It's true enough that the independent film as we know it owes much of the recognition it receives today to the Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, and the studio they founded, Miramax, but this is far from the only studio that has produced some truly quality independent movies in the last fifteen years or so.
My personal favorite purveyor of indie films happens to be Fox Searchlight Pictures. Sure, like many fans aggrieved by his decisions with respect to Marvel Comics movies I may think Tom Rothman is the devil's spawn, but Fox Searchlight is a different animal from 20th Century Fox and they've come up with some really memorable films. For those unfamiliar with their films, it will be my pleasure to list my favorites:
The Full Monty (1997) is, as far as I know, the film that put the then-fledgling indie film distributor on the map. Directed by Peter Cattaneo and written by Simon Beaufoy, the film tells the (apparently true) story of several blue collar workers in England who, upon being retrenched, decide upon a rather unorthodox way of making money for their families, i.e. by doing a male striptease act a la Chippendales. It's British humor at its very finest, and even the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences was captivated; the film received four Academy Award nominations including nods for Best Picture and Best Director.
Waking Ned Devine (1999) set in a tiny Irish village, is another absolute gem of a film about a man who dies of a heart attack upon learning that he has won the lottery, and, more imporantly about the village's collective effort to cover up his death so that they can collect the prize and split it amongst themselves. I think I may have burst blood vessels laughing at how funny that movie was.
Sideways (2004) is set on the other side of the pond for a change; specifically, California, where depressed middle-school teacher Miles (a wonderful Paul Giamatti) accompanies his friend, over-the-hill actor Jack (the hilariously authentic Thomas Haden Church) on one last weekend of fun in California wine country before Jack gets married to his longtime girlfriend. The film alternates between haunting poignancy and laugh-out-loud hilarity, and was my favorite release of 2004, even over the acclaimed blockbuster Spider-Man 2. It also got multiple Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, and it ended up taking home the golden statuette for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) a film about a children's beauty pageant, which has her entire family composed of her self-help guru dad (Greg Kinnear), exasperated-to-have-invested-all-her-money mom (Toni Colette), emo/ultra-quiet/aspiring pilot half-brother (Paul Dano), her insane, profane, drug-addict grandfather (Alan Arkin), and her suicidal gay college professor uncle (Steve Carell) make a cross country trip in a beat-up Volkswagen bus that turns out to be a character unto itself as the movie unfolds. Like Sideways, it's a movie about a road trip, and what a road trip it turns out to be! I loved this film and apparently the MPAAS did too; it won two Oscars, one for Best Original Screenplay and the other for Alan Arkin's supporting role as the foul-mouthed granddad.
Juno (2007) is a movie about a smart (and smart-mouthed) teenage girl (Ellen Page) who gets pregnant by her best friend (Michael Cera) puts her baby, unborn for most of the movie, up for adoption. The couple that responds to her ad, a pair of yuupies played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner seems to be the perfect couple and therefore the perfect parents but like the saying goes, looks can be deceiving. Again, Fox Searchlight flirted with Oscar as the film garnered nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actress for Page's spunky teen, and Original Screenplay. Writer Diablo Cody took home the award for her bitingly original script.
If I seem unduly preoccupied with the attention the films released by Fox Searchlight have been getting from the MPAAS it's because I am truly and deeply glad that on February 22, 2009 at the Kodak Theater, one of their releases, the extremely popular Slumdog Millionaire, finally took home the top prize for the studio, besting offerings from Paramount, Focus Films (Universal Pictures' independent arm), Universal itself, and Oscar veterans the Weinstein brothers courtesy of their new studio, Weinstein Films. It was also the film through which Monty screenwriter Beaufoy managed to snag a long-overdue Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
What I like about Fox Searchlight movies is that while they show a broad spectrum of human experience with dark or heavy films like Boys Don't Cry or Kinsey also having come from their stable, most of their truly outstanding movies, and the ones that garner the most recognition, are all life-affirming, lighthearted affairs that, even if they don't necessarily have storybook happy endings, are nonetheless very positive in their overall outlook. I hear that Slumdog continues this trend and am quite excited to see it, apart from the fact that it has won an award for the studio which it has deserved for a long, long time.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Why Comic Book Makers Should Stop Pandering to Hollywood
These days, thanks to films like The Dark Knight, the first couple of Spider-Man films and Iron Man, comic books are seen as entirely legitimate source material for motion pictures. This is good in that comic books seem to finally be coming out of the ghetto to which they've been confined for the longest time, but bad in that now, a lot of comic book storylines feel extremely self-conscious, as if their writers were making pitches for Hollywood screenplays. Worse still, a lot of writers working on comics these days are screenwriters or TV writers, and their work is of mixed quality; while I loved the work of J. Michael Straczynski, for example, I can't say the same for that of Jeph Loeb. Quite frankly the problem with comics these days is that a lot of them feel like wannabe movies.
And this is a terrible thing. Comics are comics and movies are movies, and both are distinct art forms, each with its own peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, and each with characteristics unique to its own form that the other cannot and should not aspire to mimic.
There are so many things about comics that simply have not been translated to movies: Spider-Man has forgotten the ability to wisecrack. V (in V for Vendetta) suddenly became an agent of democracy rather than anarchy. Superman has not faced any of his cosmos-shattering adversaries like Darkseid or Braniac and has had to content himself with flying really fast and lifting really heavy objects. The Hulk, well, for two movies running now, the Hulk has not quite felt real. This may not speak very well of the movies that adapted them, but it speaks well of the source material in that there remain certain intangibles which they have over their adaptations; there remains reason for viewers to say "I liked the comic better" the same way Lord of the Rings purists will always say "I liked the book better."
Bill Watterson, creator of the now defunct Calvin and Hobbes, hit the nail on the head when he refused to allow his creation to be adapted as a cartoon. Basically, even though he had a deep respect for the art of animation, he had a problem with voice actors giving life to Calvin. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine Watterson feeling that no six or seven-year-old boy could properly deliver Calvin's ridiculously precocious dialogue properly, or that some middle-aged woman (e.g. The Simpsons' Nancy Cartwright) would always be just that: a middle-aged woman and not a child. Thanks to this little bit of artistic integrity on Watterson's part, the strip is now immortalized in its current form and Calvin will never be reduced to the identity of his voice actor or Korean animation studio, which is more than I can say for Spider-man, who is indelibly linked to Tobey Maguire by millions of people who've never picked up a comic book.
Lest I be misconstrued, I'd like to clarify that I'm not against adapting comic books at all; I love many of the comic book adaptations that have come out over the years, with the first two Spider-Man film and last year's Iron Man being my favorites with my (personal) runnerup honors going, in no particular order, to the Bryan Singer X-Men films, the Hellboy films, Guillermo Del Toro's lone Blade film, Blade II, and the Christopher Nolan Batman films.
My point is that the attempts of some comic book creators or publishers to "make life easier" for the filmmakers that may or may not adapt their work by writing stories that pander to them or redesigning costumes or origins or various other tweaks is doing the comic book industry as a whole a severe disservice. Of course, in some cases "realistic" costume tweaks can help; without Adi Granov's designs, I'm pretty sure Iron Man would not have been half as watchable as it eventually was.
I say, let the film industry play catch-up. One can only imagine how frightfully dreadful comic books and their subsequent adaptations would have been had Stan Lee been content to limit his stories to the kind of images that the technology of the time was capable of realizing.
Hollywood has caught up with a lot of comic books, having made some pretty sterling adaptations in the last few years. If comic book writers absolutely have to think about Hollywood when writing their plots and scripts, I think their driving concern should be "so what CAN'T Hollywood do yet?" Assuming visual effects studios can ever crack those nuts, that would make for some pretty engaging viewing.
And this is a terrible thing. Comics are comics and movies are movies, and both are distinct art forms, each with its own peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, and each with characteristics unique to its own form that the other cannot and should not aspire to mimic.
There are so many things about comics that simply have not been translated to movies: Spider-Man has forgotten the ability to wisecrack. V (in V for Vendetta) suddenly became an agent of democracy rather than anarchy. Superman has not faced any of his cosmos-shattering adversaries like Darkseid or Braniac and has had to content himself with flying really fast and lifting really heavy objects. The Hulk, well, for two movies running now, the Hulk has not quite felt real. This may not speak very well of the movies that adapted them, but it speaks well of the source material in that there remain certain intangibles which they have over their adaptations; there remains reason for viewers to say "I liked the comic better" the same way Lord of the Rings purists will always say "I liked the book better."
Bill Watterson, creator of the now defunct Calvin and Hobbes, hit the nail on the head when he refused to allow his creation to be adapted as a cartoon. Basically, even though he had a deep respect for the art of animation, he had a problem with voice actors giving life to Calvin. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine Watterson feeling that no six or seven-year-old boy could properly deliver Calvin's ridiculously precocious dialogue properly, or that some middle-aged woman (e.g. The Simpsons' Nancy Cartwright) would always be just that: a middle-aged woman and not a child. Thanks to this little bit of artistic integrity on Watterson's part, the strip is now immortalized in its current form and Calvin will never be reduced to the identity of his voice actor or Korean animation studio, which is more than I can say for Spider-man, who is indelibly linked to Tobey Maguire by millions of people who've never picked up a comic book.
Lest I be misconstrued, I'd like to clarify that I'm not against adapting comic books at all; I love many of the comic book adaptations that have come out over the years, with the first two Spider-Man film and last year's Iron Man being my favorites with my (personal) runnerup honors going, in no particular order, to the Bryan Singer X-Men films, the Hellboy films, Guillermo Del Toro's lone Blade film, Blade II, and the Christopher Nolan Batman films.
My point is that the attempts of some comic book creators or publishers to "make life easier" for the filmmakers that may or may not adapt their work by writing stories that pander to them or redesigning costumes or origins or various other tweaks is doing the comic book industry as a whole a severe disservice. Of course, in some cases "realistic" costume tweaks can help; without Adi Granov's designs, I'm pretty sure Iron Man would not have been half as watchable as it eventually was.
I say, let the film industry play catch-up. One can only imagine how frightfully dreadful comic books and their subsequent adaptations would have been had Stan Lee been content to limit his stories to the kind of images that the technology of the time was capable of realizing.
Hollywood has caught up with a lot of comic books, having made some pretty sterling adaptations in the last few years. If comic book writers absolutely have to think about Hollywood when writing their plots and scripts, I think their driving concern should be "so what CAN'T Hollywood do yet?" Assuming visual effects studios can ever crack those nuts, that would make for some pretty engaging viewing.
Shamelessly Riding the Obama Phenomenon
Last January, Marvel Comics sold over 350,000 copies of a Spider-Man comic book that featured U.S. President Barack Obama on the cover and in a five-page back-up story. I saw a copy in Filbar's and despite having an overwhelming urge to join the wave of speculators that no doubt helped propel sales skyward I balked, being utterly turned off by the art and script of the story featuring Obama, all of which pretty much gave comic books a really bad name.
Not too long before, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief had said that in keeping with Marvel portraying the "real world," the U.S. President of the Marvel Universe would be Barack Obama. This was buttressed by an appearance the Commander-in-Chief apparently made, in continuity, in an issue of the comic-book Thunderbolts, which also came out in January. The writer of the series, Andy Diggle, went on record saying the President was Obama and even spiced up the script with a reference to his star-studded inauguration.
And it was then that marketing reared its hideous head.
Probably at the instance of some clowns with MBAs, Marvel's marketing arm claims that the only Obama appearing in the Marvel Universe is the one who shows up in Amazing Spider Man 583, the one whose dialogue is downright embarrassing (along with the dialogue of the rest of the story), the one who doesn't look a blessed thing like him, and who appears in a horribly stereotypical, borderline racist depiction of what a "black president" should be like (i.e. a basketball expert). Not, Marvel's marketing is quick to point out, the decisive, authoritative figure that attempts to rein in the now power-mad Norman Osborn. That man, according to Marvel marketing, is merely "the representation of who the President in the Marvel Universe is" even though he's quite obviously black, slim and young(ish). Of course, the appearance of Obama elsewhere would probably detract from the sales of the book Marvel are most keen to push. Maybe they can retract their announcement later, when the sales department is satisfied with the figures.
Please, Marvel, ditch the suits. They're really just embarrassing the lot of you.
Not too long before, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief had said that in keeping with Marvel portraying the "real world," the U.S. President of the Marvel Universe would be Barack Obama. This was buttressed by an appearance the Commander-in-Chief apparently made, in continuity, in an issue of the comic-book Thunderbolts, which also came out in January. The writer of the series, Andy Diggle, went on record saying the President was Obama and even spiced up the script with a reference to his star-studded inauguration.
And it was then that marketing reared its hideous head.
Probably at the instance of some clowns with MBAs, Marvel's marketing arm claims that the only Obama appearing in the Marvel Universe is the one who shows up in Amazing Spider Man 583, the one whose dialogue is downright embarrassing (along with the dialogue of the rest of the story), the one who doesn't look a blessed thing like him, and who appears in a horribly stereotypical, borderline racist depiction of what a "black president" should be like (i.e. a basketball expert). Not, Marvel's marketing is quick to point out, the decisive, authoritative figure that attempts to rein in the now power-mad Norman Osborn. That man, according to Marvel marketing, is merely "the representation of who the President in the Marvel Universe is" even though he's quite obviously black, slim and young(ish). Of course, the appearance of Obama elsewhere would probably detract from the sales of the book Marvel are most keen to push. Maybe they can retract their announcement later, when the sales department is satisfied with the figures.
Please, Marvel, ditch the suits. They're really just embarrassing the lot of you.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Barack Obama: A Cultural Phenomenon I'm Glad I Lived to See
My daughter is three years old, going on four, and knows nothing of racial differences between people, much less stereotypes. A few days ago we were watching Iron Man on DVD, and upon the appearance of James Rhodes, a character played by African-American actor Terrence Howard, she cried out "it's Barack Obama!"
