DISNEY’S PURCHASE OF LUCASFILM SPELLS THE DEATH OF POPULAR CINEMA

 By Jonathan Alexandratos

In 1998, David Foster Wallace, in his “The (As It Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2” argued that Cameron’s sequel represented the prototypical film in cinema’s shift into the realm of “F/X porn.”  Well, he was right.  Except, now, that F/X porn has spread, like ivy up the brick wall of a very old building, and is on the verge of strangling popular cinema, as its econotropic leaves open to photosynthesize massive quantities of money into sugary scenes of meaningless explosions and stock characters and beaten-to-death, basic moral dilemmas and cheesecake lines like “Chill” and “I am the law!” and anything normally heard at your local neighborhood Wal*Mart but with a peppering of “motherfucker” or “bee-otch” or “shiiiiiiit” thrown in.  This final nail in the coffin of innovative, popular, low-budget film has been driven in by Disney’s recent purchase of Lucasfilm.

It’s tragic, really.  Star Wars (and the original two sequels that followed) represented the efforts of filmmakers working overtime, some for next-to-nothing in the way of salary, in a garage or basement, sanding down household gadgets to make them into X-wings or lightsabers or TIE fighters.  These films so clearly spoke to archetypal mythology – an obvious lovechild of George Lucas’ friendship with Joseph Campbell.  They were concerned with taking a story that the Native Americans knew, the Ancient Greeks knew, the Ancient Chinese knew (et many, many al.) and putting that tale onscreen, filtered through the lens of genre, more specifically sci-fi.  It was a literary and social pursuit – more adaptation than creation.  The arc of those initial three films in the Star Wars franchise seemed to be born out of concern: concern that, if the myths that have followed us through time are not transcribed onto the popular media of each era, we risk losing the universal connection that has always, whether widely-known or not, followed these myths through time.

George Lucas’ ‘90s-era concern with adding an alien frog to this scene, or an extra Cloud Car to that one, or scrubbing the walls of his films even cleaner than they originally were showed the start of a director/producer’s unfortunate interest in the postmodern superficiality of storytelling.  The prequels that emerged on the heels of these “special” editions fully grounded Lucas in this mindset.  From Episode I, II, and III, audiences were force-fed ridiculous, contrived plots that were designed not to build on the universal narrative of humanity, but:

1.     Create the largest Return of Investment (ROI – something Wallace also indicates Cameron was chiefly concerned with in T2) by billing the biggest possible names and scripting shallow characters to fit whomever the star du jour might be to fill the role.

2.     Use language that is basic to create a simple plot that can easily be translated into other languages and distributed throughout the world, again, to help sales (another quality Wallace attributes to T2).

3.     Further Wallace’s Inverse Cost and Quality Law (ICQL) by showing yet another three (!) colossally-funded pictures that display immensely shitty artistic quality.

4.     Console audiences that these films won’t seem too long because, after all, they’re just “episodes” (just like TV!  Remember how much you love TV?  Short, quick TV…), and they contain lots of pointless action sequences that ensure the movie just *flies* by because it, while feature-length, uses quick camera angle changes that jolt ad nearly infinitum and impose the illusion of a shorter film.

5.     Give audiences episodes within these “Episodes” that are markable by their action sequences (Pod Racing, the Battle of Naboo, the Clone War) so that the thin bridges constructed to hold these masses together can basically be skipped.  This is much in the same way that Hamlet can be made less daunting by boiling the whole thing down to six soliloquies.  Except Hamlet is actually good.

6.     Focus on the merchandise, merchandise, merchandise.  Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi could let the mechanics of a particular starship fall second to story because there was less of a certainty, especially for the first installment, that any of these galactic vessels would make it into 1/30,435,342-scale plastic replicas with lights and sounds for the delight of children ages 3+. 

And now Star Wars is in the hands of a corporation that has created a monopoly on the film industry that would make John D. Rockefeller charge, wild-eyed, up the steps of the Supreme Court yelling, “And you prosecuted *me*!?”  It is in the hands of a corporation that not only has not read Campbell, but has not read [period].  It has seen only the material that informs its bottom line, all of which follows the Wallacian ICQL.  Disney has promised to crap out new Star Wars sequels every couple of years starting in 2015.  There are already rumors of the bankable names that will star.  As we approach a date which the Mayans surely *meant* to put on their calendar, take a look at the above six items.  I’ll be shocked if Disney does not digitally-enhance all of them so that they look their sanitized-best when put front-and-center of our new Made-for-Movie TV episodes.

In other words: we’re screwed.*

*Though, if you can get around the feeling that you’re being pretentious (a struggle I grapple with all the time, now), there are low-budget diamonds in the roughs of the $2.99 bins at your local, nameless, off-the-grid DVD/Blu-Ray distributors (and online).  Immerse yourself, take risks, and you’ll be greatly rewarded. 

Problems with the poster - A Good Day to Die Hard

No.  Just...no.  Absolutely not.

