Cold Crash Pictures Commentary

Sunday Inanity

2012-02-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

I got a job! Part-time, taking care of kids at a local Elementary School after-care program, but I will now be making more money than I am spending on loans, and doing something awesome for it to boot, so that's great.

Work continues on my expansion of The Contraband Romance and my Red Dead Redemption review. I just finished Act I of The Contraband Romance, and I've completed four minutes of the Red Dead review (it looks like it will be about 12 minutes total). The reason the review is taking so long is because it's not just me sitting in front of a computer narrating my thoughts. It'll be a slick production, complete with relevant gameplay footage, snazzy editing, and full color commentary, like this.

This week on the blog, you can expect some new thoughts on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, a new installment of "Science and the Silver Screen," and perhaps a cost/benefit analysis concerning all the current ways to watch movies at home, if I'm feeling statistical.

--Serge

PS: I know nothing of statistics. The analysis will therefore be less "statistical" and more "anecdotal."

"Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" Looks Promising

2012-02-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Just when you're ready to swear off trailer-watching for the rest of your life, somebody releases the trailer for Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, due to hit theaters this summer:

I was just thinking this morning: when Hollywood was first founded, producers were king. Then, during the Golden Age, it was a mixture of studio execs and actors who ran the show. Then, in the 70s, directors began their rule, which only recently ended with the "pre-sold property" revolution of the early 21st century. Now it seems that franchise rights are calling all the shots in Hollywood.

But now I'm thinking: isn't it time for writers to have their glory day in the hot sun?

--Serge

Movie News Round-Up

2012-02-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

A lot has been happening in the world this week, and when there's so much news that I can't pick just one topic to blog about, you get all the highlights in one big post. At the very least, you should read what's in bold and get your worldly bearings, as The Daily Show is still on hiatus.

Proposition 8 ruled unconstitutional: Ok, so this isn't really movie news, but it's awesome nonetheless. A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco declared in a 2-1 ruling that California's ban on same-sex marriage serves no purpose but to "lessen the status and human dignity" of homosexuals. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Now, some people would agree wholeheartedly with that opinion and still vote to ban gay marriage. Those people are bigots. For those who don't know: America is not in the business of putting civil rights to a vote. That's not what we did in 1964, and that's not what we're gonna do in the near-future when the Supreme Court finally makes a gorram ruling on this. I'd thank the bigots to remember that.

Here's Ellen DeGeneres, being awesome:

Season 8 of House, M.D. will be its last: "After much deliberation, the producers of House M.D. have decided that this season of the show, the eighth, should be the last. By April this year they will have completed 177 episodes, which is about 175 more than anyone expected back in 2004."

Perhaps worthy of note is that the show is not being cancelled, but rather series creator David Shore and colleagues have decided on their own accord that the show has run its course and it's time to end. Even though I think House jumped the shark quite a few seasons back, I respect this move -- probably enough to actually tune in for the final 11 episodes.

I gotta say, now that it's finally over, I'm looking back and only remembering the good. It's a show that sold itself not on pretty faces or explosions, but rather intelligence, the search for truth, and probing the human heart (sometimes literally, haha). Once the show is off the air, the only people on tv will all be either cops, lawyers, or vampires.

The River premieres to lackluster ratings, sucks big time: ABC launched a new found-footage horror series this past Tuesday and, not only does it suck big time, it lost a 10th of a rating point for every half-hour that it aired -- so I'm not the only one who thought so.

The conceit is this: dude disappears in the Amazon jungle, his family heads down to find him. From there, they threw every horror-cliche that they could think of to advance the plot: astral projections, smoke monsters, skittish ethnics who warn the white people that they're treading on sacred what-nots, snooty British people, daddy issues.

Here's how stupid the show is: when the main characters finally find the boat of the dude they're trying to rescue, they head aboard and hear banging coming from below-deck. They trade terrified looks and Leslie Hope says "There's someone on the ship!" real worried-like. Weren't they hoping to find someone on the ship?

That about sums up every moment of concocted "suspense" in the whole show. It's so horrifically manufactured, so blandly stylized, so terribly edited that I can't imagine anyone will be asking for more than the 8 episodes already produced.

Jon Huntsman shouldn't have dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination: Because Rick motherf*cking Santorum just took three states. Seriously, this madness has gotta stop.

--Serge

Criterion Corner: Three Outlaw Samurai (1964)

2012-02-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

There comes a time in every cinephile's life when he or she finally sees an old-school samurai film that isn't directed by Akira Kurosawa. Three Outlaw Samurai was that film for me, and I'm glad it was, because it's awesome.

A wandering samurai named Shiba literally walks in on a hostage situation: three peasants have kidnapped the local magistrate's daughter in an effort to negotiate lower taxes, as they are currently so overtaxed that they can't feed their families. Shiba is moved by their story and agrees to help them fight off the local sheriff. That's Outlaw Samurai #1.

The sheriff grabs a swordmaster, Sakura, from prison, and tasks him with killing Outlaw Samurai #1. Sakura arrives and, while he and the outlaw samurai fight, the situation is explained to Sakura and he immediately switches sides. That's for Outlaw Samurai #2.

I won't spoil everything (so far we're only about ten minutes into the movie), but I will say that the only other samurai in the film is the evil Kikyo, who works for the local magistrate, simply because he loves having "a belly full of wine and a soft bed under [his] back." Kikyo is not the main character, but his journey from evil henchman to Outlaw Samurai #3 is one of the more compelling arcs in the movie.

For me, this film is important because it was the first chanbara, or post-war Japanese sword-fighting film, that I saw that wasn't directed by Akira Kurosawa, and I finally got to see if it was Kurosawa or the subject-matter itself that was really the draw.

Well, Kurosawa's still a genius but clearly he's not the only one capable of directing a wonderful chanbara film.

The director of Three Outlaw Samurai is Hideo Gosha, and what's more, this was his feature film debut. He went on to direct Goyokin and Sword of the Beast, two films I can tell you nothing about, but whose loglines sound awesome. As far as I can tell, the Criterion DVD releases of those two films are the only home video releases of those titles in the United States.

But as for Three Outlaw Samurai, I was quite taken by the way it was shot -- especially the action scenes. The combat is often framed by wide shots that go on for minutes at a time. The fights themselves are brutal and extremely well choreographed and performed. The action scenes were shot, in short, as if they were released this past week.

There are hardly any cuts during any of the fighting scenes, and that's great because I've started getting sick of that in more modern releases.

Three Outlaw Samurai also provides what I believe to be an accidental feminist commentary. Rather, the film is what it is, and I've decided to read parts of it through a feminist framework. I'd be getting into spoilers pretty quick if I revealed specifics, but the treatment of women in this world of magistrates and ronin is not particularly humanitarian.

I'm reading in the essay included with the Criterion release that Gosha would go on to redefine the Japanese woman's picture, so it can't be outside the realm of possibility that gender, too, is being examined here, in addition to honor, loyalty, disloyalty, cynicism, the fluidity of allegiance, feudal economies, and sword-fighting techniques.

I've come to find that my favorite special feature provided by Criterion in any particular release of theirs is very often the essay that they include in booklet form. In the way of special features, this blu-ray release of Three Outlaw Samurai contains only a theatrical trailer and the aforementioned essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri. It's the most fascinating and enlightening bit of literature I can find on the subject, and it serves the release just fine.

Audio and visual quality continues to be the best in the business. This release comes highly recommended. If anything gets me to sign up for Netflix's exorbitantly-priced mailing service again, it'll be the other non-streaming chanbara films of the 60s and 70s.

--Serge

Holy Trailer Round-Up!

2012-02-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

So if you watched the Super Bowl you saw every one of these -- oh, except the brand spanking new The Amazing Spider-Man trailer which just debuted!

And then the stuff you've already seen (but still well worth watching again):

All right, so they still can't make a John Carter ad that looks even halfway decent, but I'm still gonna be first in line to see this bad boy:

For the love of God, just buy the rights to the name "Transformers 4" already:

I don't get it; why would they remake The A-Team only two years after it came out?

--Serge

Topical Tuesday: 6 Reasons Hockey is the Best Spectator Sport in the World

2012-02-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

6. Only six minutes of commercials per period: That's right, there are only three stoppages of play for commercials every twenty minutes. Other sports may in fact best that, but what I'm talking about here is football, which suffers from a cripplingly high rate of cutting to commercial.

5. The fastest action: Hockey is the third-fastest-played sport in history, after NASCAR and Roman chariot-racing. Skaters regularly reach speeds of 30 mph or more (Sami Kapanen once completed a lap around the rink in 12.7 seconds), and slapshots can move faster (114.13 mph) than the fastest baseball pitches (105 mph).

The rules of the game, too, have been optimized for fast play: when viewership reached an all-time low in 2004, the NHL amended the rules of the game to allow for more frequent breakaways, and longer passes down the ice.

4. It hasn't been invaded by cry-babies: I can't watch basketball or soccer for this very reason. You so much as bump a basketball player, or not bump a soccer player, and they go down, play-acting for a foul. No such nonsense in hockey. You get checked into the boards, nobody bats an eye.

It's also probably the only sport in history wherein a boxing match can spontaneously break out and no one is so much as ejected from the game.

3. They score only as often as they need to: Before the 2004 NHL lockout, players were only averaging 5.136 goals per game, the lowest rate of scoring since 1952. After the lockout, the NHL altered many of its rules so as to increase the rate of scoring, but not so much as to make it into a gorram basketball game.

Goalie pads were made smaller and on-ice rules were amended so as to increase the rate of shots on goal. Scoring jumped to 6.05 goals per game. Watch any given game and you'll find they're scoring just often enough to keep you interested, but not so often as to make any one goal insignificant.

2. The Florida Panthers are 1st in their division: The Panthers began as an expansion team in 1993, and they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals in '96 (where they lost to the Colorado Avalanche in a 4-game sweep). Ever since, the Panthers have cultivated one of the worst all-time records in NHL history, ending last in their division for the past two seasons.

That all changed this past season when they hired a new GM, a new head coach, signed a dozen new free agents, and changed their home jerseys back to red. Some would argue that that last change has had less effect than the others, but the fact remains that at the time of this writing, the Florida Panthers are first in their division for the first time in the history of the franchise.

1. Canadians play barefoot, hold live flamingos instead of sticks: Haha, no they don't, but they totally should.

--Serge

"The Woman in Black" is the Worst Kind of Film to Blog About: It's Just "Good"

2012-02-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

You won't find a rant on the blog today, because The Woman in Black wasn't a stellar game-changer in the world of supernatural horror, nor was it a sour disappointment. It was just good.

In today's horror-saturated market, however, merely good is pretty refreshing.

It's refreshing to see a horror film whose cinematographer knows how to operate a steadicam, whose focus isn't on gore or jump-scares, whose cast isn't a bunch of nameless teenagers. The Woman in Black avoids all the typical low-budget horror-film pratfalls, and that in itself is a pretty awesome feat these days.

Mr. Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a solicitor in early-1900s England. His wife has died in childbirth four years earlier, and he has only managed to limp along, both financially and emotionally, ever since. When his boss sends him to a remote hamlet to sort out the last will and testament of a wealthy client, he's got to make good in order to keep his job.

The Woman in Black puts to good use my favorite horror-film archetype: the terrible place (see also Alien, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc). The house that Mr. Kipps is sent to is haunted by the vengeful spirit of a previous occupant. But it wouldn't be a story if he could simply leave -- the livelihood of his family is at stake. At one point early in the film, Mr. Kipps is told to "go home" and "cherish your son" rather than remain in that terrible place.

Mr. Kipps' cool reply is that he wouldn't already be there if he didn't.

The question that the Terrible Place presents itself is "What keeps the protagonist there?" The Woman in Black answers this competently and satisfactorily. It's just not very ground-breaking stuff.

In fact, if there's one big problem with this film, it's that it feels like we've already seen it before. A haunted house, an isolated village populated by spooky locals, an angry ghost with a veiled, misshapen face, a protagonist with lots of emotional baggage, etc, etc. It's The Ring, ten years after the fact.

But The Ring wasn't bad, and neither is this. The atmosphere in particular is well-constructed -- perhaps better-constructed than The Ring. Though not so abjectly horrifying, it's probably a lot spookier than The Ring.

Most horror films shoot their scenes close to the protagonist, over-the-shoulder of the main character, from their perspective, as it were. We see what he/she sees, and we are made to fear the off-screen space. But in The Woman in Black, scenes are often shot from far off, looking at the protagonist, as if from the point of view of the ghost. Off-screen space is still threatening, but not in the traditional sense. The threat poised is not physical, but psychological.

Anyhoot, that's about the most technically-distinguishing thing I can think to say about the project, and if it were much better, maybe I'd be compelled to say even more, but in the end, it's a good little horror flick but not the best we've seen.

In fact, the play is much better. It adds a spectacular twist to the original novel that is medium-specific, which is to say that it's a twist that can only be presented in the form of a play. The proof is in the fact that the movie does not preserve this twist.

At the very least, in a film whose characters are so concerned with closure, it's nice to see that the film remembered to provide closure for its audience.

--Serge

Sunday Inanity

2012-02-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

This week on the blog, you can expect my thoughts concerning The Woman in Black, a review of a new Criterion title on blu-ray, and a post which compiles all the reasons America should care about the NHL. The Florida Panthers are in first place!

I've scaled back all my writing and editing efforts and am currently working on just two projects: my expansion of The Contraband Romance and my video review of Red Dead Redemption. Both require massive amounts of time and energy and between blogging and job-hunting those are really the only things I have time for. Hope y'all understand.

--Serge

The Weekend Meme

2012-02-04T00:00:00.001-05:00

Submitted without comment:

--Serge

Just For Fun: Serge's 5 Least Favorite Films of All Time

2012-02-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

This list is not to be confused with the five worst films of all time. There are godawful films, like Troll 2, and anything on the sci-fi channel, but for a film to be one's least-favorite, it might retain all of its technical competence and yet still manage to incur one's wrath.

What I'm trying to say is that there are worse films out there than the five on this list, but none that make me angrier.

Very often, we can learn more from a bad film than a good one. That's why we do this. The discourse surrounding these films might in fact outpace the discourses surrounding other (much better) films, but sometimes we can learn from mistakes easier than we can from genius. Either way, I can't f*cking stand these movies.

Yeah, that's the movie I want to see: the
one with the invisible Jessica Alba

5. Fantastic Four (2005): The epitome of Hollywood laziness, this film represents what I believe to be the most half-assed attempt at generating a box office hit in the history of cinema -- and what's worse is that it worked ($330 million gross on a $100 million budget). It's as if the script was written by an algorithm calculated to make bank on Chris Evan's pecs.

Every hint of individuation and originality has been scrubbed from the script in favor of a boring-as-hell battle between pretty people and pretty people with facial scarring.

At any moment where someone's psyche could've been explored, it was eliminated in favor of a sight gag. Seriously. Mr. Fantastic uses his superpowers to grab toilet paper from across the hall and Jessica Alba loses her clothes on the Brooklyn Bridge. Aaaaaand scene.

The original hipster.

4. 8 1/2 (1963): The epitome of surrealist, self-indulgant, artsy-fartsy cinema. This is the movie that killed foreign film for so many American viewers. The problem with this story is the same problem with any story whose protagonist's enemy is ambivalence: it's boring as hell. It's a movie about a dude with writer's block, which I'm almost positive was written by a dude trying to overcome writer's block. What's more, there are dreamscapes. Lots and lots of dreamscapes.

Hamlet also had an ambivalent protagonist, but it was written by perhaps the greatest writer in the history of the western world, and, as far as I know, he's the only guy who ever got it right.

People say that, even with all its flaws, it's still the greatest film ever made about film. I would kindly redirect them to Tropic Thunder.

Other way, dude.

3. Forrest Gump (1994): Don't misunderstand me, this is in no way a difficult film to watch. Anybody can sit down and have a good time watching it. And that's the problem.

It's a movie about all the worst things that happened to the American social fabric in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and it plays like a greatest hits album. How many people tuning in to watch this terrifying depiction of the 1960s and 70s are tuning in because they actually miss or wish they lived through the 1960s and 70s?

With all of that said, some have suggested that Forrest Gump's naive optimism parallels the same blind optimism displayed by the titular character in Voltaire's 1759 masterpiece of satire Candide, except that, in the novel, eternal optimism was an actual thing to be critiqued, whereas Forrest Gump was mentally challenged, so where's the critique there?

If you put this poster on your wall without
seeing the film, congratulations, the terrorists have won.

2. Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961): I hate this movie so much. The fact that more people can recognize the poster than name the film is all but proof that you should hate it, too.

I understand the delicate social commentary it constructs and all that, the precious metaphors and allusions and whatnot, but in the end what we've got is a boring-ass film filled with boring-ass characters doing nothing in particular for no apparent reason (although the unemployed sure do love dressing up in jewelry and dining at Tiffany's, don't they?).

Watch the film. Nothing happens. Not a thing. In the last act, the cat runs away, but you'll have stopped watching by then. Some have praised the film for its "restraint," but I would direct those people to Mickey Rooney's depiction of Holly's asian landlord and kindly ask them not to let the door hit them on the way out.

"Ladies."

1. Field of Dreams (1989): Oh, G-d, we've reached the end, haven't we?

This film has got it all: a doofus lead character appointed with an impossible-to-fail task, a journey filled not with action or conflict but with warm, gooey nostalgia, a writer who thinks his story is good enough to get JD f*cking Salinger out of hiding, and the most inexplicably popular leading man in show business to undress you with his eyes from the poster.

It's baseball porn. Written by a Canadian.

This film exemplifies exactly how not to make a film that I would like: avoid conflict. Gimme an unrelatable problem for an unsympathetic protagonist to solve. Ham it up. Gimme some slow-motion baseball action-shots to ponder. Make bank.

The fact that this film was nominated not only for Best Picture, but also Best Adapted Screenplay, is proof of the Divine: because someone must pay for this.

--Serge

Spoiler Cinema: "The Reader"

2012-02-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

So I'm thinking I'm going to go ahead and start posting regular entries of a new video series I'm calling "Spoiler Cinema," wherein we, um... spoil some cinema. Here, just watch the clip:

Anyhoot, if y'all think that's cute, maybe I'll go ahead and make more of them each week. Any requests, besides The Sixth Sense? Because The Sixth Sense is totally next.

--Serge

Another Day, Another Podcast

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Howdy, folks. Ninth Wheel Media has posted another podcast, which features yours truly. Today's topic is our most anticipated films of 2012.

This wouldn't normally be the only thing I'd post today, but when there's a perfectly good podcast to put onto one's blog, one is inclined to spend the day writing and editing instead. And that's what I did. Editing a video review is painstakingly slow, but I think it's gonna be incredibly rewarding.

--Serge

Topical Tuesday: 4 Ice Age Animals That Were As Cool As Any Dinosaur

2012-01-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

Regular readers know that I love dinosaurs, but I don't love dinosaurs just because they're dinosaurs. If dinosaurs weren't cool, I wouldn't talk about them, and, contrary to what some might say, there are plenty of dinosaurs that I could care less about (Tarchia kielanae is the youngest known Mongolian ankylosaurid and is noteworthy for being represented by at least five different zzzzzzz).

Anyhoot, I've only recently begun branching out from the Mesozoic in my studies and already I'm finding a plethora of dramatic kick-ass animals -- all of which evolved long after the dinosaurs went extinct. I only have a list of creatures noteworthy for their enormous sizes so far, but I imagine I'll learn the subtleties of Cenozoic fauna in the coming months.

4. Paraceratherium, the largest land-mammal in the history of the planet

Elephants are the largest land mammals currently living on the planet, but they're only half as tall as what came before them. Physiologically, Paraceratherium was like a cross between a rhino and a giraffe, and indeed its closest living relative is the rhinoceros (its name means "near horn animal").

Structurally, however, Paraceratherium looked just like a f*cking AT-AT.

