The Hobbit: An Uneducated (Visual) Comparison

I've seen The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey three times so far.  The first day I saw it was also the same day of the Sandy Hook tragedy so I just haven't felt up to writing much about it.  I loved the movie, more than a lot of folks, apparently.  But I still can't think about it without my mind wandering to the families in Connecticut.  So I'm going to take a different approach to my discussion.  I saw the film first in 2D, then in 3D and finally in 3D HFR (high frame rate).  I'm definitely not an expert on the subject of frame rates, etc., but I can tell you that what we're referring to here is shooting a movie in 48 frames per second instead of a standard 24 frames per second.  I think there is some discussion out there about what the human eye truly processes per second but that's more than I need to know.  What I do know is what I like and what worked for me.  Sadly I have no actual visuals to do a comparison but I will include some pretty Hobbit pictures if that helps.  I don't think the movie stills do the film any justice but they're still nice to look at.

First up...2D.  I think the regular print of The Hobbit looked absolutely lovely.  It was bright, clear and pretty to look at.  The effects and CGI worked wonderfully. I didn't feel like I was missing out by not seeing it in 3D (maybe because I knew I would be experiencing it that way later) either.  There aren't too many occasions in the movie that things are flying around and you find yourself thinking, "Gee I wish I had 3D glasses on right now."  That said...

Seeing it in straight 3D was by far my favorite.  What was pretty in 2D was absolutely gorgeous in 3D.  It was the first time I saw a movie in 3D and didn't have to fuss with the glasses. I always feel like there are dark spots and stuff is just never clear enough for me.  Not so with The Hobbit.  Gollum looked absolutely fantastic and incredibly life-like.

Rivendell looked about the same as it did in the Lord of the Rings movies, which is to say, quite lovely.  However I wasn't struck by any noticeable improvement in scenery there.  

The 3D HFR didn't sit right with me the entire time but for the most part it was fine. I didn't actually notice a huge difference from regular 3D but then there were a few times it seemed a bit off.  What I noticed was that occasionally movement seemed wrong.  Someone's arm moved a bit too fast or the camera moved just a hair too much.  I think any tiny little weirdness in movement was exaggerated but then was gone in a flash so it wasn't a huge deal.  The fighting and running around all looked fine and I think that's because the camera was pulled back a bit. The scene where the dwarves clean up after dinner (probably my favorite one because they are actually singing) looked no different than regular 3D so that was good too .

The scenery didn't look too terribly different from the 3D either.  I guess I wanted to be astounded by the HFR so I could totally back Jackson's choice in using it.  I just didn't see what the big deal was.  However I wonder what the 2D and regular 3D would have looked like if he hadn't shot it at 48 fps.  I'm sure someone much more knowledgeable than myself would have more to say about the HFR

My good friend and Tolkien "scholar," Michael Livingston wrote a review of The Hobbit on his blog and I encourage you to check it out. 

"The Body" (Buffy 5.16): Simply a Masterpiece

This episode is not one I would usually list amongst my "favorites" of the series, because it is decidedly not an example of the "hurts so good" catgory of "Amends" or "The Prom." "The Body" is upsetting and uncomfortable and unfair. It's also moving and revelatory and very, very real. Jenn and I agreed that the typical Do's and Don't's format wouldn't be appropriate to discuss what writer/director (and demigod) Joss Whedon achieved with this episode. I decided to recap "The Body" by looking at how Whedon used the tools of his chosen medium, television, to explore and represent grief and loss.

Time. The forty minutes of "The Body" is shorter than the time span covered by the story, but not by much. The show opens with the same scene that closed "I Was Made to Love You," emphasizing the crystallization of the moment Buffy discovers Joyce's body.

It's just as shocking every time.

The same mental process, by which ordinary objects attain disproportionate significance in the moments surrounding a trauma, is visually represented in the lead-up to Buffy telling Dawn the news.

Including an unmoving woman's body. The man's a genius.

