from his forty-day fast in the desert, he pulls his heart out through his chest in front of his disciples. It's supposed to symbolize something, see.
Now, I may sound a bit bitter, but I'm not. Not really. But we'll get to that in a minute.
The life of Jesus has got to be the most difficult subject in the world to put to film (that, and an ambivalent hero). It's easy to write a Christ metaphor, but to write Christ literally takes a set of skills that I sorely lack.
For one thing, you're dealing with what is literally holy writ to over two billion people on the planet. So expectations aren't just high, they're high and fixed. There's only one acceptable interpretation for a vast majority of the audience.
Additionally, there's nothing thematically interesting about perfect divinity. If your protagonist is perfect, then there isn't much for him to do, and certainly not much of an arc.
Indeed, all those divine cinematic depictions of Jesus are insufferably boring. This is the only film about Jesus that gives Christ something to do. And the thing he must do is decide, firstly, whether or not he is the Christ, and secondly, how best to save the world from damnation. It's quite the tall order.
It's the only movie I've ever seen that sets out to tell the life of Jesus Christ as a story, which is to say, the three-act journey of a protagonist from denial to trials to ultimate boon. And that's what makes The Last Temptation of Christ so great.
If I sounded bitter before, it's because of all the lyrical trimmings that the film sports. It would seem to me that the filmmakers tried to make the film more "contemplative" than it really needed to be, as if to demonstrate to audiences that they had thought long and hard about making this movie and that what they are presenting is terribly worthwhile.
It is, but not because of all the lyricism, and the run-time that's about forty minutes too long.
I despise assigning numbered scores to the films I discuss, but if I were forced, such as, say, in an attempt to clarify exactly what I'm saying, I'd give this film four stars out of five.
Criterion has done a fantastic job in both the audio and visual departments of this blu-ray release, as always. In the way of supplemental material, by far the most substantial tidbit is the commentary by Scorsese, Willem Dafoe, and screenwriters Paul Schrader and Jay Cocks. There's also an interview with composer Peter Gabriel, an essay by film critic David Ehrenstein, behind-the-scenes footage shot by Scorsese in Morocco, and a collection of sketches by costume designer Jean-Pierre Delifer.
In the end, I believe that The Last Temptation of Christ is a far greater film study than it is a film. What that means is that I don't think I'll ever watch it again, alone, by myself, as it's more fun to ponder than it is to actually watch.
But with a group of people who are willing to debate the life and ministry of Jesus Christ with me, and his various depictions throughout cinema history, then yes.
David Mamet says that there are only two kinds of religious films: sappy, and exploitative. He might say otherwise, but I'd posit that The Last Temptation of Christ is one of the only religious films that I've seen which is neither. As a story about a man in conflict, rather than as a Messiah in conflict, The Last Temptation of Christ proves worthy of our consideration.
I may have graduated from college, but I still work for the Broward County school system, and so I still get to celebrate Spring Break. Busy week ahead: I have an appointment with CAPS on Monday, which I hope will aid in my search for permanent employment. I also hope to finish The Contraband Romance within the next two weeks, and then the Red Dead Redemption review another two weeks after that. Plus, there's a Panthers game on Thursday to attend, and Melancholia comes out on blu-ray this Tuesday!
This week on the blog, you can expect a review of John Carter, which I plan to see tomorrow night, a review of the Criterion blu-ray release of The Last Temptation of Christ, and a Topical Tuesday post concerning some amazing new research on dinosaur feathers. Seriously. It's way cooler than it sounds.
I know I said that The Weekend Meme was coming back with a lazy vengeance just last week, but I'm afraid I've got something of a proper post for today. Behold, the first minute and forty-five seconds of my long-promised Red Dead Redemption video review:
Don't worry: I've actually got over six minutes total edited together. The full review should run about twelve minutes total, and I fully intend to upload it in glorious 720p HD -- so long as youtube lets me. I tried uploading just this sneak peek last night in HD and youtube wasted two hours of my night before finally giving up and telling me it couldn't be done (though it might've been a bandwidth thing).