Paraceratherium was the largest land mammal to ever walk the face of the Earth, standing 18 feet tall at the shoulder, with a maximum head height of 26 feet. Paraceratherium was very well adapted to its environment, as it occupied a 14 million year swath of the fossil record without much change in its anatomy. Most mammals only persist as a distinct species for 2 to 5 million years before evolving into something else (humans have existed for 1.5 so far).

If you're hoping to see more of what Paraceratherium was like in life, you're in luck; this fella was the subject of the third episode of the BBC's Walking with Beasts, although they refer to it throughout the episode as an "indricothere," which is not a specific genus.

3. Andrewsarchus, the largest carnivorous land-mammal in the history of the world

The largest carnivorous mammal you can find on the planet these days is the polar bear, but back in the Eocene, it was Andrewsarchus mongoliensis, which was like a cross between a wolf, a hyena, and a Honda Civic.

Andrewsarchus is known from only one (terrifyingly massive) skull, so scientists are not entirely sure of its exact dimensions, and its weight is pure speculation, but what we do know for a fact is that this was one gigantic predator (whose closest living relative is not the wolf or the bear, but rather the hippo).

Fun fact: Andrewsarchus was named after Roy Chapman Andrews, the purported real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones.

As gigantic as it was, there are other creatures looking to take away Andrewsarchus's title of Largest Carnivorous Mammal in Earth's History. For now, second place goes to Arctodus simus, or the Pleistocene short-faced bear, which lived in California and only died out 11,000 years ago. Did we mention that it stood six feet tall at the shoulder?

2. Megatherium, the ground sloth the size of an elephant

This is perhaps the most well-known specimen on today's list. Megatherium, or the Giant Ground Sloth, lived in Pleistocene South America alongside saber-toothed tigers and could've existed as recently as 10,000 years ago.

Besides being a ground sloth that stood as tall as an elephant, what's cool about this animal is that it was one of the first "big" animals to be studied by paleontologists (it was named by Cuvier way back in 1796). Dinosaurs get most of the press these days, but back in the early 1800s, most people hadn't even heard the word "dinosaur," and preferred reading about the massive mammals being dug out of the ground in North and South America.

One more cool thing: in 1996, some scientists pointed out that the part of the elbow onto which the tricep attaches in Megatherium is relatively short -- an adaptation for speed. This has led some to speculate on the possible omnivorous scavenging habits of the Giant Ground Sloth, with some going so far as to suggest that it may have stolen kills from saber-toothed tigers. This remains a controversial claim.

1. Kelenken, the predatory bird as tall as a house

Throughout much of the Pleistocene, South America was ruled by megafauna, which included not only giant mammals, but giant birds as well. The Phorusrhacidae, or "terror birds," were a collection of flightless monsters that ruled much of the ancient Earth. Scientists estimate that the flightiest specimens could've reached speeds of up to 30 mph.

The biggest was Kelenken guillermoi (that orange monstrosity up above), which stood between nine and ten feet tall, and sported the largest skull of any known bird (28 inches).

The purple one, Titanis walleri, was the only species to make it all the way to North America, where it settled in what is presently Gilchrist County, Florida, where it finally went extinct approximately 2 million years ago.

If you're already planning that novel wherein a small colony of Titanis are discovered still living in the Everglades, you can forget it: James Robert Smith already published that novel in 2006.

--Serge

Thoughts on (the First Half of) "Edmond" (2005)

2012-01-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

Edmond is a 2005 film written by David Mamet and directed by Stuart Gordon. It tells the story of Edmond, a wealthy suit living in New York who decides one night that he doesn't like the place he's at in life and chooses to cast off anything and everything that he considers unfulfilling, starting with his wife.

He leaves her, and heads to the local bar, where he meets a sympathetic businessman who advises him to get laid immediately. He gives Edmond the name of a new strip club in the neighborhood, and Edmond sets off.

He finds the club and all he asks is for one shred of honesty from the girls there: he wants to pay a mutually-agreeable price to go in the back and get his rocks off. But the girl there wants him to buy her a pair for drinks first, for $100. Edmond says that that's a ridiculous price to pay for two drinks, and then he realizes that the girl must get a commission for them. He leaves the club, enraged, because he told her all he wanted was a straightforward exchange.

The rest of Edmond's night is one of the most hypnotically engrossing sagas I've ever seen on film. Perhaps there's no need for hyperbole; what I mean to say is that all this guy wants is to get laid, and I couldn't believe the number of complications Mamet was able to invent in order to prevent him from doing so.

But there's more to Edmond's quest than just sex. He wants honesty. With everyone he meets, he demands honesty - the boys and the girls. He's not looking to judge anyone, and he's not looking for anyone to judge him. He'll figure out morals later; right now he's just trying to figure out what truth is.

Now, normally, just seeing a great film isn't enough to get a post out of me, so I'll tell you what happened next that made me turn off the movie in disgust.

At the halfway point in the movie, Edmond finally gets a girl, a waitress, to go home and sleep with him. He doesn't even have to pay her for the favor. Edmond is ecstatic. He begins raving about his newfound joie de vivre a little too enthusiastically, and when he freaks the waitress out and she begins crying for help, he f*cking murders her with a gold-plated WWI survival knife.

Yeah, spoiler alert.

Here's the thing: the reason I'm writing this post is not to rant about this movie's inexplicable second-act twist. It's to petition you, dear reader, for an answer to the following question:

Shouldn't I keep watching?

I mean, it still streams on Netflix. They saved my place. I can go back and resume watching precisely where I left off. Shouldn't I do that?

I don't have a problem watching despicable protagonists. Nobody turns off a movie just because the protagonist does something horrible. If anybody did that, we wouldn't have The Silence of the Lambs, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Galaxy Quest, or, well... any David Mamet films.

So what is it about Edmond's sudden taste for manslaughter midway through the film that makes me stop watching it? I think it's because I thought I was watching a different story. I thought I knew where this story was going, and it's clearly not going that way anymore. I thought it was a story about Edmond's self-realization.

Whatever it is, it isn't that anymore.

But perhaps the fault is mine. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to get ahead of this film, to guess what it was about before it went ahead and told me. Perhaps I should wait to see what happens next.

I suppose I've built it up way too much at this point, and so I'll definitely have to go back and see where it's going. I'll be sure to post follow-up thoughts later this week.

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

I told myself I wouldn't become one of those bloggers who apologizes for not posting more often, but dammit if that's not what I'm doing now. On the bright side, I'm working hard on new video content for this blog, and if I'm ever going to get around to posting even a written review of Mass Effect 2, I've gotta actually play the damn thing, and I don't know if you heard, but it's really, really big.

Personal update: I'm still here in South Florida, tracking down at least a part-time job. My first real job was at a Blockbuster Video back in 2007, and back then you could walk into any retail store in the country and walk out with a job. Needless to say, in today's economy, it's not so easy.

This week on the blog, I will post thoughts on the polarizing film Edmond (2005) which is currently streaming on Netflix, a post on how hard it is to make a film about any given job that people who actually have that job will actually enjoy, something for Topical Tuesdays concerning either space or paleontology (space-paleontology?), and I'm planning to write up a review of The Woman in Black, which I plan to see this Friday.

--Serge

American "Lockout" Trailer Promises Just Another Action Movie

2012-01-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Regular readers know that I am super-stoked to see Lockout on April 20th. Sure, it's got the exact same plot as Escape From LA set in space, but it's got the writer of Leon the Professional and the main character seems to be a combination of everything we love about Tony Stark and Snake Plissken.

In a previous post, I labelled the international trailer the Best Trailer Ever:

Today, we get our first American trailer, and wouldn't you know it, all they did was mash together a bunch of effects footage and sprinkle in a teensy bit of exposition:

When will marketing departments learn that whatever you can render on a computer will never entertain an audience more than a great script? What the international trailer gave us was a hilarious anti-hero on a high-stakes quest and what the domestic trailer gives us is, well, explosions.

The one joke that the American trailer preserved was that stupid oral sex gag, which is what I counted to be the only bit of dumbness in the international trailer.

Anyhoot. Marketing campaigns suck. Let's start some sort of viral marketing campaign of our own and spread the word on this film, which looks like it's going to be awesome, despite what the marketers would have you believe.

--Serge

"Aliens: Colonial Marines" Videogame Delayed Until Fall

2012-01-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

So perhaps you didn't know, but a new videogame based on the Alien franchise was due to hit store shelves this coming March for the PS3, XBOX 360, and PC. Development was far along; they debuted a full-length demo at E3:

Developer Gearbox Software announced yesterday that the game will be delayed until Fall 2012, and wouldn't you know it, I'm kinda happy about that.

Via Game Informer: "Aliens: Colonial Marines is a process of creativity and invention and those don't necessarily follow the structure of an assembly line. While setting clear goals, deadlines and predictions is helpful, they are often subjective. We don't want to sacrifice the creative process just for the sake of following a blueprint. We prefer to have the creative discovery shape that blueprint because our goal is to make a great game, and we are prioritizing this goal over the previously targeted date."

Gearbox Software seems to think it owes us gamers an apology, when in fact nothing would've made me angrier than seeing yet another crappy Alien game hit the market.

Regular readers might remember how ridiculously high my expectations got when the last Alien game hit the market two years ago. There was nothing to indicate greatness in that title, but I dared to dream, and when it debuted it was universally "meh'd."

After the massive let-down that was Aliens vs. Predator, I'd be thrilled if Aliens: Colonial Marines somehow managed to be just a competent shooter, worthy of a rental. The delay is indicative of either extra attention from the developers, or terrible unforeseen problems that can't be swept under the rug before March, and I pray to the gods of unrealistic expectations that it's the former.

Developer Steam is also notorious for delaying their releases, and they make damn fine games.

The gaming industry has been hit hard by the recession, namely, because gamers like me have been hit hard by the recession. We play games not because they make us better people, but because they're fun. And when we go broke, we look for cheaper ways to have fun.

Gaming companies don't seem to want to lower their prices (in fact, if anything, the trend has been to surcharge gamers with "limited edition" releases and separate charges for DLC), and so they do other things to bring gamers back. Brand appeal seems to be the soup of the day. But seriously: all you have to do is make it fun to play.

--Serge

I'm in a Podcast

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

My friend Alex and I made a podcast the other day. Have a listen if you'd like. The topic is our five favorite films of 2011, soon to be followed up by our most-anticipated films of 2012.

This isn't the only thing I did today. Instead of dedicating an hour of the day to writing up a full-length blog-post, I started editing my long-promised Red Dead Redemption video review, which I hope to have finished within two or three weeks.

--Serge

Obligatory Oscar Nominees Rant

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

So the nominees for the 84th Academy Awards were announced yesterday morning and, as per tradition, I'm here to rant about them a little.

Some might wonder why I even bother to watch the Oscars if they disappoint so often, but the way I see it, the Academy Awards is the only canon awards show in all of Hollywood -- the Golden Globes, the Writer's Guild Awards, all of those are more like a bunch of buddies who hated the Oscars so much that they decided to hold their own awards show in their garage, and I'm not quite there yet.

If nothing else, it's the only movie-themed party I can throw that anyone will attend.

This year, only nine nominees were announced for Best Picture. The reason is because the Academy recently amended its rules so that now a film can only become a nominee if it receives at least 5% of the vote. From now on, the number of Best Picture nominees will vary from anywhere between five and ten.

And the nine nominees this year are the most predictable, pretentious, fart-smelling bunch in the biz. With addenda.

I'm not saying these films are bad. I'm not saying that these films are necessarily pretentious or boring. All I'm saying is that this would be the list of films that the Academy would get excited about:

The Artist: A silent black and white film shot in the old 4:3 aspect ratio, a love letter to silent cinema. And it's got a quaint little dog to boot. I hear this one's really good and I actually really want to see it, but if the Academy got any more predictable they'd have to start announcing the winners a month before the actual ceremony, too.

The Descendants: Another title I didn't see, and wouldn't see, if only it wasn't getting so much Oscar buzz. The logline was kinda cool (a man trying to reconnect with his daughters in the wake of his wife's hospitalization learns that his wife was having an affair), but the "look at George Clooney running" master shot from the trailer kinda dampened my enthusiasm.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Oh, for Pete's sake.

The Help: 2011's The Blind Side. Must we suffer through the white guilt nomination every year now? Perhaps it's interesting to note that this is the first film on the Academy's alphabetized list that I've actually seen, and I hated it (a post on that soon).

Hugo: Ok, so I really want to see this one, I've heard it's great from everyone who saw it, and I'm actually kind of excited to see the Academy nominate a kid's movie for Best Picture, even if Martin Scorsese had to direct one before they finally did so.

Midnight in Paris: Regular readers know that this made my short list for Best Picture of the Year. This is in fact the only title from that list the Academy chose to nominate, so this is the title I am pulling for.

Moneyball: Aaron Sorkin could sneeze onto a three-hole-punched stack of paper fastened with two brass brads and the Academy would nominate it. No, I haven't seen it yet, don't really want to, but I will when I get the chance and we'll see if the little girl singing a song at the end will produce the catharsis that I'm told the rest of the movie couldn't.

The Tree of Life: Terrence Malick only directs one film every decade, this film got the special effects guy for 2001: A Space Odyssey out of retirement, and it features Sean Penn pontificating about life, the universe, and everything. It all adds up to a mediocre film, one that was bound to get nominated.

War Horse: This and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close will have to duke it out for the most Oscar-Baity Film of the Year.

At least The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didn't get nominated (with apologies to Alex).

But seriously: they didn't even fill up the ballot and Melancholia got left off?

The Oscars will air on Sunday, February 26th, 2012. If you're, you know... interested.

--Serge

Three Reasons: "Godzilla"

2012-01-24T00:00:00.001-05:00

Godzilla debuts on blu-ray today, courtesy of Criterion. You can find my review of this, my most favorite monster movie of all time, right here. Below, you'll find Criterion's "Three Reasons" trailer for the film, which sums up, in just a few choice images and captions, three reasons why you should check out the film. They do it for most all of their new releases, and I think they're great.

--Serge

Topical Tuesdays: Real Life Yeti Lived Alongside Primitive Man

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

This is Gigantopithecus, a ten-foot-tall, 1,200 pound hominid which existed in Southeast Asia for approximately one million years and went extinct just 100,000 years ago, which means it lived alongside both Homo erectus and even Homo sapiens.

This is what your great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents had to out-compete just to keep the species alive.

Now, perhaps you're wondering why you've never seen a skeleton of one of these bad boys in any museum, anywhere in the world. That's because no one's ever found a complete skeleton. We known Gigantopithecus from just over 1,300 teeth and several well-preserved jawbones.

What that means is that this creature's method of locomotion, appearance, and exact limb proportions are based largely on speculation.

Science has been burned badly in the past for speculating on the existence of new hominid species from dentary samples. In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn named a new species of hominid after examining only one tooth, which turned out to be from an extinct species of peccary. Young-Earth Creationists have never let us forget the misidentification of the so-called "Nebraska Man."

But we've learned a lot from our past classification blunders, and now we only declare what we know of our specimens to be demonstrably true, and if we speculate, we do well to label it as such. So here we are:

We know that the closest-living relative of Gigantopithecus is the orangutan, which indeed has the longest arm length (proportional to its body) of any living ape, but what we're still doing is guesstimating. Nobody knows if Gigantopithecus walked on its hind legs, or on its knuckles. Nobody knows what the length of its arms or legs were. Even its height is based only on some morphology studies and a whole lot of extrapolation.

Some of the more conservative camps assert that Gigantopithecus may not have stood taller than 6 feet.

But even with those limitations, what we have at the end of the day is a six-inch mandible and molars the size of a grown man's thumb, which clearly belonged to the largest primate in the history of the planet.

What's interesting to note is all that science has been able to conclude definitively from just the teeth we've found.

A phytolith is a piece of silica that has been absorbed by a plant and then re-deposited into the soil after the plant has died. Scientists have been able to study the phytoliths present in Gigantopithecus teeth and concluded that its diet was rich in bamboo, a very sugary plant, which would explain its high number of cavities (some have suggested that it went extinct when its food-supply grew scarce).

Perhaps surprisingly, scientists have known about Gigantopithecus for a long time. The first molar was found and identified in 1935 by German anthropologist Ralph von Koenigswald, who was searching for specimens in a Chinese apothecary shop. The first piece of Gigantopithecus discovered in a "geologic setting" came in the mid 1950s.

It didn't take long for Yeti proponents to scream... well... "Yeti." And it didn't take long for Bigfoot proponents to scream... Gigantopithecus americanus.

You know why "gigantopithecus americanus" doesn't have its own wikipedia page? This is why.

--Serge

I Saw "Tree of Life" And...

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

I didn't like it. It's supposed to be one of the best films of the year, but all it really amounted to was a whole lot more of the trailer. Remember the trailer? Yeah. It's 2 hours and 18 minutes of that.

So here's the plot, which you can use as a cheat-sheet when you're actually watching the film: Jack (Sean Penn) is sad. He is a sad, melancholy architect who ponders his early life after spotting a tree being planted out on the street. He grows up in Waco, Texas with a domineering father (Brad Pitt) and a kind-hearted mother (Jessica Chastain). Intercut images of the birth of the universe. And the death of the universe. Et cetera.

Now, I'm not saying that that amounts to nothing. The film is unquestionably beautiful, and we go into it knowing we're not going to be getting the plot of Inception. But what I fail to see is why we need another 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The similarities are uncanny.

Both films feature extensive cosmic in-camera special effects done by the same man, Douglas Trumbull (he actually came out of retirement to work on this film). Both feature three different timelines proceeding semi-simultaneously (prehistoric, the contemplative present, the conflict-filled past). Both films are intentionally sparse on dialogue. Both are impressionist pieces.

But where the crucial differences lie is in their ability to generate catharsis. 2001 does, The Tree of Life doesn't.

Even when you have no clue what's literally happening on-screen at the end of 2001, you still feel something for it. Even though "starman" isn't in your vocabulary, you still know that Dave has crossed an incredible new threshold, and it means something grand for the whole human race (the score helps generate catharsis when the action does not).

At the end of The Tree of Life, you kinda know what emotion you're supposed to feel, but you don't really feel it.

None of this adds up to a terrible movie. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen for the first hour, and every time Terrence Malick cuts away to space it takes my breath away. Remember the trailer? It's a beautiful trailer. It just doesn't make me feel much that can subsequently be put into words, or transmit into action.

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

Looking for work is a full-time job. It seems I'm closing in on a retail position or two, which sucks, but then again the bills will not stop just because I'm unemployed. I'm trying to keep up the blogging and the screenwriting, because right now those are the only things keeping me sane.

I hope to get you guys a review of Mass Effect 2 this week (written, I'm afraid), and a post on a monster from the not-so-ancient world for Topical Tuesdays. I'm also suddenly interested in the depiction of religion on film, but you won't get a post on that until my thoughts ripen a little. Maybe this week, maybe not. Oh, and I haven't bitched about creationists in a while, so maybe I'll do that, too.

--Serge

What Do "Nacho Libre" and "Remember the Titans" Have in Common?

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

They're my two favorite sports movies, that's what!

There is a classic way to construct a sports movie: the team is last in their league/division/conference, the laughing stock of the sport. They face many early defeats after discovering an inner strength and blazing ahead in the ranks. Soon enough, however, interpersonal conflicts threaten to ruin their game, just when they're about to advance to the finals.

They make it to the finals, and they enjoy early success, but soon enough, they fall behind. Their old stand-bys are no longer cutting it. In the end, they find a player/strategy previously declared useless, and they put it to good use. They come from behind in the last moment and take home the gold.

This is the classic sports film: Angels in the Outfield, Little Giants, Space Jam -- and they're great.

But what separates Nacho Libre and Remember the Titans from the classic sports film is that they both disregard the classical sports-movie formula; in either film, there is no drama derived from the rise and fall of victory and defeat.

Namely, in Remember the Titans, the team we root for wins every single game that they play, and in Nacho Libre, the "athlete" we root for doesn't win a single match -- except for the championship.