Sound. One of the most apparent, and most discussed, directorial choices made by Whedon was the exclusion of anything but ambient sound during the episode There is no instrumental music--only distant sirens, chimes, and a whole lot of silence. After the frenzy of Buffy's attempts to revive Joyce, the arrival of the paramedics, and the pronouncement of Joyce's death, there isn't a whole lot to say.

Script. But there are things that have to be said, obviously. However, the episode isn't very interested in the specifics of relating the news. Buffy's ambiguous phone call to Giles--"She's at the house"--could just as easily refer to Glory, which is what Giles assumes. The audience is placed behind a classroom window when Buffy tells Dawn,

and the details of how Willow, Xander, Tara, and Anya find out are elided completely. Jenn also has a smart reading of the Christmas flashback, the first of the episode: "This episode really seems to center on the futility of wishful thinking, especially when it comes to something (like death) which is so thoroughly beyond our control. So, having Buffy's first flashback / fantasy going to Christmas and the conversation about whether Santa's a myth is an appropriate introduction. The idea of a real Santa would be great. It would be some positive magic in a world full of so much destruction (both the Sunnydale world and our own). Granted, Anya revealing that he would eviscerate children squashes that idea. But, that's the point. Even when we find out something's real, that doesn't necessarily mean it will meet our ideal expectations or be good."

Character. But what does get expressed verbally are a lot of unanswerable questions. From Willow's desperate uncertainty over what to wear in order to express emotional support for Buffy and grief for Joyce,

to Xander's attempt to blame Glory, then the doctors,

then the wall,

and Anya's poignant confusion over not just the how but the why of death

everyone is struggling to speak about the unspeakable.

Tara emerges as the emotional center of the group even more than usual in this episode. She comforts Xander by suggesting she understands how the pain in his hand corresponds to the pain in his heart, and her articulation of the psychic cataclysm occasioned by her own mother's death is the only comfort Buffy receives in the episode.

I'm tempted to quote her speech in full, but then you'd miss the brilliance of Amber Benson's delivery.

Genre. We are watching a show entitled Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Whedon never lets the horror and fantasy elements of the show's modus operandi be trumped by the all-too-natural story of loss. For example, Anya's pleas for understanding, which at first read as her characteristic blunt insensitivity to the way people communicate due to only recently becoming mortal develops into a very human assault on the inescapable unknowability and brutal stupidity of death. This one I will quote in full. It's famous and it should be.

"I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, ... there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid. And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."

The closing scene, where Dawn encounters a vampire after sneaking into the morgue to look at her mom, has occasioned some debate as to whether the intrusion of the supernatural interrupts the dramatic power of the episode. It seems to me that this is just another version of the argument that fantasy and horror, especially if televised, are somehow less serious or important than other methods of narration. Whedon demonstrates how fantasy and horror are intrinsically human responses to the body blow of loss. Buffy's fantasies that she arrived in time to save her mother are just as unlikely and impossible as the notion that vampires live and walk amongst us.

It's called magical thinking for a reason.

And Dawn's slow approach to her mother's dead body is the kind of horror story that the appearance of a vampire intensifies, not negates.

The closing battle graphically illustrates that, though in some ways death stops time, time refuses to stop because of death. Buffy is still the Slayer, and can't absent herself from the world because of her overwhelming grief. But the episode doesn't give us any closure, or any easy answers. The closing shot is of Dawn reaching out to touch her mother's face, and collapsing into blankness.

For Your Consideration: How to Survive a Plague

So Oscar season has finally commenced (as evidenced by one of my favorite elements--the composition of Alisa's Oscar Menu), and as usual, I haven't seen as many nominated films as I should.

But I did catch How to Survive a Plague last night, and I think its content, if not its form, is worthy of Best Documentary Feature gold. The doc's title, as Jonathan points out, is a little misleading, as its focus is not on the macro issues of managing the AIDS crisis in the late twentieth century (largely leaving out issues such as worldwide infection issues, patients of color, and infected women), but rather the micro--the history of ACT UP, a subversive AIDS activist group that used guerilla tactics to raise awareness and deliver experimental drugs to patients who were dying at apocalpytic rates. And at this, How to Survive a Plague is masterful.

