Films of the Underappreciated Pt. 3: The Best Film of the Decade

A bit of a long title, but hey, it’s the last show of the season; gotta go out with a bang. As my plastic surgeon once said, if ya gotta go, go with a smile…

Now that we are partway through the year (halfway, some might argue), it seems appropriate to decide once and for all what the best picture of the past decade was…is? Is.

No, wait, was.

Well, anyway, despite having seen many, many movies (at LEAST 37), I have not seen every single movie that was made in the past ten years. However, I am trying. In the past couple nights, I’ve seen Pontypool AND I Sell The Dead. However, neither of those was the best movie of the past ten years. That…would be this baby:

Yeppers, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain is my pick for best picture of the decade. It’s really,  really, a superb film. The visuals are simply amazing (which should come as no surprise for Aronofsky’s fans; he’s the guy who did Pi, remember?), but no more amazing than the fascinating storyline. The Fountain attempts to deal with a myriad of themes, including death, aging and immortality, but honestly, it’s just about how love can penetrate time and space (and no, I didn’t mean that in a sexy way). Despite all its pomp and pretension (or rather, along with its pomp and pretension), it’s a beautifully simple love story, and that’s EXACTLY why it works so well.

Beyond that, there’s also a painfully appropriate score (by Clint Mansell, but played by the Kronos Quartet and, uh, post-rockers Mogwai, I think) and some superb acting by Hugh Jackman (the man’s been on Broadway AND been Wolverine). Basically, Hugh is a conquistador/cancer researcher/zen astronaut who quests across a thousand years in an effort to find the tree of life…well, maybe you’d better just watch it. In short, imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey, only shorter (and with less monkeys), but capable of saying much more, and in a much more personal way, and you’ve got The Fountain.

Anyways, I’m curious to know what others might suggest is the best film of the past decade (2000-2009, let’s say. I’ll have to hear something fantastic to take it from this year). Who knows? Perhaps I’ll rescind. Maybe it really was Transmorphers 2: The Fall of Man…

Driods, iTunes, and the Unnecessary Addition

My brother got a new phone the other day. A Droid, or some such. The point is, it looks exactly like an iphone, and for all intents and purposes, IS an iphone. At least, as far as I’m concerned.

What I thought was unusual was that, upon purchasing such a thing, you automatically get a gmail account. Huh. Innocent enough, I suppose, but still…I found it a little odd.

And then, I read an article on cracked.com about Apple.  Specifically, why you should fear Apple. Reason number one was that Apple has a habit of…”sneaking” programs into computers via updates. I say “sneaking” because, well, there’s nothing illegal about it. It’s in the update notice that the programs are being installed. It’s just that, I don’t really see the point in including the latest version of Safari with your updated version of iTunes.

Is this the future? Additional features, accounts, web browsers, ads and more, snuck into our existence because we happen to own another product? I don’t see why one would REQUIRE a gmail account (or, hell, even ever feel the need to log into said gmail account) upon obtaining a shiny new phone, so the question that boggles the mind is why?

It just seems to me that it would be the raw equivalent of buying a new car that comes with a Taco Bell cup holder that never can be removed…and perhaps someday, when the car is updated, it’ll automatically vaporizes all cups that AREN’T from  Taco Bell.

Can Someone Explain to me…

…why it is that less “serious” magazines, like The National Enquirer or The Globe, seem to have FAR LESS ADVERTISING than “real” periodicals like, oh, I dunno, anything else? National Geographic for sure; half the front of that thing is ads. Hell, half of most women’s magazines are ads, not ashamed to admit that I know that.

Can it be that tabloids make their sales from actual sales? That subscribers aren’t just notches on a stick, tally marks meant to keep score so companies will sink money into your mag?

…wait, does anyone actually subscribe to tabloids? Or do you just pick them up in the supermarket? To be perfectly honest, I haven’t paid too much attention to them since the Weekly World News went outta business…

Anyway, maybe this is the future of mass printed media. Tabloids. Nothing can stop them! Hmm…isn’t that what they said about soaps?

Films of the Underappreciated Pt. 2

Well, I saw an interesting picture last night.

Not exactly a “film of the under appreciated;” after all, Tom Jones (1963) kind of launched the American career of Albert Finney. And the man was a Shakespearean trained actor for-gosh-sake, ya know?

Still, I do feel that there is a certain aspect of this film that lies dormant in the hearts and minds of film students: the home movie crowd. Namely, in an era where shakey camera stylistics get either points given or taken away by critics, people have fairly short term memories. Whenever Cloverfield (2008) is mentioned, most people only trace it back to The Blair Witch Project (1999), or Cannibal Holocaust (1980) if they’re feeling particularly clever.

