The Farrelly Brothers' Formula is as follows: A sappy romantic comedy, told primarily from the perspective of the male lead, infused with envelope-pushing moments of can-you-show-that-in-a-movie scatology so that teenaged boys don't realize they're watching a chick flick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but there it is. Here, it's been applied to the basic structure of a 1970s Neil Simon flick in place of the original's very of-the-moment cynicism about the romantic ideals of love and marriage... and I have to wonder if the Brothers are as gobsmacked as I am that it didn't work.
The basic premise is the same: Eddie (Ben Stiller) a lifetime bachelor, just got married in a hurry (short-version: mid-life crisis) to the beautiful Lila (Malin Ackerman, who's now the first trouble-sign for "Watchmen" if her turn here isn't an unfortunate fluke) and headed of to Cabo for the honeymoon - whereupon he quickly discovers A.) that Lila is really, really irritating and wrong for him; and B.) that the (single) woman of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) is at the same hotel.
That's a funny premise, and it worked the first time around thanks to an honest understanding of the it's own potentials and implications: It was cynical, but also practical, about the idealizing of both marriage AND singlehood. It's characters, in the spirit of 1970s dark comedy, were all largely selfish and unidealized creatures - in other words, they were fully human: Charles Grodin as the hero was, while not "evil," an egocentric jerk. His main dissapointment with his new wife is that she's too much oriented toward the traditional marriage-ideal - she wants to be June Cleaver, and he's built more for a Desperate Housewife. That's why he's so enamored of the "other woman," a blonde ice-queen played by Cybil Shepherd: She doesn't "need" or even all that much "want" him... their made for eachother. Probably.
The Farrelly's have populated their version with their usual collection of slightly-grosser Hollywood rom-com superbeings, which is the foundation of it's rapid ruin: This story just doesn't work when the wandering husband and the other woman are both genuinely good, decent people "destined" to be perfect for eachother. A guy who's as movie-hero good and decent as we're told Eddie is would NEVER chase another woman on his honeymoon unless pushed to a ridiculous extreme, which requires that Lila become a ridiculous caricature of body-functions, personality-flaws and dark-backstory that's just disasterously over-the-top to - It's not enough to make her "wrong" for Eddie, she has to become a bad person.
Perfect example: Early on, much is made of Lila's deviated-septum which leads to her accidentally spraying liquids (and more) from her nose. It's understandable that Eddie would be a bit grossed out to learn this, and at the prospect of having to deal with it for the rest of his life, but for a mere physical tic to help his eye start wandering would make him slightly less than a 100% worth-pulling-for hero; so soon enough we're told that her condition is the result of a prior cocaine habit. Eddie is put-off and more-than-a-little frightened by her, but the audience is told to HATE her. The Farrelly's aren't misogynists, but in trying too hard to make us root for Eddie unconditionally they've engaged in the kind of woman-hating that you rarely see outside of films made by women.
Likewise, it'd be ridiculous to assume that someone who's as nice/smart as we're told Miranda is wouldn't catch on tho things sooner. This requires a truly hackneyed bit of contrivance, like something out of the worst sitcom, wherein she believes something about "Eddie's wife" that isn't precisely true, and phrases it in such a way so that Eddie thinks everything is okay when, in fact, it isn't. Dumb.
This is just bad writing and poor filmmaking, plain and simple. The actors, with the exception of a typically-annoying Carlos Mencia, are trying with nothing to work with. And what was surely hoped to be the "Mary Moment" of grossout humor falls totally flat. It's a bust. Pity.
FINAL RATING: 3/10
Saturday, 6 October 2007
INTERMISSION: BANANAS OF REVENGE
"Run for your lives, children! RUN!"
Knoxville, TN is only about 3 1/2 hours away, so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine a small group of Spirit of Vatican 2 parishioners forming a convoy of VW vans and Toyota Priuses (or maybe even just hitching a ride in order to further conserve fossil fuel consumption) for the purpose of traveling down here and picketing outside my theater. It appears that their EcoChurch Director Che' Lovell (or perhaps his evil doppelganger) is currently scripting a play with the hopes of getting it produced on the stage, or maybe even someday as a movie. (You never know, I hear the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos is always on the lookout for fresh talent.) And it appears the SOViers were hoping to convince me into reviewing the work in progress.
Of course, I tried to explain that The B-Movie Catechism is a film-centric blog, but they started going on about the suppression of the freedom of self expression and my being a slave to the fascist media machine which (except for a few wise and brave actors) continues to propagandize "outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society" and how my resistance, though passive, was nonetheless mean, hurtful and a reflection of "the violence inherent in the system." (Some of this sounded oddly familiar.) So I thought, what the heck, even though you don't get to take popcorn inside the auditorium, it's still in a theater, right? (Popcorn causes cancer this week anyway, so who needs it.) Let's go and take a peek at ACT I of BANANAS OF REVENGE. (WARNING: This review contains some spoilers. You might want to go read the first act yourself before continuing.)
SCENE: A banana plantation in Guyana or someplace like that really hot.Well right away I couldn't help but notice the cast. I'm not sure how Che' managed to get so much celebrity firepower on such a minuscule budget. Garafolo will do anything for the least bit attention, but as for Cruise and Travolta, well, I guess brain of H Robert Williams could have called in some favors from the scientologists. (They probably still owe the world penance for Battlefield Earth.) Anyway, the play starts with Travolta as the cruel plantation owner oppressing his workers.
