HopkinsCinemAddicts

Cruella: A Traditional Fairytale with an Updated Aesthetic

This weekend, I went to the movies for the first time since the start of the pandemic. When we’re both home from school, my friend Ryan and I like to go to the worst movie we can find that still promises some entertainment value. We haven’t always struck the right balance - Tom Hooper’s Cats (2019) in particular felt like a waste of $13.50 - but the theatrical experience can usually make a mediocre film into a somewhat captivating spectacle. We saw Cruella, the origin story of the titular Disney villain first seen in 101 Dalmatians. Amateur reviews on Twitter advertised a bonkers explanation for Cruella’s hatred of spotted dogs, the kind of plot twist you can tell got greenlit in the middle of a pandemic when everyone was losing their minds a little bit.

Cruella places its heroine at the center of the London fashion scene amid near-constant British invasion-era needledrops, painting the classic villain as an avant-garde designer who stages guerilla runway shows and sabotages her stodgy competition, the House of Baroness. The rivalry between the two designers, Cruella and the Baroness, somewhat acts as a microcosm for the film’s blending of gritty, counterculture coolness with elements of the classic fairytale. I couldn’t stop thinking of comparable works, possible pitches: “Vivienne Westwood meets Mary Poppins;” “The Devil Wears Prada meets Cinderella”. Maybe this is because I think of Disney less as a treasure trove of quality children’s entertainment and more as a soulless conglomerate gobbling up all the surrounding talent and putting them to work spinning gold out of idle Disney IP. 

It’s not just a Disney thing, though: Todd Phillips’s Joker essentially mix-’n’-matched thematic and plot elements from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy while applying them to the well-known narrative of the evil comic book character. Cruella, teasingly dubbed “the Girl Joker,” borrows less directly from seminal works, but both films seem to me like things people wanted to make anyway and then were paid a lot more money to write as vehicles for already-established characters owned by studios. The trend of small, up-and-coming, “serious” directors being tapped to helm big-budget Marvel movies in the past few years (e.g. Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler, Rian Johnson, Chloe Zhao) suggests an attempt by the genre to rebrand as genuine “art” rather than action fodder, an ideological counter to the studios’ impetus to churn out as many sequels and reboots as possible. At first glance, Cruella reads as an audacious cash-grab by an industry bereft of new ideas; its merits as a film don’t necessarily absolve it of that judgement, but rather raise questions about the interactions between creativity and money in a “fallen” Hollywood. 

It makes me a little mad that they used an Iggy Pop song in a Disney movie. It feels like yet another example of mainstream media de-fanging subversive work by adopting its aesthetic without analyzing its deeper meaning. “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” makes an inane level of sense in a movie about a woman obsessed with crafting a dalmatian fur coat. It’s clever in a not-clever way that pisses me off and makes me feel like I’m being annoying for getting pissed off. But who was that for? Am I just supposed to recognize the androgynous High Street vintage store proprietor; Cruella’s Frank-n-Furter costuming and makeup as she assumes control of her own “Frankenstein place,” Hell Hall; the music of The Beatles and The Clash (different, sure, but both famous and British) as half-defined markers of a bygone era, stripped of any real cultural significance, but easily recognizable shorthand for a “vibe” that doesn’t need to adhere to historical accuracy?

Yes! Yes. Time and again, Cruella anesthetizes the cultural subversion and political turmoil its allusions suggest by reverting to fairytale conventions. Any issue of class brought to bear by Cruella’s status as an orphaned pickpocket is quelled by the ultimate revelation that she is the Baroness’s daughter. Both Cruella and the Baroness are referred to as “psycho,” but their poor mental health is simply a facet of the characters’ villainousness. The cast’s algorithmic diversity suggests a post-racial landscape, and readings of unconventional characters like Artie and Cruella as “queer” are purely subtextual. Thus, Cruella utilizes its historical and cultural milieu for aesthetic purposes while such allusions appear to “heighten” the text.

Consider The Lobster

I think that Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster is a good movie. I really like it.

My opinion of The Lobster is not radical or exceptional—lots of people seem to like it (my mom not included). It currently holds an 88% on rotten tomatoes, it won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and it was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 89^th Academy Awards. Not to say that awards and public opinion determine the quality of a film, but I think it’s fair to call The Lobster at the very least ‘well-made’. Of course, it’s not an objectively good movie because ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are subjective terms, and people who didn’t like the movie are just as valid in their opinions as those who did. There wouldn’t be any point in trying to argue that The Lobster is objectively good, but I think it’s possible to assert that certain aspects of the movie are just plain good without stepping on any toes.

I think the performances in The Lobster, especially from leads Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Coleman, and Léa Seydoux, were objectively good. Why? How do you qualify an objectively good acting performance?

One way would be to judge a performance by how convincing it is: if the audience believes the actor, then the actor did a good job. Obviously, that doesn’t work. None of the performances in The Lobster are convincing because none of them are trying to be. All the actors employ a really interesting deadpan delivery that almost seems accessible by the end of the film. It’s great, but not convincing.

So maybe acting should be judged by how enjoyable it is: if the audience enjoys the performance, then the actor did a good job. That doesn’t really work either. Asking about ‘enjoyment’ is diving right back into subjectivity, and also a good performance doesn’t necessarily have to be an enjoyable one. Javier Bardem is incredible in No Country For Old Men, but I would call his performance unsettling rather than enjoyable.

Another, simpler way to judge acting would be to just look at the intentions of the actor. If they were trying to deliver a certain performance and they succeeded, then their acting was good. The problem with that would be the question of whether or not the actor’s initial intentions were good, and how do you judge that? I personally think Jared Leto’s version of the Joker was terrible, even though he seemed to commit pretty well to his own vision of the character.

None of these work, and it might seem like the solution is back where I started… everything in entertainment is subjective, and there’s no point in trying to sort the good from the bad without purely relying on people’s opinions. This is an easy way out, but it ignores the clear trend of how certain types and kinds of movies do well with critics and audiences, while others do not. Certain factors like originality, authenticity, emotional resonance, sense of humor, tension, social awareness, etc. all propel a movie towards success. It seems like not all of these factors are purely up to the audience member—a film can be original, socially aware, and tense regardless of what you might think about it (see Get Out). So if the individual pieces can all be more or less quantified, then why is a movie itself still totally up to opinion? And why are aspects like acting and directing equally so? Why can I not say that The Lobster is objectively good?

Well, maybe The Lobster is a bad example. It’s a bit of an artsy-fartsy, absurdist piece of Art with a capital A, and I can easily see how a huge amount of people would find it boring or even annoying. And maybe that’s exactly the answer: movies are all about what you’re looking for. Franchises like The Fast and the Furious openly reject any and all criteria that might be applied when judging The Lobster, and yet they do really well and people like them. Quality of acting, directing, writing, and production design is only important insofar as it lands with its intended audience. Even though I have no interest in seeing The Fate of the Furious, it wouldn’t be fair to call it bad because it made $1.236 billion on a $250 million budget (Jesus Christ).

To wrap this up, I think movies can be ‘objectively good’ at doing certain things for certain people. 1917 was good at being an original and captivating war film, Avengers: Endgame was good at being a smart and loveable blockbuster, and Marriage Story—I don’t know, I didn’t see it.

I think The Lobster was objectively good at casting modern dating and relationships in a really weird, emotional, and memorable light—that's why I think it’s a good movie.

Doctor Sleep and American Cinema Iconography (Cristina)

I was lucky enough this past May to attend the Cannes Film Festival. In between the dozens of films from a variety of different festivals in the city, I was also able to grab a ticket for a midnight showing of The Shining. The film was presented by Alfonso Cuarón and Stanley Kubrick's daughter, Katharine, having been digitally remastered in 4K by Leon Vitali, Kubrick's long-time assistant. 

Sitting feet away from an unfathomably large screen in one of the biggest movie theaters I'd ever been in, I discovered an incredibly deep appreciation for the film that I hadn't experienced the only other time I'd seen it, watching it from a desk chair pointed at my roommate's laptop. Having just raced from a screening of a documentary about film sound (Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound), I took special note of the way the speakers filled every corner of the huge theater with the haunting score as the camera swept over the scenery of the opening extreme long shot of the ride up to the Overlook Hotel.

It was a transformative experience for me as a moviegoer, to sit in this room and be fully and completely immersed in an iconic piece of American horror, surrounded by people who love movies enough to dedicate 10 days of their life to the nonstop consumption of them, not to mention directors like Cuarón who credit this film for igniting their desire to craft their own movies. 

By another stroke of luck, I managed to attend an early screening of Doctor Sleep a few weeks ago. The film is an adaptation of Stephen King's sequel to The Shining and its trailers repeatedly reference the original movie. The score from Kubrick's film is a steady undercurrent between shots of the rotted Overlook Hotel and an adult Danny Torrence (played by Ewan McGregor) wandering its halls. Some moments are pure recreations of scenes from the original film: the eerie twin girls in the hallway, the viscerally red wave of blood pouring from the elevator.

Even without this marketing, Doctor Sleep by its very nature has big shoes to fill as a sequel to what's frequently called the best horror film of all time. And yet, Doctor Sleep strikes out on its own, diverging from the tone, pace, and world of the first film. Where Kubrick's film is all about suspense and slow movement towards the action of the climax, Doctor Sleep splits itself between three storylines: one following adult Danny as he attempts to escape the traumas of his past, one about a child psychic learning more about the extent of her abilities, and one introducing a group of creatures who eat the souls of children with the shining. It's a film that's a lot more interested in magic, worldbuilding, and action. With some slight adjustments to the first two hours, namely replacing the term 'shining' for some other description for telepathic powers, you wouldn't be able to tell it was related to the Kubrick film at all. 

It's a movie with its own merits, with clever concepts and stunning visuals. Although I'd predict that nostalgia for the original was what brought most of the audience to the Parkway Theater on a Monday night, just as it brought so many film buffs to the theater in Cannes, Doctor Sleep proves itself to be a gripping movie in its own right. The audience genuinely connected with the film, the theater filling with gasps, shouts, and laughs as the narrative progressed.

Yet, Doctor Sleep still delivers on the nostalgic iconography that it promises. By the time the film does inevitably return to the Overlook Hotel, the anticipation has been mounting for almost two hours. Danny and the child psychic Abra start off on a long drive back to Colorado, the montage of scenery ominously building tension and dread. While there had been more vocal reactions to other exciting, shocking, and emotional moments of the film, the recreation of the opening flyover shot, this time in the dark, as Danny and Abra draw closer, stole the audience's breath. 

Leaving the theater, I wasn't sure what to make of the film as a whole. More than anything, what stood out to me was the feeling of connection between the audience members as we experienced moments old and new, embraced new characters and spectacles, and reexperienced iconic images of a seminal American film in an engaging, new context.

The Office: The YouTube Edition (Yaejin)

    Originally created to be a video-sharing platform, YouTube.com is currently the second most visited website globally according to the Visual Capitalist. Shows produced by prominent television networks such as ABC, NBC, and CBS are now also promoted on the site, capitalizing on its massive audience. Networks release teaser clips to promote their series as well as upload highlights. Among the multitude of channels that serve this purpose, that for the American adaptation of The Office truly shines.

    The Office US uploads content three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. These are not just clips, but are complication videos devoted to individual characters: “Best of Pam/Ryan/Darryl/etc.” They include slices from throughout the show’s nine seasons and attract millions of views. Watching a character grow through the years can leave even non-fans with a peculiar fondness for them. While showcasing the most iconic moments, these small features leave you wanting to see more.

    There are videos dedicated to rivalries, bloopers, and inside jokes. The people behind the YouTube channel feel like genuine fans themselves. Some videos are dedicated to popular conspiracy theories, catering to the imagination of its audience. The creators encourage viewers to actively engage by upvoting or leaving comments.  A month-long tournament to determine the most loved character resulted in an April Fool’s prank. Every day of March, the channel polled the audience, pitting two characters against each other to see who was favored, narrowing to an ultimate showdown. However, the prank resulted the choice of an insignificant character whose picture is shown in only one episode, as its winner.  The tournament required daily participation from both channel and audience, which displays their synergy. The channel really understands its fans, tailoring the prank to their humor. 

    Not only are the creators accessible through YouTube, the comment section supports direct conversation among fans. Anyone with a Google account can write, upvote or downvote, and reply to comments. Because the most popular opinions are at the top, the comment section is a quick way to gather perspective. While most are rather silly, some comments can be insightful. Over six thousand viewers agreed with one in particular by Daniel Rios: “A part of growing up is realizing that Karen really didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just that she wasn’t Pam...” In The Office, Jim starts dating Karen after Pam initially rejects him. 

    Yes, while some characters are written to be hated, Karen is friendly, hardworking, and fun. These qualities are usually appreciated, but some people justify their adoration for Pam as a reason to dislike Karen. For so many to share this irrational reasoning conveys their emotional investment in The Office. This show has convinced its audience that these characters exist in some other world. Although Karen is fictitious, real people react emotionally to her. 

    Although it should elicit reaction, great script writing helps its audience reflect and grow with the story. That thousands were able to recognize their own growth through the show struck me. The character relationships must be engaging yet realistic for the audience to dislike someone who disrupts this environment. However, they must also be nuanced enough for people to reflect on their biases. Attracted by the ongoing popularity of the YouTube channel and convinced by the conversation generated, I started watching The Office myself.

Finding and Searching for Inspiration During Post-Production (Vanessa)

At the beginning of 2019 (which was also around the time I started to go through my footage for HOUSE), I was asked to consider two questions. The first: what movies have you enjoyed recently? The second: why did you enjoy them?

A significant amount of work goes into filmmaking of all kinds. From casting, to location scouting, pre-production, scheduling, and everything in between, the process of making a film, no matter the size, is consuming. However, in the midst of all the stress of figuring out the logistics of making and editing a film is the desire to make the darn thing in the first place. The two questions I was asked encouraged me to consider both where my own passion for filmmaking comes from and also what it is about the films of others that inspires me. In essence, I am trying to do more to think not only about where I want to go in terms of the vision of HOUSE but also where my interest in documentary filmmaking comes from.

For this post, I would like to take a step back from talking about editing itself and focus on two documentaries that I have looked to for guidance while editing HOUSE when in need of guidance for how editing works for documentary filmmaking.

The first of these three documentaries is John Heyn and Jeff Krulik’s 17-minute short Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Shot in the parking lot of a 1986 Judas Priest concert, Heyn and Krulik interview fans stimulated by raw excitement, a love of heavy metal, and, of course, alcohol and drugs. NPR did a review of Heavy Metal Parking Lot in 2016 during the week of the film’s 30^th anniversary. It features an interview from Laura Schnitker, an ethnomusicologist (basically someone who studies the intersection of music and culture) and an acting curator at University of Maryland who notes “for anyone who wants to understand what a heavy metal crowd looked like when heavy metal was at its peak popularity in the 1980s, this is a perfect document of that point in musical history…it’s just a great snapshot of fandom”.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot is striking to me because of how simple it is both in conception and in execution, but also so rich in terms of its honest depiction of a particular group of people simply existing in a particular cultural moment. The interviews are cut together so that different people ultimately end up answering the same questions, but in a way that depicts just how excited the fans are to be there. There are moments that are undeniably hilarious: teenagers screaming out random nonsense and proclaiming their love for Judas Priest, an event worker from the Caribbean who talks about how he’s never seen such craziness at home, and plenty of other metal-heads truly just enjoying the moment.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot, to me is an inspiration because it is honest. In the NPR interview, Krulik notes “neither one of us ever set out to do that [make fun of the fans]. I mean, there is manipulation involved: You’re editing it, you’re getting right to the most entertaining content. And that was our agenda, to make an entertaining 15-minute video”. Personally, I think that Heavy Metal Parking Lot lives up to this assertion. Yes, it is funny. But instead of focusing on the fact that, yes, the debauchery of the day makes it so fun to watch, it’s goal ultimately proves to be showing just how much fun it is to be a fan. This has been something I’ve grappled with while editing HOUSE: how do you create an honest depiction of something without necessarily making fun of it?

