Seriously, it's just embarrassing.
Just look at this goddamn mess. It's getting to the point where I just reflexively scoff as soon as I see the Legendary Pictures logo. Two trailers and it's already guaranteed to be a self-important mess of all style and no substance. The point of a trailer is to be tantalizing, to build up enough interest without giving away the whole movie. But this trailer has failed in that. It seems already defeated when that shiny beard guy yells "RELEASE THE KRAKEN" and all of a sudden ohhhhh nooooo loooooooook it's the kraaaaaaken it's so biiiiiiiiiiiiiig oh please enjoy this we spent ever so long on the CGI.
The whole point of the first Clash of the Titans was to be some good, lighthearted, campy fun. Ray Harryhausen, the master of claymation, poured endless hours into the effects because he loves what he does and because he wanted it to be fun. But this remake seems far too full of itself, far too convinced of its own worth, to be endearing. It reeks of desperation, of neediness. It seems like everything it shows me needs me to be entertained.
Of course, I have no problem with this being released by Legendary Pictures. After all, the point of many legends is to be cautionary tales.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
What is a film? A miserable little pile of CGI!
Or: When Anime Dracula quotes the Bible, you listen
It seems we are living in the age of empty spectacle. It's truly staggering to think of just how far CGI technology has come in the last two decades. And yet to me it's even more staggering to think of how much we've squandered it. Our technology has evolved, but out storytelling has stagnated, has been hurled to the wayside to make way for profit and spectacle.
Look at older movies made with primarily physical effects for a moment, movies like Brazil or Alien or — here's a sad thought — The Fifth Element. Physical effects and sets are far more costly than CGI, so there is an incentive to make sure that the costs are worth it. And those movies deliver! They rollick, they terrify, they despair and delight, they make you feel! Ask yourself, when was the last time a movie made you feel something?
Nowadays, for every Pan's Labyrinth or Moon, there are innumerable 300s or Avatars or Watchmen or Episode III: Attack of the Clones. I couldn't have come up with a more fitting title for Attack of the Clones if I tried. It was artificial, soulless, so wrapped up in its own self-importance that it forgot to have a point. Far too many films lately have been nothing but blind spectacle, ultimately short-sighted in their fanatical visual focus.
Make no mistake, the affordability and ease of CGI is nothing but a bonus to any filmmaker. The problem is when all efforts are focused on making sure the arterial sprays are rendered in perfect detail and no attention is left to make sure something of substance gives purpose and worth to the film. These films may be visually dazzling but ultimately they are hollow experiences.
The problem is not with CGI. The problem is never about the technology, it's about the human reaction to the technology. We have a tremendous gift, but we lack the responsibility to use it well. My prediction is when we get past the novelty of CGI we'll start seeing a lot more mature, responsible films made with CGI instead of puerile and soulless husks. Because ultimately this is about soul.
But don't take my word for it when there's someone far more eloquent:
It seems we are living in the age of empty spectacle. It's truly staggering to think of just how far CGI technology has come in the last two decades. And yet to me it's even more staggering to think of how much we've squandered it. Our technology has evolved, but out storytelling has stagnated, has been hurled to the wayside to make way for profit and spectacle.
Look at older movies made with primarily physical effects for a moment, movies like Brazil or Alien or — here's a sad thought — The Fifth Element. Physical effects and sets are far more costly than CGI, so there is an incentive to make sure that the costs are worth it. And those movies deliver! They rollick, they terrify, they despair and delight, they make you feel! Ask yourself, when was the last time a movie made you feel something?
Nowadays, for every Pan's Labyrinth or Moon, there are innumerable 300s or Avatars or Watchmen or Episode III: Attack of the Clones. I couldn't have come up with a more fitting title for Attack of the Clones if I tried. It was artificial, soulless, so wrapped up in its own self-importance that it forgot to have a point. Far too many films lately have been nothing but blind spectacle, ultimately short-sighted in their fanatical visual focus.
Make no mistake, the affordability and ease of CGI is nothing but a bonus to any filmmaker. The problem is when all efforts are focused on making sure the arterial sprays are rendered in perfect detail and no attention is left to make sure something of substance gives purpose and worth to the film. These films may be visually dazzling but ultimately they are hollow experiences.
