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One Additional Thought on “Boyhood”

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Boyhood is a landmark achievement in filmmaking, and it deserves a place in history. Its actors, director, and others who put so much time and effort into it deserve all the accolades in the world. I thought I had a criticism of the film, but really it’s a criticism of what comes next. As brilliant and compelling and wonderful as Boyhood was, I’m wondering about the potential for future films. Obviously the movie resonated with me, but once the credits ended and I’d had time to think about it, I realized that it hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.

Mason’s childhood was different from mine in many critical ways, but it was very much alike in many others. We both grew up in Texas, yes, but we also both grew up in the United States, and in a particular version of this country. In additional to nationality, Mason and I share features like race, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. I may have had a more affluent upbringing than Mason, but his was still reasonably comfortable.

Again, these are not intended as criticisms. This was an extremely ambitious project, and Linklater had to make the film at least somewhat autobiographical, if only in the sense that this unprecedented type of film took place in a world that was accessible to the filmmaker. I am hopeful that something like this is possible for other settings, be it on the basis of race, geography, or whatever. I don’t know of any projects like that in development, and anything that got greenlit today wouldn’t be in theaters until at least 2027, but I still hold out hope.

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“It’s always right now”: A Few Thoughts on “Boyhood”

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About three days into my college orientation, one of our advisors (a sophomore who had the perhaps unenviable task of shepherding about fifteen of us into university life) suggested we make a run to Target to get any supplies we might need for our dorm rooms. This event sticks out in my memory because it marked a “moment of realization” that might be common for college freshmen, and young adults in general. Or it might not—I’ve never asked anybody. I have now lived more years since that evening than I had lived up to that point, so the moment may seem sort of pithy now.

Kelly Martin (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Oh, the places we went! (Actual store we went to not pictured.)

As we piled into the advisor’s car at around 9 p.m., though, I had this sudden realization that I never could quite describe. It wasn’t freedom, exactly, even though part of the realization was that I hadn’t had to ask anyone’s permission to go to Target late in the evening, and that no one was monitoring my bedtime (aside from basic social conventions between roommates). A better word might be possibility. If nothing was stopping me from going to Target at 9 p.m.—aside from not having a car and living in an unfamiliar city with spotty public transportation—what else was possible for me? Like I said, it seems pithy from the perspective of being 40 years old, but to an 18 year old from the quasi-suburbs who had never been away from adult supervision, the possibilities seemed endless. This brings me to the movie Boyhood.

Via 365filmsbyauroranocte.tumblr.com

I saw Boyhood in the theater about six months ago, and like most people, I was astonished by the ambition of the project and the story that it told. As you probably know, director Richard Linklater shot the movie a few weeks at a time over the course of twelve years, from 2002 to 2014. The movie follows the life of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from elementary school to his first moments of college. The final scene of the movie is what really stuck in my mind, because it captured that feeling of possibility better than I could ever describe it with words. Spoilers ahead… Continue reading →

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Eight Short Rants about Foxcatcher

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I saw Foxcatcher this past weekend, and I would now like to present a few spoiler-filled rants about the film.

1. The accolades miss some incredible performances.

All the buzz is about Steve Carrell  who portrays John du Pont as perhaps the quintessential “eccentric, lonely rich guy,” surrounded by toadies but devoid of any friends. We’ve already seen Carrell’s potential to play both a serious and villainous character in 2013’s underrated The Way Way Back, but here he is literally transformed into a sort of monster. He absolutely deserves the accolades.

Mark Ruffalo is incredible as wrestler Dave Schultz. I never would’ve thought of Ruffalo playing a world-class athlete. I don’t mean that as a slight, but rather that his roles, even as the Incredible Hulk, tend to be more cerebral than physical. Here, though, he adopts all of the physicality and mannerisms of a lifelong wrestler, while still showing incredible depth and complexity. The scene where he is asked to say into the camera, for a du Pont-funded documentary, that John du Pont is his “mentor,” is utterly brilliant. Both he and Carrell deserve the Oscar nominations and praise they have received.