Now I love me some Bruce Willis.  And, after viewing the trailer, I think this will be a good installment of the Die Hard franchise.  But "YIPPEE KI-YAY MOTHER RUSSIA?"  No.  Nope.  Definitely no. In their defense, there's no doubt what movie this is for but I just can't...  I...  [sigh]  No.

Advertising rant - Alex Cross style

I’m stunned that I forgot to mention the one big thing I kept thinking about after seeing Alex Cross.  Then I realized it bugged me enough, and is timely enough, that I could just turn it into a rant.  Basically large sections of the movie were a commercial for the Cadillac CTS.  Also featured were an old-timey Cadillac and a few Escalades but they were not quite as prominent as the CTS.  Full disclosure, I think the CTS is a good looking car.  It’s something I’d be interested in if featured on Top Gear.  It actually may have been featured but I am so far behind on Top Gear that I wouldn’t know. 

Matthew Fox’s character, aka the bad guy, in the movie drives a CTS. The first time we’re introduced to the bad guy, the camera is on the front, lower part of the car, and the shot is of the Cadillac emblem while the car speeds to its destination.  Later in the movie the camera is in the back seat and is focused on Fox playing with the stereo as he exits a car park.

I just Googled “Cadillac CTS Alex Cross” and there are just under 30,000 articles right now so I’m not alone in noticing this.  In fact you should probably just go read one of those because they’re probably written much better.  If you’re still with me then let’s talk a bit about advertising in media.

I’m sure we’re all aware of product placement.  Studios actually employ people who ensure certain products are in frame in movies and television shows.  Wayne’s World 2 did a funny spoof on product placement and that was back in 1992.  GAH!  1992!  That was 20 years ago.  I’m so old!  Hold on while I cry softly and rock back and forth in a corner.

Ok, where was I?  Yes, product placement has been a thing for a long time.  There’s a cool youtube video chronicling this very thing:

 The recent surge in television equipment like the TiVo and DVR has advertisers quaking in their loafers.  The folks who keep track of TV viewing don’t count the number of people watching shows on DVRs because advertisers don’t count them.  However these advertisers have now injected commercials into the scripts of the show.  One of my favorite summer shows, The Glades, is incredibly guilty of it.  Characters would go on and on about all the features of the car that was being shoved down our throats.  Guess what?  I can’t even remember what kind of car it was.  I think it was a Hyundai but maybe not.  Because so many of us don’t sit down to watch a TV show live, commercials and all, the advertisers have to adjust how they get their message out to the masses.  My thinking is that if we’re being sold a product during a show, then those DVR numbers should totally count.  They advertise before, during and after shows on the internet.  Heck, youtube is getting ugly with ads now too. 

Maybe this is why I find shows like Copper and Downton Abbey so refreshing.  There’s not a lot of advertising that can be done in period dramas.  At least Mad Men is about advertising. I expect it there but they handle it in such a great way that I don’t even notice when I’m being worked over for a product. 

I understand that without advertising we wouldn’t have any television programming at all.  I just resent when writers and actors have to resort to writing and reciting dialogue that has nothing to do with the plot of the show.  “Wait ‘til you see how awesome this navigation system is in this brand new Hyundai I bought.  I’m sure it’ll help us catch the bad guy and get him to confess to everything.  If he was smart he’d ask for a lawyer and OnStar would be able to find one.”

Ads have been in movies for a while and that’s not going to change.  But again, I resent the obviousness associated with Alex Cross.  My fear is that it’s just going to get worse and worse.

Nashville: This from the writer of Thelma and Louise?

I'm not thrilled with the poster, either.

Before I commence my feminista rant about the road Nashville seems to be traveling, a confession. I've never technically *seen* Thelma and Louise. Some people pretend to have watched The Princess Bride, and I don't make it common knowledge that I've never seen a pretty foundational feminist film. But from what I've gleaned, it seems to be at least a little bit interested in women claiming power over their bodies and their lives. So when I heard that Callie Khouri, writer of T&L, was producing and writing Nashville, a soapy drama about two female country music singers going head-to-head, I thought it would at least be about something similar. At least by episode two, not so much (spoilers follow).

I expected the show to look at how Rayna James (perpetual girlcrush Connie Britton), an old-school star on the decline, and Juliette Barnes (yet to win me over Hayden Panettiere), a pop-country hybrid of the Taylor Swiftian school, mustered their relative power bases to battle each other for professional supremacy. And though that idea didn't make me entirely comfortable (Why is it so interesting to watch female artists tear each other apart? Looking at you, Black Swan.), I thought it could be an entertaining investigation of how women in different stages of their personal and professional lives access and express power in different ways. And I was totally going to be Team Rayna. The first episode included some feisty exchanges between the two that seemed promising, if not as sharp and sparkly as the dialogue of All About Eve, a film to which this show rather bafflingly is continually compared.

