Ever Seen It: Parents

In 1989 a 3 million dollar film was released in 94 theaters, grossing a total of 870,000 dollars in the 5 months that it was in theaters. Available now to watch on Hulu, You Tube and iTunes (for .99 cents), this low budget film has received many a poor review. What is it about Halloween that we will sit through the worst of films (Saw VI?) for anything (like an $8.50 ticket)?
So I watched it.
The film is about a young boy, who may have some mental dementia (he seems to be obsessed with blood and gore), who believes his parents are cannibals (The film was released in Germany as "Daddy ist ein Kaniballe"). He attends school where the teachers and students all believe him to have mental issues. (What parents would ever eat human meat?) The boy follows his father to his job, where the father works testing chemicals on various subjects, including a The social worker (who is very much a child herself) ultimately believes the child and follows him to his household.
The film was unique, if anything. With a Harold and Maude feel to it, the boy's fantasies about death and dying are intriguing, given that they are premonitions into the acts of the parents. The acting, especially on the boys part, is very subtle – almost disturbingly so. That might be partly why the story seems to do so well for how low-budget the film actually was. Unfortunately, it wasn't what audiences were looking for in 1989, and it may not be first of choice now 20 years later. Nothing really stood out in the film, but it is worth a watch if you find yourself longing for a silly film on all Hallow's Eve.

Revisited: Armageddon

I have not seen Michael Bay’s 1998 film since theatres with my cousin and aunt as a naïve and wide-eyed child. The past few years have had me plagued with a curious desire to rewatch the movie that I remember as epic and amazing. Imagine my disappointment. Granted, the past 11 years have seen my film education multiply infinitely but regardless of such fact, this film, er movie, would fail miserably.

In the vein of Bay’s previous film, The Rock, it is a hard-hitting and implausible adventure. However, this time the entire world is on the line and the only people to save it are an amalgamated list of A and B stars who all suffer from bad acting. Not that much more should be expected. And much akin to Bay’s feature length epic-music video set on Alcatraz, it is a nauseating and flamboyantly disorganized experiment in what David Bordwell might call hyper-intensified continuity. If the camera doesn't move that we hardly see the cut long enough to decipher such. And if nothing is exploding or ticking down or going wrong, or even if it is, then it will likely be basked in a cold blue or green light. And if the shot isn’t of the entire city being wiped out by a meteor chunk than its someone’s cringing faces as something else goes wrong. This movie’s pace slows not, even for tender moments between father and daughter as he is about to save the world from the inevitable Texas sized meteor.

I really hate to call Bay an auteur because it suggests an artistically and tonally motivated appearance of his oeuvre, but fast cuts, flying cameras, silhouetted helicopters, and ridiculous plots are evident in practically all his films. I can’t wait to see what the next Untitled Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay project entails. But lets reflect on the one hint of possible quality of this film; the belief that we as humans have the ability to save ourselves from extra-cosmic events far beyond the scale of our strengths. Giant meteor? Nuke it. The film almost tries to deal with the inevitability of death and human place among the stars but falls to the commercial explosions, action, and patriotism. It’s surprising that the bomb wasn't painted as an American Flag.

What’s wrong with this movie? Its like watching an exhausting and poorly constructed trailer for over two hours and coming away with even less of a message than could be packed into a two minute teaser. The biggest event of mankind is played off like another Roland Emmerich movie. I should clarify that I was not disappointed with this movie; I certainly didn't want to like it. So if anything it should be complete satisfaction. At least in a way.