I believe that speaks volumes about Barack Obama's cultural impact the world over. Like Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, Obama is now the global avatar for the black man. It is true that he is a man of several different ethnic backgrounds, considering that his mother was white and that his stepfather was Indonesian, and people who really care to read up on the man will know this as there is pretty much a wealth of information steadily becoming available about him.
For the rest of the world, however, what they see is what they get, and as a result white and brown melt away and suddenly Obama is the quintessential black man, which, for black activists everywhere, can only be a good thing. This has been written elsewhere, and far more eloquently, but I thought it worth taking note of considering my kids are even in on it.
It's really worth taking note that a three-year-old immediately identifies a random black man as "Barack Obama" considering that less than two years ago people who weren't following the American political scene were saying "what's a Barack Obama?"
I like the fact that my children are growing up in an era where Barack Obama's success is even possible, considering how it's barely been a year since people were saying it was not. Heck, I love having witnessed this era myself, even if I wasn't in Washington or Chicago for all the festivities.
I believe that speaks volumes about Barack Obama's cultural impact the world over. Like Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, Obama is now the global avatar for the black man. It is true that he is a man of several different ethnic backgrounds, considering that his mother was white and that his stepfather was Indonesian, and people who really care to read up on the man will know this as there is pretty much a wealth of information steadily becoming available about him.
For the rest of the world, however, what they see is what they get, and as a result white and brown melt away and suddenly Obama is the quintessential black man, which, for black activists everywhere, can only be a good thing. This has been written elsewhere, and far more eloquently, but I thought it worth taking note of considering my kids are even in on it.
It's really worth taking note that a three-year-old immediately identifies a random black man as "Barack Obama" considering that less than two years ago people who weren't following the American political scene were saying "what's a Barack Obama?"
I like the fact that my children are growing up in an era where Barack Obama's success is even possible, considering how it's barely been a year since people were saying it was not. Heck, I love having witnessed this era myself, even if I wasn't in Washington or Chicago for all the festivities.
Monday, February 02, 2009
WHY ASIANS SHOULD BOYCOTT THE FILM VERSION OF AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER
When it was announced that M. Night Shyamalan, Indian-American director of The Sixth Sense, would be directing the live-action adaptation of the popular cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, I had mixed feelings on the matter. I was, without question, glad that a director of such high profile had been given the project, and glad further than he had a distinctive Asian heritage which could translate into a keen awareness of the story's Asian orientation and a desire to bring that intact to the big screen. I was worried that this movie was not exactly up his alley, as it will be his first adaptation of someone else's material and it will be an action movie, which is quite a contrast from the slow-burn thrillers he's done throughout his career.
Still, as a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender I was excited for the project, even when I heard they had to drop the word "Avatar" from the title due to legal conflicts with James Cameron, whose highly anticipated return to filmmaking, Avatar is due out this December. I followed updates on location shooting and casting, though for a while I fell out of the loop.
Still, I wondered who'd they'd cast as the characters. I knew they'd probably go for unknowns, so I figured, things being the way they are, they'd get Amerasian kids (American citizens of Asian descent) for the roles.
Recently, though, I was able to catch some snippets online, and what I read appalled me. Apparently they've hired WHITE kids to play Aang, Sokka and Katara! Aang, to anyone familiar with the show, is clearly derived from a Buddhist monk, while Sokka and Katara look and dress distinctly like Inuits (the people who, if I'm not mistaken, are more popularly known as Eskimos) so it would have been a no-brainer to cast an Asian unknown as Aang and two Native American unknowns as Sokka and Katara. Right? Right? Wrong, apparently.
It's Mickey-fucking-Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's all over again.
It makes me wonder if Shyamalan and Paramount even understand the whole concept of the show being a love letter to Asian culture and the values it espouses. The series creators have even openly professed their love for the works of Hayao Miyazaki whose styling they often tried to ape in the course of the series.
I smell marketing all over the casting of three white kids, and wonder if the dipshits over at Paramount need to look over the grosses of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again, a movie that made a bundle of money without a white person in sight, and without a word of English even being spoken. It's kind of mind-blowing how, in an age where a man with American, African AND Asian heritage can be elected President of the United States of America, and where the biggest movie star in the world is an African American, a bunch of myopic movie producers and an even MORE myopic movie director still believe that the only way to sell an ASIAN themed movie is to fill it with white kids.
I took little consolation from the knowledge that the story's primary villain-turned-hero, Prince Zuko, was recast from a white teeny-bopper to rising star Dev Patel, the British Indian actor currently making waves in Danny Boyle's Oscar frontrunner Slumdog Millionaire. Zuko is, next to Aang, probably the most important character of the story, and one Shyamalan himself has identified as his favorite, so it's nice that a person of Asian descent (though he is British) should get this role. But, with a white kid still in the lead role, a role written for an ASIAN kid, it's all still all wrong. Sure, all of the lead voice actors for the characters (again, with the exception of Prince Zuko, who was dubbed by Filipino-American Dante Basco) were white, but the intention for them to be Asian is ALL OVER THE PLACE, from the houses they live in to the clothes they wear to the values they profess to cherish.
People are raising a hue and a cry over the suggestion that Will Smith, the biggest box-office star on planet earth, play Captain America because Steve Rogers, as a character, is blond and blue-eyed. Well, while Aang is certainly nowhere near as iconic as Steve Rogers he is meant to be Asian in his looks AND his personal philosophy, so the decision to go with a white kid, who hearkens from a culture that represents a COMPLETELY different value system (and comes from a state which gave birth to a President more reprehensible than the series' main villain, Firelord Ozai), is every bit as objectionable if not more so.
What kills me about Paramount's and Shyamalan's decision is that Asians outnumber Caucasians by something like five to one on Planet Earth, and in America alone they could have practically thrown a stone and hit a kid of Asian descent and looks, especially if they'd gone to California or Hawaii. Instead, they get a WHITE kid from TEXAS. Just TYPING that makes my skin crawl.
This early, I've pretty much decided not to see this in the theaters; if it turns out to be any good I'll just go to a street corner and pick up a bootleg DVD. Unless and until Paramount get their shit together and show those white kids the door they are not getting a blessed centavo of my money and, if there's ANY justice in the world, not any money from any Asian person anywhere.
It's my hope now that the upcoming Dragonball movie, which also features a white guy in a role arguably created for an Asian, tanks horribly, thus forcing Paramount and Shyamalan to seriously and I mean SERIOUSLY rethink their casting decisions.
Still, as a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender I was excited for the project, even when I heard they had to drop the word "Avatar" from the title due to legal conflicts with James Cameron, whose highly anticipated return to filmmaking, Avatar is due out this December. I followed updates on location shooting and casting, though for a while I fell out of the loop.
Still, I wondered who'd they'd cast as the characters. I knew they'd probably go for unknowns, so I figured, things being the way they are, they'd get Amerasian kids (American citizens of Asian descent) for the roles.
Recently, though, I was able to catch some snippets online, and what I read appalled me. Apparently they've hired WHITE kids to play Aang, Sokka and Katara! Aang, to anyone familiar with the show, is clearly derived from a Buddhist monk, while Sokka and Katara look and dress distinctly like Inuits (the people who, if I'm not mistaken, are more popularly known as Eskimos) so it would have been a no-brainer to cast an Asian unknown as Aang and two Native American unknowns as Sokka and Katara. Right? Right? Wrong, apparently.
It's Mickey-fucking-Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's all over again.
It makes me wonder if Shyamalan and Paramount even understand the whole concept of the show being a love letter to Asian culture and the values it espouses. The series creators have even openly professed their love for the works of Hayao Miyazaki whose styling they often tried to ape in the course of the series.
I smell marketing all over the casting of three white kids, and wonder if the dipshits over at Paramount need to look over the grosses of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again, a movie that made a bundle of money without a white person in sight, and without a word of English even being spoken. It's kind of mind-blowing how, in an age where a man with American, African AND Asian heritage can be elected President of the United States of America, and where the biggest movie star in the world is an African American, a bunch of myopic movie producers and an even MORE myopic movie director still believe that the only way to sell an ASIAN themed movie is to fill it with white kids.
I took little consolation from the knowledge that the story's primary villain-turned-hero, Prince Zuko, was recast from a white teeny-bopper to rising star Dev Patel, the British Indian actor currently making waves in Danny Boyle's Oscar frontrunner Slumdog Millionaire. Zuko is, next to Aang, probably the most important character of the story, and one Shyamalan himself has identified as his favorite, so it's nice that a person of Asian descent (though he is British) should get this role. But, with a white kid still in the lead role, a role written for an ASIAN kid, it's all still all wrong. Sure, all of the lead voice actors for the characters (again, with the exception of Prince Zuko, who was dubbed by Filipino-American Dante Basco) were white, but the intention for them to be Asian is ALL OVER THE PLACE, from the houses they live in to the clothes they wear to the values they profess to cherish.
People are raising a hue and a cry over the suggestion that Will Smith, the biggest box-office star on planet earth, play Captain America because Steve Rogers, as a character, is blond and blue-eyed. Well, while Aang is certainly nowhere near as iconic as Steve Rogers he is meant to be Asian in his looks AND his personal philosophy, so the decision to go with a white kid, who hearkens from a culture that represents a COMPLETELY different value system (and comes from a state which gave birth to a President more reprehensible than the series' main villain, Firelord Ozai), is every bit as objectionable if not more so.
What kills me about Paramount's and Shyamalan's decision is that Asians outnumber Caucasians by something like five to one on Planet Earth, and in America alone they could have practically thrown a stone and hit a kid of Asian descent and looks, especially if they'd gone to California or Hawaii. Instead, they get a WHITE kid from TEXAS. Just TYPING that makes my skin crawl.
This early, I've pretty much decided not to see this in the theaters; if it turns out to be any good I'll just go to a street corner and pick up a bootleg DVD. Unless and until Paramount get their shit together and show those white kids the door they are not getting a blessed centavo of my money and, if there's ANY justice in the world, not any money from any Asian person anywhere.
It's my hope now that the upcoming Dragonball movie, which also features a white guy in a role arguably created for an Asian, tanks horribly, thus forcing Paramount and Shyamalan to seriously and I mean SERIOUSLY rethink their casting decisions.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Snub of WALL-E: The REAL Oscar Disappointment
That Pixar's WALL-E got snubbed by the Academy has apparently not come as a surprise to many people, certainly not in the way that The Dark Knight snub did. To my mind, though, it's certainly a bigger crime, because in addition to being a narrative masterpiece, the movie has something a lot more to say than, at the very least, a movie about a man aging backwards, yet another look at a disgraced President, a gay politician, and yet ANOTHER Holocaust/WWII themed movie.
WALL-E may have a love story beating at its heart, but first and foremost it's a film about saving our planet, something which can only begin with a sincere change of attitude. THIS is the kind of blend of craftsmanship AND relevance that the Academy has awarded in the past and should continue to recognize. Movies like Schindler's List and Crash were unapologetically message movies that were bestowed the Best Picture honor, so why not give similar recognition to a movie that is arguably at least as well-made as the former and, from what I've heard almost CERTAINLY better made than the latter? I may well have answered my own question on this very blog by talking about the Weinstein Brother's omnipresent influence with the Academy, but considering that Pixar has scored THREE best animated feature wins and has had every single one of its films released after the category was introduced score a nomination one wonders why they haven't crossed over yet. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon managed to score a Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film nod years ago, so really, I have to say, what's keeping the Academy from recognizing one of the best made movies of the year, which is arguably the most socially relevant?
There can be good arguments made in favor of passing up WALL-E just as there can be those for its snubbing The Dark Knight as well, though to my mind, in the case of the former, I'll be harder pressed to believe them. After all, the film WAS nominated for Best Original Screenplay, an arguably major award that not even TDK scored for all its eight nominations, and that's usually a very important indicator of how the Academy views the craftsmanship of the film. And to think that WALL-E and TDK were overlooked in favor of The Reader, a film which is now the whipping boy of just about everyone who believes these two films deserved better.
The way I see it, when the era of the Weinsteins is over, Oscar season will become a lot more interesting, because then films will have a better chance of getting in on merit.
WALL-E may have a love story beating at its heart, but first and foremost it's a film about saving our planet, something which can only begin with a sincere change of attitude. THIS is the kind of blend of craftsmanship AND relevance that the Academy has awarded in the past and should continue to recognize. Movies like Schindler's List and Crash were unapologetically message movies that were bestowed the Best Picture honor, so why not give similar recognition to a movie that is arguably at least as well-made as the former and, from what I've heard almost CERTAINLY better made than the latter? I may well have answered my own question on this very blog by talking about the Weinstein Brother's omnipresent influence with the Academy, but considering that Pixar has scored THREE best animated feature wins and has had every single one of its films released after the category was introduced score a nomination one wonders why they haven't crossed over yet. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon managed to score a Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film nod years ago, so really, I have to say, what's keeping the Academy from recognizing one of the best made movies of the year, which is arguably the most socially relevant?
There can be good arguments made in favor of passing up WALL-E just as there can be those for its snubbing The Dark Knight as well, though to my mind, in the case of the former, I'll be harder pressed to believe them. After all, the film WAS nominated for Best Original Screenplay, an arguably major award that not even TDK scored for all its eight nominations, and that's usually a very important indicator of how the Academy views the craftsmanship of the film. And to think that WALL-E and TDK were overlooked in favor of The Reader, a film which is now the whipping boy of just about everyone who believes these two films deserved better.
The way I see it, when the era of the Weinsteins is over, Oscar season will become a lot more interesting, because then films will have a better chance of getting in on merit.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Visionary History
One of my favorite movies of 2004 was Pixar Films' The Incredibles, directed by Brad Bird. I loved everything about it: the idea of a superhero undergoing a midlife crisis and getting fat and balding just like regular people, the snappy dialogue, crisp animation and geek references.