TIME: Right now except night
[TOM CRUISE and JEANNE GARAFOLA on stage]
[Enter the JOHN TRAVOLTA]
GARAFOLA: Don’t you care about anyone but yourself?I pointed out that this scene might be more hard hitting if Travolta was in his get-up from the movie adaptation of the stage adaptation of the movie Hairspray, but Che' mockingly informed me that no Republican would be caught dead cross-dressing (except inside the offices of the FBI or possibly in a public restroom stall) and no LGBT person could ever conceivably be an oppressor. Fine, it's his play. The character's then spend an inordinate amount of time talking about some political stuff I didn't quite get until they discover a book which contains all the truth they need to free themselves. I perked up at this point, thinking this might be a Bible, but then I realized I've never read a translation of Holy Scripture which included words like Bourgeoisie or Proletariat.
TRAVOLTA: No. Now I need to go and give money to republicans so they can help me by making laws which suppress women and indigenous peoples.
[Re-Enter JOHN TRAVOLTA with SEAN PENN and DANNY GLOVER. GLOVER has his hands tied behind his back]Shows what I know. I thought Glover was getting too old for this s***. It's the introduction of Penn that really interests me though. I've always held a begrudging respect for Penn. Any man who can marry Madonna and escape without putting a bullet through his own skull has more than proved his intestinal fortitude to me. Sure, he lost his mind in the process, but that just adds an extra raw edge to any performance he gives. Just see how convincing he can be; it really looks like he's punching Glover in the gut, hard. I suggested this would be a great point in which to have Mel Gibson rush in and save Glover, but for some reason the mention of that name nearly caused a riot to break out, so I had to take it back. Meanwhile, back on the stage, the play continues with long sections of expository dialog about oppression and the ownership of goods. Penn sees the error of his ways and punches Travolta in the nose, somehow killing him in the process. (Again, I thought the death scene would have been twice as dramatic played in drag, but nobody's listening to me.) Following that, there's lots more talk about who owns the bananas. It might be a good time to point out that the Catechism tells us, "Even when we have done our work, the food we receive is still a gift from our Father; it is good to ask him for it and to thank him, as Christian families do when saying grace at meals." (Why do I get the inescapable feeling you'll find my use of the Catechism oppressive?) The play continues.
PENN: This menial laborer person is causing trouble. I caught him handing out things people read.
TRAVOLTA: Hit him.
[PENN punches GLOVER in stomach]
GLOVER: It is the dawn of a new day. The sun is yellow like the bananas. It is a banana dawn. All over the world people are waking up and they will see the banana sun.Finally, I started to get excited. You see, based on the title of the play, I had been expecting an epic along the lines of the motion picture classic Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes. Except with bananas. How great would that have been? The sequel Return Of The Killer Tomatoes even starred George Clooney, so there was some hope he might return to his roots in the little known fruit-horror genre and bless us with a cameo. But to my dismay, Act I abruptly ends at this point. No mayhem, no mad scientists, no guys dressed in big banana suits terrorizing the countryside. There's none of that here. This is more like Waiting For Godot, with fresh fruit.
GARAFOLA: The fascists will be looking for the bananas and they won’t find them!
GLOVER: But the bananas are bananas of revenge. And so they will have to eat the bananas and the bananas they eat won’t taste very good except to us.
I'm sorry Che'. It's not that I mind morals embedded in my entertainment. Remember that eloquent speech Peter Graves gives at the end of It Conquered The World. "He learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature... and because of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too late for himself that men have to find their own way, to make their own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves. And when men seek such perfection... they find only death... fire... loss... disillusionment... the end of everything that's gone forward." (I'm tearing up just thinking about it.) But he delivered that speech only after fighting to the death with an upside-down giant carrot with fangs. I understand this is only a work in progress, but if you're going to win me over, Act II needs to be less Godfather II and more Troll 2.
Maybe I'm just the wrong person to ask to review high-brow theatrical productions. D. G. D. Davidson over at The Sci-Fi Catholic is much more intellectual than I am, and I understand that he's under pressure also to review the play. Maybe he'll do your work justice. Until then, just in case you're too upset, I'm going to brush up on how to defend myself against a man armed with a banana.
Thursday, 4 October 2007
FROGS
TYPICAL REVIEW
"If you’re a huge fan of cheesy ‘Nature vs. Man’ flicks, this one is for you. For anyone looking for something not featuring tons of slimy reptiles and amphibians, look elsewhere." - Scott Weinberg, Apollo Movie Guide
THE PLOT
Rugged outdoorsy photographer Pickett Smith is cruising in his (non-gas powered) canoe taking snapshots of swamp animals and leaky pipes for an unnamed ecology magazine. (Ya think maybe this is our hero?) Before Pickett knows what is going on, he is capsized by a (obnoxiously loud gas-powered) speedboat driven by two of the Crockett siblings whose family just happens to own the waters the photographer has been exploring. Pickett is fished out and taken to the Crockett island estate where the über-dysfunctional family is gathering for their annual 4th of July (oh, the dripping irony) celebration. As Pickett is something of an ecology expert, he is almost immediately grilled by the Crockett's about the increasing number of abnormally large frogs on the island. Pickett suggests that nature might be in revolt due to all of the pollutants and pesticides mankind is dumping on it. (Wow, right on the first guess. He really is an expert.) Jason, the Crockett patriarch, calls shenanigans however because he knows from Sunday School that man has dominion over the animals. The argument becomes moot when the phones go dead and various groups of wildlife begin systematically picking off family members and guests, all under the watchful guidance of the frogs. The dwindling group of survivors only hope is to escape the island and make it back to the mainland. Or is it?