The documentary follows the lead provacateurs of ACT UP (some you might recognize--playwright Larry Kramer and artist Ray Navarro, and others you might not, like Bob Rafsky and Mark Harrington) as they stage massive and visually spectacular protests at the National Institute of Health, various drug companies, and the streets of New York and Washington DC in order to call attention to the lack of funding for AIDS research in the 80s and early 90s. While the protestors' flair for embodying the rage and grief they felt at the unspeakable loss the virus was wreaking (a large group scattered the ashes of their deceased loved ones over the White House lawn to call attention to President George Bush's inattention to the epidemic, for example), what is even more remarkable is their commitment to self-empowerment and education in the medical field.

With the help of retired chemist Iris Long, an American hero, the men and women of ACT UP wrote policy papers, researched drug trials, and shepherded experimental treatments through the FDA approval process. They for all intents and purposes created an underground health care system that provided practical assistance and emotional hope to those who were being cruelly and lethally overlooked by the mainstream doctors and pharmacists. And what is almost miraculous is, it worked. Due largely to the untiring work of the men and women of ACT UP, the current class of protease inhibitors--the "Lazarus drug, as it brought the nearly dead back to life--have rendered AIDS (for those who can afford the protocol--a crucial but little remarked upon distinction) into a chronic condition rather than a death sentence. As well a a documentary about the AIDS epidemic, Plague is also a testament to how committed and sustained social activism can (and does) change the world.

How to Survive a Plague doesn't offer a particularly innovative way of telling its story, but its archival footage of early ACT UP meetings and protests is remarkable, and evidences that even as these people were dying, they felt compelled to record the bloody and passionate war they waged against not only AIDS, but a social system that at best ignored the problem, and at worst blamed the victims for their plight. What was even more remarkable to me was the joy and laughter that punctuated the strategy meetings, even as their comrades were physically, unmistakably, wasting away. As the ACT UP motto insists, "Silence = Death," and even during infighting, arrests, and inconceivable loss and grief, these brave, brilliant, and hopeful men and women never stopped shouting, and never believed they weren't worthy of being heard.

Oscar Menu Time!!!

I actually forgot to watch the Oscar nominations this morning and am totally ashamed of myself.  I live for this stuff! I'm not terribly surprised with the noms but am disappointed on behalf of Bill Murray for Hyde Park on Hudson.  He was fantastic and I don't say this just because he's an (imaginary) ex of mine.

So now I need your help with menu items.  As in the past, the idea is to play on the title of the movie or a person's name.  For instance, someone like Javier Bardem becomes Caviar Bardem.  This year's list isn't an easy one so good luck to us all!

Best Picture
Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild         Chicken Breasts of the Southern Wild?
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi                                       Life of Pie seems too easy
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Actor
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Denzel Washington, Flight

Best Actress
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Emmanuelle Riva, Amour
Quvenzhane* Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild          
Naomi Watts, The Impossible

Best Supporting Actor
Alan Arkin, Argo
Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, The Master
Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook

Best Original Screenplay
Amour, Michael Hanake
Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino
Flight, John Gatins
Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal


Best Adapted Screenplay
Argo, Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin,
Life of Pi, David Magee
Lincoln, Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell

Best Animated Feature:
Brave
Frankenweenie                                     Frankenweenies?!?
ParaNorman
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Wreck-It Ralph


*I'm totally going to ignore her real name and make hush puppies in her character's honor.

 

Liveblogging The Bachelor

Has your television viewing experience felt a little bereft of cocktail parties and rose ceremonies lately? Well, Sean the Frankenbachelor is here to satisfy your guilty pleasure/hate watching needs.

Yeah. They picked this guy.

You might remember Sean as the dude who got dumped by Emily last season. Or possibly not. But either way, he and his pecs are meeting twenty-five emotionally stunted and cognitively challenged ladies who are almost certainly lying about their age, all vying to be the girl who will share a People magazine cover with him six months from now, detailing their break-up. Want to get in on the ground floor of this train wreck? Let's liveblog, shall we?