I dare say, however, that Channing Tatum deserves more praise than he has received, but that the structure of the final act of the film did him no favors. The movie begins with him as the central character (something I’ll get to more in a moment), but by the end he has largely faded from view without much explanation (I’ll get to that, too.) Carrell or Ruffalo essentially played characters frozen in time, with Tatum’s character responding and adapting to his circumstances. Again, this is not to take anything away from those two phenomenal performances, but Tatum came closest to the archetypal “hero’s journey.” He offers an amazing display of the pressure that star athletes feel, much of which they put on themselves. He embodies the physicality of the sport even more than Ruffalo, although I don’t know if that was too much or not. Sometimes it seems like Hollywood wants to typecast him as the “handsome guy who can act,” but this movie allowed him to do more than that.

2. The film is interesting, but once you realize what it is actually about, it is frustrating and disappointing.

Continue reading →

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In space, no one can hear you scream, still.

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By now everyone has probably seen multiple Prometheus trailers. My favorite is actually still the first teaser trailer, which has almost no dialogue and a lot of loud, scary sound effects:

Maybe it just fits with my ADHD.

What I did not realize, until someone helpfully posted it to YouTube, is that the original trailer for 1979’s Alien used the same creepy sound effect, and it is just as scary. I’ve seen Alien dozens of times, and this still creeps me out:

Less than three weeks to go!

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Random Coincidences: “The Magnificent Seven”

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Some of you may know 1960’s “The Magnificent Seven” as one of the greatest westerns of all time. It is also based on Kurosawa’s 1954 film “The Seven Samurai,” considered by me to be the greatest film of all time. Yes, I’m talking to you, “Citizen Kane” and “Casablanca.” Kurosawa’s movie is better, so nyah.

Of the seven actors that played the seven Old West gunslingers hired to defend a Mexican village from a group of bandits led by a classically-trained actor faking a Mexican accent, only one, Robert Vaughan, is still with us today. (He has done some remarkable work as a non-attorney spokesperson recently, but I digress.)

The first two to pass away were Steve McQueen in 1980 and Yul Brynner in 1985. After that, four more have died, and it all happened in the space of one year:

There is no greater cosmic significance to this whatsoever, although (no major spoilers) if the actors had passed in the same order as their characters in the film, that would be something remarkable. I just thought it was interesting. (This is what I do on Saturday mornings.)

It is vaguely reminiscent of the “Poltergeist” curse, in that it is tempting to draw some sort of conclusion that greater forces are at work. Statistically speaking, though, the supposed curse around the three “Poltergeist” films (2 unusual deaths, 2 medically-predictable ones, all of them tragic) was  nothing out of the ordinary.

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I forgot a few very obvious “Hunger Games” influences, may the Great Geek God forgive me

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I am embarrassed to admit a few omissions from yesterday’s post about influences in The Hunger Games. In order to shore up my geek creds, let’s just go ahead and list them here and pretend this never happened, okay?

The SPOILER ALERT from the previous post remains in effect.