But last night's episodes seems to suggest that Nashville is going to be, counterintuitively, more about how these women are locked out of power in every aspect of their lives. Record company executives and video directors (all male) determine their respective career paths and images, and the two women spend most of the show fighting over songwriter Deacon Clayborne, with Juliette resorting to bribery both sexual and material, and Rayna to emotional blackmail in order to secure his presence on tour. Deacon is positioned as the character of authentic artistic worth and talent, with both women acknowledging their careers are unsatisfactory or incomplete without him. This is to say nothing of the (totally unnecessary to my mind) subplot of Nashville's mayoral election, in which Rayna is again a pawn in the game of thrones between her father, her husband, and a (male) family friend.

Even more distressing is how the show seems to be arguing that this system is being perpetuated in the younger generation of female artists. The episode also follows Deacon's niece, who performed a lovely duet last week of a song she had written with a male musician. A male producer wants to produce their demo, but she resists because her boyfriend, a struggling singer-songwriter, might object. Her decision to record the song in the episode's closing minutes come after the producer nonverbally implies that her fate could be Rayna's if she agrees to sing with the man who put her words to music. Though this is meant to be an enticement, it sort of freaked me out, considering the impotence that frustrated Rayna throughout the show.

Maybe (hopefully!) the series will eventually start to critique and dismantle this structure that allows women power only through performances, both onstage and off, that are orchestrated, judged, and made meaningful by the men in their lives.

Problems with the poster - Twilight 4.2

I was going to present this without comment but I can't help myself.  For some reason this poster just cracks me up.  I don't know if it's because they seem to be taking themselves too seriously or maybe it's that I can't help imagining the three actors and how this photo shoot went down.

If they're lucky someone just superimposed their heads on the bodies of stand-ins.  There isn't much that is more awkward than pretend running. Maybe more awkward is having to do press with your pretend boyfriend who you supposedly cheated on and are possibly back together with now...just in time for press for your new movie.

Also, who are those people behind them?!?! And what's with the wolves?  They're suddenly smaller than they were in the previous movies? 

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter: A film divided against itself

And Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson seems so cool.

My Twitter friendly review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is: "It would be somewhat acceptable if it were not at all about Abraham Lincoln." Then you would just be left with some (still cool to me) nineteenth-century Matrix-esque vamp slaying with a silver-dipped axe (thought silver was anti-werewolf?-- whatever) and the film could have jettisoned its sloppy, irresponsible, and straight-up offensive treatment of abolitionism and the Gettysburg dead.

Abe suffers from what I've termed the "Captain America Problem" (CAP!) because, well, I had a problem with a scene in Captain America. One moment in last summer's film shows Cap shield slinging in a snow covered forest during World War II. Now, maybe it was because I had just seen Band of Brothers, but for me, snow covered forests [plus] World War II [equals] The Battle of the Bulge where thousands of Allied soldiers slowly froze and starved when they weren't being, you know, blown up, trying to hold the line. I couldn't help but think that injecting a fantastical savior into a very real battle where very real people endured very real losses cheapened and sanitized the suffering. But that was just one scene. Abe takes the CAP and makes it a foundational narrative component of the film.

I knew I was in for trouble when, in an opening scene of voiceover exposition that lays down the (underdeveloped and incomplete) account that hey, there are vampires in America, a throwaway line mentions that said vamps decimated Native Americans. Um, well, unless they tricked the European settlers into all those massacres and land grabs, that sounds a bit like blaming the genocide on vampires instead of, you know, THE HUMANS WHO ACTUALLY DID IT. And that was just the beginning.

Because the protagonist is Abraham Lincoln, and the film retains just enough "actual history" to keep the character recognizable, the abolitionist movement and the Civil War loom large. And because the script is committed to collapsing a vampire vs. human war for dominance over America into the pro- vs. anti-slavery conflict that exploded into the Civil War, the latter traumas are reduced to narrative pawns. Vampires are pro-slavery because of a steady food supply, and the Confederates who eventually ally with them do so out of, well, who knows. Abolitionists, including, may God forgive screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith, Harriet Tubman, are conscripted into the fight against vampires because that's so much more important than, you know, ending chattel slavery and liberating millions of human beings. The implicit argument that vampires, not people, were ultimately accountable for supporting and perpetuating institutionalized slavery culminates in the scene when the slaughter at Gettysburg is ret-conned to argue that vampires were responsible for the tens of thousands of Union dead. It tasked me. Sort of like how Kirk tasked Khan.

Sci-fi and fantasy texts are not only capable of, but I would argue, uniquely suited to, making cogent and powerful arguments about socio-political injustices. See Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, X:Men, etc., etc., etc. And it is not inherently dangerous or disrespectful to fictionalize history. See Beloved, Kindred, V., etc., etc., etc. But when historical traumas become glibly instrumentalized to enable big explosions and blood-spatter, and an ill-defined supernatural evil substitutes for and glosses over the human actions and rationalizations that enabled and encouraged human suffering, well, that cannot stand.

A Little Bit of Heaven, A Whole Lot of Crap: A rant against bad illness movies

I even find the poster annoying.