Each film, therefore, must find a source of drama that comes from something other than the game itself. In Remember the Titans, it is the interpersonal conflicts of the team (overcoming their racism), and in Nacho Libre, it is in achieving self-worth (in the face of being thoroughly unspectacular).

Both films also happen to sport fantastic scripts and characters that endear themselves to me better than most regular movies, much less sports movies.

Athletes that I've spoken to tend to hate sports movies. That makes sense, I guess, because the only two films about the actual film industry that I think are worth a hoot are State & Main and Tropic Thunder. Athletes: what are your favorite sports films, and why?

--Serge

4 Ways "How I Met Your Mother" Could've Been a Great Show

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

So I watched the first season of How I Met Your Mother this past week, and I don't like it very much -- certainly not enough to continue watching. What's more, I think it represents just what's wrong with modern sit-com writing.

4. They could've left out the sexism: there's nothing about the show that screams misogyny. Rather, it's peppered in at odd intervals.

I don't mean to say that the creators of the show are sexists. I'm more inclined to believe that television shows must be written extraordinarily fast and sometimes the writers reach into a grab-bag of lazy archetypes and a lot of them wind up espousing sexism.

In "Return of the Shirt," Ted looks up an old girlfriend, Natalie, whom he had previously dumped over the phone, on her birthday, via voicemail.

He rekindles their love but ultimately winds up dumping her on her birthday again, because she isn't "the one." The writers know that Ted must be punished for his insensitivity, so they make Natalie a martial-arts expert, and she beats the crap out of him.

Now, there's more to say here about crappy writing than there is about sexism, but, in their haste to meet deadline, the writers have not only slapped together a terribly contrived plot, they've done it with the tired old archetype that hell hath no fury like the wrath of a woman scorned. Her pain is played for laughs, and we all go home a little dumber.

3. It didn't have to be a piss-poor copy of Friends: relationships are explored and pop-culture is referenced via the interactions of a scrappy collection of (white) twenty-something buddies living in New York. The only real difference is that Friends is the better show, and How I Met Your Mother is propped up with a pointless framing device.

It does nothing to improve on the Friends formula (save perhaps the creation of Barney), and it makes lots of new mistakes. In the first season of How I Met Your Mother, for example, nobody dealt with money problems. None at all. Even though Lily is a gorram kindergarten-teacher-slash-amateur-artist. Sure, she sits on a cake and has to put it all on her credit card in one episode, but the money problem is fixed in that same episode when Marshall gets a high-paying job.

In one of the better episodes of Friends, the six of them go out to dinner and their income discrepancies rear their ugly heads when three of them buy high-priced entrees and the other three can only afford the bread. If you're going to plagiarize, at least copy the good parts.

2. Ted didn't have to be a jerk: the supporting characters are easily the best thing about this show. Barney is the best, followed soon-after by Lily and Marshall, when the writers aren't trying too hard to complicate their relationship with lame-ass plot-twists.

Ted, on the other hand, is an unsympathetic asshole, and that wouldn't be a problem if we were supposed to hate him, but I think that most of the (self-generated) problems he faces are supposed to garner him sympathy. Now, television is a fantastic medium in which to explore character, and this could've been a show about Ted's journey from self-interested jerk to selfless humanitarian, but if that were the case, I think we would've already seen Ted practicing a little self-reflection.

1. They could've written in an interesting protagonist: this is different from writing a jerk as a protagonist, and this is really what I think the biggest and most pervasive problem with modern sit-com writing is.

Their protagonists suffer from a deplorable case of Everyman Syndrome. That is, they have no discernible defining characteristics or personalities. They are the Qui-Gon Jinns of television.

Think about Ted. Who is he? How would you describe him, without resorting to physical descriptions or job titles? He's, um, well, he's the protagonist. He's the least-charming, the least-intelligent, the least-sympathetic character in the whole show, and they made him the main character for some reason.

I don't know why this problem is so prevalent. I think it's the kind of protagonist audiences hate, but studio heads love. "The more generic we make him, the more people will identify with him!" But that's not the way it works.

Han Solo isn't everyone's favorite Star Wars character because he's a blank slate of emotion onto which everyone can ascribe his or her own desires. It's because he's the coolest mutherfacker in the room.

--Serge

In Honor of "The Green Hornet"

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

My top five favorite films of the year are currently Hesher, Melancholia, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Midnight in Paris, and The Green Hornet.

Hesher technically came out in 2009, so I know it won't be getting any awards this year. Melancholia will probably get at least one nomination, maybe even Best Picture. Midnight in Paris is in the running for Best Director, Picture, and Original Screenplay, and I'll be surprised if it doesn't win at least one. Rise of the Planet of the Apes will probably pick up a VFX award, if not the world's first Best Actor nomination for a mo-cap performance.

The Green Hornet will get absolutely nothing. And that's not fair. Just watch the clip below, and tell me this isn't the most fun a superhero movie has ever had, ever:

So anyway, this movie got way too little love this year, and I'll probably keep yapping about it all awards season long. In the meantime, you should czech it out.

--Serge

PS: So there's a bunch of crazy things media-related going on in the world right now, such as SOPA and wikipedia's 24-hour protest blackout, but I figure any news site in the world can fill you in on those issues better than I can. In other news, the one Republican candidate I actually liked, Jon Huntsman, has dropped out of the race. Looks like I'm officially abstaining from the vote.

Topical Tuesday: Thoughts on the Devil

2012-01-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

These are the thoughts that possessed me in church the other day. This is a post for all my theology-major friends. I know you're out there. Help me field some of these.

It all started with a semi-rhetorical question: does the Devil have free will?

Of course he does, right? Lucifer was God's second-in-command before he decided to rebel against God and bring a third of all the angels under his command. But what he was fighting was an omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful being, and so of course, he lost.

Now the story goes that the newly-christened "Satan" then became responsible for all the world's evil (although Isaiah 45:7 seems to want to put the blame on the Almighty). Since then, he's had the job of deceiving the masses of the world and leading them from the lighted path. In the end times, Satan will finally be defeated and chained up in Hell forever, where he will henceforth do no more harm.

But here's my question (not rhetorical this time): what if Satan accepts Jesus into his heart as his personal Lord and Savior?

We've already established that the Devil has free will. What's to stop him from getting saved and ruining God's plans for the Apocalypse?

Do you even possess free will anymore if God tells you exactly what you're going to do next?

If God says "You have free will, and with it, you will choose to sit down in that chair in ten seconds," there are a number of categorical contradictions at play. First of all, God is omnipotent. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will sit in that chair in ten seconds. But now that you know that, can't you not sit in that chair just to spite Him?

No -- because then He wouldn't be omnipotent anymore. Then again, you wouldn't have free will anymore.

So when the Devil is told by an omnipotent being that he will continue to enslave the fallen until he finally masses one final rebellion and is defeated forever, is he free to do anything otherwise?

None of these ideas are new. God doesn't disappear in a puff of logic, and it's certainly not my intention to try. I'm willing to accept that these could simply be problems of semantics, and not theology, but if that's the case, I'd like someone to explain it to me, because I can't be the only person on the planet asking these questions.

Mostly, I just like the image of Satan coming forward during an altar call and giving my childhood pastor a heart-attack.

What if all of these questions were fed into a screenplay-machine? We'd see an epic tale of betrayal and war, of a fallen hero looking to amend his ways, only to find himself thwarted by fate in the most literal sense. It would be the only movie in history that ever made "fate" do something for the plot!

--Serge

Lionsgate May Make More "Twilight" Films; Too Many Dismissive Comments to Choose From

2012-01-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Summit Entertainment is the studio responsible for the Twilight franchise. It was sold last week to Lionsgate for $412.5 million, a price which some analysts have said is way too much, as the value of the company is expected to plummet after the fifth and final Twilight film hits theaters later this year.

But now Lionsgate chief Jon Feltheimer, who runs a publicly-traded company which must answer to its shareholders, says he's hoping to continue the franchise with more films, proving once and for all that perhaps the Mayans were right:

"It's hard for me to imagine a movie that does $700 million-plus doesn't have ongoing value. It's an amazing franchise that they have done a great job of maintaining with absolutely no deterioration. So the simple answer is 'Boy I hope so.' "

I try my best not to gang up too often on a demographic as intellectually defenseless as Twilight fans (whoops), if only because I worry that the joy I get from bashing the franchise somehow gives it value, and while the idea of continuing a series with no more source-material available is nothing new, I feel that it's just sad to let this crap keep going.

I suppose one argument is that Lionsgate may use the profits acquired from a sixth Twilight film and use them to bankroll more artistically-sound projects (Summit was also the financier behind 50/50, Knowing, and The Hurt Locker), but then might we also open a new Baptist church to bankroll a hooka lounge? And no, I don't have those two backwards.

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

My friend Alex is going to start up a podcast sorta thingy, and he's asked me to be a part of it, so hopefully that will be up sometime soon. What's more, I've begun expanding The Contraband Romance into a feature-length script. Good stuff.

This week, I will think of something awesome for Topical Tuesdays, and maybe a post on writing for sitcoms. I've just gotten into How I Met Your Mother, see.

--Serge

"Inception Makes Everything Epic"

2012-01-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

Here it is: the first video update of this semi-video blog. It's a silly video -- little more than a match-cut exercise to keep me sharp, but I like how it turned out. Apologies for the awful quality. For some reason, I can't figure out how to get Serif MoviePlus X3 to output in HD. That's what I get for buying $13 editing software.

So I actually think I did a bad job reducing the number of posts I made this week: we only went one day without a post. I'm still trying to work out how best to run this blog, but now I'm thinking I really will reduce the number of posts per week, but the ones that I do post will be pretty substantial -- like the Criterion review I posted yesterday, or the Year in Film posts, or Topical Tuesdays, or a post which examines the links between Alien and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc, etc.

The next video I'm planning to make will either be a video review of Red Dead Redemption, or a video which examines all the best films of 1939, depending on how much raw footage I can find.

--Serge

Criterion Corner: "Godzilla" (1954)

2012-01-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

Godzilla makes for a unique companion-piece to two American films made in the same era: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and - no joke - Dr. Strangelove.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms came out in 1953. It tells the tale of a giant reptilian monster that is awakened by an atomic bomb test in the Arctic, whereupon it heads south to terrorize the North Atlantic, and finally, New York. Ray Harryhausen's special-effects were a real box-office draw, and the film was a hit.

Legend has it that the success of 20,000 Fathoms convinced producer Tomoyuki Tanaka to make Godzilla.

Indeed, they have superficially-similar stories. Atomic testing in the Pacific awakens Godzilla, a 164-foot-tall dinosaur with the ability to repel artillery attacks and breath radioactive fire. After sinking several ships and wiping out dozens of island communities, Godzilla arrives in Japan and wreaks havoc on Tokyo.

But where the two films differ (and why I believe Godzilla is the better film) is that such a nuclear-generated attack actually happened to Japan just nine years earlier. It isn't difficult to spot the parallels between the plot of Godzilla and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and even the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945, which was not a nuclear attack but claimed many more lives than either nuclear attack).

A film like 20,000 Fathoms is fueled by speculation. It takes the worries of the day and extrapolates from them the most dramatic outcome. What writer/director Ishiro Honda gives us in Godzilla,however, is not speculative -- it is a real event, that actually happened, dramatized so as to make it watchable. It is an attempt to bring about not just diegetic closure but catharsis for the viewer. What 20,000 Fathoms presents is mere entertainment.

Stated another way: 20,000 Fathoms is history in the hands of the showman. Godzilla is history in the hands of the artist.

Dr. Strangelove, too, was an acute filmic response to the new nuclear age. In many ways, it was America's Godzilla. America and Japan were playing vastly different roles in the post-war nuclear world, and so one could have expected both films to be vastly different. One is a somber monster movie, the other a madcap satire. But where Dr. Strangelove lets us laugh at the expense of a happy ending, Godzilla is somber and ultimately offers a solution to the terror.

This is a film with a production history that's almost as fascinating as the film itself. At the time, it was the most expensive Japanese film ever produced. It was a box office hit, though most critics issued negative reviews, with some going so far as to say that the filmmakers were exploiting the pain of those affected by WWII.

The original intent was to animate Godzilla with stop-motion effects, as was the titular creature in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, but it was judged that the costume-builders in Japan were better at their craft than any of the animators.

The original title of the monster, "Gojira," is a combination of the Japanese words "gorilla" and "whale."

Frankly, it's kind of rare for Criterion to release such a popular title. Godzilla is so popular, in fact, that it was already released on blu-ray back in 2009 by Classic Media. This is the superior release by leaps and bounds (especially in the AV department), but with such an iconic film, it's impossible to include every supplemental feature ever created.

What I mean to say is that the Criterion release doesn't have the largest batch of extras out there, but what's there is great stuff, including a new audio commentary by author David Kalat, four interviews with cast and crew members totaling 105 minutes (three of which were recorded in 2011), and three short features on the visual effects of the film, its cultural impact, and a real-life nuclear accident which inspired parts of the film.

Additionally, there is an incredibly well-thought-out essay by critic J. Hoberman that is included with the film that I found greatly illuminating.

Of course, perhaps the most substantial "extra" is Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the 1956 re-edit of the film for American audiences. An American reporter played by Raymond Burr was concocted, filmed, and inserted into the film, while all the references to radiation-poisoning were edited out.

This was the version that most people in the United States only ever saw until the original Gojira was finally given a substantial release -- in 2004.

Criterion's release represents the best possible AV specs available anywhere in the world, and the inclusion of both films makes for an interesting study of competing cultures. If you haven't seen this, the king of all the monster movies, I'd recommend you do so immediately.

Please note: this video is not meant to represent the AV quality of the Criterion release.

--Serge

Most Anticipated Films of 2012

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Red Tails -- January 20th. George Lucas' first non-franchise movie in over two decades is a historical action-drama with an all-black cast that all the studios refused to release. All of this intrigues me very much.

The Woman in Black -- February 3rd. The play was terrifying. I can only imagine what the magic of montage is able to do for it. And isn't it refreshing to see a horror movie shot with a tripod for a change?

John Carter -- March 9th. I'm hoping that this will be the kick-ass space-pulp masterpiece that Avatar should've been. With a Pixar veteran at the helm, let's hope the film is better than its godawful trailer.

Casa de mi Padre -- March 16th. Will Ferrell promises that this will be "the funniest movie you'll ever read."

Cabin in the Woods -- April 13th. Awful trailer. Let's hope that's a prelude to greatness.

MS One: Maximum Security -- April 20th. This is, I believe, the world's best trailer. We'll see soon enough if a film with the exact plot of Escape From New York distinguishes itself enough to warrant such shameless plagiarism.

The Avengers -- May 4th. Joss Whedon complained that the superhero film never saw a classic golden age, that it skipped straight to postmodern with Batman Begins. The Avengers is his attempt at bringing about said-age. I can't wait to see if his efforts pay off.

Prometheus -- June 8th. The only film that, judging only by the trailers, seems capable of giving The Dark Knight Rises a run for its money.

The Amazing Spider-Man -- July 3rd. Don't know what to expect with this one. A needless re-tread or a stellar reboot? Will this be the Batman Begins of Marvel franchises?

The Dark Knight Rises -- July 20th. I'm gonna go ahead and call it now: best pic of the decade.

Total Recall -- August 3rd. Below is the only publicity still from production. I'm against remakes of Paul Verhoeven movies as a rule, but then again I'll probably go see it simply because it's a remake of a Paul Verhoeven movie.

Skyfall -- November 9th. The twenty-second Bond film. Casino Royale was dynamite stuff and Quantum of Solace wasn't so bad. I'm just hoping that they'll improve with the third installment, now that there's no writer's strike to futz with the script.

Gravity -- November 21st. Nothing, not even a banner image for this film, has been released. Publicity hasn't started up yet. What we know is that the film, written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron, stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as two astronauts adrift in space trying desperately to reach Earth. On-set buzz has got me anxious to see it.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey -- December 14th

Django Unchained -- December 25th. Quentin Tarantino's latest, a film that some close to production have said will "change the way that movies are made." I don't know about that, but Tarantino is good-enough at his job that I'll see anything he makes at least once.

I just realized, I have a strong bias for sci-fi, action, and fantasy. Violence seems to help, too. Whatever, dude. The only difference between a knife-fight and two people talking their feelings out is externalized versus internalized conflict.

--Serge

Somebody I Don't Know Signed on to "Riddick" Sequel

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

Someone named Katee Sackhoff has signed on to play Dahl, a "Nordic mercenary" in the untitled Riddick sequel, which confirms that after a two-month hiatus, filming on the third installment of the Riddick franchise has resumed. I don't know anything about Katee Sackhoff, but the fact that the production has finally secured financing after so many delays is fantastic news!

If you happen to be a Riddick fan. Most aren't, but I am.

Additionally, somebody named Jordi Molla has signed on to play Santana, "a leader of an eight-man crew bent on killing Riddick." Which sounds awesome.

What we know of the plot is as follows:

"Betrayed by his own kind and left for dead on a desolate planet, Riddick (Diesel) fights for survival against alien predators and becomes more powerful and dangerous than ever before. Soon bounty hunters from throughout the galaxy descend on Riddick only to find themselves pawns in his greater scheme for revenge. With his enemies right where he wants them, Riddick unleashes a vicious attack of vengeance before returning to his home planet of Furya to save it from destruction."

Here, have some concept art:

"Melancholia" Named Best Picture by National Society of Film Critics

2012-01-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

It's the first major US award for Lars Von Trier's latest, which received negative press after director Von Trier made some poorly-clarified comments regarding Nazis. Long story short: he was being sarcastic (or at least people were taking him waaaay out of context), and Cannes is pretty tone-deaf.

But Melancholia is my current pick for Best Film of 2011, and so it's nice to see it finally get some recognition.

The National Society of Film Critics, which is made up of 58 film critics from across the country, publishes everything but who voted for what, and so not only do we know that Melancholia beat out Tree of Life for the top prize, it beat it out by one vote!

Brad Pitt won Best Actor for Tree of Life and Moneyball, and Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress for her performance in Melancholia. I'm assuming she accepted the award, even though she shrewdly divorced herself from the film after Von Trier's comments at Cannes.

BEST PICTURE
1. Melancholia – 29 (Lars von Trier)
2. The Tree of Life – 28 (Terrence Malick)
3. A Separation – 20 (Asghar Farhadi)

BEST ACTOR
1. Brad Pitt – 35 (Moneyball, The Tree of Life)
2. Gary Oldman – 22 (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)
3. Jean Dujardin – 19 (The Artist)

BEST ACTRESS
1. Kirsten Dunst – 39 (Melancholia)
2. Yun Jung-hee – 25 (Poetry)
3. Meryl Streep – 20 (The Iron Lady)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1. Albert Brooks – 38 (Drive)
2. Christopher Plummer – 24 (Beginners)
3. Patton Oswalt – 19 (Young Adult)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1. Jessica Chastain – 30 (The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Help)
2. Jeannie Berlin – 19 (Margaret)
3. Shailene Woodley – 17 (The Descendants)

BEST DIRECTOR
1. Terrence Malick – 31 (The Tree of Life)
2. Martin Scorsese – 29 (Hugo)
3. Lars von Trier – 23 (Melancholia)

BEST SCREENPLAY
1. A Separation – 39 (Asghar Farhadi)
2. Moneyball – 22 (Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin)
3. Midnight in Paris – 16 (Woody Allen)

--Serge

PS: This is how I'm thinking the blog will work from now on. Between weekly and bi-weekly video updates, you'll get short updates throughout the week on a variety of subjects at random intervals.

Sunday Innanity

2012-01-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

The search for work continues. I've picked my next three scripts to write. I wish these two facts weren't completely unrelated.

To be honest, it's getting harder and harder to blog every day. First of all, I keep busy doing things away from the computer, and second of all, most of my movie-related thoughts concern my scripts, which I am not allowed to blog about. I'm excited to say that I'm plotting a dinosaur-related biopic, a horror film set in space, and a post-apocalyptic epic, but that's as much as I think I should say.