While Tom Jones did include several nice cinematic touches (some of the scenes were shot silent, and characters broke the fourth wall regularly, but not too regularly, with amusing results), and a couple of misses (most notably the sound; like Orson Welles on a bad day), perhaps the best scene was the stag hunt. Here, the poor sound quality worked absolutely in the film’s favor. Mixed with jerky camera work, extreme close ups and wide shots, the chaotic feel of a stag hunt is almost perfectly captured. And, as far as I can tell, pretty much invented that whole Blair Witch style of film work.

I can’t say who followed the film (it won a bunch of awards on both sides of the pond, so SOMEONE was watching), but film makers who want to attempt the “home movie effect” well should take notes; it’s way too easy to screw it up, but Tom Jones managed to do it just right.

Short Stories

Philip K. Dick once wrote (something to the tune of), “The difference between a short story and a novel is that a short story deals with a murder, but a novel deals with a murderer.”

Herein lies the origins of genre and stereotype.

The short story has always predated the novel, be it in the form of oral traditions or fairy tales; even things touted as the first novel in the English language (The Canterbury Tales comes to mind) are merely collections of short stories, based on simple characters thrown onto a parchment in order to act out a story. The story is, of course, the internal message of the media. Short stories exist to communicate simple ideas and concepts.

The novel, on the other hand, stretches out in order to develop character, or characters. In a novel, the characters choose how the story goes, and as Dick points out, often take on a life of their own and dictate the story (having written long and short fiction, I know this to be the case). In short stories, the actual plot is set in stone. Characters are set up easily, conforming to stereotypes and expectations on the part of the reader, in order to TELL THE STORY. If you don’t believe, check out some urban legends sometime soon, and let me know what changes more often, the characters or the plots.

This is also genre, which is used to easily categorized short stories (horror, romance, comedic), but quite difficult to apply when dealing with serious novels (drama? Human interest? Or some bizarre blend of those with other genres?). Dick suggests that genre is simply the set of rules created between the reader and writer, the expectations of both that set the stage for whatever message or moral needs to be told in the short story.  Novels are not bogged down by such hindrance, allowing their world to evolve naturally around the characters that inhabit it. Here, Dick also suggests, is both the strength, and the weakness, of novels.

It is for this reason that the novel has long since been seen as the “high art” of the prose world, trumping short stories by and large, reducing them to mere pulp.  If novels are the art films of the literary world, then short stories are surely her popcorn pictures.

That’s also why short stories are more fun to read.

What Happened to Youtube?

For a while I, and many others, have mourned the slow death of Youtube. The rise of the Youtube star (effectively removing the site from the hands of everyday schmucks who started the thing), as well as the overt commercialization of the site (ads before, after and in the middle of videos, not to mention companies having stations that are glorified commercials (however, I am amused by the Del Taco channel, but that’s a guilty pleasure)). Now, the newest addition to the club, the removal of the ratings system.

And when did it happen? It didn’t happen this week, it must not have, since there’s a Ask Yahoo article about it from “about” a month ago.

Last week, I kind of thought that the ratings were absent…but now I notice that they’re gone, replaced by Facebook-esque “like” and “don’t like” buttons.

Either way, I hate it. I was already careful enough with a system as simple as five stars; this is essentially a two star system (and the “like” button apparently  adds the video to your favorites automatically). Scratch that, this is a “like/don’t like (circle one)” sytem. Was having to decide over five levels or quality AND adding a video to a “I just kinda like this” list considered too hard for the average viewer?

Is this a dumbing down of Youtube? Could Youtube get any dumber? I guess so.

Sources:

Cnet News

Yahoo Answers

3D Movies…now this:

Well, if 3D movies really are the way that theaters and production companies are going to keep people in theater seats (something which I can’t quite grasp, they give me a headache), then perhaps that’s the way that toothpaste companies are going to keep people in their bathrooms. Hence:

I know, it’s not much, but I just thought this was funny…are we STILL in an age where 3D sounds hip, exciting and futuristic enough that  it can sell anything (keeping in mind that most toothpastes, not just Crest, are three dimensional), or has this hip, exciting and futuristic age merely dawned on us again? Brunel would not be pleased…

Films of the Underappreciated Pt. 1

Getting a bit nutty with the pictures on this one…

Well, I know I was supposed to be working on my blog yesterday, but I just couldn’t think of anything. Pretty soon it was after four (more like eight), so, I started flipping around the ON DEMAND! service until I found a comedy to watch. That took place in the Old West. And had zombies in it.

