Saturday, April 18, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Status Update
I didn't see enough movies last month to justify posting a new screening log, so I'll post one in a few weeks that will cover March and April.
Instead of watching movies and blogging, I've been (a) playing role-playing games (lots of Dungeons & Dragons) and (b) watching various TV shows (some great ones, like The Wire (from the beginning for the third time) and Lost, avant-garde weirdness like Tim and Eric and the new Celebrity Apprentice, and stupid/enjoyable stuff like Krod Mandoon and Nitro Circus).
Instead of watching movies and blogging, I've been (a) playing role-playing games (lots of Dungeons & Dragons) and (b) watching various TV shows (some great ones, like The Wire (from the beginning for the third time) and Lost, avant-garde weirdness like Tim and Eric and the new Celebrity Apprentice, and stupid/enjoyable stuff like Krod Mandoon and Nitro Circus).
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
My Sword and Planet Hack for Spirit of the Century
I'm starting to write up some house rules for my Spirit of the Century-derived, FATE-based Sword & Planet role-playing game scenarios.
Until I sat down to do this, I really didn't realize how hard writing good, clear rules can be. I salute the Evil Hat guys and beg forgiveness for the clumsiness that follows. This is a rough, rough draft - I've written it up quickly to get something out there. At this point, a lot of it will only make sense in the context of SotC and FATE.
Inspirational Fiction:
Flash Gordon - the Alex Raymond comic strip, 'natch - of course, but filtered through the kind of sensibility that Grant Morrison brings to his super-hero projects. Also: Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure stories.
Inspirational Games:
I started with Spirit of the Century but found that though it did what I wanted, it also did some other stuff that I didn't necessarily want and was getting in the way. Luckily, the genius of the guys at Evil Hat is that SotC and it's underlying FATE system are endlessly and easily tweakable. Abilities are a Sorcerer-inspired paring-down of Skills from SotC. Descriptors are also adapted from Sorcerer. The "Brutal" Conflict rules are taken from The Shadow of Yesterday/Solar System's Bringing Down the Pain. "Primed Aspects" are from a Story Games thread started by Paul Tevis.
Part 1 - Characters:
There are two major (mechanical) pieces to characters creation.
(1) Setting Abilities
(2) Choosing Aspects
(1) Setting Abilities:
A Character has three Abilities - Body, Will, Skill. Set one at +3, one at +2, and one at +1.
(2) Choosing Aspects:
A Character has room for 10 Aspects, but will probably start play with 6 or 7, leaving the other slots available to be chosen during play. Here are the guidelines for choosing Aspects:
-choose 2 Aspects based on and/or related to the Character's cultural origins. For the purposes of Sword & Planet gaming, there are three Cultures: Earthling, Alien - Primitive, and Alien - Decadent. These Aspects can answer a question like "Where did I come from?"
-choose 2 Aspects based on and/or related to the Character's profession/job/etc. Answering questions like "What do I do?" and "How do I do it?"
-If you haven't already written an Aspect that does this: (a) write an Aspect that acts as a descriptor to your Body ability, (b) write an Aspect that acts as a descriptor to your Will ability, (c) write an Aspect that acts as a descriptor to your Skill ability.
-Fill in a few more Aspects so you have around 6 or 7. Leave a few blanks to be filled in during play.
Special Effects:
You can choose to give your character a Special Effect. This is optional. In general, characters should be assumed to be (more-or-less) human, with normal capabilities within the limits of their culture and profession. A Special Effect gives them access to additional powers and capabilities, but also acts as a narrative constraint. In practice, this means that while characters with a Special Effect can do something out of the ordinary, they are subject to be limited by circumstances. A Special Effect must be directly linked to an Aspect that deals with it.
In my game, here are some examples:
Some characters are Dragon Riders. This Special Effect means that they can ride on the dragon (taking advantage of its flying ability) and they can use the Dragon's breath weapon to attack foes from a distance. And Consequences caused by a dragon's attack are likely to be pretty severe!
However, this leads to some limitations: dragons are big, they can't always be with their riders. A rider apart from their dragon might susceptible to being Stuck with an Aspect like: "No confidence when alone".
Some characters are initiates into the alchemical secrets of various desert powders. This allows them to act on characters in a variety of ways: Sticking them with Aspects like "Drugged and dazed" or "In love with the next person she sees..." But the limitation is that it requires time to gather the materials and create these concoctions.
Part 2 - Aspects:
See here for the SotC overview.
If you Invoke/Tag you have to say how that looks in the fiction. As a corollary, you can only Invoke/Tag if doing so would make sense in the fiction.
Invoking - after a roll, spend a Fate point to Invoke one of your Aspects. Invoking allows you to re-roll or add a +2 to the final roll. Mark that you have used the Aspect.
Tagging - after a roll, spend a Fate point to Tag an Aspect that is not on your sheet (i.e. an NPC Aspect or a Setting/Scene Aspect). Tagging an Aspect allows you to re-roll or add a +2 to the final roll. Fate points spent on Tagging go into the Pot. If you are Tagging an Aspect on an NPC or the Setting/Scene mark that you have Tagged it. (You do not mark another PC's Aspect when tagging).
Primed Aspects (PCs only):
If you Invoke an Aspect three times in one session it is "Primed". At that point, you can no longer Invoke that Aspect (although it can still be Tagged by other characters). However, you can choose to Burn that Aspect if you desire. A Burn is like a super compel: you get three Fate points, but you have to change that Aspect into something else. The new Aspect starts with no marks (fully unprimed).
Invoking/Tagging Sequence:
Invokes/Tags are not declared until after the initial roll. At that point, the current loser gets to say whether or not they want to spend a Fate point to alter their roll. (In the case of ties, the character with the lower Ability in conflict goes first. If this ties, the character with the least number of Fate points goes). They can choose to re-roll or gain a +2 bonus. If they do so, they have to say which Aspect they are Invoking/Tagging and what that would look like. Once they commit, they can't take it back. The other player gets a chance to respond with an Invocation/Tag of their own. This goes back and forth until one player or the other gives up or runs out of Fate points. For a given character, all re-rolls have to come before any +2 bonuses. (I.e. once you choose to take your +2 you have to let your dice stand).
Sticking - Certain kinds of successes allow you to Stick a New Aspect on the Setting/Scene or a Character. Whenever you Stick an Aspect you get a free Tag on that Aspect. "Stuck" Aspects can be Fragile (they go away after that Free tag), Sticky (they stay around for you or anyone else to use until they go away because of shifting circumstances and/or the Scene ends, or Session (they stay for the rest of the Session).
Part 3 - Conflicts:
Simple Conflicts:
For the most, only roll dice when there is a conflict of interest between two characters.
Players should state their intent. (This is a Free and Clear phase).
The higher roll is the Winning roll.
Check for Invocation/Tags.
Determine the final outcome: High Roll - Low Roll = Effect.
Any Effect of 1 or more is a success (i.e. the winner gets their intent).
In addition:
An Effect of 1 allows you to Stick a Fragile Aspect on the immediate Setting/Scene.
An Effect of 2 allows you to Stick a Sticky Aspect on the immediate Setting/Scene.
An Effect of 3+ allows you to Stick a Session Aspect on the immediate Setting/Scene.
You can only Stick an Aspect on another character through a Brutal Conflict.
Linked Conflicts:
Sometimes a conflict will lead to a natural follow-up conflict. In this case, use the success of the first conflict to Stick a temporary Aspect somewhere. This Aspect, like any Stuck Aspect, is eligible for a free Tag. The narrational trick is to make this Stuck Aspect relate to the follow-up conflict.
Helping:
One character will make the roll. Use their ability. Other characters may help. They do this by spending Fate points to Invoke or Tag Aspects just like the acting character. They should decalre they are helping before the roll, but if they didn't roll their own dice in the current conflict and it makes sense that they could "jump in" partway through, they can decide to help at any point afterwards. (Any Invocation/Tagging for re-rolls must happen before any +2 bonuses are taken by the side).
Assessments:
An Assessment is a special kind of Conflict where you try to uncover the Hidden Aspects of an NPC or the Setting/Scene. Vs. an NPC this is usually a Will vs. Will roll, but Skill could be substituted depending on the circumstances (i.e., using a police interrogation technique). Vs. the Setting/Scene you will usually be rolling Skill vs. an unmodified roll. If you lose vs. the NPC, the NPC gains a Free Tag on one of your Aspects in any follow up conflict. If you lose vs. the Setting/Scene, you gain a Fragile Temporary Aspect relating to somehow misreading the lay of the land/mood of the crowd/etc.
Declarations:
A Declaration is a special kind of conflict where you can Stick a new fact onto the Setting/Scene. This is usually a Skill vs. an unmodified roll. The "color" of the Declaration (i.e. what it looks like in the fiction) should be based around an area of expertise that makes sense in terms of the character's concept. The level of the Stuck Aspect is based on the Effect earned in the roll. The PC gets a free Tag (just like with any other Stuck Aspect). If the PC loses, they receive a Fragile Consequence that doesn't count against their limit. A Declaration cannot change the backstory or a character's history: it has to be something that applies to the unfolding situation.
Brutal Conflicts:
If you want to take a named character out of the game or if you want to Stick an Aspect on a PC or NPC you need to do so through a Brutal Conflict.
Brutal Conflict works in rounds.
Free & Clear - determine who is opposing whom and whether actions are parallel or perpendicular.
If you are just defending you get a +2 bonus and get the possibility of generating Spin.
Parallel Success = deliver harm equal to your Success level
Perpendicular Success = deliver harm equal to the difference of Success levels
Harm above the max leads to Consequences. Consequences are a special kind of Stuck Aspect.
Maneuvers = instead of doing harm, Stick an Aspect to the Setting/Scene as per the normal conflict rules
Part 4 - Fate Point Economy:
PCs start with 10 fate Points.
VIP NPCs start with 5.
Major NPCs start with 3.
Minor NPCs start with 1.
When PCs or NPCs Invoke the Fate Point is simply spent.
When PCs get Tagged they take the Fate Point used in the Tag.
When PCs Tag NPCs or the Setting/Scene they put the Fate Point in the Pot.
The GM has an unlimited number of Fate Points to use for Compels.
The Pot:
After the game, look at the Fate Points in the Pot. The group spends these points to add Aspects permanently to the Setting/Scene and/or to NPCs.
A totally new Aspect costs 3 points.
Making a Sticky Aspect permanent costs 2 points.
Making a Session Aspect permanent costs 1 point.
Making an NPC Consequence permanent costs 3 points.
Promoting an NPC from Minor to Major costs 1 point.
Promoting an NPC from Major to VIP costs 2 points.
Part 5 - NPCs and Setting:
NPC Notes:
VIP NPCs are created more or less like PCs. Major NPCs have one Ability at +2 and another at +1. Minor NPCs have one ability at +1.
VIP NPCs should have 5 or 6 Aspects. 3 must be Open and the others should be Hidden. Think of the Open Aspects as part of their description when introducing the character. (Two of the three Open Aspects might map onto the NPC's Culture/Profession).
Major NPCs should have 3 or 4 Aspects. 2 Must be Open and the others can be Hidden.
Minor NPCs should have one or two Aspects, both in the Open.
Setting/Scene Notes:
Follow the same breakdown for Setting/Scenes - they are either VIP, Major, or Minor, with the same number of Aspects and the same breakdown of Open/Hidden.
Still needed: Character Sheets, NPC sheets, Setting/Scene sheets, better names for a lot of this stuff (i.e. Stuck Aspects, abilities), more info on Compels, more info on scene framing, etc., etc.
Until I sat down to do this, I really didn't realize how hard writing good, clear rules can be. I salute the Evil Hat guys and beg forgiveness for the clumsiness that follows. This is a rough, rough draft - I've written it up quickly to get something out there. At this point, a lot of it will only make sense in the context of SotC and FATE.
Inspirational Fiction:
Flash Gordon - the Alex Raymond comic strip, 'natch - of course, but filtered through the kind of sensibility that Grant Morrison brings to his super-hero projects. Also: Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure stories.
Inspirational Games:
I started with Spirit of the Century but found that though it did what I wanted, it also did some other stuff that I didn't necessarily want and was getting in the way. Luckily, the genius of the guys at Evil Hat is that SotC and it's underlying FATE system are endlessly and easily tweakable. Abilities are a Sorcerer-inspired paring-down of Skills from SotC. Descriptors are also adapted from Sorcerer. The "Brutal" Conflict rules are taken from The Shadow of Yesterday/Solar System's Bringing Down the Pain. "Primed Aspects" are from a Story Games thread started by Paul Tevis.
Part 1 - Characters:
There are two major (mechanical) pieces to characters creation.
(1) Setting Abilities
(2) Choosing Aspects
(1) Setting Abilities:
A Character has three Abilities - Body, Will, Skill. Set one at +3, one at +2, and one at +1.
(2) Choosing Aspects:
A Character has room for 10 Aspects, but will probably start play with 6 or 7, leaving the other slots available to be chosen during play. Here are the guidelines for choosing Aspects:
-choose 2 Aspects based on and/or related to the Character's cultural origins. For the purposes of Sword & Planet gaming, there are three Cultures: Earthling, Alien - Primitive, and Alien - Decadent. These Aspects can answer a question like "Where did I come from?"