I look to Heavy Metal Parking Lot for the answer, which is ultimately to select footage the preserves the spirit of community and fun that is central to the house music community. One particular moment that I’ve enjoyed editing is a series of clips featuring interviewees responding to the prompt “describe house music in a few words”. The intrigued responses are just as fun and telling as the overly enthusiastic ones, and lives up to the idea of creating something that is both entertaining, and honest.  

The second documentary that has been on my mind a lot and a interesting point of reference for me as an editor has been this year’s Oscar winner Free Solo, which chronicles the journey of free solo rock climber Alex Honnold. I’ll admit, I was not entirely sure of my own feelings about Free Solo when I first saw it. It’s a spectacularly well shot documentary (the landscapes in particular are stunning) but the main point of curiosity for me while watching Free Solo is just how odd it is to explore the world of Alex Honnold. Alex is not passionate about much in his life. Even his girlfriend, who Is featured prominently throughout it, seems annoyed at just how little Alex seems to care about life. His friends constantly remind viewers of how absolutely terrible it feels to be filming something that ultimately could be Alex’s death, which is his scaling of Yosemite’s El Captain without harnesses or ropes. Alex is borderline unlikable.

However, what is interesting about Free Solo is how it chooses to depict just how deeply Alex loves free soloing. Rock climbing is more than his passion, but truly the crux of his existence. The editing takes care in depicting the complexities of its characters, cleverly juxtaposing images of Alex processing his mission with the beauty of the scenery, which doesn’t necessarily make you want to go climbing, but instead communicates the sense of inspiration one can derive from just how incredibly dedicated this man is to his task. Climbing is Alex’s life. He is less in love with the mountains as he is a part of them.

For me, Free Solo has been helpful with the process of editing house by encouraging me to think about boundaries. Free Solo is really two stories: Alex’s and Jimmy Chin’s (the director). Jimmy is a professional climber and mountaineer and at times Free Solo balances Alex’s narrative of climbing the mountain without equipment with Jimmy (and his crew’s) narrative of climbing the mountain with Alex and with film equipment. It works on two levels, depicting Alex’s grappling with undertaking a task that truly might kill him and Jimmy’s grappling with what it means to film something that is so blatantly stupid yet so fascinating. And what it would mean to film the death of his friend, in the case that Alex didn’t make it.

Editing is about decision-making, and both Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Free Solo make interesting choices that inform the overall narratives that both documentaries depict. At the heart of both documentaries is the notion of passion and of what it means to love a thing or an action as opposed to a physical person. They are vastly different, but accomplish their goals in choosing to sequence different events to construct a larger story as opposed to just sticking random images together. The footage in both is thoughtful, allowing the story of their subjects to emerge naturally. For me, this gets at the core of what I want HOUSE to be: a depiction of the excitement of experiencing something that you truly love. And hopefully, through careful and mindful editing, that feeling will emerge.

Almost Like It Never Happened: Violence Contained By Film (Jin)

The moment we capture an event or person on film, they become unreal to us. They’ve become possessable objects, something to be replayed and thus controlled. Through this ownership, the spectator retains the power to watch without being held accountable for what is taking place on the screen. When the film is that of a real act of violence, the power dynamic becomes particularly apparent: though the spectator may sympathize with the people on the screen, he or she typically feels no sense of direct responsibility. What is happening on the screen remains on the screen. The film is a separate world altogether, one which can be turned off and forgotten, or even replayed again and again until it has lost its ability to shock. How many times have we watched bleeding victims and decimated cities on the news? It may be an evocative sight but not a lasting one.

Benny, the fourteen year old protagonist in Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video, is the archetype of someone lost in an illusionary, dream-world of the seen and the controlled. Born into a wealthy family obsessed with career and social reputation, he himself is lost in delusion, albeit one composed of television screens. Just as his parents’ are trapped in their fear of losing face to their coworkers and friends, Benny is trapped in a self-imposed, psychological landscape of his bedroom which feeds his obsession with videos. There is a video constantly playing in the background while he quietly works at his desk, along with a second television screen showing a live feed of his apartment building’s exterior and his own bedroom’s interior. It is a life of relentless observation, one in which Benny plays the role of stoic, cold spectator.

 

The extent of his psychotic containment reaches its peak when Benny invites a girl over to his home to watch a video he’d recorded of a pig being slaughtered at a relative’s farm. Their sparse dialogue alone reveals a sort of naivety and a disconnect between violence in reality and on film. When asked by the girl, “have you ever seen a dead person – a real one, I mean,” Benny replies, “No. I once saw a TV program about the tricks they use in action films. It’s all ketchup and plastic.” He remains unaware that actions in reality, unlike on video, have real consequences, and when he eventually discharges a slaughtering gun, the same one used in the pig video, on the girl’s chest, he is taken aback by the girl’s agonizing screams.

Proceeding the girl’s death, the greatest moment of horror is when we realize that, despite having murdered a human being, Benny still remains locked in his internal world. The real physical action of violence fail to raise any real emotional response from Benny, and like how the murder scene is shown solely on his television screen rather than being shown in real time, Benny has internalized the incident as an “unreal” event isolated within the video tape. Even when Benny’s parents discover his son’s crime, they show a similar lack of emotive response and immediately begin strategizing how to save their reputation. It becomes increasingly apparent that the absence of consequence is more noticeable than the absence of a life itself. The dead girl remains a stranger, and though she mentioned having a large family, nothing is to be known about the impact of her death. In fact, it is as though Benny’s murder tape carries a higher value than the girl herself and is almost more “real” due to its ability to prove the murder had occurred. Later on, the video tape is the only object capable of bearing any real consequence, by acting as legal evidence and resulting in the family’s arrest. Preceding this, however, the family remain in a strange limbo, spending a whole week vacationing in Egypt.

The loss of a human life could hardly be felt as “real,” when there are absolutely no repercussions against the murderer: how is it possible to dictate one’s actions as being real, if they hold no visible effect? The emotionless psychological vacuum of Benny’s mind is therefore all the more terrifying than any real physical damage he can cause. Ultimately, it is this lack of emotional and social consequence that is felt as being “more violent” than the actual murder itself.

Great Things Come In Short Packages: Why A Film Does Not Have To Be Feature Length To Be Memorable (Mireille)

With the Academy Awards being presented this evening, social media and many news outlets are buzzing about the film nominations, and whether one film will sweep all of the awards. These debates are centered on those films that have gained the most notoriety, and one of the types of film that is all too often absent in these discussion and may not even be readily accessible for viewing, is the short film. I do not intend to overgeneralize and say that wide attention is never given to these films, but they rarely receive the spotlight that feature length Oscar nominated films bask in.

Shawn Christensen’s Academy Award winning short film Curfew (2012) is, in my opinion, an extraordinary piece that depicts the typically human struggles, namely one’s own mental health and the frequent dysfunction that exists in families. By packing each frame of the film with rich music, color, and geometry, Christensen successfully conveys the horror of an attempted suicide, the ravages of drug abuse and domestic abuse, the dysfunction of families and the power of the human spirit and enduring love/blood bond between family members. There are full length feature films that are less successful than this short at touching the audience to its very core with a range of emotions that are real and never trite or banal.

The opening sequence of Curfew immediately shocks the viewer and sets the dark psychological tone of the film. At the same time, the hyper pigmented colors and the composition of the frame nudges us to question the reality of the situation. The film begins with a bloodied hand reaching for an old fashioned rotary telephone, painted in the same color tones as the blood tainted hand. The use of high contrast lighting projected on the phone adds to a growing dystopic feel. Christensen, who also plays the principal character Richie, cuts to a high angle shot of himself submerged in a bloodied bathtub while he listens helplessly to the woman on the phone who is pleading with him to take care of her daughter. At this moment we have the confirmation that we are witnessing a suicide attempt. It is, however, depicted in almost a picturesque manner, thanks to Christensen’s specific color palette and positioning of his own body almost as if posing for a painting. To complete the sense of detachment and other worldliness, Christensen incorporates the famous Flower Duet from the opera Lakmé, a piece normally associated with joy.  

As the film progresses, the audience is introduced to the complex relationships between the characters in the film. Richie’s sister, Maggie, has a daughter named Sophia whom Richie does not know but is responsible for taking care of her. The initial dialogue between Richie and Sophia sets the tone for Sophia’s apathy and defiance towards Richie, which is emphasized by Christensen utilizing very strong geometry in many of the shots throughout his film. The characters are initially separated by harsh vertical or horizontal lines which emphasize the divide between Richie and Sophia. However, as the film progresses Sophia begins to cross these constructed cinematographic boundaries to join Richie. These subtle gestures show that Sophia, although a young girl caught in familial and custody troubles, begins to develop a greater understanding and compassion for the situation and is able to sense the longing within Richie. This understanding arrives as a result of incessant questions and answers as well as sequences in the film that lead us to believe one thing that turn out to be another. Christensen juxtaposes the violence and ugliness of the drug world with the innocence of a child and the inevitability of man who loves his sister and niece. He interjects the hallucination of a man on the edge of self-destruction with the whimsy of child’s play.

By the end of the film we have returned to Richie contemplating his suicide in the dystopic and removed setting of his bathroom. The phone, in the same cyclical and rhythmic pattern that drives the film, begins to ring once more as Richie submerges his body into the bloodied water of his bathtub. However this time Richie disconnects the phone in a symbolic move to disconnect himself from the family that has re-entered his life and yet rejected him once more. However, without any warning, Richie violently reconnects the phone, and the film comes full circle with a plea from his sister to watch Sophia except this time it is not a desperate demand, but a conciliatory offer for peace between them.

I would venture to guess that this beautifully crafted and well-acted film that has won multiple awards, including the Oscar, is not on everyone’s short list of favorite or must see films. Why is that? Certainly one reason has to do with its lack of big name producers and actors that wield sufficiently prominent name recognition that draws audience into the light that they effuse. Nevertheless, Curfew is no less worthy for not being a feature film. My challenge to you on the eve of this Oscar night is to give the “shorter guy” a chance. Watch the Academy Award nominees for the short film, whether live action, documentary, or animation, and if you find them worthy perhaps help spread the word by allowing them to ride the crest of the wave of social media that they hardly get swept up in.

Audience's Thirst for Retribution (Jaeyoung)

   

 SPOILER ALERT: Middle part of Moonlight discussed.

    When it comes to watching movies in the theaters, audience participation is strongly encouraged in movies such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (“WHY THE F*CK IS THERE A BILLBOARD IN THE MIDDLE OF A CEMETERY!?”). It’s funny, it’s bawdy, and everyone’s having a good time.

   And then there are films like Oscar Best Picture Winner Moonlight, where audience participation should exist solely within the silent, emotional dimension of one’s soul. In other words, no one should be talking at any point in time.

   Of course, human beings are imperfect, so at least some verbal litter is inevitable. However, when I watched Moonlight a couple weeks ago, one person’s comment irked me so much that I wanted to scream.

   It happened in the middle of the movie, when Chiron becomes lost in a fit of fury and approaches his bully during class. This bully has turned his lover and friend against him and forced him to lose the one glimmer of hope in his sad, oppressive life. Thus, he betrays his gentler character and becomes the monster he’s been running from. He picks up a chair and strikes his adversary on the head, dolefully indulging in the violence that characterizes his society.

   And then from behind me, a stupid, gleeful “yes!” is uttered from someone’s mouth.

   My (elitist) blood boiled. Whoever it was that said this obviously missed the emotional significance of this scene and mistook it for a cheap revenge sequence. This is not that kind of movie! It annoys me to this day, how one person’s knee-jerk reaction pulled me out of the exceedingly tragic denouement of the second act.

   However, I should be fair. After all, aren’t the audience conditioned to respond in this way? Whether violent justice is an innate human desire is a matter for philosophers. But with movies like Kill Bill and Gladiator (both awesome films, don’t get me wrong) making their mark on the public conscious, aren’t audience members wired to desire the violent end of a villain?

   The answer is yes, at least in the eyes of film production studios. Take, for example, Taken. In order to exploit this animalistic response, they pit child sex traffickers as the bad guys, which basically sets up a premise close to the Nazi-killing genre: aggressive violence that is unquestioned and justified. Consumers are able to completely indulge in ass-kicking and throat-slitting without having to weigh any sort of moral repercussions. We crave Liam Neeson’s murderous rampage, and the more pain the child sex traffickers feel, the more endorphin pulse through our veins.

   I suppose Taken would be the one revenge film I could think of right now that is unforgivable with regards to violence (I think I became a truly worse individual coming out of it). Smarter films utilize revenge to achieve something beyond just base pleasures. For example, John Wick utilizes revenge to drive forward its ultra-stylistic action sequences. Inglorious Basterds utilizes revenge to develop a plot that ultimately criticizes the audience for their blood lust. Gladiator utilizes revenge to explore not only Maximus’ character, but also that of Commodus, who is undeniably evil yet heart-wrenchingly pitiful.

   But even when revenge is given intelligent treatment, it cannot mask the prevalence of audience blood thirst. Even in Netflix’s Daredevil, where the main villains are given incredibly sensible characterization, there are countless scenes where shady henchmen are beat up gratuitously and mercilessly. In this case, it is impossible not to pander to the audience’s thirst for violence; logistically, the show can’t go through each henchman and assign deep human characterizations.

   Therefore, is it possible to reverse this trend? I don’t think so. Even smart revenge films will continue to be misconstrued by many as being “awesomely violent” (as opposed to “violently awesome”), and studios will continue milking that cow because of capitalism, etc. For many movies, violence will continue to be their main selling point.

   Moonlight, of course, is nowhere close to being a revenge film. Yet, I am pushed to believe that the conditioned responses perpetuated by these types of movies made its way to the theater those weeks ago. Perhaps I should be more forgiving and try to understand why that person said, “Yes!” Maybe she said this because, mistaking aggression for assertion, she believed that Chiron was finally standing up for himself. Maybe if I had asked her why she responded in this manner, she could explain exactly what was going on in her head. Maybe, if I pressed on, she might apologize for caving in to the wide-spread audience blood-thirst that the film industry has hooked society on. Who knows.

   Or how about this: maybe, we should all remind ourselves that some movies are not Rocky Picture Horror Show and that people should keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves when they are at the movie theater.

True or False? Reality and Illusion in Metafiction and Metacinema (Tori)

In the short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" from the compilation Labyrinths by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, we come face to face with the meta.  Here, the meta, or metafiction in this case, is a type of self-conscious writing, or writing fiction about the act of writing fiction itself.  As an English major, I constantly find myself writing "meta" in the margins of the novels I'm annotating; it is far from a rarity in writing, and also in film.

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" tells the story of a world called Tlön, invented by a secret society, complete with invented countries, invented inhabitants, and even an invented language.  The first-person narrator of this story, possibly Borges himself, though it is never revealed, stumbles across a mention of Uqbar, a place in Tlön, in an encyclopedia and finally, after laborious exploration and inquiry, uncovers the history of this world, fully unaware of its inherent falsity.  It might sound ridiculous, but how could he know if this world were real or not?  The most unsettling part of this story is that there is no basis to which the narrator could know of this world's falsity; it seems to be a real world.  As the story progresses, the line between imagination and reality is inextricably blurred; the fantastic world intrudes upon the real world, and there is no going back.  The story ends: "If our forecasts are not in error, a hundred years from now someone will discover the hundred volumes of the Second Encyclopedia of Tlön.  Then English and French and mere Spanish will disappear from the globe.  The world will be Tlön."

This story is a fantastic example of metafiction.  It concerns the process of creation, but it truly becomes meta when one considers how this story is actually about itself as a story.  Borges is inventing this entire story, yet there is truth within this imaginary tale concerning how humans interact with reality and with illusion.  In my opinion, the meta is one of the most powerful tools an author can use in his or her writing.  It is impossible to read something meta and not think of its myriad implications within the text and also in regard to your own life.  The meta demands self-reflection, and thus you can learn a lot about yourself and about the world around you through your engagement with it.

