Sci-Fi Shorts

            It seems science fiction has gone the technological route, which doesn't seem all that surprising given its connection to the evolution of machines.  And as such, it is becoming easier and easier for aspiring filmmakers to knock out a short film in their basement and get the attention of the money-holding men that matter.  It has indeed worked with the horror genre as cheap thrillers like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity are bought by giant companies and adjusted for mass appeal.  Today’s shorts represent the spectrum of this process.

            The first, for anyone paying attention, should be obvious.  It is Neill Blomkamp’s short that was expanded into the feature length District 9 to mass appeal and a Best Picture nomination.  The aliens are different, and debatably, a bit cooler.  The style was retained in D9 as the faux-documentary that gives the film a unique energy for an alien invasion theme.  Losing the bid on directing a Halo movie, Peter Jackson allowed Blomkamp to do what he wanted and $30 million later we got D9.

            The second is by Fede Alvarez of Uruguay who packed a bunch of people in a bus and told them to run from something while he filmed.  For less than $300 his YouTube video that showcased his talents landed him a similar multimillion dollar almost overnight.  The film reflects a bit of the subjectivity of Joburg in its handheld camera but is not copycatting the documentary aesthetic.

            The third is by Andrea Ricca, whose website promotes the one camera and one computer simplicity of making films.  At the same time, it manages the narrative simplicity not employed in either of the above short films.  Yet like the others, it shows a desire to tell a story visual while acting as a calling card for the filmmaker’s talents.  

          It remains undisputed, though, that the availability of such marketing means that more filmmakers are able to get their work to a larger audience with less hassle.  And many have made the case that the evolving technology has allowed more amateurs to make their masterpieces.  Yet just because the tools are there does not mean the overall work has gotten better.  Just because everyone has a pencil and paper does not mean they are writing novels.  

Kick-Ass (2010)

            Where to even begin?  Kick-Ass has been a highly anticipated project around the Internet blogospheres and fan-boy kingdoms.  And it will come as little surprise that the final product is right up their alley as it mixes smart visuals, foul-mouths, caped crusaders, squirting blood, controlled fight scenes, hot girls, fan-boys, pop culture references, out-of-control fight scenes, and comedy into an almost inescapably entertaining and jaw-dropping 2 hours.  It is no exaggeration that even before the credits roll it would be a pleasure for the movie to restart itself.

            Matthew Vaughn heads back to the arena from which his debut feature, the fantastically stylish and awesome L4yer Cake, hails, and returns with an even more fantastically stylish and awesome film cut from the pages of a comic book.  Vaughn wrote the script concurrently with the comic writer Mark Millar, who pitched the idea.  In what is certainly a regretted mistake, Sony passed on the film forcing Vaughn to finance the film on his own.  It has since made back its $30 million budget in just over a week and word on the street is that it rocks.

            It would be a simple task, if unnecessary, to freeze frame the entire film and recompose to form an accompanying graphic novel.  Vaughn stations the frame about, making transitions weave in and out of one another and making their presence known only when they desire.  He lets the visual landscape provide

I Love Sarah Jane (2008)

            It is not immediately apparent that this Australian short is a zombie film.  More than anything, says director Spencer Susser, it is about the power of love to blind its bearer to anything else going on in the world.  Made in order to support a pitch for a feature, the film stars Mia Wasikowska as the only girl still alive in the wake of a zombie outbreak.  In fact, only the kids have survived.  The sole adult is the girl’s father, tied up in the backyard, who becomes subject for the kids’ torturous experiments.

            The film is simple and clocks in at 14 minutes yet seems to pass in even less.  The gray and dismal apocalyptic world is rather featureless save for the overturned cars and scattered bodies.  And as a whole, the film casts and almost demure tone as the lead boy shyly approaches the girl of his dreams whose zombie handling skills rivals that of any of the gang.

            Susser had his hand in Spider on the camera or electrical crew and his first feature, Hesher, has a commendable cast.  He is likely a director to keep in mind.  The film can be found on Wholphin number 10, or apparently YouTube.

