The Year of Impossible Marketing

This year has been pretty astounding for animated children’s films. Up and Ponyo will appear on many a top ten list, and even Coraline and 9 were visually interesting. And so far the adult films of the year haven’t been so bad, either. Movies like The Hurt Locker and Precious are compelling examples. But then there are the somewhere-in-between films. And these are the movies that have most impressed me in 2009. Where the Wild Things Are, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Mary and Max must give marketers the biggest headaches. All three look like children’s films, two are based on children’s source material, and all three have dark, adult themes and humor that would not only be over a kid’s head, but entirely inappropriate.

Where the Wild Things Are

This is the film that seems to have been most misinterpreted. I’ve heard many stories about people who took their kids to go see this, and then had to leave half way through when their kids were bored/crying. Where the Wild Things Are is not meant for children. And that confused the majority of the movie-going public. In a market where the merit of an adaptation is based on how well it represents the book, this one has a tendency to disappoint. Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze take the story places Sendak never meant for it to go, but in my book, that’s never a bad thing.

I was just impressed. The voice acting was affecting (Gandolfini should be nominated for an Oscar, honestly), the costumes were a wonderful throwback, and the cinematography is both bleak and beautiful. A movie meant for adults that remember how hard it is to be a kid, Where the Wild Things Are doesn’t have as much of a built in audience as studios may have originally expected.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

In this film Wes Anderson gives us a bizarre mix of slapstick childlike humor and dry, typical Anderson one-liners. Lines like “I love you, but I never should have married you,” might not quite work when the next scene consists of animated rodents dodging bullets. But the mixture is, at least, interesting. Especially when we’ve been seeing a lot of the same stuff from this director (stuff I love, by the way, but the motifs are starting to look a little too familiar from film to film). The adult jokes tend to hit their mark while the Roald Dahl inspired plot is pretty delightful.

Again, Mr. Fox is a throwback to old animation styles. Mouse and the Motorcycle style puppetry mixes claymation with other stop motion. Even when the plot might get boring to an adult audience, the animation is always fascinating to watch. Adult themes like the suppression of creativity in a domestic environment will definitely go over a child’s head completely, and the goofy plot isn’t enough to sustain the film. Luckily for Anderson (and studios), he has enough of a reputation to avoid the marketing nightmare that the next film would come up against.

Mary and Max

So far, this is my favorite film of the year. It opened at Sundance to very pumped crowds, but has yet to get a U.S. release date. Which is sad, but makes perfect sense. This is a film that looks like a children’s movie. It looks as silly as Wallace and Gromit, for example, but contains much more adult themes. Suicide, death, depression, alcoholism, and obesity haunt the movie. But they also make poop jokes. Like the other two in-betweeny films, Mary and Max is not an “adult film.” There is no swearing, nudity, violence, etc., and all three films are rather heartwarming (especially this one). The themes have everything to do with childhood, but less to do with a child audience.

I think what I like most about all three of these movies is their awkwardness. Since they don’t quite fit into an age group they bounce all over the place. They don’t seem to care about pleasing a certain group definitively. So when it comes to awards, numbers, and even release dates, they struggle. Childhood is messy. Sometimes we’re forced into adult situations too early, sometimes we hang onto our youth too hard. All three of these films successfully, I think, explore this.

 

Ok...maybe there's a little nudity...

 

Unrelated Ranting

I want to use this blog about movies to rant a little bit about things that are kind of unrelated to movies, but kind of totally related because movies, if you think about it, are related to everything. So lets get this shit underway:

Lately I’ve been really disappointed by my tendency towards self-censorship. I’m sitting here eating canned beets, writing a semi-crazy  anti-Mormon rant when I say to myself “this is the internet. People will read this,” and delete the whole thing. Sure, it was pretty offensive and I don’t want to make my dad cry, but it was also pretty funny and totally relevant. Because who cares that I’m eating beets? Aren’t you more interested in what I have to say about the ERA? I am!