I read this story by Borges a few weeks ago in an English class and found it fascinating, and I have been thinking about the meta ever since.  Thus when it came time to watch another film for this blog post, my mind immediately jumped to meta films.  Though there are countless films that interact with the subject, there is one that is widely believed to be the ultimate in "metacinema," as it is called, and after watching it, I found many echoes of the stimulating ideas suggested in Borges' story as well as new ideas about the nature of filmmaking in regard to reality and illusion.  It is safe to say that the 1963 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini entitled 8 1/2 is both one of the strangest and one of the most thought-provoking films I have ever seen.

The story follows film director Guido Anselmi, played by Marcello Mastroianni, who is dissatisfied with the big new science fiction film he is in the process of directing, while simultaneously dealing with a complicated personal life due to his cheating on his wife, Luisa, with another woman, Carla. He is consistently bombarded by his production team, as well as a film critic, with ideas and questions about the film.  Yet, the appeal of this film is not in the specifics about the plot but in both the structure and dialogue that prompt this film to be considered one of the great pieces of metacinema.

The film opens with a man sitting in his car.  He is trying to drive across a bridge, but traffic has come to a standstill.  At first, everything seems normal, but then we notice a man in a neighboring car is staring directly at this first man.  Then, another man looks right at him, and then a woman does the same.  We are next given a wide-angle shot of a bus full of people with their arms dangling out the windows, facing right at this first driver, and everybody in the standstill traffic jam stares at him.  This is a terrifying image; these people are all frozen and look almost like wax figures.  They do nothing except stare.  The scene just gets more strange from here.  First, the man fiddles with his car windows and doors and starts to panic.  It seems as if he is stuck.  Yet, we then see him climbing out of the roof of his car, and then he begins sailing through the air, his coat blowing behind him in the wind like a cape.  He is flying.  The camera then tilts down to the ground; we are now on a beach, and a different man is holding a rope.  It looks as if he is flying a kite, but we soon realize that at the top of this rope is the flying man, who is then pulled down to the ground.  Right before he hits the ground, we cut to a shot of a man in bed with his arm outstretched.  It was all a dream.

Odd scenes such as this one occur throughout 8 1/2.  At first, just as in the opening scene, the line between reality and illusion is pretty clear.  The scene starts off normally, but it then becomes so fantastic that it must be an illusion.  Guido next imagines himself interacting with his parents, both of whom we learn are dead, and then he imagines a scene outdoors with a beautiful woman.  He also has multiple flashbacks to his childhood.  These scenes are all relatively easy to follow; it might not be understood at the very beginning that they aren't really happening, but the audience can catch on relatively quickly.

Yet, as the film progresses, this line between reality and illusion begins to blur more and more until we get to the final scene, in which truth and fiction are completely indistinguishable; it seems to be both real and an illusion at the same time.  The final scene features every character in the film, including Guido's deceased parents, his childhood self, and the beautiful woman we initially thought was only a part of Guido's imagination, as they perform together in a sort of circus act.  As Guido states at the end of the film, "Everything is true."  We can no longer figure out what is imaginary.  The world has become Tlön.

The dialogue in this film presents some confusing and incredible ideas about the nature of truth and falsity in relation to film.  The words "true," "real," "honest," "lie," "clear," and "understand" come up countless times in the dialogue.  The film asserts itself as a piece of metacinema very early on, when the film critic gives Guido feedback on his science fiction film idea, proposing "One wonders what the authors are trying to say.  Are they trying to make us think?  Do they want to scare us?" which are exactly the thoughts we, the audience, are having at that moment in time about 8 1/2.  Moments like this occur throughout the film, as the characters express exactly what we're thinking, thus blurring the line between the world of the film we're watching and our own world.

A key moment in the film occurs when Guido's film and his personal life are shown to be irrevocably connected.  As he attempts to find an actress to play the role of his wife, Luisa, in his science fiction film, the real Luisa storms out of the theater.  Guido follows her, imploring "Did something you saw offend you?  It's just a movie" to which Luisa replies, "Another fiction, another lie.  You put all of us in it, the way it suits you."  These lines are very loaded.  Guido tries to comfort Luisa by assuring her it's just a movie, but it is clearly not just a movie; the movie is their relationship.  Guido puts everybody in his life into the movie; he has cast the people of his world in this film.  Therefore, he functions as a director of the film, but he also functions as a director of his real life.

This film, like metafiction, raises many self-implicating questions.  Throughout the film, we are trying to understand what is going on.  We are making snap judgments about each scene: is this scene real?  Is this another illusion?  Is this real or fake?  But, as reality and illusion become more and more inextricable, we come to realize that these questions are useless.  As with Tlön, the real world and the imaginary world come to a merging point.  Like Guido at the end of the film, we have a realization: "I'm no longer afraid of telling the truth about what I don't know, what I'm looking for, what I haven't found."  We finally have to accept ambiguity, something Guido is forced to avoid by those around him who constantly ask him for clarity.

Fellini provides us mainly with questions rather than answers in 8 1/2, but one thing he does assert is the profound importance and power of the unknown.  Why is it so hard for us to come to terms with ambiguity? Why is it so hard to admit and accept that we don't know?  Why do we care so much about coming to a conclusion about what is real and what isn't when Fellini beautifully shows that illusions can actually be just as real as reality?  Acclaimed author Tim O'Brien writes in his novel The Things They Carried, "I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."  Films are all about story-truth.  Though they are directed and calculated and technically illusions, 8 1/2 proves that the world of cinema, perhaps even more so than the real world, can, in fact, provide us with truth.

Help! I'm in Love with a Horrible Movie (Rachel)

Over the years, less and less people have been asking me The Question. “Rachel, what’s your favorite movie?” I’m sure it’s because word’s gotten around about how difficult The Question is for film majors to choose just one, but I guess it’s also because I stopped answering with my actual favorite film. It is true that I’ve always found answering The Question difficult, but it’s more so because my favorite film, Sunshine (2007) is not your usual answer. I get strange looks, even from my fellow film-majors, because who doesn’t answer with the expected, Citizen Kane, or War-Kong Wai’s In the Mood for Love? And absolutely no one, not even my closest friends, had seen Sunshine before I made them watch it. So even if I do answer the question truthfully, I get a second question-- Well what is it about? And quite simply, I can never do the movie justice.

I first watched Sunshine my senior year in highschool. I was in the Advanced Creative writing class and for the last unit, my teacher decided to introduce us to writing for Film. He showed us a number of greats, Fargo and No Country for Old Men, just to name a few, but the last film we watched was Sunshine. Though I don’t remember what my final script project was for the class, I remember every moment of watching that movie. It was raining outside, so the room was dark and cozy like a movie theater. Some of my classmates were doing homework, but others, like me, settled in our seats as our professor introduced the film.

“This is a movie,” He said. “Watch it.”

The film begins with a basic premise: In the year 2057, our sun is dying. The earth, due to the lack of heat, has frozen over into a second ice age, and humanity is slowly succumbing to it. A team of scientists embark on a mission, the second of its kind, to place a nuclear bomb in the center of the sun in order to jump start it. Simple right? Basic sci-fi premise, apocalypse scenario. You’ve probably heard a similar story a thousand times. The beginning of the film is likewise standard, with the crewmembers of the Icarus II, their gigantic, sun-reflecting spaceship, discussing the importance of their mission, and how they can succeed when the previous mission, Icarus I, failed. The previous mission had lost contact with earth seven years prior, and the fate of the crew is unknown-- but the sun was still dying, so Earth knew that Icarus I had failed.

Everything goes well for a time in the Icarus II. The crew have a fully functioning bio-center which produces the oxygen needed for their long journey to the sun, they have plenty of food, and for the most part, the crew gets along with one another. When they happen upon the floating corpse of the Icarus I, however, everything goes downhill, fast. I held my breath as they chose to explore the abandoned ship-- partly because of the suspense, and partly because of the immense amount of white, floating dust present on every surface. I wondered what could have caused this dust to aggregate on an empty space ship if all the crew were dead… and then the realization hit me. It was the crew.

A lot of the film is like this. It twists and winds along unknown paths, but you feel led to every development through subtle clues. It shocks you with realizations that you knew deep down, but didn’t want to admit to yourself. A big part of the film is surprisingly focused around religion-- or more specifically the question of humanity's place in the universe. The theme of dust makes this particularly evangelical, as one of the characters states, “At the end of time, a moment will come when just one man remains. Then the moment will pass. Man will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here... but stardust.” Sounds familiar, right? Along the lines of “For you are dust, And to dust you shall return,” from the Bible. Now I’m not saying that Sunshine is the most original movie, but it’s certainly effective.

One of my favorite parts of the film does appear until nearly the end. The “monster” or “alien” that infects the spaceship in fact, is never clearly seen. Though I won’t spoil exactly what this monster is, he is shown as being a liminal creature, never quite existing in the physical world, but certainly physical enough to start picking off the crew members one by one. The way the camera moves around him is both terrifying and unique, with a lens-baby like wetness that makes it feel as if you are in a nightmare, unable to open your eyes fully. Though much of the film is filled with beautiful, wide-landscaped shots of the Icarus I and space, it is these close, intimate, and disturbing close-calls with this monster that truly make the film different from any other sci-fi flick.

So why is Sunshine my favorite? Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s one of the reasons I became interested in film in the first place. In the rainy-darkness of that classroom in highschool, I watched a film that incorporated both a mind-blowing story, with incredible visuals, and a monster that you don’t even have to see to be afraid of.

After watching this film a hundred times, of course I saw it flaws-- but every film student finds flaws in film, even their favorite ones, and still loves them all the same. Though Sunshine has a 76% on rotten tomatoes, and all my film friends give me funny looks when I mention it, this movie will always have a special place in my heart. So don’t be afraid to like horrible movies. If you love it, go ahead and love it, and say proudly it’s your favorite. Because loving a horrible movie doesn’t mean you have bad taste in film, it just means you love it’s flaws just as much as you love what is good about it…and you learn from that. So love your film’s flaws. Love it’s cheesy one-liners and predictable plot, and never worry about answering The Question ever again. 

And it might just make you love film more.

Screams, Teens, and Horror Scenes: The Power of Fear (Rachel)

This may come as a surprise, but I really don’t like horror movies. I’ve tried (mainly against my will) to sit through them in their entirety, but for the most part, I just cover my eyes and wish I had made better decisions. As a film person, I understand that I miss out on a lot of (apparently) great movies this way. I’ve never seen The Ring (2002), or any of the numerous Halloween’s, and I’m quite content with that. Sure, most people would say old school horror movies aren’t that bad, but even Scream (1996) has made an appearance in a nightmare or two of mine, and that’s just from catching a minute of it while flipping through the TV channels.

My friends don’t get it, and I don’t blame them. I’ve flown stunt planes, scuba dived with sharks, and fenced against Olympic athletes, but I won’t watch Saw with them. The only “horror” movie I’ve ever liked is 28 Days Later (2002), and that’s just because it’s just a plain awesome movie all around.

I was once tricked into watching a Rob Zombie film, as I had no idea who he was at the time. The film, which mainly consisted of my fingers over my eyes and lots of screaming, was probably the worst hour and a half of my life. At the same time, I was riveted. The wanton violence, the disturbing reality created by the characters, and the raw psychosis depicted was masterful in making me fear. I found myself creating two versions of the film-- the half that was scary and sucked the me into the director’s game, and the half that used incredibly iconic film techniques to create that game.

 For film class, the assignment this week was to watch the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) in all its 80’s glory. I went through the stages of convincing myself to watch the film. The thoughts, “It won’t be so bad, it’s from the 80’s, they couldn’t even show dead people on TV,” and, “You’ll watch it with the lights on, nothing to worry about!” helped me get around to finding the film, but it took me a while to actually press play. How was I supposed to analyze a movie for class through my closed fingers? And worse yet, I had put off watching the movie until the night before class. It was 2am before I, hugging a security blanket, pressed play. 

The film itself is of course, full of 80’s angst. The main characters are two teen couples who begin to have odd dreams about a man with blades on his fingers. But besides the cheesy subplot, it really gets interesting when the dreams and reality begin to merge. With Freddy apparently able to kill from the dreamworld, no one is safe. The line between dreaming and reality becomes blurred both in editing and plot until the audience is waiting for Freddy to appear at any turn. The use of lighting and jump-cutting give subtle clues to what is more real than not, but without any prior knowledge of these clues, the audience is strapped in for a wild ride. Thankfully, I was able to watch most of Nightmare without the lens of my fingers, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared. But instead of being paralyzed by it, I knew why I was scared.

 I couldn’t tell you if I had nightmares after watching A Nightmare on Elm Street, but I certainly had a better understanding of why people actually like these incredibly violent and disturbing realities complete with their own sadistic villains. These films, in the iconic words of that masked guy from Saw, want to play a game with us. They dare us over and over again to question our own realities, and use editing, sound, and lighting to draw us each into our own private hells. Even if the plot is barely coherent, or they used way too much fake blood, a horror movie will play upon our most basic human fear, that our reality might not be all that it seems.

 

 _{By Screenshot from "Internet Archive" of the movie Dracula (1958) - http://www.archive.org/details/HorrorOfDracula-Trailer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11740931}

I still can’t quite pinpoint the exact reason for my hatred of horror movies. Maybe it’s because I can’t help but think the character’s dumb for even walking into the haunted house in the first place, or for not grabbing a gun when the killer only has knives for fingers, but you know, that’s just me. Whatever the case, all movies deserve at least a chance, and perhaps I’ll work my way up to a scarier one eventually. But no clowns. Definitely no clowns.

 

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Crybaby's Experience (Rachel)

I can’t say exactly when I realized that I loved movies. Maybe, it was years ago as I sat with my father in the living room of my childhood home and watched Sean Connery ask for a martini, shaken, not stirred. Or maybe it was when, after years of watching the extended cut of The Lord of the Rings, I finally realized there was a behind-the-scenes disk, and watched all 11-hours of production diaries from start to finish. But even then, maybe it was when my mother shared her favorite film, Apollo 13 with me, and I realized what amazing power a beautiful musical score could have.

Looking back on my relationship with movies actually gave me the answer I was looking for. All of my favorite memories of watching them showed me that it wasn’t just watching the movie itself that I loved, it was what watching the movie did to people...The ability of movies to touch, move and even influence, each and every one of us. For me, movies brought me closer to my father, they made me wonder about the world of film, and they helped me appreciate the power even the seemingly most insignificant components have in creating a masterful movie experience.

I used to judge a movie based on what they did to me, IE-- does it make me sob like a baby or not? Though a valid concept when I was younger and didn’t personally connect to a number of films, as I grew older, more and more movies made me cry. I thought that if I watched enough films in my studies, I would eventually grow jaded to actors just portraying emotion...but time and time again I am surprised by the power of films to make me reflect on my own humanity… and others to see someone on screen that seems even more real than they are to themselves.

I was also surprised when a movie on my film class’s syllabus for this semester actually ended up becoming one of my favorite films of all time. The french film, Le scaphandre et le papillon (2007), or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, follows the true memoir of a man named Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffered a stroke and is completely paralyzed. His mind however, continues to function normally. The condition, known as Locked-In Syndrome, forces him to meditate on his entire life, which the film carries us through via his memories and fantasies.

The true power of this film comes from the absolute mastery of the editing and cinematography.  From the quick, jarring cuts between scenes to the ocean-like lighting that places us directly into Jean-Do’s mind as he swims in his own ocean of loneliness and doubt, there is little in this film that isn’t worth appreciating. We, the audience, are trapped in a mostly first-person view of Jean-Do’s now limited life, not by any will of our own, but by the mesmerizing composition centered before us. The actor who plays Jean-Do, Mathieu Amalric, brilliantly makes us both love and hate a man completely paralyzed in a wheelchair, with only one eye to express any kind of emotion. And we are hypnotized by his performance.

You would think that the most emotional part of this film would of course be when, spoilers, Jean-Do inevitably dies from complications with his condition at the very end… but I found myself embarrassingly balling halfway through the film. Why, you ask? Because the actor began a voiceover narrating the memoir of the real Jean-Dominique Bauby, who actually had a heart attack, and learned to write using a blinking code from his one good eye. The words are simple, Mathieu Amalric’s native French is full of emotion… but it was those very real, labored-over words that finally made me lose it. Maybe it’s just me--call me a crybaby if you want… But I find that true emotion in film doesn’t only come from just anywhere. Emotion has to come from some kind of truth, no matter how small, and it has to be inherently human in nature. Whether that means using words from the real-life subject of the film, or just the idea spawning from the script-writer’s own life experience… All film has a truth worth crying about. And whether beautiful or sad, we always find it. 