Now, regular readers know that I am an unreconstructed Sparksian, so it was probably no surprise that I would be perversely attracted to A Little Bit of Heaven. This mess of syrupy fluff seemed to promise the same blend of romance and melodrama (romodrama?) that Sparks adaptations sign, seal, and deliver. Kate Hudson, who has been on a precipitous downward slide since Almost Famous, plays a young, hip girl who gets diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer. At the very best I was hoping for a glassful of Sweet November with a pinch of 50/50. What I got was a double-shot of dumbed-down dreck.

I knew that the road was going to be rocky when a) a cute kid; b) a cute dog; c) a sassy gay best friend; and d) pointless voiceover narration were all introduced in the first three minutes. And it's not a totally great sign when they try to establish Hudson's character, Marley, as a with-it, sex positive girl by having her make a booty call, land an ad account for condoms, and say out loud "I'm really fun" (because she seems really intolerable) in the first five minutes. Plus, the film criminally misuses both Peter Dinklage (I shit you not--his character is where the title comes from) and Gael Garcia Bernal's mouth. But look, I rented the death porn movie--I'll accept the soundtrack doing the bulk of the emotional work of the story, I'll even accept Whoopi Goldberg playing God in Marley's anesthesia-induced vision, and her undergoing Samantha Jones chemo (you still have enough energy to go out drinking). But what bothers me about this movie is more systemic than specific.

My problem is when films use illness as a convenient entre into another recognizable narrative--be it a love plot, a redemption plot, whatever. The thing about serious illness is that it disrupts narrative. It explodes any and all sense of logic or cohesion or cause and effect that make people who look to stories for meaning (i.e., humans) comfortable. In this way, sickness graphically demonstrates the way our bodies and minds and worlds are in a constant (and at times heartbreaking) state of dynamic conversation with each other. And texts (movies, books, plays) are in a unique position to literalize and explore how being life-threateningly ill intensifies and exposes that relationship, both for the suffering body and for the people who love that body. Movies like A Little Bit of Heaven play it way too safe, which is fairly insulting to people who are ill, people who care about people who are ill, and people who believe in art's power to honestly and bravely investigate what it means to be human.  

A Nicholas Sparks (sorta) rant

 

"Why I Will Not Be Seeing "The Lucky One" This Weekend" 

or 

"I'm Not Emotionally Stable Enough for Nicholas Sparks"

Really that second title says it all but let me give you a little background about me and Mr. Sparks.  I have a weakness for Nicholas Sparks movies.  I can't be bothered to read his books.  I know they're quick reads but why bother when there will be a movie?  They aren't great works of literature and apparently they translate well to the screen so I don't see the need to read them.

*************SPOILERY BITS AHEAD****************

Let's do the list.  First up we have Message in a Bottle.  This one didn't suck me in but I got it and it was romantic and sweet but it didn't get to me like...stupid, effing A Walk to Remember.  The main character is young, beautiful, in love and DYING.  The boy of her dreams gives her everything on her bucket list only it's not some 'when I die in 60 years' list.  No. She's dying, like, soon.  I've only watched it twice because I hate that I cry no matter what.  I know what's coming.  It's so sappy and romantic and I'M SUCH A SUCKER FOR SAPPY AND ROMANTIC.  Ugh.  Next up is my favorite and probably most everyone else's too...The Notebook.  Firstly I really like Rachel McAdams.  She's one of the few actresses I always enjoy.  Also, I loved Ryan Gosling before this movie.  I spotted him in Remember the Titans, I saw The Believer the week it landed on DVD, I lusted after him (much like Sandra Bullock) in Murder By Numbers.  By the time The Notebook came out I was already a huge fan.  The movie just solidified my love for him.  Honestly.  Have you seen it?  You must have.  Hasn't everyone? He's wonderful.  I could go on so I'll stop myself here.  I didn't see Nights in Rodanthe. Apparently I don't care much for the movies starring people older than me.  I don't know why so don't ask me.  I did see Dear John and loved it.  It was sappy, romantic and I like both Channing Tatum and Amada Seyfried so I was all in.  I watched The Last Song and it's probably my biggest exception because I CAN'T STAND MILEY CYRUS.  She bugs me.  I didn't really even like the movie besides Greg Kinnear who is great in everything. 

There are a few other movies that seem like they should have been Sparks but weren't (The Vow, Charlie St. Cloud) and I've seen them too.  I'll say it again: I am a sucker for sappy, romantic movies.  Especially if there's death involved and there's always a death.

That brings us to The Lucky One.  I can't say much about the movie because, as you've probably guessed, I haven't read the book.  From what I can tell Zac Efron (so glad I'm legally allowed to swoon over him now. Yes, I think he's cute.  Shut up.) is a soldier whose life is saved by finding a picture. Oookay.  He has to find the girl in the picture, y'all!  They fall in love, someone dies, one of them pushes the other away but there's sure to be a lot of romantic things that happen.  I'm guessing this is what every relationship in the world must be like, right?  If Nicholas Sparks sticks to this formula, and he does, then this is what romance is supposed to be.  I personally have yet to experience this formula but according to Mr. Sparks this is what love is.  Poor me.  And also, Nicholas Sparks hates singletons.  Jerk.