6:56 My wine is poured, my loins are girded, and my snark is engaged. Which I'm guessing Sean won't be for long after the conclusion of this ill-begotten reality show. But still, I watch. And I self-loathe.

6:58 The previews. We have kissing, the first mention of "fairy tale" (drink!) and lots and lots of heavy eye make-up.

6:59 Sean is bitching about being dumped by Emily. Cry me a river, S. Looks like you dodged a bullet with that one. And in the preview, the girls are crying and fighting, and referencing "dark forces" in the house. AWESOME. Is Voldemort one of the contestants?

7:00 Girls are getting carried off on stretchers and calling each other "plagues." This could be a really good season.

7:03 Overlong and boring recap (is there any other kind?) of Emily's Bachelorette season.

7:04 God has another plan for Sean. I don't think any god would be so cruel as to make an appearance on *this* show part of any beloved believer's plan.

7:12 Ari, a fellow loser from Emily's season, is hanging out with Sean, wearing possibly the ugliest shirt I've ever seen. They call each other "dude" a lot and Ari dispenses with kissing advice after Sean practices his "Will you accept this rose" line on him and they make jokes about spending a night together in the Fantasy Suite. Isn't this supposed to be a dating show? Or are they into each other? That would be rad, actually.

7:17 After the break, we finally get to meet the women. Though I suspect I'll soon be nostalgic for these moments before they showed up.

7:18 First online dating commercial. Drink!

7:22 Sean is dressed like "Mr. Bland" from Reservoir Dogs to meet the chicks. Chris Harrison, who you might remember got divorced during the course of the last season, thereby proving the Bachelor toxicity spreads like a zombie virus, destined to infect us all.

7:24 Boring "meet the bitches" segment. I'm going to go get some Fritos and cheese dip.

7:25 It's kind of funny to see these girls pretend they know who the interviewer is talking about when they say "the Bachelor is Sean."

7:28 There is one girl who has two kids and one girl with one arm. And another one who is basing her strategy on her favorite novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, and articulates a hope that Sean will pull off her clothes and spank her. And someone who spells her name AshLee. So this is happening.

7:31 Crap. There's a model. I think we all remember the last model we had on this show.

Yeah. Her.

7:38 Here comes the first limo. God help us all. First up is AshLee, who, judging by her interview, cries. A lot. And a cosmetics consultant. What does that even mean? Ah--it means she puts on lipstick and plants one right on Sean's cheek. Which he doesn't care to wipe off. Charming. But the next chick up pulls a handkerchief out of her cleavage and takes care of it. Again I say, charming.

7:40 Boring, boring, boring. Girl with a secret handshake. Boring boring boring. Time for limo 2.

7:42 Someone from Nashville with unevenly curled hair is singing a sort of embarrassing song about the two of them. But her hair is put into perspective by Katie, the yoga instructor, whose hair has unfortunately exploded. Maybe they can both consult with Other Ashlee, the Fifty Shades fan and hairdresser. She pulls a tie out of her cleavage, and asks Sean to teach her how to "use it" later. Sean looks equal parts confused and terrified.

7:44 Sean is now thanking girls "for coming." I think he's having a stroke. Out of limo 3 comes a girl doing backflips who totally face plants. Well played. Oh God, a graduate student. Followed by a Jumbotron Operator! Now there's something you don't see every day. And a girl from Denver--holla! Faced with Tierra from Colorado, Sean has now left the premises. That must be some kind of record.

7:52 And in what will be the first in what I'm sure will be a series of bad decisions, Sean decides to give Tierra a rose, based solely on the fact that she's wearing a ring with a heart on it. As you might imagine, this makes the other girls just love her.

7:54 Limo 3 must be where they put all the boring girls. I mean, pennies to throw in the fountain? Let's have our awkward pause now so we won't have it later? Please. This is The Bachelor, ladies. Bring your psycho A game. Here comes limo 4. I have high hopes. . .

7:57 That are so far going unrealized. The most interesting thing about these girls is how they managed to dress inappropriately for an event that I thought impossible to dress inappropriately for.