THE POINT
And lo, as the moon entered the seventh house, mankind took a moment of rest and looked at all which it had created and beheld that it was... dirty. Oh sure, conservationists may have been around since the 19th century, but it was in the mid-60s with books like Silent Spring and The Population Bomb that the environmental movement proper really kicked into high gear. But if you had to pick a banner year for environmentalism, at least in regards to pop culture currency, it would have to be 1971. In that single year we saw the founding of both Greenpeace and Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, the very first Earth Day, and most important of all, that famous Keep America Beautiful commercial showing a Native American shedding a single tear over a ravaged polluted landscape. (I dare you to find a child from the seventies who didn't see that thing hundreds of times. We may not have known about any of that other stuff, but we darn well knew our country had become a garbage dump.) With environmental concerns at the forefront of the public consciousness it was only (dare I say it) natural that Hollywood would cash in. So in 1972 we got Frogs.
Boy did we get frogs. Over 600 of the slimy non-CGI things if the trivia is to be trusted. Not to mention the hordes of snakes, spiders, lizards, turtles, and various other critters which descend on the Crockett household. (The only thing missing are the worms, the tormenting w... see, I knew that would stick in my head.) And they're all shot beautifully. That's undeniably one of the first things you notice about this movie. It's like someone forgot to tell cinematographer Mario Tosi (Carrie, Sybil) this was just some cheesy drive-in flick. Frogs was released as a double feature with Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster for crying out loud and yet this guy takes the time to churn out National Geographic quality images. (I suppose the director was impressed too as this movie contains more images of creatures sitting around doing nothing than a whole day's worth of Animal Planet programming.) In hind sight, this film didn't really deserve his efforts. Or that of the actors for that matter. Sam Elliot and the gang really seem to believe in the movie's "message" and put their heart into the proceedings. The standout actor is, no surprisee, B-movie great Ray Milland as the domineering bigoted sexist industrialist wild-game hunter who believes his fortune gives him carte blanche to do as he pleases with both people and the world they live in. Nicely underplayed by Milland, Jason Crockett is a living, breathing Pandora's Box of what was considered eeevil in the early 70s. (There's probably even something symbolic in his being crippled and confined to a wheelchair, but I just can't make myself think too hard about Frogs in order to figure it out.) Everybody seems to have come to this movie with the intention of making a truly good film.
It's a shame the premise is so ridiculous. Let's face it, unless they're 40 stories tall and smashing up Tokyo, things like frogs, turtles, and lizards just aren't that threatening. How are you supposed to get all that worked up over critters you see in the bushes outside your house every day? I'll grant that the filmmakers used unusually large versions of these animals, (don't get me started on the countless species shown which have no business being in Florida) but at the end of the day it's still just a bunch of garden pests. The script tries to get around this fact by having most of the cast accidentally disable themselves in some contrived manner, thereby allowing the slow moving animals to stage their assaults. (Really, what choice do you have when you're story calls for someone to be killed by turtles?) But about the fourth or fifth time some halfwit falls in a hole or gets stuck in the mud, the continuous rolling of your eyes starts to get uncomfortable. I mean, c'mon! There's actually a scene where some schlub falls to the ground and a bunch of spiders start dropping Spanish Moss on him (don't ask) AND he gets too tangled up to get away. This movie isn't so much about "when animals attack" as it is "when animals host the Darwin Awards".
The other irritating thing about the movie (well, if you're still bothering to take it even half seriously) is that it never properly explains the motivation behind the animals' actions, especially considering a lot of these creatures should be eating each other rather than planning joint attacks on humans. And why on Earth are the frogs in charge anyway? According to C. C. Abbott's article The Intelligence of Batrachians from Science Magazine, frogs are "exceedingly stupid", so is there some other guiding force behind it all, maybe some kind of Gaia thing? Who knows? Pickett offers up his theory that it's all somehow retribution for man's abuse of nature, which everyone immediately accepts with no questions, but nothing shown in the movie ever really verifies this. For all we viewers know, this whole thing could actually be Plan 10 from outer space. (Hey, just because Plan 9 failed miserably doesn't mean they won't try again. Keep watching the skies!)
Frogs was released 35 years ago and (from my layman's perspective anyway) arguments over, and explanations for, what's going on in the environment don't seem to have gotten any more clear than they were back then. From VP Al Gore and his camp we're told that global climate change "is a true planetary emergency. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, working for more than twenty years in the most elaborate and well-organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have forged an exceptionally strong consensus that all the nations on Earth must work together to solve the crisis of global warming." On the other side we get dissenters like MIT scientist Richard Lindzen who tell us that "alarmist predictions of more hurricanes, the catastrophic rise in sea levels, the melting of the global poles and even the plunge into another ice age are not scientifically supported." Somebody (besides just me, i mean) is confused. Perhaps author Thomas Storck is right when he reminds us that "Satan promotes error in pairs, so that there will always be two warring camps, both zealously championing positions that are flawed, and both keenly aware of what is wrong with their opponent's point of view, but blind to what is wrong with their own. And in the modern world, too often Satan has managed to divide Catholics between these two camps. The only remedy, the only means by which we can escape this bitter but sterile secular warfare, is by obtaining an understanding of what the Church really teaches."