One Thousand, Eighty

The theater can be a wonderful thing: bright and thundering sound, the shared experience, and the large screen, with perfectly clear images flashing before our eyes. The attempt to bring that experience to the home with the home theater is rapidly evolving. We've moved from the "tube" (cathode ray tube) televisions, to the flat screen tv with "full 1080" resolution. That means that there are 1080 pixels, or RGB (red, green and blue) dots lining the side of the tv vertically, and 1920 pixels stretching across the bottom. That's a lot of pixels! 2,073,600 to be exact. While there's a bit more than that on the theater screen (up to 4K (4096×2160 (8,847,360 pixels) which is 4.26 times as many pixels) in some digital cinemas (the same resolution at which the RED camera captures raw footage)), you've got to admit that the 1080 resolution is pretty impressive.
I recently purchased myself a Samsung Blu-Ray player, capable of this 1080 output, to go along with my apartment's 720p Panasonic Viera, 50 inch plasma television. Using Netflix, I've been able to rent several blu-ray discs and watch some very decent movies on beautiful 1080p. The result is amazing. There truly is a visible difference between DVD resolution and Blu-ray resolution, something that I feel brings out the filmic qualities of the movies. These movies that were shot on film deserve to be presented in something less digitized (or compressed) than a DVD, especially when viewed on a 50" television.
Whether it's the fact that the television is plasma, or simply that it's a high resolution image being displayed through a slightly lower resolution television (1080 movie played on a 720 tv), or just the fact that it's a high-definition image, I feel that the smoothness, or the filmic quality of the movie is preserved when I watch films like the one I watched last night: Patriot Games (starring Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan (the role previously played by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October) released in 1992, directed by Phillip Noyce). Truly HD film transfers are one step closer to that wondrous experience of going to the theaters and viewing beautiful films (even when their digitized)

Trailers Re-worked

Trailers are fun. Re-edited trailers are even more fun. And aside from being great practice in editing they help highlight the importance of stylistic expectations and music in developing genres and tones. The Shining recut has been incredibly popular and a host of rather poorly realized attempts plague the Internet. Here are some good ones I have encountered.

It’s quite interesting to see how our expectations play against the final delivery of the trailer. What once was casual and carefree becomes sinister and daunting. Enjoy.

Ever Seen It: Troll 2

Yes, I watched Troll 2. Yes, it was pretty bad. Yes, you should watch it for free on Hulu. And no, you should not expect a polished piece of cinematic history that will inspire independent filmmaking and youngster film students for generations. But you should expect hoards of deliciously bad special effects, misplaced sound, and quite possibly the worst attempt at making a creature this side of The Killer Shrews.

For those of you who don’t know, Troll 2 is an unrelated plagiarism of an entirely different film and makes no explicit or even implicit reference to the namesake Troll film that, unlike number 2, actually contains a troll. This film is a perfect example of attempting to capitalize on something that had only minor success hoping that it fares better than absolutely no success. But we are smarter than this and in only one viewing, or even a montage, this piece of trash is instantly dethroned as nothing more than cheap, very cheap, entertainment. I suppose the poster could have hinted to that fact. The film is helmed by Italian schlockster Claudio Fragasso under the pseudonym Drake Floyd clearly suggesting that the film might not be such a proud achievement and its tagline, One Was Not Enough, strikes a comically ironic note.

The only redeeming factor, besides the endless amounts of green goo and human plants, comes in the form of Michael Stephenson. As the young Joshua he is the only one savvy to the goblin agenda cleverly disguised within the town Nilbog. Aided by apparitions of his dead grandfather and using his natural ability to scream he and his bad acting family defeat the plastic faced midgets to hilarious result. Stephenson has since directed a documentary about the cult phenomenon of the film. Tis a great example of how the Internet can, like nothing else, making something so bad into something so revered.

Do not forget, I beg you, Troll 2 is a bad movie. No, it’s not up there with Plan 9 From Outer Space but considering they probably put more effort into it than Ed Wood it’s not surprising. Lest I forget, the acting in this movie is horrendous and plays like a Troma film sucked dry of any drop of talent. Of course, credit where credit is due, they think they are acting well. And while it doesn't help that their scripted actions involved no improvisational freedom, much of what happens makes no sense. Let’s only hope that the pending Troll remake bears no resemblance to its unrelated follower.

Two See, or Not Two See

I ventured to the theaters to see films 35 times in the year 2008. It intrigued me today to think of the movies which became repeated views. The question I asked myself was: do I tend to see movies a second time when I view them at home, or is the theater the one and only time I see most movies. The conclusion is not as shocking as I had led myself to believe.
Just out of memory, I could name 9 movies that I never saw again after the initial theatrical view. But upon returning to my stack of saved ticket stubs, I found an intriguingly large number of one-time views.