One thing in particular I feel deserves celebrating about this movie is how it achieves a timelessness in its storytelling. Sure, it does this primarily by tapping universally understood themes and concerns, but one thing that really helps it along is the ultra-slick, retro-futuristic motif that permeates the film, from the production and costume design to Michael Giacchino's fantastically lively, predominantly jazz music score. It's evocative of a period that's caught somewhere between the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, and yet so much of the technology flaunted there doesn't even exist yet, even though much of it is theoretically possible.
I love movies that play with history this way; sometimes the filmmaker picks a certain point in human history and says "what if this was done differently somehow" and ends up giving us a world we can now only dream of seeing in real life. These are certainly not visions of our actual past, nor are they necessarily of our future, but often somewhere in between, somewhere we can never quite be because they are at the same time somewhere we've already been and somewhere we aren't quite at just yet. I believe one of the terms used to describe such non-histories is "steampunk."
Apart from Brad Bird's The Incredibles, one of my favorite examples of this is the little-seen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a pet project of Jude Law's which presented an alternate version of the 1930s which was brought to life almost exclusively in Computer Generated Imagery, a full year before Robert Rodriguez did it in Sin City and three before Zack Snyder did it with 300. Unlike The Incredibles, Sky Captain does not envision a world that is neither here nor there but rather presents us with a definite past, albeit not the one we knew, one with Zeppelins as a usual mode of travel and robots that roam New York City in the 1930s. I suppose another good example would be The Golden Compass, though I did not see that film.
Speed Racer, for all its flaws, went the retro-futuristic route that The Incredibles did, and to my mind it is quite relevant that these two films share, in Michael Giacchino, a composer. While as a racing fan I simply didn't buy the film and its impossibilities, I loved the alternate history it presented with a world where cars ran on fantastical sounding components like transponders and convergenators, using fuel cells and yet sounding very much like throaty V8s were propelling them. The stylized anime-inspired visualization didn't float my boat when it came to many of the racing scenes, but it made everything else quite pleasing to the eye.
I'm sure there are dozens of examples of films that employ this storytelling technique just floating out there and I'd love to get my hands on them. I don't know how many people would agree with me on this but I'd love to see Superman re-fashioned this way.
One thing in particular I feel deserves celebrating about this movie is how it achieves a timelessness in its storytelling. Sure, it does this primarily by tapping universally understood themes and concerns, but one thing that really helps it along is the ultra-slick, retro-futuristic motif that permeates the film, from the production and costume design to Michael Giacchino's fantastically lively, predominantly jazz music score. It's evocative of a period that's caught somewhere between the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, and yet so much of the technology flaunted there doesn't even exist yet, even though much of it is theoretically possible.
I love movies that play with history this way; sometimes the filmmaker picks a certain point in human history and says "what if this was done differently somehow" and ends up giving us a world we can now only dream of seeing in real life. These are certainly not visions of our actual past, nor are they necessarily of our future, but often somewhere in between, somewhere we can never quite be because they are at the same time somewhere we've already been and somewhere we aren't quite at just yet. I believe one of the terms used to describe such non-histories is "steampunk."
Apart from Brad Bird's The Incredibles, one of my favorite examples of this is the little-seen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a pet project of Jude Law's which presented an alternate version of the 1930s which was brought to life almost exclusively in Computer Generated Imagery, a full year before Robert Rodriguez did it in Sin City and three before Zack Snyder did it with 300. Unlike The Incredibles, Sky Captain does not envision a world that is neither here nor there but rather presents us with a definite past, albeit not the one we knew, one with Zeppelins as a usual mode of travel and robots that roam New York City in the 1930s. I suppose another good example would be The Golden Compass, though I did not see that film.
Speed Racer, for all its flaws, went the retro-futuristic route that The Incredibles did, and to my mind it is quite relevant that these two films share, in Michael Giacchino, a composer. While as a racing fan I simply didn't buy the film and its impossibilities, I loved the alternate history it presented with a world where cars ran on fantastical sounding components like transponders and convergenators, using fuel cells and yet sounding very much like throaty V8s were propelling them. The stylized anime-inspired visualization didn't float my boat when it came to many of the racing scenes, but it made everything else quite pleasing to the eye.
I'm sure there are dozens of examples of films that employ this storytelling technique just floating out there and I'd love to get my hands on them. I don't know how many people would agree with me on this but I'd love to see Superman re-fashioned this way.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Why The Dark Knight Didn't Bag Major Oscar Nominations (Except for Heath Ledger's)
There's a part of me, a mean, juvenile, unapologetically puerile part, that took absolute glee from knowing that The Dark Knight failed to land nominations for Best Picture, Director or Screenplay at the recently announced Academy Award nominations, and not because I have anything in particular against the movie itself.
No, my beef is with the legions upon legions of fanboys who infested messageboards like a loud, unstoppable plague for months before the release of TDK and were thumping their chests for months thereafter, like the asshats who posted messages like "TDKTDKTDK (add about 100 more TDKs)" and "TDK will pwn" on every update on Iron Man or some other movie of 2008, people who, as the film scooped up one accolade after another, were picking up a sickening momentum in terms of their collective cacophony. The snub at the Golden Globes, while it could have been seen as a precursor of things to come for the film, really meant little to nothing as the Globes have been somewhat widely ridiculed for years.
As patently absurd as it sounds, it struck me that, if TDK had garnered either Best Picture or Best Director nod, fanboys would have been morally convinced that they owned the world, and the entertainment industry would go to hell in a handbasket because Hollywood would agree. I mean, as it is, they already have a sense of self-importance more bloated than a drowning victim who's been floating around for about three months.
I have no idea if the Academy was thinking this and truth be told, they probably weren't, but I'm GLAD the fanboys are taking it personally; I'm GLAD that, to them, it's the Oscar folks flipping the bird right at them. The sound of their collective heart breaking as they post their spelling- and-grammar-impaired diatribes on messageboards decrying the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences is all the payback I'll ever need. Iron Man didn't get any major Oscar nods either but I couldn't give a damn; it's already performed well beyond anyone's expectations, even making it on at least ONE major critic's top ten movies of 2008 lists...a list which excluded TDK. In short, no expectations, no disappointment. I don't even expect Iron Man to win either of the technical Oscars for which it was nominated.
The more rabid TDK fans, intoxicated on the thought that for once, they were at one with the teeming masses, rode the gravy train all the way till it was abruptly derailed last Thursday.
It was funny how they loved to talk about how grosses mean nothing and yet point to TDK's b.o. as the reason why it's the greatest movie ever. It was funny how they talk about how awards mean nothing but cried like babies when TDK was snubbed in favor of The Reader, which, from all indications, is yet another meandering downer of a movie produced by the grossly overrated Weinstein brothers, Bob and Harvey.
Thing is, even though there was a part of me that took pleasure in seeing so many fanboys wailing like hungry infants, the greater part of me, to my SURPRISE, was sickened that yet again, the Academy has shown its true colors by throwing its most infamous "political figures," the Weinsteins, a bone, one that happened to be at Batman's expense. Of the five nominees, four were widely expected to make it into the race: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk and Frost/Nixon. The Reader, a film which was noted for Kate Winslet's portrayal of a Nazi, while well-regarded, was not expected to make the cut. It perhaps is not entirely coincidence that it happened to be released by the Weinstein company, the studio formed by the Weinstein brothers after Walt Disney Pictures eased them out of ownership of the studio they had founded, Miramax.
The fanboys whose pleasure gave me a rise can and actually should take solace from the knowledge that the Academy, in its history spanning over eight decades, has, time and time again betrayed its highly political nature. There have, throughout the years, been power players and I'm sure learned film historians could provide a pretty long list of them. Recently, in maybe the last four or five years, TIME's Richard Corliss, wrote about how downright ridiculous some of the awards in the last twenty years had been and I have seen a couple of lists of questionable nominations that some other writers have compiled over the years.
Of these power players, the Weinsteins are undoubtedly among the more significant of recent times.
Now, these guys have arguably done a lot for independent film, almost as much as Robert Redford did by coming up with the Sundance Film Festival. The studio they founded has enabled small filmmakers to make movies that a lot of mainstream studios wouldn't even touch. In fact, sometime in the 1990s, the Weinsteins helped make independent cinema "en vogue" at a time when studios seemed to be artistically bankrupt.
That said, the brothers, both at their time with Miramax and their new studio, the Weinstein Company, have come up with some real clunkers, some of which, absurdly enough, were able to garner Oscar nods or even wins and to my mind it's the Academy's irrational need to pander to these men that makes so many of their choices suspect, including some of the ones they made this year.
The late 1990s to early 2000s were the heyday of the Weinsteins in terms of Academy Award recognition. 1998 was a year that particularly grated on me as the moderately entertaining Shakespeare in Love achieved a shocking and widely despised upset over the sweeping war epic Saving Private Ryan. Moreover, Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar for Best Actress left a lot of people grumbling, as did Roberto Benigni's Best Actor win for Life is Beautiful, a film in which he played...himself. The worst was yet to come, though, as 1999 and 2000 saw back-to-back nominations for Miramax that, in a word, seemed somewhat gratuitous on the part of the Academy. Lasse Halstrom's The Cider House Rules, a film based on John Irving's novel that was regarded by critics as somewhat tepid and which didn't even achieve much by way of box-office garnered Best Director and Picture nods to the dismay of many. I'd like to comment more on that but I haven't seen the film.
In 2000, though, the Academy gave quite a bit of recognition to a film I DID see and which I found distinctly underwhelming: Chocolat, AGAIN directed by Halstrom, and AGAIN distributed by Miramax. It got nominations for Best Picture, Actress and Supporting Actress, among others, and though I found it a charming little film I confess I was really left scratching my head by the Academy's choice. It was shut out when awards night rolled around, but in any event the nominations themselves were absolutely puzzling, and pretty much led me to believe that the Weinsteins somehow had the Academy by its collective balls, if that was at all possible.
Nor are the Academy's dodgy decisions limited to favoring the W brothers. Among some decisions I found somewhat risible were Kevin Spacey's Oscar for playing American Beauty's Lester Burnham, who was basically a total retread of a character he'd played in the late Ted Demme's The Ref, a movie that had come out five years earlier. There was Denzel Washington's Best Actor Oscar for Training Day, which he arguably should have gotten two years earlier for The Hurricane and which could have been an apology from the Academy for passing him over in favor of Spacey. Unfortunately, if it was an apology, it came at the expense of Russell Crowe, who deserved to be a back-to-back winner that year. Crowe had won a deserved Oscar for Gladiator but lost out on A Beautiful Mind, something I (and a couple of other people I know) feel was just...wrong.
And then, of course, there was all the brouhaha in 2005 about how Crash won the Best Picture Prize that, many believed, rightfully belonged to Brokeback Mountain. I won't even get started on that one.
It's all politics, really. It seems that the Weinsteins who are notorious for their aggressive campaigning come awards season, needed a slot and somebody had to get bumped off. In a way, it's the luck of the draw and considering TDK was primarily a summer blockbuster type of movie, it was the easiest choice to drop in favor of a "serious" film, i.e. anything from the Weinsteins that has an unhappy ending. I'm not saying there was anything as insidious as a buyout or something like that, but I am willing to bet money that the Academy's biases against certain genres and FOR certain producers, based on past history, may have played a role of one kind or another.
So TDK fans, content yourselves with your favorite movie's 8 Oscar nominations, critical acclaim and massive box-office. You may not own the world, but an Oscar Best Picture snub isn't nearly the terrible blow many of you may think it is.
No, my beef is with the legions upon legions of fanboys who infested messageboards like a loud, unstoppable plague for months before the release of TDK and were thumping their chests for months thereafter, like the asshats who posted messages like "TDKTDKTDK (add about 100 more TDKs)" and "TDK will pwn" on every update on Iron Man or some other movie of 2008, people who, as the film scooped up one accolade after another, were picking up a sickening momentum in terms of their collective cacophony. The snub at the Golden Globes, while it could have been seen as a precursor of things to come for the film, really meant little to nothing as the Globes have been somewhat widely ridiculed for years.
As patently absurd as it sounds, it struck me that, if TDK had garnered either Best Picture or Best Director nod, fanboys would have been morally convinced that they owned the world, and the entertainment industry would go to hell in a handbasket because Hollywood would agree. I mean, as it is, they already have a sense of self-importance more bloated than a drowning victim who's been floating around for about three months.
I have no idea if the Academy was thinking this and truth be told, they probably weren't, but I'm GLAD the fanboys are taking it personally; I'm GLAD that, to them, it's the Oscar folks flipping the bird right at them. The sound of their collective heart breaking as they post their spelling- and-grammar-impaired diatribes on messageboards decrying the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences is all the payback I'll ever need. Iron Man didn't get any major Oscar nods either but I couldn't give a damn; it's already performed well beyond anyone's expectations, even making it on at least ONE major critic's top ten movies of 2008 lists...a list which excluded TDK. In short, no expectations, no disappointment. I don't even expect Iron Man to win either of the technical Oscars for which it was nominated.
The more rabid TDK fans, intoxicated on the thought that for once, they were at one with the teeming masses, rode the gravy train all the way till it was abruptly derailed last Thursday.
It was funny how they loved to talk about how grosses mean nothing and yet point to TDK's b.o. as the reason why it's the greatest movie ever. It was funny how they talk about how awards mean nothing but cried like babies when TDK was snubbed in favor of The Reader, which, from all indications, is yet another meandering downer of a movie produced by the grossly overrated Weinstein brothers, Bob and Harvey.
Thing is, even though there was a part of me that took pleasure in seeing so many fanboys wailing like hungry infants, the greater part of me, to my SURPRISE, was sickened that yet again, the Academy has shown its true colors by throwing its most infamous "political figures," the Weinsteins, a bone, one that happened to be at Batman's expense. Of the five nominees, four were widely expected to make it into the race: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk and Frost/Nixon. The Reader, a film which was noted for Kate Winslet's portrayal of a Nazi, while well-regarded, was not expected to make the cut. It perhaps is not entirely coincidence that it happened to be released by the Weinstein company, the studio formed by the Weinstein brothers after Walt Disney Pictures eased them out of ownership of the studio they had founded, Miramax.