Fine. We've already noted in our last short feature where the Catechism plainly states that as Christians we have some responsibility towards the environment. The International Theological Commission, writing in Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, puts it this way, "Christian theology speaks of man as the master of a household to whom God has confided care of all his goods (cf. Mt 24:45)." Which is just a nice way of saying we're in charge of taking good care of the place until the owner gets home. So if we were in the movie Frogs, we'd be on Pickett's side, right? But the Catechism also reminds us that "everyone has the right of economic initiative; everyone should make legitimate use of his talents to contribute to the abundance that will benefit all and to harvest the just fruits of his labor." But doesn't that mean we would be on the side of the Crocketts whose main concern was using our resources to expand economic development? Well, either we've run into an apparent contradiction (again) in Church teaching, or it looks like the Catechism expects us to work out how to accomplish both things simultaneously. Be not afraid, though. As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, the "passion for synthesis is the spirit of Catholicism, always seeking both/and solutions."
It would be extremely helpful if we could whip out a nice WWJD moment here, but unfortunately it's not that simple. About the only time Jesus makes explicit mention of the environment is to compare the local garbage dump to Hell. Nowhere does he organize a protest to have Gehenna cleaned up or shut down, nor does he say it's necessary for the economy. The International Theological Commission sadly admits that "in the end, we must note that theology will not be able to provide us with a technical recipe for the resolution of the ecological crisis". In short, the Bible isn't going to tell us what the acceptable level of greenhouse gas emissions is or whether or not we should reuse our plastic grocery bags. "It is not the role of the Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life." the Catechism reminds us, "This task is part of the vocation of the lay faithful, acting on their own initiative with their fellow citizens." We're meant to exercise our own intelligence in determining who's telling us the truth about environmental issues and whose policies will best address the issues at hand. That's just good citizenship.
But that doesn't mean we leave the policy debates entirely in the hands of the secular world. At a recent talk to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Pope Bendeict XVI stated that there were "three specific challenges facing our world, challenges which I believe can only be met through a firm commitment to that greater justice which is inspired by charity." One challenge involved ensuring that human beings be seen "as persons, male and female, created in God's image and endowed with an inviolable dignity." (Things like abortion would fall under this category.) The second involved ensuring that "those spiritual goods which are properly human expand and multiply when communicated." (He was specifically addressing increasing the opportunities for education.) But surprisingly the third challenge he mentioned was the environment.
"In meeting the challenges of environmental protection and sustainable development" the Pope said, "we are called to promote and 'safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic "human ecology"'. In other words, what we have specifically as Christians is a duty to preserve the ethical framework within the environmental debate. Translated into specifics, this means Catholics are expected to do their best (as voters, legislators, businesspeople, etc.) to ensure such things as never allowing environmental concerns to overshadow the value of the human person (no creepy population control experiments), never dismissing environmental concerns in the name of progress or the free market (no devastating the natural resources of third world countries for a better bottom line at home), and no placing our immediate lifestyles over the concerns of future generations (maybe we should reuse plastic grocery bags, they do make okay cat pan liners). Our religion asks of us what it should, that we apply its basic principles to the broader issues at hand.
The funny thing is, as noted by some of the above examples, once you start applying Christian ethics to the environmental debate, it doesn't take long to figure out that, at some point, we're going to be at odds with every politcal or secular philosophy out there. And this, I believe, is the deeper point and the reason why the Pope included the environment as one of the primary challenges of our time. Along with a handful of other issues, environmentalism is one of the key areas where the Christian religion has the opportunity to distinguish itself from all other philosophies as a consistent, well reasoned, ethical approach to finding solutions for today's problems. As hard as it is to believe, the debate that surfaced decades ago in convoluted crapfest "message" movies like Frogs actually has the potential to become one of the defining issues for this generation of Christians.
THE STINGER
Of course, Benedict XVI wouldn't be much of a Pope if he didn't find some way to work a little evangelization into the whole thing. A recent article in the National Catholic Reporter speculates that "Benedict sees in the modern environmental movement the most promising route for recovery of the natural law tradition. What today's rising ecological awareness presumes is that there are limits inscribed in nature beyond which humanity trespasses at its own peril. Without any particular reference to religion, the secular world today is arriving at its own version of natural law theory. Building upon that momentum, and directing it beyond environmental matters to questions of individual and social morality, is what Benedict seems to mean by a "secular path" to formation of conscience." A lot of critics have suggested that the modern environmental movement is turning into a kind of "secular religion", and they're probably right. But what this article is proposing is that the Pope is reaching out to the environmentalists and saying, "Hey, what you're searching for, what you're trying to formulate, it's already here in the same old place it's always been." Ain't that always the case?
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
Moral Combat
Hat-tip: Kotaku.com
Egh. Well, this is certainly a buzzkiller after yesterday's "Mario Galaxy" trailer.
Produced several years ago but apparently only heading into some kind of release now, "Moral Combat" is - aside from being a new all-time champion in the field of Worst Movie Title Pun EVER - a documentary about the debate over video game violence. http://kotaku.com/gaming/game-violence/moral-kombat-premiers-at-vgxpo-306503.php
The doc, produced by Spencer Halprin, carries the standard promises of a "fair look at both sides," but I didn't need to know that it gives substantial screentime (and a premier panel discussion!) to Jack Thompson to know that a red flag was already up on this one. Here's the thing: It's all well and good to pretend that every argument carries equal weight and is equally worth considering in the hypothetical realm of academic debate where you do so to sharpen the rhetorical skills. But that's not - and I know I'm committing a sin against Political Correctness by saying this - how it works in the Real World, where quite often you DO frequently find "debates" where one side IS demonstrably, catastrophically wrong.