I apologize for presenting you with such productivity on the day normally reserved for The Weekend Meme. Please accept this picture of the Bluth family with all their faces digitally swapped as recompense (and possible nightmare-fuel):
Hey, guys. I wanted to get the first minute and forty-four seconds of my Red Dead Redemption review up tonight for you peeps, in glorious 720p HD, but after three hours of rendering and uploading, the process froze with twelve minutes to go. When I went to re-upload the video, the estimated upload time had doubled.
Bah. So I'm sorry you won't get to see that tonight. In hindsight, maybe it's better if I wait until the whole video is ready before I upload any parts of it.
But since this post is no longer about my review, it's now about John Carter. Go see it! Let's make it a hit. Below, you'll find a compilation of all the media available online about the film.
For the past month, I have become an expert in two things: movies, and elementary childcare. I have assembled for your viewing pleasure the best of both worlds: clips from the movies (and tv) demonstrating the coolest and most relevant concerns of early childhood educators such as myself.
Due to the huge volume of stuff I have to do these days besides blog (part-time work, search for full-time work, edit reviews, write scripts), I think I'm going to go ahead and post a weekly video omnibus on any given subject.
Most readers know the story: Mass Effect 3 came out yesterday.
I wanted a Mass Effect-related post for the day, but I only got my hands on the second installment last month, so that's the review we're getting today.
Mass Effect 2 is a game that's more than the sum of its parts. Even though the one-note combat is clunky and uninspired, the graphics are stuck firmly in the uncanny valley, and the story is filled with sci-fi cliches, I couldn't help but like it quite a bit. Weird, right?
It took me about ten hours of playtime before I could even give the game a simple thumbs up or a thumbs down -- the time it takes me to play through some other games entirely.
You play as Commander Shepard, and in the first five minutes of the game, you die. One cinematic and a character-creation screen later, you're reborn and back in combat (not cloned, but somehow "revived," a process which we are told took two years and billions of dollars to complete -- one wonders why Shepard wasn't simply cloned).
This part of the game's story is, simply put, piss-poor storytelling. It violates so many common-sense storytelling laws. For one thing, you can't just kill your main character in the opening scene and then bring him back to life virtually consequence-free. It nullifies the threat of death.
And yet, despite these flaws, the lack of stakes, the poorly clarified context, I kinda enjoyed myself while playing the game. The little character moments finally begin to add up after so many hours of fighting side-by-side with your favorite squadmates.
In short: the story is no Knights of the Old Republic, but it works. No doubt part of the unclarified stakes problem stems from the fact that I never played the first Mass Effect.
Is that entirely my fault? Perhaps, but perhaps not.
When you wait ten hours to finally learn what's at stake in a game, only to learn that it's "the galaxy," you tend to feel a little let down in the creativity department.
It's probably no surprise that a game that invests so much time and energy into its story wouldn't skimp on characterization, which is built in three ways: voice-acting, graphics, and writing.
We've already established that the writing is pretty hit and miss. For every anecdote I listened to, enraptured, there was always another that was just a complete slog. But in the end, I tended only to remember the compelling ones. My short-term memory is very forgiving, I suppose.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't air my grievances concerning this game's treatment of homosexuality: you see, the game allows you to court fellow squadmates, and even sleep with some of them if you play your cards right, but you can only generate homosexual relationships if you play as a girl.
This is a terribly misogynistic oversight, which I read has been thankfully corrected for the third installment.
Voice-acting is pretty superb, except, of course, for the dude voicing none other than Commander Shepard him/herself. I suspect that developer BioWare specifically told the voice-actor not to inflect much, or to impose much of a personality onto Shepard, because the player is supposed to be shaping Shepard's personality throughout the game.
But the way that Knights of the Old Republic solved these conflicting problems was to simply not voice the main character. Rather, the player him/herself would read the lines of dialogue off the screen and impart whatever tones he or she wanted onto the protagonist.
If only Mass Effect 2 had done the same.
Then, finally, there are the graphics, which, frankly, really piss me off. Everything is too damn shiny, too damn clarified, too damn primary color-y. And the dead-eyed character models do little to garner my sympathy. Luckily, the writing does a decent-enough job at that.
Whew. All of that talking and we haven't even gotten to the combat yet.