The fanboys whose pleasure gave me a rise can and actually should take solace from the knowledge that the Academy, in its history spanning over eight decades, has, time and time again betrayed its highly political nature. There have, throughout the years, been power players and I'm sure learned film historians could provide a pretty long list of them. Recently, in maybe the last four or five years, TIME's Richard Corliss, wrote about how downright ridiculous some of the awards in the last twenty years had been and I have seen a couple of lists of questionable nominations that some other writers have compiled over the years.
Of these power players, the Weinsteins are undoubtedly among the more significant of recent times.
Now, these guys have arguably done a lot for independent film, almost as much as Robert Redford did by coming up with the Sundance Film Festival. The studio they founded has enabled small filmmakers to make movies that a lot of mainstream studios wouldn't even touch. In fact, sometime in the 1990s, the Weinsteins helped make independent cinema "en vogue" at a time when studios seemed to be artistically bankrupt.
That said, the brothers, both at their time with Miramax and their new studio, the Weinstein Company, have come up with some real clunkers, some of which, absurdly enough, were able to garner Oscar nods or even wins and to my mind it's the Academy's irrational need to pander to these men that makes so many of their choices suspect, including some of the ones they made this year.
The late 1990s to early 2000s were the heyday of the Weinsteins in terms of Academy Award recognition. 1998 was a year that particularly grated on me as the moderately entertaining Shakespeare in Love achieved a shocking and widely despised upset over the sweeping war epic Saving Private Ryan. Moreover, Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar for Best Actress left a lot of people grumbling, as did Roberto Benigni's Best Actor win for Life is Beautiful, a film in which he played...himself. The worst was yet to come, though, as 1999 and 2000 saw back-to-back nominations for Miramax that, in a word, seemed somewhat gratuitous on the part of the Academy. Lasse Halstrom's The Cider House Rules, a film based on John Irving's novel that was regarded by critics as somewhat tepid and which didn't even achieve much by way of box-office garnered Best Director and Picture nods to the dismay of many. I'd like to comment more on that but I haven't seen the film.
In 2000, though, the Academy gave quite a bit of recognition to a film I DID see and which I found distinctly underwhelming: Chocolat, AGAIN directed by Halstrom, and AGAIN distributed by Miramax. It got nominations for Best Picture, Actress and Supporting Actress, among others, and though I found it a charming little film I confess I was really left scratching my head by the Academy's choice. It was shut out when awards night rolled around, but in any event the nominations themselves were absolutely puzzling, and pretty much led me to believe that the Weinsteins somehow had the Academy by its collective balls, if that was at all possible.
Nor are the Academy's dodgy decisions limited to favoring the W brothers. Among some decisions I found somewhat risible were Kevin Spacey's Oscar for playing American Beauty's Lester Burnham, who was basically a total retread of a character he'd played in the late Ted Demme's The Ref, a movie that had come out five years earlier. There was Denzel Washington's Best Actor Oscar for Training Day, which he arguably should have gotten two years earlier for The Hurricane and which could have been an apology from the Academy for passing him over in favor of Spacey. Unfortunately, if it was an apology, it came at the expense of Russell Crowe, who deserved to be a back-to-back winner that year. Crowe had won a deserved Oscar for Gladiator but lost out on A Beautiful Mind, something I (and a couple of other people I know) feel was just...wrong.
And then, of course, there was all the brouhaha in 2005 about how Crash won the Best Picture Prize that, many believed, rightfully belonged to Brokeback Mountain. I won't even get started on that one.
It's all politics, really. It seems that the Weinsteins who are notorious for their aggressive campaigning come awards season, needed a slot and somebody had to get bumped off. In a way, it's the luck of the draw and considering TDK was primarily a summer blockbuster type of movie, it was the easiest choice to drop in favor of a "serious" film, i.e. anything from the Weinsteins that has an unhappy ending. I'm not saying there was anything as insidious as a buyout or something like that, but I am willing to bet money that the Academy's biases against certain genres and FOR certain producers, based on past history, may have played a role of one kind or another.
So TDK fans, content yourselves with your favorite movie's 8 Oscar nominations, critical acclaim and massive box-office. You may not own the world, but an Oscar Best Picture snub isn't nearly the terrible blow many of you may think it is.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
"Philippine Independent Cinema," or...Leave It To Filipinos To Bastardize Yet Another Noble Concept...
On my way to and from work I find myself walking by a lot of "second-run cinemas" or movie theaters that show old movies. Because I work in the Manila area and walk most often by Avenida Rizal, most of those second-run theaters invariably show...adult films. Though I never actually watched any of the movies, a lot of them looked familiar to me, and it was only upon some thought that I realized it was because I had seen the ads and posters for a number of them before, touted as examples of "Philippine Independent Cinema." I almost gagged with the realization.
Now, I'm no prude and no self-righteous crusader and I've seen a number skin flicks or skin-heavy flicks, including some of the acclaimed ones. That said, it really pains me to see that Robinson's Galleria, which devotes one of its theaters to showing independent movies, more often than not finds itself playing features that end up in second-run skin-flick theaters. Whether it's straight or gay porn, the thought that the only stories that many, if not most of our "independent" filmmakers can come up with are those involving graphic sexual intercourse really makes me shake my head for the Philippine movie industry as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the forces behind these so-called "independent" films were basically the guys who were cut loose by the studios when folks like Henry Sy (and the consumers in general) laid down the law and said "we don't want to watch your garbage anymore." So yeah, the term "independent" is accurate in that sense, but I despise those people for badging their films with it, because in some cultures, like Hollywood, an independent film is one that is free from studio meddling and bureaucracy and, quite often the need to pander to the lowest common denominator. Of course, just because a foreign film is independent is no guarantee it'll be good, but if nothing else, it'll at least be different from the stuff the studios come up with.
Here, "independent films" seem only to pander to their viewer's sexual appetites, with story basically being a secondary consideration. I saw the highly controversial "Live Show" on DVD and, whatever people may say about the decision to ban it, will have to agree with its critics that yeah, it was basically pornography masquerading as a "message film." One of its stars, Klaudia Koronel, did porn fans a great disservice by going legit, getting her degree and getting married (I think), but she did the movie viewing public a huge favor by ensuring they'd never have to endure her "acting" again.
There's nothing wrong with independent films having sexual content if it serves a greater story, but for flick upon flick to center around the same themes and to lean on the same old devices to propel their stories, many of which involve two people taking their clothes off and getting it on, kind of hammers home just WHY Filipino movies are floundering in the first place. I'll give a good example; when Asia Agcaoili promoted her movie "Casa" another movie bandied about as an "indie flick," her selling point was basically...her sex scenes. Nothing about the story or guerilla style filmmaking, just...her explicit sex scenes for which, she teased, she did not even cover her vaginal opening with the plaster traditional used by actors simulating love scenes to prevent unwanted entry. I've often fantasized about buying all of her smut on black market DVDs, smug in the knowledge that I'll be "taking advantage" of her without giving her a solitary centavo of my money. She deserves no less for mangling something as noble as the term "indie flick" which in other places of the world means something more than a soft-core porn movie.
The problem isn't that we're prudes or living in the 19th century; the problem is that now the "independent filmmakers" who are basically supposed to be mavericks and at the forefront of creativity, appear to be creatively bankrupt.
Now, I'm no prude and no self-righteous crusader and I've seen a number skin flicks or skin-heavy flicks, including some of the acclaimed ones. That said, it really pains me to see that Robinson's Galleria, which devotes one of its theaters to showing independent movies, more often than not finds itself playing features that end up in second-run skin-flick theaters. Whether it's straight or gay porn, the thought that the only stories that many, if not most of our "independent" filmmakers can come up with are those involving graphic sexual intercourse really makes me shake my head for the Philippine movie industry as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the forces behind these so-called "independent" films were basically the guys who were cut loose by the studios when folks like Henry Sy (and the consumers in general) laid down the law and said "we don't want to watch your garbage anymore." So yeah, the term "independent" is accurate in that sense, but I despise those people for badging their films with it, because in some cultures, like Hollywood, an independent film is one that is free from studio meddling and bureaucracy and, quite often the need to pander to the lowest common denominator. Of course, just because a foreign film is independent is no guarantee it'll be good, but if nothing else, it'll at least be different from the stuff the studios come up with.
Here, "independent films" seem only to pander to their viewer's sexual appetites, with story basically being a secondary consideration. I saw the highly controversial "Live Show" on DVD and, whatever people may say about the decision to ban it, will have to agree with its critics that yeah, it was basically pornography masquerading as a "message film." One of its stars, Klaudia Koronel, did porn fans a great disservice by going legit, getting her degree and getting married (I think), but she did the movie viewing public a huge favor by ensuring they'd never have to endure her "acting" again.
There's nothing wrong with independent films having sexual content if it serves a greater story, but for flick upon flick to center around the same themes and to lean on the same old devices to propel their stories, many of which involve two people taking their clothes off and getting it on, kind of hammers home just WHY Filipino movies are floundering in the first place. I'll give a good example; when Asia Agcaoili promoted her movie "Casa" another movie bandied about as an "indie flick," her selling point was basically...her sex scenes. Nothing about the story or guerilla style filmmaking, just...her explicit sex scenes for which, she teased, she did not even cover her vaginal opening with the plaster traditional used by actors simulating love scenes to prevent unwanted entry. I've often fantasized about buying all of her smut on black market DVDs, smug in the knowledge that I'll be "taking advantage" of her without giving her a solitary centavo of my money. She deserves no less for mangling something as noble as the term "indie flick" which in other places of the world means something more than a soft-core porn movie.
The problem isn't that we're prudes or living in the 19th century; the problem is that now the "independent filmmakers" who are basically supposed to be mavericks and at the forefront of creativity, appear to be creatively bankrupt.
Petty Tyrants Lining the Pews
This was meant to be my "pop culture" blog, but lately I've decided that it would be better devoted to what it was titled for: throwing tantrums, and this one, to my mind, is a doozy.
I sometimes find myself questioning the systems that some parish priests institute as part of their masses, like the time of the mass during which they choose to make their announcements, with some priests having the congregation stand up, abruptly sit down again to listen to the announcements, then to stand up again. One parish has the congregation stand up after communion and all the way through several minutes worth of announcements after they've already sat through an entire mass and want to go back to work. These can be pretty annoying, but truth be told I just shrug my shoulders and make it a point to avoid going to mass there.
There's one practice, though, which I simply have to comment on because based on what I've seen it appears to have bred a bunch of despots.
Apparently, in one parish, the line for communion is policed by a bunch of middle-aged to geriatric women. I experienced this first hand when one such woman snarled at me to wait till I was called, as I was, at the time, unfamiliar with their practices. I've not made the same mistake again, but I have noted that a couple of these pseudo gestapo tend to give parishioners dirty looks for such harmless things as heading to the bathroom, which I sometimes do when hearing mass. Now, I won't knock the purpose for these attempts to instill some kind of order as I'm not really familiar with how chaotic things were before these systems were put in place, but I will say that if ever it was a good idea, the cure has since become worse than the disease.
The saying power corrupts may be tired and old but it is ridiculously apt, and what immediately comes to mind when thinking about those old biddies who fancy themselves "policewomen of God" (a concept probably cooked by an overzealous parish priest) is a bit of dialogue between Steve Buscemi and an actor playing a parking attendant, whose name I've forgotten, which took place in the movie Fargo. In the film, Buscemi pulls into a parking lot, gets a ticket, doesn't park, then, upon immediately pulling out again, is compelled by the attendant to pay for the ticket. Annoyed, Buscemi says "I bet you think you're some kind of authority figure, with your little uniform." That's pretty much EXACTLY how to describe the attitudes of many of these post-menopausal women during the mass.
Well, if the church starts to lose parishioners to nearby churches, and I can think of at least two, in reevaluating their approach, the first thing they should give the axe are these ridiculous little stormtroopers.
I sometimes find myself questioning the systems that some parish priests institute as part of their masses, like the time of the mass during which they choose to make their announcements, with some priests having the congregation stand up, abruptly sit down again to listen to the announcements, then to stand up again. One parish has the congregation stand up after communion and all the way through several minutes worth of announcements after they've already sat through an entire mass and want to go back to work. These can be pretty annoying, but truth be told I just shrug my shoulders and make it a point to avoid going to mass there.
There's one practice, though, which I simply have to comment on because based on what I've seen it appears to have bred a bunch of despots.
Apparently, in one parish, the line for communion is policed by a bunch of middle-aged to geriatric women. I experienced this first hand when one such woman snarled at me to wait till I was called, as I was, at the time, unfamiliar with their practices. I've not made the same mistake again, but I have noted that a couple of these pseudo gestapo tend to give parishioners dirty looks for such harmless things as heading to the bathroom, which I sometimes do when hearing mass. Now, I won't knock the purpose for these attempts to instill some kind of order as I'm not really familiar with how chaotic things were before these systems were put in place, but I will say that if ever it was a good idea, the cure has since become worse than the disease.
The saying power corrupts may be tired and old but it is ridiculously apt, and what immediately comes to mind when thinking about those old biddies who fancy themselves "policewomen of God" (a concept probably cooked by an overzealous parish priest) is a bit of dialogue between Steve Buscemi and an actor playing a parking attendant, whose name I've forgotten, which took place in the movie Fargo. In the film, Buscemi pulls into a parking lot, gets a ticket, doesn't park, then, upon immediately pulling out again, is compelled by the attendant to pay for the ticket. Annoyed, Buscemi says "I bet you think you're some kind of authority figure, with your little uniform." That's pretty much EXACTLY how to describe the attitudes of many of these post-menopausal women during the mass.