Thusly, there are times when "balance" between sides is not possible because any "balance" would have to be artificially-imposed. You cannot "balance" debates about Holocaust Denial, for example, because the "it never happened" side has no evidence or credibility while the "yes it did" side has MOUNTAINS of it. There can be no "balance" there: One side is right, the other side is wrong, and any attempt to make it appear otherwise would have to be an exercise in dishonesty, framing crazy people in order to make them appear as worth hearing from as their legimitate others. All men are created equal... yes, but they don't stay that way. Jack Thompson, Louis Farrakahn, Pat Robertson, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, etc. are not rational, reliable sources on ANYTHING - they are crazy people.
And that, you may have guessed, is my problem with what this doc claims to be (I will, of course, withhold final judgement until I see it)... it's not, in my estimation, possible in the realm of intellectual-honesty to make an "unbiased" doc on this subject that is also fair and balanced - it's NOT a balanced debate, and it NEVER will be. There has never been, and will never be, proof to back up the idea that violent video games are a direct cause of real-world violence. Not one study, not one laboratory test, not one SHRED of hard evidence has ever been found. The Thompson/Leiberman side does not have anything to support their claims. Not a single thing.
Thus, a truly unbiased doc showing both sides as they are would end up looking, well... as innevitably one-sided as a doc about the debate over the roundness of the Earth. Because you have one side that's made up of rational individuals with evidence and facts, and another side made up of crazy people with nothing to back them up. And as the trailer, which I'm about to show you, demonstrates, the filmmakers are at great pains to make Thompson etc. look to be on equal moral and intellectual footing with their opponents, which is simply not an accurate representation of the situation.
Now, I understand. This is the way people think you NEED to do documentaries, always pretend that everything is exactly equal and worth-considering or else you'll be accused of propaganda. I get that, and was expecting it. THEN I saw the trailer, which I somehow managed to miss back when it was fresh:
No, you didn't just imagine that. One of the commentators blames video-games for 9/11, and the film (appears to, based on it's own trailer) treats this as an argument as worth considering as any other.
Yeah, talk about fair.
Egh. Well, this is certainly a buzzkiller after yesterday's "Mario Galaxy" trailer.
Produced several years ago but apparently only heading into some kind of release now, "Moral Combat" is - aside from being a new all-time champion in the field of Worst Movie Title Pun EVER - a documentary about the debate over video game violence. http://kotaku.com/gaming/game-violence/moral-kombat-premiers-at-vgxpo-306503.php
The doc, produced by Spencer Halprin, carries the standard promises of a "fair look at both sides," but I didn't need to know that it gives substantial screentime (and a premier panel discussion!) to Jack Thompson to know that a red flag was already up on this one. Here's the thing: It's all well and good to pretend that every argument carries equal weight and is equally worth considering in the hypothetical realm of academic debate where you do so to sharpen the rhetorical skills. But that's not - and I know I'm committing a sin against Political Correctness by saying this - how it works in the Real World, where quite often you DO frequently find "debates" where one side IS demonstrably, catastrophically wrong.
Thusly, there are times when "balance" between sides is not possible because any "balance" would have to be artificially-imposed. You cannot "balance" debates about Holocaust Denial, for example, because the "it never happened" side has no evidence or credibility while the "yes it did" side has MOUNTAINS of it. There can be no "balance" there: One side is right, the other side is wrong, and any attempt to make it appear otherwise would have to be an exercise in dishonesty, framing crazy people in order to make them appear as worth hearing from as their legimitate others. All men are created equal... yes, but they don't stay that way. Jack Thompson, Louis Farrakahn, Pat Robertson, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, etc. are not rational, reliable sources on ANYTHING - they are crazy people.
And that, you may have guessed, is my problem with what this doc claims to be (I will, of course, withhold final judgement until I see it)... it's not, in my estimation, possible in the realm of intellectual-honesty to make an "unbiased" doc on this subject that is also fair and balanced - it's NOT a balanced debate, and it NEVER will be. There has never been, and will never be, proof to back up the idea that violent video games are a direct cause of real-world violence. Not one study, not one laboratory test, not one SHRED of hard evidence has ever been found. The Thompson/Leiberman side does not have anything to support their claims. Not a single thing.
Thus, a truly unbiased doc showing both sides as they are would end up looking, well... as innevitably one-sided as a doc about the debate over the roundness of the Earth. Because you have one side that's made up of rational individuals with evidence and facts, and another side made up of crazy people with nothing to back them up. And as the trailer, which I'm about to show you, demonstrates, the filmmakers are at great pains to make Thompson etc. look to be on equal moral and intellectual footing with their opponents, which is simply not an accurate representation of the situation.
Now, I understand. This is the way people think you NEED to do documentaries, always pretend that everything is exactly equal and worth-considering or else you'll be accused of propaganda. I get that, and was expecting it. THEN I saw the trailer, which I somehow managed to miss back when it was fresh:
No, you didn't just imagine that. One of the commentators blames video-games for 9/11, and the film (appears to, based on it's own trailer) treats this as an argument as worth considering as any other.
Yeah, talk about fair.