-choose 2 Aspects based on and/or related to the Character's profession/job/etc. Answering questions like "What do I do?" and "How do I do it?"
-If you haven't already written an Aspect that does this: (a) write an Aspect that acts as a descriptor to your Body ability, (b) write an Aspect that acts as a descriptor to your Will ability, (c) write an Aspect that acts as a descriptor to your Skill ability.
-Fill in a few more Aspects so you have around 6 or 7. Leave a few blanks to be filled in during play.
Special Effects:
You can choose to give your character a Special Effect. This is optional. In general, characters should be assumed to be (more-or-less) human, with normal capabilities within the limits of their culture and profession. A Special Effect gives them access to additional powers and capabilities, but also acts as a narrative constraint. In practice, this means that while characters with a Special Effect can do something out of the ordinary, they are subject to be limited by circumstances. A Special Effect must be directly linked to an Aspect that deals with it.
In my game, here are some examples:
Some characters are Dragon Riders. This Special Effect means that they can ride on the dragon (taking advantage of its flying ability) and they can use the Dragon's breath weapon to attack foes from a distance. And Consequences caused by a dragon's attack are likely to be pretty severe!
However, this leads to some limitations: dragons are big, they can't always be with their riders. A rider apart from their dragon might susceptible to being Stuck with an Aspect like: "No confidence when alone".
Some characters are initiates into the alchemical secrets of various desert powders. This allows them to act on characters in a variety of ways: Sticking them with Aspects like "Drugged and dazed" or "In love with the next person she sees..." But the limitation is that it requires time to gather the materials and create these concoctions.
Part 2 - Aspects:
See here for the SotC overview.
If you Invoke/Tag you have to say how that looks in the fiction. As a corollary, you can only Invoke/Tag if doing so would make sense in the fiction.
Invoking - after a roll, spend a Fate point to Invoke one of your Aspects. Invoking allows you to re-roll or add a +2 to the final roll. Mark that you have used the Aspect.
Tagging - after a roll, spend a Fate point to Tag an Aspect that is not on your sheet (i.e. an NPC Aspect or a Setting/Scene Aspect). Tagging an Aspect allows you to re-roll or add a +2 to the final roll. Fate points spent on Tagging go into the Pot. If you are Tagging an Aspect on an NPC or the Setting/Scene mark that you have Tagged it. (You do not mark another PC's Aspect when tagging).
Primed Aspects (PCs only):
If you Invoke an Aspect three times in one session it is "Primed". At that point, you can no longer Invoke that Aspect (although it can still be Tagged by other characters). However, you can choose to Burn that Aspect if you desire. A Burn is like a super compel: you get three Fate points, but you have to change that Aspect into something else. The new Aspect starts with no marks (fully unprimed).
Invoking/Tagging Sequence:
Invokes/Tags are not declared until after the initial roll. At that point, the current loser gets to say whether or not they want to spend a Fate point to alter their roll. (In the case of ties, the character with the lower Ability in conflict goes first. If this ties, the character with the least number of Fate points goes). They can choose to re-roll or gain a +2 bonus. If they do so, they have to say which Aspect they are Invoking/Tagging and what that would look like. Once they commit, they can't take it back. The other player gets a chance to respond with an Invocation/Tag of their own. This goes back and forth until one player or the other gives up or runs out of Fate points. For a given character, all re-rolls have to come before any +2 bonuses. (I.e. once you choose to take your +2 you have to let your dice stand).
Sticking - Certain kinds of successes allow you to Stick a New Aspect on the Setting/Scene or a Character. Whenever you Stick an Aspect you get a free Tag on that Aspect. "Stuck" Aspects can be Fragile (they go away after that Free tag), Sticky (they stay around for you or anyone else to use until they go away because of shifting circumstances and/or the Scene ends, or Session (they stay for the rest of the Session).
Part 3 - Conflicts:
Simple Conflicts:
For the most, only roll dice when there is a conflict of interest between two characters.
Players should state their intent. (This is a Free and Clear phase).
The higher roll is the Winning roll.
Check for Invocation/Tags.
Determine the final outcome: High Roll - Low Roll = Effect.
Any Effect of 1 or more is a success (i.e. the winner gets their intent).
In addition:
An Effect of 1 allows you to Stick a Fragile Aspect on the immediate Setting/Scene.
An Effect of 2 allows you to Stick a Sticky Aspect on the immediate Setting/Scene.
An Effect of 3+ allows you to Stick a Session Aspect on the immediate Setting/Scene.
You can only Stick an Aspect on another character through a Brutal Conflict.
Linked Conflicts:
Sometimes a conflict will lead to a natural follow-up conflict. In this case, use the success of the first conflict to Stick a temporary Aspect somewhere. This Aspect, like any Stuck Aspect, is eligible for a free Tag. The narrational trick is to make this Stuck Aspect relate to the follow-up conflict.
Helping:
One character will make the roll. Use their ability. Other characters may help. They do this by spending Fate points to Invoke or Tag Aspects just like the acting character. They should decalre they are helping before the roll, but if they didn't roll their own dice in the current conflict and it makes sense that they could "jump in" partway through, they can decide to help at any point afterwards. (Any Invocation/Tagging for re-rolls must happen before any +2 bonuses are taken by the side).
Assessments:
An Assessment is a special kind of Conflict where you try to uncover the Hidden Aspects of an NPC or the Setting/Scene. Vs. an NPC this is usually a Will vs. Will roll, but Skill could be substituted depending on the circumstances (i.e., using a police interrogation technique). Vs. the Setting/Scene you will usually be rolling Skill vs. an unmodified roll. If you lose vs. the NPC, the NPC gains a Free Tag on one of your Aspects in any follow up conflict. If you lose vs. the Setting/Scene, you gain a Fragile Temporary Aspect relating to somehow misreading the lay of the land/mood of the crowd/etc.
Declarations:
A Declaration is a special kind of conflict where you can Stick a new fact onto the Setting/Scene. This is usually a Skill vs. an unmodified roll. The "color" of the Declaration (i.e. what it looks like in the fiction) should be based around an area of expertise that makes sense in terms of the character's concept. The level of the Stuck Aspect is based on the Effect earned in the roll. The PC gets a free Tag (just like with any other Stuck Aspect). If the PC loses, they receive a Fragile Consequence that doesn't count against their limit. A Declaration cannot change the backstory or a character's history: it has to be something that applies to the unfolding situation.
Brutal Conflicts:
If you want to take a named character out of the game or if you want to Stick an Aspect on a PC or NPC you need to do so through a Brutal Conflict.
Brutal Conflict works in rounds.
Free & Clear - determine who is opposing whom and whether actions are parallel or perpendicular.
If you are just defending you get a +2 bonus and get the possibility of generating Spin.
Parallel Success = deliver harm equal to your Success level
Perpendicular Success = deliver harm equal to the difference of Success levels
Harm above the max leads to Consequences. Consequences are a special kind of Stuck Aspect.
Maneuvers = instead of doing harm, Stick an Aspect to the Setting/Scene as per the normal conflict rules
Part 4 - Fate Point Economy:
PCs start with 10 fate Points.
VIP NPCs start with 5.
Major NPCs start with 3.
Minor NPCs start with 1.
When PCs or NPCs Invoke the Fate Point is simply spent.
When PCs get Tagged they take the Fate Point used in the Tag.
When PCs Tag NPCs or the Setting/Scene they put the Fate Point in the Pot.
The GM has an unlimited number of Fate Points to use for Compels.
The Pot:
After the game, look at the Fate Points in the Pot. The group spends these points to add Aspects permanently to the Setting/Scene and/or to NPCs.
A totally new Aspect costs 3 points.
Making a Sticky Aspect permanent costs 2 points.
Making a Session Aspect permanent costs 1 point.
Making an NPC Consequence permanent costs 3 points.
Promoting an NPC from Minor to Major costs 1 point.
Promoting an NPC from Major to VIP costs 2 points.
Part 5 - NPCs and Setting:
NPC Notes:
VIP NPCs are created more or less like PCs. Major NPCs have one Ability at +2 and another at +1. Minor NPCs have one ability at +1.
VIP NPCs should have 5 or 6 Aspects. 3 must be Open and the others should be Hidden. Think of the Open Aspects as part of their description when introducing the character. (Two of the three Open Aspects might map onto the NPC's Culture/Profession).
Major NPCs should have 3 or 4 Aspects. 2 Must be Open and the others can be Hidden.
Minor NPCs should have one or two Aspects, both in the Open.
Setting/Scene Notes:
Follow the same breakdown for Setting/Scenes - they are either VIP, Major, or Minor, with the same number of Aspects and the same breakdown of Open/Hidden.
Still needed: Character Sheets, NPC sheets, Setting/Scene sheets, better names for a lot of this stuff (i.e. Stuck Aspects, abilities), more info on Compels, more info on scene framing, etc., etc.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Ten RPGs I'd Like to Be Playing...
I'm having lots of fun playing in some Old School D&D games and running a few sessions of Spirit of the Century (Flash Gordon-flavored), but here are a few more games I'd like to add to the rotation...
1. The Burning Wheel - One of my all-time favorites! I don't get to play it nearly enough as I'd like.
2. Sorcerer - Ditto!
3. Agon - I've wanted to play this for a while now - the competitive aspect is really appealing.
4. 3:16 - I feel guilty that I haven't played this yet.
5. Spione - Not really an RPG, but close enough for the purposes of this blog post. I haven't played this since it was actually published (and the playtest version I used has been changed significantly, I believe).
6. D&D: Carcosa - I'm not quite sure what I would do with this - probably try to run the introductory adventure in the new issue of Fight On!
7. In a Wicked Age - This looks very, very neat, and its quick start/no prep nature makes it more attractive an option than most of the other games on this list.
8. Some Jeepform stuff - This is probably the "least likely to be actually played" of all the entries on the list, but I'm really interested in giving this a try.
9. Dirty Secrets - I love, love, love crime fiction, and this game actually looks like it delivers.
10. D&D 4th Edition - I go back and forth on this: right now though it is very tempting!
1. The Burning Wheel - One of my all-time favorites! I don't get to play it nearly enough as I'd like.
2. Sorcerer - Ditto!
3. Agon - I've wanted to play this for a while now - the competitive aspect is really appealing.
4. 3:16 - I feel guilty that I haven't played this yet.
5. Spione - Not really an RPG, but close enough for the purposes of this blog post. I haven't played this since it was actually published (and the playtest version I used has been changed significantly, I believe).
6. D&D: Carcosa - I'm not quite sure what I would do with this - probably try to run the introductory adventure in the new issue of Fight On!
7. In a Wicked Age - This looks very, very neat, and its quick start/no prep nature makes it more attractive an option than most of the other games on this list.
8. Some Jeepform stuff - This is probably the "least likely to be actually played" of all the entries on the list, but I'm really interested in giving this a try.
9. Dirty Secrets - I love, love, love crime fiction, and this game actually looks like it delivers.
10. D&D 4th Edition - I go back and forth on this: right now though it is very tempting!
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Screening Log: February 2009
Coraline (3D) (Henry Selick, 2009) ** - Selick gets just the right Roald Dahl-like balance between whimsy and nastiness, while downplaying the weaker elements from Gaiman's material. (For me, that's mainly Gaiman's Stephen King-like tendency to use hand-wavey mubo-jumbo to get himself out of the corners he's written himself into.) I liked the design quite a bit, although I'm not sure that the 3D added anything integral to the movie.
The House Bunny (Fred Wolf, 2008) (v) ** - A great performance from Anna Faris, some good performances from the supporting cast, not too much time wasted on the idiotic perfunctory romantic comedy subplot.
Crank (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2006) (v) * - Effective and entertaining as a cheap, nasty, gonzo exploitation movie. But there's a line between ironic commentary on a cultural phenomenon (in this case Grand Theft Auto-style rampaging male adolescent id video games) and an example of that phenomenon made by people who feel they need to cover their asses/hedge their bets.
The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989) (v) (r) *** - Kind of like Titanic: big, dopey, and despite the (at the time) cutting edge effects, very old fashioned. Watched (almost) back-to-back with Aliens, I am more-and-more convinced that the seeds of post-"Golden Age" action filmmaking (Michael Bay and Peter Greengrass) are here in Cameron's movies.
Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) (v) (r) *** - I'm not quite as impressed with this as I was when (a) I revisited Alien last year or (b) I've revisited other Camerons over the last few years. Lots of good stuff, of course, but a little bloated. As with T-2, there are scenes devoted to explicating the movie's themes that would have been better left out, because those themes - while powerful - aren't complex. Which is probably why I'd give John McTiernan's films from this period the edge: the themes there aren't necessarily any more complex, but they're worked out more fully within the boundaries of action/adventure.