  • Running Man Theatrical Poster [Fair use claimed]“The Running Man” (movie): The 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie offers a disturbingly-prescient view of today’s reality TV lineup, with the only difference, really, being that no one actively tries to kill anyone on actual reality shows today (that we know of). Arnold, as a convicted (but innocent) criminal, doesn’t have much choice but to participate in “The Running Man,” in which he must escape various celebrity “stalkers,” portrayed by real-life sports celebrities like Jesse Ventura (wrestling is sort of a sport) and Jim Brown. If he wins, he gets all manner of fabulous prizes (or does he???) Much like The Hunger Games, the game takes place in a large arena with various resources scattered about. It has a smarmy host who seems kindly but is actually a monster (Richard Dawson, soon to be channeled by Stanley Tucci). The biggest difference is likely to be in the fact that “The Running Man” is very, very ’80s.
  • “The Running Man” (novella): Where the 1987 Arnold movie errs on the side of cheesiness, the 1982 Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) novella is dark. Dark to the point of being downright cynical. The Ben Richards character doesn’t enter the game because someone coerces him, but because he needs money and really has no other options. Instead of a game arena, the game is played out in the real world in a dystopian future U.S., and in addition to “hunters” tracking him, anyone else can bring him in or kill him. He wins money for every hour he stays alive, and if he can survive for 30 days, he wins the grand prize of $1 billion. Much like The Hunger Games, the “Games Network” is ubiquitous in society, and there is even a mention, after televisions become required in all households, of instituting a requirement that they always be on. In a strange foreshadowing of today’s YouTube culture, Richards must make a video recording of himself every day and mail it to the Games Network. This keeps the audience updated on his doings and, of course, allows the powers that be to track him. In a final bit of foreshadowing, easily the most troubling of all, Richards brings the Games Network down, literally, by crashing an airplane into the Games Building. The novella ends with “…and it rained fire twenty blocks away.”
  • “The Long Walk:” This is another Stephen King book written as Richard Bachman and first published in 1979. It is set in a dystopian alternate United States controlled by a military dictatorship of some sort. Young men volunteer to participate in the annual “Long Walk.” The prize for the last man standing is, essentially, everything. Winners supposedly receive whatever they want, which must be tempting in what is described as a desperately poor and subjugated society. Losers “buy a ticket,” a term whose meaning is not made clear at first (I’m getting to that). The “Walk” starts at the Maine/Canada border and proceeds south for as long as it takes. Walkers must maintain a pace of four miles per hour, monitored by trained soldiers accompanying them on half-tracks. If their pace drops below that, they receive a warning. If they walk for an hour with no subsequent warning, the warning is removed. They get three warnings, and on the fourth warning they “buy their ticket.” The meaning of this becomes clear several hours into the walk when someone on his third warning gets a Charley horse and drops back. Despite his pleas, his ticket is called, and a soldier approaches him, pulls out his carbine, and shoots the man in the head. This being Stephen King, the carbine fires with sufficient power to eviscerate the man’s skull. Of course, all of this is televised. The remainder of the book is a psychological study of (a) the effect of nonstop walking under penalty of messy death, and (b) the factors that would possibly compel people to volunteer for this event.
  • “The Lottery:” A 1948 short story by Shirley Jackson, this may be the most disturbing of all, because it offers no hints at all that it is going somewhere creepy. Early on in the story, it might as well just be a standard small-town America story. Everyone is preparing for a big event, “the lottery,” held every year. The heads of the town’s families draw slips of paper from a box, and the family that draws the slip with the black spot is “chosen.” The members of that family draw slips of paper again, and the person who gets the one with the black spot wins, so to speak. The rest of the town then stones that person to death. It is fair to say that, based on the tone of the rest of the story, the reader does not see this coming.

I’m heading to the “Hunger Games” movie in a few hours. I’ll let you know how it is.

Photo credit: Running Man Theatrical Poster [Fair use claimed] via Wikipedia.

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A watered-down “Battle Royale” with hints of the “Handmaid’s Tale,” all wrapped up in “Twilight”

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(WARNING: Might contain spoilers) It’s not really fair to compare The Hunger Games to Twilight, especially since I’ve never actually read Twilight (and, FSM willing, I never will.) I watched the first “Twilight” movie with a vaguely annoyed expression over a three- or four-day period, since I couldn’t sit through more than about thirty minutes at a time. I only mention it because of a gnawing fear that the forthcoming “Hunger Games” movie will drop the threadbare scraps of its dystopian themes of oppression and alienation and throw itself at a tween-swoon-inducing love triangle that only barely rears its sparkly head towards the end of the book.

Actually, I know that’s going to happen, because this review says so.

I actually quite enjoyed the book (I haven’t read the second or third books yet), even if I’m not the main target demographic. It was pretty derivative of quite a few things, but I like the way it took some disparate scifi elements and put them together in an innovative, if not altogether immersive, universe.