Simply put, the combat is serviceable, and it certainly has its moments, but it's nothing brilliant. Mass Effect 2 is a third-person shooter when you're not navigating through dialogue trees, and some of the bigger problems include indistinguishable weapons, uninspired level designs, and a lack of what I'd call "substantiality" in the combat.
With that said, again, when you're actually in combat, controller in hand, gunning enemies down, you kinda forget about how mediocre it all is and just sit back and enjoy. Areas tend to get boring only right before you leave them. Enemies finally die just after you've tired of fighting them. So the tendency is to keep playing, smile fixed firmly in place.
And after all of that, what are we left with? As I said, it's a game that's a fair bit more than the sum of its parts. Mediocre + serviceable + cliched = pretty damn fun.
I tried not to spend too much time in this review comparing the game to Knights of the Old Republic, which is the title that put developer BioWare on the map, and is one of my favorite games of all time.
That game had more going for it than perhaps any title ever: they didn't have to establish a whole new world for the player, like Mass Effect 2 does. All they had to do was say "Jedi vs. Sith" and we knew exactly what the stakes were.
Mass Effect 2 doesn't have that luxury. It takes time to establish its world. Some of that time is spent slogging through some superfluous dialogue trees, but you come out the other side having enjoyed it. A few scattered hours of combat-less gameplay prove tiresome, but the whole experience is overwhelmingly positive.
Mass Effect 2 gets the First Kiss award: because it's sloppy, awkward, and not perfectly together, but we reflect on it fondly, and enjoy it nonetheless.
--Serge
PS: Fox has officially cancelled "Terra Nova" after just one season. My original post for the day was going to butcher the series, but then again I did that back when the first episode premiered, and I'm not one to beat dead horses.
"Abandon strategic military thought, all ye who enter here."
The God of the Old Testament, to quote Lewis Black, is a bit of a prick. Christians are then forced to reconcile this fire-and-brimstone figure with that of Jesus, who is, by comparison, a straight-up sweetie-pumpkin. They're not just father and son, see; they're actually the same person.
I've heard pastors shout things like "new covenant" in order to explain the change in godly personalities between Testaments, but not a lot of it has ever made much sense in practice to me.
Which leads us to last Sunday, when the local pastor I occasioned to listen to tried to use the the Battle of Jericho to preach nonviolence.
Here's the story they teach you in Sunday School: Joshua and the Israelites cross the Jordan into Canaan and prepare to attack Jericho. That night, the Lord comes to Joshua and tells him to march around the city once every six days while carrying the Ark of the Covenant.
This is the part in the story where the pastor put on a little one-man skit wherein Joshua's military leaders are shocked to hear that their weapons won't be needed. "But what about our swords? Our shields?" But Joshua, being the faithful slugger that he is, grabs his priests and they march around the city for six days, just as God commanded.
And on the seventh day, they marched around the city of Jericho for a seventh time, blew their ram's horns, and shouted. Down came the walls of Jericho. Israel wins.
But what they don't usually teach in Sunday school is what happened next:
"When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys." Joshua 6:20-21.
Pictured: God's good work.
You see that? They needed their swords, after all. All those babies aren't going to kill themselves!
Now, it's one thing to read this story and conclude something like, "Well, sometimes the Lord's work sucks," or "Destruction is what waits for those who defy the Lord." That's a certain kind of balls-to-the-wall bloodthirsty dickishness that at least makes some kind of internalized sense.
But the pastor was using this story to specifically preach nonf*ckingviolence.
What's more, I thought that, in order to do pull it off, the pastor would have to simply ignore verse 21, but no: he read the gorram thing right then and there to the audience, and then continued on with the sermon as if nothing strange or conflicting had just been read. That not only is the God of the Old Testament doing the work of King Herod, and calling it blessed, but that it's supposed to teach us to love one another and turn the other cheek.
I can't quite remember all the things the pastor said, but the general gist was that if you trust in the Lord and put down your sword/lawyer/preferred method of attack, God can deliver a victory.
To top it all off, the pastor then presented a bunch of archaeological evidence as a means of lending legitimacy to the story, as if anyone who reads the story of Jericho would take issue with -- of all things -- the archaeological account.
Supposedly, there is evidence of an earthquake which flattened the city of Jericho about the time that the Bible says Jericho was destroyed, and that one house -- presumably the house of Rahab -- was spared.