Trafic (Jacques Tati, 1971) (v) (r) **** - It's not quite that self consciously artistic comic filmmaking is underrated in film buff circles as much as the necessary correction to the undervaluing of unselfconsciously artistic comic filmmaking that began several decades ago might have gone too far. Or (although this brings things close to the edge of meaninglessness) Keaton's gain in reputation often came at the expense of Chaplin's. But it's when watching a movie like Trafic that I become aware of what a self-conscious artist like Tati or Chaplin can do that someone like Keaton just really isn't interested in: provide along with a philosophical/temperamental take on the world and our place in it, an expansive and inclusive world view - a look at society, culture, etc. organized by a single, coherent sensibility.
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) (v) (r) **** - Two random observations. (1) So much of the movie's scariness/creepiness is tied up in how Kubrick uses music (see also: There Will Be Blood). (2) Heath Ledger's Joker was so different from Jack Nicholson's Joker that no one seemed to notice that Ledger's Joker was actually Nicholson's Jack Torrance.
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) (v) (r) *** - This was the Original Theatrical Cut. I used to prefer this cut because I thought the voice-over tied it in nicely to the noir tradition. But really, despite references to The Big Sleep and Sunset Boulevard, this isn't much of a "classic" noir. It's something else - and the voice-over really does just get in the way. And I have to say that the final moment of the 1992 director's cut (the only other version I've seen at this point) - the elevator slamming shut - is (just about) infinitely better than the tacked on B.S. we have here.
Big City (Frank Borzage, 1937) (v) ***
Key:
(v) = Seen on home video (dvd, dvr, etc.).
(r) = Not my first viewing.
(s) = Short film.
Star system ("borrowed" from the Chicago Reader)
No stars = Not recommended
* = Redeeming feature(s)
** = Recommended
*** = Highly recommended
**** = "Masterpiece"
***** = A place in my personal pantheon
The House Bunny (Fred Wolf, 2008) (v) ** - A great performance from Anna Faris, some good performances from the supporting cast, not too much time wasted on the idiotic perfunctory romantic comedy subplot.
Crank (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2006) (v) * - Effective and entertaining as a cheap, nasty, gonzo exploitation movie. But there's a line between ironic commentary on a cultural phenomenon (in this case Grand Theft Auto-style rampaging male adolescent id video games) and an example of that phenomenon made by people who feel they need to cover their asses/hedge their bets.
The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989) (v) (r) *** - Kind of like Titanic: big, dopey, and despite the (at the time) cutting edge effects, very old fashioned. Watched (almost) back-to-back with Aliens, I am more-and-more convinced that the seeds of post-"Golden Age" action filmmaking (Michael Bay and Peter Greengrass) are here in Cameron's movies.
Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) (v) (r) *** - I'm not quite as impressed with this as I was when (a) I revisited Alien last year or (b) I've revisited other Camerons over the last few years. Lots of good stuff, of course, but a little bloated. As with T-2, there are scenes devoted to explicating the movie's themes that would have been better left out, because those themes - while powerful - aren't complex. Which is probably why I'd give John McTiernan's films from this period the edge: the themes there aren't necessarily any more complex, but they're worked out more fully within the boundaries of action/adventure.
Trafic (Jacques Tati, 1971) (v) (r) **** - It's not quite that self consciously artistic comic filmmaking is underrated in film buff circles as much as the necessary correction to the undervaluing of unselfconsciously artistic comic filmmaking that began several decades ago might have gone too far. Or (although this brings things close to the edge of meaninglessness) Keaton's gain in reputation often came at the expense of Chaplin's. But it's when watching a movie like Trafic that I become aware of what a self-conscious artist like Tati or Chaplin can do that someone like Keaton just really isn't interested in: provide along with a philosophical/temperamental take on the world and our place in it, an expansive and inclusive world view - a look at society, culture, etc. organized by a single, coherent sensibility.
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) (v) (r) **** - Two random observations. (1) So much of the movie's scariness/creepiness is tied up in how Kubrick uses music (see also: There Will Be Blood). (2) Heath Ledger's Joker was so different from Jack Nicholson's Joker that no one seemed to notice that Ledger's Joker was actually Nicholson's Jack Torrance.
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) (v) (r) *** - This was the Original Theatrical Cut. I used to prefer this cut because I thought the voice-over tied it in nicely to the noir tradition. But really, despite references to The Big Sleep and Sunset Boulevard, this isn't much of a "classic" noir. It's something else - and the voice-over really does just get in the way. And I have to say that the final moment of the 1992 director's cut (the only other version I've seen at this point) - the elevator slamming shut - is (just about) infinitely better than the tacked on B.S. we have here.
Big City (Frank Borzage, 1937) (v) ***
Key:
(v) = Seen on home video (dvd, dvr, etc.).
(r) = Not my first viewing.
(s) = Short film.
Star system ("borrowed" from the Chicago Reader)
No stars = Not recommended
* = Redeeming feature(s)
** = Recommended
*** = Highly recommended
**** = "Masterpiece"
***** = A place in my personal pantheon
Friday, February 6, 2009
Screening Log: January 2009
Screening Log
[Note: This is a new feature, inspired by similar things done here and here, but my version is much less ambitious (notes only when I feel like it, for example). Eventually, I'm going to set up a dedicated page for these (and my top ten lists), but for now a blog entry will have to do. The most recently watched movies are at the top. The star system is borrowed from the Chicago Reader (i.e. Jonathan Rosenbaum): anything that gets a star is recommended to one degree or another. Stuff without a star is not recommended. I'm more interested in differentiating between the very good and the great than between the mediocre and the horrible.]
January 2009
The Wackness (Jonathan Levine, 2008) (v) *
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008) ****
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Patricia Rozema, 2008) (v)
RocknRolla (Guy Ritchie, 2008) (v) * - It looks drab, there are some rough edges that get in the way of it feeling like a perfectly clockwork caper movie, Jeremy Piven phones in his performance, its gestures towards some kind of emotional resonance are overshadowed (for me) by In Bruges and The Bank Job, and it really bungles just about everything having to do with its single female character. But I still liked it: Mark Strong and Gerard Butler both give strong performances and Ritchie has an Elmore Leonard-esque flair for controlled chaos.
High and Dizzy (Hal Roach, 1920) (s) (v) *** - Harold Lloyd plays drunk for most of this movie.
Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols, 2007) (v) *
Eye in the Sky (Nai-Hoi Yau, 2007) (v) **
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) (v) (r) *** - On home video, this lacks the intensity of the "IMAX Experience", but maybe because it isn't as overwhelming, the filmmaking seems tighter. A wash, in other words.
Baghead (The Duplass Bros., 2008) (v) **
The Tracey Fragments (Bruce McDonald, 2007) (v) *
Stop-Loss (Kimberly Pierce, 2008) (v) - The underlying outrage - over why the soldiers are in Iraq in the first place and what they're doing there - never really comes into focus, so the surface outrage over the stop-loss order itself seems legalistic, the premise of an absurd, blackly comic joke that the movie is too earnest to tell.
The Unborn (David S. Goyer, 2009) - Doesn't survive the move from effective generalized creepiness to cliched specifities. Not everything needs to be explained. Especially the stuff that doesn't make any sense to begin with.
Street Kings (David Ayer, 2008) (v) ** - No surprises in this One Good Bad Cop movie: at this point I'm not even sure if any of the filmmakers even expect us to be surprised, despite the nominal twists. Still: good performances (esp. from the underrated Keanue Reeves and Chris Evans) and witty action editing.
Cleaner (Renny Harlin, 2007) (v) *
A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2007) (v) **** - After one viewing felt like I had taken a bite out of this meaty, sprawling family drama-comedy, but was already looking forward to going back for the leftovers. In other words: part of what I liked about it is that I don't have the sense that I figured it all out or connected all the dots - there's still more to go back for.
Ballast (Lance Hammer, 2008) (v) ***
The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008) (v) ***
Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot, 2007) (v) ***
The Witnesses (v) (Andre Techine, 2007) **
Wendy and Lucy (v) (Kelly Reichardt, 2008) **
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008) (v) - Kind of like the anti-Naked.
Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008) (v) * - McKay - a multiplex surrealist - is my favorite of Ferrell's collaborators, but the appealing ludicrousness of the first hour mostly evaporates after the obligatory aspirational storyline kicks in. Although the Billy Joel bit near the end is pretty great.
Cadillac Records (Darnell Martin, 2008) (v)
Traitor (Jeffrey Nachmanoff, 2008) (v)
I've Loved You So Long (Philippe Claudel, 2008) (v)
Get Smart (Peter Segal, 2008) (v) - Not necessarily terrible, but depressing in the way it plugs the Mel Brooks/Buck Henry concepts into a standard 2000s action/comedy, with a mostly-played-straight aspirational character arc and romantic interest for our hero.
Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008) (v) *
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008) (v) *** - 10 years ago I thought that someone could make the perfect Batman movie by putting Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and turning it into a Clint Eastwood vehicle. Alas, those ships have sailed, but this will do just fine.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (Chris Carter, 2008) (v) * - Professionally done mystery movie: major gripe against it (with which I agree) is that nothing in it seems to demand the theatrical feature treatment.
Key:
(v) = Seen on home video (dvd, dvr, etc.).
(r) = Not my first viewing.
(s) = Short film.
Star system ("borrowed" from the Chicago Reader)
No stars = Not recommended
* = Redeeming feature(s)
** = Recommended
*** = Highly recommended
**** = "Masterpiece"
***** = A place in my personal pantheon
[Note: This is a new feature, inspired by similar things done here and here, but my version is much less ambitious (notes only when I feel like it, for example). Eventually, I'm going to set up a dedicated page for these (and my top ten lists), but for now a blog entry will have to do. The most recently watched movies are at the top. The star system is borrowed from the Chicago Reader (i.e. Jonathan Rosenbaum): anything that gets a star is recommended to one degree or another. Stuff without a star is not recommended. I'm more interested in differentiating between the very good and the great than between the mediocre and the horrible.]
January 2009
The Wackness (Jonathan Levine, 2008) (v) *
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008) ****
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Patricia Rozema, 2008) (v)
RocknRolla (Guy Ritchie, 2008) (v) * - It looks drab, there are some rough edges that get in the way of it feeling like a perfectly clockwork caper movie, Jeremy Piven phones in his performance, its gestures towards some kind of emotional resonance are overshadowed (for me) by In Bruges and The Bank Job, and it really bungles just about everything having to do with its single female character. But I still liked it: Mark Strong and Gerard Butler both give strong performances and Ritchie has an Elmore Leonard-esque flair for controlled chaos.
High and Dizzy (Hal Roach, 1920) (s) (v) *** - Harold Lloyd plays drunk for most of this movie.
Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols, 2007) (v) *
Eye in the Sky (Nai-Hoi Yau, 2007) (v) **
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) (v) (r) *** - On home video, this lacks the intensity of the "IMAX Experience", but maybe because it isn't as overwhelming, the filmmaking seems tighter. A wash, in other words.
Baghead (The Duplass Bros., 2008) (v) **
The Tracey Fragments (Bruce McDonald, 2007) (v) *
Stop-Loss (Kimberly Pierce, 2008) (v) - The underlying outrage - over why the soldiers are in Iraq in the first place and what they're doing there - never really comes into focus, so the surface outrage over the stop-loss order itself seems legalistic, the premise of an absurd, blackly comic joke that the movie is too earnest to tell.
The Unborn (David S. Goyer, 2009) - Doesn't survive the move from effective generalized creepiness to cliched specifities. Not everything needs to be explained. Especially the stuff that doesn't make any sense to begin with.
Street Kings (David Ayer, 2008) (v) ** - No surprises in this One Good Bad Cop movie: at this point I'm not even sure if any of the filmmakers even expect us to be surprised, despite the nominal twists. Still: good performances (esp. from the underrated Keanue Reeves and Chris Evans) and witty action editing.
Cleaner (Renny Harlin, 2007) (v) *
A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2007) (v) **** - After one viewing felt like I had taken a bite out of this meaty, sprawling family drama-comedy, but was already looking forward to going back for the leftovers. In other words: part of what I liked about it is that I don't have the sense that I figured it all out or connected all the dots - there's still more to go back for.
Ballast (Lance Hammer, 2008) (v) ***
The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008) (v) ***
Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot, 2007) (v) ***
The Witnesses (v) (Andre Techine, 2007) **
Wendy and Lucy (v) (Kelly Reichardt, 2008) **
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008) (v) - Kind of like the anti-Naked.
Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008) (v) * - McKay - a multiplex surrealist - is my favorite of Ferrell's collaborators, but the appealing ludicrousness of the first hour mostly evaporates after the obligatory aspirational storyline kicks in. Although the Billy Joel bit near the end is pretty great.
Cadillac Records (Darnell Martin, 2008) (v)
Traitor (Jeffrey Nachmanoff, 2008) (v)
I've Loved You So Long (Philippe Claudel, 2008) (v)
Get Smart (Peter Segal, 2008) (v) - Not necessarily terrible, but depressing in the way it plugs the Mel Brooks/Buck Henry concepts into a standard 2000s action/comedy, with a mostly-played-straight aspirational character arc and romantic interest for our hero.
Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008) (v) *
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008) (v) *** - 10 years ago I thought that someone could make the perfect Batman movie by putting Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and turning it into a Clint Eastwood vehicle. Alas, those ships have sailed, but this will do just fine.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (Chris Carter, 2008) (v) * - Professionally done mystery movie: major gripe against it (with which I agree) is that nothing in it seems to demand the theatrical feature treatment.
Key:
(v) = Seen on home video (dvd, dvr, etc.).
(r) = Not my first viewing.
(s) = Short film.
Star system ("borrowed" from the Chicago Reader)
No stars = Not recommended
* = Redeeming feature(s)
** = Recommended
*** = Highly recommended
**** = "Masterpiece"
***** = A place in my personal pantheon
Monday, January 26, 2009
Links: In the Shadow of the Seventies
Jonathan Rosenbaum's essay on the ideology behind The Godfather movies is provocative, interesting, and short (so you have no excuse not to go read it right now) (link via The House Next Door). Here are some of my thoughts from back when I last watched these movies.
I think Zach Campbell's riff on Rocky and Rocky II makes some excellent points about the absence of working class sensibilities in contempo Hollywood movies. (His follow up post is also worth a look). (The Wrestler makes interesting "art" movie stabs at bringing this to the screen, but a lot of that movie feels like it's putting quotation marks around Rocky.)
And I always like reading through the digression-filled discussions in Dave Kehr's comments section. This one, from a few weeks ago, starts with a proposal that we can look at Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as a Hatari/Donovan's Reef-like "late" movie. Lots of good point made, although the back-and-forth gets a little nasty in places: the main Spielberg defender seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulders. Towards the end, Blake Lucas writes:
I agree with the general points he makes here - although not on the specifics: I'm a Spielberg fan. However, I do have to say that 10 years ago, I was laughed at (literally and on multiple occasions) when I'd try to talk with other cinema studies folks/film buffs about Spielberg's work in a serious fashion. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Spielberg defenders on that thread had found themselves in similar situations and were reacting partly to an attitude towards Spielberg that doesn't seem to exist anymore (and certainly doesn't exist on that thread: the people "going negative" on Spielberg are all taking him fairly seriously). I think a lot of conversations on the internet are fouled up because one or more of the parties involved is acting from assumptions formed in completely different contexts. I've been reading a film buff message board where there are a lot of "So and So Is Overrated" or "So and So Is Underrated" threads and I often get the sense that the people starting them are reacting to some specific context that they're not spelling out.
I think Zach Campbell's riff on Rocky and Rocky II makes some excellent points about the absence of working class sensibilities in contempo Hollywood movies. (His follow up post is also worth a look). (The Wrestler makes interesting "art" movie stabs at bringing this to the screen, but a lot of that movie feels like it's putting quotation marks around Rocky.)
And I always like reading through the digression-filled discussions in Dave Kehr's comments section. This one, from a few weeks ago, starts with a proposal that we can look at Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as a Hatari/Donovan's Reef-like "late" movie. Lots of good point made, although the back-and-forth gets a little nasty in places: the main Spielberg defender seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulders. Towards the end, Blake Lucas writes:
Do you really feel [Spielberg] should in some way be exempt from any critical challenge? No one else is you know. And I don't think they should be–and I'm referring even to my own favorites among all directors. The people who love them should always feel it is on them to defend them and their works. It should never just be a given–he or she is great and we shouldn't question it.
Somehow, in the new Hollywood, Steven Spielberg actually has this cachet, maybe not on this list but with most people who just take it as an article of faith that this is a great director.
Yet the complaints we have are real. He never wants us to forget that he is the director, and that he possesses directorial virtuosity. The quieter scenes that good directors (and great directors especially) give so much skill and subtlety to between the set pieces of theirs that play in anthologies and tributes (Minnelli is a great example, but in fact Hitchcock is as well) are scenes that always seem to try his patience, as if somehow in the way of the game he wants always to be seen as playing and winning. Please don't doubt the sincerity of those of us who are actively annoyed at this and the attitude and sensibility that do seem to underlie it, and the truly damaging effect some of us believe this has had on Hollywood filmmaking.
I don't go negative on Spielberg to rain on anyone's parade. I do actively dislike him, and I'm someone who likes so many directors and wouldn't for a moment claim they are all great. Most of the films I've enjoyed in my life are probably more easily defended as entertainment than great art, whatever artistic qualities they do have–and I'm not talking about someone like John Ford, who even when most out of fashion, was probably perceived as an artist by most people who had given any thought at all to cinema.
Again, what's ironic is that Spielberg fans act so wounded when he's criticized, but has there ever been anyone less affected in the wider consciousness by the perceptions of those who don't embrace him. He just goes on and on, seemingly immune to the deeper critical perspectives about his work which at least ought to be seriously addressed.
I agree with the general points he makes here - although not on the specifics: I'm a Spielberg fan. However, I do have to say that 10 years ago, I was laughed at (literally and on multiple occasions) when I'd try to talk with other cinema studies folks/film buffs about Spielberg's work in a serious fashion. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Spielberg defenders on that thread had found themselves in similar situations and were reacting partly to an attitude towards Spielberg that doesn't seem to exist anymore (and certainly doesn't exist on that thread: the people "going negative" on Spielberg are all taking him fairly seriously). I think a lot of conversations on the internet are fouled up because one or more of the parties involved is acting from assumptions formed in completely different contexts. I've been reading a film buff message board where there are a lot of "So and So Is Overrated" or "So and So Is Underrated" threads and I often get the sense that the people starting them are reacting to some specific context that they're not spelling out.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Links: Slumming
Jim Emerson hate-hate-hated Slumdog Millionaire. I enjoyed watching it, but had a number of reservations - like how it hits that yucky "sweet" spot between wallowing in misery and providing feel-good uplift - which have grown over the past few weeks. But here's how honest backlash works: my reservations aren't growing simply because the movie is winning awards and being praised all out of proportion to its actual (modest) merits, but it is because the movie has been winning awards and getting praise from all over the place that I've kept thinking about it. I liked Zack and Miri Make a Porno and My Brother Is an Only Child about as much as I liked Slumdog Millionaire, but those movies haven't collapsed under any great claims made for them. I saw them, I enjoyed them, I mostly forgot about them*. If I spent twenty minutes thinking about their problems, I might start liking them a lot less than I did when I left the theater right after seeing them, which is essentially what has happened to me with Slumdog. (I mean, without even getting into the movies that I really liked from last year, there are about twenty that I saw that are better than Slumdog**.)
I also liked Steve Sailer's suggestion that Slumdog would have been better if it hadn't been edited in such an "on the nose" manner. Steve proposes a cut of the movie where we see all of the questions in rapid succession at the start of the film and then, instead of cutting back-and-forth between the game show and Jamal's story, we just see the story and have to try to find the answers in there ourselves. A little more interactivity definitely would not have hurt.
And while I (obviously) don't agree with everything Ross Douthat writes here, I do agree that the Academy Awards would be a lot better if the voters weren't so "risk averse". I don't think The Dark Knight was the best picture of the year and I don't think it should get a slot just because it made so much money, but still... It's a very strong (if flawed) movie that resonated with audiences and critics and it would have been exciting to see that kind of movie go up against the more usual kinds of Oscar fare like Slumdog Millionaire. (Also: they should have given Clint Eastwood an acting nomination and Danny McBride a supporting actor nomination for Pineapple Express.)
(I should also note that after seeing and being relatively underwhelmed by Slumdog Millionaire my brothers accuses me of not really liking it only because it was popular and critically acclaimed. In my defense, I pointed out that among my favorite movies of the year were Wall-E, The Dark Knight, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona - hardly minority tastes. While it's true that I go out of my way to defend movies when I feel the fix was in on them - as with Speed Racer and The Happening - I never let other people's enthusiasm for a movie get in the way of my appreciation for it.)
*I've remembered a couple of performances, especially Elio Germano's in Brother.
**Wendy and Lucy, Baghead, The Tracey Fragments, Iron Man, Tell No One, Mad Detective, Be Kind Rewind, The Visitor, Changeling, Pineapple Express, Man on Wire, Reprise, It's a Free World..., Punisher: War Zone, Diary of the Dead, Leatherheads, Ghost Town, Charlie Bartlett, Sukiyaki Western Django and Definitely, Maybe.
I also liked Steve Sailer's suggestion that Slumdog would have been better if it hadn't been edited in such an "on the nose" manner. Steve proposes a cut of the movie where we see all of the questions in rapid succession at the start of the film and then, instead of cutting back-and-forth between the game show and Jamal's story, we just see the story and have to try to find the answers in there ourselves. A little more interactivity definitely would not have hurt.
And while I (obviously) don't agree with everything Ross Douthat writes here, I do agree that the Academy Awards would be a lot better if the voters weren't so "risk averse". I don't think The Dark Knight was the best picture of the year and I don't think it should get a slot just because it made so much money, but still... It's a very strong (if flawed) movie that resonated with audiences and critics and it would have been exciting to see that kind of movie go up against the more usual kinds of Oscar fare like Slumdog Millionaire. (Also: they should have given Clint Eastwood an acting nomination and Danny McBride a supporting actor nomination for Pineapple Express.)
(I should also note that after seeing and being relatively underwhelmed by Slumdog Millionaire my brothers accuses me of not really liking it only because it was popular and critically acclaimed. In my defense, I pointed out that among my favorite movies of the year were Wall-E, The Dark Knight, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona - hardly minority tastes. While it's true that I go out of my way to defend movies when I feel the fix was in on them - as with Speed Racer and The Happening - I never let other people's enthusiasm for a movie get in the way of my appreciation for it.)
*I've remembered a couple of performances, especially Elio Germano's in Brother.
**Wendy and Lucy, Baghead, The Tracey Fragments, Iron Man, Tell No One, Mad Detective, Be Kind Rewind, The Visitor, Changeling, Pineapple Express, Man on Wire, Reprise, It's a Free World..., Punisher: War Zone, Diary of the Dead, Leatherheads, Ghost Town, Charlie Bartlett, Sukiyaki Western Django and Definitely, Maybe.
Mechanism vs. Art
I really like what Dan Sallitt says here in his piece on a "Late Hawks" series:
I don't think you need to fully embrace auteurism to appreciate that the "work"/"doesn't work" model of looking at movies (or arts & culture stuff in general) is extremely limiting.
Film critics... tend to favor the paradigm of filmmakers hitting their artistic peak in early or mid-career, and thereafter laboring in vain to capture the flair of their youth. It's a natural attitude for the reviewer on the beat, deluged with mediocre contemporary product and doomed to wistful fantasy about golden ages. Implicit in the myth of decline is a vision of movies as mechanisms: uncanny objects that somehow "work" or not because of the confluence of ineffable forces. And the late films of many directors seemed often not to "work."
Auteur critics set out to substitute for the mechanism model an artist-oriented aesthetic that was borrowed from older art forms that had clearer claims to being the expression of individuals. Instead of working or not working, movies partook of the creative personality of their directors, and a valuable personality almost inevitably imparted value to individual works. Part of the auteurist agenda was to find a new mythology for the late periods of directors: where most critics saw the pitiable flailings of age, auteurists often saw the mature work of artists who had become too serene and wise for their public to keep up with. The paradigm of the early peak is still pervasive, and if auteurists courted ridicule by playing the "late period" card too freely, they often enough succeeded in installing late works in the canon.
I don't think you need to fully embrace auteurism to appreciate that the "work"/"doesn't work" model of looking at movies (or arts & culture stuff in general) is extremely limiting.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Links: Directors/Choices
There's an interesting discussion on the religious/Christian elements of auteurism in the comments to Dave Kehr's post on (appropriately enough) the new Magnificent Obsession Criterion set. For what it's worth, the less I approach auteurism as a religion, the more comfortable I am as an auteurist. To use Kent Jones' words, I find it to be "a fairly simple but useful way of looking at movies". (Which might mean that from a hard core auteurist's perspective that I don't really have what it takes!) But the question of faith vs. evidence is interesting. For me, evidence comes first, but faith plays a part. I mean: it's the greatness of Wagon Master and Going My Way (evidence) that makes me willing to jump into the deep end with Donovan's Reef and Satan Never Sleeps (faith).
There's also some back-and-forth over what "Sirkian" means. One of the issues that commenters seem to be skirting around is that the renewed interest in Sirk is partly due to a convergence of auteurist interests with camp aficionado interests. While the auteurist impulse is to take in the whole body of work and find the underlying connections, the camp aficionado focuses on the most extreme expressions of Sirk's aesthetic.
Via Tom Spurgeon, some outrage over the casting of M. Night Shyamalan's live-action Avatar adaptation. I'm a little surprised that these casting decisions were so boneheaded. I wonder if the commercial failure of Lady in the Water - which had a Utopian multi-cult vibe - made M. Night shy away from fighting for a more diverse cast. Also, I'm not very familiar with Avatar - I've half-watched an episode or two and have always meant to go through the DVDs at some point - but it does not strike me as material that is particular suited to Shyamalan's sensibilities/strengths*. A fun game: (1) Name an adaptation where a seemingly bad director/material pairing made for a good movie. (2) Name an adaptation where a seemingly good director/material pairing made for a bad movie. A bit depressing that question (2) is probably a lot easier to answer than question (1).