Well, if the church starts to lose parishioners to nearby churches, and I can think of at least two, in reevaluating their approach, the first thing they should give the axe are these ridiculous little stormtroopers.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Movies Made for Everyone That Pleased (Almost) No One
I'd be a consummate liar and hypocrite if I said that I was not at all entertained by the Speed Racer feature film when I watched it on DVD a few days ago; it was funny at some parts and exciting at others, and I honestly liked the story which propounded the arguably speculative but at the same time intriguing conspiracy theory that race victories are often decided in board rooms rather than on racetracks. Sure, I found a lot, and I mean a lot, wrong with it, but I still managed to enjoy myself for most of its 130 minutes.
That said, I understand why it bombed, primarily because it's a phenomenon I've seen before.
The first movie that comes to mind when I think of movies that tried to reach several audiences all at once is Titan A.E., the last feature-length animated film ever to be directed by one of my favorite animation wizards of the pre-Pixar era, Don Bluth, the director of An American Tail and The Secret of N.I.M.H. It was way too violent to be a kid's film (with several characters getting blown away and with one character snapping the neck of another) but never, even with Joss Whedon as one of its screenwriters and some really fantastic CGI blended in with the hand-drawn animation, quite seemed to cross over into sci-fi action territory. I, for one, liked it, but kind of had an inkling that its somewhat amorphous nature could, as it did, hurt its potential box-office. The real tragedy was how this movie apparently did for Don Bluth what Gigli did for one-time Oscar-nominated director Martin Brest. It's sad that this approach to animated filmmaking tanked because had it worked I could see a lot of comic books being made into films this way, and to my mind it is definitely nice to watch. Two attempts by Disney to make movies in this style, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, suffered similar fates at the box office, with Treasure Planet being one of the biggest box-0ffice turkeys of 2002. A Punisher film done in this anime hybrid style, reminiscent of the short-lived but fantastic HBO Spawn series, would probably have been a lot better than all of the forgettable live action films Marvel has failed to sell.
Another example I can think of, though this is slightly different, is Kingdom of Heaven, a movie that tried to be a historical epic in the vein of Braveheart and a political commentary on the struggle in Israel all at once, with director Ridley Scott and screenwriter William Monahan trying perhaps a little too hard not to antagonize any Muslim viewers. The film, while gorgeously shot and with a number of good points, ultimately meandered and sputtered at the box office as well, although a director's cut that has been released on DVD which had something like an additional half-hour of footage was allegedly a much better film than what made it into theaters.
Like both these films, Speed Racer is, in many ways, a fairly bold enterprise. While I wasn't a fan of the Japanese animated TV show on which the movie was based, I liked the idea of a major, big-budget racing movie, the first to be attempted since Renny Harlin's trainwreck titled Driven. I even liked that, from what I saw in the trailers, this movie, rather than try (and fail) to capture racing the way that Harlin did, the Wachowski brothers of Matrix fame/infamy were trying for a retro-futuristic, hyper reality.
The thing is, while they attempt to build their visuals around a fantastical world, they ground their script in the more "real" issues of big corporations running and fixing races. While they attempt to make a kid-friendly movie where the race winner drinks milk instead of champagne, they create races where crashes and deliberate collisions by drivers are commonplace. There's a fairly interesting amount of pseudo-science which vaguely explains how the cars are built and how they run, but all believability pretty much jumps out the window when one sees the cars pretty much defy all known laws of physics.
There's just too much going on at the same time for the brain to really process, and I've noticed that the people who've enjoyed themselves the most are my kids, to whom concerns like plot and credibility are pretty much superfluous.
There's a lot wrong with these movies, but they definitely deserve credit for trying something new. People who make these noble failures deserve some kind of pat on the back for trying something new, and well, for whatever it's worth, I'm giving it to them here.
That said, I understand why it bombed, primarily because it's a phenomenon I've seen before.
The first movie that comes to mind when I think of movies that tried to reach several audiences all at once is Titan A.E., the last feature-length animated film ever to be directed by one of my favorite animation wizards of the pre-Pixar era, Don Bluth, the director of An American Tail and The Secret of N.I.M.H. It was way too violent to be a kid's film (with several characters getting blown away and with one character snapping the neck of another) but never, even with Joss Whedon as one of its screenwriters and some really fantastic CGI blended in with the hand-drawn animation, quite seemed to cross over into sci-fi action territory. I, for one, liked it, but kind of had an inkling that its somewhat amorphous nature could, as it did, hurt its potential box-office. The real tragedy was how this movie apparently did for Don Bluth what Gigli did for one-time Oscar-nominated director Martin Brest. It's sad that this approach to animated filmmaking tanked because had it worked I could see a lot of comic books being made into films this way, and to my mind it is definitely nice to watch. Two attempts by Disney to make movies in this style, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, suffered similar fates at the box office, with Treasure Planet being one of the biggest box-0ffice turkeys of 2002. A Punisher film done in this anime hybrid style, reminiscent of the short-lived but fantastic HBO Spawn series, would probably have been a lot better than all of the forgettable live action films Marvel has failed to sell.
Another example I can think of, though this is slightly different, is Kingdom of Heaven, a movie that tried to be a historical epic in the vein of Braveheart and a political commentary on the struggle in Israel all at once, with director Ridley Scott and screenwriter William Monahan trying perhaps a little too hard not to antagonize any Muslim viewers. The film, while gorgeously shot and with a number of good points, ultimately meandered and sputtered at the box office as well, although a director's cut that has been released on DVD which had something like an additional half-hour of footage was allegedly a much better film than what made it into theaters.
Like both these films, Speed Racer is, in many ways, a fairly bold enterprise. While I wasn't a fan of the Japanese animated TV show on which the movie was based, I liked the idea of a major, big-budget racing movie, the first to be attempted since Renny Harlin's trainwreck titled Driven. I even liked that, from what I saw in the trailers, this movie, rather than try (and fail) to capture racing the way that Harlin did, the Wachowski brothers of Matrix fame/infamy were trying for a retro-futuristic, hyper reality.
The thing is, while they attempt to build their visuals around a fantastical world, they ground their script in the more "real" issues of big corporations running and fixing races. While they attempt to make a kid-friendly movie where the race winner drinks milk instead of champagne, they create races where crashes and deliberate collisions by drivers are commonplace. There's a fairly interesting amount of pseudo-science which vaguely explains how the cars are built and how they run, but all believability pretty much jumps out the window when one sees the cars pretty much defy all known laws of physics.
There's just too much going on at the same time for the brain to really process, and I've noticed that the people who've enjoyed themselves the most are my kids, to whom concerns like plot and credibility are pretty much superfluous.
There's a lot wrong with these movies, but they definitely deserve credit for trying something new. People who make these noble failures deserve some kind of pat on the back for trying something new, and well, for whatever it's worth, I'm giving it to them here.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Fool Me Once...
When I read the first issue of the Marvel Comics miniseries The Eternals by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr., I genuinely felt the story held the promise of great things to come. Seven issues later, I felt that the series had utterly failed to deliver on this promise and had basically spent the entire seven issues showcasing Romita's art and spinning its wheels. There were a lot things set up pretty well, but after seven issues there was no payoff to be found anywhere.
When the ongoing Eternals series was announced I understood what Gaiman's true imperative had been, which was to set-up the ongoing and whet people's appetites for these relatively obscure characters, even though he would pass the writer's baton to someone else.
I was sold on work of series artist Daniel Acuna after seeing a few preview pages, and wanting desperately to see some payoff after following a very expensive seven issues of Gaiman's miniseries I picked up the first storyarc. I had thought to review it in my multiply blog, which is where I post majority of my thoughts nowadays anyway, but I changed my mind and put my thoughts here because these are the first words I'm typing in a while that actually qualify as a tantrum.
After six issues, a little more exposition and character development, I'm still where I was when I bought this series, which was to be my "triumphant" return to comic-book collecting; feeling that I had been completely hoodwinked into thinking I'd be getting a complete story and not just some prolonged, unconsummated tease. The art is pretty (except for some annoyingly muddy colors), but this series doesn't even merit a review anymore.
I understand the writers' and editors' imperative to keep things interesting as this is now and ongoing series as opposed to a limited one, but the sales of the title seem to indicate that other readers feel exactly as I do. I've learned that in a desperate bid to boost sales, Marvel is tying the book into the X-Men to generate a little attention, but for my part I have never bought any comic just because it has "X" on the cover. Also, Acuna appears to be leaving, thus removing my only reason to keep following this title.
Thanks a lot for spoiling my "comeback," Marvel. And here I was thinking you actually wanted my money. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. If you manage to fool me again, well, I'm clearly hopeless.
When the ongoing Eternals series was announced I understood what Gaiman's true imperative had been, which was to set-up the ongoing and whet people's appetites for these relatively obscure characters, even though he would pass the writer's baton to someone else.
I was sold on work of series artist Daniel Acuna after seeing a few preview pages, and wanting desperately to see some payoff after following a very expensive seven issues of Gaiman's miniseries I picked up the first storyarc. I had thought to review it in my multiply blog, which is where I post majority of my thoughts nowadays anyway, but I changed my mind and put my thoughts here because these are the first words I'm typing in a while that actually qualify as a tantrum.
After six issues, a little more exposition and character development, I'm still where I was when I bought this series, which was to be my "triumphant" return to comic-book collecting; feeling that I had been completely hoodwinked into thinking I'd be getting a complete story and not just some prolonged, unconsummated tease. The art is pretty (except for some annoyingly muddy colors), but this series doesn't even merit a review anymore.
I understand the writers' and editors' imperative to keep things interesting as this is now and ongoing series as opposed to a limited one, but the sales of the title seem to indicate that other readers feel exactly as I do. I've learned that in a desperate bid to boost sales, Marvel is tying the book into the X-Men to generate a little attention, but for my part I have never bought any comic just because it has "X" on the cover. Also, Acuna appears to be leaving, thus removing my only reason to keep following this title.
Thanks a lot for spoiling my "comeback," Marvel. And here I was thinking you actually wanted my money. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. If you manage to fool me again, well, I'm clearly hopeless.
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Filipino's Resurgence in Comics, Here and Abroad
I'm all but retired from collecting monthly comics, and even from posting on this blog, which was purportedly supposed to be devoted to "pop culture" such as comics, movies, books and TV programs after I'd designated my "multiply" blog as the site of my ruminations and after I pretty much stopped following Formula One after watching Ferrari throw a potential driver's championship away. This blog has, for the last couple of months, actually felt by and large irrelevant as I find I have surprisingly little to say even though I've been busier, and happier, in the last year than I EVER have. Maybe the problem is that "tantrum" now sounds like a complete and utter misnomer. Still, someone once said not to get rid of the stuff I write as this is actually inventory.
Well, introspection aside, I thought it worth writing that even though 2008 may not have been the best year for comic enthusiasts in general in terms of the available reading material, it's been a great year for fans of Filipino comic book creators, who got to flex their artistic muscles in both local and foreign publications.
2008 was the year that Gerry Alanguilan concluded Elmer, his highly engaging, if flawed miniseries about talking chickens. It was the year Budjette Tan and Ka-Jo Baldissimo presented not just one but two collected editions of Trese, their refreshingly original and distinctly Filipino series about an investigator into the paranormal. It was the year that Arnold Arre, the creator of the beloved Mythology Class, launched another graphic novel.
It was also a continuation of the Filipino artist's long-running winning streak in drawing American comics. For eight months of this year, Secret Invasion, a Marvel miniseries drawn by Filipino Lienil Francis Yu, topped the sales charts, and this month has seen the launch of Marvels: Eye of the Camera, the sequel to the groundbreaking miniseries by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, with Filipino Jay Anacleto taking over the art chores from Ross this time around. Of course, Filipinos are making their presence known all over the comics landscape with artists like Carlo Pagulayan, Phillip Tan, and Mico Suayan to name a few, landing regular gigs among the big comics companies like Marvel, DC and Top Cow/Image, also to name a few.
Unfortunately, the recent financial crunch has meant another price hike for some mainstream comics, and the decrease in spending on luxury items, which is essentially what comics are, may inevitably hit the industry, but it's nice to know that, for this year at least, Filipino talent has continued to make quite an impression on comics readers around the world.
Well, introspection aside, I thought it worth writing that even though 2008 may not have been the best year for comic enthusiasts in general in terms of the available reading material, it's been a great year for fans of Filipino comic book creators, who got to flex their artistic muscles in both local and foreign publications.
2008 was the year that Gerry Alanguilan concluded Elmer, his highly engaging, if flawed miniseries about talking chickens. It was the year Budjette Tan and Ka-Jo Baldissimo presented not just one but two collected editions of Trese, their refreshingly original and distinctly Filipino series about an investigator into the paranormal. It was the year that Arnold Arre, the creator of the beloved Mythology Class, launched another graphic novel.
It was also a continuation of the Filipino artist's long-running winning streak in drawing American comics. For eight months of this year, Secret Invasion, a Marvel miniseries drawn by Filipino Lienil Francis Yu, topped the sales charts, and this month has seen the launch of Marvels: Eye of the Camera, the sequel to the groundbreaking miniseries by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, with Filipino Jay Anacleto taking over the art chores from Ross this time around. Of course, Filipinos are making their presence known all over the comics landscape with artists like Carlo Pagulayan, Phillip Tan, and Mico Suayan to name a few, landing regular gigs among the big comics companies like Marvel, DC and Top Cow/Image, also to name a few.