Here are a few things I liked about the book, in terms of its homage material:

  • “Battle Royale:” I’m referring to the profoundly-disturbing Japanese movie, not the Manga series. If The Hunger Games is not at least partly inspired by this, then it is a truly remarkable coincidence. The Hunger Games takes the children-fighting-to-the-death premise and improves on it by making the rationale for the event actually make sense. In “Battle Royale,” if I recall correctly, society has decided that children (defined as anyone under 20 years of age) constitute a grave threat to the safety and stability of society. As a disincentive to misbehaving, every year a ninth-grade class is selected to participate in the Battle Royale, in which they are deposited on an island and given a set period of time to fight to the death. It’s more disturbing than Hunger Games in the sense that these are classmates, who have known each other their whole lives, suddenly compelled to kill each other. Each child is fitted with an explosive collar to give them an extra incentive–if they refuse to fight, then the game master (whatever they’re called) will kill them anyway. The problem is that the premise makes no dang sense. The children are chosen at random, meaning that there is no value as a deterrent to crime or other misbehavior, because even model children could find themselves picked for the Battle. At least the Hunger Games are acknowledged to be random, as a demonstration of the Capitol’s complete dominance over society.
  • “The Handmaid’s Tale:” This is actually another one where I’ve only seen the movie (1990, starring Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall, and Aidan Quinn), and I’m pretty sure it leaves a lot of the book’s elements out. It posits a near-future dystopian America, the Republic of Gilead, with an uber-conservative religious leadership. Women who have managed to retain their fertility are literally treated like cattle. The main parallel I can see is in the portrayal of an all-powerful state that dominates all features of life, although it occurs to me that just about everyone, from hardcore liberals to hard core libertarians, could see some relatable material here
  • A Storm of Swords: This would be Book 3 of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series (the one that starts with A Game of Thrones). Specifically, the effete, peacock-y people in the Capitol remind me of the people in the cities of Slavers’ Bay in Storm of Swords. Daenerys Targaryen and her entourage go there early in the book and are generally horrified by what they find. The three cities, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, were once part of a great empire, but they are now in a strange state of denial about their own decline. The warriors and merchants dress ostentatiously, fashioning their hair into horns and other strange shapes and dyeing it bright colors. The warriors in particular do not make for a very effective fighting force because of their ornamentation, and they prefer to rely on their slave armies. As fans of the book know, things do not go well for the slavers. The capital of Panem rests on a fragile foundation, depending on the Districts to maintain their lives of luxury while needing to keep the Districts brutally suppressed.

Of course, there are a few things I don’t like so far:

  • Backstory: The Hunger Games does not appear to have any. At all. All we know is that something very bad happened, possibly a nuclear war and/or severe climate change, and that the oceans have risen. After some amount of time, the Capitol united all the remaining areas of North America. The Districts, which had apparently already been established, rebelled against the Capitol, but lost in a major way. The Capitol destroyed District 13 entirely, and started the Hunger Games as a reminder to the Districts that it was in charge. That’s literally all we know. It makes sense that Katniss wouldn’t know any more than that, since it would be in the Capitol’s interest to keep the District populace in the dark. The audience does not need to be that much in the dark. Try Googling a map of Panem–it’s remarkable how many different interpretations you’ll find. One person thought District 13 was in the DC area, while someone else thought it was in Quebec (apparently the Quebec theory makes the most sense, but I forget why.) At least one fan has put a remarkable amount of work into developing a map and history of Panem.
  • Economics: Matt Yglesias has a review of economic theories that make a society like Panem plausible at Slate. I did not finish reading his article because it has Book 2 & 3 spoilers, so I’ll just summarize my thoughts on the matter. The Capitol uses some very scifi technology. “Hovercraft” that either use cloaking devices or can do some sort of teleportation. Ointments that can heal second-degree burns in a matter of hours. Genetically-engineered animals with rudimentary intelligence. And so on. The Districts supply all of the raw materials used by the Capitol, it would seem, and they seem to enjoy few of these technological advances. District 12 could be part of the 1930’s or the 95th century, but it seems odd that they wouldn’t have any of the technology enjoyed elsewhere, or that they could meet the needs of the Capitol without such technology. Which leads me to my next point…
  • Geography of the Capitol: District 12 is in Appalachia. The Capitol is somewhere in the Rockies. If climate change has caused ocean levels to rise and flood low-lying areas of North America, then those areas would probably have a warmer climate than they do today. Which would be good, because it is difficult to imagine building an imperial capital city in the middle of the mountains, around 8,000 feet above sea level. Just about any city that has ruled over a large area with any degree of control (think Rome, Constantinople, Baghdad, Tenochtitlan, and so forth) had ready access to some amount of natural resources. The middle of the Rocky Mountains does not offer that, at least not in today’s ecosystem. So how did they get to be the biggest kid on the block? Perhaps their geographic isolation worked to their advantage in a nuclear war, with mountains shielding them from the worst of the fallout. Or maybe they rode out a climatic or geological upheaval by being so far away from sea level, and were then able to roam the continent, picking up the scraps. All we know for sure from the first book is that the mountains protected the Capitol from the rebellious districts. The problem is that geography is a two-way street. If it’s hard to get into an area, it might also be hard to get out.
  • Geography of the Districts: District 12 produces coal for the Capitol. District 11 handles agriculture. District 1 makes luxury goods. There is a problem with monocultures like this. Does District 11 produce good for all of Panem, or just the Capitol? Panem would need a highly sophisticated distribution system if it had to get food and other supplies from one District to all the others with little to no contact between the Districts. The mind boggles at the logistics.
  • The word “Capitol:” the book keeps referring to the capital city of Panem as the “Capitol.” One small, grammar-nerd problem with that. “Capitol” refers exclusively to a building. Anything else, i.e. a city, is referred to with “capital.” That’s been bugging me for a while.

Anyway, I’m going to see the movie on Saturday. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I can finally start reading A Dance with Dragons.

Photo credit: aimmyarrowshigh at livejournal.

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Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease may “Prometheus” be good…

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The official trailer for “Prometheus” came out last week, and I must admit that I am very excited.

The initial teaser trailer, released on December 22, 2011, was like brain foreplay for fans of the original “Alien”:

The “official” trailer came out last week to the collective squee of millions:

Finally, the “international” trailer pretty much rubs the awesome in our faces:

I have to allow for the possibility that this movie will not be good, or that it even might suck. Ridley Scott might have given us the original “Alien” and “Gladiator,” but he also gave us “Robin Hood” and “Hannibal.” I’m enough of an “Alien” fan, though, that I even went public with my excitement about Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, a film that took two incredible science fiction icons and turned them into a slightly higher-budget Jason Voorhees.

“Prometheus” has a remarkably solid cast, probably the most solid of any film in the franchise since the original. I’m not a fan of Michael Fassbender (he gets on my nerves for some reason), but I can’t deny the guy can act. I’m glad to see Noomi Rapace get a chance to reach a wider audience, especially now that most Americans picture a different actress when they think of Lisbeth Salander. I will watch anything with Idris Elba in it, just sayin’.

Of course, I am assuming that “Prometheus” actually is a prequel to the “Alien” movies. The director and producers have been extremely coy about that issue. Anyone who has seen the original “Alien” will recognize the derelict ship and the Space Jockey’s chair in the new trailers. Then again, that last Aliens vs. Predator movie seemed to want to set up the Predators as the race that piloted the derelict, although it could have been an homage. I suspect “Prometheus” will pull a reboot and ignore the AvP movies entirely (and justifiably). The project began with the idea of a prequel telling the story of the Space Jockey’s race, and that appears to be where this film is headed.

I can delve more into the “Alien” films, but for now just enjoy the anticipation of “Prometheus.”

Also, “enjoy” might not be the right word for this, but marvel that someone actually took the time to compile all the “kill scenes” from the first four films:

Spoiler alert: although I disagree with the math, they find the total score to be Aliens 53, Sigourney Weaver 17.

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