Maybe self-censoring isn’t the problem. Maybe what you don’t say is far more interesting than what you can say, and maybe hurting peoples’ feelings just isn’t all that great. Maybe the problem is that I do it badly. Because Whitman self-censored all the time, but he still got to talk about blow jobs all he wanted (they were just hidden blow jobs!). But without all the potential literal imagery and swears, Whitman isn’t very funny.

I don’t expect Dear Jesus’s readers to be the biggest Kevin Smith fans, but you have to hand it to someone that can be so candid. Not only with his fans in Q&As and SmodCast, but in the films he’s willing to make. Can you imagine taking your mom to go see Dogma? It’s only a million times worse when you made the thing, I’m sure. There are cruder movies out there, but Smith’s films don’t pretend to be anything they aren’t. Sure, Chasing Amy’s on Criterion, but it wasn’t made with the intention of ever getting to that level of critical appeal. These movies are comedies, with poop jokes, and Smith is as honestly crude as he feels like being. I think that openness of purpose is nice. Maybe I could make something that looked as good as Clerks, but I could never be that open with it, and I respect the View Askew people for that attitude.

Marrying someone that recently left the Mormon church puts me in an interesting position. On the one hand, I have to be the mediator that calms him down when he’s screaming “burn the temple!!!” on Main Street. On the other hand, he gets me thinking about all this stuff again and it makes me angrier and angrier. And all I want to do is be candid about it with people that matter to me. Never going to happen. Not even on a blog that I’m pretty sure is safe territory as far as my immediate family is concerned. And that makes me sad…or angrier. I don’t know.

katherine hepburn is my favorite author

i mean, after mary shelley

said in disgust: we’re not pioneering, we’re repairing!

then: hey, are you the fella that fired a couple of shots at billy the kid?

our government is nothing but a ganster’s joke.  the petrified forest reminds me of now.  super-exploitation of labo(u)r and, thanks to the pony express and the telegraph and cars and computers and shit, more and more redundant and/or superfluous labo(u)r which leads to massive redistribution of wealth upwards and consolidation of power.

the black mesa; that’s where we’re all headed.  so we better keep our senses of humor (and our guns).  just like bogey.

fate is in the eyes/hands of the beholder

speaking of bogart, the end of african queen gets pretty absurd.  but i’m not talking about surviving the rapids, bogey and hep falling in love, the chimp-acting, the mosquito attack, making improvised explosive devices to suicide ram a large(r) german ship or all the hippopotamuses.  the most absurd part is when rosie (katherine hepburn) makes an english (united kingdom?) flag for the african queen.  so you have this ex-pat sailor and a missionary representing the english navy (i guess) somewhere in the middle of africa fighting the germans.  so i guess this is what i meant at the beginning of the paragraph:  ww1 was absurd.

later on, charlie (bogey) has been captured by the germans and sentenced to death by hanging.  then the rosie shows up.  “rosie! rosie!” charlie yells.  the germans: you know that women?  charlie: no.  germans: but you just said her name.  charlie: i thought she was someone else.

for more information, read katherine hepburn’s the making of the african queen.  it’s fantastic.  i found it at this small used book store around the corner.  then, i found it again at the library of the rest-home my grandma is staying at.

Caesar Done Right

Once I saw this production of Julius Caesar starring Ralph Fiennes. Despite my deep hatred for Fiennes’ face, I thought the production was pretty cool. I had never seen Shakespeare done so big live. It was put on in a giant theatre in London called the Barbican that held over 100 cast members on stage at once. I mean look at this:

They basically staged a political campaign/riot complete with security guards and press. It was kind of amazing. At the end of the play they staged a battle that was very Desert Storm that took place in the background of Brutus’ confrontation with Caesar’s ghost.

My point is that I think Julius Caesar was meant to be big. Huge. But writing for the Globe Theatre, it was obviously limited.

 

Globe Theatre, also in London.

I think, had Shakespeare lived a few hundred years later he might have written Julius Caesar for film. Unfortunately, theatre is a dying art – even in the 50s – and Shakespeare, we’ve been told, wrote for the masses. He’s so crude and funny, it seems logical he would be more of the Ruth Gordon type than the Harold Pinter type.