Here are the movie I saw in 2008:
Juno (1/19)
Cloverfield (1/26)
Michael Clayton (2/02)
Jumper (2/16)
Vantage Point (2/27)
Horton Hears A Who (3/27)
The Bank Job (3/28)
21 (4/04)
Iron Man (5/03)
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (5/17)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (5/22)
Get Smart (6/22)
The Incredible Hulk (6/24)
Wanted (6/28)
Hankcock (7/01)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (7/15)
WALL•E (7/16)
The Dark Knight (7/18)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (8/02)
Swing Vote (8/04)
Pineapple Express (8/09)
Tropic Thunder (8/14)
Burn After Reading (9/12)
Eagle Eye (9/26)
Quantum of Solace (11/14)
Australia (11/29)
The Day The Earth Stood Still (12/12)
Yes Man (12/22)
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (12/26)
Valkyrie (12/28)
The Spirit (12/29)

The red movies are those I saw only once. The blue, of course, are those I saw twice if not more times (in fact, the Dark Knight I watched 3 more times in the theater, and 3 times since then on DVD and Blu-ray. WALL•E I saw 4 more times on DVD.) Is this saying that those red movies are all terrible? Is is saying the blue ones were great? Not at all. Many of the red ones were wonderful, one of the blue ones was awful.
It is very surprising to me that there are only nine movies which have had repeated views since their theatrical release. Of note are those which I absolutely loved and yet remain red: Iron Man and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It's been a long time since I've seen those movies, and they were very well made, so why have I not seen them again? Why, instead, do I chose to re-watch movies such as The Day The Earth Stood Still and Horton Hears a Who, when there are more decent films to watch? These questions I cannot answer. I only know that I long for new movies daily, but enjoy revisiting those which were wonderful.

Weekend Retreat

Amidst filming a short film for class my weekend still saw the inclusion of two classic films. Kubrick’s bold 1964 military satire Dr. Strangelove is the late director’s final black and white film and boasts an intelligence noticeably absent in Tony Scott’s sophomore feature of 1986, Top Gun. The latter is a glamorized and dramatic jet fighter commercial. Kubrick is an incontrovertibly established filmmaker whose oeuvre consistently probed under the surface and in the case of Strangelove seems a bit too relevant with the questions it asks about a species who can easily and unintentionally bring about its own demise. (Let me add here the eleventh hour inclusion of Michael Bay’s almost unwatchable Armageddon, of which a watched half, as another film who toys with the theme of extinction but appropriately skips over the issue in favor of big explosions and bad dialogue.) This is perhaps his scariest film, in which ordering a nuclear strike is much easier than calling it off and the main issues and the decisions that affect the entire world are made by a round table of isolated madmen. Top Gun is only less scary in its romanticized view of midair combat and bravura showmanship with cocky attention seekers behind the controls of $30 million war machines.

While my weekend had not aimed to be saturated far more than necessary in combat it proved an interesting reflection on the duality of war films. On the one hand we have the natural and cinematic inquisition to probe into an unfamiliar and brutal environment. Compare this to the detriments of hand-to-hand, gun-to-gun, or bomb to bomb combat that becomes engaging, exciting, and at times fun. And while some films point out the inherent irony of killing our own species others highlight the fun in challenging another human to the high stakes game of training and skill. The problem is that the two conflict with one another; when something becomes action-packed gunfire, explosions, escapes, and headshots it is immediately fun and engaging. We are promoting our own demise as entertainment: a natural progression to snuff film. Conversely, we could reflect on the dangers of fighting amongst ourselves fueled by greed of possession and intolerance of ideas. The existence of a war-glamorizing film immediately challenges the psychological debate posed by other films whose intent falls more along the lines of, say, questioning the ethics of war when both sides are really the same side.
So does this mean that a carefully delivered and socially conscious Strangelove discredits a flashy Top Gun in terms of cinematic appeal? Hardly. They are both visual and thematic escapist fare that may diverge in terms of depth and content but the fact of the matter is they are both still movies. They are movies with different statements, goals, and quite assuredly different longevity.