The problem is not with CGI. The problem is never about the technology, it's about the human reaction to the technology. We have a tremendous gift, but we lack the responsibility to use it well. My prediction is when we get past the novelty of CGI we'll start seeing a lot more mature, responsible films made with CGI instead of puerile and soulless husks. Because ultimately this is about soul.
But don't take my word for it when there's someone far more eloquent:
Monday, February 22, 2010
Donuts don't wear no alligator shoes
Or: I hate being sick
My intention was to have a post detailing my thoughts on CGI usage/reliance in modern cinema, but I seem to have come down with something. So, for lack of health, let me just recommend that everyone go out and watch Black Dynamite as soon as humanly possible.
My intention was to have a post detailing my thoughts on CGI usage/reliance in modern cinema, but I seem to have come down with something. So, for lack of health, let me just recommend that everyone go out and watch Black Dynamite as soon as humanly possible.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Halfway down this post is a .gif of jaguar-head teats shooting milk into a dude's mouth
Or: On the Antipodal Nature of Profit and Art
There are two irreconcilable forces at work in American filmmaking these days: the drive for profit and the desire to maintain artistic integrity. This is not to say this conflict is limited to the realm of film. In a capitalist society, the dichotomy between being lucrative and staying true to vision exists in all forms of artistic expression. It's simply a matter of labor. It takes less resources and fewer laborers to create a painting or a book than it does a movie or a game. To make larger productions, it takes a veritable army of specialized workers, working on specific tasks for weeks or months. As a result, it takes a lot of funds to see a film or game through to completion, to say nothing of distribution.
Thus there are only a few options for funding large-scale projects. The least common option is to fund everything out-of-pocket, but very few creators are wealthy enough to do such a thing. Sometimes the artist is fortunate to find a sort of "patronage" for their creation. Some artists may find a patronage stifling if their patron is conditional in support. But if the funding comes from a close friend or a fervent admirer, a patronage can offer the greatest creative flexibility of all funding options. Just look at Alexandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, funded largely by money from members of The Beatles, for an example of the freedoms this can allow.
Okay, maybe don't look at it.
The other options are corporate funding and government funding. Many Americans cringe at the thought of government funding thanks to the national myth of "big government" being harmful for everything. Really this idea was created by think tanks in the pockets of large corporations to lay the groundwork for massive deregulation and advancement of corporate interests. Critics of government grants might be quick to bring up The Triumph of the Will and other propaganda, but the modern artistic grant is far removed from the grandiose fascistic posturing of old. The truly fascist elements of society are not the artists who need funding to achieve their vision, but the politicians who slash grant funding out of fear and hatred of culture.
That leaves corporate funding, the vessel that most films, especially modern ones, go through. Coincidentally, most modern films aren't very good. This is because most of these films are created not out of love and the joy of crafting and sharing, but out of the cynical drive for ever greater profits, for a return on the expenditure of creating the film. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort but not necessarily a committee effort. Collaborations combine the passions of all artists involved to create something greater than its base parts. Committees scrap ideas that are considered to unfamiliar to turn a profit and leave nothing but soulless husks. Historically, the best pieces of art are the ones funded unconditionally.
There are two irreconcilable forces at work in American filmmaking these days: the drive for profit and the desire to maintain artistic integrity. This is not to say this conflict is limited to the realm of film. In a capitalist society, the dichotomy between being lucrative and staying true to vision exists in all forms of artistic expression. It's simply a matter of labor. It takes less resources and fewer laborers to create a painting or a book than it does a movie or a game. To make larger productions, it takes a veritable army of specialized workers, working on specific tasks for weeks or months. As a result, it takes a lot of funds to see a film or game through to completion, to say nothing of distribution.
Thus there are only a few options for funding large-scale projects. The least common option is to fund everything out-of-pocket, but very few creators are wealthy enough to do such a thing. Sometimes the artist is fortunate to find a sort of "patronage" for their creation. Some artists may find a patronage stifling if their patron is conditional in support. But if the funding comes from a close friend or a fervent admirer, a patronage can offer the greatest creative flexibility of all funding options. Just look at Alexandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, funded largely by money from members of The Beatles, for an example of the freedoms this can allow.
Okay, maybe don't look at it.
The other options are corporate funding and government funding. Many Americans cringe at the thought of government funding thanks to the national myth of "big government" being harmful for everything. Really this idea was created by think tanks in the pockets of large corporations to lay the groundwork for massive deregulation and advancement of corporate interests. Critics of government grants might be quick to bring up The Triumph of the Will and other propaganda, but the modern artistic grant is far removed from the grandiose fascistic posturing of old. The truly fascist elements of society are not the artists who need funding to achieve their vision, but the politicians who slash grant funding out of fear and hatred of culture.