So I think Shakespeare would have been pretty happy with Mankiewicz’s version of Caesar. It is big big BIG. There is even an actual battle scene with hundreds of extras. When Mark Antony (Brando) delivers his masterful display of rhetorical trickery, it is to a giant, raging crowd. In a story about war heroes, attempting to do heroic things, this form of narrative just seems to make sense.

I love how action-packed this version of the play is because rather than absorb all of our attention into the bloody, action sequences, we’re actually less distracted for the character building scenes. When I’ve seen Caesar done in more intimate settings, my imagination starts to wander. I want to know what these battles between Brutus and Antony might have looked like, and the play doesn’t give me the time to think about that without missing most of the important monologues. It’s nice that the film is a good half hour longer than a straightforward production of the play would be. It gives me a chance to actually figure out how complex these characters really are.

 

Month of Terror: Zombie

Today I watched a zombie fight a shark…and now I know that there is nothing cooler than a zombie fighting a shark.

The movie, Zombie (aka: Zombie 2), stars Mia Farrow’s (identical?) sister Tisa. It has PLENTY of boobies, a jagged sharp BOARD to the EYE, hundreds of head wounds, and A SHARK V. ZOMBIE SMACKDOWN!!!

I’m sorry. There is nothing intelligent to say in a situation like this.

If only it would have been a fight with this fucker right here:

God's abortion.

all the guys think you’re really spaced

you know this is frog week

so invaders from mars (1986) is a remake of invaders from mars (1953) but there’s this great et (1982) scene early in the movie.  david goes to school to slice up frogs but ends up getting sliced himself.  “i hope you need a tetanus shot,” is his teachers reply.  like the basic theme of et: never trust adults (maybe authority figures is a better word choice (to lessen/heighten slippage)).

the beginning: david wakes up one night to see a giant spaceship landing just beyond his house.  no one believes him.  his dad goes out to check out the site, finds nothing, but returns strange.  funny, maybe.  with a scar on the back of his neck.

you gotta be shittin me about that spaceship

the tv shows in the movie are great.  people on fire.  then the cops show up.  they dont believe the stories of ufos, but they’ll have a look around.  “i haven’t been up here since i was a kid.”  (turns out the cop in the remake actually played david, the kid, in the original.  not only that, the remake literally remade the set of the fenced pathway leading to where the spaceship landed from the original.  this means, of course, that the cop is telling a kind of truth that’s only true outside of the movie itself.)  the cops come back with that same glossed-look over look and neck scars david’s parents have.  so obviously all these authority figures have been taken over by martians.  the big problem for the martian-possessed humans is acting human (which may be a problem for normal humans if subjectivity is a performative act); things like who does the dishes, where you’re supposed to go to work and whether or not to cook meat (the martians usually opt for not cooking which gives them away every time).

david convinces the nurse that his parents and teachers are aliens.  now she’s hiding them from everyone.  the parents come to confront her in this great scene where the parents backs are to the camera with the nurse explaining that the kid need psychological help in a continuous jaws-shot (or vertigo-shot, if you prefer).

they can move tunnels!

bud cort is a seti scientist so excited to finally see extra-terrestrial intelligent life.  he thinks that if we just talk with the aliens, we can work out all our differences.  he approaches to martins asking something like “how are you boys doing?”   “how does he know they’re boys?” one of the marines asks.  that’s a fantastic question.   i mean, who’s to say how martian reproduction works?  maybe they only have on sex; maybe 100.  unfortunately, before bud cort can answer that question, he’s disintegrated by the martians zap-gun.

it turns out, just like the wizard of oz, that the whole thing was just a dream.  david wakes up and his parents aren’t controlled by martians.  they’re controlled, like all of us, by money (capital).

or was it just a dream?  a question mark ending.