I guess it does matter a little that I can’t say when exactly I began to love movies. It matters, because I think it means that I never needed to start. The first movie I saw when I was a baby, whether it was The Diving Bell and The Butterfly or Thomas the Tank Engine-- probably made me cry, right?... But I also probably loved it. And I assume that films will continue to make me, and whole audiences cry, and love them, until the end of time… because that’s what they do. We may be trapped in our own anxieties, busy lives, or otherwise, but we will always be swept up by film’s ability to reach us inside our diving bells. 

 

Short, Sad, and to the Point (Madison)

With February fast approaching, it seems appropriate to write a post about that problematic behemoth of the film industry, the Oscars. I admit to being fairly new to the scene: typically, my interactions with the Academy begin and end with me Googling red carpet looks the day after the awards ceremony. This year, though, I wanted to be a little more in touch. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to dive in to all the complicated (and frankly upsetting) politics of the bigger categories like Best Film or Best Actor. I decided to start small; or rather, short. For this post I watched the 2016 nominees for Best Live Action Short Film, an emotionally taxing set of five films with casts and crews from all over the world.

 

 

The list includes Ave Maria (Palestine, France, and Germany), directed by Basil Khalil, Shok (Friend) (UK and Kosovo), directed by Jamie Donoughue, Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Okay) (Germany and Austria), directed by Patrick Vollrath, Stutterer (UK), directed by Benjamin Cleary, and Day One (USA), directed by Henry Hughes. Although these films offer much-needed international perspectives, you will notice that all of the directors are men; even in less popular categories like the Short Film, the tendency of the film industry (and particularly the Academy) to prioritize primarily male voices, stories, and perspectives is readily apparent, and should be considered critically. Still, putting aside questions of identity politics (however necessary they may be), I will begin by heartily recommending that you watch these films, difficult as they are to sit through without shedding a few tears.

 

 

I have never been one to watch short films; they often don’t play in most theaters, and they can feel somehow inaccessible, made solely for the film fanatic who is particularly literate in the finer points of film technique. After all, these short movies just don’t have the space to tell long stories; out of a sort of necessity, their strength often comes from careful attention to design and cinematography. These films, though, proved me wrong. It’s true that I thought each was well shot (Shok giving its viewers a careful contrast between the beauty of the Kosovar countryside and the ugliness of state-perpetrated violence and poverty; Alles Wird Gut moving the audience skillfully from the bright lights of a fair to the cool, colorless space of an airport), each also told an essential human story with impressive precision.

Because of the brevity of these films—the longest clocked in at half an hour—every line of dialogue, every shot, had to be meaningful. There could be no wasted action. Thus, these films packed every minute with an emotional force that I don’t often see in feature length movies.

 

 

Each of the nominated films open on a scene that gives us a sense that something important is at stake, at risk, or in danger of being lost: within the first few minutes of Ave Maria we hear (but do not see) the sounds of a car crash; the camera moves outside, where we get a close-up of the head of the Virgin Marie statue, knocked off in the crash, oozing what looks like blood onto the sandy earth. Stutterer opens on the main character, Greenwood, trying to overcome his debilitating speech impediment to call the telephone company; the woman on the other end repeats, “Hello? Is anyone there?” as we watch his mouth working frantically to produce sound. The use of close-up in both cases feels particularly powerful; the emotional crux of the piece literally fills the screen (in the former, the darkly silly and accidental meeting between people of differing faiths is pictorialized in the wounded statue; in the latter, a man’s struggle to connect despite his stutter is made visual with a prolonged gaze at Greenwood’s lips.)

 

The other three films also open on a weighted scene: a speeding car almost runs over a child’s bicycle lying in the road (Shok), a man paces in front of a gated house, buzzing the doorbell over and over (Alles Wird Gut), a woman tries to operate a makeshift showerhead and a man barges in on her (Day One.) The viewer is thrown immediately into the action, waiting for what will happen next and knowing that it must happen soon. Each film becomes something of a masterpiece in tension; even those without scores, like Alles Wird Gut, evoke mood very effectively through the use of diegetic sound (especially those sounds of modernity: the whine of a motorcycle, the whoosh of a highway, the ding of a cellphone, all of which create a feeling of manic speed or stress.)

 

 

Though the films vary in lightness (ranging from an unflinching reflection on the Kosovo War to a sweet piece about a young man’s first date with his online girlfriend), none of them lack for emotional honesty. Above all, they are believable: in Stutterer, Greenwood sends flirtatious messages over Facebook (“6 months? Have I really been enduring you for that long?”); in Ave Maria, Moshe’s wife and her mother-in-law bicker constantly throughout their fifteen minute ordeal. These conversations feel like the ones we have with our own friends and families every day; thus, even as the characters’ worlds are different from our own, they never venture into the realm of film set. Because we are allowed to see these quotidian, or even goofy moments—Lea, in Alles Wird Gut, sticks her tongue out in her passport photo; in Shok, Petrit begs his mom to let his friend sleep over—we are willing to follow these characters into whatever dark places the filmmakers take them. And, almost without exception, we are taken somewhere dark.

 

 

Even in Ave Maria, a comedy set in the West Bank, there is the sense of a lingering threat despite the light, humorous tone; the Israeli family, when presented with a vehicle by the silent nuns, worries about passing the checkpoint in a car that looks “too Arab,” saying that the guards “would shoot [us] on sight.” In the end, the family transforms the “Arab” car into a Christian one, roping a neon cross on top and blaring hymns from the windows, and the threat of violence disappears in the sheer silliness of the image.

The other films, for the most part, offer no such relief. More often than not, things seem to go from bad to worse; children get shot, mothers die in childbirth, a father clings, sobbing, to his young daughter as the police try to rip his hands away. As a fellow theatergoer said, “My takeaway is that everything is definitely not going to be okay.”

Still, this level of emotional drama may be somewhat par for the course for short films like these. Shorts require far less funding than feature length films (although most of the budgets were not yet available online, Stutterer’s listed budget is a meager $7,200; a small sum, compared to movies like Brooklyn, which has a budget of roughly $10 million); this means that the filmmaker has a bit more creative freedom to do as he (or she, in other cases) pleases. With longer films, it’s hard to sustain the intense misery present in these shorter pieces: for one thing, two hours is a long time for a filmmaker to stay on one painful note; for another, the audience simply wouldn’t stand for it. With films as short as these, however, there is enough stamina to maintain a somber attitude, and less of a need for a film to be friendly to a broad audience.

Because each of these films is truly the vision of its director, they are quite different from one another. Still, if there is anything that ties these many films together, it is their searing humanity. If the material is at times familiar (the two boys in Stok make perhaps an overly likely pair, with the one being too big for his britches, and the other playing the innocent who dies in the end to teach the former a lesson; in Day One, divorcee Feda begins by proclaiming that she never wanted children, but emerges from the movie singing to a stranger’s baby with a rapturous look on her face), it is never unconvincing. Because of the elevated stakes, the fast pacing, and frankly wonderful performances (I found the child actors particularly impressive), I could forgive the things I could not understand about each film. Even those pieces that left us with an unresolved ending, as Alles Wird Gut did, felt persuasive; in fact, the fractured, brief nature of these stories mimicked life almost more effectively than a longer movie could. The form felt true to the disordered pace of life in the ‘real world’, where stories don’t always arc perfectly, and there often isn’t a discrete ending.

 

 

As I have learned from the above films, sometimes it is better to be brief, so I’ll leave you with this: the short film, though it may seem intimidating at first, is a medium well worth exploring, and the nominated films this year are especially impactful. To quote the Bard, “though [they] be but little, [they are] fierce.” You can watch the 2016 Live Action Oscar Shorts in theaters now (if you’re in Baltimore, the Charles has been showing them nightly!), or wait until February 23^rd, when they will be available online. Be sure to bring some tissues with you when you go.

Time in Movies, Movies in Time (Ian)

 

Some years just aren’t good to moviegoers.  2004 birthed few movies worth mentioning (Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind, Kill Bill Vol. 2, and Mean Girls practically finish the list).  Conversely, some years are great to film--2007 for instance saw There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly all grace the silver screen.

Fortunately, the stars aligned, and 2014 was a stellar year in film.  We got Boyhood, and Birdman, and Foxcatcher, and Whiplash, and Nightcrawler, AND The Babadook--the list goes on, but I’ll stop there.

Funny enough, the good years seem to come with a theme that stretches across their respective filmographies (coincidence? self-projection?).  2007 saw a type of rejuvenation of the “lonely man” archetype popularized by Paul Schrader’s “Night Worker” series of films.  Upon reflection, 2014 saw many of its films measure their ability to be “revolutionary” in hours, and minutes, and seconds; they pushed cinematic boundaries by manipulating how films portray time.

Boyhood seems like the most obvious example of a film representing time in a “new” way, and its deceiving because of it.  The film has received widespread acclaim for its portrayal of twelve years in a family’s life, filmed across twelve years real-time.  Certainly there is technically no other film like it, simply because no other film was produced over a twelve-year period.  And while it is interesting to see Boyhood’s Mason and co. age twelve years throughout the span of three hours (and in the process to relive moments in time like the book release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows unstaged), beneath the glamour of the movie’s unprecedented production schedule, it’s time trick is just that--a trick.  Obviously the movie examines time, but not uniquely, like it wants you to believe; rather, it examines time like anyone else would--like everyone else has to.

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman stands at the opposite end of the spectrum, presenting time in a highly formalistic way.  Whereas time passes in Boyhood it flows in Birdman, making it the truly unique interpretation of the fourth dimension (despite what the former would have you believe).  The camera floats continuously not just through space, but time as well, trimming away the “fat” of the narrative and conflating scenes of “artists” producing “art” into a pressure-cooker that eventually reaches its breaking point and bursts into surrealism and absurdity.

Somewhere in the middle lies the lesser-seen Locke, directed by Steven Knight and starring Tom Hardy.  The film’s narrative takes place across one single, 84 minute car ride, with the camera never leaving the car.  Locke is the only passenger, meaning he is the only character ever on screen, and speaks to other characters only via his car’s speaker phone.  By the end of Locke’s hour-and-a-half drive into London he has successfully annihilated his professional and personal lives.  While the premise isn’t exactly “cinematic”, by staying with Locke in-real time the film lets the viewer witness every second of the man’s disintegration.

Way back in the third paragraph I mentioned that the “theme” I draw from a given year’s filmography may be self-projected rather than widely felt, but that issue becomes irrelevant the more I think about it.  After all, studying the films in 2014 through the lens of time has been fruitful, if only for my sake.  Even if it’s “uniqueness” is ultimately glib, by making a spectacle of the objectively mundane maturation process, Boyhood makes everyone’s past seem special, or somehow larger-than-life; a treat to be savored, rather than a given to be endured.  Meanwhile, the blurring of time and space in Birdman layers spectacle on spectacle until eventually absurdity replaces reality--not a bad representation of life in a world with increasingly bleaker political and social climates that make it ever-harder to understand.  Locke emphasizes that no moment should be wasted, because in every moment lies the potential for life-changing events.

Birdman manipulated time to make art look absurd; 2014, however, used time to make films that were great.  Tit for tat, the films produced in 2014 cement it as one of the richest years recent history.  Let’s hope for an equally profound (and thematic) 2015.

 

Why Can't a Documentary Win "Best Picture"? Looking to the industry’s most unappreciated genre (Ian)

ACT I: Speaking of which, what does "Best" Picture even mean?

If nobody’s said this to you yet, let me be the first to welcome you to Oscar season.  If you're a movie fan of any degree you're probably somewhat familiar with the award ceremony--theoretically, the awards represent the highest honor filmmakers and film talents can achieve in the industry. Meryl Streep has three trophies. Celebs get dressed up. They laugh. They cry. They aren’t allowed to drink alcohol. They receive lavish gift bags. Everyone leaves happy, even the losers (unless you’re Eddie Murphy, but is that guy ever happy?).

First things first: I am addicted to the Oscars.  No, really.  I stuff winners of Best Picture/Director/Actor/Actress/Screenplay (original and adapted) into my little brain.  Oh wait, you didn't win an Oscar?  You were only nominated for one?  No problem, I've probably memorized that about you, too (the Ghyllenhaals/Michelle Williams/Amy Adams/Mark Wahlberg/Julianne Moore/Annette Bening/Joaquin Pheonix/P.T. Anderson/David Fincher/need I go on?).  Seriously, memorizing these actually uses up a lot of my time, people.

At the same time, I recognize the Oscars for what they are: a self-indulgent system devised by Hollywood for Hollywood, the industry’s way of keeping the big films big, and the little films little.  Truthfully, winning an Oscar nowadays is not so much an "honor" as it is a political rat-race, with producers like the Weinstein brothers routinely dominating the competition because...well....they out-promote their adversaries, and produce films designed to win Oscars.

Okay, now let's think about that last statement for a second: how can one "design" a film to win an Oscar?  Good question.  I don't want to detract from the main purpose of the article, but it is a point worth examining, so we’ll do so quickly.  Here’s how you win an Oscar:

-Best Actor:  Are you above forty, and did you play a real-life person?  Sounds good to us.

-Best Actress: Are you hot and under forty?  Is your character struggling with mental illness?  OR, did you play a real-life inspirational female?  Sweet.

-Best Supporting Actor/Actress: Did you undergo a physical change for your role?  Are you a beloved character actor that delivered a semi-powerful dramatic performance?  Are you Christoph Waltz? Enjoy your trophy.

-In order to win Best Picture, you need to be epic in scope.  No one is quite sure what the Academy means by "epic", and indeed their definition seems to be quite fluid.  Oh, and the films should be inspirational, and preferably have happy endings.  Bonus points if it focuses on a real-life person.  Films with darker tones/blood/sex need not apply (with the occasional anomaly--No Country for Old Men, Midnight Cowboy).

Interestingly, however, if the Academy hasn't changed their preference for "Best Picture" winners, it has become more liberal in what films they'll nominate for best picture.  Increasingly, animated films are entering the "Best Picture conversation", along with films that blatantly value technical achievement over all other filmic aspects (ie Avatar and, unfortunately, the heinous Gravity).

Yet, while animation and techie films are now allowed "in the club", how many documentaries have been nominated for Best Picture, ever?  Zero.  Yup, zero.

Let's take a look at why this might be:

 

ACT II: Is it something we said?  Is it Michael Moore?

I have a semi-private list of my Top 100 films--obviously the list is inherently subjective and prone to frequent change, however the very top films tend to remain the same.  As of early 2013, however, I made a significant change to the list.  Why?  Because I saw a documentary by unknown filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing.

And it rocked my world.  It didn't just place in my top 100; it placed at #3.

Netflix now screens the film, so don’t walk, run to your streaming device and watch it.  The film is at once horrifying, entrancing, and eye-opening.  It was, without a doubt, not only one of the best films of 2013, but also the most important film I saw that year--and maybe ever.  I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but in brief: the documentary examines the government sanctioned mass murderers of supposed communists in 1960’s Indonesia, focusing in particular on the head honcho behind the killings, Anwar Congo.  Oppenheimer gives Congo and some of his fellow gangsters filmmaking equipment with which they can recreate their “heroic conquests”.  First Anwar and his groupies are nothing short of horrifying.  Then, however, as the film continues Anwar becomes shockingly human.  The film makes evil human.  The film gives evil a face.