I'm going to be scaling back the number of posts I write per week. I won't be eliminating the written commentary altogether, but what I'd like to do is start releasing a video of some sort every week or two, and in order to find the time to write, film, and edit a weekly video, I'm going to have to scale back the amount of time I spend preparing written posts.

We'll see how this week goes, but if I make headway on the video I'm currently editing ("The Inception Soundtrack Makes Everything Epic"), I will soon be converting this blog to a full-blown video-blog, and won't that be exciting?!?!?

--Serge

Movie Attendance Is At It's Lowest Since 1995 -- Apparently We Need More Spectacle

2012-01-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

So a while back I brought you the wisdom of Andy Hendrickson, the Disney exec who said that "story ain't sh*t." He pulled out a chart which listed the top ten highest-grossing films of all time, and pointed out that they're all spectacle pictures. He's an idiot, but you can find my full rebuttal here.

Long story short: his precious chart wasn't adjusted for inflation, and he's an idiot.

Movie execs are spending more and more money on big-budget "spectacle" pictures, and then they sit back and scratch their heads when they fail at the box office. Inflation and fluctuating ticket prices nullify the importance of gross. Attendance is the vital stat, and it's at its lowest since 1995.

My working theory is that spectacle-filled marketing campaigns perk viewer interest, and maybe they even get a few asses into the seats, but the real draw is story -- that's what gets people to come back. Hendrickson's response: not enough spectacle.

Geezus Kryst.

But look at some of the biggest bombs of 2011, and tell me the problem wasn't a lack of story: Mars Needs Mom ($39 million gross on a $150 million budget), Sucker Punch ($89.8 million gross on an $82 million budget), Cowboys & Aliens ($178.8 million gross on a $163 million budget), Conan the Barbarian ($48.8 million gross on a $90 million budget), The Thing ($27.4 million gross on a $38 million budget), and Green Lantern ($219 million gross on a $200 million budget).

Granted, I actually liked The Thing, and I have yet to see Mars Needs Moms, and there were plenty of bombs that weren't special effects heavy (The Rum Diary; $21.6 million gross on a $45 million budget), but I think it's clear that the problem with cinema is not too little spectacle.

I think these projects were all criminally indistinguishable. When every studio's got access to special effects and big stars, story is all that's left to distinguish any given project. It's not enough to hold the rights to a given property -- you need a story to go with it.

Of course, I have an invested interest in the debate, and in the answer I've provided. I write spec scripts, and I say the problem with Hollywood today is a lack of new ideas. But whatever, man: see a need, fill a need.

--Serge

Movie Attendance Hits Sixteen Year Low -- But That's Not What We're Gonna Talk About

2012-01-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

So 2011 had the lowest theater attendance since 1995, and the studio executives are all scratching their heads trying to figure out why: "But we put out all these sequels!"

When in fact you could ask any moviegoer in the country and they could tell you instantly why theater attendance is down: the studios are actually releasing fewer good films.

That's what we'll be talking about tomorrow, anyway. I've been away from my computer all day and I'm only sitting down to blog with minutes left in the day. In lieu of a proper post, please accept the following pic as compensation:

Points if you know the movie; double-points if you know what "radians" are.

--Serge

Topical Tuesday, Thursday Edition: Rick Santorum

2012-01-05T17:39:00.000-05:00

So Mitt Romney won the Iowa Caucus on Tuesday night, but that's not the story that everybody's running with: the real story is that he only took it by eight gorram votes, and that the runner-up is Rick mutherf*cking Santorum.

There's a good reason you know nothing about this guy. He's been bottomed-out in the polls until, well, basically, last night. He's a neoconservative whack-job (as if that narrows things down for us) who only surged ahead to number two in the week before the election because the Republican voters of America have been sampling every other candidate in the race for the past year, and it was finally Santorum's turn in the barrel.

In fact, he's only number two in Iowa, a state which has traditionally voted for whichever candidate had the most framed Bible verses decorating his or her office. Four years ago, it was Mike Huckabee, who subsequently lost the Republican nomination.

But we've whined about Herman Cain on this blog (who has since dropped out of the race) and Michelle Bachman (who bowed out yesterday after winning only 5% of the vote in Iowa), so why not Rick Santorum, too?

Santorum is a lawyer who served in the US House of Representatives (1991-1995) and in the US Senate (1995-2007). He is a neoconservative, which is defined by Lewis Black and someone who watches The Matrix and thinks it's real.

Strictly speaking, they are the people who occupy the farthest position to the right on the political spectrum.

Santorum believes that the attacks on September 11th were not in fact an isolated incident but rather the continuation of a 300-year-old war to "restore Shia clerics to power in the western world." His "evidence" in support of such a claim was a Muslim siege in Europe which occurred on September 11th, 1683.

In 2001, Santorum tried unsuccessfully to amend the No Child Left Behind Act so that intelligent design would be taught alongside evolution in schools. In 2005, he amended his thinking and adopted the call of "Teach the Controversy."

For those who don't know, if Intelligent Design is Creationism dressed up in a cheap suit, then Teach the Controversy is Intelligent Design dressed up in a miniskirt in a back-alley.

Santorum went on record in 2002 and stated that the Catholic abuse scandal was not a problem of pedophilia, but rather of homosexuality. He went on to state that Boston itself, "a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America," was to blame for the "moral relativism" that caused the scandal in the first place.

This probably goes without saying, but Santorum is against same-sex marriage. However, unlike most candidates, who simply disagree with it, Santorum has stated that he believes homosexuality "destabilizes" society.

He believes that the issue should be decided by popular vote, and not the Supreme Court. This would only be a good idea if civil rights weren't at stake. We don't put civil rights to a vote in this country -- or at least we shouldn't.

Santorum believes that there is no inherent right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution. If you're thinking it's all just a matter of interpretation anyway, the Supreme Court didn't it that way when they ruled that there is an inherent right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965).

Santorum believes that English should be established as the national language of the United States. Presumably because they wouldn't let him establish "white" as the official skin-color, or "male" as the official gender.

Santorum is a supporter of the War on ~~Nouns~~ Terror and is a supporter of the Bush Doctrine (but at least he knows what the hell it is).

Santorum would allow states to ban birth control, which is, as he puts it, "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." No word yet on whether or not he would ban Viagra.

I don't have a citation for this one but word on the internet is that Santorum pledged in Le Mars, Iowa to drastically scale back federal food stamps and because the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.

Now, I don't know to what issue this quote speaks, but during a Christian television appearance, Santorum said “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘Now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"

As if Santorum couldn't get any more unlikable, he also happens to be a confrontational, explosive, abrasive loudmouth, which would be annoying no matter what his beliefs. 30,007 people in Iowa are f*cking insane.

Thoughts on Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Remake

2012-01-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

I didn't like the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Remakes need to work especially hard in order to justify their existence to their audiences, and I think that David Fincher's latest directorial effort failed to do so.

I am a big fan of the Swedish original. The only two reasons to ever remake a film is that you either have a new artistic vision for the project, or you have a fresh desire to make more money. Since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been a box-office disappointment ($72 million on a $90 million budget in its first 13 days of release), I can only imagine that the filmmakers believed that they had created a film that was above and beyond the artistic merits of the first.

As far as I can tell, only one significant change has been made in the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it bothers me a lot: I don't believe it's much of a feminist text anymore. I think the filmmakers all but completely removed the feminist commentary.

That's a shame, because the original title of the film's source-material was "Men Who Hate Women."

Nothing, not even the accents, have been changed in Fincher's adaptation. It's still the story of Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced Swedish reporter who is hired to investigate the disappearance of a Swedish railroad tycoon's niece. Daniel Craig now stars as Blomkvist; his is the only performance in the entire film that is inexplicably devoid of a Swedish accent (which is made even more ridiculous when he actually travels to London).

I said the only change in the American remake was the removal of the original film's feminist commentary, and that's what I intend to demonstrate now.

It all started back in June when the studio released that damn poster featuring a topless Rooney Mara being held from behind by a fully-clothed Daniel Craig, which made most everyone who was familiar with the original Swedish film scratch their heads.

Lisbeth, it seemed, wouldn't be the type of girl who would consent to that sort of photo-shoot. I'd sooner see her kicking the ass of the photographer who proposed it. Lisbeth was never much of a sexualized object in the original Swedish film, which is, of course, a big part of why I liked it so much.

Many of the men in her life saw her as a sexual object, but, then again, those were the perverted bastards that the film was demonizing in the first place.

Too many scenes of sexual violence are filmed from the male perspective. As a male viewer, I don't appreciate a film which shows me a scene of sexual violence and asks me to be horrified while simultaneously showing me everything that's turning on the offending villain.

In the original Swedish version (forthwith abbreviated OSV), Lisbeth's rape takes place in the dark, from a low angle, etc, etc. Nothing but Lisbeth's horrified expression and cutaways to the master shot in order to preserve continuity. In other words, it's filmed from her perspective.

In the new American remake, it's the opposite: the scene is brightly lit and the camera frequently takes in the scene from the point of view of Lisbeth's rapist, as if to say "Here is Rooney Mara's butt -- but remember to be horrified."

The rape scene should've been filmed more carefully, not only because of the obvious sensitivity of the subject-matter, but also because this particular rape scene has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot.

Lisbeth gets raped. Then the plot moves on.

The most the scene may then do is establish theme. In the OSV, those themes are the dangers of fundamentalism, sociopathy, and misogyny. The American remake breezes so swiftly by the motivations of its villains that they are reduced to little more than caricatures.

Lisbeth's character suffers from inexplicable alterations as well. In the OSV, Lisbeth hands Blomkvist his first big break in the case: she snoops in on his computer, reads his notes, and reveals in an encrypted email that the numbers he has been studying for days are Bible verses, not phone numbers. In the American remake, Blomkvist learns of this in a random encounter with his daughter (who is never seen again).

What's more, the OSV uses Lisbeth's photographic memory to further the plot, while in the remake, it's little more than a worthless character trait that gets destroyed anyway when Lisbeth has to constantly re-check her notes throughout the film (presumably for the sole benefit of the viewer, who struggles to keep up with so much rapid-fire exposition).

And finally, in the OSV, Lisbeth is the one who discovers the identity of the murderer. In the remake, she and Blomkvist discover the killer's identity nearly at the same time -- but Blomkvist first.

I think I know why the filmmakers made all of these changes. I think they wanted to make Mikael seem like a more capable detective. More in control. More dominating. More... patriarchial.

But of course, we aren't watching a Lisbeth Salander film to see the patriarchy at work. And much of what I liked about the Swedish Blomkvist (as opposed to the British one) was his painfully inept investigation techniques. He's a journalist, not a detective -- it makes sense that Lisbeth would have to ride in and save the day.

Granted, that does happen in the remake. Though Blomkvist learns the identity of the killer on his own, he still gets captured and strung up to die. Lisbeth has to come in and save him. But the filmmakers wouldn't go so far as to change that, would they?

Here's the thing about movies: they're expensive -- and none of them are perfect. If the Swedish original was just fine (and it was -- more so, even), why the need for a remake? Especially if you don't improve!

--Serge

Topical Tuesdays: An Incredibly Brief History of Feminism

2012-01-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

First Wave Feminism

The word "feminism" gets thrown around quite a lot these days, and very few people seem to know what it actually is.* I understand the confusion, because feminism is a movement, not a stance, and as such it requires less of a definition and more of a history in order to be understood.

The important thing to remember is that feminism is composed of a series of waves, and they all come with their own distinct purposes, cross-purposes, and goals.

1st Wave Feminism began in the 1860s and lasted until the 1940s. This was the first Women's Lib movement (in modern American history, anyway), the Suffrage Movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and all that. It was concerned with getting equal rights for women: the right to vote, the right to own land, to divorce, to work, to raise one's own children, to use birth control.

It was a resounding success. In fact, it was so successful that feminist mobilization all but disappeared by the late 1930s. Women could vote, they could divorce, they could own land. The battle was won, right?

What feminist soon found out was that equal rights on paper did not necessarily translate to equal rights in actuality, and so 2nd Wave Feminism arose out of a profound sense of discouragement in the 1970s.

Second Wave Feminism
(the vocal minority, anyway)

This is the wave of feminism that the Radical Right seems to think all feminism is: the one that lobbied for abortion rights, for sexual orientation rights, the one that happened to contain a vocal minority that declared women better than men.

But the thing is that 2nd Wave Feminism lacked internal cohesion. While one group of feminists would advocate for the worldwide sterilization of all men, another would seek to foster the Civil Rights Movement (even anti-war protests are at least partially credited with helping to kick-start the 2nd Wave). 2nd Wave Feminism had no unified doctrine; it was a variety of responses to a common concern.

3rd Wave Feminism began, according to my teacher, in 1985. Everybody agrees that 3rd Wave Feminism is over, but nobody is exactly sure when it ended.

Third Wave Feminism

3rd Wave Feminism is postmodern feminism, which is where we get into the advanced stuff like gender spectrums and debates concerning maternal rights versus feminist rights. It, too, lacks internal cohesion, but it is pointedly less vocal than 2nd Wave Feminism. 3rd Wave Feminism is largely an academic movement. It is less of a rights-seeking movement and more of a tenure-seeking movement.

And so here we are: 4th Wave Feminism, which is pretty much ours to define.

This is how I see it: the patriarchy keeps men in power, but it doesn't keep all men in power. Most men should have just as much of an invested interest in tearing down the patriarchy as women -- this is indeed the role that men play in the feminist movement.

As a member of modern society, men and women have no roles to fulfill as predetermined by gender. There are those that would say otherwise, but this is what I'm saying: gender doesn't decide for us. Anything. Except which bathroom you use. And women are legally obligated to wear bras when they visit prisons.**

4th Wave Feminism is not about "tough women" or "submissive men." It's about people.

You'll need to know all this for tomorrow's grilling of the American The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake.

--Serge

*Pat Robertson called feminism "a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians." But of course, back at the University of Chicago, we didn't call that "feminism," we called that "O-Week."

**I'm not joking. These are two of only three laws put in place by the federal government that are predetermined by gender. The third concerns same-sex marriage.

The 2011 Cold Crash Awards

2012-01-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

Maybe this will become an annual thing, idk. Since I haven't seen enough films to justify a proper "Top Ten" post, I figure this is the next best idea. In fact, I think this sort of post could actually replace my previous posts on the best and worst films of the year.

Best Film that Everybody Liked: Midnight in Paris -- Woody Allen's latest was not only a great film, it was his highest-grossing ever ($143.6 million). I love studying Woody Allen films. The dude has made one film a year, every year, for over four decades. He tries new things with each film, and yet he goes through distinct phases as well, so you can categorize like crazy.

After a whole career of making films set in New York, Allen has found a new muse in Western Europe, setting films in England, Spain, and now France. Midnight in Paris is a film that could've only been tackled by a master of art like Allen, because the film is about chasing the masters of art, and, as an artist, I found its message incredibly encouraging and the film itself fantastically entertaining.

Owen Wilson as a Woody Allen stand-in is an awesome mix of vulnerability, honesty, and pessimistic optimism ("Things will turn out ok in the end, but I'm probably wrong.") Also, Meaningful Name Alert: the protagonist is named Gil, because he's a fish out of water (and he enjoys long walks in the rain).

Best Film that Nobody Liked: The Green Hornet -- I think people went into this movie ready to hate it. It was a comic book movie written by Seth Rogan, known only for stoner comedies, directed by Michel Gondry, who had no previous experience directing action movies, and it was delayed several months for re-shoots before finally being unceremoniously dumped into January, which is an infamous cinematic deadzone.

But what's the product we actually got?

The Green Hornet is about a young slacker, Britt Reid, who decides to do something meaningful with his life after he inherits a fortune from his media mogul father. He becomes The Green Hornet, a masked crime-fighter who worms his way deep into the criminal underworld by posing as a criminal himself. His weapons are ingeniously inventive, his journey from useless playboy to selfless hero is a joy to watch, and the film's sense of humor is perfectly suited to the tone. I even like the film's racial commentary, marginal as it is. What's not to love?

Worst Film that Everybody Liked: Super 8 -- This is an argument regular readers have heard before, but allow me to reiterate one more time: Super 8 is a shamelessly nostalgic homage to Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a little bit of Cloverfield-inspired action sprinkled in, and no matter how admittedly-decent this film is, I think we'd all rather be watching another film -- or at least I would.

See, Raiders of the Lost Ark was an homage that worked. It refined the old material, it made it its own, it broke new ground, it justified its existence, and above all, it was exciting. Super 8 was... quaint, I guess. It never really convinced me that it had to be made. I'm not saying love-letters to our favorite filmmakers are all bad ideas, I'm just saying that the love letter had better be on-par with the love itself in order to get me to compliment you for writing it.

Worst Film that Nobody Liked: Cowboys & Aliens -- My cinematic debut, of sorts. I did research for the film back when it was just a first draft (and they might've sorta maybe possibly used one of my ideas), but even back then the whole endeavor sounded pretty stupid to me. Everybody seemed to think it was going to be the hit of the summer until the trailers finally hit and nobody knew what to think of it.

It's a slick action movie, but little more. What's worse, it doesn't know that it's just a slick action movie. It thinks it's high-brow stuff. I'm not joking: writers Kurtzman and Orci said it was "Unforgiven meets Alien," and, even if you somehow do manage to craft the perfect hybrid of those two disparate properties, you keep it to yourself, if only to keep from confusing people.

Best Film that Nobody Saw: Melancholia -- A limited theatrical release, a categorically-depressing subject, and some ill-timed and poorly-clarified comments concerning Nazis doomed this film's attendance. But it's the best. If you're willing to ride with the whole idea of a film about the end of the world from the perspective of a person who's looking forward to it.

That's the trick, I think. It's a movie about depression, as symbolized by the destruction of the Earth, written by a man who was clinically depressed for many years. Accepting the destructive fate of the Earth isn't accepting the destructive fate of the Earth so much as learning to cope with depression. That's what it symbolizes. That's what I think.

I've heard at least two people say that the problem with the film is good old fashioned bad writing: cliched characters, underdeveloped personalities, melodrama. And that may all be present. But this film is tragedy of the highest proportions, and I believe that archetype suits the project better than subtlety. All I'm trying to say it that it worked for me.

Worst Film that Everybody Saw: Transformers: Dark of the Moon -- Even I saw it, for Pete's sake, and I knew I wasn't going to like it. How do you make a film that's so bad you get more pleasure from the act of criticizing it than from watching the damn thing?

Greatest Critical Hypocrisy: Tree of Life -- What I mean to say here is that this film seems to be the darling of every reviewer in the whole gorram country and yet nobody raised a peep for The Fountain five years ago.

In all fairness, I haven't seen Tree of Life yet, and I'm not saying I think it's going to be bad, and I'm not saying The Fountain is so similar, but I've seen enough of the marketing campaign and I've read enough reviews to know that the reviewers love this film for all the same things that The Fountain had, and yet The Fountain got no love.

Why? Terrence Malick, that's why. The dude can't seem to make more than one film per decade, and so when he does get around to making one the critics tend to lose their heads. Again, I like Terrence Malick, and I'm not saying it's wrong to praise Tree of Life. I'm saying you can't love Tree of Life for its space-age visuals and its melancholy contemplation of life, the universe, and everything and still give no love to The Fountain, either.

The Oscar Bait Award: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- Bet you thought I was going to say War Horse, didn't you?

Now, I haven't seen this one yet, and I know some people who really like it, even prefer it to the Swedish version, and I'll see it this week and that will finally settle the issue at last, but hear me out on this: we already had three fantastic film adaptations of the Millenium trilogy when this remake was greenlit, all of which were heavily screened on Netflix.

They spent a fortune ($120 million) to get the American remake made, and even though they told us it was always going to be a smash-hit at the box-office, the novels were never so popular in the states as they were abroad, and now it's tanking at the box office (a take of only $60 million at the time of this writing).