7:58 Lesley brought a football. For apparently no reason, as she just gave it to Sean and didn't throw it or anything.

7:59 A girl in limo 5 threatens to "pee her pants," which is promising. It's the model from Wisconsin. Eh. Now we have a DEAD RINGER for Whitley from A Different World! And a girl who threatens to visit mafia violence upon Sean if he doesn't pick her. There's a novel approach. And, last but not least, we have the girl from the previews who showed up in a wedding dress. She calls herself a "prankster." Methinks she's a leading contender for the "restraining order" rose.

8:02 A surprise contestant! The only inhabitant of limo 6 is . . .  to be revealed after the break. Will it be Emily? Will it be Chris's ex-wife? The suspense is killing me!

8:06 It's . . . someone I don't recognize at all. Who is that? Why is no one telling me who she is? Everyone is acting like I should. I feel like I've taken crazy pills! Is she from Bachelor Pad? Ah--my mother has solved the mystery. She was on Bachelor Ben's season, and her crazy fundamentalist parents ix-nayed the en-Bay. Apparently they were totally cool with the drunken hedonism that is The Bachelor Pad, but whatever.

8:10 Sean gives some b.s. toast about being open-minded or whatever. Forget that. Let the drama begin!

8:12 The wedding dress designer admits to not ever watching Sean on The Bachelor. Sean, naturally, responds by giving her a rose. He is nuts with these roses. I don't think he gets how the show works. It's not like the soccer tournaments where everybody gets a trophy for trying.

8:20 Ah--so Sean is eschewing the rose "ceremony" and just handing them out as he goes along. This seems a shaky strategy, as maybe he should talk to all of them first? But what do I know? Sean knows that he's not into Whitley. Who does sort of talk like her jaw is wired together, so maybe that's a turn-off.

8:22 Wedding dress girl is wasted and worried he didn't "get" the wedding dress "joke." Now she's making him dance and sing. This is officially the first meltdown of the evening. Surprisingly, no rose for her.

8:25 The show is now threateningly to go NC-17 with Fifty Shades oddly dancing and muttering in the background while Sean talks to another girl, and promising to try out some BDSM action at the first cocktail party. Sean informs her he's brought a rape whistle. She's also way drunk, but since she's not in a wedding dress, he's sort of into it.

8:31 One girl is refusing to "compete." She strikes me as a girl who will be going home later. This is, after all, a competition. Apparently, she has no problem with crying, though. 

8:34 The Bachelor is like a social Darwinist's wet dream.That is, if you define "evolution" as "survival of the dumbest and bitchiest."

8:36 Sarah with one arm is explaining about how she has one arm. And she's doing it in a remarkably mature and honest way. So there's no way she's going to last long on this show, which doesn't value such qualities.

8:43 First Rose Ceremony! How many could he possibly have at this point? Two? I hope some of the drunker girls pass out.

8:44 Now comes the part of the show when a bunch of girls whose names I have not bothered to learn get rose, aka, the part of the show where I play around on Facebook.

8:48 Drunk girl in wedding dress = in. Whitley, random blonde girl #1, random blonde girl #2, Bachelor Pad alumna/Jumbotron operator, girl with horrible fake tan who sang = out.

8:51 First mention of "love journey." Drink!

8:56 Highlights. Using the term loosely. We've got bungee jumping and helicopters and musical guests of questionable quality. We've got beaches and mountains and making out. We've got cat fights and and accusations that someone has a boyfriend and is not there "for the right reasons." And . . . roller derby? Neck braces? And crying. Lots and lots of crying. Join me on this love journey, won't you?

Downton Abbey The Morning After: Mo' Money, Mo' Problems

Break out the sherry, Downton's back!