So without unburdening my soul and letting you into my deepest, darkest neurotic thoughts, I'll just reiterate that I'm am currently unable to put up with the romance of it all (the death I don't mind so much...unless it's a pet.)  This movie, more so than others but not more than The Notebook, makes it seem like the characters are REALLY into each other.  Let's take a look at some of the screencaps I found: 

"I can't take my hands off of you."

"In order to read this tattoo I must use my hands."

Hands, hands, hands.

"Don't ever take your hands off of me."

"My hands.  They're not on her. Also... I've probably been pushed away, which is why I look so glum."

You know someone has just died.  At least he has hands for comforting purposes.

Even the premiere was all about hands.

If you go see it, please tell me how it was.  I'll see it eventually but when I'm in a less 'I'm feeling sorry for myself because my life isn't like a Nicholas Sparks movie kind of mood.'  Instead I'll be going to see a horror movie.  Yep, that's WAY more what I need right now.  Death (the good scary movie kind), destruction and gore.  BRING IT ON, WHEDON!

Also, Tracy has done a companion piece on Mr. Sparks.  So read it!  She's got some great things to say and has even seen Nights in Rodanthe.

Go to hell, Lars von Trier: A fair and balanced review of Melancholia

I took a break from Fifty Shades Freed for this?

Oh how I've always hated you, Lars von Trier, using your pseudo-feminist plots as a flimsy cover for pervasive and disturbing misogynistic characterizations. And oh how I cursed your name when I heard about the plot of Melancholia. I wished it had been directed by anyone but you. The idea of conceptually rhyming a planet slamming into Earth with a woman's bout with clinical depression has such promise. Depression is a planet--one that you live on after it collides into you, obliterating the Earth everyone else is enjoying. That's how Ang Lee, David Fincher, Alfonso Cuaron, and even Quentin Tarantino would have filmed it. Hell, I think Brett Ratner would have gotten there by accident.

But you, you Lars von Trier, used this promising plot as an excuse to run every woman in the film through your exploitative, voyeuristic, and humiliating wringer. It's not a good sign for your film when you make your depressive heroine annoying, her sister impotent, and their mother a witchy harridan who makes the worst wedding toast in the history of cinema. (As an aside--worst wedding toast in the history of cinema is actually sort of a stiff competition. Old School, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Wedding Crashers--but the difference is, those screenwriters all knew that no one would ever say such a thing out loud at a wedding. Von Trier hasn't gotten the memo.)

Also, I've about had it with your pretentious, over-scored, self-indulgent opening set pieces. Though I suppose it was a fair introduction to the film's argument that women are most beautiful and magical when they've surrendered to death, and most hysterical and pathetic when they hope for survival. I might have even forgiven the misogyny--God knows I'm in good practice from my love for and compulsive rewatches of Fight Club--if everything in the entire movie wasn't such a heavy-handed half-baked Metaphor. When you already have a planet named Melancholia, you really don't need a wedding limo that can't get on the road, or a lost Edenic apple orchard.

Melancholia is notable for two reasons--the opportunity to see Alexander and Stellan Skarsgard act together, and the dubious honor of containing the most over-long and ultimately pointless wedding reception scene in modern cinema, unseating Deer Hunter. Other than that, I was alternately bored and pissed for two hours and fifteen minutes. I won't get fooled again, Lars von Trier.

Jonathan Franzen Just Pissed Me Off

I don't disagree. But man, I'm steamed.

What I am about to write is not strictly germane to this site, as it a) references an ages-old New Yorker
article and b) is of little interest to anyone not either familiar with or interested in Edith Wharton. But this is the only soap box I have available, and I'm climbing on up.

I am perennially and perpetually behind on the New Yorker, so I just cracked opened the February 13 & 20 double issue, which contains this article by Jonathan Franzen. The link will only give you an abstract, but don't pay to read it. I don't want you to read it. It's perhaps the most ill-conceived, shoddily written, and bafflingly wrong-headed sexist essay I've read since one of my other favorite writers, Christopher Hitchens, proclaimed women unfunny. And I love Jonathan Franzen. I wish The Corrections and Freedom were people, so I could marry them. But for this, I beg you to indulge me in some Franzenfreude, which has rather awkwardly been translated to indicate feminist friction with Franzen. (To my mind, it would actually mean joy at Franzen, but whatever.)

First, the premise: Franzen posits that "a fiction writer's oeuvre is a mirror of the writer's character" and that "Without sympathy, whether for the writer or for the fictional characters, a work of fiction has a very hard time mattering." Um, okay; but then he makes the rather mind-boggling claim that because Edith Wharton was remarkably wealthy, her "privilege isn't easy to like; it puts her at a moral disadvantage." Apparently, Wharton's wealth makes her a less sympathetic and moral figure, and therefore a writer whose works have a harder time "mattering," than the anti-Semitic statements of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, William Faulkner's vow to shoot anti-racist Northerners in the street to "defend Mississippi" from outside agitators, Norman Mailer's identification of contraception as "an abomination" or comparison of homosexuality to "a murky smog," or William Burroughs, who accidentally shot his wife during a drunken prank. Now, I admire the works of all these writers (some more than others) and think they indisputably matter, but according to Franzen's argument, they're all more "sympathetic" than Edith Wharton because she was, um, rich?