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
Super Mario Galaxy: The Prologue
"Mario" creator and video game patron-saint Shigeru Miyamoto is, famously, infinitely more a gameplay/visuals guy than a story guy. As such, the series' that he either created or shepherd tend to tilt toward classical mythic archetype like "Legend of Zelda" or feature the basic "you are ____ you need to _____" structure of the Mario series. Yes, there are story-driven installments like the "Mario RPG," "Paper Mario" and "Mario & Luigi" sub-series, but the mainline titles tend to shy away from overly-complex in-game narratives and the notion of a larger series continuity is all-but nonexistant. As such, you seldom see a main-series Mario title aim to fit in the kinds of story-advancing cinematic cutscenes you see in so many other "next-gen" games aside from the 'better-than-the-actual-games' mini-movies that tended to open the GameCube Mario Sports titles.
Well, apparently the occasion of Mario's first full-bore platforming foray onto Nintendo's (now officially the top-selling video game console of this generation so far) little miracle-machine The Wii has given them the incentive to OPEN the highly-anticipated game with THIS magnificient bit of gorgeously-colorful, fan-service heavy cinematic, easily the grandest opening for a Mario game ever (for now only available with it's Japanese-language version):
A bustling, re-designed Mushroom Kingdom being carpet bombed!? Kamek the Magikoopa!? Bowser conjuring up what looks like force lightning!? Flying saucers!? And, most-importantly... "Super Mario Bros. 3"-era AIRSHIPS swooping out of the night sky to their original theme music!!?? I've been waiting to see something like that in a Mario game for almost as long as I've been waiting to see something like this:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Well, apparently the occasion of Mario's first full-bore platforming foray onto Nintendo's (now officially the top-selling video game console of this generation so far) little miracle-machine The Wii has given them the incentive to OPEN the highly-anticipated game with THIS magnificient bit of gorgeously-colorful, fan-service heavy cinematic, easily the grandest opening for a Mario game ever (for now only available with it's Japanese-language version):
A bustling, re-designed Mushroom Kingdom being carpet bombed!? Kamek the Magikoopa!? Bowser conjuring up what looks like force lightning!? Flying saucers!? And, most-importantly... "Super Mario Bros. 3"-era AIRSHIPS swooping out of the night sky to their original theme music!!?? I've been waiting to see something like that in a Mario game for almost as long as I've been waiting to see something like this:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Monday, 1 October 2007
REVIEW: In The Valley of Elah
The "Iraq movies" aren't doing well. If you keep up with movie news, you know that. If you frequent 'conservative' punditry sites, you know that AND you've endured some insufferable cheerleading about it. It's one thing if openly-depressing, politically-charged films like "Elah" or the upcoming "Rendition" aren't exactly making off with billions; but when even a politics-free shoot `em up like "The Kingdom" opens in second place to The Rock as a football toughie with a troublemaking little girl there might just be a problem here.
Well, okay, several problems; "Iraq fatigue" being first and foremost. 70% of the country opposes the war, yes, but polls also show that most are largely resigned to it's protracted continuation. Thus, while a certain vocal minority (including lots of folks in the movie business) finds Iraq to be all-encompassingly-infuriating, most potential audiences just find it depressing. Fury sells tickets, depression doesn't.
But at a close second, I think, is a general sense of lacking import. Before I go on, let's just get this on table: I'm registered as an independent. My politics fall solidly in the camp of "libertarian," which generally means I'm mostly about what "conservatives" were SUPPOSED to have been about before the Religious Nuts took over that whole "side" of things and ruined American political discourse right up through today - in shorthand, when it comes to applying dated literature to government imperitives I'm inclined to pick Ayn Rand over The Bible - or Koran, or Book of Mormon, or whatever for that matter. I did not vote for Bush or Gore or Kerry (no, not Nader either, put down the hammer.) I will not vote for Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson. I fully expect history to judge George W. Bush as one of the worst American presidents of all time. I am in favor of a War on Terror, but not waged in the slapdash way it is currently being waged. I was in favor of attacking Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, but ALSO not in the slapdash way either was and continues to be done. And I am most definately against the continued presence of combat troops in Iraq: American soldiers, Marines and contractors should NOT be getting blown to bits so that eternally-warring tribes of intellectually-unevolved religious nuts can play Democracy Dress-Up.
So, then, to lack of import. With the final chapter of the Iraq War debacle still to be written, and the larger Terror War still ongoing, and even the Bush Legacy still up in the air... what, exactly, are these movies going to "be" in the here and now? It's too late to stop the war, and too early to get any kind of intellectually-honest read of what this war will "mean" to the American psyche overall. So, even though I'm aware that most of the people making these movies are sincere in their beliefs and pure of motive... I have to ask what the "point" is. The downer Vietnam movies of the 70s and 80s had the benefit of hindsight for perspective. Downer WWII movies like "Flags of Our Fathers" or "Letters From Iwo Jima" offer a more complex examination of the "Good War." Basically, if I'm going to endure undeniably depressing subject matter, the typical tradeoff is some kind of larger benefit - and I don't really see that being feesible in these "too late"/"too soon" Iraq films. Hearing a feature-length "we told you so" from Robert Redford and Paul Haggis is not a benefit, I'm sorry.