The Framed Reception of Boys Don't Cry

            Kimberly Peirce’s 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry has been much discussed because of its representation of gender identity that is non-typical in a hetero-normative society.  The true story of Teena Brandon, a biologically female transgender person, ends with his death at the hands of two friends who raped and murdered him after discovering the truth about his “gender identity crisis.”  Under discussion now is not the verisimilitude of Peirce’s film but its reception by critics. Entirely ignored is the differentiation between sex and gender.  Within the critical writings, the two are freely interchanged.  From here on, sex will mean biological classification and gender will mean socially/psychologically constructed sexual orientation.  Brandon, then, is a straight male in the process of matching his given birth sex to his gendered feelings and impulses.  However, the reviews coming out saw Brandon as female, and suggested audiences do the same.  By referring to Brandon as feminine and emphasizing the non-diegetic filmmaking aspects, the reviews invite viewers to a reading that negates the film’s intent.

            Brandon Teena identifies as male and Peirce’s film asks its viewers to do the same.  Yet the majority of reviews refer to ‘her’ without distinguishing between sex and gender.  The reviews invite us to see Brandon as a she by calling Brandon “s/he” (Hoberman), “his” (Levy), “him/her” (Foreman), and of course, “herself.” (Gillespie)  Two reviews do appropriately describe Brandon the way he would like to be addressed.  Yet both must validate it first.  Roger Ebert writes, “She is a girl who thinks of herself as a boy…we must use the male pronoun in describing him.”  And Kenneth Turan writes for the Los Angeles Times, “someone who so succeeded in gender disguise that it’s difficult to talk about her without feeling that “him” is the more appropriate pronoun.”  Here, Turan mistakes the “gender disguise” with the actual act of disguising one’s biological sex.  Brandon identified as male and did everything but disguise this fact.  One review even challenges, as an aside, such a notion.  “…as to murder a young woman (or man, depending on how strongly you take the central point of the movie to be, that Teena Brandon was in fact a man for lack of phallus).” (Brundage)  In one simple parenthesis Brundage suggests that perhaps we should not see the character as male and promptly refers to Brandon in the feminine for the remainder of the article.

            Further, the articles propose that Brandon’s state is a “departure from the norm” (Turan) and should be seen as a purposeful and deceitful act.  Ebert states, “She is a lonely girl who would rather be a boy.”  While not incorrect, it again fails to differentiate between Brandon’s sex (girl) and gender (male).  Many reviews connote the performance aspect, describing a “woman who successfully masqueraded as an attractive young man” (Foreman), or “went on to create a charismatic identity as an attractive young man” (Maslin), or “reinvented herself.” (Gillespie) (Hunter)  What this terminology

Revisited: E.T. and POTC

            I had not watched Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic since sitting on my living room floor, popping in the well-worn VHS, and being amazed day after day.  The film has been a childhood necessity for a generation.  Having re-watched it, I could recall ninety percent of the shots, much of the dialogue, all of the scenes.  It was the first time having seen the anniversary edition with new and embarrassing digital effects.  It is these that I blame for making me wish I had simply the memory of the film and not a recent encounter.

            Increasing the family friendliness of the film, the guns wielded by G-men were digitally removed and replaced with flashlights and walkie-talkies.  Their at-the-ready trigger fingers can still be seen awkwardly protruding beyond the edge of their handsets.  In a similar and much more degrading, unfortunate, and nostalgia shattering fashion, numerous shots of the creature itself have been digitally glossed over making his CGI-smooth skin stand out like a poorly conceived superimposition.  In a matter of minutes all the wonderful feelings I have associated with the film for the last 15 years of my life left me.  Much of the effect of the alien is its tangibility as Elliot interacts with its hairless features.  I am not going to try and reconcile the reasons for which the film has been tampered with.