If it were up to me, The Act of Killing wouldn't have just won “Best Documentary" (it didn’t, losing to the far less compelling Twenty Feet from Stardom), as that prize simply wouldn’t have done the film justice.  I would have give it the mother of all prizes, "Best Picture".  And yet, there was never a chance of the Academy handing their major award over to Oppenheimer’s masterpiece. This sad truth begs the question: why is the documentary viewed as an inherently “lesser” genre to fictional narratives?  I have a few thoughts:

1) People don't realize how sophisticated documentaries have become formally and stylistically.  The Act of Killing is a documentary, yet it feels like fiction because of its subject matter and, perhaps more importantly, its presentation.  Formally, Killing works like a narrative because Oppenheimer doesn’t simply sit back and observe his subjects or collect data, but rather because he intervenes with the world of his film in order to spur observation.  Scientists are interested in watching a mouse to see if he can learn the route that leads him to cheese--not so much just because the scientists like seeing the mouse run.  Perhaps that’s why the 1975 Grey Gardens also watches like a fiction more than a traditional documentary--the Maysles brothers famously and controversially interacted with their delusional subjects in order to trigger and capture some of their most disturbing behavior.  By laying the foundation for an interesting documentary without necessarily compromising the integrity of their observations, filmmakers are starting to produce documentary works that entertain as much as they inform.  Alas, people haven’t noticed this trend, because most people don't watch documentaries, because everyone still thinks that watching a documentary is like watching March of the Penguins.  

People seemed to like March of the Penguins when it was first released, but in no universe was the film cherished.  And why should it be?  It comes across like an extended Animal Planet feature, meaning its sole mission is informative in nature.  And people don't want to be "informed" when they go to the movies; movie making 101 says that audiences want to escape into the picture.  The documentary doesn't change us like fiction films can.  Now, however, with The Act of Killing, or Leviathan, documentaries are an escape.  They take us to a different world--only after the credits roll does the audience remember, either with joy or horror, that what they've just seen is real.  If anything, I think that this realization would make the content of the film more affecting than any tear-jerking narrative biopic.

2) Documentaries still advertise like...documentaries:  this one is pretty self-explanatory:  go to The Godfather’s Wikipedia page and look at the poster used as the page’s profile picture. Now do the same for The Act of Killing.  Judging purely by the films’ posters, which movie would you rather see? (Note: apologies, I am not allowed to post the pictures on CinemAddicts myself, due to university policy. Guess you’ll just have to toughen up and do this the hard way.)

If you answered that you’d rather see The Godfather, you’re right.  The posters used for The Act of Killing aren't ugly; personally, I find them aesthetically appealing.  However, the posters just...don't tell us anything about the film.  They don't provide us with any sense of tone, of narrative, or of what the audience can expect.  And, especially in this economy, people aren't going to spend $12 on a movie they know nothing about.  Meanwhile, while The Godfather's poster is minimalistic and dark, these qualities are purposeful, and give the viewer a sense of tone and atmosphere before they even see the movie.

Now type into Google Images “Jay Shaw Mondo print the act of killing” and look at the first image that comes up.  The image shows a limited edition print of an alternate poster for Killing, designed by Jay Shaw and sold by Mondo a while back.

Now THIS is a poster worthy of the film.  Just as The Godfather's poster, even with its startling minimalism, sets the tone for the film, so does Shaw's Killing print.  Sure, the bloody image of Anwar Congo’s face may alienate mothers who were considering viewing the film; but it's going to attract a WHOLE lot of other people who like crime/thriller/psychological drama films.  And trust me, that trade off is worth it.  My mom doesn't like movies much, anyways.

3) Most importantly, advertising in a way that punctuates style would have aided Oppenheimer's Killing to enter a conversation; ironically, emphasizing style over substance in the film’s promotional materials probably would’ve worked better to quickly pique interest within the population  The print has a story to show, not observations to tell.  And only when films enter conversations do they generate awards buzz--and only once buzz is generated can a film garner the attention of good ol' Oscar.

Act III: Does it matter?

Does winning Best Picture matter?  No.  Plenty of great films (Shame, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Honeymoon Killers, even Rosemary's Baby) have been largely or completely ignored by the Academy.  But passing over some deserving fictions doesn't matter as much as passing over deserving documentaries, because every fiction genre has an audience that is going to see the film, no matter if the Academy likes it or not.  But the documentary?  Not so much.  Sure, it might win "Best Documentary", but that simply keeps it pegged as the very thing people aren’t that interested in seeing: a documentary.  In order to give the documentary a now much-deserved image boost, one must break down the barrier that documentaries are simply "documentaries", not "pictures."  Because trust me, documentaries now give us pictures that are worth consuming and loving.

In Defense of Failures (Josh)

    With the advent of websites such as “metacritic” and “rottentomatoes,” film criticism could arguably appear as a quantitative science rather than evaluation of art.  Potential film viewers can log onto a site, see a number that determines the quality of the film and then make their decisions accordingly.  This system may prove convenient, but films are a complicated art form, and reducing them to simply good or bad does neglect a number of factors.  I want to profile two films that, according to Rottentomatoes are “rotten,” and explore them beyond a number representing a feailture to include the aspects that may make them worthwhile cinematic experiences.  These two films are Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here and Jason Reitman’s Men, Women, and Children.

    Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here is a coming of age story about a man in his mid 30’s struggling to come to terms with the responsibilities and realities of adulthood and family overpowering his dreams and desires.  The film begins with beautiful shots of light pouring in through the trees as the protagonist, Aidan Bloom, narrates one of the only non diegetic pieces of dialogue in a film, the story of him and his brother who dreamed as children to one day become heroes, only to end up realizing that this desire may always be a dream.  The shots continue as a fantasy sequence where Aidan and a robot follower run and battle crime.  As they turn around, they see his son asking for the password to their iPad.  This snaps him back into reality, at he breakfast table with his demanding children insistent that he put a dollar in the swear jar because of his cursing.  This sequence of images provides details of a man whose mind and body are in completely different places.  His wife must act as the adult figure within the household. When his wife finally confronts the protagonist, Aidan, about this, Braff’s film frames this conversation with an old carnival off in the distance. The image the viewer sees is of two adults sitting near a beach in a spot one would expect of teenagers. These young parents have matured into an age where responsibilities must now dictate their lives.  Aidan is a struggling actor necessitating his wife, Sarah, to work a miserable office job she hates because as she states, if she stops, their kids don’t eat.  Sarah must finally ask him when their lives became all about him and his dreams. As Aidan snaps into his realization, Braff moves his camera close, taking the characters out of the carnival.  The realities of his life make living for dreams a threat to one’s family.  Shortly after, Aidan receives a pamphlet instructing him on how to handle his father’s funeral.  The disconnect between the fantasies of youth and the disillusionment of adulthood continues in a sequence when Aidan takes his children on a “field trip” to a beautiful spot in the California desert.  As he attemps to explain the location as the site of his most recent life saving epiphany, the children only look at him with bewilderment.  The sound is full of wind and the sun disappears quickly in the scene.  Braff through the non-verbal filmic elements of light and sound brilliantly illustrates a character experiencing disillusionment.  A single epiphany will not save his life anymore, it will take true work. Wish I Was Here is not a perfect film and it certainly has missteps.  For instance, characters far too often nod in a solemn fashion after Braff’s screenplay makes a character state a self-aware profundity.  At other times, the camera lingers on character’s faces in order to remind the audience of the emotional impact of a particular scene.  Despite these flaws, Braff’s film at its core is a beautiful and moving story that represents largely realized ambition by the director.

    Jason Reitman’s Men, Women, and Children tells the story of how human beings interact with each other and face their problems in the era of modern communication technology and social media.  At first glance, it may appear to condemn and blame social media for society’s ills.  Because of this, it could therefore elicit easy criticism as a film made by an out of touch Baby Boomer, but a careful viewing of the film will unearth a much more profound message.  Social media and technology are tools that the characters use to try to solve their problems.  It provides them with an illusion of an escape but sadly for them, an ultimately ineffective avoidance mechanism.  Reitman shows this world with images such as an overhead shot of a high school hallway.  This image is of all the students on their phones, bumping into each other, and entirely oblivious of their surroundings.  Reitman presents an omniscient view of their online interactions, the worlds into which they have all escaped. Another scene features three cheerleaders talking while two of them send text messages back and forth gossiping about the third.  One may look at these sequences and see a condemnation of texting, but that is too simplistic of a view.  The overhead shot does not dwell on the phone, but on the gaps between characters.  The students in the school have no connection to one another other. Instead of seeking meaningful relationships with their fellow students, they instead turn to their phones.  One scene with a group of cheerleaders reflects teenage gossiping behavior, albeit in a way that reflects the times of the film.  Another two characters in the film are in a failing marriage and both turn to online sources in order to fulfill their lives.  One seeks an affair on an online cheating website, and the other seeks out an online escort.  Reitman never frames these scenes as the Internet being a cause; rather he has scenes of the characters unable to express themselves to each other.  When the characters must finally talk to each other and admit their wrongdoing, they both mutually decide that they should ignore the problem and instead focus on what they each want on their respective omelets.   Reitman uses a visual technique whereby when a character is immersed in their social media of choice, the world around them becomes that website or videogame.  The characters in this film must plug in to a different reality to escape their own dissatisfaction.  Men, Women, and Children like, Wish I Was Here does have some disappointing elements.  The film has a frustrating voiceover narration that tries to poetically connect the space satellite voyager with the situations of the character.  Unfortunately, Reitman does choose to have a narrator explicitly state the connections during numerous points throughout the film. He does this both in a montage showing the space shuttle voyager leaving our galaxy as the voice explains the event as a direct metaphor to the characters in the film, as well as a technique where he has the narrator speak over the film to explain motivations and backstory. It is an example of a screenplay telling rather than showing, and is by far the weakest element of the film. 

    Neither Wish I Was Here nor Men, Women, and Children are perfect films, but they are ambitious and have the intention on making a statement on modern day American society.  They have complex and well thought out characters and are careful to use filmic language to convey their themes.  Yes, they have flaws in their storytelling.  No film is perfect however, and both Braff and Reitman have made powerful dramas that do have a lot to say on the human condition.

From Homewood to CERN and Back Again: Search for the Higgs Boson in "Particle Fever" (Helen)

 

3D view of an event recorded with the CMS detector in 2012 at a proton-proton centre of mass energy of 8 TeV

 

Johns Hopkins University's very own theoretical physicist, Professor David E. Kaplan, and director Mark Levinson’s first collaborative documentary Particle Fever (2013) hit the national film circuit this past month. It is first feature length film chronicling the four major experiments of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the five-year quest for the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Although Particle Fever had a relatively slow start at the box office, this film is as much of an achievement in aesthetics as it is in documenting one of the biggest scientific events in recent history.  Assisted by such film titans as editor Walter Murch and composer Robert Miller, Levinson follows David Kaplan and his academic contemporaries through the ups and downs of the largest particle accelerator ever constructed. 

I attended the sold out debut at the Charles Theater last Sunday with the entire graduate physics department. David Kaplan also attended the screening, introducing the film to an audience composed entirely of Hopkins PhD students, and one undergraduate film major. To further my anticipatory anxiety, my only academic exposure to basic physics concepts ended sophomore year and I haven’t looked back since. While particle physics may seem a little intimidating to the average viewer, Kaplan’s scientific explanations in the film provided just the right amount of information to help me understand as well as receiving the approving nods of the more qualified audience members. Beyond that, the passion and excitement beaming from the cast of scientists involved in the LHC appeared to be contagious, as I found myself actually sitting up at the edge of my seat.

Besides recording one of the most important scientific events in my lifetime from the ground floor, Particle Fever piqued my curiosity by functioning as a human-interest piece on the top particle physicists in the world. What is perhaps more impressive, is that a group of people operating on such a high level of a subject I knew very little about were so incredibly relatable. Very early on in the film, Kaplan interviews his mentor Dr. Savas Dimopoulos, who explains his motivation behind his work in theoretical particle physics as something between art and science. He explains the process in which he chooses his next research endeavor as such; to put it simply he looks for questions that are intellectually fascinating but also reflect an artistic creativity that sets him apart from other scientists in his field. The film also follows Kaplan’s peers such as Nima Arkani-Hamed, one of the most famous particle physicists not only of his age group but also on a global scale. Levinson manages to capture the finesse and skill of Nima’s chalkboard equations in a way that resembles Leonardo da Vinci and his sketchbook to a particle physicist. My favorite character within the film however, was first year CERN post-doc student Monica Dunford. The film contained many of her own video logs as well as a variety of interviews at her work and home spanning the entire five year journey of the ATLAS project, the most publicized experiment at the LHC. As an experimental particle physicist, she explained the distinction, or really delightfully trash talked, the theoretical side of her field. Playfully begrudged, she admitted the symbiotic relationship between the dreamers and the doers, with a slight bias towards the experimental side.

In addition to inspiring an academic passion I didn’t anticipate, the film also resonated with me as human being who has admired the night sky and wondered about the vast interworkings of the universe. The crux of the film, finding the Higgs Boson, now had a much greater significance than when I originally read about it in the fall of 2012. It wasn’t just another particle discovery; the existence of the Higgs had the entire field of physics hinging on it. Everything we knew up to this point about our world and the infinite space surrounding it was supported by two basic particle theories, “Super Symmetry” and “Macroverse”. Both required the Higgs discovery to be possible, but also, data from the experiment could potentially confirm which theory was correct. The mass of the Higgs Boson particle was the deciding factor. It was projected to be around one of two masses: a lighter ~115 GeV and a heavy ~140 GeV corresponding to “Super Symmetry” and “Macroverse” theory respectively. While this is treading into esoteric territory, the simplified version is that “Super Symmetry” supported the existence of more particles that created a stable and balanced universe. “Macroverse” on the other hand, negated the possibility for the discovery of new particles and perhaps the notion that our universe is unstable and unfortunately temporary. Not only was this a dramatic climax in any ficitional sense, the fact that this was a reality was both exciting and terrifying. To summarize, space is as fascinating as it is potentially lethal and particle physics is 'much' cooler than it sounds.

 

So Many Firsts (Ingrid)

    

    There’s nothing glossy about The Charles Theater. Look up, and you’ll see exposed rafters and piping. Look left and right, and you’ll see water-damaged brick walls, worn-out furniture, and antiquated film equipment. The decorations—the larger-than-life sized penguin statue and the smaller-than-life sized stuffed leopard donning sunglasses—do not make much sense. The Charles is not glamorous; it doesn’t pander. Its aura suggests history. It’s authentic, it’s simple; it exists for quality film.

    Last weekend was a weekend of firsts for me. I did something I do, well, never. I ventured beyond the Hopkins bubble and dabbled in the Baltimore film community. I regret not having done so earlier. In fact, this was my first real theater experience in Baltimore (a pathetic confession from a Film and Media Studies major).

    How coincidental that on a weekend of firsts for me, I chose to watch a movie all about firsts. The Spectacular Now (2013), directed by James Ponsoldt, centers around Sutter Keely (played by Miles Teller) and Aimee Finecky (played by Shailene Woodley), two seniors in high school, who, during this limbo period of life, find each other. The film highlights their coming-of-age events: Aimee’s first sip of alcohol, her first time having sex, Sutter’s first encounter with his estranged dad, his first identity crisis, and their first tastes of independence and responsibility, their first experience with true love. But it’s not a perfect love. Sutter is far from sure about a single aspect of his life. His relationship with Aimee is no exception. His confusion is one we all can remember; a confusion we’ve all resolved at some point in our lives in the same way Sutter does—with the motto, “living in the now.” It’s a naiveté everyone can relate to.

    At every stage in life, your perception of time is constantly morphing. During childhood, every day is a countdown to the next birthday, the first day of school, the next performance, musical recital, or little-league game. When it comes time for high school, you anticipate new things. Life becomes measured by part-time jobs, by proms, by relationships. But at the same time, your life begins to feel like a waiting game, qualified by the impending reality of college and of the future. “I don’t see what’s so great about being an adult. Are you happy?” Sutter says to his geometry teacher, who is reprimanding him on his failure to perform in class. It’s a strange thing to have to accept—to have to grow up and learn when things like high school geometry seem inapplicable to real world situations.