At least that's what Matthew might say when a possible inheritance nearly derails his long, LONG, awaited nuptials to Lady Mary in last night's Downton Abbey series 3 premiere. See, Robert has made some bad investments and won't be able to keep Downton. Coincidentally (very coincidentally), Matthew might be coming into some big bank from St. Lavinia's father, which he feels weird about taking since he, you know, dumped her and all. Thankfully Mary's tendency to be self-centered and stubborn and Matthew's tendency to be self-righteous and stubborn didn't prevent all us Downtonophiles from reveling in a proper Edwardian wedding,

Yay!

and some not-so-proper Edwardian honeymooning afterwards. Though it must be awkward to enjoy the first months of your connubial bliss in your parent's house (and I said "ew" out loud when Matthew slyly shared with Lord Robert that his "eyes had been opened" after the honeymoon), thank you, show, for acknowledging that people did, in fact, have sex in the early twentieth century. Even in England.

The other long-awaited event in series 3 is the arrival of Shirley Maclaine as the crass American with all the cash. I must say, I only liked Martha in so much as it gave the irrepressible, incomparable, Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess a chance not to like her. And I so love when Vi doesn't like things. Like weekends. And how Branson dresses for dinner. Otherwise, Martha's character seemed like they couldn't decide whether to go for full-on campy or not.

Though this outfit and pose seems to place her firmly in the "camp" camp.

Speaking of Branson, it was lovely to see him and a preggers Sybil back for the wedding. And if you're wondering if marriage has cooled his fiery political passions, let me assure you, it has not.

And Edith. Oh Edith. Now the only virginal Grantham in the family, she continues to be a source of incredible pathos, though now that she seems utterly de-fanged by romantic disappointment, she's pretty much 100% pathetic, and will heretofore be referred to as "Poor Edith."

As for downstairs . . . Batesey remains incarcerated in what amounts to a pretty fabulous episode of Lockup: Downton Abbey. He practically shanked his unpleasant cellmate!

He could totally make that into a shiv.

And Anna continues to try to clear his name, which makes her the star of a pretty fabulous episode of CSI: Downton Abbey. Daisy does her best impression of Bartleby the Kitchen Maid out of frustration at her inability to advance in the servant hierarchy, and Thomas and O'Brien are BFFs no longer! O'Brien's is now more concerned with the fate of her tall nephew, Alfred.

We'll have to keep an eye on Mrs. Hughes's cancer scare and Edith's designs on the one-armed Sir Anthony!

Poor Edith.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: A Fairy Tale Ecology

"Once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her Daddy in the Bathtub." Beasts of the Southern Wild, which has been drowning in buzz since its release at Sundance last year, is a dreamy drama in the sense that it follows the logic of the unconscious more than traditional narrative structure. Hushpuppy, the six-year-old firebrand at the film's center, is consumed with mapping her world in four dimensions. She is almost painfully attuned to the life that teems out of every crevice of the Bathtub, the bayou community where she lives with a handful of diverse residents, and how those lives fit together and will be viewed by "the scientists of the future." Her eco-philosophy is that "the whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece . . . the whole universe will get busted." And busted Hushpuppy's universe gets.

A series of personal and environmental catastrophes rock the Bathtub during the course of the film, and Hushpuppy must constantly recalibrate herself and her behavior in order to survive. The fantastical element of the film is found in the Auroch's, huge beasts that are released by the melting of the polar ice caps and ravage across the landscape. However, they alone do not explain the title. Hushpuppy recognizes herself and her friends as beasts as well, subject to the same brutal natural laws. Death is an inevitable part of any ecology, and Hushpuppy's response to the worsening health of her father, Wink, leads her on a hero's journey worthy of Joseph Campbell.

What interested me most when watching the film was that I had heard in the original stage production, Juicy and Delicious, Hushpuppy was a boy. I'm not sure about this, but I suspect some of the dialogue, including the moment when the now female protagonist screams "I'm the man" in a call and response with her father in a climactic scene, is original to the play. I think the gender dissonance of these moments is productive and authentic. The relationship between Wink and Hushpuppy is central to the film, and the child's absent mother is central to the plot. It makes sense that Wink would raise his daughter as he might a son, and the Bathtub is a remarkably equitable community, where categories like male and female, black and white, are much less important than ones like home and exile. Though I'm not as enchanted with Beasts as some reviewers, some of the shots are almost unbearably lovely and the argument that all life is beautifully, violently, interconnected is desperately urgent and only getting more so.