Via Richard Modiano at a_film_by: I liked this interview with Bertrand Tavernier. FWIW, I agree with him about John Ford, not so much about George Lucas. I had seen a few Tavernier movies over the years, but none made an impact until Safe Conduct, which I watched on DVD last year. I really loved it and am now looking forward to catching up with the rest of his movies.
And, if you haven't already, be sure to check back through all the posts that came out of Ed Howard's "Early Hawks Blog-a-Thon" which wrapped up yesterday. Lots of interesting posts, but I especially liked Glenn Kenny's on Walter Brennan's proto-Stumpy performances.
*Which I say as a huge Shyamalan fan.
There's also some back-and-forth over what "Sirkian" means. One of the issues that commenters seem to be skirting around is that the renewed interest in Sirk is partly due to a convergence of auteurist interests with camp aficionado interests. While the auteurist impulse is to take in the whole body of work and find the underlying connections, the camp aficionado focuses on the most extreme expressions of Sirk's aesthetic.
Via Tom Spurgeon, some outrage over the casting of M. Night Shyamalan's live-action Avatar adaptation. I'm a little surprised that these casting decisions were so boneheaded. I wonder if the commercial failure of Lady in the Water - which had a Utopian multi-cult vibe - made M. Night shy away from fighting for a more diverse cast. Also, I'm not very familiar with Avatar - I've half-watched an episode or two and have always meant to go through the DVDs at some point - but it does not strike me as material that is particular suited to Shyamalan's sensibilities/strengths*. A fun game: (1) Name an adaptation where a seemingly bad director/material pairing made for a good movie. (2) Name an adaptation where a seemingly good director/material pairing made for a bad movie. A bit depressing that question (2) is probably a lot easier to answer than question (1).
Via Richard Modiano at a_film_by: I liked this interview with Bertrand Tavernier. FWIW, I agree with him about John Ford, not so much about George Lucas. I had seen a few Tavernier movies over the years, but none made an impact until Safe Conduct, which I watched on DVD last year. I really loved it and am now looking forward to catching up with the rest of his movies.
And, if you haven't already, be sure to check back through all the posts that came out of Ed Howard's "Early Hawks Blog-a-Thon" which wrapped up yesterday. Lots of interesting posts, but I especially liked Glenn Kenny's on Walter Brennan's proto-Stumpy performances.
*Which I say as a huge Shyamalan fan.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Links: Movie Critics
I had never seen Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of Midnight Run until I followed a link from The House Next Door the other day, but reading it was like discovering the ur-text of the kind of criticism I've been trying to do/promote here for the last two years (or so). More and more I'm seeing my "big theme" as: "In criticism, appeals to principles may work rhetorically, but they obscure a necessarily contingent process." What I like so much about Rosenbaum's criticism is that it's always self-reflexive and aware of its own contingencies. (Incidentally, Jim Henley linked to this post and described it as me laying out my "standards", but they aren't really standards: just five different, not-necessarily-compatible things I enjoy from movie acting).
After poking around on Dan Sallitt's home page I ended up reading David Edelstein's Slate Book Club take on David Thomson from a few years ago. This is one of the best written examples of how not to read/judge a critic that I've ever come across. Edelstein's underlying problem with Thomson is that he disagrees with him on the relative worth of specific movies. The Altman paragraph Edelstein quotes seems to me like a very strong piece of criticism: it's evocative and challenging and, most importantly, offers a new angle on how some of Altman's major movies work. That it gives short shrift to this-or-that late Altman movie is besides the point. I think I've mentioned this before here, but I don't value a critic like, say, Michael Sicinski (my fave) because his opinions/tastes line up with my own. I like him because (a) he has interesting observations about movies, (b) he expresses these observations in an interesting and/or appealing manner, and (c) I wouldn't necessarily have made the same observations or expressed them in the same way. Any idea that even smells a little bit like "Good critics are the ones who agree with me" deserves to be held up to ridicule.
Speaking of ridicule: lots of it on Jim Emerson's blog directed at Armond White's latest obnoxious "Better Than" list. Pairing and comparing movies can be a revealing and interesting tactic, but, as Jim and his commenters point out, when White does it it confuses rather than clarifies. Still: I thought about White's lists while watching It's a Free World... last weekend. I couldn't help comparing it, favorably, to The Visitor. The Visitor obscures the issues its dealing with by abstracting them from their real world context, while It's a Free World... not brings these issues to light within their larger context. The Visitor is the more artfully made film - it's coherent, where It's a Free World... is choppy and threatens to go off its rails in a few places - but, at least in this case, a little less art may have been a good thing. And it helped me to get a handle on what Free World did well when I looked at it in terms of what The Visitor does well.
After poking around on Dan Sallitt's home page I ended up reading David Edelstein's Slate Book Club take on David Thomson from a few years ago. This is one of the best written examples of how not to read/judge a critic that I've ever come across. Edelstein's underlying problem with Thomson is that he disagrees with him on the relative worth of specific movies. The Altman paragraph Edelstein quotes seems to me like a very strong piece of criticism: it's evocative and challenging and, most importantly, offers a new angle on how some of Altman's major movies work. That it gives short shrift to this-or-that late Altman movie is besides the point. I think I've mentioned this before here, but I don't value a critic like, say, Michael Sicinski (my fave) because his opinions/tastes line up with my own. I like him because (a) he has interesting observations about movies, (b) he expresses these observations in an interesting and/or appealing manner, and (c) I wouldn't necessarily have made the same observations or expressed them in the same way. Any idea that even smells a little bit like "Good critics are the ones who agree with me" deserves to be held up to ridicule.
Speaking of ridicule: lots of it on Jim Emerson's blog directed at Armond White's latest obnoxious "Better Than" list. Pairing and comparing movies can be a revealing and interesting tactic, but, as Jim and his commenters point out, when White does it it confuses rather than clarifies. Still: I thought about White's lists while watching It's a Free World... last weekend. I couldn't help comparing it, favorably, to The Visitor. The Visitor obscures the issues its dealing with by abstracting them from their real world context, while It's a Free World... not brings these issues to light within their larger context. The Visitor is the more artfully made film - it's coherent, where It's a Free World... is choppy and threatens to go off its rails in a few places - but, at least in this case, a little less art may have been a good thing. And it helped me to get a handle on what Free World did well when I looked at it in terms of what The Visitor does well.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Links
This post on the "Ozzie and Harriet Syndrome" reminds me, once again, that no one today who invokes Ozzie and Harriet seems to have ever seen their TV show (link via Dirk Deppey). The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is not like Leave It to Beaver, where father knows best and each episode offers a little moral about proper living. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is much more its own thing: a precursor of both the immature dad sitcoms - like Everybody Loves Raymond - and more "experimental" sitcoms -like Buffalo Bill or Seinfeld (because, of course, conventions weren't as set in stone). For instance, in one of my favorite episodes that combines these two aspects of the show, Ozzie decides to protest the fast pace of the modern world by... staying in bed all day.
I find Jim Emerson's argument that the action movie elements in The Pineapple Express are meant to be read as "stoners imagining themselves the heroes of a movie they'd like to see" unconvincing as a literal interpretation of the movie. Despite all the evidence Jim musters, Occam's Razor leads me to think that this is more of a case of bending and mixing genres than an attempt at a story with multiple layers of reality. Still, there's a lot there to mull over and tease out regarding the way conventional narrative movies mix and match different levels of "movieness".
This piece makes a compelling case for 300 as the definitive movie of the Bush era. Some other contenders: Burn After Reading, 28 Weeks Later, Darkon, Flags of Our Fathers, Hostel, A History of Violence, The Descent, The Village, and Mystic River. Looking at this list, I'd argue that genre films manage to capture the era better than movies that try to deal with current events directly because (a) they act as allegories/metaphors with multiple possible readings/meanings (in other words they're slippery) and (b) filmmakers have more freedom with how they enact/realize/shape fantastic/unreal/"genre" elements than they do with "real world" elements (in other words they're more supple).
I find Jim Emerson's argument that the action movie elements in The Pineapple Express are meant to be read as "stoners imagining themselves the heroes of a movie they'd like to see" unconvincing as a literal interpretation of the movie. Despite all the evidence Jim musters, Occam's Razor leads me to think that this is more of a case of bending and mixing genres than an attempt at a story with multiple layers of reality. Still, there's a lot there to mull over and tease out regarding the way conventional narrative movies mix and match different levels of "movieness".
This piece makes a compelling case for 300 as the definitive movie of the Bush era. Some other contenders: Burn After Reading, 28 Weeks Later, Darkon, Flags of Our Fathers, Hostel, A History of Violence, The Descent, The Village, and Mystic River. Looking at this list, I'd argue that genre films manage to capture the era better than movies that try to deal with current events directly because (a) they act as allegories/metaphors with multiple possible readings/meanings (in other words they're slippery) and (b) filmmakers have more freedom with how they enact/realize/shape fantastic/unreal/"genre" elements than they do with "real world" elements (in other words they're more supple).
Friday, January 16, 2009
More thoughts on how we watch movies...
As a follow-up to my last post (which was a follow-up to this post from Jim Emerson):
I went to see Let the Right One In last night. For most of the movie, I had a fair amount of distanced admiration for the filmmaking, but, as Sean Collins put it in this (excellent) post I really felt all those minutes. I wasn't pulled in and/or engaged like I was with movies as different as The Dark Knight, The Flight of the Red Balloon, Rambo, or In Bruges - movies that "had" me almost from the word go.
But the last twenty minutes of Let the Right One In put a whole new light on the entire experience: they retroactively made the entire movie cohere for me and I went from admiring the movie's pieces from a distance to fully embracing it as a whole.
I had the opposite experience with Happy-Go-Lucky: I was definitely "with" the movie from the beginning - thanks mainly to Sally Hawkins' performance - to the point where I was willing to forgive things that seemed like missteps/headscratchers (the scene with the homeless man). But the final scenes between Poppy and her driving instructor, where Mike Leigh's schematic message finally locks into place, struck me as being so heavy-handed and dishonest that they retroactively made earlier scenes seem more heavy-handed and dishonest than they had at first (especially the sequence where Poppy visits her married, settled sister). Once these final scenes made me certain of what Mike Leigh was trying to do with the whole, little problems that I had been willing to ignore became bigger problems that I didn't want to ignore and pieces that hadn't even looked like problems turned into problems because of the way they fit together within the bigger picture.
Another way to think of this is that movies are both a performance - those bits and pieces - and an object - the whole they add up to.
I went to see Let the Right One In last night. For most of the movie, I had a fair amount of distanced admiration for the filmmaking, but, as Sean Collins put it in this (excellent) post I really felt all those minutes. I wasn't pulled in and/or engaged like I was with movies as different as The Dark Knight, The Flight of the Red Balloon, Rambo, or In Bruges - movies that "had" me almost from the word go.
But the last twenty minutes of Let the Right One In put a whole new light on the entire experience: they retroactively made the entire movie cohere for me and I went from admiring the movie's pieces from a distance to fully embracing it as a whole.
I had the opposite experience with Happy-Go-Lucky: I was definitely "with" the movie from the beginning - thanks mainly to Sally Hawkins' performance - to the point where I was willing to forgive things that seemed like missteps/headscratchers (the scene with the homeless man). But the final scenes between Poppy and her driving instructor, where Mike Leigh's schematic message finally locks into place, struck me as being so heavy-handed and dishonest that they retroactively made earlier scenes seem more heavy-handed and dishonest than they had at first (especially the sequence where Poppy visits her married, settled sister). Once these final scenes made me certain of what Mike Leigh was trying to do with the whole, little problems that I had been willing to ignore became bigger problems that I didn't want to ignore and pieces that hadn't even looked like problems turned into problems because of the way they fit together within the bigger picture.
Another way to think of this is that movies are both a performance - those bits and pieces - and an object - the whole they add up to.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Some thoughts on how we watch movies...
Jim Emerson has started a very interesting series of posts on The Dark Knight. I thought it was a very good, but flawed film, and, though Jim thinks it's a bad movie, the issues he raises tie into why I don't think it's a very good film, full stop, let alone a great film.
My take is that it's a sloppier piece of filmmaking than Batman Begins (and a much sloppier piece of filmmaking than The Prestige), but that the many moment-to-moment examples of spatial/plot incoherence are overwhelmed and - to a certain extend - made irrelevant by the movie's thematic and emotional intensity and specificity. Or, rather: the incoherent moments are overwhelmed by the intensity and it is the specificity of how that intensity is achieved that makes it easy for those of us who like the film to ignore them even when, after the fact, someone like Jim points them out to us.
I think that you can do these or similar kinds of exercises with other movies on this tier - "very good, but flawed" like No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood - but I doubt they have much effect in terms of changing a sympathetic viewer's mind. This can still be a useful and/or interesting conversation to have, but, at one point in the comments Jim says that "the movie" comes before "don't like", which I think is true only to a certain extent. Most people - critics included - do not watch a movie with a mental checklist of how all the little pieces are falling into place or how they're not falling into place. Rather, I think we're always moving between the little details and the Big Picture that's coming together in our heads. In fact, without some sense of the Big Picture, we can't even begin to make sense of the little details.