The lack of hindsight perspective is especially problematic for these films, because in it's absence you wind up imposing the structure of previous films about previous wars onto this one - and that it's not a precise "fit" is always going to show. The battle-scars a war leaves on the national psyche effects what sorts of stories take shape about it, and one scar doesn't fit with another. Making a gung-ho WWII film in Veitnam doesn't work (see: "The Green Berets,") just as making a sombre Veitnam film in WWII doesn't either (see: "The Thin Red Line.") And so we have Paul Haggis' "In The Valley of Elah," which wants very much to be "Coming Home" for Iraq... and that's why it doesn't totally work. It feels far too much like a Veitnam movie transplanted to Iraq, and however similar the two may wind up looking the disconnect is too noticable.
This is one of those very sincere and earnest films that feels in need of a few more years of mental gestation before it goes before cameras - it's more like a rough idea of a great movie than a great movie in it's own right. Haggis, clearly, wanted to make an anti-war film about Iraq in a visual and tonal-milieu of working-class Middle America; and the individual peices of this construction are all there to see: Pickup-trucks and flagpoles. Army uniforms and shaved heads. Flat-country vistas and homey local diners. A police-procedural about a murdered, possibly-AWOL Iraq veteran and the greater mystery of heat-scrambled video on his cellphone. Tommy Lee Jones in an Oscar-worthy performance as a walking avatar of worn, wounded American manhood.
Jones is a gruff, old-fashioned and (truth be told) bullheaded and often unpleasant veteran who's already lost one son to the war in Afghanistan. When informed that his other son, last known to be serving in Iraq, was in fact recently back stateside and now AWOL, he matter-of-factly heads to the town surrounding the base to check things out. A tragic surprise awaits him: His son's body has been found, burned and cut into peices, evidently the victim of a violent murder. The geography of the crime scene leads to a clash between the local police and Army, but as a former MP Jones takes it upon himself to investigate the crime vigilante-style. He enlists (well, bullies, really) some help from a local cop (Charlize Theron, her Midwestern accent vastly improved since "North Country") who starts to smell conspiracy and possible cover-up. Meanwhile, Jones' character contends with a darker personal mystery poised to shatter his very reality: a series of videos from Iraq found on his son's cellphone are slowly being reconstructed, and each new peice of footage suggests darker and darker truths to come about his son, the war and What Really Happened Over There.
As I said, all the peices are in place for a really good, if tough, examination of the lasting effects of a war. But since the war-proper still hasn't revealed what the actual nature of it's effects will be, early-bird "Elah" has to make do with archetypes and suggestion. The result is that the "mystery" is too easy to solve - once you've met the players and detected the intended message, you already know what has to have happened and what it will mean. With appologies to Mr. Haggis, who I believe was making a sincere effort at having his message movie function as a legitimate whodunnit, it just doesn't work: The early notes of looming darkness, Bush speeches as background chatter and methodically-rising drumbeat of plot points involving shell-shocked, maladjusted veterans are just too clear an indicator as to what MUST have "gone down" for the story to arrive at it's largely pre-announced 'point;' so the red-herrings of drug deals and Mexican gangs just feel like so much obvious misdirection.
Coupled with this, the already-creaky device of the phone videos being decoded by a program that moves at plot-point-generating speed starts to feel outright phony - there's never any real question of "what" will be revealed. Finally, a way over-telegraphed final coda is, I'm sorry, just plain heavy-handed. This is material that, given the presumptive nature of doing it now, demands a certain level of subtlty and let's face it, "subtle" hasn't really been Haggis stock in trade up to this point. I liked "Crash," yes, but the only way that particular film could've been more "heightened" and operatic would be to have the cast burst into song. It worked there. Here, Haggis is going for "dialed down" drama and it's clear it isn't where he lives, creatively - what's supposed to be terse and restrained instead feels... vauge.
Overall, it isn't a bad movie - just a deeply flawed one. Jones turns it into a work of real worth with his achingly-good performance alone, matched only by Susan Sarandon as his wife in what's easily one of the most real and believable "older couple who communicate without much talking" relationships onscreen in ages. In fact, it's heartbreakingly easy to imagine a great, genre-defining film being made about Iraq from this same story, with the same cast and talent, several years from now. But right now, working only with what history and reality has provided so far, what the film winds up with is a cinematic-variation on one of the very actions it seeks to condemn: A pre-emptive strike on a target it doesn't yet sufficiently understand.
FINAL RATING: 6/10
Well, okay, several problems; "Iraq fatigue" being first and foremost. 70% of the country opposes the war, yes, but polls also show that most are largely resigned to it's protracted continuation. Thus, while a certain vocal minority (including lots of folks in the movie business) finds Iraq to be all-encompassingly-infuriating, most potential audiences just find it depressing. Fury sells tickets, depression doesn't.
But at a close second, I think, is a general sense of lacking import. Before I go on, let's just get this on table: I'm registered as an independent. My politics fall solidly in the camp of "libertarian," which generally means I'm mostly about what "conservatives" were SUPPOSED to have been about before the Religious Nuts took over that whole "side" of things and ruined American political discourse right up through today - in shorthand, when it comes to applying dated literature to government imperitives I'm inclined to pick Ayn Rand over The Bible - or Koran, or Book of Mormon, or whatever for that matter. I did not vote for Bush or Gore or Kerry (no, not Nader either, put down the hammer.) I will not vote for Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson. I fully expect history to judge George W. Bush as one of the worst American presidents of all time. I am in favor of a War on Terror, but not waged in the slapdash way it is currently being waged. I was in favor of attacking Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, but ALSO not in the slapdash way either was and continues to be done. And I am most definately against the continued presence of combat troops in Iraq: American soldiers, Marines and contractors should NOT be getting blown to bits so that eternally-warring tribes of intellectually-unevolved religious nuts can play Democracy Dress-Up.