What I'm trying to say is that, without seeing it, I don't know what this movie is doing to justify its existence, beyond just shooting for the Oscars (where we all know it'll pick up half a dozen nominations).

If the American remake is really as good as some people say it is, I will happily revoke this award and hand it over to War Horse (though I hear that one's pretty good, too).

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

2011-12-31T00:00:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year! Now that the holidays are officially over, so is my grace period. I'm down in Florida, searching for as much part-time employment as I can, at least until I find full-time employment. The search is crazy, filled with dozens of catch-22s. For example: I need a car to get a job, but I need a job to get a car. Etc, etc. You don't want to hear these thoughts. Every gorram adult finds their own workarounds, and I am no different.

This week on the blog, you can expect the return of your regularly-scheduled Topical Tuesday, and a proper full review of Green Hornet, which was probably my Favorite Film of 2011 That Nobody Liked. If I see any movies in theaters this week, you'll hear my thoughts on those, too.

--Serge

The Weekend Meme

2011-12-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

Behold: ten movies I didn't get to see in 2011 that I really, really want to see:

And a bonus eleventh guilty pleasure, absolutely free!

Who saw these? Tell me what you thought of them in the comments, lemme know what's worth seeing. And have a happy new year!

--Serge

(Some of) the Worst Films of 2011

2011-12-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

My Year in Film post for 1939 is taking a while to finish, so today we're going to continue with our inventory of the films of 2011 instead. Yesterday we got through (some of) the good. Today we go through (some of) the bad.

Insidious -- A horror movie about astral projection (which is passed on genetically, if you can believe that), what makes this film so lame is its watered down scares and its twist ending which makes the efforts of the main characters all for naught, which is to say, the efforts of the audience all for naught. Introducing a new problem in the last thirty seconds is not a proper twist; it just means you left out an act. There was stuff in this movie that I liked, but my opinion was hanging by a thread in that final act when whoever wrote the damn thing nullified all that I had just watched and lopped it off.

Source Code -- Again, there were good things about this movie, but the whole thing never gelled, and by the third act, I had very little clue as to what was going on, and the ending just kinda rewrote all the rules of the first act after declaring over and over again that the rules of the first act couldn't be rewritten. The reason I'm being so vague is because I know there will be people reading this blog who haven't seen the film and still want to, so lemme just say that this film is all logline, no substance.

Bridesmaids -- I liked it for a good long while, laughed my ass off a couple times, but then they went and ended the film without fixing any of the problems that the main characters had when the movie started out. That's not a film. That's a series of carefully constructed sight-gags.

Here's a plot-map of Bridesmaids: Act One, main character is broke and demoralized, is asked to be best friend's maid of honor. Act Two, main character flubs her duties as best friend's maid of honor, best friend doesn't like her anymore, still broke. Act Three, best friend friend forgives main character (for no reason) so MUSIC MONTAGE!

She's still broke, and she's remoralized for no reason. Again, that's not a film. But it was fun seeing Melissa McCarthy poop in a sink.

Priest -- Everything that was cool in this movie was taken from other (better) movies. Speaking of which!

Super 8 -- We get it JJ Abrams: you like Spielberg. But even if you've managed to craft a somewhat-diverting nostalgarific homage to some of Spielberg's better sci-fis from the 70s, I'd still just rather watch some of Spielberg's better sci-fis from the 70s than this stuff. And enough with the thuper thecret campaign promotions. All it does is lead our expectations down the wrong road.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon -- Sigh. Three tries and I'm done being civil. These films are total crap. Everything about them screams first draft. Not even the special effects are all that interesting. Add in Michael Bay's trademark misogyny and you've got one of the worst blockbusters of all time.

Captain America: The First Avenger -- Again, sigh. A by-the-numbers superhero tale that would've been easier to like if we didn't all know that this film was just an excuse to cash in on pre-Avengers hype. And its stubborn denial of history is more than a little insulting.

Cowboys & Aliens -- Lame-brained but very slick action movie that I could respect more if it didn't think it was "Unforgiven meets Alien." Srsly?

A Dangerous Method -- One of the best trailers of the year yielded one of the most disappointing films. Too bad.

--Serge

(Some of) The Best Films of 2011

2011-12-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

I didn't see many films this year. I blame the studio release schedule. They save all their good movies for June, July, and December -- and late December at that. I have yet to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Young Adult, The Adventures of Tin Tin, and War Horse, and those are just the titles released in the last two weeks.

But anyhoot. It's not like I didn't see any great films this year, and this is the post that you're going to hear about it. Expect a more thorough inventory in the coming months.

Green Hornet -- Not to be confused with Green Lantern (2011), which was really meh. Green Hornet had everything going against it: a long-forgotten property getting reimagined by a stoner-comedy actor and a director famous for his surreal mind-bending romances. It was delayed for months while scenes were reshot. All signs point to failure, right?

I thought it was the most clever, optimistic, and unapologetically fun superhero movie I've ever seen.

Rango -- Weird, but then again that's what they were going for. It's more thought-provoking than it is entertaining, though. A city-born gecko makes his way to a town in the middle of the desert, where an old tortoise is keeping himself in power by ruthlessly restricting the town's water-supply.

It's the exact plot of Chinatown (1974), see -- but with talking animals. That's what the critics call "postmodernism."

The thing is, Chinatown is obviously the better film. If the juxtaposition alone isn't enough to keep you interested, steer clear. At most, Rango is the only proper way to introduce your kids to Roman Polanski.

Battle: Los Angeles -- All I'm saying is, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Limitless -- Ditto.

Thor -- My favorite standalone Avengers movie, and perhaps my favorite Marvel movie ever made, and you can keep your Captain America. Sure, it's a bit rushed, but not since Iron Man (2008) have I seen a protagonist go from hotheaded brigand to hotheaded hero in such a satisfying way -- and Thor didn't have any of the hypocritical warhawking that Iron Man did!

Midnight in Paris -- Woody Allen has made one film a year for over four decades. When you're that prolific, you take a lot of chances, and your films tend to be all over the quality-meter. But Allen is a master filmmaker, and so even his bad films are at least thought-provoking. His good films are entertaining in addition to thought-provoking. And his masterpieces are all that and thematically rich to boot.

Midnight in Paris is all three.

What's more, this is the kind of film that could've only be made by one of the greats. If your old roommate made a movie about chasing all the artistic greats, you'd say he was a hack. But when Woody gorram Allen makes a movie about chasing all the artistic greats, there's something important to ponder.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes -- This movie would've been perfect, if only the screenwriters hadn't put so much dumb emphasis on the wants and cares of the humans. Clarify their intentions, sure, but don't deliver some half-assed appeal to their concerns like RotPotA did. I didn't care one lick for James Franco's character, nor could I keep straight just what his boss wanted from him, either.

No, where RotPotA shines is when the action is all on Caesar, the intelligent ape who leads a rebellion against homo sapiens in search of freedom. He's easily the most compelling character in the whole show, and he only has two lines in the entire film (whoops, did I spoil something?).

My hope is that the sequel, which is being written right now, will both expand and refocus the mythos onto the apes and their newfound freedom, and leave the humans to die.

Don't be Afraid of the Dark -- Horror done right. Not necessarily groundbreaking work, but very, very effective -- and a directorial debut to boot!

The Thing -- Again, not a groundbreaking film, but the fact that any major Hollywood studio delivered a prequel to my favorite horror film of all time which left me satisfied and surprised is a pretty impressive feat. What's more, the CGI shape-shifting effects actually got my skin crawling in several scenes.

The Debt -- The easy comparison to make is with Munich (2005), simply because of subject-matter, but then again both films present two entirely different forms of moral second-guessing. Munich asks the broader questions with easy answers ("Should we hunt down and kill terrorists?"), and The Debt asks far more pointed questions with difficult answers ("Is success really more important than perceived success?").

I still like Munich better, though, if only because of its breakneck pace.

Melancholia -- The frontrunner for Serge's Favorite Film of the Year. You can read the review here.

Which of these would I be happy to see nominated, come Oscar time? I'd go with Melancholia, Midnight in Paris, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but that's only from what I've seen so far. Stay tuned. Coming soon will be a post of all my least favorite films of the year.

--Serge

Top 10 Films of 2010

2011-12-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, you read that right. No, wait, maybe you didn't. This is a list of the top ten films of last year, the films of 2010. The year that gave us both the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Death at a Funeral remake (I mention it here because it won't be making it onto the list).

We've all had a full year to view the films of last year and make up our minds. I've made a few big changes to last year's list, with the inclusion of three new films, the booting of two, and the re-shuffling of everything else.

10. The A-Team: How the heck did this film not get more press? Acclaim was so nonexistant I didn't even rent this one -- I caught it on Starz when my parents were channel-surfing. Perhaps my low expectations are to blame, but I thought this was the best action film I've seen since Smokin' Aces (which was written and directed by the same guy, incidentally), and you can keep your Expendables.

With that said, if you didn't like Smokin' Aces, you probably won't find much to love in The A-Team (though the fact that you don't like Smokin' Aces probably speaks to a bigger problem, like the fact that you don't like awesome movies).

9. Black Swan: This was my number-two pick last year, and, while my opinion of Arononfsky's ballerina-thriller hasn't necessarily diminished over the past twelve months, I realize with hindsight that it's not the groundbreaking masterwork I once credited it as. It does nothing wrong, but it does nothing new. Obsession, paranoia, mirror imagery, dopplegangers, they're all staples of this particular genre. I appreciate its balls-to-the-wall madcap fearlessness, however, which is why my aforementioned enthusiasm for it remains undiminished.

8. The King's Speech: Yes, it's a film about a stuttering Brit fighting the Nazis with elocution-lessons, but it happens to be a really great film about a stuttering Brit fighting the Nazis with elocution-lessons. See it for Colin Firth's swearing-session alone.

7. The Social Network: I'm getting my praise for this film out of my system now, because I believe that, despite its being so well-written and well-directed (and well-scored!), I think people are going to forget about it just as soon as Facebook disappears (give it ten years, it will be replaced).

It was a cool experiment to unleash Aaron Sorkin's writing talents on a subject as silly as frat-house spats, but I think he creates more lasting dramas out of the subjects of politics and law, personally. I think The Social Network works better as a comedy than as a drama.

6. Ondine: Still one of my favorite sleeper-hits of 2010 (which wasn't actually a "hit" at all). Ondine is a film about a fisherman (Colin Farrel) who hauls up a beautiful girl in his nets one day, who refuses to reveal her identity (but she calls herself "Ondine"). Farrel's young daughter decides that Ondine might in fact be a selkie, a mythical water-woman, come to find herself a mate. Farrel doesn't have any reason to believe his daughter's wild musings, until he fails to disprove them.

The audience delights not only in the wait to see who or what Ondine really is, but also the romance that blossoms between her and her ship-bound savior. It's also nice to see director Neil Jordan tackling more uplifting material than Interview with the Vampire (1994).

5. Robin Hood: Maybe it wasn't better than Gladiator (2000), but at least it wasn't totally ripping off Spartacus (1960). Then again, maybe it was better than Gladiator. The most resilient complaint that I've heard about this film is that it's not very historically accurate, but then again that's not a "fault" of the film so much as an interesting bit of trivia: Did you know that Robin Hood didn't actually draft the Magna Carta? No, I didn't know that, but still, what a story!

If you've got the choice, see the director's cut: it's got sixteen extra minutes of footage that really make the film that much better (especially the admirably-organic romance that develops between Robin and Marion, easily the best on-screen romance of the year).

4. Toy Story 3: Pixar's proper meditation on death (what Up (2009) should've been, IMHO). It didn't make me cry so much as it made me think, not only about the acceptance of death and change, but also about how many times screenwriter Michael Arndt has seen Cool Hand Luke (1967).

My girlfriend's theory is that the gang of toys actually did die in that incinerator, and that what followed was merely a dream which transpired in their final moments -- or a vivid depiction of toy-heaven. I'm not inclined to immediately disagree.

3. Winter's Bone: Film noir in the Appalachians, with a girl playing Sam Spade. This film kicks subsequent ass.

The bank is going to foreclose on an Appalachian family's home if 17-year-old Ree Dolly can't prove that her drug-addicted dead-beat dad is actually dead. Devoid of sentimentality, Ree heads out not to uncover the truth, but simply to prove it. A triumphant tale for truth-seekers and young people the world over.

2. Agora: In the fourth century AD, you were more likely to be killed by a follower of Christianity than converted by one, and the frequent battleground was the city of Alexandria, which housed all the knowledge of the ancient world. Hypatia was a philosopher and scientist who was stoned to death in 415 AD by an angry mob, who considered her heliocentric views of the solar system heretical.

Ok, so that's actually the plot of Agora and not whatever wikipedia would tell you about the subject, and so it contains a fair bit of speculation, but almost nothing that the film presents is categorically untrue (they portray Hypatia as an atheist when in fact she was a pagan, but we know what they mean).

The tale is exciting, infuriating, depressing, hopeful, and of course, extremely cathartic. Rachel Weisz breaks your heart. Perhaps because of its sour views of fundamentalism (which it happens to call "Christianity"), it got a negligible release in the United States (it's not even available on blu-ray in this country), but it became the highest grossing film of 2009 in Spain.

1. Inception: It feels weird to place this at the top of my list, because I really believe that it's Christopher Nolan's least-important film, at least from a thematic standpoint. He's filmed weighty studies on everything from denial to obsession to batpods, and yet all we really get from Inception is a dude who needs to pull a heist and get back to his kids.

It also gives us a zero-g fist-fight between a gun-toting construct of the subconscious and Joseph Gordon Levitt. Hence the aforementioned number-one spot on this list.

Picking number one was incredibly difficult. It was a toss-up between all five top contenders, and I really think Agora is at least marginally better than Inception, but technically, Agora came out in 2009, and was only released on home video in 2010, which is how I saw it.

I don't mind putting a technically-ineligible title on the list, but putting it at number one makes me uncomfortable, even if it's my gorram list.

For posterity, these are some of the films I saw that I liked but don't quite make the list: Shutter Island, The Runaways, How to Train Your Dragon, Biutiful, True Grit, Rabbit Hole, The Fighter, Monsters, My Soul to Take, and Salt. If there's a title you believe belongs on the list, please let me know, because I either saw it with the wrong expectations, or didn't get around to seeing it at all.

--Serge

Animorphs #5: The Predator

2011-12-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

I can't imagine how hard it is to write a whole book in less than a month -- even a young adult title like Animorphs.

I imagine KA Applegate had to start writing as soon as she finished the previous entry and then finish whatever she had started at incredible speeds.

What I'm trying to say is that this installment of the Animorphs series is a bit of a disappointment, but it introduces some game-changing plot-twists, and so it cannot be ignored.

The reason it's a bit disappointing is because, at the end of the last book, we got Ax, and this is the first book where Applegate can really do something with him -- explore the implications of getting to know an alien as a friend -- and, for the most part, absolutely none of those implications are explored.

Sure, Ax is the one who proposes this book's particular mission, but besides one diverting mall sequence wherein we learn of Ax's obsession with Cinnabuns, he's pretty ineffectual and under-developed.

The reason for this is because this is Marco's story to tell.

We saw this happen in book #2: it should've been about Tobias' newfound life as a red-tailed hawk, but instead, we had to wait until Tobias got to narrate a book before that arc was fully-explored.

So this is Marco's turn, and what we get is a pretty episodic story which lacks thematic unity. This might sound like a lot to ask from a young adult novel, but that's what makes Animorphs so great -- it usually delivers the goods.

Also, a big pet peeve of mine: I have no clue what the subtitle "The Predator" is referring to, but then again the Animorphs subtitles are chosen by editors, not Applegate, and most all of them are freaking inscrutable.

With all of that said, I believe Animorphs #5 would make for a better film than any of the other previous entries in the series: it showcases battle morphs, aerial morphs, insect morphs, infiltrations, battles, and even missions accomplished in human form. Also: so much of the story is emotional, which takes the form of expositional hand-holding in the novel, but could be accomplished with some very powerful acting on screen.

Marco is ready to quit the Animorphs. It was never his war to fight. Everybody else had a reason. Marco's had none. Until now.

That's what it says on the back of the book. Here's the spoiler: his mom is Visser One. It's the exact same reason Jake fights (a dear member of the family is a Controller), but the stakes are much higher.

I really like that this is the reason that Marco fights, and I really love that he doesn't want any of the other Animorphs to know about it. I love the moment when Rachel tells Marco that she admires his calm, and Marco is so shocked by that. I love it when Marco decides he likes Ax after Ax says something particularly hateful about Yeerks.

I love the visceral horror communicated in the underground ant-attack.

All of these add up to a series of moments, however, and not a unified whole. The plot is not what unifies this book -- it's Marco's cynicism, his frustration, his anger.

Is this the stuff of books or films? I don't know. Maybe I'm just spoiled on masterpiece cinema.

By and large, the best bit of the book is the last act -- when all hope is lost, and KA Applegate not only communicates that abject despair to the delight of our hearts, but also comes up with a plausible yet surprising escape to the delight of our brains.

Were I to script three, four, or five Animorph films (and I'd certainly welcome the opportunity), I wouldn't abide by this mission-of-the-week format. It's a little different for a young-adult series, and it's probably no fair to judge the series by the standards of film, but I feel the story would benefit more from a wider scope.

In hindsight, this book isn't so much a missed opportunity as it is an opportunity to expand on Marco when I was just expecting an expansion on Ax. Right book, wrong order? The scene where Marco morphs a lobster is pretty awesome.

--Serge

Post-Christmas Monday Post, Short and Sweet

2011-12-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

I prepare these posts a day in advance, and can you imagine me blogging more than five minutes on Christmas day? Me neither.

This week, you can expect several posts on all my favorite films of the year (and last year), and I'm resisting the urge to write one of those terribly materialistic "haul" posts. At the very least, you should know I got all six Star Wars films on blu-ray!

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

The Weekend Meme: Five Christmas Films That Aren't Christmas Films

2011-12-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

Makes you think twice about leaving those cookies out overnight.

You know what we mean: the films that happen to take place during Christmas but do very little to foster the Christmas spirit.

5. Die Hard (1988) -- The best action film ever made happens to take place just before Christmas, as John McClane fights terrorists inside an LA skyscraper. What does the Christmas setting do for the plot? There's a "ho ho ho" joke in there somewhere. The important thing to remember is that you never need an excuse to set your film during Christmas.

4. Gremlins (1984) -- It's a monster horror-comedy which uses its Christmas setting as the perfect excuse to tell the world's worst Christmas story. Beyond that, you got me. I think one of the gremlins wears a Santa hat in that bar.

3. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) -- We've long wondered whether or not this is a Halloween or a Christmas movie, and though we're definitely leaning toward Halloween, you'd have to be either the biggest humbug in the world or a young earth creationist to snub this heartwarming film around Christmas time.

2. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) -- So I haven't actually seen this movie, but here's the logline: in Norway, the original demigod Santa Claus is released from his icy underground prison, whereupon he goes on a killing spree. I hear the movie ends with a gun-toting kid leading an army of Santa-killers, and that's an image I want stuck in my head right now.

1. Merry Christmas, Drake and Josh (2008) -- It's hard to explain exactly what's so great about this film. It's a Nickelodeon original movie that I happened to catch the other day on tv. Half of it, actually. There were two kids who could only avoid jail-time if they got a group of wide-eyed kids to tell their parole officer that they had the best Christmas ever. There are chimps with certificates of sweetness, homicidal wood-chippers, and Kimbo Slice bashing through a wall dressed in a Santa suit. Context, shmontext.

--Serge

Greatest Week Ever for Trailers Ends with a Bang: "Prometheus" (2012)

2011-12-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

I take it all back. Trailer-cutting is back to the master art-form it once was:

I just, I can't even, I mean....

This is one of those days where the visceral awesomeness eclipses anything anyone could possibly say about it, so I'm just gonna give you a couple more clips to watch and call it a day.