And there are some movies that require you to buy into the Big Picture upfront, because, otherwise, none of the little details are going to make sense. Take A History of Violence or Eastern Promises: if you approach these as if they're meant to be "realistic" crime dramas, they'll probably come off as sloppy, incoherent, and ludicrous. I don't think either of these movies has any major flaws of the kind Jim is talking about (or I was talking about here or Dan Sallitt was talking about here), but if you're not a sympathetic viewer, every moment probably looks like a flaw.
My take is that it's a sloppier piece of filmmaking than Batman Begins (and a much sloppier piece of filmmaking than The Prestige), but that the many moment-to-moment examples of spatial/plot incoherence are overwhelmed and - to a certain extend - made irrelevant by the movie's thematic and emotional intensity and specificity. Or, rather: the incoherent moments are overwhelmed by the intensity and it is the specificity of how that intensity is achieved that makes it easy for those of us who like the film to ignore them even when, after the fact, someone like Jim points them out to us.
I think that you can do these or similar kinds of exercises with other movies on this tier - "very good, but flawed" like No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood - but I doubt they have much effect in terms of changing a sympathetic viewer's mind. This can still be a useful and/or interesting conversation to have, but, at one point in the comments Jim says that "the movie" comes before "don't like", which I think is true only to a certain extent. Most people - critics included - do not watch a movie with a mental checklist of how all the little pieces are falling into place or how they're not falling into place. Rather, I think we're always moving between the little details and the Big Picture that's coming together in our heads. In fact, without some sense of the Big Picture, we can't even begin to make sense of the little details.
And there are some movies that require you to buy into the Big Picture upfront, because, otherwise, none of the little details are going to make sense. Take A History of Violence or Eastern Promises: if you approach these as if they're meant to be "realistic" crime dramas, they'll probably come off as sloppy, incoherent, and ludicrous. I don't think either of these movies has any major flaws of the kind Jim is talking about (or I was talking about here or Dan Sallitt was talking about here), but if you're not a sympathetic viewer, every moment probably looks like a flaw.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Fidelity
There's no correlation between how faithful a movie adaptation is to its source material and how good it is. Accusing a movie of infidelity is a lot like accusing a movie of historical inaccuracy. As I wrote in this post:
So we can use "source infidelity" as a clubm, but also as a hook. That's basically what I was doing in my post on The Spirit. It isn't the fact that Frank Miller's movie isn't faithful to Will Eisner's comics that makes it a bad movie, but comparing what it does unsuccessfully to what Eisner's comics do successfully is useful and illuminating. More importantly, perhaps, it is a natural comparison to make.
We can also talk about different kinds of infidelities. The movies of Atonement and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe all stick reasonably close to their source novels in terms of incident, character, and theme, but fail to translate the sensibility of the original, because they substitute the conventions of contemporary, mainstream narrative cinema for the more personal voice of the respective novelists.
The Narnia movie takes C.S. Lewis' "stuff" and presents it as a souped-up action/adventure fantasy, with none of the fragility of the original story. Despite its heaviness as an allegory, I think that Lion shows a light touch (especially when compared to Tolkien's more elaborate fantasy novels). The Narnia books are more bedtime story than fantasy epic, something that the movie completely misses.
The movie of Atonement is high-energy and twisty-turny - a period melodrama played like The Usual Suspects. It's a choice that works (on a certain level), but it also jettisons the more contemplative aspects of the original novel (which happen to be those elements which made the book memorable). The effect is that the movie is more intense than the book, but also less gripping - or maybe less grippable: there's not as much there to think over once the movie's done.
Sometimes I get the feeling that unsympathetic viewers will bring in a concept like "historical accuracy" to make their argument against a movie stronger: it gives the impression that they are holding the movie up to an objective standard. This is a suspect maneuver, IMO, because most viewers (general audience members, film critics, and film buffs alike) are not at all consistent in terms of which movies they hold to that standard. "Historical accuracy" is like a club they pick up when they feel the need to beat on movies they don't like.
So we can use "source infidelity" as a clubm, but also as a hook. That's basically what I was doing in my post on The Spirit. It isn't the fact that Frank Miller's movie isn't faithful to Will Eisner's comics that makes it a bad movie, but comparing what it does unsuccessfully to what Eisner's comics do successfully is useful and illuminating. More importantly, perhaps, it is a natural comparison to make.
We can also talk about different kinds of infidelities. The movies of Atonement and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe all stick reasonably close to their source novels in terms of incident, character, and theme, but fail to translate the sensibility of the original, because they substitute the conventions of contemporary, mainstream narrative cinema for the more personal voice of the respective novelists.
The Narnia movie takes C.S. Lewis' "stuff" and presents it as a souped-up action/adventure fantasy, with none of the fragility of the original story. Despite its heaviness as an allegory, I think that Lion shows a light touch (especially when compared to Tolkien's more elaborate fantasy novels). The Narnia books are more bedtime story than fantasy epic, something that the movie completely misses.
The movie of Atonement is high-energy and twisty-turny - a period melodrama played like The Usual Suspects. It's a choice that works (on a certain level), but it also jettisons the more contemplative aspects of the original novel (which happen to be those elements which made the book memorable). The effect is that the movie is more intense than the book, but also less gripping - or maybe less grippable: there's not as much there to think over once the movie's done.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Spirit
Kim Thompson says that The Spirit is bad in a way that suggests Frank Miller made exactly the movie he set out to make. I think he may be right, but a big part of what made watching the movie such a disappointing experience was that there were hints - around the edges - of what a better Spirit movie might look like.
Specifically: in the opening and closing voice-overs, the Spirit rhapsodizes about his beloved city, but the city plays no part in the movie. Where the Gothams of either the Burton or Nolan Batman movies are fully-realized places, Central City in Miller's movie is barely even a background: to call it abstract is giving it too much credit. Calling it generic, even, implies that there's some form there that's fulfilling certain conventions, but there's just nothing.
Anyway - that absence points to how Miller should have made this movie: with Central City as the main character and the Spirit operating in the background. Hey - he could even have split the movie up into three separate stories - maybe even stories from Will Eisner's comics - with some recurring characters to give us a sense of a living city.
For me, it isn't a question of whether or not Miller should have been more faithful to the original comics. However, completely ignoring what made the original comics interesting and sucessful - or rather, giving it lip service but not following through - seems like a bad idea.
This happens to tie into my Comic Book Pet Theory #2 (#1 is the thing where I say that Watchmen is all about gravity and that Dave Gibbons doesn't get enough credit for it): apart from a few early homages to The Spirit in Daredevil, Frank Miller's work bears no relationship to anything Will Eisner has ever done. Miller keeps trying to pass himself off as an "Eisner acolyte", but they are completely different artists. Eisner is interested in the city - in its geography and in the way that geography shapes the lives of its denizens. It's the line that runs through his work from The Spirit to the graphic novels. His heirs are Ben Katchor and Chris Ware. Miller is an action/adventure cartoonist working with outsized figure-drawing and Steranko-inspired page layouts. Though I don't think he's ever said this, he's a follower of Kirby, and, to the extent that you can talk about his innovations, the main one is that he either (a) puts exaggerated Kirby-style super-hero figures into non-super hero genres (Sin City, 300) or (b) brings various noir elements to bear on super-hero comics (The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One). (I think his best super-hero work is The Dark Knight Strikes Again partly because he's dealing with super-hero comics on their own terms, even if he seems to find those terms somewhat retarded).
It's (unfortunately) not surprising then, that a cartoonist whose work centers on figure-drawing would make a movie that is so (detrimentally) "figure"-centric (and I don't say actor-centric because none of the people on screen are creating characters or playing objectives or doing any of the other things we like to see actors do). That's partly why Central City is such a non-entity: Miller is only interested in it as a backdrop for highly-stylized images of movie stars and would-be movie stars. The problem, as Michael Barrier would point out, is that, the drawn figure tends to be much more expressive and much more congenial to exaggerated expression than bodies on film. So Miller is trying to do something he knows, but he's working in a medium where it's very hard to do that kind of thing and he's not using the right kinds of tools.
I'd still argue that what he's trying to do, doesn't really make a good fit with the material, although that becomes a side point as Miller doesn't even do what he seems to be trying to do all that well.
Specifically: in the opening and closing voice-overs, the Spirit rhapsodizes about his beloved city, but the city plays no part in the movie. Where the Gothams of either the Burton or Nolan Batman movies are fully-realized places, Central City in Miller's movie is barely even a background: to call it abstract is giving it too much credit. Calling it generic, even, implies that there's some form there that's fulfilling certain conventions, but there's just nothing.
Anyway - that absence points to how Miller should have made this movie: with Central City as the main character and the Spirit operating in the background. Hey - he could even have split the movie up into three separate stories - maybe even stories from Will Eisner's comics - with some recurring characters to give us a sense of a living city.
For me, it isn't a question of whether or not Miller should have been more faithful to the original comics. However, completely ignoring what made the original comics interesting and sucessful - or rather, giving it lip service but not following through - seems like a bad idea.
This happens to tie into my Comic Book Pet Theory #2 (#1 is the thing where I say that Watchmen is all about gravity and that Dave Gibbons doesn't get enough credit for it): apart from a few early homages to The Spirit in Daredevil, Frank Miller's work bears no relationship to anything Will Eisner has ever done. Miller keeps trying to pass himself off as an "Eisner acolyte", but they are completely different artists. Eisner is interested in the city - in its geography and in the way that geography shapes the lives of its denizens. It's the line that runs through his work from The Spirit to the graphic novels. His heirs are Ben Katchor and Chris Ware. Miller is an action/adventure cartoonist working with outsized figure-drawing and Steranko-inspired page layouts. Though I don't think he's ever said this, he's a follower of Kirby, and, to the extent that you can talk about his innovations, the main one is that he either (a) puts exaggerated Kirby-style super-hero figures into non-super hero genres (Sin City, 300) or (b) brings various noir elements to bear on super-hero comics (The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One). (I think his best super-hero work is The Dark Knight Strikes Again partly because he's dealing with super-hero comics on their own terms, even if he seems to find those terms somewhat retarded).
It's (unfortunately) not surprising then, that a cartoonist whose work centers on figure-drawing would make a movie that is so (detrimentally) "figure"-centric (and I don't say actor-centric because none of the people on screen are creating characters or playing objectives or doing any of the other things we like to see actors do). That's partly why Central City is such a non-entity: Miller is only interested in it as a backdrop for highly-stylized images of movie stars and would-be movie stars. The problem, as Michael Barrier would point out, is that, the drawn figure tends to be much more expressive and much more congenial to exaggerated expression than bodies on film. So Miller is trying to do something he knows, but he's working in a medium where it's very hard to do that kind of thing and he's not using the right kinds of tools.
I'd still argue that what he's trying to do, doesn't really make a good fit with the material, although that becomes a side point as Miller doesn't even do what he seems to be trying to do all that well.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Forager's 2008 Big List of Stuff
I usually don't get around to finalizing my annual "Best" lists until after I've had a chance to catch up with all of the year's releases. Going by past experience, that means my 2008 Best lists wouldn't be ready until May 2009.
Here's something different for this year: a big, fruit salad list of my favorite arts/culture stuff from 2008* that I've seen/read/experienced in 2008.
I wanted to annotate each of the entries, but I also wanted to make sure I posted this before I went on my Christmas vacation - so there are some "blanks" here that I might come back to fill in later.
No music here, because I've mostly given up on listening to new releases, although I did like the Coldplay album quite a bit. No novels here because I'm a couple of years behind there, too. No a(r/l)t comix either, for the same reasons: I'm always playing catch up!
I'm on Christmas vacation now, so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to respond, but questions and comments are always appreciated.
1. Lost Season 4 - In certain RPG circles there's a recurring debate that goes something like this:
On the one side, you have people saying that Star Wars is cool because of all the spaceships, aliens, and powers, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules for all of the cool spaceships, aliens, and powers. On the other side, you have people saying that Star Wars is compelling because of its underlying dramatic and thematic concerns, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules to help address these dramatic and thematic concerns. People on this side of the debate tend to dismiss all the powers, spaceships, and aliens as "mere color"- i.e. trappings that you could get rid of and still have something that was Star Wars-like (i.e. something that had the same kind of pulpy feel and mythic reach).
I take a middle ground: Star Wars is compelling and cool because of the virtuous cycle set up between its unique sci-fi trappings (the specific spaceships, powers, and aliens) and its thematic concerns. I think all of the best fantasy and sci-fi manages to find this kind of "sweet spot" where the "rules" of the mythos (i.e., how the Force works, how the Republic is organized politically, etc.) creatively constrain and shape the action and themes.
Sometime during it's second season I started describing Lost as a series that moment-for-moment was one of the most entertaining shows on television, but on a larger, "seasonal" scale was extremely unsatisfying. In other words, they couldn't find that sweet spot. All the little bits and pieces worked, but they didn't seem like they added up to anything and it was frustrating because it seemed like they were supposed to add up to something. In his piece on the Season 4 finale, Sean argued that getting too concerned about the big picture was, perhaps, not the best way to watch this show. But it's hard not to get caught up in all the details of the Lost mythos, since they're interwoven so completely into the action. Anyway, I think it wasn't until the end of Season 3 and (especially) the entirety of Season 4 that the Lost team perfected the balance between micro and macro: moment-to-moment the show was as strong as ever and the slowly but steadily emerging outlines of the "big picture" helped to ground these moments and give them greater thematic resonance because of the way they fit into the mosaic of the mythos.
2. Profit motive and the whispering wind - I want to write something of my own, but for now read this.
3. Cartooning class with Matthew Thurber - Taking this course was definitely one of the best decisions I made all year. Matt is a very good teacher and the class was laid back and a lot of fun. Plus, I learned a lot and even ended up getting to make my own minicomic. I've been a comics/cartoons fan for just about as long as I can remember, but the last time I ever really tried to draw a comic was back when I was in the third grade. What's interesting to me as a guy who spends a decent percentage of his spare time thinking about/writing about comics is how much insight making even a pretty basic minicomic gave me into comics in general. It was an eye-opening experience. Like - I love that part in Donald Phelps' essay on Gould's Dick Tracy where he talks about the way Gould uses blacks, but it wasn't until I tried (and failed) to get a similar effect that I was able to grasp exactly what Gould had achieved.
4. The revival of Last Year at Marienbad at Film Forum - What a difference a print makes! Fred Camper, one of my favorite film critics, always emphasizes that if you've only seen a movie on video, you haven't really seen it. After having first seen Last Year at Marienbad, years ago, on a pretty lousy VHS tape, watching it on a beautiful print at the Film Forum was a revelation. On video, the image was cramped and fuzzy. The subtitles were barely readable and incomplete: I could comprehend French well enough to know that stuff was left out, but not enough to follow the twisty-turny narration. At the Film Forum, everything was clear. This is a beautiful, clever movie - and it's also pretty funny.
5. The Fold - A funny, super smart erotic, sci-fi thriller webseries (co-written and produced by my friends Ray and Polly, but I'd recommend . Erotic, not so much because it's made to turn you on (although it might), but because, unlike most fiction, it acknowledges that the part of us given to erotic fantasizing isn't completely compartmentalized from the rest our lives. It's filled with lots of smart, sci-fi-ish observations about the way Web 2.0 has affected our sense of the border between public and private life and how that, in turn, has affected those fantasies.
6. Burn After Reading - I wrote about this movie already, here.
7. Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job Season 3 - I've written a little bit about Tim and Eric before, here. This season of their show had some of their funniest moments, but it's also probably their most inaccessible body of work, in that it's more self-referential than ever, more focused on exploring its own little world. This has a downside - guests and bits trotted out seemingly as "fanservice" - but it also allows for stuff like the "Jim and Derrick" episode, one of the best takes on MTV-style youth culture since Beavis and Butthead.
8. Wall-E - I like that A.O. Scott has to qualify his praise of Milk as being the best live action mainstream American movie he saw all year.
9. Slam Dunk Vol. 1 - I've gotten back into reading manga, but on most of the series I'm following I'm waaaaay behind. Slam Dunk is the only "new" manga I've started and Vol. 1 is the only manga I've read that was actually released this year. So this was the first year ever that the bulk of my comics-reading enjoyment came from manga, so I'll Slam Dunk stand in for all of the stuff I read and enjoyed.
10. Jason Statham - Almost singlehandedly keeping the action movie alive.
11. The "Brand New Day" and Beyond Era of The Amazing Spider-Man - I read some comics that I thought were better than these and a few comics that I enjoyed more, but I really dig what the writing/editorial team is doing with this book. Which is, as I've written before, trying to elaborate and expand on the John Romita/Stan Lee run without straying too far from what makes the character and concept work. In theory, I'm all for wild and woolly super-hero comics that make no sense to outsiders and I genuinely like those idiosyncrasies of super-hero comics that get filed off when they get turned into super-hero movies, but, in practice, the decisions made by the Spidey Team have led to better super-hero comics (in just about any way you want to define "better") than the weirder/more ambitious ones made by the folks over at DC or in Marvel's "Event Department".
Anyway, this has gotten me back in the comic store on a weekly basis, something I couldn't have imagined happening at this time last year.
12. Rambo - I want to write about this movie, but don't have time to do it justice right now. I'll just say that I think this movie is a kind of inversion of Saving Private Ryan, esp. in terms of how salvation relates to warfare and in terms of how it addresses the question "what good can come of the kind of mechanized violence that rips people to shreds". It's The Wild Bunch for the new millennium. (And this reminds me that I still need to see JCVD.)
13. The Happening - I wrote about this a couple of times.
14. Black Summer by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp - I wrote about this comic already, here. I'm not as into their follow-up, No Heroes - it's #0 issue was really great, the next two issues were a bit of a let down - but I still think Ryp is one of the few guys drawing super-hero comics who'd be worth following no matter who was doing the writing. Frank Quitely would be one of the others. Luckily, they both tend to work with guys who know how to write these kinds of things.
15. All of the classic comic strip collections that I hope to either get as Christmas gifts or get for myself with any B&N gift cards I might recieve - Kind of cheating since these aren't things I've actually read. But it definitely makes me very happy that there's the distinct possibility that I'll be able to spend New Year's Eve pouring over that Scorchy Smith collection.
*More or less: I always allow for some wiggle room.
Here's something different for this year: a big, fruit salad list of my favorite arts/culture stuff from 2008* that I've seen/read/experienced in 2008.
I wanted to annotate each of the entries, but I also wanted to make sure I posted this before I went on my Christmas vacation - so there are some "blanks" here that I might come back to fill in later.
No music here, because I've mostly given up on listening to new releases, although I did like the Coldplay album quite a bit. No novels here because I'm a couple of years behind there, too. No a(r/l)t comix either, for the same reasons: I'm always playing catch up!
I'm on Christmas vacation now, so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to respond, but questions and comments are always appreciated.
1. Lost Season 4 - In certain RPG circles there's a recurring debate that goes something like this:
On the one side, you have people saying that Star Wars is cool because of all the spaceships, aliens, and powers, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules for all of the cool spaceships, aliens, and powers. On the other side, you have people saying that Star Wars is compelling because of its underlying dramatic and thematic concerns, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules to help address these dramatic and thematic concerns. People on this side of the debate tend to dismiss all the powers, spaceships, and aliens as "mere color"- i.e. trappings that you could get rid of and still have something that was Star Wars-like (i.e. something that had the same kind of pulpy feel and mythic reach).
I take a middle ground: Star Wars is compelling and cool because of the virtuous cycle set up between its unique sci-fi trappings (the specific spaceships, powers, and aliens) and its thematic concerns. I think all of the best fantasy and sci-fi manages to find this kind of "sweet spot" where the "rules" of the mythos (i.e., how the Force works, how the Republic is organized politically, etc.) creatively constrain and shape the action and themes.
Sometime during it's second season I started describing Lost as a series that moment-for-moment was one of the most entertaining shows on television, but on a larger, "seasonal" scale was extremely unsatisfying. In other words, they couldn't find that sweet spot. All the little bits and pieces worked, but they didn't seem like they added up to anything and it was frustrating because it seemed like they were supposed to add up to something. In his piece on the Season 4 finale, Sean argued that getting too concerned about the big picture was, perhaps, not the best way to watch this show. But it's hard not to get caught up in all the details of the Lost mythos, since they're interwoven so completely into the action. Anyway, I think it wasn't until the end of Season 3 and (especially) the entirety of Season 4 that the Lost team perfected the balance between micro and macro: moment-to-moment the show was as strong as ever and the slowly but steadily emerging outlines of the "big picture" helped to ground these moments and give them greater thematic resonance because of the way they fit into the mosaic of the mythos.
2. Profit motive and the whispering wind - I want to write something of my own, but for now read this.
3. Cartooning class with Matthew Thurber - Taking this course was definitely one of the best decisions I made all year. Matt is a very good teacher and the class was laid back and a lot of fun. Plus, I learned a lot and even ended up getting to make my own minicomic. I've been a comics/cartoons fan for just about as long as I can remember, but the last time I ever really tried to draw a comic was back when I was in the third grade. What's interesting to me as a guy who spends a decent percentage of his spare time thinking about/writing about comics is how much insight making even a pretty basic minicomic gave me into comics in general. It was an eye-opening experience. Like - I love that part in Donald Phelps' essay on Gould's Dick Tracy where he talks about the way Gould uses blacks, but it wasn't until I tried (and failed) to get a similar effect that I was able to grasp exactly what Gould had achieved.
4. The revival of Last Year at Marienbad at Film Forum - What a difference a print makes! Fred Camper, one of my favorite film critics, always emphasizes that if you've only seen a movie on video, you haven't really seen it. After having first seen Last Year at Marienbad, years ago, on a pretty lousy VHS tape, watching it on a beautiful print at the Film Forum was a revelation. On video, the image was cramped and fuzzy. The subtitles were barely readable and incomplete: I could comprehend French well enough to know that stuff was left out, but not enough to follow the twisty-turny narration. At the Film Forum, everything was clear. This is a beautiful, clever movie - and it's also pretty funny.
5. The Fold - A funny, super smart erotic, sci-fi thriller webseries (co-written and produced by my friends Ray and Polly, but I'd recommend . Erotic, not so much because it's made to turn you on (although it might), but because, unlike most fiction, it acknowledges that the part of us given to erotic fantasizing isn't completely compartmentalized from the rest our lives. It's filled with lots of smart, sci-fi-ish observations about the way Web 2.0 has affected our sense of the border between public and private life and how that, in turn, has affected those fantasies.
6. Burn After Reading - I wrote about this movie already, here.
7. Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job Season 3 - I've written a little bit about Tim and Eric before, here. This season of their show had some of their funniest moments, but it's also probably their most inaccessible body of work, in that it's more self-referential than ever, more focused on exploring its own little world. This has a downside - guests and bits trotted out seemingly as "fanservice" - but it also allows for stuff like the "Jim and Derrick" episode, one of the best takes on MTV-style youth culture since Beavis and Butthead.
8. Wall-E - I like that A.O. Scott has to qualify his praise of Milk as being the best live action mainstream American movie he saw all year.
9. Slam Dunk Vol. 1 - I've gotten back into reading manga, but on most of the series I'm following I'm waaaaay behind. Slam Dunk is the only "new" manga I've started and Vol. 1 is the only manga I've read that was actually released this year. So this was the first year ever that the bulk of my comics-reading enjoyment came from manga, so I'll Slam Dunk stand in for all of the stuff I read and enjoyed.
10. Jason Statham - Almost singlehandedly keeping the action movie alive.
11. The "Brand New Day" and Beyond Era of The Amazing Spider-Man - I read some comics that I thought were better than these and a few comics that I enjoyed more, but I really dig what the writing/editorial team is doing with this book. Which is, as I've written before, trying to elaborate and expand on the John Romita/Stan Lee run without straying too far from what makes the character and concept work. In theory, I'm all for wild and woolly super-hero comics that make no sense to outsiders and I genuinely like those idiosyncrasies of super-hero comics that get filed off when they get turned into super-hero movies, but, in practice, the decisions made by the Spidey Team have led to better super-hero comics (in just about any way you want to define "better") than the weirder/more ambitious ones made by the folks over at DC or in Marvel's "Event Department".
Anyway, this has gotten me back in the comic store on a weekly basis, something I couldn't have imagined happening at this time last year.
12. Rambo - I want to write about this movie, but don't have time to do it justice right now. I'll just say that I think this movie is a kind of inversion of Saving Private Ryan, esp. in terms of how salvation relates to warfare and in terms of how it addresses the question "what good can come of the kind of mechanized violence that rips people to shreds". It's The Wild Bunch for the new millennium. (And this reminds me that I still need to see JCVD.)
13. The Happening - I wrote about this a couple of times.
14. Black Summer by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp - I wrote about this comic already, here. I'm not as into their follow-up, No Heroes - it's #0 issue was really great, the next two issues were a bit of a let down - but I still think Ryp is one of the few guys drawing super-hero comics who'd be worth following no matter who was doing the writing. Frank Quitely would be one of the others. Luckily, they both tend to work with guys who know how to write these kinds of things.
15. All of the classic comic strip collections that I hope to either get as Christmas gifts or get for myself with any B&N gift cards I might recieve - Kind of cheating since these aren't things I've actually read. But it definitely makes me very happy that there's the distinct possibility that I'll be able to spend New Year's Eve pouring over that Scorchy Smith collection.
*More or less: I always allow for some wiggle room.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Don't Like
Here are some recentish movies I don't like:
Untraceable - like Saw for people who are too squeamish for Saw. But what's the point of that, really?
Cloverfield - Lots of imagination/thought went into marketing. Very little went into filmmaking.
Vantage Point - The point of breaking up a movie down by different characters' p.o.v.s is to evoke the sense that no one personal can ever know the complete truth. Here it's just a gimmick to try to trick us into thinking there's more going on here than in your standard episode of 24 (there isn't).
Surfwise - I hate it when documentaries massage their information to make a more conventionally shaped story. In this case, leaving out obviously damning info until the midway point to serve as a dramatic "gotcha".
The King of Kong - I hate it when documentaries massage their information to make a more conventionally shaped story. In this case, altering the facts and the timeline to make someone out as "the bad guy".
Tropic Thunder - No organizing intelligence behind the filmmaking. Plus, Stiller works way too hard at his gags.
21 - Morally and aesthetically repellent. It's ok to betray people to get what you want as long as those people were dicks to you first. WTF?!?! Also - it looks like a beer commercial.
In the Valley of Elah - Earnest and it's heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, the earnestness doesn't mesh well with the pulpy mystery plot.
Atonement - Works really hard to let you know that this isn't Masterpiece Theatre. In the process, defangs the book and turns it into a fairly conventional melodrama/romance.
Juno - Good supporting cast cannot save film from unbelievable central character and unbearable indieverse stylings.
Sweeney Todd - You can't cast someone who can't sing as Sweeney Todd, because you need to be able to sing effortlessly before you can give a performance while singing. Johnny Depp's little voice turns a giant character into a pipsqueak, which drains the horror from the story. Also - awful CGI version of London makes me long for MGM soundstages.
The Transformers - Likable enough, but, really, really badly made. Lots of boneheaded ideas like: two entirely superfluous subplots involving characters who are not Transformers, having the action shot so quickly we can't appreciate any of the robot design work that the filmmakers spent millions of dollars on.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters - Like 5 episodes of the TV show stuck together. Unfortunately, though the TV show can be genius, usually it's only genius about once ever three episodes.
Hot Rod - Just what you were waiting for: a bog standard SNL comedy shot in the "quirky" indie style of Napoleon Dynamite. I love to see independent voices get turned into easily marketable fashions. Yay capitalism!
Wild Hogs - A good idea - middle class dudes playing at outlaws - but executed without any guts while making all the easy jokes.
La Vie en rose - Mind boggling stupid. The central performance had 100% more acting than any other performance I've seen in the last year or so.
Evan Almighty - It's not just that there are "getting hit in the balls" jokes. It's that the "getting hit in the balls" jokes are handled in the most lazy-ass way possible. Also - it cost over $100 Million and it looks (in terms of design and cinematography) worse than many movies made for mere tens of thousands of dollars.
Untraceable - like Saw for people who are too squeamish for Saw. But what's the point of that, really?
Cloverfield - Lots of imagination/thought went into marketing. Very little went into filmmaking.
Vantage Point - The point of breaking up a movie down by different characters' p.o.v.s is to evoke the sense that no one personal can ever know the complete truth. Here it's just a gimmick to try to trick us into thinking there's more going on here than in your standard episode of 24 (there isn't).
Surfwise - I hate it when documentaries massage their information to make a more conventionally shaped story. In this case, leaving out obviously damning info until the midway point to serve as a dramatic "gotcha".
The King of Kong - I hate it when documentaries massage their information to make a more conventionally shaped story. In this case, altering the facts and the timeline to make someone out as "the bad guy".
Tropic Thunder - No organizing intelligence behind the filmmaking. Plus, Stiller works way too hard at his gags.
21 - Morally and aesthetically repellent. It's ok to betray people to get what you want as long as those people were dicks to you first. WTF?!?! Also - it looks like a beer commercial.
In the Valley of Elah - Earnest and it's heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, the earnestness doesn't mesh well with the pulpy mystery plot.
Atonement - Works really hard to let you know that this isn't Masterpiece Theatre. In the process, defangs the book and turns it into a fairly conventional melodrama/romance.
Juno - Good supporting cast cannot save film from unbelievable central character and unbearable indieverse stylings.
Sweeney Todd - You can't cast someone who can't sing as Sweeney Todd, because you need to be able to sing effortlessly before you can give a performance while singing. Johnny Depp's little voice turns a giant character into a pipsqueak, which drains the horror from the story. Also - awful CGI version of London makes me long for MGM soundstages.
The Transformers - Likable enough, but, really, really badly made. Lots of boneheaded ideas like: two entirely superfluous subplots involving characters who are not Transformers, having the action shot so quickly we can't appreciate any of the robot design work that the filmmakers spent millions of dollars on.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters - Like 5 episodes of the TV show stuck together. Unfortunately, though the TV show can be genius, usually it's only genius about once ever three episodes.
Hot Rod - Just what you were waiting for: a bog standard SNL comedy shot in the "quirky" indie style of Napoleon Dynamite. I love to see independent voices get turned into easily marketable fashions. Yay capitalism!
Wild Hogs - A good idea - middle class dudes playing at outlaws - but executed without any guts while making all the easy jokes.
La Vie en rose - Mind boggling stupid. The central performance had 100% more acting than any other performance I've seen in the last year or so.
Evan Almighty - It's not just that there are "getting hit in the balls" jokes. It's that the "getting hit in the balls" jokes are handled in the most lazy-ass way possible. Also - it cost over $100 Million and it looks (in terms of design and cinematography) worse than many movies made for mere tens of thousands of dollars.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Action Movies, Part 3: Taxonomy!
Here's a brief history of the posts related to this conversation on action movies:
1: Movie Club discussion of T-2.
2: My first Gold Age of Action Movies post. Turned out to be the only one (the follow-up post on Speed remains half-written).
3: Sean's response is really worth reading. (That Speed post was supposed to address a lot of these concerns - honest!!! ;) )
4: Post on f/x and super-hero movies.
5: Sean's Bourne/Bond post and my response (check out the comments, too).
Which brings us (mostly) up to date... I'm going to use this post to regroup a bit and throw some more ideas out there.
I see two major trends in contempo American action cinema - two major branches on the family tree - and both are a response to the challenge of CGI-driven fx.
Branch 1: "Plastic Playsets and Comic Book Movies". These movies present stylized action in stylized worlds. The use of space in these movies tends to be expressionistic. There is an emphasis on self-contained settings and a decided lack of emphasis on creating the illusion of contiguous spaces.
(By which I mean: compare the opening of Speed - which goes to great lengths to show us the elevator shaft and exactly how the elevator shaft is connected to the rest of the building - or the entirety of Die Hard - where both the "geography" of the building and how the building fits into its surroundings are important - to the Matrix movies - where the major action scenes are set in places that are like closed-off levels of a video game (the rooftops, the hallway, the highway).)
This branch takes CGI and uses it to make movies more like comic books (once again, I'm following Bordwell), anime, and wuxia.
Major works include: The Matrix, the Star Wars prequels, Sin City, Kill Bill, 300, Beowulf, Speed Racer.
Minor works include: many videogame adaptations, 30 Days of Night.
Interesting outliers: Fight Club and Panic Room.
Branch 2: "Impact Impressionism". This is what I've been talking about in the Bourne/Bond post. There's a focus here on any number of techniques that read as "realistic" and are meant to give off a "you are there"-feeling. The illusion of spatial authenticity and integrity so important to "Golden Age" action movies takes a backseat to creating the illusion of integrity and authenticity of feeling. The videogame analogue here is the first-person shooter.*
Branch 1 uses CGI to create an intense fantasy experience, Branch 2 uses CGI (but tries to mask this use) to create an intense experience of realism.
Major works include: the Omaha beach sequence from Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Tony Scott movies, the Bourne Movies.
Minor works include: Mission: Impossible 3, Quantum of Solace.
Outliers (not fully action movies but indicative of the trend): Phone Booth, Tigerland, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later.
I tend to be more down, in general, on Branch 2 movies for a number of reasons.
One is that, as a practical matter, I think it leads to sloppier filmmaking, or, rather, it allows the filmmakers to get away with being sloppier than they otherwise might be.
Two is that - and this might be my crankiness getting in the way of my judgment - critics tend to talk about these movies in terms of greater realism, ignoring the fact that the realism is superficial. And that's partly the filmmakers fault, in that Greengrass, say, adapts the cinema verite style from his "non-fiction" movies when he's making the Bournes.
Related to this: I see the "Impressionistic" Style as part of a larger trend away from a kind of filmmaking where meaning lies in the shot and towards a kind of filmmaking where meaning lies more in the rhythms of the editing (see also: Michael Bay). I think that this is an interesting trend, but that talking about it in terms of realism obscures the issue.
That's also why I'm skeptical about observations like Tom Spurgeon's (from this comment thread):
I do think these techniques can be used expressively. I think that 28 Days Later's final action works in the way that Tom is suggesting the Quantum scaffolding fight works.**
Three is that I can't shake the sense that in these kinds of movies the filmmakers are working extra hard to put something over on me. It comes off as frantic and desperate.
*Steve Sailer's point about No Country for Old Men is interesting here: he argues that the Coens figured out you have to slow things down to give a "real" FPS experience.
**I also think this is part of what Greengrass does in Ultimatum.
1: Movie Club discussion of T-2.
2: My first Gold Age of Action Movies post. Turned out to be the only one (the follow-up post on Speed remains half-written).
3: Sean's response is really worth reading. (That Speed post was supposed to address a lot of these concerns - honest!!! ;) )
4: Post on f/x and super-hero movies.
5: Sean's Bourne/Bond post and my response (check out the comments, too).
Which brings us (mostly) up to date... I'm going to use this post to regroup a bit and throw some more ideas out there.
I see two major trends in contempo American action cinema - two major branches on the family tree - and both are a response to the challenge of CGI-driven fx.
Branch 1: "Plastic Playsets and Comic Book Movies". These movies present stylized action in stylized worlds. The use of space in these movies tends to be expressionistic. There is an emphasis on self-contained settings and a decided lack of emphasis on creating the illusion of contiguous spaces.
(By which I mean: compare the opening of Speed - which goes to great lengths to show us the elevator shaft and exactly how the elevator shaft is connected to the rest of the building - or the entirety of Die Hard - where both the "geography" of the building and how the building fits into its surroundings are important - to the Matrix movies - where the major action scenes are set in places that are like closed-off levels of a video game (the rooftops, the hallway, the highway).)
This branch takes CGI and uses it to make movies more like comic books (once again, I'm following Bordwell), anime, and wuxia.
Major works include: The Matrix, the Star Wars prequels, Sin City, Kill Bill, 300, Beowulf, Speed Racer.
Minor works include: many videogame adaptations, 30 Days of Night.
Interesting outliers: Fight Club and Panic Room.
Branch 2: "Impact Impressionism". This is what I've been talking about in the Bourne/Bond post. There's a focus here on any number of techniques that read as "realistic" and are meant to give off a "you are there"-feeling. The illusion of spatial authenticity and integrity so important to "Golden Age" action movies takes a backseat to creating the illusion of integrity and authenticity of feeling. The videogame analogue here is the first-person shooter.*
Branch 1 uses CGI to create an intense fantasy experience, Branch 2 uses CGI (but tries to mask this use) to create an intense experience of realism.
Major works include: the Omaha beach sequence from Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Tony Scott movies, the Bourne Movies.
Minor works include: Mission: Impossible 3, Quantum of Solace.
Outliers (not fully action movies but indicative of the trend): Phone Booth, Tigerland, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later.
I tend to be more down, in general, on Branch 2 movies for a number of reasons.
One is that, as a practical matter, I think it leads to sloppier filmmaking, or, rather, it allows the filmmakers to get away with being sloppier than they otherwise might be.
Two is that - and this might be my crankiness getting in the way of my judgment - critics tend to talk about these movies in terms of greater realism, ignoring the fact that the realism is superficial. And that's partly the filmmakers fault, in that Greengrass, say, adapts the cinema verite style from his "non-fiction" movies when he's making the Bournes.
Related to this: I see the "Impressionistic" Style as part of a larger trend away from a kind of filmmaking where meaning lies in the shot and towards a kind of filmmaking where meaning lies more in the rhythms of the editing (see also: Michael Bay). I think that this is an interesting trend, but that talking about it in terms of realism obscures the issue.
That's also why I'm skeptical about observations like Tom Spurgeon's (from this comment thread):
It isn't just that I don't buy that theory in this specific case. After all, we can tell Bond and Mitchell apart just fine during the chase, but not when they get to the scaffolding - the part of the sequence that would be the most difficult to choreograph and edit for clarity. And, aside from the chase that happens at the opera, I don't think there's much that distinguishes the rest of the action sequences from those of many other contemporary action movies.Wasn't the fact that Bond was indistinguishable from his opponents in some of the fights in the second movie part of the point? His actions gain clarity as he gains moral clarity and is able to better distinguish himself against the people he's fighting.
The way the two films use the action to compare Bond to others -- including the woman in this latest film -- is the most interesting thing about the two movies.
I do think these techniques can be used expressively. I think that 28 Days Later's final action works in the way that Tom is suggesting the Quantum scaffolding fight works.**
Three is that I can't shake the sense that in these kinds of movies the filmmakers are working extra hard to put something over on me. It comes off as frantic and desperate.
*Steve Sailer's point about No Country for Old Men is interesting here: he argues that the Coens figured out you have to slow things down to give a "real" FPS experience.
**I also think this is part of what Greengrass does in Ultimatum.
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