Looking Backward

By Jonathan Alexandratos

So as I was watching the fifty millionth not-so-good, somewhat-terrible, okay-actually-quite-dismal episode of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers last night, I found myself asking, “Why?”  Why do we, collectively, enjoy putting ourselves through material from our childhoods that we know isn’t good?  The answer is probably in the question – because it’s from our childhoods.  But then that spins off into the question of what, exactly, makes us hold nostalgia, which drives many a-film viewing/purchasing/enshrining, so dear?

I mean, if I look at my DVD/Blu-Ray collection, there are at least a handful of films I bought not so much because of what they say, but the memories they echo.  The Magnificent Seven, Battle of the Bulge, about a bjillion seasons of Power Rangers, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Dracula, 12 Monkeys, The Devil Rides Out.  These are all films (well, Power Rangers is a TV show…to put it mildly…) that, sure, I appreciate the content and the relevance of, but had to *own* because of the memory of seeing for the first time.  I wanted The Magnificent Seven to take me back to catching that movie on cable at my grandmother’s house when I was in the throes of high school, feeling entirely disconnected with my classmates’ culture.  Battle of the Bulge was supposed to take me back to hearing the film in the background at my parents’ friends’ house in Knoxville, Tennessee, while it played, marathon-style, on the ever-beloved History Channel.  These are the desired effects, but do they manifest?

Well.  No.

Not really, at least.  Not as vividly as I think I wanted when I bought the films.  Godard said, “I do believe in beginnings, middles, and ends – but not necessarily in that order.”  That seems okay, but I wonder if, when the order is set – beginning, middle, end; end, beginning, middle; &c. – how easy is it to shift things around?  Highly improbable, in any actual sense, but mentally?  God knows we all try. 

Nostalgia.  As Milan Kundera explains in Ignorance, “The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos.  Algos means ‘suffering.’  So nostalgia is the suffering caused by unappeased return.”  And this, the idea that nostalgia causes pain, has been known for quite some time.  Take Dante:  “There is no greater sorrow/Than to recall a happy time/when miserable.”  Going further back, the Devil, in some beliefs, was not cast to hell due to a disobedience of God, but an extreme love for Him – a love such that the Devil would not bow to man, only to God, thereby disobeying God’s request of the angels.  In hell, the Devil is taunted by what?  The memory of the echo of God saying to the Devil, “Go to Hell.”  He is tortured by nostalgia.

And yet I routinely invite the “memory of the echo,” the movies of nostalgia, to a permanent place in my home.  Furthermore, I feel confident I’m not the only one.  A quick Youtube search will show that volumes of ‘90s commercials posted there garner views with numbers like 541,871, 28,453, 21,270.  Why on Earth would we want to invite the torment, time and again, that, according to some texts, is a fate extreme enough to be brought by God unto the Devil?

I’d posit that it stems from another spiritual and mythological act: ritual.  Nostalgia creates a ritual of the past, which, like rituals in spirituality, brings us closer to the intangible.  The past is not a physical form.  I cannot touch it.  But, in viewing The Battle of the Bulge, I can, for a moment, be present in a facsimile of it, due to my ritual watching of the film.  I put the movie on, I conjure the memories of that Knoxville home, and those memories are slightly enhanced by the ritual of which I am now a part.  And that, for the moment, feels good.  When the ritual is over, just like in spiritual ritual, I am then awakened to the suffering of being truly alive, which is what Dante refers to in the above.  Yet, in Joseph Campbell’s view, being awakened to that suffering is not a bad thing, because it is a component of being truly alive, and thereby an affirmation of the genuine nature of my surroundings. 

The difference between my circumstance and the Devil’s (in the aforementioned case) is that I, like all participants, can do the ritual again.  The movie can be played and the feelings can be conjured as many times as needed.  Hell, it would seem, is the feeling of exiting the ritual of nostalgia, without participation in the actual ritual of nostalgia.  Mercifully, life doesn’t work like that. 