    A big part of what makes this film so convincing is the casting. Sutter Keely and Aimee Finecky look like us. They could have easily been in our high school class. Shailene Woodley is not made-up. Her long, unkempt hair is tied up messily for half the film; her clothing is bland, and almost always wrinkled. On top of that, her performance is believable. In tight close-ups, we notice every slight change in expression. We see her nervous eyes darting around, every spasm in her cheeks, her insecure gestures; we hear the uncertainty in her voice, her timid giggles between sentences. Our heart goes out to Aimee when we discover her dad passed away from a drug overdose and she works six days a week running a paper route for her mother to pay half the bills. Despite her dreams of moving to Philadelphia and attending college there, she is pressured to stay at home to help support her family. The overall depiction is stunningly real.

    Opposite Aimee, is Sutter, a character who I found extremely interesting. At eighteen, he is still a boy in every sense of the word. His carefree youth is apparent: his baby cheeks, his acne, his voice cracks, his early and irresponsible predilection for whiskey. He comes from a broken family; a home where his mom works double-shifts and keeps any information about his missing dad and the divorce away from him. Despite this, Sutter has an adolescent cockiness, an easy-going, class-clown attitude that makes him undeniably charming. It’s intriguing because he puts on this devil-may-care, invincible façade and yet is arguably the most clueless, troubled, and emotional character in the film. He avoids conversations about the future at all costs. It takes an unlikely companionship with Aimee and an eye-opening encounter with his dad to help him find direction.

    One particularly touching scene for me is the long take of Aimee and Sutter’s conversation through the woods. Their stream of consciousness conversation begins innocent but deepens, as they share their hindered desires and unstable familial relationships. It develops into a beautifully natural and awkward exchange about their experiences with relationships and ends with their first kiss. This stereotypically epic and pivotal moment is instead, portrayed with subtlety, composed of only diegetic sounds and crafted in a way that doesn’t linger or exaggerate. This is one of the many sweet and true moments of the film.

    The emotional climax is when Sutter reconnects with his long-lost dad. Sutter’s hopes are high. His idolization of his dad manifests in a built-up fantasy based on all the good memories from his childhood. The meeting, however, is disappointing from the start. When Sutter shows up at his dad’s shabby condo, a disheveled, unshaven, tapped-out man answers the door. Sutter’s dad openly forgets that they had made plans over the phone and appears unexcited to be reunited with his son. It only goes downhill from there. Their conversation continues at a local bar, where his dad remains uninterested the whole time. When Sutter asks about what went wrong with his parents’ marriage, his dad admits to having cheated and having left voluntarily. To make matters worse, Sutter’s dad justifies by saying, “I don’t live in the past, I live in the now.” In that jarring moment, Sutter realizes his dad is a selfish, unmotivated washup. Sutter sees his own life mantra, “living in the now,” play out abysmally in a man he had admired throughout his childhood. In learning about his past and reconstructing a more accurate image of his dad, Sutter is finally able to yank himself out of complacency.

    The Spectacular Now was like chicken noodle soup—soothing and comforting in a way very few romantic dramas and comedies have been for me. It was a complete departure for the string of meaningless, unwitty, unrealistic movies of this genre that have plagued theaters in the past few years. For a jaded viewer, it is a breath of fresh air—pure, genuine, and inspiring. Above all, this movie was perhaps the first time in a while I have felt this strong of a connection to the characters. I came out of the movie thinking, “they understand; someone understands.” And maybe that’s because it speaks to something that’s still fresh in my memory; I only have two years between high school and right now. But I think on some level, everyone can look back and relate to The Spectacular Now. It’s real characters, real dialogue, and real circumstances appeal to a universal experience. 

Defiance - An Adventure in Transmedia (Sophie)

Transmedia, specifically transmedia storytelling is the art of telling a single story or exploring a single world across different media. It is closely associated with the idea of a story world, a more abstract concept referring to a single narrative world that exists across different works of narrative art.

 

In the summer of 2011, Syfy announced an upcoming transmedia collaboration with gaming company Trion Worlds. The result is a two-part project that premiered this year in April with a long-form TV science-fiction political action drama and a corresponding multi-platform MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game).

 

    This is the background of the world they share. In the year 2046, arks carrying survivors of a dying alien solar system carrying an entire ecosystem arrive on Earth, causing war and a complete restructuring of the planet’s surface, society, and biosphere. The show takes place after this, in a town called Defiance, following the myriad political and social struggles resulting from the mix of alien and human cultures and agendas. To some degree, the show relies on tried-and-true plot tropes, such as Romeo and Juliet-style love stories, cultural and spiritual tensions, and classic science fiction elements like alien-on-alien battles, spacecrafts, blue glowy things, and futuristic energy weapons which account for most of Syfy’s budget on the show.

 

    The goal of the project was to extensively link the shared world of the game and the show. They take place in the same area at the same time, and the two branches of the project promise future crossovers, ranging from the ability of the player’s character in the game to appear in the show to large scale players’ actions influencing the show’s narrative future. At the moment, however, the crossover is limited to similar storylines and characters and timed missions in the game that must be completed by the next episode’s airing. The two development teams both made concessions for such a project to become a reality. While, for example, the gaming team thought the alien races known as “Voltan” should bring with them flying car technology, Syfy’s television crew told them that was right-out too expensive.

 

    Meanwhile, Syfy’s conceptual team thought horses or similar pack animals would fit the setting. The logistical team for the video game informed them that pack animals interfere with combat in games like the one they were designing. I admit to having not played the game, but I do have exposure to both television and games of this genre – and the mutual influence is clear.

 

    The TV show brings several well-recognized actors, including Grant Bowler, (known for his previous work in Ugly Betty and True Blood,) and Julie Benz, from (Angel and Dexter). Of course, the television actors served as the live models for their digital doubles in the game. The actors, along with the visual decisions for the various races in the world, had to be decided on several years in advance than they would have been for a typical science fiction show for like this without a collaborating video game team. On the other hand, while video games can relatively easily create very non-human aliens, a TV show has more limitations, meaning Defiance’s aliens look remarkably human. The collaboration has a kind of lowest common denominator effect, where both media have to take into account the limitations of the other.

 

However, transmedia collaboration is not without its strengths. Despite several obvious archetypes and standard genre elements, the extensive world-building is obvious from the very first episode. Because the show is free to tell for of its mythology in the setting of the game, the world feels like it has even more depth. There are two complete languages for the show and game, constructed by David J. Peterson, who also worked on Dothraki, the constructed language from Game of Thrones. Though we don’t see much of some of the alien races, as not all are represented in the main cast, each has distinctive cultural characteristics, evident in their speech patterns, dress, and attitudes, even in minor roles.

 

The races are also original in that the cultures seem to have been built from the ground up, rather than borrowed from Earth cultures and pasted onto alien species, a welcome relief to a veteran viewer of the genre (though some play it a little close at times).

    The show promises a world full of conflict and tensions, some which are more television arc-worthy, others of which could easily permeate throughout the show and game worlds (such as racial tension and environmental dangers). The show has recently been renewed for a second season, hopefully bringing the promised crossovers closer to reality.

The Smaller Screen: Television and the Internet (Sophie)

Now-a-days, every film and tv show have an official website, many of them with extra content, ranging from behind the scenes photos to brand new footage or animated web series set in the same universe. More and more people are accessing films and television for the first time from their computers through web-streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, official Youtube channels, or streaming directly from network or TV show websites. Things that are not officially available are still peddled on the web, either on technically illegal streaming sites or illegal download. The fact is, the web and the computer are now integral parts of how film and television are consumed.

Then, there are the materials created explicitly for the web. The web series, or web television is technically in its late teens as a form, but changes in web speed, accessibility, and technology, such as Youtube's creation in 2005 fundamentally made the web a kind of playground for new, independent creators, especially those interested in episodic structure. Web series, as defined by Wikipedia, consist of everything from weekly news shows, to animated movie reviews, to slapstick comedies produced on low budget to newer dramas made with partnerships in Hollywood or with big name web companies.

Recently, television stations have been buying rights to shows originally made for the internet and airing them. At this point, there are far too many varied forms or web television to address at once. Low budget, episodic comedies are popular and well suited to the short run times that many web series have. Dramas are less common. Nearly all web episodes air short episodes. Very short. For dramas, which on television find it more useful to run for an hour as opposed to comedies at a half hour, the web demands an adaptation of narrative structure. On the longer end, a web show like Sanctuary (one of the highest budgeted, at 4.3 million, and with Hollywood insiders) ran eight 15-20 minute episodes before being picked up by (then) SciFi for television. On the shorter end, several mystery shows ran episodes of 90 seconds each.

H+, a new show this fall, produced by Warner Brother's Digital Distribution, their web specific developers, in partnership with Youtube, chose a median episode length of about 4 minutes per episode. From the creative team of John Cabrera (writer, known from his acting on Gilmore Girls) and Bryan Singer (producer, who worked on The Usual Suspects, along with several super hero movies), the show is on the scale of the post apocalyptic science fiction shows that the major networks keep trying out for prime time slots. With a budget of a little under 2 million, and filmed around Santiago, Chile, the plot spans decades and the entire globe. It calls on special effects for simulated many advanced technologies, as well as classically higher budget effects, like explosions, crashed cars and complex sets.

The bare bones of the plot is what happens when technologies like smart phones become even more advanced to the point of integration into the human body, and what, in an extreme case can be the fall out from that. Quoting inspiration from Lost, the story is told non-linearly, through multiple threads about the technology that slowly (by episode 24, halfway through the proposed 28 episode 255 minute run) seem to be connecting to each other through overlapping character. Every episode has a given location and time relative to “it happening,” the disaster the changes the world that is supposed to be the driving mystery.

Having followed the series through it's 2-3 episodes a week release schedule, the series comes off quite differently than it's made for TV counterparts (Revolution – J.J. Abrams similarly plotted adventure on NBC; Falling Skies – an apocalypse driven by alien invasions – produced by Steven Spielberg on TNT). The combination of short episodes and receiving those episodes as part of disjoint stories seem more like views into a world and do less to push the viewer towards wondering about the mystery. Because the series premiers on Youtube, the comments contain instant reactions. Rather than discussions of the mystery, or insightful connections or theorizing (typical, I am told, of a forum after an episode of Lost,) most of the top comments are complaints about the short format, asking for longer 15-30, even hour long episodes. The creators occasionally step in the discussion and recommend watching a bunch of the episodes at a time.

What seemed curious is that now, in 2012, the web series format is nothing new. Most of the people watching H+ watch other videos on Youtube, maybe even other series. What is it about this one? In gauging my own impressions of the format and the content, perhaps the scope and the scale of the project are just too big for such a small screen. It's only recently that we have come to expect high budget effects and global scale shooting from television. Only recently have the high tech and the post apocalyptic gotten comfortable on the small screen (though, it could be argued, that they are still trying to find their footing there.) Moving it so quickly to the web series, especially to such a short episode, the visuals and intensity feel like small clips from something out of what we have come to expect of high budget television or movies. They feel like additional information rather than the core plot. Certainly the decision to build up this universe that is already hard enough to contain on the web through non-linear slowly converging storylines adds to the frustrations.

Ultimately, H+ has still creating an engaging universe and interesting characters. Whether or not the medium or the form they used is ultimately beneficial is unclear. The web is still a new media, and certainly not one accepted at the same level as television. Budgets are lower, and it's considered an honor to be picked up by a network to be aired through “normal” means. It's future, though can only get brighter as technology improves and people rely less and less on the major networks for their programming. Already, Netflix and Hulu are creating their own content. Perhaps a program like H+ isn't so much in the wrong place, but before it's time.

Check out H+ for yourselves on their Youtube Channel.

Let's Be Honest (Natasha)

        The March issue of Vanity Fair is calling Barry Levinson's Diner "the most influential movie of the last 30 years."  Maybe it is.  Personally, I find that The Sixth Sense was by far the most influential because it informed the majority of my fears of the dark as well as a truly excellent lyric in The Lonely Island's "J*** in My Pants."  While VF and I agree that Diner is so terrifically influential because of its realism, we diverge completely when it comes to choosing scenes that show it.  They chose the scenes of conversation between the six best friends in the Fells Point Diner.  I choose something simpler, more specific and, as it happens, very appropriate in the context of this blog.

        There is a scene halfway through the movie that, though very brief, allows all the virtues of Diner's overt quotidianness and subtle honesty to crystallize into a little geode of relatability.  Eddie (Steve Guttenberg), the literal-minded, happily aimless, slightly adenoidal groom-to-be and Billy (Tim Daly), the unhappily aimless, romantic yet resilient grad student who has come home to be Eddie's best man, walk into a movie theater whose marquee reads "ANOTHER BERGMAN CLASSIC."  For anyone who feels like I do about The Seventh Seal, we suspect this might not be the most thrilling cinematic experience for this pair.  It will be especially bad for Eddie, who balks at all things evasive or amorphous--and whose side the audience is secretly encouraged to be on, from the opening scene in the diner with the roast beef sandwich to his ingeniously spastic dance with the oddly-shaped stripper late in the movie.

        A close-up in the theater shows Eddie and Billy in the audience, their faces lit by the bleak whiteness of the monochromatic Bergman classic.  With his eyes fixed on the screen, Eddie frowns--more out confusion than displeasure--and asks, "What am I watchin'? Movie just started, I don't know what's goin' on."

        "It's symbolic," Billy replies.

        "Who's that guy?"

        "That's Death walking on the beach."  Billy seems apathetic, but his face looks almost appreciative next to Eddie's 

        "I been to Atlantic City a hundred times, I never saw death walk on a beach."

        To understate it a bit, Ingmar Bergman is not for everyone.  I love Max von Sydow, love the occasional chainmail muscle tee, but I did not love The Seventh Seal.  I am sure many people in the Film Department and beyond will consider that unenlightened, but I am also sure a great many Diner viewers had the same reaction I had to the scene.  Regardless of anyone's fondness for allegorical Swedish cinema, The Seventh Seal with all its symbolism is such a perfect foil because Diner is free of symbols--nothing in the movie is charged with meaning anything, it just is.  When we watch this movie, we watch people--Eddie, Billy, Boogie (a delicate pre-boxing, pre-reconstructive surgery Mickey Rourke), Shrevie (Daniel Stern), Fenwick (Kevin Bacon), Modell (Paul Reiser), the annoying old guy buying a TV (Herb Levinson, the writer/director's uncle)--just existing, to no specific end.  I don't know how I could aptly describe the plot while still doing justice to how engaging and satisfying Diner is.

        There is one other metacinematic touch that boosts the realism:  The inspired character of Methan (Tait Ruppert, a local Baltimore kid), who appears only twice and says only quotations from Sweet Smell of Success.  As we're watching it, these expertly crafted lines delivered in a precise, intense monotone make the movie going on around the polished interjection seem all the more like real life. When we've finished it and, say, have a blog post to write, we realize how organic all the dialogue in Diner is.  However many moments in the movie were ad-libbed, there was still a script that captured what happens in conversation between guys and their friends, their parents, their girlfriends, their wives, even their useless, pretentious brothers like Fenwick's.  I feel as if I could saunter into the Fells Point Diner anytime and, as Shrevie says, "bullshit the entire night away" with those six lost soon-to-be-men. I only wish I could.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

10 Horror Films You Probably Aren’t, But Should Be Watching (John)

10 great, original horror films for those of you who are tired of remakes, reboots, rip offs, and other disappointments.    

Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006, Dir. Scott Glosserman) What may at first seem like a run of the mill mockumentary is actually a very smart, very funny little film that follows a team of graduate students as they document Leslie Vernon’s quest to become the next horror icon.  Wonderfully subversive, well acted, and with a fun little cameo from Robert Englund, this film isn’t really scary, but well worth watching.

Black Christmas (1974, Dir. Bob Clark) While true horror fans know this film well, it seems to have slipped through the cracks of the slasher cannon.  Before Bob Clark directed the holiday classic A Christmas Story, he painted the holiday black in this tale of a sorority house terrorized by a mysterious caller who begins murder the sorority sisters.  Combining American conventions with Italian giallo sensibility, Black Christmas is the sadistic older brother to the slasher Godfather Halloween.

High Tension (2003, Dir. Alexandre Aja) Two friends, Alexa and Marie, travel to Alexa’s country home for a vacation that turns into a nightmare when a mysterious man shows up, bent on killing everyone.  Few films are as simplistic as High Tension.  The film guns it right out of the gate and never lets up.  It’s ending may seem a little slapped together, but if you’re in the mood for 90 minutes of blood soaked tension, Aja’s French thriller will do the trick.