            I had not watched Gore Verbinski’s 2003 swashbuckling epic since about fall of 2006.  Thus the film was much more in my recent memory and not tied to childhood feelings of freedom and wonderment.  It was a film that I had gorged myself on during its release and for a few years following.  And despite its vast commercial appeal and societal immersion I remain devoted to its fanship.  This is not to say I don't find it easy to identify problems with its technical and story elements.  But more than any other movie in my young film interest days, POTC had the most impact on me wanting to make huge movies.  Such a feeling does not continue, for the moment at least.

            More than anything, in the last few years I have come to realize how my life is defined by movies.  In particular, this refers to the chronology of events in my life.  Any important moment is recalled based on the movies I watched on each side of it.  There are times when the quantity of films watched spikes.  Other times, I go weeks with only watching a few.  Thus films serve as mental retrieval cues for my memories and I can only hope that someday I won’t know whether a memory is mine or is taken from the cinema.

            

Cronenberg Short Films

            

Camera

           Commissioned by the Toronto Film Festival for the 25^th anniversary, Camera finds Cronenberg at a very reflexive and contemplative point.  Having released eXistenZ the year before, itself a representation of the film industry, this short film turns towards the director’s thoughts about his own death.  Familiar-faced Les Carleson plays the aged and worried Actor who has shared a dream that, word for word, matches one Cronenberg had during the 80’s.  In it, Cronenberg was infected with a disease while watching a movie, a notion played to full effect in Videodrome.  The Actor goes pessimistically on about death and the camera, how it records the death of the moment, and how it is poorly paired with the kids operating the old piece of machinery.

            All but the final shot of the film are captured in a grainy, handheld, and disgusting digital format that accentuates Carleson’s age, his wrinkles and lines, his worried eyes and uncomfortable condition.  In the final shot, the film camera takes a controlled and nostalgic glide towards the actor as he reclaims a bit of calm.  But the final frames, before the film runs out, show him in a state of uncertainty as the light exposes and immortalizes the death of the moment.  Cronenberg is obviously cognizant of the growing infatuation with digital cinematography and is calling for the continuation of the original art.  His thoughts are less concerns than they are opinionated preferences.

At The Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema of the World

            The second piece comes from a collection of shorts commissioned by Cannes’ 60^th and features renowned directors from across the globe.  Cronenberg’s contribution finds the director himself, the last Jew in the world, taking up residence in the men’s bathroom in the last cinema in the world.  With pained facial expressions, Cronenberg caresses a gun, its bullets too, and slowly explores the best way to end his life.  Two voice-overs replicate a news broadcast where newscasters observe his actions with feigned interest and complete objectivity.  They suggest the weakness and pathetic nature with which the Jew cops out on life.

            Shooting himself shooting himself, Cronenberg has commented on the death of cinema before.  And in later press interviews suggested that the form of cinema as we know it is already gone.  Undoubtedly, Cronenberg understands the nature of the medium, its social relevance, its fluidity and temporariness.  In both of these short films, he makes it clear that nothing, not even a medium that ‘immortalizes’ those that it captures, can last forever.

Sherman's March (1986)

            With camera perched on shoulder, Ross McElwee set out to retrace and document Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea.  Yet shortly before beginning his expedition he found himself suddenly single and at a loss for such a status.  The documentary that grew must be far from the historical reconstruction McElwee envisioned and is undoubtedly far more interesting.

            The journey, instead of navigating a trail of destruction, navigates a trail of destruction and reconstruction as the director encounters past loves and recent infatuations.  Perhaps his thin physique and heavily bearded face make him ample target for being set up.  Or perhaps his deflective camera, which allows him to maintain a distance between himself and the social world, is read by those around him as such.  Either way, McElwee falls subject to numerous experiments with good-looking southern girls whom he is at times expected, at other times demanded, to woo and wed and propagate. 

            The personal exploration of love lost and found is inherently emotional as McElwee tries to reason for missed chances and uncertain futures.  The onscreen dialogue accompanied by voice over narration predates YouTube confessionals by more than a decade and succeeds far more than any superficial v-log.  It is hard not to feel bad for the socially precarious filmmaker yet his tone is never self-deprecating, self-pitying, or self-effacing. 