But then, considering all of this, one might wonder how close religion comes to nostalgia.  There’s a song: “Give Me That Old Time Religion.”  Why?  Because that nostalgia is “good enough for me.”  Religion is wrought with the feeling of harkening back, and objects that allow the recreation of an experience through the externalization of memory.  And it may be that because of this – this idea that the object is just as important as the experience, that the throne is just as relevant as the person who sits on it (see the thrones and sarcophagi of Ancient Egypt) – that we, today, can feel that something as (perhaps) secular as a film can be the object that opens up the realm of the intangible and, I’d add, the spiritual.

So if you’re thinking that this is all one big excuse for me to watch more Power Rangers, well, yeah you’d be right.  With my fetish object-action figures (I always demand my fetish objects come with Kung-Fu Grip) by my side, I’ll happily take the spiritual journey backward, and then whiplash into the pains of being truly alive, all in 20 minutes or less.  How can you beat that?

Footnote: Our Academic Work, Ourselves

Footnote, a 2011 Israeli film about family politics, begins as a love letter to academic frustration, and ends as a poignant argument that what we write, and what we say about what we write and what others write, is really the deepest expression of who we are. The movie centers on the uneasy relationship between Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, a father and son who are both professors in Talmudic Studies. The younger Shkolnik, Uriel, is wildly successful, having published nine monographs and dozens of journal articles on topics like marital politics in the Talmud. Eliezer's greatest claim to fame is being the only living scholar referenced in a footnote in his mentor's magnum opus and writing the introduction to a textbook. As Uriel racks up award after award, Eliezer's very posture and facial expression becomes an avatar of jealous rage. Some might find a father's obvious and oft-expressed bitterness towards his son's success surprising. Those some are probably not academics.

The world of academia is by nature both close-knit and competitive, which means that often scholars are vying with their closest friends for positions and publications. It can be, shall we say, a bit awkward and emotionally complicated. Footnote is perfectly in tune with the feuds and pettiness that can infect academic disciplines, and using the language of scholarly dispute to explore the equally fraught realm of father-son dynamics is illuminating.

Eliezer and Uriel have wildly different approaches to Talmudic study, and correspondingly oppositional ways of being in the world. The father is brittle, cold, and isolated, choosing to write while wearing comically large noise-reduction headphones. He believes a strictly scientific approach to the Talmud is the only valid one. His professional disappointment and near-irrelevancy--his deep fear that he not only is referenced in a footnote but is merely one himself--is channeled into an almost pathological distaste for his son. The son is charismatic, forceful, and direct, and his work is more socially informed and interpretive. He also worships his father, who can barely stand him. When Israel's largest scholarly prize is awarded, the way Eliezer and Uriel speak about each other's work reveals volumes about how they feel about each other personally, and how Uriel might or might not replicate his father's paternal frigidness with his own son, Josh.

Footnote is one of those films that doesn't fit neatly into a pre-packaged genre. It's funny and sad and visually experimental--sort of like the love child of Woody Allen and Wes Anderson. Definitely worth a spot on the Netflix queue.

Django Unchained

I'm sick so I'm not in the mood to, you know...think.  Thus this will be a quickie review.

I enjoyed Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino, but then I tend to like all his films.  He has a formula, he sticks to it, and it usually works.  I have no real big complaints about the film.  It's violent as all get-out but then it's a Tarantino movie.  They use the N-word way too much but I'm guessing it was typical of the time.  It still bugged me, though.  The story of a newly freed slave who becomes a bounty hunter and searches for his wife on the plantations of the south, was fine.  My boss pointed out that the story could have taken place in 30 minutes.  He's probably right.  I wonder if anyone actually times actual story vs. filler in a Tarantino movie.  Of course the filler is usually cartoonish violence but the dude has flair for that kind of violence so you won't hear me complain.

Anywhoodle, all the pieces were there: good acting (especially from Leonardo DiCaprio), a fun revenge story, good directing, great camera work, etc.  They took the time to make people's teeth look gross and I appreciate that kind of detail, even if they were all still too straight.  So see it or don't.  I don't care.  All I care about is getting back into bed.

Oh and Happy 2013!