Inside (2007, Dir. Alexandre Bustillo) This French shocker is for everyone who thinks that American horror films have become just a little too safe and predictable.  On the eve of giving birth to her first child, a woman is visited in the middle of the night by a woman intent on taking her unborn child.  Visceral, unforgiving, and downright surreally violent, Bustillo’s breakthrough film is everything horror should be, if you can stomach it. 

May (2002, Dir. Lucky McKee) This unsettling little indie film tells the story of May, a young woman finding it increasingly impossible to interact with those around her, who decides to create her own perfect friend out of the best parts of people.  Angela Bettis gives an amazingly creepy, and surprisingly empathetic performance as the title character.

Pieces (1982, Dir. Juan Piquer Simón)  Falling into the category of "so bad it's good" films, Pieces follows a chainsaw wielding killer as he saws his way through a college campus, steal body parts along the way.  This film is the Citizen Kane of tasteless, talentless slashers.  Watch it with friends.

Pontypool (2008, Dir. Bruce McDonald) Based on a novel by Anthony Burgess, this uncommonly intelligent zombie flick changes up the formula by having the infection spread, not through blood, but through language.  Strong performances all around help flesh out this great premise and turn an interesting film into a great one.

Thirst (2010, Chan-wook Park) The director of Old Boy tries his hand at the vampire genre in this tale of a priest turned vampire.  The amazing performances of Kang-ho Song and Ok-bin Kim elevate this twisted, bloody love story into something really worth seeing.

Torso (1973, Dir. Sergio Martino) This Italian giallo slasher follows a mysterious killer with a knack for strangling American exchange students.  While the first 45 minutes are almost incomprehensible pedestrian it all comes together and the film’s final act builds more tension than most horror films can dream of creating. 

Trick ‘r Treat (2007, Dir. Michael Dougherty) This horror anthology is probably the best Halloween film since John Carpenter changed the way we think about Halloween in ‘78.  Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, and Brian Cox all give great performances in this celebration of the holiday.  The film also introduces Sam, the Spirit of Halloween, one of the best horror villains in a long time. 

Happy Halloween.  Go watch something scary.

 

 

A Night with Charles Burnett (Josh)

For the longest time, I had been unaware of a great filmmaker.  As a child, I had unwittingly seen, and enjoyed, one of his early Disney collaborations: a TV-movies entitled Selma, Lord, Selma.  Then, about a year ago, I was re-introduced to Charles Burnett through his seminal feature film Killer of Sheep.  The film is one that can be considered a truly American Independent film.  Burnett's work has always evoked connections to the Italian neorealists for his open portrayal of characters and documentary-like approach to filmmaking.  His use of natural light, naturalistic (many times improvised) dialogue, and location shooting added to this "independent" style of cinema.  

In Killer of Sheep, his use of sound is incredible.  The music choices, which caused many problems upon the release of the film as the producers could not secure the rights to many of the songs, give life and set mood in a piece that has no real specific narrative direction.  The use of diegetic sound also enhances the state of wandering in and out of people's lives.  

                         (Image Courtesy of Creative Commons)

I was excited to receive the news that Charles Burnett would be speaking on the Hopkins campus en route to his speaking engagement at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.  Instead of showing Killer of Sheep (which was shown at the National Gallery along with When It Rains, a short film that Burnett mentioned was one of his favorite works he's done), he screened Nightjohn, another Disney-commissioned made-for-TV movie.  

Here is  Burnett introducing his film:

 

 

Although the film can be very Disney-esque, there are moments of brilliance that allow Burnett's style to shine through.  One of these moments comes early on in the film when Sarny's mother is sold.  The young Sarny stands motionless as the wagon toting her mother pulls away.  The camera is mounted on the
 wagon and rattles along, giving a perfect point of view shot.  While much of the film follows a sleek, Hollywood style, this raw aesthetic sneaks its way into the film and harkens back to Burnett's earlier work.  Burnett also respects the locations in which the characters live.  This is another tell-tale of his creative sensibilities. 

                                (Image Courtesy of Creative Commons)

For a film that is pretty predictable – save for its brutal portrayal of slave life in the South - with its
 sweetness, moments of horror, and little bits of humor, it is engaging enough to sit through for its 92 minute runtime. 

The lengthy Q&A came to a close with Burnett trying to encourage the filmmakers in the audience to go out there and make films – this after an extensive discussion of how independent cinema is in decline and money is scarce.  But Burnett’s encouragement comes not from his words, but from his works, leaving a legacy of inspiring films for young filmmakers. 

 

“For the Love of Movies”: A Film Review about People who Review Films (Hannah)

 

In today’s internet savvy society, the term “everyone’s a critic” has become a veritable reality. Now, everybody has the forum to not only express their ideas on film to their peers, but also to distribute their opinions to a vast and anonymous public audience. However, long before the advent of internet blogging and twitter, film criticism has had a long and fascinating history that, at least according to director Gerald Peary, warrants examination. “For the love of Movies: The story of American Film Criticism”— a recent documentary and Peary’s directorial debut— explores this history and follows the progression of film criticism in America. “For the Love of Movies” has two projects that work together to create a complete picture of the film reviewing industry. First, it examines the history of film criticism from small plot synopses in newspapers to the varied forms in different media that are available today. At the same time, it investigates the nature of past and contemporary individuals who have held the title “film critic” and seeks to understand this profession, define its purpose, and assess its questionable future. Ultimately, the film claims that this profession— which is threatened by the availability of film reviews on the web— is above all else the product of a profound passion for film and is a valuable asset to the industry and its audience. However, while the historical information is fascinating and the film critic industry well examined, the documentary’s relationship with, and message for, the rise of web reviews is a bit unclear. 

Peary divides “For the love of movies” into six different chapters in which he describes a two decade period as it pertains to film criticism. The first era, which is called “The Dawn of Criticism”, extends from 1907 until 1929. The earliest movie reviews, narrator Patricia Clarkson explains, began as simple plot summaries in trade papers. Quickly, some figures like Frank E Wood and Robert Sherwood began realizing the unique nature of the movies— a medium that is more than “filmed theater”— and developed theories as to how to measure their quality. These writers even formed relationship with filmmakers and obtained roles in making movies in addition to viewing them.

The documentary lays out five more of these time periods, however, mostly focuses on Sherwood’s and Wood’s inheritors— the critical innovators of subsequent eras. Writers like Manny Farber, Vincent Canby, Bosley Crowther, Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael all contributed to the discipline in their own significant and unprecedented way. “For the Love of Movies,” which details these contributions by quoting passages from their articles and showing interview footage of these individuals, wonderfully exhibits these personalities and puts a human face to these figures who are so often reduced to a name in a newspaper.

The film also lays out the different tensions and dynamics that defined this profession. For instance, Bosley Crowther, the New York Time’s main critic and the most powerful critical voice in film in the forties and fifties, would look for the moral element in the film, and promote movies with a positive message. However, the younger generation— writers like Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris— felt that movies should be judged on aesthetic merit alone. They did not feel that the movie’s moral fiber was relevant to the review and believed that Crowther was “out of touch.”

While Kael and Sarris fell on the same side in this debate, the movie spends a lot of time on the famous conflict between these two powerful voices in the movie review business. During the sixties, Sarris, who wrote for the village voice, and Kael, who wrote for the New Yorker, became the two of the most influential critiques. Their conflict started with Sarris’ acceptance of the French Auteur theory that was popular in the seventies. Kael strongly discredited the auteur theory— which states that the director determined the movie and was an artist no different than a painter— and unabashedly slighted Sarris’s ideas. However, eventually Kael also became somewhat of an aurterist herself, only she supported her directors while Sarris championed other directors. This rivalry is an interesting one and demonstrates the internal dynamics of the word of movie criticism quite well. With the exploration of these tensions, “For the Love of Movies” shows that the film criticism industry was also changing and dynamic and any recent challenge, it suggests, is only the newest point on the evolution of this medium.

Interwoven into this narrative are questions that are posed to a number of contemporary critics— Liza Shwatrzbaum, AO Scott, and Owen Gleiberman to name a few— on the nature of their profession. Questions like “what qualifies you to be a film critic?” “did you always want to be a film critique” “Does your partner have to also be movie-crazy?” are peppered throughout and serve as a supplement to the historical account. In the responses to “what qualifies you as a film critic,” the general consensus is reached that critics do not actually have anything that proves their ability. “There is no degree or piece of paper” AO Scott explains that gives a critic the authority to relay his opinions on film. One critic even goes so far as to say that it actually is only to due to “sheer dumb luck” that he gets to have the job of attending movies.

While I believe that the documentary relays a fascinating history and successfully characterizes the role of a film critic, the take-home message is somewhat unclear. The movie opens up with a quote that is more in the nature of a hurricane relief ad, “Today film criticism is under siege... 28 reporters have lost their jobs over the last several years” The obvious reason for these jobs losses is the virtual (no pun intended) obsolescence of printed film criticism because of the availability of free film reviews on the web. However, while they seem to bemoan that fact of this loss, in actuality the film does not critique this newer form of criticism. In fact, they name a few reasons why this new trend is good for movie audiences and the movies in general.

First, at least according to film blogging king, Harry Knowles, the rise in the citizen as film reviewer is sign that more people are “thinking critically.” Film criticism on the web does not signify a decline is the standards of film critique, as some may think, but is rather a testament to the younger generation’s engagement with higher thought. Moreover, as America does not have a monolithic pop culture, there is no one critic who can speak for everyone. The cacophony of voices on films is well suited to the heterogeneous society we live in. Michael Bay, for instance, is hated by movie critics and yet adored by many viewers. Perhaps, there is a need then to have people with different aesthetic sentiments to cater to different tastes.

Ultimately, the film decides that it is and has always been a field that is about the eponymous “love of movies.” The critics do their job because of their passion for film but also the entire profession is really for the continued improvement of the film industry. Directors and actors benefit have an added incentive to make a movie as good as possible and critics have a long tradition, dating back to Sherwood’s time, of giving their opinions in the movie-making process. Most importantly, these critics spark conversations, whether it be between Kael and Sarris or a cab driver and AO Scott, and elicit ideas and dialogue over the common viewing of films. With these reasons, they certainly make a convincing case for the continued importance of this profession; however, I had trouble shedding any tears over the rise of online film criticism— especially as I consider the forum in which this is being published.

FMS Faculty Screening: Works & Works in Progress (Carlos)

On April 16, the Film & Media Studies Program hosted a screening of Works & Works in Progress by the program's four faculty filmmakers. The audience in attendance was a mix of both university students and the general local public, and a reception after the showcase brought the evening to an agreeable close.

Filmmaker John Mann opened the screening with an excerpt from a documentary entitled, Shelter, which concerns the experiences of homeless men living in shelters in Kansas and North Carolina. Shot in only six weeks, the film is structured around of a series of sit-down interviews. In one interview a man speaks about having participated in a study where he was paid to allow for his heart to be stopped and revived. In another, a man confesses that while anchored to his socio-economic status he feels little self-worth. Mann joked that the most critical responses to the documentary centered around the fact that it "provided no viable solution to homelessness," although that was hardly his intent. Afterward he screened an excerpt from Locust Point, which represents a departure from the traditional documentary form. Comprised of exquisitely composed reenactments over narrated journal entries and personal letters, the film portrays experiences of immigrants living in the Baltimore neighborhood during the early 1900s. Lastly Mann presented his most recent -- and what he suspects to be his last -- documentary, Running to Keep from Falling. As a reaction to the notion of the hyper real ever present in modern life, the film clearly delineates the trajectory Mann's directorial career has followed. Over static shots of descending elevators, ascending escalators, and passing trains, a series of automated phone messages and voicemail entries are assembled -among other things- as dialogue exchanges and statements addressed to the viewer. The content of these messages either clashes with or recontextualizes the associated image, and the coupling demands active spectatorship to arrive at meaning with respect to the whole. 

Filmmaker John Mann listens intently. (Photo courtesy of Hannah Spangler)

Writer/director and photographer Matthew Porterfield, who teaches screenwriting and film production, presented test footage of actors and location studies for his next film, slated to begin production this summer. Entitled, Metal Gods, Porterfield’s second feature is best described as, "exploitation meets the art house genre." Set in southeast Baltimore during the reign of metal music, the period piece explores a week in the lives of Sean and his older brother, Trevor, as they are forced to rectify a conflict disturbing their social sphere. The filmmaker has been casting since November of last year, and has thus far held over 400 open auditions. What has resulted from months of work is an eclectic cast of largely non-professional actors. While Porterfield normally skipped to the best segments of each audition screened, he insisted on playing one video all the way through. In it, an audition with a young non-professional prospect on his front porch is cut short by a phone call from the kid's mother. From behind the camera we hear Porterfield on a cellphone as he struggles to quell the concerns of a woman having an understandably hard time with a stranger videotaping her son. The accidental material makes the audition a short in and of itself. Afterward he screened test footage of a few location studies, including an abandoned paintball field and a pipeline on the side of the road that seemed to recede infinitely. Porterfield has managed to generate positive interest in Metal Gods well before its production.

Writer/director Matthew Porterfield.

Animator and videographer Karen Yasinsky teaches both animation and visual language courses at the university. Yasinsky first screened a stop motion animation short entitled, I Choose Darkness, which adapts its subject matter from Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar. Yasinsky combines fluid animation, emotive and expressive lighting design, and a rich and engaging soundtrack of carefully foleyed effects to both evoke and echo the sense of filmic realism characteristic of the Bresson feature. Yasinsky has also created a live action animation short that derives its subject from the opening of Jean Vigo's L'Atalante. While her works are often adapted from live active feature films, the filmmaker frequently takes the narrative in different directions, establishing similarities while subverting expectation for the astute viewer familiar with its source material. The adjustments and modifications always service the medium and acknowledge that the practice of adaptation has its own set of complexities. Since she prefers to steer clear of spoken word, gesticulation is a high priority. She noted that the subjects of her animations express themselves through different modes of rubbing, or physical interaction. Once accustomed to this unique gestural vocabulary the result is affective. Yasinsky humorously admits she finds comfort in the work she does and the discipline it entails because it aligns naturally with her tendency to stay indoors and willfully removed from social settings. She says the work ethic associated with both stop motion and line drawn animation conforms to her obsessive personality as well as her sensitivity to detail. Yasinsky's acclaimed shorts will also be featured at the upcoming Maryland film festival this year.

The most recent addition to the Hopkins Film program faculty is Douglas Sadler, who co-teaches narrative production, a course offered to both MICA and JHU students. Sadler presented three distinct works that mark a clear transformation in both aesthetic and thematic preoccupations. Demonstrating directorial range, Sadler began by presenting an excerpt from a student film depicting a charged dream-state experience. The second excerpt screened was from a Samuel Beckett teleplay of Ey, Joe?. Influenced by the Dogme95 movement, Sadler's next excerpt from a digital feature entitled, Riders, illustrated the extent to which a shoe-string budget, a small crew, limited technical means can deliver a gratifying cinematic experience. The fourth, a mainstream narrative feature film entitled, Swimmers, which garnered a number of festival awards during its run. The most mesmerizing of the set was the clip of Joe, in which the subject is depicted in one take listening to a voice addressing him off screen. The take is uninterrupted and eight minutes long. Abiding by the strict stage direction presented in the original script, the subject was not permitted to blink for the entirety of the take.

Animator Karen Yasinsky makes a gesture. (Photo courtesy of Hannah Spangler)

A wine and cheese reception provided the ideal setting for students and locals to exchange a few words with these active and award-winning contemporary filmmakers. We look forward to similar showcases in the future as faculty members continue to develop their bodies of work.