Unfortunately, the recent financial crunch has meant another price hike for some mainstream comics, and the decrease in spending on luxury items, which is essentially what comics are, may inevitably hit the industry, but it's nice to know that, for this year at least, Filipino talent has continued to make quite an impression on comics readers around the world.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Hollywood's Losing Battle: The War on Terror
For the last two years or so it has perplexed me that, for all of their filmmaking and marketing prowess, Hollywood seems utterly incapable of selling movies that touch, directly or tangentially, on the United States government's infamous "war on terror." I'm not speaking as any kind of entertainment insider and in fact, this topic was discussed in Time Magazine with probably a lot better insight than I could hope to give, but at the time the article was written, yet another work touching on the controversial conflict, Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and frequent Scott collaborator Russell Crowe, was just about to hit theaters. It was speculated at the time that it could finally end Hollywood's losing streak with the war, but at the end of the day, it didn't, failing to even open at number #2 on its opening weekend.
So as it stands Hollywood now has a zero batting average when it comes to selling feature-length films touching upon the war on terror. From Oscar winners like Reese Witherspoon (Rendition) to Jamie Foxx (The Kingdom) to Hollywood royalty like Tom Cruise (Lions for Lambs) and the aforementioned Crowe and DiCaprio, Tinseltown's efforts to lure moviegoers into the seats with their take on the war have been received with, at best, tentativeness and at worst, complete and utter indifference. Meryl Streep, it should be noted, starred in not just one but TWO flops on the war on terror: Rendition and Lions for Lambs. She has the track record to show she can sell a film, so she definitely isn't the problem. It isn't even much of a stretch to predict that the upcoming film Green Zone, from the tried and tested box-office duo of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass of Bourne fame, will suffer a similar fate at the tills. Universal Pictures, the film's distributor, has apparently yet to announce a release date despite the fact that the film was in the can several months ago. The widespread interest in Hollywood types to have their say on the war seems to have been tempered by the widespread rejection of audiences of just about every single movie thus far released on the topic.
The lingering question, really, is how does one explain the aversion of Joe Moviegoer (a very distant cousin of Joe the Plumber) to any and every take on the war on terror?
I don't buy that America isn't receptive to criticism; one need only look at the sensational box-office returns of Farenheit 9/11, which was essentially one long diatribe against the Bush Administration and its war on terror.
I don't even really have any ideas on what's behind the almost unanimous rejection of these movies, whether left OR right-leaning, but it's definitely some kind of sociological phenomenon considering the pedigree and box-office clout of filmmakers who've thrown their hats into the ring. I've never even actually seen any of these movies so I can't speak about their merits or lack thereof, but seeing such widespread rejection I can't help but take notice. Is the problem that the movies themselves aren't any good, or that their target audience just aren't ready to digest their subject matter?
It's a question Hollywood should be asking itself before bankrolling another project set in Iraq or even discussing, let alone critiquing, the war on terror. It's a shame because all things considered, it's a discussion that really should be encouraged.
So as it stands Hollywood now has a zero batting average when it comes to selling feature-length films touching upon the war on terror. From Oscar winners like Reese Witherspoon (Rendition) to Jamie Foxx (The Kingdom) to Hollywood royalty like Tom Cruise (Lions for Lambs) and the aforementioned Crowe and DiCaprio, Tinseltown's efforts to lure moviegoers into the seats with their take on the war have been received with, at best, tentativeness and at worst, complete and utter indifference. Meryl Streep, it should be noted, starred in not just one but TWO flops on the war on terror: Rendition and Lions for Lambs. She has the track record to show she can sell a film, so she definitely isn't the problem. It isn't even much of a stretch to predict that the upcoming film Green Zone, from the tried and tested box-office duo of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass of Bourne fame, will suffer a similar fate at the tills. Universal Pictures, the film's distributor, has apparently yet to announce a release date despite the fact that the film was in the can several months ago. The widespread interest in Hollywood types to have their say on the war seems to have been tempered by the widespread rejection of audiences of just about every single movie thus far released on the topic.
The lingering question, really, is how does one explain the aversion of Joe Moviegoer (a very distant cousin of Joe the Plumber) to any and every take on the war on terror?
I don't buy that America isn't receptive to criticism; one need only look at the sensational box-office returns of Farenheit 9/11, which was essentially one long diatribe against the Bush Administration and its war on terror.
I don't even really have any ideas on what's behind the almost unanimous rejection of these movies, whether left OR right-leaning, but it's definitely some kind of sociological phenomenon considering the pedigree and box-office clout of filmmakers who've thrown their hats into the ring. I've never even actually seen any of these movies so I can't speak about their merits or lack thereof, but seeing such widespread rejection I can't help but take notice. Is the problem that the movies themselves aren't any good, or that their target audience just aren't ready to digest their subject matter?
It's a question Hollywood should be asking itself before bankrolling another project set in Iraq or even discussing, let alone critiquing, the war on terror. It's a shame because all things considered, it's a discussion that really should be encouraged.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Madness and Brilliance of Tina Fey
I'd known about writer/comedienne/actress Tina Fey for quite awhile, but my first real exposure to her was the film Mean Girls, which she wrote and in which she starred as Lindsay Lohan's teacher. When I heard of the TV series 30 Rock, which she actually created based on her extensive experience as a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, I was quite keen on watching it but, for one reason or another, never got around to it.
Thanks to the wonder of the internet, however, I've been able to catch up on several episodes of the second season, and I dare say I love the show even more than I thought I would based on the ads I saw on TV! From the zany, rapid-fire writing of Fey and her team of writers to the knock-'em-out-of-the-park performance delivered by card-carrying Democrat Alec Baldwin, playing his antithesis, a staunch Republican in just about every episode I've watched, this show is pure gold. I easily enjoy this show a lot more than the last sitcom I followed with any semblance of regularity, which was Friends.
Maybe I'm at that stage of my life where I like stories about the workplace more than I do those about people's personal lives, and given that Friends was largely about the interpersonal dynamics of the six protagonists, mostly as far as their romantic relationships went, but whatever the reason, I am well and truly loving this show. I never liked Ally McBeal with its self-absorbed, self-pitying heroine, but oddly enough, Fey's Liz Lemon isn't exactly completely removed from the neurotic lawyer Callista Flockhart played for five years, and yet I totally connect with her character. What I like about her is how, even though she has issues, she doesn't act, the way Ally McBeal often did, like her problems are the most important in the world. No dancing babies here, folks.
And the best part is how, even though this show is, in every way that counts, Fey's baby, she doesn't hog the limelight. The world of 30 Rock is populated by fantastically insane characters, the notable of which being Baldwin's uber-prick Republican Jack Donaghue (sp?), though he is far from the only one. Even Jane Krakowski, who basically recycles her oversexed, busybody secretary from Ally McBeal, manages to make me guffaw time and time again.
It's nice to have something that really tickles the funny bone on a regular basis again. These days, being able to laugh is a truly precious commodity.
Thanks to the wonder of the internet, however, I've been able to catch up on several episodes of the second season, and I dare say I love the show even more than I thought I would based on the ads I saw on TV! From the zany, rapid-fire writing of Fey and her team of writers to the knock-'em-out-of-the-park performance delivered by card-carrying Democrat Alec Baldwin, playing his antithesis, a staunch Republican in just about every episode I've watched, this show is pure gold. I easily enjoy this show a lot more than the last sitcom I followed with any semblance of regularity, which was Friends.
Maybe I'm at that stage of my life where I like stories about the workplace more than I do those about people's personal lives, and given that Friends was largely about the interpersonal dynamics of the six protagonists, mostly as far as their romantic relationships went, but whatever the reason, I am well and truly loving this show. I never liked Ally McBeal with its self-absorbed, self-pitying heroine, but oddly enough, Fey's Liz Lemon isn't exactly completely removed from the neurotic lawyer Callista Flockhart played for five years, and yet I totally connect with her character. What I like about her is how, even though she has issues, she doesn't act, the way Ally McBeal often did, like her problems are the most important in the world. No dancing babies here, folks.
And the best part is how, even though this show is, in every way that counts, Fey's baby, she doesn't hog the limelight. The world of 30 Rock is populated by fantastically insane characters, the notable of which being Baldwin's uber-prick Republican Jack Donaghue (sp?), though he is far from the only one. Even Jane Krakowski, who basically recycles her oversexed, busybody secretary from Ally McBeal, manages to make me guffaw time and time again.
It's nice to have something that really tickles the funny bone on a regular basis again. These days, being able to laugh is a truly precious commodity.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
A Good Time to Be Broke
Financial crunches of late, both global and personal have severely curtailed my personal spending. The good news is, right now I don't really mind.
Everything on the consumer market that might vaguely interest me nowadays, from movies to comic books to toy cars to DVDS, has me feeling particularly underwhelmed. I stopped collecting albums/CDs a long time ago, and since becoming a lawyer I seem to have become increasingly less literate (as absurd as that sounds) as time goes by, with even comic books becoming a chore to read. But more on that later.
Now that I've seen Tropic Thunder and am only really looking forward to Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond caper, there is, rather blissfully, almost nothing I'm looking forward to spending my money on.
In the realm of film, I have to say there isn't much I'm looking forward to, save perhaps for Avatar, (James Cameron's first movie since the monumental Titanic), which looks, from all indications, to be that rarified Hollywood animal: an ORIGINAL blockbuster film, not one derived from a novel, a comic book, a TV show, a toy line, or a video game. That, unfortunately, won't be out until Christmas next year, but the good news is I don't see myself spending a whole lot of money on movies until then. I'm also looking forward to the sequel to Iron Man, the Marvel Comics Avengers movie (as opposed to the Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman stinkfest) and film adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender (not related to the Cameron project) and the European comic book sensation Tintin, but none of these movies will be out any earlier than 2010, so my wallet is destined to stay healthy between now and then, and any spending won't be on account of rushing to cinemas.
In terms of comic books, the anti-climactic-event-comic-book still seems all the rage these days, with Secret Invasion and Final Crisis topping the comic book charts and most Marvel comic books bearing an "embrace change" banner implying that Secret Invasion is likely to end on a low note with the marauding Skrulls somehow taking over the world or at least staking a huge chunk of its territory, as if real life weren't bleak enough. Considering Marvel, my bastion of comic book entertainment, is still very much into its addiction to shaking up the status quo every year I don't intend to give them business again any time soon. I can definitely see myself picking up collected editions of their Stephen King adaptations and some of their Spider-Man storylines down the line, but the compulsion to buy their books on a monthly basis, to which I was once a slave, is now completely gone, with no sign of it ever coming back.
With DVDs, well, with the Blu-Ray disc having won the format wars I find myself somewhat leery of spending large amounts of cash, whether on real or fake DVDs, on a product that was always destined to one day be antiquated but is now just counting the days till it goes the way of the Laser Disc. I don't have much of a collection to begin with, and although I still want to add Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk to my small and incomplete collection of Marvel movies, well, both the thought of them being outmoded and their prices are just too scary for me right now, especially given my limited funds.
As for my toy car addiction--I mean hobby--which kicked off in December of 2006 and raged for most of 2007 and a good chunk of this year, well, apparently the speed with which I could acquire the cars I liked was greater than the toymakers' ability to come out with new models because I now have everything all the models I want that are currently on the market. The only cars left that I still want to buy aren't even on the market yet, and, I hope, will stay that way for awhile. If I had my way I wouldn't want them to come out until sometime next year.
I don't even spend that much money on eating out anymore because quite frankly I really don't want to keep shopping for increasingly bigger pants every other year. Maybe, if I drink enough liters of water every morning and eat small enough meals, I'll be able to squeeze into my 34-inch pants again someday.
It's a good time to not have a whole lot of money for worldly pleasures, guilty or otherwise, because right now there aren't a whole lot of pleasures on which I'd like to spend it.
Everything on the consumer market that might vaguely interest me nowadays, from movies to comic books to toy cars to DVDS, has me feeling particularly underwhelmed. I stopped collecting albums/CDs a long time ago, and since becoming a lawyer I seem to have become increasingly less literate (as absurd as that sounds) as time goes by, with even comic books becoming a chore to read. But more on that later.
Now that I've seen Tropic Thunder and am only really looking forward to Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond caper, there is, rather blissfully, almost nothing I'm looking forward to spending my money on.
In the realm of film, I have to say there isn't much I'm looking forward to, save perhaps for Avatar, (James Cameron's first movie since the monumental Titanic), which looks, from all indications, to be that rarified Hollywood animal: an ORIGINAL blockbuster film, not one derived from a novel, a comic book, a TV show, a toy line, or a video game. That, unfortunately, won't be out until Christmas next year, but the good news is I don't see myself spending a whole lot of money on movies until then. I'm also looking forward to the sequel to Iron Man, the Marvel Comics Avengers movie (as opposed to the Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman stinkfest) and film adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender (not related to the Cameron project) and the European comic book sensation Tintin, but none of these movies will be out any earlier than 2010, so my wallet is destined to stay healthy between now and then, and any spending won't be on account of rushing to cinemas.
In terms of comic books, the anti-climactic-event-comic-book still seems all the rage these days, with Secret Invasion and Final Crisis topping the comic book charts and most Marvel comic books bearing an "embrace change" banner implying that Secret Invasion is likely to end on a low note with the marauding Skrulls somehow taking over the world or at least staking a huge chunk of its territory, as if real life weren't bleak enough. Considering Marvel, my bastion of comic book entertainment, is still very much into its addiction to shaking up the status quo every year I don't intend to give them business again any time soon. I can definitely see myself picking up collected editions of their Stephen King adaptations and some of their Spider-Man storylines down the line, but the compulsion to buy their books on a monthly basis, to which I was once a slave, is now completely gone, with no sign of it ever coming back.
With DVDs, well, with the Blu-Ray disc having won the format wars I find myself somewhat leery of spending large amounts of cash, whether on real or fake DVDs, on a product that was always destined to one day be antiquated but is now just counting the days till it goes the way of the Laser Disc. I don't have much of a collection to begin with, and although I still want to add Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk to my small and incomplete collection of Marvel movies, well, both the thought of them being outmoded and their prices are just too scary for me right now, especially given my limited funds.