For all you fellow fourth-wave feminists:

There is more he-man toughness in the following clip than in the entire Expendables franchise combined:

--Serge

Holidays are Crazy, Just Ask Any Hobbit (Yes, That's My Segue)

2011-12-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

So the holidays are crazy and I've got no time to blog today. Here, have a trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2013) as a consolation, nearly ten years to the day after The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) hit theaters:

--Serge

Full "Dark Knight Rises" Trailer Showcases Explosions, Bane's Unintelligible Dialogue

2011-12-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

First, the trailer:

We're all very excited, blah, blah, blah. Here's something that goes beyond mere speculation: whether or not Bane's voice is going to be remixed in order to sound more... like human English.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

"Sources close to the movie say Warner Bros. is very aware of the sound issue. One source working on the film says he is 'scared to death' about 'the Bane problem.' And with good reason. The last Batman film, 2008’s The Dark Knight, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, and the studio doesn’t want anything to tamper with Rise’s chances for success.

"Sources also say some at Warners would like Nolan to change the sound mix, but the filmmaker, whose autonomy is well-earned (his Inception earned the studio more than $800 million and eight Oscar nominations), has informed executives that he plans only to alter the sound slightly, not to rework it completely.

"'Chris wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn’t dumb things down,' says one high-level exec, declining to be named. 'You’ve got to pedal faster to keep up.'"

Personally, I've got no problem with having to pay attention in order to understand what a character is saying. I wouldn't mind missing half of Bane's lines if it meant keeping his voice as scary as it is now ("When Gotham's in ashes, you have my permission to die").

Seriously, that guy could order coffee and I'd wet myself.

I'm not big on fanboy speculation. The only reason I bring up "the Bane problem" because having an unintelligible character really is a legitimate prduction concern. Whether or not Bruce gets his back broken is a decision I leave up to Nolan.

--Serge

PS: The Dark Knight (2008) had its own fair share of unintelligible lines, and nobody seemed to mind. In the words of Eddie Izzard, it's only 30% what you say, and 70% how you say it.

Topical Tuesdays: Another Nomenclature Battle in the History of Paleontology

2011-12-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

My last post on a nomenclature flame-war in the history of paleontology garnered a lot of hits, so I hope you'll like this one, too.

Edward Cope was one of the greatest paleontologists of the 19th century. He became embroiled in a three-decade-long war with fellow paleontologist Othniel Marsh in the late 1800s. Each man sought to discredit the other, collect more specimens, and publish more papers. Their feud would come to be known as The Bone Wars, and if you asked either man, he'd say that the other guy started it.

It is from within this Bone War ("Fossil Feud," etc) that we have one of the greatest nomenclature battles in the history of modern science, a surprisingly dramatic tale which showcases not only an epic war of words between two intellectual combatants, but also the birth of modern American science.

It was 1866, and most Americans outside the academic circles hadn't even heard the word "dinosaur" yet. Dinosaurs were largely a European interest. Only two "land saurians" had ever been discovered in America: two plant-eaters, both of which were depicted as slow-moving lizards.

But in 1866, Cope described and named America's first meat-eating dinosaur: Laelaps, after the dog in Greek mythology that never failed to catch what it pursued. Though largely unknown today, Laelaps was the most popular dinosaur of its day. You've probably seen this very famous painting by Charles Knight, which depicts Laelaps in dynamic combat.

Fast-forward to 1877. Cope has since begun his feud with Marsh, and his rival is out to discredit him. Marsh digs through an untold number of zoological journals and finds that the name "Laelaps" has previously been assigned to a spider genus.

By the rules of zoological nomenclature, that meant the name "Laelaps" had to go. It's an easily-corrected mistake, but Marsh gave Cope no time to correct it. Marsh went ahead and renamed Cope's specimen Dryptosaurus (the name that it is known for today) without Cope's input.

This was, for those unfamiliar with the protocols concerning zoological nomenclature, a dick move.

There's a reason these two were never photographed together
(Cope to the left, Marsh to the right).

But Marsh should've known better than to badger a fellow paleontologist for such a simple mistake. In that very same year, Marsh dug up the remains of what was then the largest land animal known to science: a sixty-foot-long sauropod ("long-neck") which he named Titanosaurus.

Imagine Cope's delight when he found that the name "titanosaurus" was indeed already taken by a dinosaur from India. He was quick to point out Marsh's mistake in print.

Marsh quickly renamed the specimen Atlantosaurus in a paper which I like to imagine he wrote while turning a terrible shade of pink. He saved some face by declaring Atlantosaurus "the largest land animal to have ever walked the earth."

Here's the thing: have you ever heard of Atlantosaurus? Yeah, me neither.

Cope waited until Marsh's paper was published before he unveiled a new species that was even bigger than Atlantosaurus: Camarasaurus. What's more, Atlantosaurus is known from only two vertebrae, while Camarasaurus is known from dozens of near-complete skeletons, and many scientists now believe that Atlantosaurus is not a unique species at all.

You'd think this would clinch the fight for Cope, but there was one more hand to be dealt. Actually, two.

You see, 1877 was a big year for the Bone Wars, and for Othniel Marsh in particular. Marsh's "titanosaurus" mix-up was quickly forgotten when he discovered Stegosaurus, Allosaurus and Brontosaurus, back to back to back, all in the same year. Even today, these three dinosaurs are far more popular than anything that Cope ever found, and it would seem that this popularity contest was ultimately won by Marsh.

But not quite.

Both men died before the end of the 19th century, bankrupt, sick, and alone, due in large part to their own costly academic feud. But Cope would have the last laugh.

I don't know in what year it happened, but somebody figured out in the late 20th century that the specimen of Brontosaurus that Marsh had discovered and popularized was actually an unintentional fabrication. Marsh had actually dug up some Apatosaurus bones and, lacking a skull, slapped the head of another animal onto them: a Camarasaurus, in fact.

By the rules of zoological nomenclature, "brontosaurus" became a nomen oblitum -- a forgotten name. That's why you won't walk into any respectable museum and find a dinosaur labelled "brontosaurus."

I picture Cope smiling in his grave.

The Bone Wars are an infinitely fascinating subject. If you want to know more, you can either pick up The Bonehunter's Revenge by David Rains Wallace, or just wait for me to write the screenplay.

--Serge

"Toddlers & Tiaras" is Not the Al Qaeda Recruitment Video You Think it Is

2011-12-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

So I watched two episodes of Toddlers & Tiaras this weekend, the TLC show which chronicles the exploits of various spray-tanned toddlers as they compete in little-girl pageant shows around the nation, and perhaps you're wondering if it's worth your time, or if it proves the terrorists have won.

You've seen the tv spots, which play up the supposed depravity of the whole endeavor, but what bothered me most about the show wasn't its depravity but rather its distinct lack thereof.

In the end, the show's problem is that it just didn't make me feel icky.

There are two kinds of reality shows: those that sell the (purported) talents of their subjects (Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, etc), and those that sell the depravity of their subjects (Jersey Shore, Hoarders, etc).

I'm not saying either set makes for good television -- I'm just saying those are the types that sell.

Maybe these little-kid pageants are depraved, idk. Did you click the hotlink? It's footage of a three-year-old dressed as the prostitute from Pretty Woman (1990). Is that depraved? Maybe. Probably. But should we care?

We're not talking about an outfit, we're talking about a costume. They sell children's Michael Jackson costumes and nobody bats an eye. Why should Julia Roberts be any different? Nobody's suggesting an occupation for the poor kid -- they're just goofing around.

Look at the audience: they're cracking up. In context, this doesn't look like depravity. It just looks silly. But not silly enough to make me laugh.
You tune in to be incensed, and all you really feel is mild annoyance.

Sure, most of the kids are spoiled brats, but some of them are really sweet. Some of the parents are insane control-freaks but others are simply facilitating the genuine interests of their kids. I was forced to play baseball as a kid for many years, and it's hard to let that slide if you're then going to get angry at allowing a little girl who loves dresses to compete in pageants.

Sure, some of what the show presents is alarming, but none of it is directly correlated to the pageants. I think the brats are just bratty kids. I don't think dressing up a toddler as the prostitute from Pretty Woman sends any message other than "I have bad taste in movies."

Putting a cone bra on a little girl is only about as insane as letting a little boy go out on the town with a toy gun -- which is to say, not very -- at least in context. People whisper their concerns about pedophiles, but honestly, I don't think any pervert is holding back on his urges because a kid isn't decked out in Madonna-ware.

I think you should watch out for pedophiles no matter what the kids are wearing.
I'm not trying to be flippant. I think the issue at stake is what we choose to grow incensed about as a culture, what we condone and what we don't. There's only so many things we can get up in arms over, and frankly, I think this should be way down on the list.

My hat is off to the poor editors, who try desperately to assemble a narrative from the footage that's dumped onto their desks, but in the end there isn't a lot to suggest or infer. If you want to get angry at your tv, go watch the next Republican debate.

You can give Toddlers & Tiaras a try if you're more interested in the effects of all these influences on child development than I am, or you could watch Tom Hanks parody the whole thing:

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

2011-12-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

So I'm back in Florida, searching the world over for a decent job before my loan repayments overtake me. In the meantime, I blog. This week, you can expect my latest thoughts on dinosaurs, a review of a new release, perhaps, and I'd like to start working on that Red Dead Redemption video review for you guys.

My dream is to one day turn this into a video blog, if only I can managed to assemble videos faster than one every six months.

Also: I can already say that the 1939 installment of the Year in Film will take longer than a month to complete. I just signed up for Blockbuster Total Access just so that I could finish by the end of February. Been a crazy six months. Keep it here.

--Serge

"Lock Out" Promises to Be the Best Movie Ever, Delivers Best Trailer Ever on Good Faith

2011-12-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

Lock Out (known as MS One: Maximum Security overseas) tells the story of a man wrongly-convicted of conspiracy who is tasked with rescuing the President's daughter from a maximum security prison in space and holy sh*t that's the best synopsis ever.

Why does this not yet have a domestic trailer? I don't mean to say that the international trailer is in any way inadequate, but why have I not heard anything about this movie until today????

According to imdb.com, Lock Out releases April 20th, 2012 in the United States, but I might just fly to France on February 22nd to see it there two months early (it's co-written and produced by Luc Besson).

--Serge

5 Movies That Were Better Than the Book

2011-12-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Everybody loves lists. I'm thinking they're worthy of a new weekly feature on the blog. So check back every Friday for a new numerical run-down of some sort -- movie or media-related, of course.

5. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Perhaps you're wondering why "The Wrath of Khan" never showed up on your high school required-reading list. That's because the novel it's based on is actually titled "Moby Dick."

Both stories feature obsessive, sociopathic captains who are bent on carrying out suicidal revenge-plots against the man/creature they hold responsible for their terrible lots in life. Ahab goes after a white whale. Khan targets the Enterprise. Fun fact: Khan never once meets Kirk face-to-face in the entire film (though they do Skype quite a bit).

Now, I don't mean to say that "Moby Dick" is a bad novel. It's great. Especially if you like chapter-long discussions concerning the best way to remove the head of a whale. But Wrath of Khan is set in space, see. And everything is better when it's set in space. Almost.

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

As I've stated previously on this blog, I believe "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," as written by Douglas Adams, is too episodic and unfocused to ever be called a masterpiece. I sympathize with Adams. He was actually writing a radio show, not a novel, which is, of course, supposed to be episodic.

But what the 2005 film was able to do was condense all those loosely-connected anecdotes and boil its themes down to one hilarious, heartfelt tale of adventure, love, and sentient petunias, and I think it rocks.

Adams himself penned the first draft before he died suddenly in 2001. Adams had said that he hoped to go back and write a happier ending to the Hitchhiker's saga one day (the fifth book ends with all the characters and all the Earths in all the parallel universe dying at once), so it looks like this film is as close to that as we'll ever get.

3. Interview with the Vampire (1994)

This movie is awesome, as regular readers know. It forms a third of what is, in my mind, the holy trinity of vampire movies: Interview with the Vampire, Nosferatu (1922) and Blade (1998).

But where the film is a gothic horror told in all its grimy glory, the book is a whiny, plodding, angsty tome. The same stuff happens, but with a lot less... happening. In the film, the existential worries are a result of the action, but in the novel, the action is a result of the existential worries.

Not that I blame Anne Rice for writing an angsty novel about the demise of a vampire-child: she began writing "Interview" soon after the death of her five-year-old daughter, who died of leukemia, a cancer of the blood.

Rice subsequently wrote the first draft of the screenplay in 1993, and I can only imagine the uncredited rewrite by director Neil Jordan did wonders.

2. Pride & Prejudice (2005)

This novel sucks. It sucks. It just plain sucks. It's boring, it's anticlimactic, it reads just like a diary. I suppose there's a subtle humor at play, maybe a couple of decently-penned twists and some good conflicts of interest, but I get the impression that little is on purpose.

The movie, on the other hand, is a different story. It's fantastic. Condensed, action-oriented, and it captures the actions associated with falling in love, and eschews the feelings, which are almost impossible to film anyway.

Part of the problem is simply the limits of the writing medium. Here, read this, then go watch this, and tell me artists weren't simply waiting around for film to be invented for ten thousand years.

1. Starship Troopers (1997)

Now, I realize there are a lot of people who consider the book a masterpiece, and the film little more than melodramatic pro-Nazi nonsense, but I happen to believe the opposite. Sort of.

The book is no doubt a landmark of sci-fi literature, but the thing is, all those satirical depictions of facism that pop up in the film weren't meant to be satirical in the original novel.

Now, author Robert Heinlein wasn't a Nazi. Far from it. He hated Nazis just as much as any American who served in the US Navy from 1929 to 1934. And he wasn't exactly Jack D Ripper, either, wanting to bomb anyone who waved an enemy flag back to the stone age. One of his most "controversial" opinions in the 1950s was that America should pursue a nuclear weapons program (as opposed to abandoning it entirely), an opinion which garnered him lots of undue flak.

He wasn't a facist. He was a jingoist.

But even if I agree with some of Heinlein's defense policies, most of them are pretty far-right, and even if I agreed with all of them, I don't appreciate sitting down to read a story and being presented with a lecture instead.

I'm not saying it's a bad book. If there's such a thing as a science fiction political essay, then "Starship Troopers" is one of the best. All I'm saying is that it's not an exciting story.

Wikipedia has the book listed as both a "sci-fi novel" and a "political essay." The film, on the other hand, is a straight-up satirical action. With bewbs.

And this.

--Serge

Merry Early Christmas

2011-12-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

I can't blog tonight because I'm going to a three-hour Christmas pageant down in Ft. Lauderdale. I leave you with the greatest Christmas movie ever made:

There's also a lot of great content that I posted this week, assuming space-sex is your thing. And who's thing isn't?

--Serge

New Black List Indicates All My Scripts Must've Gotten Lost in the Mail

2011-12-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

"Fuckbuddies" appeared on the Black List a few years ago.
It was subsequently bought and quickly re-titled.

I think the Black List is interesting, because, while it amounts to little more than a list of everyone's favorite films that no one was willing to make, it does spread the word on good material, and once you're on it, your stuff tends to sell real fast. Perhaps it's sad that popular consensus is the deciding factor in choosing what finally gets produced, but nothing dries tears faster than money.

In other words: I'd rather have my scripts bought than put on the Black List, but the popularity is a nice consolation prize -- especially in this business.
I had a whole post written up about all this, but that really sums up everything I have to say, and I believe you shouldn't use two words to say what you can in one.

With that said, would anyone like a copy of my scripts?

The 2011 Black List Top Ten:

1. The Imitation Game by Graham Moore
Based on the true story of British mathematician Alan Turing. Turing decrypted German Morse-coded radio communications (arguably leading to the Allied victory of WWII) and poisoned himself after being criminally prosecuted for being a homosexual.

2. When the Street Lights Go On by Chris Hutton and Eddie O’Keefe
Set in the early eighties, a town suffers after the brutal murder of a high school girl and a teacher.

3. Chewie by Evan Susser and Van Robichaux
A satirical behind the scenes look at the making of Star Wars through the eyes of the man who played Chewbacca.

4. The Outsider by Andrew Baldwin
Set in post-WWII Japan, an American former prisoner-of-war is accepted into the yakuza.

5. Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses by Matthew Aldrich
A man goes on a crime spree with his eleven-year-old daughter.

6. In the Event of a Moon Disaster by Mike Jones
An alternate version of the APOLLO 11 mission that imagines what might have happened if the astronauts had crash-landed.

7. The Current War by Michael Mitnick
A story based on the real inventors Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

8. Maggie by John Scott 3
A family helps their eldest daughter as she comes to term with her infection, which is slowly turning her into a flesh-eating zombie.

9. The End by Aron Eli Coleite
Four people have six hours to try to make peace with their lives before an interstellar event brings about the end of the world.

10. Beyond the Pale by Chad Feehan
After their father is buried, two siblings witness the town undertaker digging up the grave and taking something sending them on an investigation into his necrophilia.

The value of such a list for an aspiring writer is, I believe, in studying the art of the logline. Which of these scripts would I read having heard just the one-sentence synopsis? Why, the one that's most ironic, of course!

Or whichever that presupposes an alternate version of the Apollo 11 mission that imagines what might have happened if the astronauts had crash-landed.

You know... whichever.

I'd love to practice my logline-writing skills on this here blog, but a logline is not protected in the way that a script is, and so I'm afraid all my loglines will have to remain locked in my notes. Rest assured, if they ever show up on the Black List, you'll know about it.

--Serge

Topical Tuesdays: Everything I Know About Sex in Space

2011-12-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

As with last week's post on space-pooping, this post will not yield much in the way of pictures

There is no official NASA policy prohibiting sex in orbit. Though it's not exactly endorsed, either. The long story short is that no NASA policy even acknowledges the possibility of sex (in space), but the impression both astronauts and inquiring journalists get is that if you're caught having sex in space, you'll never fly again.

What would prohibit astronauts from getting their freak on in orbit, besides the practical inhibitions, is a boy-scout-like oath they're all required to take, which states that they won't do anything that would portray the space agency in a negative or uncouth light -- a blanket sweep which effectively prohibits baby-making in space.

Why the concern?

Presumably, the whole reason NASA exists is so that mankind can spend more and more time in space, and more and more time travelling to distant parts of the universe. A one-way trip to Mars would take an estimated nine months. NASA hopes to build colonies there one day. If we're going to build a permanent presence beyond our own atmosphere, sex in space had better be addressed sooner rather than later.

The matter finally seemed settled in the mid-90s, when a report came to light which detailed the sexual experimentation of several teams of astronaut spouses, who tried out a variety of "positions and techniques" in zero gravity, and listed several preferences.

As it turns out, the mission that supposedly carried out these high-altitude experiments launched a full year after the supposed "report" came to light (on the internet, no less), which summarily debunks the whole story.

PS: the whole crew of that expedition was male.

But why shouldn't NASA start studying sex in space?

Here's a question for future space-colonists: can you get pregnant in zero gravity? Scientists aren't sure. Even if sperm can swim in zero gravity (tests have proven inconclusive), no one is sure if they'd be able to navigate the falopian tube.

If you're on a thirty-year haul to Proxima Centauri (a remote but theoretical possibility), you'll want to know.

But just because no space agency has ever experimented with space-bonking doesn't mean that no one ever has.

The author of Packing for Mars, Mary Roach, heard of a Russian-produced porn purportedly shot in zero gravity.

How'd they purportedly manage that?

By purportedly loading the cast and crew onto a 747 and bribing the pilot so that he would fly them on a series of parabolic arcs, which would produce weightlessness for twenty to thirty seconds every two to three minutes.

It's the same technique that NASA uses to test all of its equipment before sending it into orbit (at a cost of $95,000 per flight, which goes to explain NASA's astronomical operating budget). It's long been known as the "Vomit Comet," though NASA prefers "Weightless Wonder."

So anyhoot: Roach tried to track down what there was to know about that purported porn. She couldn't find any of the actors, but the producer happily sent over the tapes (apparently, it was a trilogy of porns). It didn't take long for Roach to learn that, rather than shooting the entire film in zero gravity, only one scene was supposed filmed weightless.