But it gets better--Franzen assures us that despite her privilege, we can sympathize with Wharton because of her "one potentially redeeming disadvantage: she wasn't pretty." Because she wasn't conventionally beautiful, we all naturally feel sorry for her, because after all, what else do women have to offer? I know that's certainly why I sympathize with, and therefore more highly value, the works of the weak-chinned John Updike, the jowly Henry James, or the bug-eyed and rabbity Sinclair Lewis. Franzen enlightens us that even this sympathetic shred in Wharton's character is undone, however, by her "relatively few friendships with women" her tendency to sustain "close and lasting friendships with an extraordinary number of successful men" whose wives she treated with "indifference or outright jealousy" and unfortunate love life, which included a divorce from her philandering and embezzling husband, whom Franzen snarkily adds she "forced . . . to pay up" and an affair with a bisexual journalist. Franzen concludes by affirming that she "might well be more congenial to us now if, alongside her other advantages, she'd looked like Grace Kelly or Jacqueline Kennedy." Which is a little like saying Franzen might have been nominated for--or even won!--the 2010 Pulitzer for Freedom if he'd looked like Ryan Gosling.

Following this witless analysis so sexist that I was certain it was going to be a parody, we get misreadings of Wharton's major novels so egregious as to beg the question of whether he's actually read them. His take on The House of Mirth includes a reading of heroine Lily Bart as "the worst sort of party girl" "in no danger of starving," even though her lack of an independent income or any marketable skills put her precisely in such danger by the end of the novel. He blames Lily, rather than the series of men who toy with her, exploit her, and abandon her for her ultimate fate, and additionally badly misinterprets the opening line that identifies Lily as "always roused by speculation" to indicate her calculating nature, rather than the speculative bets men place on her fading beauty. Plus, he claims Wharton "saddled her lily-like heroine with a beard--in German, Bart" as evidence of the "sadistically slow and thorough punishment of the pretty girl she couldn't be." Seems to me that a more generous, and much more interpretively rewarding, reading of her last name is one that points toward bartering--what she must do with her body in order to survive.

By the time I got to the end of the essay, where Franzen confidently, and totally inaccurately, claims that Newland Archer wants Countess Olenska "but, being married, can't have her" (Archer is engaged, not married, when he meets the Countess). I had about had it with Franzen. And, if you've made it to the end of this essay, you might know the feeling. Since this was so long ago, all of these complaints might already have been raised by writers smarter and more eloquent than I. But I had to get it out. Now I'm going to go read Fifty Shades of Grey, which at least I *expect* to be bad for women.

Editorializing. It’s my pleasure.

I'm in a mood so be prepared

I’m gonna tell you about things I’m not doing.  One is a thing I’m specifically not doing this weekend but will get to eventually.  The other is something I’m not doing ever and don’t want you to do either.  Thing #1 is that I’m not going to see Hunger Games…wait for it…this weekend.  Thing #2 is that I’m not going to see Titanic in 3D.  Ever.  In fact I am saying right here, right now that I will NEVER WATCH TITANIC EVER AGAIN.  Quote me on it.

So…Hunger Games.  I’ve already aired my concerns about the casting.  I don’t think I mentioned my hesitancy about the director.  But I do think I mentioned my problems with the trailer in the aforementioned casting post. 

Listen, I loved the first book.  It had a huge impact on me.  I rushed out and bought each of the subsequent books when they were released.  IN. HARDBACK.  I didn’t wait for paperback or get it on my Kindle.  I wanted it in my hands.  Of course I haven’t seen those books since I read them (they’ve been making the rounds amongst my friends.)  I loved Catching Fire but not as much as Hunger Games.  I liked Mockingjay a lot but didn’t love it but that’s got nothing to do with why I’m hesitant to see Hunger Games, the movie. 

There was no way the movie version of Hunger Games was going to live up to the version in my head.  I had hopes but knew that whoever took on the project would not be able to really capture the sheer scope of it. Also, I KNEW that the studio or director or combination of would shy away from the teen-on-teen violence.  Casting someone in their early 20s (who actually looks like she’s in her 20s and not in her teens) took away from the shock of teens killing each other.  But I’ve been over this in that other post. 

I actually have out-of-town plans this weekend but if I had been even the slightest bit excited I would have gone to see it today.  For most adaptations I am able to divorce the two and accept that the movie is never as good as the book.  But I just can’t do it.  Maybe my incredibly low expectations will serve me well this time around.  It’s getting good reviews but each reviewer can’t help but compare it to the book.  That doesn’t bode well for the purists.  I think I’m mourning what could have been but I can’t say that with any certainty until I see the film.  And I will see it, just not this weekend. 