As for my toy car addiction--I mean hobby--which kicked off in December of 2006 and raged for most of 2007 and a good chunk of this year, well, apparently the speed with which I could acquire the cars I liked was greater than the toymakers' ability to come out with new models because I now have everything all the models I want that are currently on the market. The only cars left that I still want to buy aren't even on the market yet, and, I hope, will stay that way for awhile. If I had my way I wouldn't want them to come out until sometime next year.
I don't even spend that much money on eating out anymore because quite frankly I really don't want to keep shopping for increasingly bigger pants every other year. Maybe, if I drink enough liters of water every morning and eat small enough meals, I'll be able to squeeze into my 34-inch pants again someday.
It's a good time to not have a whole lot of money for worldly pleasures, guilty or otherwise, because right now there aren't a whole lot of pleasures on which I'd like to spend it.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Starting and Ending the Summer On Top
Robert Downey Jr.'s story this year is really one for the books; this is the year he finally claimed what had been coming to him since being nominated for an Oscar for his sensational work in Sir Richard Attenborough's Chaplin: the title of box-office king. This has actually already been covered in an article published in Time magazine that featured an interview with Downey and came out some weeks before the release of his certified blockbuster Iron Man, but I thought to say something in view of the fact that two of his three projects this year, Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, have been bona fide number one box-office hits, being the first and last big hits of the 2008 U.S. summer box office.
The best part about Downey's story, though, is is that he didn't exactly disappear into the ether when he had his drug problem and emerge years later expecting be treated like the Hollywood royalty he was following his Oscar nod in 1993. No, aside from his trips to rehab, he's also kept himself busy with a variety of projects, some of them obviously just for the paycheck (The Shaggy Dog), while others with arguable entertainment value (Bowfinger, Gothika, In Dreams), while others still reminding people of his caliber as an actor (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Zodiac). In other words, when he nabbed the role of Tony Stark he wasn't exactly trying to cash in on his goodwill from Chaplin, or even from his stint on Ally McBeal.
Downey is an inspiration to underperforming slackers everywhere. He's the kid with the 180 I.Q. who failed all his subjects because his mind was elsewhere or he's busy smoking weed and who managed to get his head out of his ass a few years later and finally graduate. I'm sure it's been written elsewhere that this guy was once Hollywood's greatest wasted talent, but if it hasn't then allow me to coin the phrase. Well, it's now a thing of the past.
Also, for me the underperforming genius analogy isn't that far from the truth because what Downey brings to his roles is a distinct intelligence, something you don't quite get from Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. He's kind of like George Clooney that way, and if his portrayal of Tony Stark was criticized for being too Jack Sparrow, I think it's because he and Depp share the same mad-genius approach to eccentric characters like the ones they portrayed in their respective blockbusters. I'm absolutely champing at the bit to see him as a crazy Australian method actor who has his skin color altered to play a black man in Tropic Thunder. From what I've seen his performance looks out-and-out insane.
Welcome back, Robert. Please stay on the wagon this time so we moviegoers can bask in your greatness for a long time to come.
The best part about Downey's story, though, is is that he didn't exactly disappear into the ether when he had his drug problem and emerge years later expecting be treated like the Hollywood royalty he was following his Oscar nod in 1993. No, aside from his trips to rehab, he's also kept himself busy with a variety of projects, some of them obviously just for the paycheck (The Shaggy Dog), while others with arguable entertainment value (Bowfinger, Gothika, In Dreams), while others still reminding people of his caliber as an actor (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Zodiac). In other words, when he nabbed the role of Tony Stark he wasn't exactly trying to cash in on his goodwill from Chaplin, or even from his stint on Ally McBeal.
Downey is an inspiration to underperforming slackers everywhere. He's the kid with the 180 I.Q. who failed all his subjects because his mind was elsewhere or he's busy smoking weed and who managed to get his head out of his ass a few years later and finally graduate. I'm sure it's been written elsewhere that this guy was once Hollywood's greatest wasted talent, but if it hasn't then allow me to coin the phrase. Well, it's now a thing of the past.
Also, for me the underperforming genius analogy isn't that far from the truth because what Downey brings to his roles is a distinct intelligence, something you don't quite get from Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. He's kind of like George Clooney that way, and if his portrayal of Tony Stark was criticized for being too Jack Sparrow, I think it's because he and Depp share the same mad-genius approach to eccentric characters like the ones they portrayed in their respective blockbusters. I'm absolutely champing at the bit to see him as a crazy Australian method actor who has his skin color altered to play a black man in Tropic Thunder. From what I've seen his performance looks out-and-out insane.
Welcome back, Robert. Please stay on the wagon this time so we moviegoers can bask in your greatness for a long time to come.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Pixar and the Law of Diminishing Returns
Pixar Animation Studios is easily the king of the animation hill nowadays, in terms of both quality and box-office take. Of its nine feature-length films, only one has grossed less than $190 million in the United States: 1998's A Bug's Life. They average a healthy 90% or so on websites polling movie critic reactions like metacritic or rottentomatoes. Since the animated film feature award was introduced in 2001 Pixar have only lost it twice (to Shrek in '01 and Happy Feet in '06) and have more animated feature Oscars than any other studio. Their films, year in and year out, just seem to get better and better (with the exception of Cars, which left several critics cold). So things should, ideally, be all happy in Pixar land, right?
Well, maybe not necessarily.
Since the arguably underwhelming performance of A Bug's Life, Pixar movies experienced very healthy box-office returns with Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles each making at least a quarter of a billion dollars at the United States box office. Cars nearly reached the quarter of a billion benchmark as well. In terms of box-office, however, Ratatouille made heads turn by having both the lowest opening weekend box-office AND final box-office returns of any Pixar movie since A Bug's Life. In fact, it was estimated that allowing for inflation, Ratatouille is the lowest grossing movie ever to come from Pixar. It seems that although critics (and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) loved it, a lot of people were not thrilled with the thought of rats preparing gourmet food.
This year's WALL-E should have marked a return to form. Written and directed by Andrew Stanton, one of the masterminds behind Finding Nemo, Pixar's biggest hit to date, it's a superb film that should pretty easily walk away with yet another Best Animated Feature Oscar for the studio next February. Critics loved it. The protagonist is cute and lovable, the story is moving and relevant, and the visuals are astonishing. It DID make over $200 million dollars and surpassed Ratatouille's underwhelming (for Pixar) grosses. However, like that movie about the gourmet chef of a rat it looks like it'll sputter out long before the quarter billion mark, which Pixar films used to hurdle without popping a sweat. Taking inflation since the release of those older films into account and the chasm becomes that much bigger.
My question, then, is: what one earth is going on here? We're talking about a company that makes some of the best MOVIES, let alone animated ones, around. With our childhood heroes like Spielberg and Lucas now producing tripe like the latest Indiana Jones movie and the Star Wars prequels (including a VERY poorly received cartoon prequel), these guys feel like the only true pioneers left (i.e., filmmakers that make their living off purely original, as opposed to adapted, material) with passion and vision. Since the traditional animation industry basically breathed its last a few years ago these guys have taken the baton and have led animated films into a new age. It got kind of crazy two years ago when something like a dozen CGI films came out, but things have since settled down again and the last two years have had a much more reasonable number of films come out.
It's hard to form any real box-office trends from Pixar movies considering that, with the exception of Toy Story 2 and the upcoming sequel to Cars, each movie they come up with is a fresh one and stands or fails on its own merits or weaknesses, but it is genuinely dismaying to me that WALL-E didn't do better at the box-office considering it easily stands head and shoulders above anything else out there in movie theaters. I liked it better than my previous favorite for the year, Iron Man, and certainly better than the much ballyhooed The Dark Knight. Though we're essentially talking apples and oranges, it appears the critics liked it better, too.
There's no point in prescribing any cure for this apparent downtrend because Pixar are, and will probably remain, better at what they do than anyone else. Audiences will watch what they want to watch, and no one can tell them otherwise. I'm just pointing out that for a film so in keeping with everything that has made Pixar such a giant of the industry to perform poorly relative to its predecessors is slightly perturbing.
If I were to hazard some "advice," it would be that, maybe, just maybe, audiences are looking for something new. Considering that Pixar's next offering will have 3-D portions, maybe they've already figured that out, and I hope their leap of faith pays off, because if anyone deserves to be rewarded for boldly going where no one has gone before, it's them.
Well, maybe not necessarily.
Since the arguably underwhelming performance of A Bug's Life, Pixar movies experienced very healthy box-office returns with Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles each making at least a quarter of a billion dollars at the United States box office. Cars nearly reached the quarter of a billion benchmark as well. In terms of box-office, however, Ratatouille made heads turn by having both the lowest opening weekend box-office AND final box-office returns of any Pixar movie since A Bug's Life. In fact, it was estimated that allowing for inflation, Ratatouille is the lowest grossing movie ever to come from Pixar. It seems that although critics (and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) loved it, a lot of people were not thrilled with the thought of rats preparing gourmet food.
This year's WALL-E should have marked a return to form. Written and directed by Andrew Stanton, one of the masterminds behind Finding Nemo, Pixar's biggest hit to date, it's a superb film that should pretty easily walk away with yet another Best Animated Feature Oscar for the studio next February. Critics loved it. The protagonist is cute and lovable, the story is moving and relevant, and the visuals are astonishing. It DID make over $200 million dollars and surpassed Ratatouille's underwhelming (for Pixar) grosses. However, like that movie about the gourmet chef of a rat it looks like it'll sputter out long before the quarter billion mark, which Pixar films used to hurdle without popping a sweat. Taking inflation since the release of those older films into account and the chasm becomes that much bigger.
My question, then, is: what one earth is going on here? We're talking about a company that makes some of the best MOVIES, let alone animated ones, around. With our childhood heroes like Spielberg and Lucas now producing tripe like the latest Indiana Jones movie and the Star Wars prequels (including a VERY poorly received cartoon prequel), these guys feel like the only true pioneers left (i.e., filmmakers that make their living off purely original, as opposed to adapted, material) with passion and vision. Since the traditional animation industry basically breathed its last a few years ago these guys have taken the baton and have led animated films into a new age. It got kind of crazy two years ago when something like a dozen CGI films came out, but things have since settled down again and the last two years have had a much more reasonable number of films come out.
It's hard to form any real box-office trends from Pixar movies considering that, with the exception of Toy Story 2 and the upcoming sequel to Cars, each movie they come up with is a fresh one and stands or fails on its own merits or weaknesses, but it is genuinely dismaying to me that WALL-E didn't do better at the box-office considering it easily stands head and shoulders above anything else out there in movie theaters. I liked it better than my previous favorite for the year, Iron Man, and certainly better than the much ballyhooed The Dark Knight. Though we're essentially talking apples and oranges, it appears the critics liked it better, too.
There's no point in prescribing any cure for this apparent downtrend because Pixar are, and will probably remain, better at what they do than anyone else. Audiences will watch what they want to watch, and no one can tell them otherwise. I'm just pointing out that for a film so in keeping with everything that has made Pixar such a giant of the industry to perform poorly relative to its predecessors is slightly perturbing.
If I were to hazard some "advice," it would be that, maybe, just maybe, audiences are looking for something new. Considering that Pixar's next offering will have 3-D portions, maybe they've already figured that out, and I hope their leap of faith pays off, because if anyone deserves to be rewarded for boldly going where no one has gone before, it's them.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
ATTENTION SAM RAIMI AND COMPANY
I never bought into the fanboy ranting that proclaimed Batman Begins as the best superhero movie of all time. I mainly adhered to the tried and true maxim "to each his own," but I also had a number of reasons why, while I enjoyed the movie, a lot, even, I don't consider it one of my all time favorites. Most of my reasons had to do with the time Bruce Wayne actually donned the mask.
I've heard similar criticisms about the Spider-Man movies, and pretty much wrote them off to that aforesaid maxim. There was one critic on one site who just kept ranting about how untrue the movie was to the character and how fake the special effects looked (which I found true for the first and much of the third installment but not the second) but most of his ranting just seemed like irrational fanboy hate. Fortunately I actually met someone who could actually articulate what it is he really disliked about the movie: the complete absence of Spider-Man's witty quips.
Now that The Dark Knight is, even adjusting for ticket price differentials, on its way to becoming the highest grossing comic-book movie of all time, it's dawning on me that there are a lot more fans who would have plunked down some more money to watch the Spider-Man movies again if the mythology had been tweaked more because I know for certain that as a comic-book character Spider-Man is at least AS popular as Batman.
Apart from Heath Ledger's death which was probably good for many of the glowing reviews as well as a few tens of millions in grosses (the way Brandon Lee's death arguably enabled his swansong The Crow to make about forty million more dollars than it probably would have had he lived), TDK benefits from being the most faithful page-to-screen comic-book adaptation ever.
Thinking about it now, the problems I had with the script and story devices are problems I would have with the comics in general. I had thought to devote a generous portion of a blog post to a discourse on why Nolan's and Ledger's purportedly "realistic" Joker is a caricatured, inadequate representation of evil considering that most evil in this world, even the worst kind, is motivated by some personal gain and not some insatiable penchant for destruction, but I stopped myself because I realized that this was how the latter-day Joker was written: as the never-ending chaos that perpetually foils Batman's never-ending quest for order in Gotham City. I understood at last why Christopher Nolan "gets it" completely and while Sam Raimi, as noble as his intentions and efforts are (at least in the first two movies), does not.
As a big-screen comic-book hero, Spider-Man could easily match if not exceed Batman in terms of outright popularity. After all, the box-office records set by the first movie stood for years and Sam Raimi's magnus opus will still be the first movie to ever make $100 million on its opening weekend. But there is still a cache of fans that won't give it repeat business because as a page-to-screen translation, something has been lost. The guy who mentioned it a couple of years ago was right on the money: he's missing his snark.
Spider-Man's witty dialogue is what makes him more entertaining than Batman, Superman, Iron Man, the Hulk and all of the superheroes, adapted or waiting to be adapted, together.