That leaves corporate funding, the vessel that most films, especially modern ones, go through. Coincidentally, most modern films aren't very good. This is because most of these films are created not out of love and the joy of crafting and sharing, but out of the cynical drive for ever greater profits, for a return on the expenditure of creating the film. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort but not necessarily a committee effort. Collaborations combine the passions of all artists involved to create something greater than its base parts. Committees scrap ideas that are considered to unfamiliar to turn a profit and leave nothing but soulless husks. Historically, the best pieces of art are the ones funded unconditionally.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
We Sing To The Forest
Thoughts on Colin Turnbull's The Forest People
A short entry this time because it'll be a busy week for me. For my anthropology class, I'm reading Colin Turnbull's 1961 ethnography The Forest People on the BaMbuti pygmies. It's a fascinating read due to its narrative style. On the other hand, it's hard to do a subtext analysis because it's a non-fiction book.
The book is full of beautiful passages that naturally and fluidly shed insight on the BaMbuti way of life. My only complaint is a small one. It wouldn't feel right accusing Turnbull of racism in the face of his tenderness and love for BaMbuti culture, but there's sometimes something ugly in his descriptions of the African tribes the pygmies come in contact with. Other than that, it's a fascinating read.
A short entry this time because it'll be a busy week for me. For my anthropology class, I'm reading Colin Turnbull's 1961 ethnography The Forest People on the BaMbuti pygmies. It's a fascinating read due to its narrative style. On the other hand, it's hard to do a subtext analysis because it's a non-fiction book.
The book is full of beautiful passages that naturally and fluidly shed insight on the BaMbuti way of life. My only complaint is a small one. It wouldn't feel right accusing Turnbull of racism in the face of his tenderness and love for BaMbuti culture, but there's sometimes something ugly in his descriptions of the African tribes the pygmies come in contact with. Other than that, it's a fascinating read.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
BETRAYED BY MY OWN CREATION! HOW!?
Or: Dr. Moreau's Legacy in John Wells' The Company Men
Most of you probably haven't seen The Company Men, considering it was just shown this week at the Sundance Film Festival. For your sake, then, I'll include a short synopsis. The film follows 3 men working for one Boston-based shipbuilding company – sales associate Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), his boss Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), and upper manager Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) – as they cope with getting laid off. The acting is a treat, the writing is crisp, and perhaps the only sour note is a lack of perspective.
I'll get my gripes out of the way first because this review isn't about those. Sometimes it seems to ask, "Oh heavens, who will think of the white males? See how they suffer at the hands of this cruel recession! Have they not endured enough?" I found it difficult to refrain from cackling with glee when sad music plays as Ben Affleck's character Bobby is forced to sell his Porsche, much less sympathize with him. Getting laid off is obviously a difficult and unhappy time for anyone, but even in America there are people harder-hit by this recession than affluent white males.
Despite this, the film is an excellent piece of work. It follows the classic story archetype of the mad scientist: scientist corrupts natural order to create monster, scientist sends monster against enemies, monster turns against scientist to punish hubris. In this metaphor simply replace "scientist" with "the white man," "monster" with "capitalism," and "enemies" with "poor people." "Natural order" still applies, I suppose, simply because capitalism is an unnatural construct, but perhaps the same could be said of all economic systems.
Really I can't be too hard on a movie that shows capitalism in an unfavorable light, but that's just me. The film culminates in the dilapidated husk of a Boston shipyard after a funeral. Tommy Lee Jones grumbles to Ben Affleck that "we used to make something in this country." Two victims of a predatory system lament in the skeletonized corpse of a third. The denoument, to avoid spoilers, is bittersweet but not without hope.
If you can still catch a Sundance showing, you won't regret it. If you can't, it's at least worth a rental when it comes out on DVD.
Most of you probably haven't seen The Company Men, considering it was just shown this week at the Sundance Film Festival. For your sake, then, I'll include a short synopsis. The film follows 3 men working for one Boston-based shipbuilding company – sales associate Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), his boss Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), and upper manager Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) – as they cope with getting laid off. The acting is a treat, the writing is crisp, and perhaps the only sour note is a lack of perspective.