            The final product is testament to the uncertain nature of non-fictional storytelling.  The filmmaker as subject has certainly been seen, yet McElwee’s 1986 entry comes off as the most sincere and cathartic.  His interactions maintain a sense of observation and confusion.  His narration emphasizes the thoughts in

Kids + Money (2008)

            This 2008 short documentary is as eye opening as it is repulsive.  The state of American consumerism and self-indulgence is spewed from the mouth of a dozen Los Angeles teenagers whose preoccupation with wealth supersedes their attention to race.  Having been bred in a culture of heightened awareness to financial status has more demanded than created the infatuation with presentation and social awareness.

            The numerous talking heads are usually smack dab in the middle of an expansive abode or amongst hoards of frivolous clothing purchases.  One girl, hyper-aware of social stratification at her high school, models the various clique clothing while articulating the general expense.  Another boy sorts through stacks of $300 jeans and dozens of $100-300 dollars sneakers scattered across is floor.  On numerous occasions the kids recount their general expenditures, whether it be hundreds of dollars for casual shopping or the same amount for pre and post-prom activities.  And while a few kids provide the monetary supplement themselves, one girl scoffs at the idea that she will ever have to work.

            Perhaps the most interesting thing we see in these kids is a semi-developed attention to social stratification and organization.  Miniature sociologists with surprising scrutiny.  They identify, clearly, the importance of money in everything they say and do.  At the same time, for many of them, the dollars directly inhibit their attention to everything else.  A day at school is composed of gathering visual data about everyone else’s clothing choices.  Their approval depends on its quality, uniqueness, and brand. 

Basket Case (1982)

            One of the more aptly named films I can think of.  It is also a very simple and cheaply executed cult film that spawned a pair of sequels during the ‘90’s.  Almost Cronenbergian in parts, the film delivers enough blood and creature carnage to make the midnight movie crowd happy as well as drops a few jaws of the everyday person.

            Duane carries his twin brother around in a picnic basket after a group of evil doctors separated them.  The twin, basically a head with arms, was thrown out with the trash and left to die.  Duane found his brother, being able to communicate telepathically, and saved his life.  The movie recounts their journey of exacting revenge on the doctors and society at large who are unwelcoming of the freak.

            There is not shortage of face grabbing, blood spewing, scalpel stabbing, and stop-motion creaturing, in the 1982 film.  It is no surprise that the film’s lasting status suggested a modern remake. (yet to be seen)  

War of the Worlds (2005)

            This movie screams Hollywood.  It makes no mistake in addressing itself as American in everyway.  From the patriotic defeat of an alien race by the greatest country on the earth to the numerous 9/11 references, it should come as no surprise that the film also screams Steven Spielberg.  I am surprised Dakota Fanning didn't scream his name, it seems like the laws of probability would dictate that sooner or later she would.  Now five years old, the film far from stands of one of the director’s best or one of the most important of…ever.

            Initial reviews for Spielberg’s retelling of the Well’s classic were mixed.  Numerous critics saw through the hyperbolic amalgamation of alien technology, special effects, roaming cameras, explosions, flying cars, and general panic.  The film is pure Spielberg, perhaps a collection of may things he has already succeeded at.  In that manner, it doesn't really offer anything new.  Other critics placed the film upon a pedestal as the director’s crowning achievement.  These people must have missed Jaws and Jurassic Park.

            What this film does offer is almost two hours of non-stop alien apocalypse action rendered a complete failure through the eyes of what we must conclude to be a not untypical American family.  It is certainly not an ideal family, but the extra terrestrial invasion sure helps mend it a little.  Tom Cruise is right at home in the big action blockbuster, running from things that are about to blow up and managing to find his way front and center in the frame.  From what little development there was in this not-quite-character-study, Cruise portrays the failing father turned heroic dad well enough.  We can only assume that Spielberg is pleased in mending the estranged American family.