Christian apologetics has never made much sense to me, because, whenever science delivers some bit of information that contradicts a literal reading of the Bible, that evidence is summarily discarded anyway.
Wouldn't you know it? The method used to date the city of Jericho is none other than radiometric dating.
This isn't supposed to be a throwing down of the gauntlet, but I would welcome explanations from those with a greater understanding of theological thought than me to explain what I'm missing here.
--Serge
PS: The Last Temptation of Christ arrived today on blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. What providence! Expect a review soon.
I don't follow pre-release tracking very much. I assumed that Alice in Wonderland would be a flop two years ago simply because the idea sounded stupid to me. It still does, but audiences disagreed: the film went on to gross over a billion dollars worldwide.
Now, I haven't even seen John Carter yet, but there are some good people involved in its production (Andrew Stanton, Michael Chabon) who know how to make great films (Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3), I liked the book very much ("A Princess of Mars"), and I think this movie will be at least everything Avatarshould've been, if not downright spectacular, and all that the media seems to want to say about it is how much it cost to make ($250 million) and how soft the tracking is.
Pixar Writer/director Brad Bird recently pointed out, rather astutely, that "the showbiz press complains about big-budget sequels and remakes, but when a big NEW film like JOHN CARTER arrives, support is nonexistent."
This is one of the many reasons that I am gunning for John Carter to be a hit.
John Carter represents, to me, what Avatar represented two and a half years ago, but with less plagiarism: the idea that a film can become a success on the merits of its story, without the benefit of big-name actors or pre-release awareness (some decent trailers would be nice, though).
The tale of John Carter and Dejah Thoris is a powerful, grass-roots romantic adventure, with all the sci-fi trimmings that make movies great, and when endeavors like these fail to garner audiences, I get sad.
Luckily, the last report on how soft the tracking has been for this film was published on February 16th, which is admittedly less than a month before its release, but then again was still long before Disney launched its full ad campaign (which should be gearing up this week).
John Carter is opening virtually unopposed on the first day of Spring Break, and while the tracking probably remains pretty soft at the time of this writing, no doubt it will improve when word of mouth gets out (the majority of reviews, from both critics and regular moviegoers alike, have been positive).
What I'm trying to say is that a hit is still well within the bounds of reason.
Writer/director Andrew Stanton points out: “When you’re 10 or 11 years old, and you’ve discovered girls, but they haven’t discovered you yet, and you’re reading about this ordinary guy that’s suddenly extraordinary on another planet, he’s got the coolest best friend, the coolest pet, and he’s winning the heart of the most beautiful girl in the universe, that’s like a checklist of everything you’ve ever wanted.”
If only they could assemble a decent trailer.
On that note, take a look at what I believe to be the best trailer yet for John Carter, which is notable for its being a fan-made trailer:
--Serge
PS: Hours after I had proofread this post, Disney went and posted a ten minute preview of John Carter on youtube. It displays some pretty good writing and some awesome direction, but I still don't think it's the sort of thing that would win the hearts of people who have no interest in the film. Anyhoot. Time will tell.
Everything on the part-time work front is going fine, but here's to hoping that the battle on the full-time work front will pick up soon. The problem is, I don't even know what positions I'm qualified for. What's a job these days? Can I send someone the films I've made and get a job that way? I doubt I could be an editor, even though I can edit, because I'm not familiar with the industry-standard Final Cut Pro -- but only cause I don't have the $600 required to buy it.
Anyhoot. It's not so much "searching" for a job as it is "brainstorming" for a job. I've even looked up animal husbandry jobs at Zoo Miami. Such is the economy. Ideas would be much appreciated!
Work has picked up on both the Red Dead Redemption review and the expansion of The Contraband Romance. You guys have heard me talk so much about that damn Red Dead review that I'll probably go ahead and post the incomplete audio-only version this week on the blog, just to prove that I actually am making progress.
And dudes! Mark your calendars. John Carter comes out this Friday!
Whatever happened to the weekend meme? I guess I started posting inane crap on Sunday and so Saturday became like a sixth post of the week. Well, this blog has standards, g-ddammit, and I'll be damned if they get raised on my watch.