I'll get my gripes out of the way first because this review isn't about those. Sometimes it seems to ask, "Oh heavens, who will think of the white males? See how they suffer at the hands of this cruel recession! Have they not endured enough?" I found it difficult to refrain from cackling with glee when sad music plays as Ben Affleck's character Bobby is forced to sell his Porsche, much less sympathize with him. Getting laid off is obviously a difficult and unhappy time for anyone, but even in America there are people harder-hit by this recession than affluent white males.
Despite this, the film is an excellent piece of work. It follows the classic story archetype of the mad scientist: scientist corrupts natural order to create monster, scientist sends monster against enemies, monster turns against scientist to punish hubris. In this metaphor simply replace "scientist" with "the white man," "monster" with "capitalism," and "enemies" with "poor people." "Natural order" still applies, I suppose, simply because capitalism is an unnatural construct, but perhaps the same could be said of all economic systems.
Really I can't be too hard on a movie that shows capitalism in an unfavorable light, but that's just me. The film culminates in the dilapidated husk of a Boston shipyard after a funeral. Tommy Lee Jones grumbles to Ben Affleck that "we used to make something in this country." Two victims of a predatory system lament in the skeletonized corpse of a third. The denoument, to avoid spoilers, is bittersweet but not without hope.
If you can still catch a Sundance showing, you won't regret it. If you can't, it's at least worth a rental when it comes out on DVD.
Monday, January 25, 2010
White People Are Getting Fucked Up By A Movie About Blue Cat-Elves
Or: The Consequences of Idolization in James Cameron's Avatar
James Cameron, I have a small suggestion next time you’d like to make a film. Nothing huge, mind you. It really just boils down to one minor quibble:
Next time hire a writer.
No one’s criticizing the strength of Avatar’s visuals, except maybe some stodgy old luddites angrier about CG than I am. Instead they (not the luddites, that is, but the hypothetical critics implied with “no one”) are criticizing how goddamn cartoonish the plot is.
I have to be really careful in discussions about Avatar because sometimes I’ll hear people defend the name “unobtanium” as a legitimate name for the movie’s MacGuffin mineral. I have to be careful about this because when I hear someone defending something indefensible it makes me question if I’m even alive and living in reality. Such facile and lazy writing couldn’t possibly have survived the production process of a multi-million dollar blockbuster release. “But it’s a legitimate term that has been used in the aerospace engineering field for decades!” the defender might say. “Get out of my bathroom, I’m trying to shower,” I might reply were the defender arguing this point in my bathroom. Otherwise I might say “Legitimate? Pfah! Only so far as an in-joke can be legitimate.”
It’s one thing to call an essentially unobtainable material “unobtanium” as a joke, but it’s quite another thing to call it “unobtanium” when they have enough of it to justify a floating display chunk and an extensive mining operation harvesting more every day. They have clearly obtained unobtanium. And why? Because otherwise the movie wouldn’t have a one-dimensional conflict. Oh, sorry, I mean, “because this little gray rock sells for twenty million a kilo.”
This brings me to the crux of this article, for without our cartoonishly villainous antagonists, we couldn’t have our insultingly virtuous protagonists. The Na’vi are the result of post-colonial atonement-seeking filtered through the lens of lazy storytelling equipped with an enormous budget. But the movie would like you to accept that - despite existing on a planet that already had some form of planetary consciousness and an entirely alien physiology - they evolved into a sentient and miraculously humanoid race of giant blue cat-elves.
Fair enough, I suppose. Except then they just so happened to develop a perfectly idealized subsistence-based culture that reveres nature and abhors senseless killing. And I do mean a singular culture, because apparently the Na’vi are so homogenous that the only differences between Pandora’s various tribes are their geographic locations. Far be it from me to criticize the ideals of environmentalism, but in this case the Na’vi are literally too good. They are romanticized right out of their own biology. Are we supposed to believe that there are no diseases whatsoever on this lush jungle world teeming with fungal life?
I’m not asking for a complete ethnography on a fictional alien race, simply a modicum of depth. Perhaps if we had seen some of the downsides to living as the Na’vi live then we wouldn’t see the schadenfreude-laced laments of broken internet denizens stricken by Avatar-induced depression. As morbidly hilarious as this situation is, Mr. Cameron, let’s try to avoid it next time. And there’s only one way to do that: Hire a writer.
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