A little bit of fast-forwarding and she found the scene: two actors porking in zero gravity.

But it wasn't really zero gravity. It didn't take an expert to see the cheap tricks employed to give the impression of weightlessness (think extremely low tech, like putting light-fixtures on the floor).

What's more, Roach mentions that, in all of her research, she spent a lot of time observing liquids in zero gravity, and the certain liquids on display in the porn were not behaving as if they were truly weightless. Her subsequent emails to the porn producer went unreturned.

So that's it? Has no one ever gotten jiggy wit it in space?

The impression that I got from Roach's account is that, while certainly no one has ever gone on record as having ever played mattress rodeo amidst the final frontier, it'd be hard to believe that it's never happened.

What happens in high-Earth orbit stays in high-Earth orbit.

--Serge

PS: I don't know if my older brother is a regular reader, but if he is: happy birthday, Luke!

Science and the Silver Screen: "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

2011-12-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

I tried starting a series on Hollywood and historical accuracy about eighteen months ago and only reviewed one film. The reason is because I don't know enough about history and I don't care enough about biopics to write a continuing series on either.

Science, however, is another matter. I love science, and I love science fiction. This should be good.

So welcome to the first semi-regular installment of Science and the Silver Screen, where we discuss the levels of scientific accuracy in any given film. There won't be any final "grade" issued, because it wouldn't be fair to make a judgment call on the accuracy of any film purporting to be fiction, but we'll at least reveal what from the film you can use in your science projects.

And first up, we have the film that was voted the greatest sci-fi film of all time by the American Film Institute: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

At first glance, the film would seem merely accurate, and not necessarily inspired. But then you realize that the film came out in 1968, a full year before the first man set foot on the moon, and suddenly it looks a lot more impressive. Nobody knew precisely what the lunar surface environment would be like, and nobody knew what the Earth would look like standing on its surface, but on June 20th, three dudes travelled there and the world saw that Kubrick and co. nailed it.

In fact, it was Kubrick's hyper-realistic depiction of the lunar surface that inspired the conspiracy theory that Kubrick himself faked the moon landing on behalf of the government.

Kubrick is infamous for his attention to detail. 2001 is no exception. Apparently, when everybody sat down to make a movie about space, nobody told Kubrick that it was all gonna be fake.

I'm being flippant. Of course Kubrick knew he wasn't really going to be travelling into space to make the movie.

But that didn't stop him from insisting that all the props in the film be built to work in space.

Now, granted, I hear that, and my bullsh*t-detector starts ticking. An obsessive auteur is one thing, but studios don't have infinite budgets. Kubrick couldn't have gotten gorram spaceships prepared just to make a gorram movie. But here's what he did prepare:

Those are the full directions for a zero-gravity toilet. You can read the whole set of instructions here (though I'll save you the suspense and tell you right now that the word "poop" doesn't show up even once).

Granted, the instructions are obviously a complete fabrication, but, if you'll remember from last week's totally-unrelated post on pooping in space, NASA hadn't even invented a zero-gravity toilet by 1968, and the toilet that they did finally design prominently features a hose attachment.

One more thing: 2001 gets most of the press, but I'm just as much a fan of its lesser-known sequel, 2010: the Year we Make Contact (1984). In it, those mischevious black monoliths from 2001 travel to Jupiter and (spoiler alert) condense it into a star.

This is a stroke of science fiction genius, because, long story short, Jupiter is a star -- or at least it would've been, if only its mass were larger. In fact, Jupiter possesses almost the exact same atmospheric makeup as the sun (89% hydrogen and 10% helium, compared to 73% hydrogen and 24% helium for the Sun). It's just not dense-enough to generate nuclear fusion.

So this post is getting long and we haven't even discussed artificial intelligence or artificial gravity, but these films are worth revisiting, and I'm certain we'll be back soon.

--Serge

Innanity Sunday

2011-12-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, I will be flying from San Diego back to Ft. Lauderdale. Long story short: I couldn't find enough work in LA to pay for a place of my own, so I'll be staying in Florida until new opportunities arise. Today was the deadline for finding permanent work in LA -- my six month student loan grace-period is finally up.

It looks like the immediate future will be filled with screenwriting, as much part-time work as I can manage, and a healthy dose of videogames (I haven't booted up my PS3 in three months -- and not by choice).

This week on the blog, you can expect a post on sex in space to make up for that one post on pooping in space we had last week, and I might start a new series or two in order to make up for the abysmal lack of original content last week. T'was a rough week, both physically and mentally, and I thank you for sticking with this 'ere blog, despite the brief hiccup in content.

--Serge

New "Battleship" Trailer Utilizes Artillery as Percussion; What More Do You Need to Know?

2011-12-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

I'll admit that this looks cool (if a bit exhausting), but haven't we seen this movie thirty times before? You've got the robot-aliens demolishing skyscrapers (Transformers), force-fields blowing up fighter jets (Independence Day), aliens utilizing robotic suits (District 9), and a rookie hero stepping up to command a ship after its commander is killed (Star Trek).

Also, no thanks to 9/11, we all know what a crumbling building looks like, and, as far as I can tell, no studio gets it right. Never enough dust. Are we not supposed to feel anything when they fall? Then why bother watching the gorram movie?

I can't help but think that, on 9/11, Hollywood watched and thought "My G-d, we've got enough B-roll to last us till rapture!"

--Serge

You're Getting Your Weekend Meme a Day Early

2011-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Howdy folks: it's been a very trying week. Not a lot of time to blog. I managed to write up a quaint little post on Three Amigos! (1986) yesterday which I think everyone should check out, and my post on pooping in space has gotten more views than any other post I've written in the past three months. Thanks!

For today, rather than upload a late post, I'm going to go ahead and reblog the extraordinary efforts of others:

--Serge

I Have Three Demands: A Sociopolitical Analysis of "Three Amigos!" (1986)

2011-12-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

Film degrees don't offer much in the way of employment, but even with the economy as it is, it's times like these that having a film degree makes it all worth it: I get to write about Three Amigos! (1986) and call it something intellectual.

The danger in making any film in one country which depicts the people of another is dishonesty, to misrepresent or marginalize the Other.

(Already, I've overstepped my scholarly duties by implying that such a thing is bad. There aren't supposed to be any judgment calls in classical film analysis. I once watched a professor scold a kid for mentioning in passing how much he happened to enjoy the film we were analyzing that day. But I've graduated now and I can make all the judgment calls I want)

Three Amigos! tells the story of three silent-era movie stars who are mistaken for real gunfighters by some rural Mexican villagers. They are brought down to Mexico thinking that they will be paid 100,000 pesos to put on a show of their talents. In reality, they are expected to fight off El Guapo, a ruthless Mexican thug who commands fifty men.

In all too many Hollywood productions, the situation is always the same: there's a indigenous population of Others who must enlist the aid of white American men when they are threatened by members of their own kind. The Magnificent Seven (1960), Avatar (2009), Dances With Wolves (1990), etc.

The three examples I've provided are what I count to be poor representations of reality: white America is not necessarily the white knight it tends to think it is. The implications are profound: indigenous ("non-white") people in American cinema are typically either ruthless killers or inept plebeians. What finally provides their salvation is the American patriarchy.

I'd say this type of filmmaking is harmless, except it seems to have actually infiltrated American foreign policy ("Bring it on," etc., and I've heard it said that Nixon once remarked that "Patton would've wanted us to stay in Vietnam," not for any knowledge of the man, but for George C. Scott's performance of same).

So after that preamble, we come to Three Amigos!, which appears to suffer from the exact same problems that the other films do -- except I wouldn't love it so much if I thought it did.

On the surface, it hits all the same problematic plot points as the other films: uneducated ethnic villagers, besieged by another set of ethnics, rescued by the efforts of three white American men. What's more, it would seem that Mexican men come in only two varieties: ruthless gangsters and inept benevolents.

The most proactive member of the Mexican community, Carmen, goes out to find help for her village and winds up mistaking three movie stars for actual gunifghters. Noble but inept nevertheless.

And then we stumble upon the film's subtleties, which ride in to save the day.

Long story short, Three Amigos! is a comedy, and its comedy goes almost as far as its postmodern self-reflexion does in redeeming its admittedly-ridiculous vision of rural Mexico.

In one scene, Lucky Day (Steve Martin) is caught sneaking into El Guapo's compound. With fifty guns leveled at his head, he decides it's as good a time as any to list his three demands: "One: that you stop harassing the people of Santo Poco. Two: that the land of Mexico be redistributed equally among the people, and a proportional system of government be established, consisting of three separate but equal branches: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. And three: that the girl Carmen be returned to me unharmed."

This lays out what for me is the film's saving grace (one of many, as it were): here it is acknowledging the ridiculousness of American jingoism, the nonsense contained in the idea that America can show up in another country and demand that it spontaneously become something else.

Thus, we have a story which is built from all the same old marginalizing stereotypes (which, coincidentally, tell a fantastically exciting story), but presented in such a way that undermines them. And we get to laugh.

The wonders that can be accomplished with postmodernism.

There's more to this argument than what I've just presented, but this is a blog, not a term paper, so let's just wrap it up with this:

--Serge

Trailer Cutting Seems to be Getting Worse

2011-12-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

I apologize for putting up two posts in one week about the exact same topic, but the epidemic just won't die. Below, you'll find the trailers for Cabin in the Woods (2012) and Perfect Sense (2012).

Cabin in the Woods is the long-delayed brainchild of Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard. All we knew about the project was that Whedon was co-writing and it was going to be the horror film to end all horror films, a movie that would function not only as a self-reflexive examination of the whole genre, but also serve as an incredibly scary tale on its own.

But you wouldn't know any of that from the trailer, because they've decided to market it in exactly the same way that every cheap-ass horror flick gets marketed these days.

That's right: a horror movie with a title as self-aware as The Cabin in the Woods gets a marketing campaign that basically boils down to "Look! The promise of jump-scares!"

I'm not saying every horror film trailer has to be self-aware, but when the hook is "We're going to be making fun of while simultaneously working with horror-film archetypes to deliver an engaging story," you can't deliver a trailer that makes the gorram film look like everything else.

Where's the context? Where's the characterization? Where are the stakes? Where is the brilliant genre-specific subterfuge that we all know will be on display throughout the film? The most we get along those lines is the one interesting part of the entire trailer: "We should split up." "Yeah, good idea."

"...Really?"

And then it's back to the mindless montage.

Then we come to Trailer #2:

This film is about a chef and a scientist who fall in love in the middle of an epidemic which slowly robs people of their five senses, a concept which actually intrigues me more than the thought of watching a topless makeout between Ewan McGregor and Eva Green.

Did you get any of that from the trailer? Yeah, me neither.

It seems every genre has its own set of cringe-inducing trailer-cliches. I smell a definitive post on the subject in the near future!

--Serge

Topical Tuesdays: Everything I Know About Pooping in Space

2011-12-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Thunder-Chrome

So I just finished reading Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, and it's easily the most engrossing bit of nonfiction I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

But perhaps "pleasure" isn't the right word. You see, as Roach points out, travelling into space forces those invovled to push the boundaries -- not only of engineering, of what's possible, but also of what's socially acceptable, of what's tolerable.

And now that I know... I need to share.

Everybody knows that the toilets of NASA are to be loathed (the butt of the whole program, so to speak), but what's actually so terrible about them? Well, for one thing, NASA missions didn't even invent a toilet for their astronauts until the 1970s. The Apollo and Gemini missions simply didn't have them.

There wasn't any room in the shuttle. Roach says that the Apollo 13 capsule had about as much cubic feet of space for the three-man crew as a sports car. There were no bathrooms. They used plastic bags to dispose of solid waste.

Are you ready to know what scenes didn't make it into the final cut of Apollo 13 (1995)?

Astronauts would hold the bags in place on their bottoms (part of their training back on Earth was to learn how to position the bags with the aid of an in-toilet camera), spread the cheeks manually (unless they figured out how to squat in zero gravity), and catch the offending matter in the bag. This act in itself is difficult, as the first astronauts soon learned that egesta tends to curl (backwards, if you care to know) in zero gravity.

"Egesta" means exactly what you think it means. It's the opposite of "ingesta." You'll learn a lot of euphemisms for "poop" by the end of this post.

Escaped turds are not unknown in the history of NASA. It's all there in the mission transcripts, which are freely available to the public thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. At least one conversation with Houston was interrupted when the crew suddenly noticed an offending bolus hurtling across the cabin.

The crew first briefly discussed whose it might be before laughing hysterically and finally bagging it.

Astronauts: tougher in more ways than just guts.

And that's not the end of the ordeal. You can't just seal the bag and stow it away. If bacteria are allowed to do their work inside the bag, it will expand and explode within a few days, due to the gasses that bacteria produce. Astronauts had to disperse an antibacterial powder into the bag (not easy in zero gravity) and then knead it throughout the material. If you happened to be in the middle of a docking procedure, or some other priority assignment, you had to hand it off to another crewmember to do (in what Roach calls a "true test of friendship").

And then NASA invented the zero-gravity toilet, which only made things worse.

First, there was the toilet with the spinning blades (operating just six inches below the rim) that would first chop up an astronaut's deposits and then freeze-dry the offending material to the inside walls of the bowl.

Sounds safe and sanitary, right? Only until you turn the blades on a second time. The freeze-dried dung would then shatter and be dispersed throughout the cabin in a cloud of what must be called "fecal dust."

What NASA finally settled on (and, as far as I can tell, is still in use today) is a fitted suction-tube which -- you guessed it -- generates about as many problems as it solves. The worst-case scenario is a clog in the air-filter, which must then be cleaned by -- you guessed it -- whoever used it last.

Disposing of urine, in case you're wondering, is a walk in the park compared to the multiple problems presented by the disposal of solid waste. Urine is either deposited directly into a condom-like catheter fitted directly over the penis or, in the case of women (and the men who prefer it), a diaper.

As you might imagine, most astronauts who are launched on short-term missions simply hold it all in (we're back to solid waste now). NASA has tried liquid and pill diets, but neither worked well. NASA has also tried feeding its astronauts a diet rich in highly-processed foods, the effect of which is to constipate their astronauts for the duration of a mission.

I get the impression that few complain.

Storing bowel movements after they've passed is another problem. It's enough of a problem that one NASA scientist proposed they hydrolize solid waste back into (tasteless, perfectly sanitary) carbon and stored as edible patties.

In a line that I desperately hope is a direct quote, and not a fabrication of Roach's, one of the astronauts present exclaimed "We're not eating shit burgers on the way back from Mars!"

See, the reason I mention any of this is because I think space-travel is important, and what to do about doody is just one of the incredible challenges that engineers and astronauts face in the trek to outer space. It's just as daunting a problem as designing any landing-system or executing parabolic course-corrections from twenty million miles away, and yet it receives far less press.

Anyway, that's the reason I'm writing a post about poop. Because NASA is populated by heroes, and sometimes, being a hero stinks.

One final anecdote: NASA has done well to figure out which foods are the most readily-absorbed by the body. Animal fat and protein is one of the most readily-metabolized foods. A ten ounce steak will produce only one ounce of solid waste, an absorption-rate of 90%. Hard-boiled eggs have an even higher absorption-rate.

This is why the traditional pre-launch astronaut meal is steak and eggs. They'll be sitting in the cockpit for eight hours straight with nowhere to go, and, as Roach puts it, "you don't want to be eating FiberOne on launch-day."

The traditional Russian pre-launch breakfast, it should be noted, is not steak and eggs, but rather a one-liter enema.

I apologize for what I just put you through, dear reader. To make it up to you, I promise to deliver a post on sex in space for the next Topical Tuesday.

--Serge

Another One of Those Days

2011-12-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

My intake of thought-provoking media has temporarily outpaced my output of relevant responses. I will get back up to speed later this week, but for now, check out the following clips and marvel with me!

--Serge

Innanity Sunday

2011-12-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

I am in Mexico for the next week or two, discussing collaboration-possibilities with some independent movie producers. Dunno what these talks will yield, but I'm hoping for awesomeness.

I also have access to a treadmill for the first time in three months, so maybe I'll be able to work some of this Thanksgiving weight off just in time for Christmas. I return to Florida on December 12th, which is also the day, coincidentally, that my first student loan repayment is due.

It's been six months since graduation. I can haz employment, plz?

This week on the blog, you can expect some thougts concerning the various purchases I made over the Black Friday weekend. I'm not talking about the purchases themselves: I'm talking about thoughts concerning the films that I happened to purchase.

Instead of another deplorably materialistic "haul" post, I'm just gonna go ahead and list the films that I bought right here: The African Queen (1951), King Kong (1933), Three Amigos (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), Life is Beautiful (1997), and "The Fountainhead" for my Kindle. So expect thoughts on some of those projects shortly.

--Serge

Now You Go Too Far: "Starship Troopers" to Get the Reboot Treatment

2011-12-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

Because this isn't cool-enough already.

Regular readers know that I am a huge fan of Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997), a property which started life as a boring-ass love-letter to American jingoism in the 1959 novel of the same name, and was transformed into one of the most deliciously ironic sci-fi actions to ever satirize the Nazis by a man who not only understands how to tell a great story but who was also carpet-bombed by the Nazis as a child.

Aaaaaaaaaand it's getting a reboot.

From Vulture: "Sony Pictures uber-producer Neal Moritz... has assigned the script to screenwriters Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, who, among other things, wrote Thor and X-Men: First Class, as well as many episodes of the TV shows Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Fringe."

Now, I'm not against reboots as a rule. Some of them have yielded great stuff. But this project in particular bugs me.

Here's the problem: they are not rebooting this film because they've got some new vision for the project. They're rebooting it because RoboCop (1987) and Total Recall (1990) are also getting reboots. And Hollywood is just a bank.

They'll keep Miller & Stentz's script on file, just in case the other two films do well at the box-office, and if not, it'll sit on a shelf, forever. I suppose if all three do well, we'll get Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995) remakes, too.

I can only imagine (with dread) what the studio would want to change in order to distinguish itself from the original: "Let's keep it truer to the crappy warhawk novel! Let's make it darker© and grittier™! Let's remove all the satire and demand that the audience take the concept of a war against space-faring psychic bugs seriously this time!"

With all that said, if the studio is looking for someone to do a polish, allow me to fax over some samples of my work....

--Serge

Can No One Make "John Carter" Look Good?

2011-12-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

I believe that John Carter (2012) will be a good movie. It's got a Pixar front-man both writing and directing, it's based on a masterpiece-of-the-genre novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the script got polishes from a Pulitzer Prize winning author. The budget has swelled past $250 million, so you know they won't be skimping on special-effects.

So, assuming it's any good, why can no one over at Disney assemble a trailer worth half a hoot?

Look, here's the first trailer, for comparison:

They're both crap, but what's worse is that they don't even look like crap from the same movie. The first trailer they released is soft, lyrical, and actually my preferred trailer of the two, but it fails stupendously to excite. I read the book; I know this is an adventure film, so where's the gorram adventure? Don't they know that this movie is an epic romance set on Mars in the midst of a multi-front alien war?

So we wait a few months and Trailer #2 saunters in, and it's all "You want adventure? I'll show you adventure!" And we are "treated" to two minutes of jumbled effects footage. Sure, now the movie looks action-packed, but we're still missing what even the first trailer sorely lacked: stakes. And context.

Why is John Carter on Mars? What does he plan to do now that he's here? Why are there other humans on Mars? And why should we give a crap about any of this? The story is what distinguishes this project, so I find it weird that neither trailer utilizes even one line of exposition to explain what the hell is going on.

This movie is based on a 95-year-old space-opera masterpiece, and yet both trailers make it look like it's simply chasing the tail of Cowboys & Aliens (2011).

And this time, it's distributed by Disney, so there won't be any topless Olivia Wilde.

Or topless Daniel Craig.

Look, don't get me wrong, this is one of my most anticipated films of 2012, but I don't want to be the only person in the theater to enjoy it!