Now for my other rant…Titanic 3D.  DON’T GO!  Yes, I’ve been over this before in my James Cameron rant but it’s worth repeating.  There’s no reason to see this film in 3D.  I’ve seen the trailer in 3D and the only difference is the depth of field.  That’s no reason to shell out 3D money to see a movie you’ve probably already seen.  I don’t care if it was your favorite movie ever.  I don’t care if your walls are papered with images of Jack and Rose.  I don’t care if you’ve seen Celine Dion in concert 15 times just to watch her pound her chest while singing about her heart going on. 

Ok, I’ll admit that I saw Titanic in the theater when it first came out.  I liked it (at the time) and cried.  Then it got popular, Cameron’s ego got bigger, and I hated it.  People saw it 4 or 5 times in the theater.  FRIENDS OF MINE (Ashrey!) saw it 4 or 5 times in the theater.  That’s enough people.  This madness of re-releasing movies in 3D must stop.  They weren’t shot with 3D cameras so they won’t look terribly different.  It’s just another way for studios, producers, and ego-maniacal directors to take more of your hard-earned money. 

I’m not going to remind you of when it’s being released but it’s coming up.  I’m begging you…don’t go.  Ignore it.  I can promise you that it will have no impact on your life whatsoever. 

WTF, Academy?: A Review of Take Shelter

Want to see the best horror movie of 2011, and a film that is, at the very least, stronger than The Help, Midnight in Paris, and Moneyball? Visit your local Redbox or Neflix queue and check out Take Shelter. Please. I'm seriously begging. I need to talk to someone about this compelling, terrifying, moving, and masterful film.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols has taken the concept of pathetic fallacy and pushed it to its very limits. His movie follows Curtis (Michael Shannon in a brilliant, sophisticated, complicated performance that takes Brad Pitt's Billy Beane and eats it for breakfast) as he descends into delusional paranoia. Maybe. Curtis's persistent and unsettling dreams about coming storms literalize how the subconscious speaks to us in code. Whether a real natural disaster is looming or not, Curtis's fears about a devastating tornado are symbolic for the way life can deliver catastrophes with very little warning. His daughter, Hannah, is now deaf but wasn't always, giving credence to his psyche's realization that there are some disasters you cannot prepare for.

Shannon's totemic face is this film's anchor as the audience becomes more and more uncertain as to what is dream and what is waking life, what is fantasy and what is reality. In a movie season where psychological disorders have become shorthand for social commentary (Melancholia, The Beaver, It's Kind of a Funny Story), Take Shelter explores and explodes the way a human mind can reflect and distort its environment in order to conform to expectations both reasonable and not. Curtis knows he must protect and provide for his family (daughter Hannah and wife Sam, played by Jessica Chastain, of course) in a way his distant father and mentally ill mother never could. For him, that means bankrupting himself in order to finance a tornado shelter that could withstand an apocalypse or two, and brushing aside his fears that he might be going crazy. Up until the last, brilliant, scene of this film, I had no idea whether his bunker would be a) necessary; b) a mark of his madness; or c) a tomb. I'm still not entirely sure. In the way the film interrogates the modern relationship between the sociopolitical and the individual, I'm reminded of both Jonathan Franzen and The Social Network, another, to my mind, unconventional horror flick.

Take Shelter is a cinematic cousin to my other favorite movie of 2011, The Tree of Life. Both films show a natural world beautiful in (and because of) its awesome power and disinterested cruelty. However the former takes seriously the implications of this world on individual human minds. Shelter is something, therefore, that is not a given, but a privilege that must be seized--violently if necessary.

I'm still shaken by this movie, and especially by Michael Shannon's tour de force performance, and not just because I have recurrent nightmares about tornadoes too. They nominated Shannon for Revolutionary Road and overlooked him for this? For real?

Hey Girl, Why doesn't the Academy love me like I love you?

Figure freaking A.

All right, now I'm pissed. By my reckoning, the Academy owes Ryan Gosling four nominations and counting. Since 2006's Half Nelson (for which he was nominated), he has appeared in Lars and the Real Girl and Blue Valentine, not to mention Ides of March and Drive this year alone. What's up, Oscars? Gosling too pretty for you?

Actually, I think that's part of the problem. Actors like Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio had a hard time being taken seriously until they got older, and they shared the same sort of ethereal beauty of face (rather than the more rugged handsomeness of a young Paul Newman or Marlon Brando) currently displayed by the thirty-one-year-old Gosling [see Figure A]. But this isn't a gushing tribute to the flawless planes of Ryan Gosling's face, this is a rant, and I think that what he does with that face (and that body) is more interesting than anything Redford, Pitt, or DiCaprio did, or are doing, with their pulchritudinous gifts from a generous god.