Liz's top 50 films

Broken Blossoms (Griffith) '19
The Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein) '25
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Dreyer) '28
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov) '29
M (Lang) '31
Grand Illusion (Renoir) '37
Now, Voyager (Rapper) '42
Double Indemnity (Wilder) '44
The Big Sleep (Hawks) '46
The Killers (Siodmak) '46
Out of the Past (Tourneur) '47
Germany Year 0 (Rossellini) '48
A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan) '51
On the Waterfront (Kazan) '54
12 Angry Men (Lumet) '57
Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick) 57
Touch of Evil (Welles) '58
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut) '60
Breathless (Godard) '60
La Dolce Vita (Fellini) '60
One-Eyed Jacks (Brando) '61
La Jetée (Marker) '62
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick) '64
Easy Rider (Hopper) '69
Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson) '70
Klute (Pakula) '71
Carnal Knowledge (Nichols) '71
Badlands (Malick) '73
The Conversation (Coppola) '74
Chinatown (Polanski) '74
The Passenger (Antonioni) '75
Nashville (Altman) '75
Grey Gardens (Maysles) '76
Annie Hall (Allen) '77
Apocalypse Now (Redux) (Coppola) '79
Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio) '82
The Breakfast Club (Hughes) '85
Empire of the Sun (Spielberg) '87
Moonstruck (Jewison) '87
Big (Marshall) '88
Short Cuts (Altman) '93
True Romance (Scott) '93
City of Lost Children (Caro) '95
Clueless (Heckerling) '95
Best in Show (Guest) '00
War Photographer (Frei) '01
The Deep End (McGehee/Siegel) '01
Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki) 03
The Door in the Floor (Williams) '04
The Last King of Scotland (Macdonald) '06

Coulais' Soundscape in Coraline (Shauna)

Why is it so difficult to remain attentive to sound while watching a film?  And why is it so rare that we fully appreciate and internalize a musical score?  In a culture that bombards us with visual emblems, cues and representations, image frequently subverts sound, particularly in retrospective analysis.  We subconsciously relegate the musical score to the background, assuming it is more of an embellishment than a fundamental structural component.  Yet, a soundtrack can elicit intense emotional responses and deserves independent analytic and artistic investigation. 

The mise-en-scene acquires a notably warmer pallet in the alternate universe; costumes, props and visible light sources furnish a deceptively enticing fantasy world. Coraline. Creative Commons.¹

The challenge of formulating a non-verbal audio accompaniment to a narrative cannot be overstated.  In constructing an audio landscape, directors risk imposing a generic emotional atmosphere.  Such moods are frequently sentimental or melodramatic.  Exploiting sound to elicit calculated audience responses is highly problematic: a musical score that reduces the climate to shallow, one-dimensional emotions undermines the audience.  Characters and environments tend to lose their originality under the oppressive weight of music that “tells” viewers how to feel.  In turn, audiences habituated to overt musical scores lose the ability to formulate original thoughts about characters, relationships and environments.  A score might inspire angst, pity, joy or elation, but one-to-one equivocations between musical styles and emotions are rarely interesting.  When music is manipulated to induce a calculated response, it fosters complacency among viewers and dulls their capacity to think critically about the music in relation to the mise-en-scene, framing and characters. 

Last weekend, I ventured into Muvico 24 to see Henry Selicks’s acclaimed stop-action film Coraline in 3D.  Until then, I never had a reason to visit Arundel Mills.  But after seeing the film in 2D at The Charles, a trek down to the Mills was my only option if I wanted to see Coraline in all its stereoscopic glory.  The first thing you notice as you enter Arundel Mills is the ridiculous scale of things.  The whole mall is divided into "neighborhoods," each complete with streets and massive cafes facing massive stores selling computers and televisions.  It’s like an airport, only exponentially larger.  During the trailers, the sound was overwhelming and obtrusive, functioning only to amplify the impact of mass destruction, mechanical failure or human brutality.  In a way, the trailers' sound quality and volume conformed to the grotesque scale of the theater and mall.  I consider this type of sound to be exploitative because it obstructs our sense of cinema's visual language and fails to illuminate subtle connections between sound and imagery.

A successful sound universe generally develops an environment's complexity, widening the number of possible associations and interpretations, rather than confining a scene to one monolithic mood (i.e. "melancholy" or "happiness").  Part of what makes Coraline such an intriguing piece of art is the musical score's capacity to evoke new sentiments with multiple viewings.  Instrumental details and subtle shifts in tonality, volume and timbre are integrated with a level of craftsmanship that merits the meticulous language of stop-action animation.  My emotional response is never identical or formulaic.  Rather, I experience conflicting senses of familiarity and refreshing newness each time I listen to the score.  Moreover, within the context of each investigation, it is possible to discern conflicting elements: desire and repulsion, harmony and discord.

It would be a disservice to the film to try to analyze the extensive array of technically brilliant elements, including the interiors and landscapes, the characters' physical forms and movements (angular or wobbly, and often "twitchy," according to Selicks) and the lighting (cool/diffused versus warm/hard).  Instead, I hope to analyze three realms – Coraline's ordinary home, the art deco theater, Bobinsky's circus tent and the other-worldly garden – to investigate how the musical score and mise-en-scene interact to reveal parallels between characters and their micro-environments.  

Bruno Coulais is the film's French composer.  He is also well-known in the U.S. for his compositions in Les Choristes, a film that ardently asserts the power of music to counter repressive regimes.  The presence of youthful singers from Nice in Coraline identifies the musical score as Coulais'.  His work is original and inventive, oscillating between contemplation and agitation.  Perhaps the most challenging aspect of writing a film score is to ensure it is unified without being redundant.  Coulais achieves such a sense of unity by relying on a core group of instruments: horns and oboes, harps, vocals, piano and percussion instruments, along with synthesizers and bells.  He avoids the typical musical motif, instead opting to use certain melodies, rhythms and tones to color specific characters.  Thus, individuals and their environments acquire musical personalities that complement their visual impact. 

Neutral tones, cool accents and diffused lighting predominate Coraline's ordinary domestic existence. A raked stage intensifies the sense of confinement in the drab interior. Coraline. Creative Commons.²

In Coraline's home, a neutral dinginess pervades the dining room.  The accumulation of cool neutral elements - tiles, chipped cabinetry, fogged windows, metallic chairs, kettles and cutlery - cement the sense of ordinary.  Her parents are so embedded in the minutia of domesticity that they seem to become human appendages of the monotonous environment.  In the office, her father's gaunt, hunched body is echoed by precariously piled boxes and canted camera angles.  Coraline's restless form reflected in his computer poignantly encapsulates the gap between her boredom and his frustrations over work.  When he sends her on a mission to list the doors, windows and "everything that's blue," Coraline conveys curiosity, insight, independence and slight brooding.  Her quest is accompanied by Coulais' "Exploration," a light ballad performed with the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra.  A single angelic voice and accompanying harps and piano endow Coraline's childhood with a balance of beautiful innocence and potential darkness.  Using the synthesizer, Coulais compiles harmonies (from the solo vocalist) to create an illusion of multiple intertwined voices.  The result is a sound metaphor for the paradigm of the only child, who relies on her imagination for companionship. 

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, retired British theater performers. Coraline. Creative Commons.³

Within the universe constructed by the "other mother," one of three luxuries used to entice Coraline is an elaborate art deco theater.  There, imitations of Coraline's two elderly neighbors, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, perform an opera complete with intricate costumes, two-dimensional sets and an elaborate pulley system for hoisting figures.  It is a testament to the convincing characterization and deft manipulation of the puppets that we perceive the scenario to be authentic.  Suspended in the world of Coulais' musical composition and Selicks' animation, we embrace the notion of sculpted characters consciously performing against their own two-dimensional mise-en-scene!  Spink's fleshy body is firmly encased in a fish tail and Forcible's voluptuous form is scantily clad in sequins. Rarely in popular cinema is the elderly female body so brazenly displayed, and in this sense, Selicks departs from conventional Western constructs of feminine beauty.  However, Coulais' musical score grounds the scenario in a performance culture, where such absurdity seems natural. The music is highly dramatized and full of affectations.  And perhaps because the sequence is so flamboyant and unexpected, the lyrics assume a greater weight, even a sense of urgency.  It is difficult to ascribe a particular meaning to the opera's narrative, yet the warnings to sailors hint at an ominous future.

Music plays an equally critical role in the faux Bobinsky's circus tent.  It lends a sense of magical-realism through vaguely Eastern European melodies and frantic orchestral maneuvers.  There is a childish quality to the music, which seems to oscillate and glimmer alongside the synchronized mice.  Small bells, cymbals, percussion and fluttering high-pitched brass instruments give the sequence a ephemeral, dreamy aura.  But the music also echoes the eerie oboes, horns and chimes earlier associated with the authentic Bobinsky, blurring the threshold between the two parallel worlds.

The final other-worldly wonder is the Fantastic Garden, endowed with luminescent crocuses, tickling ivy and swarms of hummingbirds.  The garden brims with color, warmth and movement - pulsing with the vitality of an intricate ecosystem.  The visual elements are built up gradually, each striking component giving way to another, until the entire garden is viewed from above to reveal a fauna mosaic Coraline head.  The music develops in parallel fashion: what starts as a few lone violins culminates in a jazzy conglomeration of percussion, cymbals, bells, horns and strings.

After viewing the film in 2D and 3D, I have to say that the 3D format undermines the potent textural impact of Bruno Coulais' musical score.  Although it certainly adds a technically impressive element to the opening sequence, in which needle-thin metallic fingers deconstruct the fibers, fillings and hair of a doll, it deprives the movie of its cinematic essence, giving it the feel of a video game.  Coulais' music, influenced by the French pianist Eric Satie, renders the animation deeply emotional, at once delightful and disconcerting.  Coulais' sound scheme renders Selick's work more vivid, immediate and lasting.  His impact far exceeds anything stereoscopic effects can achieve.

In an interview regarding the film's fastidious attention to detail and craft, Henry Selicks asserted that his main job was "to keep the beauty under control...to knock down the beauty."  Excess beauty is a very real risk when a project involves so many talented people, each engaged in one small component of the whole.  But Selicks, through figure twitches and grit, successfully combats perfection.  He relies on visual language to convey characters' behaviors and mannerisms, and trusts Coulais' music to inform their deeper emotional complexities.  For this he should be commended. 

 

Image Credits:

1. "Pic by Focus Features." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

2. "Coraline's Normal Life." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

3. "Miss Forcible and Spink." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

 

 

Movie Atmosphere (Cameron)

I have now seen three Korean movies on the big screen with no English subtitles and little help with translation from my Korean friends (unless there was something REALLY bugging me about the plot that I had to ask about). I really want to keep this experience free of any language cheating. I’ll write about that later, but first, let me tell you a little bit about the actual experience of going to a Korean movie theater.

To be honest, my first cinema experience in Korea (they call the theaters “cinemas” and since Americans do that too sometimes, I might as well) was to see Get Smart with my American friend who looks like he could play the lead in a film about Norsemen. I was surprised to find how easy it was get tickets in English even though at first I got confused stares from the ticketing boy behind the counter since I definitely look the part of a real Korean-speaking Korean. But after some gesturing and slow speaking, we got two tickets for around 7,000 won or roughly $6 (reminds when tickets were that price a few years ago in the States). In Korea, you can choose where you want to sit in the theater, which is very convenient if you are just a pair of movie-goers but I suspect not so convenient if you are part of a large group. Anyways, since I prefer to sit towards the back and smack in the middle of the row, I rather like reserving my seats in advance. I think they do that in Australia, too. Or was that London…anyways back to Korea.

You can choose the regular salty kind of popcorn at the snack stand or you can choose a “sweet” option with caramel corn-type flavoring. I think I prefer the good ol’ salty kind, though. They usually don’t have candy, but they often offer things like hot dogs, nachos, and pretzels. Koreans really love ojinga, or dried squid, so they have that available in most places, too. Of course, each cinema has its own offerings in terms of snacks, but if you want anything American-esque I recommend getting it from the convenience store around the corner since the stewards don’t seem to mind if you bring in your own treats (although I wouldn’t flaunt that you have them in your possession either). While I haven’t tried the ojinga from the snack stand, I have had it from the grocery store and it is rather good, if a little chewy. Kind of like a milder, saltier, softer form of beef jerky without the rawhide appearance.

Anyways, there are three main cinemas in Gumi. Lotte Cinema, which has two locations in Gumi, is kind of like the local AMC theaters and CGV is has more international offerings (I have seen Under the Same Moon and am looking forward to the Korean release of Let the Right One In from Sweden). Both theaters show international releases from Hollywood, albeit a few months late sometimes. They are all in high rise buildings as everything in Korea is built upwards instead of outwards because of the lack of space. Movie-goers can either take the elevator or the escalator to get to the appropriate floor. The elevators in the downtown Lotte Cinema have stewards that check your tickets and direct you to the right floor, but I prefer the escalator ride in the CGV building because you can look outside the large paneled glass windows to view downtown on the way up and it’s particularly pretty at night. I also love seeing the larger-life movie posters they have posted on each level – they are much bigger than the ones in the States which also makes them better in my opinion.

I have never seen such professional movie ushers outside of the ones you see in old movies. The ushers at Lotte Cinema and CGV have quite meticulous uniforms (usually dark pants or skirts and matching vests with ties or some sort of fancy closure at the neck). There is also a lot of bowing and “oso-o-shib-shi-o” (welcome) and I kind of feel like a celebrity when an usher is particularly polite. In this case, I prefer the ushers at CGV because there are more of them and they stand outside the theater entrances as opposed to the downtown Lotte Cinema where they are just at the elevators on the first floor (in fact, after I leave the elevator and step into the dimly-lit lobby on the higher floors I always feel like I’m lost). Because of the seating arrangements and perhaps the ûber-efficient Korean timing between shows, it’s almost impossible to enter the theater if you get there more than ten minutes early. Usually I’m sitting with my friend outside twiddling my thumbs and staring blankly at the ads for upcoming films. In these cases I hate small talk because I have to talk for hours every day with my classes so I don’t like talking when I don’t have to these days (some people may be relieved to hear that).

Whenever I enter the movie theater in Gumi, I am always surprised that no matter how recent the film is, there are never that many people in the theater. Even when I went to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day in Seoul (Korea’s answer to NYC), it wasn’t particularly full (more thoughts on this later). So when I went to see Get Smart I was surprised to find that my friend and I were two of maybe eight people there. This made it blatantly obvious that most of the American humor in the film went unregistered by the Korean audiences as we Americans were the only ones laughing hysterically for 90% of the time. The slapstick humor was the most translatable.

When you sit down in a Korean theater, the lights are dim, sometimes they are playing some K-pop music, but most of the time it’s just silent. Then they play commercials that you could find on TV or advertisements for local businesses. After that, you might get to see one or two previews for some upcoming films. I have always been a big fan of previews and love it when I forget what movie I actually came to see. I guess this is because my imagination fills in the rest of the storyline from the teasers. So it’s kind of disappointing when I only get to see one or two, and even more so when the teaser is in Korean and I have no idea if what I just saw is really what I think or did I misinterpret? Anyways, I’m always surprised how quickly the feature film starts and even after having gone to the cinema multiple times I am still confused at first if what I’m watching is another preview or really the start of the film. That’s American brain-washing for you. Or conditioning. Whatever. It’s confusing.

After Get Smart was over I was content to sit there and watch the credits (I love to do this if only to wait until the very end to see if the director has put in some sort of special treat for people like me who sit and watch until the very end). However, in Korean culture this is a very rare and slightly strange habit and so I always feel pressured to leave right away after the credits roll even if I want to see the cast list (I guess there’s always IMDB...). So I started to leave the same way I came in but was surprised (yet again) to find that you use the emergency (or so I thought) exit instead and find yourself in an entirely different and disorienting part of the cinema. And always, since Koreans sort their trash into recyclables, liquid waste and compost, I never know which trash can (they call them rubbish bins, after the Brits) to use and have to peer into them every time even though they are labeled in Korean and I could just memorize which ones are which.

But that’s ok with me, since I always have other things on my mind, like how I always forget that I’m in Korea whenever I go see an American (or English-speaking) movie despite the Korean subtitles at the bottom. And then, when the credits roll and I get out of my seat and see all of the Koreans around me "pop" I’m back in the reality of being far away from friends, family, pizza-by-the slice, cheap booze and cable TV.

See you again soon!