Upcoming Feature. The Wolfman

It’s about time that a remake I am actually excited for is headed our way. If you have ever seen the original 1941 version with Lon Chaney, Jr. you know that it is pretty good. It is reworked here with an aptly placed Benicio Del Toro taking Chaney’s spot and Anthony Hopkins looking the coolest he has ever looked. I am not sure how they are altering the story but the cinematography looks stellar, and how couldn’t it be with the DP of The Secret of the Ooze on board. Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving round out the leads in what looks like a satisfyingly dramatic retelling of Universal’s classic monster movie.

Joe Johnston directs, the man who so graciously brought us Jumanji, and October Sky. Further, the effects don't look half bad so check out the trailers. It doesn’t come out until February so we still have a while to wait. While the reviews I have read were raving they certainly explicate its gore. Either way, I’m pumped.

Movie? Film?

Denotatively, the only difference between film and movie is the former’s restriction to actually being captured on celluloid, movies have the freedom of being digital. Connotatively, however, the separation betwixt the two words can mean the difference between good and bad, elitist and average, snobbish and modest. And while a majority of the population, myself at times, uses the words interchangeably, they exist as distinct entries of the cinematic lexicon.

You rarely hear action film, its usually action movie with the expectation that characters will fall victim to decapitations, fireballs, shattering glass, and one-liners. On the same hand, European art films are always, well, European art films. The connotative difference between film and movie is hardly important, depending on who one is conversing with, but they suggest a sharp difference in reference to the motion picture one is speaking of. I had a friend say to me once that Batman Begins was a movie and The Dark Knight was a film. While the point here is not for me to argue for or against such statement it brings an interesting point to mind. Both films did quite well at the box office. However, the latter came out on top by more than $300,000. Does this mean that people are more interested in films than movies? Hardly.

We have not taken into account the multitude of other factors; familiarity with former film, increased advertisement, Heath Ledger’s Death. And there is no doubt that this is still an action movie despite the fact that it might have a plot. All this aside, and the standing notion that The Dark Knight is a film as compared to Batman Begins as a movie, lots of people went to see this film. Does this mean that audiences are now more interested in content over spectacle? I should think (and partly hope) not. Movies are still escapist fare where we can see splattering alien guts and toppling sky scrapers and slow-motion gunfights. That’s the fun of the movies; a fun that should not be lost by forcing films to have a literary drive.

Now, many if not most of my favorite motion pictures would be classified as films. And I by no mean aim to define films or movies as better than the other but simply intend to point out the connotative difference, a difference that is reflected in how audiences view and discuss movies, I mean films, I mean motion pictures. It will likely take the right kind of person; the kind who likes films, not movies, to point out the difference when we consider it as almost entirely connotative, but is it important that we make such a distinction?

Film Studies

“Auteurism shifted attention from the “what” (story, theme) to the “how” (style, technique), showing that style itself had personal, ideological and even metaphysical reverberations. It facilitated film’s entry into literature departments and played a major role in the academic legitimation of cinema studies.”

So writes Robert Stam in The Cult of the Auteur from his book Film Theory: An Introduction. Should I thus thank Andrew Sarris, who introduced the auteur theory to the US, for the fact that I watch two movies every Monday, in class? Can we attribute the inclusion of a film studies program at universities to one particular person and event? Doubtful. I can still, however, praise the insight and ability of an idea to have an important effect on the life of those interested in film studies, of which there are many. And it would be naïve to think that film would not have attained the status it has. Film itself is no different, it has changed only in how we look at it and certainly with time we would have come to realize its literary and academic legitimacy.
Now, I could sit here all day and argue about why films are better than books, or vice versa if need be. It seems to have become a matter of the esteemed and elite to suggest that the filmic adaptation pales in comparison to the written source. Some people fail to recognize it is not a matter of better or worse but of difference. Literature has its strengths that film cannot match but for each of these there are just as many that film can capture and that the written word cannot even begin to explain. This is mind; it was only a matter of time that film studies be legitimized. Perhaps it has not reached the level of literary interpretation, it would be arrogant to suggest such a young art could do so, but it is getting there. At the same time, however, it is changing day to day as technology runs rampant and the story, as well as how it is told, has changed.
Like it or not, films are here to stay. And if you are reading this, you’ll probably be hearing a lot more about them and about the ideas expressed above.