Behold, the return of the weekend meme:
In the original three-second video posted by GQ, she says "I'm Olivia Wilde. Welcome to the GQ Comedy Show."
"Why?" you ask? Do we care? Are we caring about that?
Now all that's left is to find the hottest dude in Hollywood with pecs big enough to pull off the inevitable parody. I vote for Jason Momoa.
This book is all about the last act. There's a mission of the week that plays out in the first two acts (the gathering of intel, the mission unfolding), but all the really interesting bits come at the end.
Namely: Jake becomes a Controller!
Jake falls into a portable Yeerk pool and emerges under the control of the same Yeerk that has been infesting his brother Tom. Will the other Animorphs figure out that he's infested? And if so, how will they keep him holed up long enough for the Yeerk in his head to die?
All right, so this isn't a press release, it's a lit review, so we're going to wind up spoiling some bits here. If that's not your thing, then you're going to have to look elsewhere.
Jake's reason for fighting the war against the Yeerks has always been his brother Tom, who has been infested with a Yeerk for at least the past year. Tom's Yeerk hatches a plot to put a Yeerk into the head of the governor, which presents the Animorphs with a major problem: even if they halt the infestation without a hitch, that will mean that Tom's Yeerk will have failed Visser 3.
The Visser has a habit of slaughtering those who fail him.
This whole war is one big recurring cost/benefit analysis for the Animorphs, and it's nice to see the stakes raised to such mythological heights so very often. If Jake's whole reason for fighting the war against the Yeerks is so that he may one day save his brother, then what's his incentive to carry out this mission?
In fact, this is the book in which Jake decides that winning the war for the whole planet may in fact take priority over rescuing Tom. But for his previous hubris, Jake is infested with a Yeerk when the mission goes south.
Now, from here, there are several ways that the series can go. The Yeerk in Jake's head could convince the others that he's really plain-jane Jake, and go off to report all their names and addresses to Visser 3. That's what we'd likely classify the Worst Case Scenario.
Conversely, the Best Case Scenario would be that Jake spends three days waiting under guard for the Yeerk in his head to starve, but in order for that to happen, his friends would have to somehow magically conclude that Jake was in fact a Controller.
In fact, they do.
We could reduce what happens next to a platitude, such as "the power of friendship," and maybe the temptation would be even stronger than usual, owing to the fact that this is indeed a book for children, but this is not just a book for children: it is a book for children about war.
When Jake is ultimately saved from such a categorically powerless state by the love, dedication, and intelligence of his friends (I won't tell you how, because that part's awesome), we experience a kind of catharsis usually only brought about by the most chemically-charged religious revivals.
But Animorphs #6: The Capture is more pragmatic than any religious tale, because it's not deus ex machina that ultimately saves the day. Jake is spared, for no reason save that there are those that love him. We should all endeavor to be so lucky.
This represents what I believe to be the best book in the series so far, and we didn't even explore the psychology of Jake's imprisonment, or the implications inherent in a world occupied by a Yeerk-infested Arnold Schwarzenegger.*
--Serge
*KA Applegate has stated that the Animorphs are meant to be residents of California. The set of animals available for them to acquire matches up nicely.
John Carter debuts next Friday, and yet pre-release tracking indicates that it might very well be one of the biggest flops in movie history. Nobody, but nobody, seems to know what the hell the dang movie is even about, much less why he or she should go see it.
In a last-ditch effort to build buzz, Disney has released a four-minute clip of John Carter fighting giant aliens in gladiatorial combat:
Now, I actually think this clip is really cool, but it's probably too little, too late. We'll see if Disney steps up its efforts in the days leading up to this film's release. Unfortunately, it looks like we're way past the point of ever getting a trailer that actually explains what the hell the movie is about.
Contrast that with the latest trailer for The Avengers, which is probably the best of all three exceptional trailers that have hit the interwebs in recent months:
Look at that: stakes, context, emotions, lines of dialogue! And they even managed to fit in their precious "sizzle reel" of action footage. The Avengers is going to be a hit.
But wait, there's more! Check out this interesting little promotional video for Prometheus, which features Peter Weyland addressing a TED crowd in the year 2023. This isn't a scene from the film: it's an independent piece of marketing conceived by director Ridley Scott and co-writer Damon Lindelof. It's also awesome:
