Alright, so I wasn't planning on throwing up any film reviews, but tonight I saw Thor and couldn't resist. While I've seen a few movies in the last month or two that I could have reviewed, Thor wound up being so all over the place that it was genuinely surprising - something you don't often encounter in cinema these days.
To start, after the first twenty minutes of the film I was convinced I was in for a shit-fest. The beginning of the film deals with the back-story of the gods and it is painfully hokey and melodramatic. It takes itself too seriously and someone in the project got way too enthusiastic about the CGI, which comes off looking cartoonish, obvious, and distracting. To boot, the dialogue and acting were nothing special.
However, when Thor is exiled to Earth the whole tone and quality of the film does a complete turn around. Suddenly the writing became clever, eliciting laugh after laugh. The film stopped taking itself so seriously and there were some great tongue-in-cheek moments, some witty dialogue and some admirable situational comedy. The characters developed in amusing and likable ways, and things in general were looking way up.
Then, as abruptly as the film became awesome, for its concluding act it reverted back to its melodrama and cartoonishness. While there were still some funny moments, the tone swung too far back toward seriousness and gravitas. Furthermore, the character of Lokey, Thor's brother, was completely... schizophrenic, for lack of a better word. His motivations were not remotely understandable and so his behavior just came off as arbitrary. I found Thor's sidekicks (whose names I don't remember) as distracting and pointless. While the intention seemed to be for them to be a form of comedic relief, they instead came off as slightly awkward and verging on ridiculous.
Seeing as Thor was directed by Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello), a Shakespeare veteran, I was expecting a little more in the way of finesse from the film and better handling of the more complex characters: character motivation shouldn't have been the challenge it appeared to be for him.
Overall I would still recommend Thor. While the beginning and end were mightily flawed the middle of the film was funny enough that I still came away having enjoyed it, and I might even watch it again when it comes out on DVD. Also, Chris Hemsworth (who played the title character) shirtless is an impressive sight indeed. Until next time!
I know, I know, I've been a terrible blogger lately. I won't bore you with excuses. Instead, I'll just say that I now have a bio up on My ETV Media! You can find it here (right between Bryan Bevier and Caroline Sues). Provided I don't get called in for extra shifts at work I may be getting out to the DOXA Film Festival (a documentary film festival) so you can probably expect some reviews either here or on My ETV Media.
Earlier I mentioned that I have been hired as a guest contributor for My ETV Media. As promised, here is a link to my first review, a critique of Limitless. Along with the review you will find a trailer for the film as well as a photo gallery. I encourage you to check out the site, hope you enjoy it!
My dear readers, I can now at long-last tell you that for the last couple of months I have been in the process of applying for an internship overseas, specifically with a (very large) Public Relations firm in Germany. I hadn't wanted to spill the beans before things had firmed up a little, but I can now very happily tell you that after receiving my portfolio and CV (Curriculum Vitae, a fancy way of saying "resume") they have offered me a position with them for three months. I am hoping to leave shortly after my Convocation this June, all circumstances permitting.
Now believe it or not I'm not sharing this simply for the bragging rights (though those are great). Rather, my impending departure means that I now have about a million things on my plate to deal with in a relatively short span of time, including learning basic German, sorting out Visa and passport business, and most importantly saving a lot of money. As such, I doubt I'm going to be posting quite as frequently as I usually do, and for that I apologize. However, the bonus is that in a few months' time I will be able to write about the incredible fashion overseas and can provide you with some great new content. On that note, I am now scouting around for some good German street style blogs so that I can prep my own wardrobe for the culture shock. If you are familiar with any good ones please let me know!
Another piece of exciting news I wanted to share with you all (which will also be contributing to my diminished blogging time) is that I will soon be a contributor for myetvmedia.com! I am delighted to say that as a direct consequence of this blog I have been invited to be their Film & Fashion Correspondent, a position I am really looking forward to filling. So, you can expect to see regular links here to reviews that will be up on My ETV Media's site, which also produces reviews of television shows, awards ceremonies, and video games, to name just a few features.
I'm going to do my best to stay on top of all these exciting things, but I'm afraid I will be prioritizing and paid work will be coming first. The moral of the story is don't worry if I disappear for a few days: I haven't forgotten about you. As always I'm sending out huge thank yous to all of you readers, without whom much of this would not have been possible.
After having such an interesting debate over the meaning behind Donnie Darko recently, my dad suggested we watch David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), a film he described as equally thought provoking. While our taste in film doesn't always overlap we can usually agree on the really amazing ones, so I didn't hesitate to agree. So, for tonight's movie night Crash was our feature.
The simple way to describe Crash would be to say it's a film about a bunch of people who are turned on by car accidents and the consequent injuries. Sounds weird but not totally unpalatable, right? Wrong. The best comparison I can think of is that Crash is much like Lars Von Trier's Europa: notoriously difficult to watch. I'll also say right now this is NOT a film to watch with your family, otherwise prepare yourself for some supreme awkwardness.
I initially went into viewing it the way I usually do with films I'd like to analyse: with my laptop at the ready so I could take down important dialogue and pivotal scenes. Well, I gave up on that after the first half hour or so, and by the fifty minute mark I wasn't sure I was going to be able to last the whole film.
My real problem was that Crash is just so goddamn gratuitous. It is quite literally sex scene after sex scene after sex scene. And I don't mean that in the sense that characters have meaningful encounters, or tasteful embraces modestly hidden behind the sheets. I mean that you see everything in pornographic detail, where characters have little to no emotional connection with one another. Then, they follow that up with the obligatory cigarette. And it's allllllll downhill from the start of the film. It moves from stranger-sex to bizarre scar-fetish sex, and the couplings are not exclusively heterosexual: there is also a sex scene with two men and later a sex scene with two women. But, of course, the gaze in the film is distinctly male ["Gaze" refers to the gender perspective that a film takes - it is expressed through camera movement and particular shots, and is most distinct when it is in the process of objectifying women; think the shot of Megan Fox bending over the car hood in the first Transformers] so, regardless of the fact there must be upwards of ten different sex scenes, men are fully clothed in all but one, while women are entirely naked or at the very least mostly-naked in all of them. It's so blatantly unequal and exploitative it makes me want to scream at the television.
The film is also frustratingly difficult to follow in terms of any real meaning, and between the car accidents, mangled bodies, and mind-numbingly repetitive sex it's hard not to quit halfway through. The film is shot so that one cannot identify with the characters, and all the acting is done in a detached and aloof kind of way. Character motive is equally difficult to distinguish (I found Dr. Remington's actions particularly arbitrary and counter-intuitive), making the film feel mostly like one long awkward shit-fest.
So why am I reviewing it if I hated it so thoroughly? Well, the film isn't entirely arbitrary. It has been widely acknowledged that one reading of the film is that it is a commentary on the depersonalization of sex: that it addresses the removal of intimacy from intimacy in our increasingly technological world. Characters seem to couple randomly while fixating on entirely impersonal items or things. Sex is never about the person it's with and is rather about satisfaction of unrelated desires. Identity and even gender are irrelevant to this film's main characters. But this is not the only interpretation.
My dad's love of the movie is founded on a much deeper meaning he perceives within the content. His theory (which I had to be walked through more than once) is that the film is a commentary on the American sexualization of the automobile as well as a satire of some of society's more bizarre fixations. He claims that the film uses its characters' fixation on cars to address our own fixation on trivial things like celebrities: it is a totally irrational obsession that whips many a person into a fanatical frenzy. Similarly, the film satires our society's fixation with perfection. The character's all-consuming lust for the scars and wounds of car accidents can directly parallel our own lust for perfection: they engage in risky car accidents in an effort to acquire erotic scarring while we risk our lives on operating tables for perfect breasts or ageless faces. Furthermore the film (supposedly) attacks our use of sex and the female form to sell anything to anyone. It takes "sex sells" to its extreme, overwhelming the audience with the repetitive nature of the sexual content. Which brings us the sexualization of the automobile.
Sex has been used to sell cars almost since they were first invented. Like most commercials, car advertisements often feature scantily clad heavily-breathing beauties writhing on the hood of the car, or they imply that the car you drive will have a direct impact on how often you will get laid - but only if you're a man. Cars' interiors (and often exteriors too) are streamlined and rounded, the seats mimicking the curves of the female form, caressing the driver. While most often I've heard such cars referred to as more of a phallic symbol, the argument is that they have become intrinsically sexual and this film takes that to its logical extreme, mocking our own absurdity. The film is evocative of the way in which some people lustily discuss "chrome spinners" and "genuine leather seats"; horsepower and hemis. In particular the character of Vaughn becomes for the other characters an extension of his vehicle's technology - they discuss his body the way others might discuss butterfly doors and elaborate sound systems. Cronenberg ultimately instills into the sexual encounters a juxtaposition of man and machine that directs the audience toward his critique of this "auto-eroticism", as it has been called.
My dad argues that the last layer of brilliance to all this is that it can so easily be mistaken and disregarded as the power trip of a slightly depraved writer/director (Cronenberg both wrote and directed the film). I, however, find it almost equally obnoxious as the product of the pretensions of a self-congratulatory and condescending man who is looking to insult and discomfort his audience by laughing at our inability to grasp his hyper-intellectual film. There could be enough deep social commentary in this film to fill a Stephenie Meyer-length novel and I still wouldn't like it any better.
Warning: If you're looking for a light read then you're looking at the wrong post and I recommend skipping to the next one.
The other day I was wondering to myself what I was going to come up with next for this blog. I'm still wading through fashion shows for this Fall, and was getting tired of sorting the photos. I haven't seen any recent films, so that option was out, and I'm told that I need to slow down my playlist posting so that the world can keep up with me. It occurred to me that while I was studying film in school I had always wanted an excuse to research an all-time favourite of mine, 2001's Donnie Darko. So, I logged on to the library's website and got to studying. Unfortunately, film is a tragically under-studied medium. Despite there being thousands of brilliant films teeming with intellectual stimulus and brilliant symbolism there is a pathetic lack of research on this particular kind of art. What I did come across, however, was a discussion of the theatrical version of Donnie Darko and the Director's Cut, which came out about five or six years ago. Instantly curious as to which version I'd seen (I first saw it on DVD), I discovered that the version I know and love is the theatrical release, but the added material from the Director's Cut could be found in the Special Features of the DVD. A consummate Darko lover, I then went on to hunt these down and watch them, both with and without the commentary. The little trip down Donnie Darko memory lane also reminded me that a sequel was released just a couple of years back, S.Darko, which followed the exploits of Donnie's younger sister Samantha. So, I watched that too. Now, armed with several pages of notes from my viewings, I am going to hash out the merits and failures of each film. I am also going to put out there that there are going to be all kinds of spoilers, so if you haven't already seen the films I recommend watching them now.
Donnie Darko [Theatrical Version]: This edit of the film presents an enchantingly ambiguous story about a mentally unstable teen, Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is told by a giant time traveling rabbit named Frank that the world will soon be ending. As the plot moves forward it alternates between suggesting that everything is part of Donnie's hallucinations and suggesting that Donnie is a divinely-appointed agent who has been given the opportunity to "save the world". By the end of the film "reality" has still not been established, and a variety of interpretations are available to the audience.
The story carries heavy religious undertones, yet it also explores a scientific and philosophical avenue which renders it all the more intriguing. The most obvious religious reading involves Frank as the guiding Angel/prophet who helps Donnie to his ultimate destiny as a Christlike martyr: Donnie dies to absolve the sins of those around him and to help them to their salvation. In this interpretation Donnie goes back in time - knowing it will mean his death - to provide a second chance for those who need it: Gretchen (Jena Malone), who is killed by a car; Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), a child-pornographer exposed by Donnie earlier in the film; human-Frank (James Duval), who hits Gretchen with his car and is consequently shot by Donnie; Ms. Pomeroy (Drew Barrymore), who loses her job after her assigned reading provokes Donnie to vandalize the school; Rose (Mary McDonnell) and Samantha (Daveigh Chase) - Donnie's mother and younger sister - who die in an airline crash.
A more scientific reading might ignore the religious themes and instead focus on the story as detailing Donnie's groundbreaking interaction with a being from another dimension. The film provides material that covers multiple realities, the philosophy of time travel, the idea of fate and choice, and the doors opened by the notion of wormholes.
The final interpretation which occurred to me was a Vanilla Sky type of twist: the entire film is simply the hallucination of a schizophrenic young man and it ends exactly where it starts.
For me, a huge part of what makes this film so fantastic is its ability to keep you thinking about it long after it's over. Furthermore it's a huge achievement to create a film that can be successfully interpreted in so many ways. When you add to this that Donnie Darko has great acting, intelligent writing, great music, and sophisticated humour you are left with a masterpiece of a film that everyone should see.
Donnie Darko [Director's Cut]: I found that the Director's Cut took all the mystery from the theatrical Donnie Darko. It takes away the question "what's going on here?", and replaces it with "this is unquestionably a story about Jesus", which I find infinitely less interesting.
For starters, bunny-Frank has several more lines that specifically identify him as an emissary from God. For example "God loves his children", or something to that effect. This quickly eliminates any question as to the nature of Frank. Most of the other scenes that were added in the Director's Cut deal specifically with exploring Donnie's relationships with his family members, teachers, and friends. The more important scenes (besides Frank's God-related lines) are mostly with Dr. Thurman, Donnie's therapist. In these scenes there is an extended discussion of God and what it means to be an atheist or an agnostic. Perhaps the most pivotal cut moment, however, is when Dr. Thurman tells Donnie he has been taking placebos, and that his pills are in fact water tablets. This extra material warps the meaning of the film in a fairly significant way. It is implied that Dr. Thurman believes that Donnie is sane, and that he is the recipient of Divine attention. Donnie is no longer a troubled teen having delusions, and instead is a bona-fide hero who will save the world.
The director, Richard Kelly, explains that this was always supposed to be the real substance of the story. His intention was to create a comic-book style unlikely hero, and in his version there was supposed to be little doubt as to the reality of the events. While I can understand and appreciate this, I really prefer the Theatrical version. In the Director's Cut the God theme, which was already apparent, becomes heavy-handed and too obvious: it feels as though you are being hit over the head with the religious message. Furthermore, the added scenes featuring Watership Down and Donnie's conversations with family and friends don't really seem to add much besides time and dialogue. Ultimately ambiguity allowed the film to take on a much broader meaning, and the different layers made it more intelligent than the clearly spelled out Director's Cut.
S.Darko: S.Darko is set in 1995, five years after the conclusion of Donnie Darko. It follows Samantha (Daveigh Chase), Donnie's younger sister, as she attempts to escape from lingering fallout of the events that transpired in the first Darko.
Where to start? Well, the cast reads like The CW's main TV stars: James Lafferty (Nathan in One Tree Hill) plays Iraq Jack, Ed Westwick (Chuck in Gossip Girl) plays Randy, and Matthew Davis (Alaric in The Vampire Diaries) plays Pastor John. The film also stars Step Up 2's Briana Evigan as Corey, and the Twilight franchise's Jackson Rathbone (Jasper Cullen) as Jeremy. While it's clear they all tried, I'm afraid the performances aren't what they need to be. While Jackson Rathbone did a pretty decent job playing a nerd gone homicidal, Briana Evigan muddled through her more weighty scenes and Daveigh Chase similarly couldn't convey the eerie horror of being a messenger from beyond the grave. While Matthew Davis was satisfactory as the pastor, it didn't seem like much a stretch for Ed Westwick to play a directionless party-boy and James Lafferty couldn't make his mental illness and PTSD look believable. The performances I found most interesting wound up being those of fringe characters who got very little screen time: Elizabeth Berkly as Trudy and John Hawkes as Phil the motel manager.
The real shame about the film is that it's very clear how much thought and work went into it. Dispersed throughout the movie are small homages to the original Donnie Darko. Randy's introduction is when he drives up in a red muscle car - a newer model of Frank's - and almost runs over Samantha; an allusion to when Frank hit Gretchen. After their car has broken down, Samantha and Corey go to Frank's Echo Service, and during Randy's party we see a whiteboard note from his mother that echoes the whiteboard use in the first film. A large iron statue of Jesus seems to transplant the statue of the Mutt in Middlesex, and Randy's brother's room contains a poster of a skeleton almost identical to a diagram in Roberta Sparrow's Philosophy of Time Travel, which is carried by Samantha in S.Darko. Pastor John and Samantha have a discussion about the future while sitting in an empty movie theater - a scene that mimics Donnie and Gretchen's movie date. References extend even further: on numerous occasions dialogue from the first film is directly transplanted into the second, for example "the kids have to save themselves" and "they made me do it". Unfortunately I found some of these references took away any mystery as to what would happen next. When Pastor John's church is burnt down it makes it obvious that he is the pedophile abducting local boys (as well as his pedophile glasses - see The Lovely Bones), since the pedophile in the first film, Patrick Swayze's Jim Cunningham, was also a victim of arson. A further testament to the thought put in were the films showing at the local theater: Strange Days and Twelve Monkeys. Strange Days was a film about dreams, while Twelve Monkeys dealt with time travel and a coming apocalypse. Later in the film these titles are rearranged into a message for Samantha: "Ten Sam get keyys n save world". The motif of windmills that appeared periodically seemed to draw attention to the theme of action caused by unseen forces.
Why do pedophiles always wear these glasses??
In S.Darko it is no mystery as to which version of Donnie Darko it takes its thematic cues from. Believe it or not, S.Darko managed to be even more religious than the Director's Cut of Donnie. S. featured repeated shots of a post-crucifixion type scene which has substituted a female martyr for the traditional Christ, featured a number of crosses, and the re-vamped Frank-the-bunny mask included a crown of thorns (I'm not kidding). When Iraq Jack first holds aloft this mask (of his own construction) he is backlit and the angles make the ears appear as wings: he becomes an angelic figure. Later, Corey decides to sacrifice herself to save Samantha and she is guided into "the light" - her own semi-angelic role is reinforced by the dog tags that both she and Iraq Jack wear throughout the film, drawing a parallel between their functions and motives.
Besides lackluster casting, the real issue with S.Darko was the plot. They took the idea of time travel from the first film, but redid it too many times to the point where it was difficult to follow and meaning began to be nullified. Certain aspects of the film - the myriad American flags and the strange feather - had no distinguishable function whatsoever [While technically the film was set shortly before Independence Day I felt this was inadequate to explain just how many (and there were many!) flags were scattered throughout the film - the only other explanation I could come up with was that it was yet another homage to the frequent use of American flags in the original Darko]. The time travel plot device became gimmicky and it was irritating when characters would repeatedly die only to come back again shortly. To give some idea of the complexity of the theory behind the plot, this is just a sample of what I found on IMDb:
"In the first Tangent Universe, the Artifact is the Meteorite, the Manipulated Dead is Samantha (that was/would be killed by Iraq Jack's Mask) and the Living Receiver is Iraq Jack. In the second Tangent Universe, the Artifact is the Black Car, the Manipulated Dead is Billy (that was/would be killed because he is locked in the mine) and the Living Receiver is Corey." and "She pours over the text, some of which reads: When the fabric of the fourth dimension within a Tangent Universe becomes corrupted, a highly unstable and volatile Fragmentary Universe can occur, sustaining itself for no longer than several days..."
See what I mean? Interesting ideas, but taken waaaaaaaaay too far. As for the soundtrack, S.Darko's music wasn't as good as Michael Andrew's compositions for Donnie. However, Ed Harcourt did do some great stuff, one track of which I have posted at the top of this entry for your viewing pleasure.
Ultimately it's no surprise that S.Darko failed to live up to the original. It had a different writer and director, and when is a sequel ever as good as the original anyway? It was, however, an interesting way to spend an evening and keep my skills of observation nice and sharp. If you've managed to read this whole essay then congratulations, you've exceeded my expectations. Hopefully you enjoyed it, and if you haven't already seen Donnie Darko watch it!!!
Alright, so generally TV series reviews aren't my cup of tea, but I couldn't resist doing a write-up on Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. You may recognize Whedon's name as he was responsible for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. While Whedon has had other projects I've been less interested in, Dollhouse was a winner.
I actually got into Dollhouse thanks to Joe Loves Crappy Movies. That comic sparked my interest, so I hunted it down online and promptly became addicted. I fell off the bandwagon for a while thanks to essays and such, but when it was recently added to Netflix (Season 1 and 2!) I finished up the series and managed to get both my sister and her boyfriend hooked in the process (he likes to call it Robot Prostitutes). But that really isn't my point.
Dollhouse's premise is that technology is invented which can manufacture and imprint personalities upon people, and this is used in a high-tech brothel/espionage company. It sounds hokey on the page, but it plays out to be really interesting. Because characters are so believably malleable, each episode can bring something entirely new, which means you don't have to endure the cliched "unexpected pregnancy" or "car accident" plot twists of less-inventive programs. Besides a captivating plot, Dollhouse can boast that it is feminist-friendly: Joss Whedon is a well-known feminist, and while the story deals with prostitution it also deals with the attending ethical issues, it doesn't exploit the subject matter tastelessly, and it has many capable and powerful female characters.
But the series' real strength is its cast. Dollhouse's only recognizable actor is Eliza Dushku, who you may remember from Bring It On, Tru Calling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any other number of films or TV series. The rest of the cast are mostly unknowns, but they have incredible talent. Often it seems as though television actors are just Hollywood's cast-offs, but this is not the case with Dollhouse. The clever writing is maximized through their commendable performances every episode. I have to say the stand-out star has to be Enver Gjokaj. While we don't see overmuch of him in season 1, in season 2 he has many more opportunities to showcase his considerable talent (Season 2 Episode 3 is particularly fantastic). Not only is he irresistibly loveable but his ability to speak in a multitude of accents is really quite impressive and his comedic timing is perfect.
Unfortunately, like most great things Dollhouse didn't get the acclaim it deserved and so it ended after only two seasons. Regardless, I enthusiastically recommend giving the series a try. If you don't have Netflix you can also find Dollhouse free here.
I'll say right off the bat that I'm pretty behind the curve when it comes to reviewing this film. It's been out for a good four years, and when it did first come out it got a lot of excellent reviews, and went on to win four Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay Based Upon Previously Produced/Published Material). However, this past weekend I finally got around to seeing it, and I enjoyed it enough that a review is in order.
To start, No Country For Old Men (hereafter NCFOM) is decidedly anti-Hollywood in its presentation. For example, near the beginning of the film Josh Brolin's character stumbles upon a group of circled vehicles, around which are scattered a dozen or so dead bodies. Where directors like Ron Howard or Michael Bay would have incorporated a dramatic shoot-out laced with slow-motion jumping and tense one-liners, the Coen brothers instead chose to leave what transpired to the audience's imagination. This happens again closer to the end of the film, where one of the main characters dies in a shootout we don't see; all the audience hears is faint gunfire, and brief shots of the aftermath.
In continuing the anti-Hollywood approach, the film closes with a character recounting a dream. Unlike many other films where viewers are treated as though they have an IQ of 50 and need every theme spelled out to them (*cough* Crash), in NCFOM the closing sequence has no grand meaning to instill upon the rest of film. In fact, there is little meaning to understand whatsoever, besides a small insight into the character. The real meaning of the film is contained, as it should be, within the cinematography and within verbal cues throughout the story. But I'll get to that.
The last anti-Hollywood thing I noticed was that the film used no nondiegetic music. For those of you who haven't studied film, "diegetic" refers to events or sounds which exist in the realm of the plot. For example, a voiceover is nondiegetic, because characters on screen cannot hear it - only the audience can. Music is slightly trickier. If a character is listening to music or playing it within the story, then it is diegetic. If music is playing, such as the film's soundtrack, and the character obviously cannot hear it (because, say, he's busy breaking into a bank) then it is nondiegetic. So, No Country For Old Men essentially used no music until the credits rolled. I'm sure I don't need to point out how unusual this is as music is a strong tool for manipulating an audience's emotional reaction to material. The effect was an interesting one: without music things took on a slightly more realistic and suspenseful feel.
There were several shots within the film that testified to the intelligence, attention, and overall talent that was involved. Two in particular stood out to me. In the first, a fairly gritty scene in which a man is being strangled to death, the camera tilts and moves away from the murder, and as we see the victim's flailing legs, we also see an intricate, feathery pattern that has been made on the linoleum from his black boots streaking on the floor as he struggled. This took me by surprise, as I never would have thought of those streaks in the first place, but having seen them, their absence would have seemed thoughtless. Also, the artful way in which the lines intersected and fanned out was unexpected in such a violent context, and therefore all the more intriguing. In the second scene, Josh Brolin discovers a blood trail in the Texan desert, and as he looks up he sees a pitbull in the distance, that glances back and then continues on. I can't do the scene justice in words, so I'll only say it's a beautifully composed sequence.
Javier Bardem has received a lot of attention since NCFOM, and it was justly given. He does a truly fantastic job of playing his very complex character. The character himself is quite an enigma, and while at the end of the film you feel you have a good idea of parts of who he is, there are also significant elements which remain a mystery. Rather than seeing this as a failure on the part of the filmmakers to fully articulate the character, I see it as a success since truly complex characters cannot be understood within two hours. The mystery is appropriate to the story, and the lack of total understanding just adds to it.
As for the film's theme, it was just as interestingly unraveled. The first segment of the film featured an emphasis upon seeing into the distance; it used a number of shots in which binoculars or gun scopes were used. As the film continued, emphasis was removed from binoculars and transitioned to mirrors and reflective surfaces. During the film, there were several instances where characters discussed trying to see what was ahead, or what was in one's future. By the end of the film, emphasis was especially strong upon the rear-view mirror. In one final scene, which did little to add to the actual plot of the film, a main character looked in his rear-view mirror as he drove away, but as he checked the mirror he was t-boned by another vehicle running a red light. This ultimately sums up the message of the film: as the characters attempted to see and forestall their fate, they only distracted themselves from what was actually coming for them.
To conclude, the film was a witty and subtle work of finely-detailed art, and I would heartily recommend it if you are looking for something to engage your intellect for a couple of hours.
Tonight I decided to take a night off from intense documentaries and dramas and chill out with a Friday night chick-flick, Post Grad. I picked Post Grad because, well, I am now a post grad, and the trailer seemed to sum up my life: out of school, out of work, in a general slump. And, until about halfway through it was doing a pretty good job of portraying life after school accurately. It was right at this depressing low-point that I decided to take a break and write my cover letter (being pathetic is such a motivator), and it's a good thing I did because after that the movie kinda just went downhill.
It was disappointing, because the film had several things going for it: Rodrigo Santoro, Jane Lynch, and a plot that one can identify with. However, Jane Lynch was fairly lackluster, the jokes weren't really funny, the dialogue was weak, and the little brother and the father (Kevin Costner - ewww) just annoyed me. So really it was just Rodrigo Santoro and a relate-able plot that it had going for it. Anyway, while I was watching, I got to thinking. I mean what's she complaining about? Her next door neighbour is a hot Brazilian who she gets to make out with sporadically! I certainly don't have that going for me. Is life really so bad? Hardly. Also, she has a friend who's not related to her. Which is also more than I can currently say, since all my friends are still in school (I'm really trying not to sound smug, I promise), so my best friend is my sister. And my cat. Who is psychotic and hates me.
But what bothered me most *spoiler alert* was at the end of the film. Alexis Bledel's character finally gets her dream job and is about to have the life she has always wanted. And then you know what she does? She GIVES UP her lifelong passion to move to effing New York to chase after jilted-friend guy. Just like that. Quits her job, leaves her family for a guy who she isn't even dating. What kind of message is that??? First of all, this guy is NOT Rodrigo Santoro, which as far as I'm concerned is Mistake Number 1. Second of all, this movie is communicating that your dream profession, your gateway to the life you have always wanted, is insignificant in comparison to a sudden and fleeting interest in your boring (and kind of pathetic) friend; that passion ultimately trumps professional and economic security. All I have to say is no. fucking. way. As IF a woman's life isn't complete without some man to share it with. Do I think that relationships are very important? Yes. Do I ultimately want one? Yes. But do I think that it's okay to drop a job that's all you ever wanted for some guy that you weren't even interested in until he moved across the country? No. Why? Because there are other guys, but no guarantees you can find an equally amazing job in another state. Especially after quitting your first super awesome job only a month after starting: no one will hire you with that commitment record. It was just so pathetically implausible. It's not like they built this amazing relationship throughout the film that was clearly the end-all and be-all of love. Nope, he left and she was like "Oh, hmm, I think I'm into him. Guess I'll drop my road to a high-powered career in an industry I love so I can go slum it in his dorm room while he plays beer pong." Post Grad FAIL.
Seeing as in my infinite laziness I have yet to peruse the Spring Runway shows (so behind, I know), I'll kick things off with a film review. Also thanks to that same laziness, it's going to be the last film I bothered to watch, Tron: Legacy.
When I first saw the trailer for Tron: Legacy (hereafter Tron) I had something of geek-out. I mean you can't help but be excited for a film scored entirely by Daft Punk, whose completely obscure Interstella 5555 I have owned and loved for years. For those of you who are too lazy to look it up, Interstella 5555 was an animated musical film Daft Punk made to accompany their album Discovery. Their first four singles - One More Time, Aerodynamic, Digital Love, and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - were released with the corresponding sections of the film. You might remember it as those music videos with the blue anime people. Daft Punk have dependably released fantastic music over the years, and I was excited to see what they would do with Tron.
Besides the soundtrack's potential, the actors who had signed-on for the film each had promise. Jeff Bridges won an Academy Award shortly after the trailer was released, and Olivia Wilde has been an installment on the popular House for at least a couple of years now. The star, Garrett Hedlund, you might recognize from Troy (he played Patroclus), or, less likely, you might remember him from Georgia Rule (TERRIBLE MOVIE). He also is in the recently released Country Strong with that entitled crack-job Gwyneth Paltrow (who names one child after fruit and another after a prophet? Really? Really??). Other cast members included Cillian Murphy (Inception, Batman Begins, and many many others) and Michael Sheen (The Twilight Saga: New Moon, The Queen). Not exactly small potatoes.
On top of all this, the trailers showcased a mesmerizing visual landscape that incorporated the best CGI available and showings in 3D.
So, how did it turn out? Well, I'll have to admit I built up some big expectations, and so the film came as a bit of a disappointment. Its strengths were in the soundtrack and the visuals. Daft Punk came through spectacularly with a soundtrack which perfectly balanced their signature electronic style with the film's need for emotive music to support dialogue and plot developments. The CD jacket explains they studied soundtrack composers and their music intensely to prepare for composing Tron's score, and that comes through in Tron: Legacy's soundtrack.
Similarly, the visuals were quite the work of art. The only CGI I found distracting was the young version of Jeff Bridges, and only during close-ups. The rest of the imagery blended smoothly. Interestingly, some filming was apparently done in Vancouver, as there is an extremely recognizable shot of the Lions Gate Bridge at the end of the film - locals will enjoy the view of West and North Van, although it certainly does shatter the illusion somewhat. The only real complaint I have about the visuals is that it at times feels as though scenes have been added simply because someone said "Hey, you know what would look really cool?". Unlike Avatar, not all of Tron was filmed in 3D - only some sequences. However, I didn't find the switching back and forth detracted from the film - rather I can appreciate the director's insights that certain scenes simply are better when kept 2D. As an added bonus the audience didn't even need to put their 3D glasses on and off - they got to stay on the whole time.
As for the weaknesses... Well, the dialogue, quite honestly, was seriously lacking. It felt formulaic and forced, which no talent (or lack thereof) on the part of the actors could really help. Besides that, the plot seemed to have significant holes in it, even though I took the extra effort to watch the original Tron before seeing Tron: Legacy. I'll add that the original Tron is quite entertaining, although more because the state-of-the-art graphics in the original are reminiscent of that first ping-pong video game from the early 80s. I found Jeff Bridges' character's manner of speaking a little bizarre, although in the bigger picture, appropriate. I'll say no more in the interest of not ruining the movie.
Overall, Tron: Legacy was worth seeing. Tron: Legacy for the most part retained the stand-out idea that Tron presented back in the 80s: the concept of the internet as "a digital frontier". The Tron films dedicate themselves to the view of the internet as a mysterious thing with infinite possibilities, capable of solving all the world's problems and doing just about anything, but also retaining a vague threat, similar to that of AI. The stories are filled with a sense of wonder that more recent generations (including my own) don't have, since we've grown up and therefore taken for granted the internet and its (limited) capabilities.
If you're going to go see Tron, prepare yourself for a mildly nostalgic, audio-and-visually focused film that's a little lacking in the backbone department. I'll add that watching Garrett Hedlund strut around in a black spandex bodysuit for most of the movie made it especially worth seeing.