Well mister, they were a couple of cowboys, and they loved the land. Yep, that’s Chris Kattan from Saturday Night Live up there, playing just about every other character he’s played on the show in this film. But he’s alright in the film, even got a couple of chuckles outta me. But hey, it’s also got Brian Posehn in it! And he plays a zombie! Everyone loves (or should love) Brian Posehn.

Anyway, the plot is (very basically) as follows: a couple of cowpokes (Chris Kattan and, well, James Denton) bust outta jail and bust up a crooked sheriff’s jaw in the process. As they flee, the sheriff organizes a posse (including a member of the ubiquitous Coppola family)…his posse little realizing that he’s succumb to “The White Man’s Curse” of Geronimo, which is turning him into a ZOMBIE!!!

So he bites a bunch of old west folks…etc., etc…everything comes to head in an old cavalry fort near the Grand Canyon, where our heroes, joined by Geronimo’s niece (Navi Rawat), must save the day. Or must they? It’s wacky!

I personally cannot believe that this picture did well. I mean, for starters I didn’t hear about it at all (it’s been on DVD for a couple of years, trolled some film festivals about a year before that): I did not see a commercial, read a review, see a box at the video store, or even click on an ad for this picture. And yet, there it was.

Additionally, as well as having the hard sell of zombie/comedy/western (these days it’s pretty hard to get a western made, let alone sold), not to mention the countrified blues/surf music soundtrack, the movie features an ever so slightly un-Hollywood ending. Fancy that. I won’t tell you how it all comes around, but suffice to say that I didn’t quite see it coming, and I’m pretty cynical.

Anyway, the film was not fantastic, I must admit. It can’t topple Wristcutters for my favorite picture this year, and there were several anachronisms that popped up from time to time (I doubt, for example, that you could have worn just a buckskin while ridding around the entire Old West without chaffing your nipples), it had pleasant camera work, a genuinely amusing script, and some clever make up and effects without relying too much on computer animations. In other words, it had this:

And this:

Need I say more?

Of Trailers

Well, this is going to run a bit past the deadline, but that’s partly my choice; this is last minute with a purpose, gosh darn it!

It would seem that a film is out today, some kind of instructional video about rearing dragons as pets. How To Train Your Dragon is, I am guessing, a PSA about dragon care.

Actually, no. I’m not that thick. Dreamwork’s How to Train Your Dragon is a family friendly film of epic propotions about a boy becoming a man…at least, that’s what I’m guessing based on this trailer:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1158218777/

(Okay, yeah, I know…I can’t get the video into the blog itself. I’m sorry. I’m not that “cool.”)

Note the sweeping orchestral breaks as we witness the young chap (Hiccup is his name, for the record) flying this way and that on his dragon. This is the film that’s being compared to E.T. in terms of inner growth, outer story, and all around good for the kids movie watching.

At least, that’s the way it’s being sold now. Take a look at this:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3870033177/

THAT’S the trailer that I saw in theaters last year. It didn’t compare the film to E.T., it compared it to Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. You know, back when the movie was just a comedy. Same movie, practically the same footage, much different atmosphere.

I’m not sure when and where the  train changed railways, but somehow Dreamworks decided to spin the picture as a family friendly epic instead of a goofy comedy. This isn’t really a profound change or anything (there were already threads of “family friendly epic” in the first trailer), but it’s just amusing to me how much of the comedic aspect has been played down in later trailers. Perhaps the heightened presence of animated films at the Oscars has made studios consider pushing movies like these into a more…respectable light.

Another One About Ads

This is stupid, but I thought it was kind of funny. Look at this image, if you please:

Do you see what I see? That is a bottle of Pepsi, sure, advertising on the bottle how well this inky black liquid is at quenching even the mightiest of thirsts…but look in the lower right corner. THIS BOTTLE IS ALSO ADVERTISING DORITOS. In fact, it goes a little beyond that…

Never mind my finger that’s in the way, this soda actually has a name dedicated to its singular mission: purchase it specifically with spicy Doritos. This beverage is no different than Pepsi Max (the Pepsi equivalent of Coke Zero, unless I’m mistaken), except that it has “a hint of lime.” Hmm. You mean like OTHER pre-existing brands of Pepsi cola? Yep. This brand was “created” (in other words, names were changed and shuffled around) to sell chips. This is truly when advertising goes too far.

Not that I have anything against Doritos mind you…if they were selling Corona Lime with Doritos, I probably wouldn’t be complaining so much.