So, then, to lack of import. With the final chapter of the Iraq War debacle still to be written, and the larger Terror War still ongoing, and even the Bush Legacy still up in the air... what, exactly, are these movies going to "be" in the here and now? It's too late to stop the war, and too early to get any kind of intellectually-honest read of what this war will "mean" to the American psyche overall. So, even though I'm aware that most of the people making these movies are sincere in their beliefs and pure of motive... I have to ask what the "point" is. The downer Vietnam movies of the 70s and 80s had the benefit of hindsight for perspective. Downer WWII movies like "Flags of Our Fathers" or "Letters From Iwo Jima" offer a more complex examination of the "Good War." Basically, if I'm going to endure undeniably depressing subject matter, the typical tradeoff is some kind of larger benefit - and I don't really see that being feesible in these "too late"/"too soon" Iraq films. Hearing a feature-length "we told you so" from Robert Redford and Paul Haggis is not a benefit, I'm sorry.
The lack of hindsight perspective is especially problematic for these films, because in it's absence you wind up imposing the structure of previous films about previous wars onto this one - and that it's not a precise "fit" is always going to show. The battle-scars a war leaves on the national psyche effects what sorts of stories take shape about it, and one scar doesn't fit with another. Making a gung-ho WWII film in Veitnam doesn't work (see: "The Green Berets,") just as making a sombre Veitnam film in WWII doesn't either (see: "The Thin Red Line.") And so we have Paul Haggis' "In The Valley of Elah," which wants very much to be "Coming Home" for Iraq... and that's why it doesn't totally work. It feels far too much like a Veitnam movie transplanted to Iraq, and however similar the two may wind up looking the disconnect is too noticable.
This is one of those very sincere and earnest films that feels in need of a few more years of mental gestation before it goes before cameras - it's more like a rough idea of a great movie than a great movie in it's own right. Haggis, clearly, wanted to make an anti-war film about Iraq in a visual and tonal-milieu of working-class Middle America; and the individual peices of this construction are all there to see: Pickup-trucks and flagpoles. Army uniforms and shaved heads. Flat-country vistas and homey local diners. A police-procedural about a murdered, possibly-AWOL Iraq veteran and the greater mystery of heat-scrambled video on his cellphone. Tommy Lee Jones in an Oscar-worthy performance as a walking avatar of worn, wounded American manhood.
Jones is a gruff, old-fashioned and (truth be told) bullheaded and often unpleasant veteran who's already lost one son to the war in Afghanistan. When informed that his other son, last known to be serving in Iraq, was in fact recently back stateside and now AWOL, he matter-of-factly heads to the town surrounding the base to check things out. A tragic surprise awaits him: His son's body has been found, burned and cut into peices, evidently the victim of a violent murder. The geography of the crime scene leads to a clash between the local police and Army, but as a former MP Jones takes it upon himself to investigate the crime vigilante-style. He enlists (well, bullies, really) some help from a local cop (Charlize Theron, her Midwestern accent vastly improved since "North Country") who starts to smell conspiracy and possible cover-up. Meanwhile, Jones' character contends with a darker personal mystery poised to shatter his very reality: a series of videos from Iraq found on his son's cellphone are slowly being reconstructed, and each new peice of footage suggests darker and darker truths to come about his son, the war and What Really Happened Over There.
As I said, all the peices are in place for a really good, if tough, examination of the lasting effects of a war. But since the war-proper still hasn't revealed what the actual nature of it's effects will be, early-bird "Elah" has to make do with archetypes and suggestion. The result is that the "mystery" is too easy to solve - once you've met the players and detected the intended message, you already know what has to have happened and what it will mean. With appologies to Mr. Haggis, who I believe was making a sincere effort at having his message movie function as a legitimate whodunnit, it just doesn't work: The early notes of looming darkness, Bush speeches as background chatter and methodically-rising drumbeat of plot points involving shell-shocked, maladjusted veterans are just too clear an indicator as to what MUST have "gone down" for the story to arrive at it's largely pre-announced 'point;' so the red-herrings of drug deals and Mexican gangs just feel like so much obvious misdirection.
Coupled with this, the already-creaky device of the phone videos being decoded by a program that moves at plot-point-generating speed starts to feel outright phony - there's never any real question of "what" will be revealed. Finally, a way over-telegraphed final coda is, I'm sorry, just plain heavy-handed. This is material that, given the presumptive nature of doing it now, demands a certain level of subtlty and let's face it, "subtle" hasn't really been Haggis stock in trade up to this point. I liked "Crash," yes, but the only way that particular film could've been more "heightened" and operatic would be to have the cast burst into song. It worked there. Here, Haggis is going for "dialed down" drama and it's clear it isn't where he lives, creatively - what's supposed to be terse and restrained instead feels... vauge.
Overall, it isn't a bad movie - just a deeply flawed one. Jones turns it into a work of real worth with his achingly-good performance alone, matched only by Susan Sarandon as his wife in what's easily one of the most real and believable "older couple who communicate without much talking" relationships onscreen in ages. In fact, it's heartbreakingly easy to imagine a great, genre-defining film being made about Iraq from this same story, with the same cast and talent, several years from now. But right now, working only with what history and reality has provided so far, what the film winds up with is a cinematic-variation on one of the very actions it seeks to condemn: A pre-emptive strike on a target it doesn't yet sufficiently understand.
FINAL RATING: 6/10
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