--Serge

The Year in Film: 2005

2011-12-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

2005 is a weird year to write about because it's a year I actually remember.

Youtube came online on February 15th of that year. NASA launched its first shuttle mission since the space shuttle Columbia exploded two years earlier. Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,836 people when it struck the Gulf Coast and overflowed the New Orleans levee system.

The war in Iraq started getting really, really unpopular (the US death toll hit 2,000 on October 26th), even as Bush was sworn in for a second term as president. Lance Armstrong won his record 7th straight Tour de France. Denis Rader, better known as the BTK killer, was aprehended on February 25th, 31 years after his first murder.

Looking back now, I feel as if 2005 was the first "modern" year when compared to today. It seems that in 2005, the internet, cell phones, and a distrust in government were finally "ubiquitous" in a way that they weren't in 2004. In that sense, 2005 is the last year, as of this writing, that I would consider "recent." I know there's more to the modern age than the internet and cellphones, but they're certainly an integral part.

2005 is also the first year that I watched the Academy Awards, which yielded one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history, but, seeing as how it was my first Oscars telecast, I thought these sorts of upsets happened all the time.

It was supposed to be a fight between Brokeback Mountain and Munich, but Crash took home the gold. The popular theory seems to be that Brokeback Mountain and Munich actually split the vote, but my guess is that the dude who carried the envelope to the stage was a big Brendan Fraser fan.

Munich is my favorite film of the five nominees that year, with Brokeback Mountain finishing a close second if only because it's not quite as exciting as Munich. Both films have got their fair share of problems, however, and so we must continue searching for the best film of 2005.

Batman Begins was certainly a milestone in franchise rebooting, but it's not without some serious problems in tone and pacing. King Kong was a worthy, spirited remake but it took waaaay too long to say what it needed to say.

It took me six years, but my thoughts concerning Serenity have finally crystallized: a two-hour film is simply not enough time for "Firefly" to come to a worthy conclusion, but at least it concludes, if not with sufficient catharsis, then at least with sufficient competency.

I have to admit, I like War of the Worlds at least a little more than when I first saw it, but that ending is still the worst instance of Spielberg sugar-coating I've ever seen.

Who's the troll who kept voting for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in this month's poll? Sure, it's the best of the Star Wars prequels hands-down, but that's like being the only butterfly at a caterpillar beauty contest.

Rounding out the sci-fi/fantasy films of 2005 is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which has a bunch of tone and pacing problems, but it's still a remarkably effective condensation of a rather scatterbrained novel. In fact, despite this film's limitations, I'd say it's a lot more focused and goal-oriented than the novel on which it is based. Too bad they couldn't iron out all the kinks (it's too damn episodic), or this would've certainly been one of the best films of 2005.

Walk the Line is one of my all-time favorite biopics, because, unlike most biopics, Walk the Line actually has a plot. It's a classic story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. Ten seconds later, the credits roll. Awesome music to boot.

Speaking of real-life stories, Cinderella Man was a decent little boxing movie that wasn't really about boxing, even if the script did have to twist the truth in order to manufacture an unsympathetic opponent for Russell Crowe to beat up.

The New World was interesting but I prefer Pocahontas (1995).

Transamerica and A History of Violence were both hard-hitting dramas which did well to show sex and violence in all their unsexy glory, but both films, in hindsight, feel more like cinematic provocations than actual dramas.

Fun fact: A History of Violence was the last major studio film to ever be released on VHS. Just one year later, The Terminator (1984) would become the first film to ever be released on blu-ray.

It's no secret: I have saved my personal favorites for last. The Constant Gardener is a masterpiece of "taking-on-the-man" cinema. Ralph Fiennes plays a bereaved husband who must investigate the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of his wife, who was about to expose a massive company of their murderous wrongdoing. It's one of the most personally-unsettling films I've ever seen. No spoilers: just go see it.

I love Jarhead. I dedicated a whole post to this film a while back and I still only skimmed the surface. It's depiction of the USMC aside, Jarhead is one of the best films to ever tackle the subject of boredom in both exciting and meaningful ways.

Pride & Prejudice rocks. It's the most viscerally awesome Victorian romance ever lensed (there's a sentence I never thought I'd type). Perhaps 2005 was the year of the film adaptation that was actually better than the novel on which it was based, if this and Hitchhiker's Guide are any indications.

As good as all of those films are, I believe none are quite as good as the unmitigated masterpiece that is Lord of War, which is indeed my pick for Best Film of 2005.

Lord of War tells the story of Yuri Orlov, a Ukranian-American who begins his adult life in Brighton Beach with no money and no prospects. Yuri soon realizes that if he goes into the gun-running business, he'll never go broke.

This is one of those films that is more than the sum of its parts. What we've got is an interesting subject, a sympathetic scumbag protagonist, and a whole host of moral ambiguity.

Put it all together and you have a masterfully-told tale that feels like no other which still manages to satisfy all of our primal story-seeking desires.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that this film is too good for me to pinpoint exactly why I like it. Mostly, I love it for the way it leaves me feeling at the end: the good people are out there, but don't expect them to win out every time.

If you want a top-five for 2005, I'd have to go with Lord of War, Pride & Prejudice, Munich, Jarhead, and The Constant Gardener.

--Serge

Ranking the Six "Star Wars" Films Part 2

2011-11-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

So on Monday we decided that A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are the undisputed kings of the Star Wars saga, and I picked A New Hope as my personal favorite.

What follows is not so much a progression of greatness but rather a progression of ever-increasing disappointments.

We start with the last two films in either trilogy: Return of the Jedi (1983) and Revenge of the Sith (2005). Jedi is generally considered the worst film of the original trilogy, and Sith is generally considered the best of the prequels. But which is better than the other? And how does one judge?

Both films were intent on completing an arc: Jedi had to get Luke to confront Vader and defeat the Empire; Sith had to bring Anakin over to the Dark Side. Both of them did this, but with varying degrees of success.

The first half of Revenge of the Sith is nigh unwatcheable. The Palpatine rescue is totally devoid of drama (not to mention the behavior of Palpatine himself is totally inscrutable), and the subsequent search for General Grievous is boring as hell. The climactic showdown between Grievous and Obi-Wan is just a showreel for ILM. Not an ounce of suspense to be had.

Eventually, however, Grievous goes down and Palpatine finally overthrows the Jedi (though what exactly he was waiting for is never very clear), whereupon things finally start to move. Anakin sides with Palpatine and the Empire is born.

The final fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin is dampened by some horrible lines ("From my point of view the Jedi are evil!"), but what's actually happening is sufficiently dramatic to carry our interest to the final shot. If only the first half of the film had been so together.

Return of the Jedi's problem is that it's uniformly "meh." It's a decent little episodic adventure which ends in a wonderfully-edited three-front battle, but you can't tell me that the rebuilt Death Star is even half as scary as it was in A New Hope. Also, when Luke is "tempted" to join the Emperor, it's not a "temptation" so much as just an offer, which Luke patently refuses. And thus, evil is overcome. Cue the Ewok party.

Even though the first half of Revenge of the Sith is not much of a film at all, I'd still say that its second half is better than the entirety of Return of the Jedi, and, though I hate to knock the film that gave us Slave Leia, I'm gonna have to go with Revenge of the Sith.

And then finally, we have the bottom of the barrel. The worst of the worst. The Phantom Menace (1999) and Attack of the Clones (2002).

I just recently did a post on why Attack of the Clones is indeed the worst film in the Star Wars saga, so I won't go and re-tread the whole argument here, but basically, both of these films are total crap, and yet only one has Darth Maul in it.

The podrace is pretty cool, too.

I also feel that The Phantom Menace leans less on the rest of the saga than Attack of the Clones does, a movie which, by the by, owes its entire existence to one off-hand remark that Luke made in A New Hope ("You fought in the Clone Wars?").

Sorry to end so abruptly, but we've finally got our assembled list, and without further analysis, that's that. In descending order of greatness: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Sith, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones. Don't watch them in that order or your head'll explode.
--Serge

Topical Tuesdays: NASA Just Launched Another Mars Rover and We Didn't Notice for all the Black Friday Sales

2011-11-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday, November 26th, NASA launched its most advanced rover ever built and sent it on a course for the Red Planet. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), which carries a ten-foot rover named Curiosity, is scheduled to land in the Gale Crater on August 6th, 2012.

Curiosity is the most advanced rover ever sent to another planetary body. It is equipped to fully-characterize the climate and geology of Mars and determine whether or not life could have ever arisen there. Unfortunately, Curiosity is not equipped to study life directly, nor is it designed to return Martian soil samples.

That might sound like an oversight, but really, it's prudence. To equip any rover with the ability to study life in an alien environment would add hundreds of millions to the cost of the project, and to do so without even confirming if Mars ever had a habitable environment would be silly indeed.

And the problems the engineers at NASA have already had to overcome without figuring out how to keep Martian soil samples in a stable environment for the 450-day return-trip to Earth.

Just landing the rover is a feat of engineering: the Martian atmosphere is too thin for parachutes to be effective, and if they were to employ thrusters the resulting ploom of Martian soil would damage the rover. NASA has created a special airfoil meant to withstand a deployment at Mach 2, and the rover itself will be deposited onto the Martian surface via a thruster-equipped "sky-crane."

NASA's website on this stuff is one of the most incredible multimedia resources I've ever seen. You can even view the CGI solar system rendered in real-time, based on the most up-to-date NASA data, including all of their missions and every heavenly body that they monitor.

Not to mention a treasure-trove of fun facts.

Did you know that Russia beat America to Mars way back in 1971? The reason they didn't get much press was because the Mars 2 lander crashed-landed and Mars 3 stopped trasmitting just 15 seconds after landing. Mars 6 crash-landed, and Mars 7 missed the planet entirely.

American-made Vikings 1 & 2 were the first man-made objects to land and actually do something on the Martian surface, back in 1976. The next big press came in 1997, when Sojourner became the first true rover to land on the Martian surface.

This, I remember. It made the cover of Time for Kids.

There is talk in some circles of the "Martian Curse," coined by journalist Donald Neff in 1997 to refer to the relatively high rate of failure for man-made Mars-bound objects. When the Ruskies aren't screwing up the rate, NASA succeeds in 65% of the Mars missions it launches; its record with rovers is much better (86% success).

Space exploration is a slow, costly enterprise, but our wonder is daily renewed. Or at least, mine is.

--Serge

It is Time: Ranking the Six "Star Wars" Films Part 1

2011-11-28T00:00:00.001-05:00

I've done enough posts about the Star Wars films in recent weeks that we might as well go ahead and rank them. I know, it's critically worthless, but who doesn't love a good list? Rather than simply list them in ascending order of greatness, I'd rather let my ranking emerge organically from a discussion of the six films as a whole.

The Star Wars saga is not Macbeth, but, then again, it was never supposed to be. The heart of drama is the complication: that which impedes the protagonist from achieving his/her goal. In what you might euphemistically call "high art," those complications arise exclusively from that which is tied thematically to the story.

In what we might call "entertaining" art, complications simply arise, and as long as those complications are unexpected and exciting, we can keep watching with just as much energy and attention as we might Macbeth and call it a good day.

What I'm saying is: "What do I do to inherit the kingdom from my betters?" is just as worthy a goal for a protagonist as "How do we keep this trash compactor from squashing us?"

With that said, we have just now discovered what separates the great Star Wars films from the crappy ones: their sense of urgency. Generally speaking, the original Star Wars trilogy is driven by action. The prequel trilogy is driven by exposition.

But it's not all so homogenous.

If excitement and the inevitable progression of action is the yardstick by which we measure the Star Wars films, then picking the best should be easy. In fact, picking the best two is extremely easy, but picking the best of those two is not.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and A New Hope (1977) are the two best Star Wars films, owing to their relentless pace, their memorable characters, their bare-necessities dialogue, and their surprising twists (one in particular gets more press than others). They each present exactly what you'd want from an adventure serial.

They're both pitch-perfect action-tastic space adventures.

When it comes to picking a favorite, though, I'd have to go with A New Hope, by a nose. It's aspirations were certainly lower than Empire Strikes Back, but it hit the mark more solidly. IMHO. As has been stated by other critics, Empire spends a lot of time just circling before it finally pounces.

I'm not saying the revelation that Vader is Luke's father was supposed to be anywhere but in the last five minutes, but the list of things that happens between the destruction of the rebel base on Hoth and that final confrontation is a lot of, um... meandering.

Luke's training on Dagobah could've been more thematically valuable if only Yoda's advice had remained consistent. I don't have individual quotes committed to memory, but really: who of us knows what the hell the Jedi order actually teaches?

Also: how long are we supposed to believe Luke's training lasts? He goes from Dude With A Lightsaber to Jedi In All But Name in the same time it takes Han & co. to outmaneuver the guts of an asteroid-slug and fly to Cloud City.

Just sayin.'

But those are just quibbles. The stories still work wonderfully -- and certainly better than the other four films in the franchise.

Yowza! This post got fairly long fairly fast. Let's finish up on Wednesday with Part 2.

--Serge

Sunday Innanity

2011-11-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Guess what? I'm down in Ensenada right now to talk to some Mexican movie executives! It's not a job interview or anything, but it should be cool nonetheless.

This week, you can expect a new installment of the Year in Film. Wahooo!

Still no work in LA. I'm going home to Florida for the holidays, and by now I'm wondering which city will be hosting me in 2012, because if this unemployment keeps up, Los Angeles will no longer cut it. Also: write your congressmen! If that SOPA bill gets made into a law then you can kiss the Cold Crash Pictures Red Dead Redemption video review goodbye.

--Serge

The Weekend Meme

2011-11-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

I found these videos oddly theraputic.

--Serge

"A Dangerous Method" (2011) Review

2011-11-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

Statistically speaking, you will not see A Dangerous Method (2011). Distributor Sony Pictures Classics has seen fit to give it only a two-city release, and then, only in specialty theaters. So unless you live in LA or New York, you won't see it until it's out on video.

The fact that it's not a very good film doesn't help.

You can usually tell when a film has been adapted from a play. Closer (2004), Frost/Nixon (2008), 12 Angry Men (1957), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992); they've all got dialogue that's been pounded out on an anvil. I could tell that A Dangerous Method was based on a play, but it was more for the five-person cast and the miniscule number of sets than the dialogue.

A Dangerous Method is an incomplete film. It feels like a first act. There's more story in the post-credits intertitles than in the actual film.

As you probably know from the trailer, A Dangerous Method tells the story of Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and his affair with a Russian patient named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), which complicates his already-complicated relationship with friend and mentor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen).

If that sounds scatterbrained and unguided, that's because the film itself is scatterbrained and unguided.

Individual scenes are interesting, but the movie never really builds to anything climactic, the story lacks a sense of progression, and none of the stakes are properly explained. It's very hard to tell how any individual scene has lead to the next.

Simply stated, the film is interesting but undramatic.

The movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be a rumination on repression and desire or a straight re-telling of the birth of psychoanalysis, and as a result, the film lacks cohesion. The movie feels like a terrible missed opportunity, because either of those tales would've made for a riveting film.

Freud and Jung are often arguing, but rarely do we know what about. Their central feud is clear-enough, but why we're supposed to care is another story. His affair with Sabina is probably the most dramatic bit of the film, but there's far too little of it.

Far, far too little.

I get that all of this is probably because the real-life story played out in exactly the same way, but that's why you've gotta pick your biopic properties so carefully. Yes, what went on is undoubtedly important, but is it dramatic enough to warrant the creation of a film?

The movie is not completely without merit. I'm not one to recommend a mediocre film just for one performance, but the work Knightley turns in is simply incredible. I imagine the temptation to show off while playing a mental patient would be insurmountably strong, but Knightley's performance is impressively unselfconscious.

I suppose there's more to say, but you've probably already decided whether or not you're going to see it and I've got Thanksgiving leftovers to eat. See you tomorrow for the weekend meme!

--Serge

It's One of Those Days Where Words Fail Me

2011-11-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned before on this blog how words are a comparatively pithy tool with which to discuss film. In a perfect world, I'd be able to instantly upload video responses to all my favorite films -- and I'm not talking about, like, narrating my thoughts into a webcam.

I'm talking about creating my own films in order to express my thoughts on film. Every one of my ideas is a response to another film, or a collection of films. Almost Gods, for example, is not only a rip-roaring beat-the-clock historical adventure, it's also a love letter to Dr. Strangelove (1964) (in addition to what I think is a thoughtful rumination on the conquest of Mexico).

In a perfect world, I wouldn't blog about Dr. Strangelove, I'd just upload Almost Gods and let it do the talking for me.

This is one of those days when the inadequacy of words is all but unassailable. Instead, scroll down, watch the videos, and ruminate with me on this wonderful medium and all its incredible facets!

A Dangerous Method (2011) review coming soon!

--Serge

Year in Film Spotlight: Best Picture Nominees of 2005

2011-11-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

The nominees were: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, and Munich.

In one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history, Crash (2005) took home the gold, which prompted some to speculate that Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Munich (2005), the favorites to win, had actually split the vote. Either that, or the dude who brought the voting results to the stage was a big Brendan Fraser fan.

So which titles were any good, and how good were they?

I haven't seen Good Night and Good Luck, so I can't rightly comment on its quality. Crap, I haven't seen Capote, either. That's 0-2. Honestly, I really only wanted to do an examination of 2005 for all the movies that weren't nominated for Best Picture.

I'll get to those two unjustified period-pieces someday soon, but for now, let's talk about the three Best Picture nominees that ~~mattered~~ I saw.

(In all fairness, I probably sound so defensive because I know I should've seen both of these movies a long time ago. I tend to love any film that tackles the issues surrounding government censorship, and Philip Seymour Hoffman very typically rocks my socks. So no excuses. I will get to them soon. Can anyone give me a one or two sentence review of their own in the comments?)

Crash was a decent little flick, and it seems everyone else thought so, too. But what nobody could fathom was how it won Best Picture.

For those of you who haven't seen it, Crash is a series of loosely-connected anecdotes about people dealing with racism in LA. Now, in a cultural vaccuum, I suppose the film works great. Scene after scene of rising tensions due to stubborn prejudice which finally erupts in a shower of conflict that is then tidily resolved through the hasty application of deus ex machina.

But movies don't exist in cultural vaccuums, so complaints abound. The film is childishly optimistic, and its presentation of racism is basically about as deep as an after-school assembly special on the subject. If you were expecting anything more provocative than the loud, friendly chant of "Racism is Bad," you've got another thing coming. Specifically, the loud, friendly chant of "Racism is Bad."

So that was Crash, which won Best Picture in a stunning upset (Jack Nicholsons expression when he announces the winner is my favorite). Most everyone figured it would be either Munich or Brokeback Mountain that would take home the top prize, and for good reason -- they're the two best Best Picture nominees of 2005 (that I've seen).

I stayed away from Brokeback Mountain for many years because of all the hype. I assumed that the only reason people were excited about the film was because it prominently featured a gay romance. When I finally did sit down to watch it, I was enthralled by an epic doomed romance of mythological proportions. The movie is a modern-day Greek tragedy, and I believe it should've been advertised as such.

Munich should be comended for its depiction of violence, which is visceral, unromanticized, and unpleasant. Watching our heroes take down terrorists isn't fun to watch. It's dramatic as hell, but not "fun." My one and only complaint is all the apologetics. The movie spends too much time asking "Is this the right thing to do?"

I'm not saying that the characters aren't allowed to second-guess themselves. The breakdown of Avner's psyche is one of the more interesting elements of the film.

No, here I'm referring to the film itself asking if what these Moussad agents did was right, in the form of a hastily-written Prime Minister who spouts rhetorical questions at the audience in an all-too-transparent attempt to make the situation appear more ambiguous than it actually was.

I'm not saying the situation was easy, but it certainly was simple.

Granted, the movie doesn't spend too much time apologizing. Most of the film is a shrieking indictment of violence, a painfully necessary force in world politics, shot beautifully and scripted well. I've got no other complaints.

Why in the world it didn't win, I'll never know.

--Serge