12 Hours of Horror

This started off as an idea to do 24 hours of hour. Yes, you’re right, that would have been badass, but Scott and I both realized that with my fascination with the genre and these past two Octobers of 31 Days of Horror, we’re quickly running out of decent movies to watch. That’s not to say that we don’t have a million non-decent movies to watch, or a million re-watches, but 24 hours worth of movies is not something you want to fuck around with. Aaron and I could barely do 24 hours of 24, which – as we all know – is jam-packed with awesome Jack Bauer action. Try watching the first disco-packed hour of Prom Night at the end of a straight day of movies. Not going to happen.

At any rate. What I’m getting at is that we’ve decided to do 12 hours worth. I don’t know what Scott’s planning, but here are my three picks:

1. Ju-on – I’m not a huge supporter of Japanese Horror lately, but this is, supposedly, one of the scarier examples. Obviously I’m going to want to stay away from the Sarah Michelle Gellar version. And maybe I’m wrong, but wasn’t this one of the first wet-haired-Asian-kids movies? I’m kind of excited to finally see it.

2. I Bury the Living – I’m so stoked to see this. A 1958 movie starring Richard Boone in a cemetery? Sign me up.

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 – This one’s supposed to be just chalk full of phallic imagery. And we all know how much I like yapping it up about phallic imagery. I’ve read so much about this and avoided it because of Dennis Hopper (that neo-nazi scares me), but now seems like the perfect time, surrounded by friends and family, to brave the horror.

So mostly this post is serving as an invitation to Brian, and whoever else might read this, to join us sometime on Halloween and watch movies with us. We’re going to need the company.

Month of Terror Update

This has been my favorite month. Probably of all time. The weather is nice, the leaves are changing, haunted houses are beckoning, my costume is almost ready (the bees that killed Thomas J.), and – most importantly of all – the movies have been totally fucking awesome. You can check out Scott’s blog for more detailed (and hilarious) reviews, but here are the highlights:

1. Ravenous – a movie about cannibalism in Mexican-American War times. What more could you want? Did you know that if you eat humans, you get a little more powerful with every bite? Unfortunately, you also develop an insatiable hunger that can never be stifled by anything but more human flesh. Guy Pierce, that one Scottish guy, and that one child pornographer star in this movie that should have had more Jeremy Davies.

2. The Changeling – What a freaky film this is. The Changeling was one adults told me was okay to watch when I was a kid since it was a PG rated horror film. Those adults are so fucked up! If I had watched this when I was a kid I would have had nightmares for years. Just more proof that the rating system does not determine age-appropriateness. The slightest movements in this movie provoke terror. A piano key sounds on its own and I pee my pants. Let’s not even talk about when the wheelchair moves. Let’s just say it was time for a shower. (poo!)

3. Bride of Frankenstein – So many more iconic images come from this sequel than the original Frankenstein. While I don’t think it’s the “better” film, like I’ve heard it said, I do think this is the funnier/funner film. “They warned me to beware my wedding night!”

4. Paranormal Activity – Maybe this one deserves its own post since it’s so controversial lately. People either love it or absolutely hate it and have devoted their lives to taking it down. I was on the love it side. I know I’m pretty easy on newer horror films, but if you take a look back over the last few years, the genre really has pretty much sucked. Take A Haunting in Connecticut, for example, a haunted house story that’s pretty typical: constant blood spatters from unknown sources, very ultra-visible ghosts, and lots of loud noises – including soundtracks. Paranormal Activity avoids the stereotypes and scared me so much. So when people say they don’t like it, I just figure they don’t really like goofy horror movies, and also they’re idiots.

5. Carnival of Souls – Considering that this movie was filmed at the infinitely creepy Saltair just outside of Salt Lake City, it really took me an unreasonable amount of time to watch it. I’ve even owned it for years and years but just never got around to it. Too bad, because I could have spent those years knowing how great Utah horror film can be. Released in 1962, this one has just the right amount of Mormon jokes and a sincerely frightening cast of ghouls. Not to be confused with the 1998 West Craven Presents Carnival of Souls, which is – of course – about a raping clown.