Gosling acts with an awareness of his physical self that I haven't seen matched since the early work of Al Pacino. It's not just that he's cognizant of his remarkable good looks, but more so that his performances are saturated with the way human beings communicate through their bodies and faces. A good point of comparison is another actor with a face that makes one question agnosticism: George Clooney. Clooney (also a good bit older than Gosling) takes roles in which his handsomeness is crucial to his character, but also an obstacle to that character's self-actualization. His roles in Up in the Air, Michael Clayton, and even The Descendants are all men who in some ways have been blessed with a disarming physical presence that allows them to get away with things that mere mortals cannot, and each character's arc is in some ways a reckoning with that cosmic Get Out of Jail Free card. Ryan Gosling doesn't choose those same sorts of roles, nor does he make his handsomeness a grotesque mask, as Brad Pitt did in Twelve Monkeys, or even, in a way, Fight Club.

Rather, he shows a remarkable capacity for hollowing out his features, giving his face and body a studied blankness that is shaped and formed by the role he's playing as he's playing it. This is most apparent in Blue Valentine, where his character ages from a cute kid to a slightly gone-to-seed man, but it also happens in his latest stand-out performances: Ides of March and Drive. I've gone to bat for Ides already, so let me focus on the latter. The man he plays in Drive has no stable signifiers whatsoever: He hardly speaks, he has no steady occupation, no personal history, no name for heaven's sake. Our connection with the character depends entirely on Ryan Gosling's physical self, and he pulls it off. A widening of the eyes, a tilting of the head, a clenching of the fist. These gestures flesh out (pun intended) the development and inner life of a character who does not, to put it mildly, always act in a sympathetic manner, and who is portrayed as at least part machine.

This sort of thing isn't easy, Academy! I know Ryan Gosling is prettier than the law allows, but it's time he won something other than a MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss. Though I will admit I enjoyed his acceptance of that honor a great deal.

Why I Dislike James Cameron

One of the trailers I saw before Hugo was for the re-release of Titanic in 3D.  We had our 3D glasses on so we got a good taste of what the movie will look like.  Bodies flying off the breaking ship and into your face.  Yep, that's something I want to see.  Sadly there's no sarcasm button on my keyboard or else I would have used it for that last sentence.  I'd love to know if Cameron had a conversation with Kate Winslet about his converting it to 3D. She's never been shy about nudity in the past but there's something about knowing your body will be on display in 3D that might give her pause.

From the footage in the trailer it doesn't look terribly different.  It adds the depth of field that current 3D excels with but that's about it.  Titanic isn't the kind of movie that will really benefit from the 3D treatment.  It's mostly talk with interesting sets but the action doesn't start until the second half of the movie.  And at that point the action is either fighting to get on a little boat or dying.  If he converted and re-released The Abyss in 3D I'd be all over it.  That movie is on my list of underrated favorites.  It'd be stunning in 3D. But no, he's set on making tons more cash on Titanic so we can see this in 3D:

BORING!

My other problem is the fact that the second biggest money making movie of all time is going back to theaters with what will amount to huge ticket prices.  As I mentioned in my Hugo recap I was charged an additional $4 at the Regal in my town.  If I go to my cheap theater it's only an additional $2 but it's not as nice a theater.  Imagine how much more money this flick is gonna make at today's prices?  Yikes.  Anywhoodle, I would like to think that Cameron, who has an incredibly creative mind, is just having fun figuring out all you can do with 3D.  But honestly I think he just wants to make more money.   

Ok, ok, it's easy to hate on something that was so successful.  I will admit that I liked the movie the first time I saw it.  I cried when Rose let go of Jack's frozen hand.  I kinda maybe sorta understand why some of my friends saw it 3 or 4 times in the theater.  It's also easy for me to hate on Avatar which was the most successful movie in history.  The story is one that's been done before and before and before.  The acting and directing weren't really good either.  The effects are what make that movie.  And yes, the effects are amazing.  Cameron has a knack for winning audiences over.  He's definitely a visionary but he also comes off as a greedy sonofabitch.

So I'm guessing this is the beginning of many movie re-releases in 3D. Lord help us if someone tries to convert Gone With the Wind in 3D. If the re-release of Titanic is successful it means studios will start churning them out at a break-neck pace. Speaking of...I will say that I'm equally perplexed at George Lucas's desire to re-release The Phantom Menace in 3D.  We saw that footage too and it didn't impress me AT ALL.  My friend Kathy mentioned how he just keeps trying to fix the movies (evident with the Blu-ray release/disaster).  Lucas should really leave them alone and find a new project to work on.  Maybe not directing but producing is a good job to have.  That Red Tails movie looks great!  He should do more of that.

C'mon. I had to include this picture. I mean, he is the king of the world, right?

But really I blame Cameron.  Yes, he's done amazing things for technology but he isn't doing it solely for technology's sake.  I was the person cheering most for his ex-wife when she won the best directing nod for The Hurt Locker, which also snagged the Best Picture win as well.  I was desperate for her to get on stage and say, "SUCK IT, JIM!" but she's a classier lady than I. 


NOTE: I would have titled this why I *hate* James Cameron but I try and save strong words like hate for people I know personally. You know who you are...