6. Dracula v. Nosferatu – Todd Browning’s Dracula is a joke – in a good and bad way. On the one hand, it’s not really what the guy who made Freaks wanted from his serious horror movie (poor drunk). It comes across as more than campy as Bela Legosi stares at the camera with his Evil Eyes for probably a straight 45 minutes. But that’s ok, because if you’re looking for the best, scariest vampire movie you can find, it’s not too far away. About three years earlier. Nosferatu is the superior movie in every way: acting, lighting, plot, and rats.

So that kind of covers it. We’ve been watching a lot of good ones, but some of them have been repeats for me (Eraserhead, Re-animator, Misery, Hellraiser, Candyman, Evil Dead II, etc).

song + video

if you love high sierra, or if you dont, or if you’ve never seen it, check out this promo video made by my friend gael summers-gavin:

high sierra

(you have to scroll down a bit to get to the video.)

custom made for freshness tm (trademark or trade-mark)

a new geometry

last friday, i attended a lecture by the guy who stole the moon rocks from nasa and tried to sell them on the black market.  during his five-plus years in prison, he invented a new theoretical frame-work for understanding both space and the space between space using an eleven dimensional reference points.

this is what i remember:

so these scientists fed the equations for the four forces (gravitational, electro-magnetic, strong and weak nuclear) into a SUPERCOMPUTER asking for a symmetrical equation (unified theory) and the SUPERCOMPUTER was like “i cannot answer this question given the parameters”.  so the scientists changed the parameters—they made the number of dimensions a variable.  years later, the SUPERCOMPUTER came back with a symmetrical answer.  it was a billion-trillion plus characters long and contained eleven dimensions.  to check the answer, the scientists asked some other SUPERCOMPUTERs.  they said the first SUPERCOMPUTER was right.

in earth v(s) the flying-saucer(s), the aliens send a message:

PEOPLE OF EARTH, ATTENTION; PEOPLE OF EARTH, ATTENTION
THIS MESSAGE IS COMING FROM SPACE, THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY; THIS MESSAGE IS COMING FROM SPACE, THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY
LOOK TO YOUR SUN FOR A SIGN; LOOK TO YOUR SUN FOR A SIGN

the sign is maybe a massive solar-flare.  eight days of catastrophe follow—earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes.  all electronic communication fails.  then the aliens attack.

it’s too nice of day for it to happen today

the military found that the aliens wore a synthetic, protective outer-layer complete with a heightened sense perception and an automatic translator.  they, the military, interpreted this as a sign of weakness (something like, if these aliens need additions to their biological (god-given?) bodies to wage war, we humans don’t need to worry), then went back to building a sonic weapon capable of knocking those flying-saucers out of orbit.

many civilians died that day, some even smashed by the crumbling washington monument.  after the sonic gun finally crashed five of their flying-saucers, the aliens (apparently) retreated.

palm beach vacation!

a SUPERCOMPUTER learns to write (in cursive)

did i mention that the aliens came correct with an automatic translator built into their cyborg-suits?  when military-scientists got a hold of the suits, they tried reverse engineering the translation process by reading every word from the (english) dictionary into the suit and recording the alien-equivalent responses.  now they (or maybe i should say we, since this film is likely only shown to earthlings, even though, like bladerunner, i identified more with the non-humans in the film) have an alien word for every english word in the dictionary (which means, since it’s like 1956 or something,  slang word equivalents were not included; however, this doesn’t mean the aliens can’t understand slang).  the obvious problem with this solution (past the more obvious problem that even word-for-word translations of different human languages are terrible at conveying the actual meaning of sentences) is it presupposes that alien language is structurally related to human language.

but, whatever.

the military then intercepts (and records) an inter-alien message.  the audio recording is then fed into a(n analog) SUPERCOMPUTER (whose real life name is GE DIFFERENTIAL ANALYZER) which then relays the message in english–not in a type-written message, but in cursive using a mechanical arm and a no. 2 pencil.

punchline

in both incidents, when facing a crisis (whether facing extinction from an invasive species or searching for the origins of the universe), we turn to computers for our answer.  too bad they only answer in code.