Out of the mask, Peter Parker is a luckless loser without money or much of a career to speak of, which is a very compelling aspect of the mythology considering what an intelligent person he is. Raimi gets that. In fact, Raimi's Parker is as close to Stan Lee's vision as you could hope to ever see on the big screen.
But when he puts the mask on, Peter Parker turns into something else altogether, and that's not a bad thing. Spidey guru Peter David put it best in a relatively recent Spider-Man comic book when he, through Spider-Man, explained that being in a mask was somehow "liberating" which enabled him to talk the way he did.
I used to dismiss the possibility of a movie Spider-Man wisecracking by rationalizing that it would be much tougher to choreograph the soaring action scenes, especially those of the second movie, with such dialogue, but recently, I saw something that convinced me otherwise: the new cartoon series The Spectacular Spider-Man. This may be a Saturday morning cartoon, but in many, many respects it's written with much more nuance than many of the movies (especially the third one) and well and truly opened my eyes. I'd absolutely love to have a season of this on DVD, as the dialogue and characterizations are wonderfully faithful and even a little updated, the action is off-the-wall FANTASTIC, and quite crucially, the fight scenes FEATURE the trademark quips.
It was upon watching this that I realized and finally came to acknowledge Raimi's shortcomings in adapting Spider-Man's adventures for the big screen. He GETS Peter out of the costume but doesn't have a clue how he's supposed to act when he's wearing it.
When in costume, Spidey is SUPPOSED to be cocky. He's supposed to have a swagger to him, and it's not SUPPOSED to be a bad thing, the way Raimi made it out to be in the third movie. His one cocky line "I guess you haven't heard, I'm the Sheriff round these parts" in Spider-Man 3, apart from being utterly painful to hear, strongly suggested that Raimi didn't or doesn't believe that Spider-Man should make wisecracks. I understand now why that would bother fans.
Well, here's the thing, Sam: if you profess to love Lee's and Ditko's Spidey as opposed to the later stuff by other creators, then you should know, by just perusing your first or collected editions, that the wiseass as Spider-Man is as integral to Lee's scripts as his money problems and responsibility hangups. This was not added on by later writers; it was an idiosyncrasy conceived by Lee himself. Try to understand, Sam: it's not a superfluity at all; in fact, in enriches the character's mythology by creating a fascinating dichotomy within him.
Spider-Man is a supremely confident and assured superhero who spends most of his time trapped in a loser/wimp's body. It is in donning his mask that he is able to set this side of himself free. When he is Spider-Man suddenly the money problems and other inadequacies in his life fall away, and he is able to bask in the glory of being super-powered. In fact, this scenario was deliberately engineered by Lee because in suggesting that Peter gets "high" on being Spidey, he presents an interesting dilemma of responsibility where Spider-Man might be shirking his other obligations to the likes of Aunt May by playing superhero.
The cockiness, confidence and wisecracks, in short, are an INDISPENSABLE part of the Spider-Man mythos, just as much as the luckless loser that Peter Parker is.
While the action sequences in the Spider-Man films (especially the second one) are really cool to watch, they do not project enough of that confidence, if at all.
Come to think of it, ROBERT DOWNEY JR. does a better job of selling Spider-Man's snark...too bad he plays IRON MAN, who isn't really known for it. Maybe he should trade his red and gold for a little red and blue? Well, maybe if he were twenty years or so younger...
Spider-Man 4 is due out in a few years, and Hollywood and fanboys being the way they are, the pressure will probably be on to equal if not exceed the heights that TDK is now scaling. Heck, the pressure will even be on to equal if not exceed the standard of quality Marvel's very own studio has set with Iron Man. I'd rather not think in those terms, but considering the first three movies have demonstrated the law of diminishing returns whereas the latest Batman movie has squarely defied it, Raimi might want to and quite frankly SHOULD reevaluate his narrative approach to arguably the most beloved comic book hero of all.
I've heard similar criticisms about the Spider-Man movies, and pretty much wrote them off to that aforesaid maxim. There was one critic on one site who just kept ranting about how untrue the movie was to the character and how fake the special effects looked (which I found true for the first and much of the third installment but not the second) but most of his ranting just seemed like irrational fanboy hate. Fortunately I actually met someone who could actually articulate what it is he really disliked about the movie: the complete absence of Spider-Man's witty quips.
Now that The Dark Knight is, even adjusting for ticket price differentials, on its way to becoming the highest grossing comic-book movie of all time, it's dawning on me that there are a lot more fans who would have plunked down some more money to watch the Spider-Man movies again if the mythology had been tweaked more because I know for certain that as a comic-book character Spider-Man is at least AS popular as Batman.
Apart from Heath Ledger's death which was probably good for many of the glowing reviews as well as a few tens of millions in grosses (the way Brandon Lee's death arguably enabled his swansong The Crow to make about forty million more dollars than it probably would have had he lived), TDK benefits from being the most faithful page-to-screen comic-book adaptation ever.
Thinking about it now, the problems I had with the script and story devices are problems I would have with the comics in general. I had thought to devote a generous portion of a blog post to a discourse on why Nolan's and Ledger's purportedly "realistic" Joker is a caricatured, inadequate representation of evil considering that most evil in this world, even the worst kind, is motivated by some personal gain and not some insatiable penchant for destruction, but I stopped myself because I realized that this was how the latter-day Joker was written: as the never-ending chaos that perpetually foils Batman's never-ending quest for order in Gotham City. I understood at last why Christopher Nolan "gets it" completely and while Sam Raimi, as noble as his intentions and efforts are (at least in the first two movies), does not.
As a big-screen comic-book hero, Spider-Man could easily match if not exceed Batman in terms of outright popularity. After all, the box-office records set by the first movie stood for years and Sam Raimi's magnus opus will still be the first movie to ever make $100 million on its opening weekend. But there is still a cache of fans that won't give it repeat business because as a page-to-screen translation, something has been lost. The guy who mentioned it a couple of years ago was right on the money: he's missing his snark.
Spider-Man's witty dialogue is what makes him more entertaining than Batman, Superman, Iron Man, the Hulk and all of the superheroes, adapted or waiting to be adapted, together.
Out of the mask, Peter Parker is a luckless loser without money or much of a career to speak of, which is a very compelling aspect of the mythology considering what an intelligent person he is. Raimi gets that. In fact, Raimi's Parker is as close to Stan Lee's vision as you could hope to ever see on the big screen.
But when he puts the mask on, Peter Parker turns into something else altogether, and that's not a bad thing. Spidey guru Peter David put it best in a relatively recent Spider-Man comic book when he, through Spider-Man, explained that being in a mask was somehow "liberating" which enabled him to talk the way he did.
I used to dismiss the possibility of a movie Spider-Man wisecracking by rationalizing that it would be much tougher to choreograph the soaring action scenes, especially those of the second movie, with such dialogue, but recently, I saw something that convinced me otherwise: the new cartoon series The Spectacular Spider-Man. This may be a Saturday morning cartoon, but in many, many respects it's written with much more nuance than many of the movies (especially the third one) and well and truly opened my eyes. I'd absolutely love to have a season of this on DVD, as the dialogue and characterizations are wonderfully faithful and even a little updated, the action is off-the-wall FANTASTIC, and quite crucially, the fight scenes FEATURE the trademark quips.
It was upon watching this that I realized and finally came to acknowledge Raimi's shortcomings in adapting Spider-Man's adventures for the big screen. He GETS Peter out of the costume but doesn't have a clue how he's supposed to act when he's wearing it.
When in costume, Spidey is SUPPOSED to be cocky. He's supposed to have a swagger to him, and it's not SUPPOSED to be a bad thing, the way Raimi made it out to be in the third movie. His one cocky line "I guess you haven't heard, I'm the Sheriff round these parts" in Spider-Man 3, apart from being utterly painful to hear, strongly suggested that Raimi didn't or doesn't believe that Spider-Man should make wisecracks. I understand now why that would bother fans.
Well, here's the thing, Sam: if you profess to love Lee's and Ditko's Spidey as opposed to the later stuff by other creators, then you should know, by just perusing your first or collected editions, that the wiseass as Spider-Man is as integral to Lee's scripts as his money problems and responsibility hangups. This was not added on by later writers; it was an idiosyncrasy conceived by Lee himself. Try to understand, Sam: it's not a superfluity at all; in fact, in enriches the character's mythology by creating a fascinating dichotomy within him.
Spider-Man is a supremely confident and assured superhero who spends most of his time trapped in a loser/wimp's body. It is in donning his mask that he is able to set this side of himself free. When he is Spider-Man suddenly the money problems and other inadequacies in his life fall away, and he is able to bask in the glory of being super-powered. In fact, this scenario was deliberately engineered by Lee because in suggesting that Peter gets "high" on being Spidey, he presents an interesting dilemma of responsibility where Spider-Man might be shirking his other obligations to the likes of Aunt May by playing superhero.
The cockiness, confidence and wisecracks, in short, are an INDISPENSABLE part of the Spider-Man mythos, just as much as the luckless loser that Peter Parker is.
While the action sequences in the Spider-Man films (especially the second one) are really cool to watch, they do not project enough of that confidence, if at all.
Come to think of it, ROBERT DOWNEY JR. does a better job of selling Spider-Man's snark...too bad he plays IRON MAN, who isn't really known for it. Maybe he should trade his red and gold for a little red and blue? Well, maybe if he were twenty years or so younger...
Spider-Man 4 is due out in a few years, and Hollywood and fanboys being the way they are, the pressure will probably be on to equal if not exceed the heights that TDK is now scaling. Heck, the pressure will even be on to equal if not exceed the standard of quality Marvel's very own studio has set with Iron Man. I'd rather not think in those terms, but considering the first three movies have demonstrated the law of diminishing returns whereas the latest Batman movie has squarely defied it, Raimi might want to and quite frankly SHOULD reevaluate his narrative approach to arguably the most beloved comic book hero of all.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
How The Dark Knight Turned Out to Be Good For Robert Downey, Jr.
I only just read a little blurb on yahoo! news about how Robert Downey, Jr., now known to the world as Tony Stark/Iron Man, recently had to come down to earth after riding on cloud nine for a few months following the runaway success of Marvel Comics' first independently-financed film. It seemed he was reveling in his newfound status as fanboy god, but eventually came to the realization that if it got to his head, he may well be looking at yet another post-Chaplin downward spiral. Nothing was actually said about The Dark Knight's success having anything to do with his sudden flash of sobriety, but the article did say he was regarded as the mastermind of the greatest comic-book movie of all time, until The Dark Knight came out. There's something in the subtext (perhaps the slant of the article) that suggested that the overwhelming success of TDK in a season that had up until that point belonged to Iron Man might have pointed out to the star of the latter movie that, hey, he's mortal after all. Good thing, too, because at least we fans know he won't do what Tobey Maguire did when the time to make Spider-Man 2 came around and claim some kind of injury while holding out his hand for mucho bucks.
Now, while I liked Iron Man over The Dark Knight, I won't bother entering into debates on artistic merit. However, one point I will fiercely defend is how Downey, Jr., with his Howard- Hughes-meets-Hugh-Hefner swagger and his credible portrayal of Tony Stark's incredible intellect, was much more instrumental to bringing Iron Man, as a film, to life than Christian Bale, with his giggle/wince-inducing impression of Kevin Conroy (which really sounds like a lame version of a twelve-year old trying to sound like Clint Eastwood) was to bringing TDK alive. Everyone, even the fans, knows that TDK is the late Heath Ledger's movie, as his portrayal of Batman's archnemesis the Joker was what received the most attention. For my money, even Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two-Face stole the show from Bale. In fact, in the story as well as in the actual performances, Bale/Batman is pretty much just along for the ride. Not so with Iron Man. Even amid solid performances by pros like Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow, Downey, Jr. stood head and shoulders above them all. Even people who dismiss the movie as mediocre cannot help but salute what was essentially a bravura performance that only the most fastidious of purists would bother to decry.
The next Batman movie won't have Ledger, or his death, to raise its profile, but Downey Jr. will, barring his falling off the wagon or worse, definitely be back for more Tony Stark, and if it's one thing he needs more than anything it's to maintain his fantastic sense of focus on the portrayal of the character. I don't imagine he would have been able to do that if he remained too intoxicated on his success this year. The guy has shown the way for anyone who wants to portray a Marvel character (or anyone who's considering returning to play a Marvel character) and though he no longer has the #1 movie of 2008 on his resume, he's not about to be forgotten anytime soon.
Will Iron Man 2 eventually eclipse the records set by TDK? Well, buoyed as that movie was by all things Ledger, I don't think so. But if solid, if not record-breaking box-office is the tradeoff for more and more amazing performances by the greatest-actor-ever-to-resurrect-his-career-from -the-dead (I'd like to secure a copyright to this phrase if I may) then may Iron Man movies never ascend to the number #1 spot of any year in which they are released. Downey, Jr., and his fans the world over, will be all the better for it.
Now, while I liked Iron Man over The Dark Knight, I won't bother entering into debates on artistic merit. However, one point I will fiercely defend is how Downey, Jr., with his Howard- Hughes-meets-Hugh-Hefner swagger and his credible portrayal of Tony Stark's incredible intellect, was much more instrumental to bringing Iron Man, as a film, to life than Christian Bale, with his giggle/wince-inducing impression of Kevin Conroy (which really sounds like a lame version of a twelve-year old trying to sound like Clint Eastwood) was to bringing TDK alive. Everyone, even the fans, knows that TDK is the late Heath Ledger's movie, as his portrayal of Batman's archnemesis the Joker was what received the most attention. For my money, even Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two-Face stole the show from Bale. In fact, in the story as well as in the actual performances, Bale/Batman is pretty much just along for the ride. Not so with Iron Man. Even amid solid performances by pros like Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow, Downey, Jr. stood head and shoulders above them all. Even people who dismiss the movie as mediocre cannot help but salute what was essentially a bravura performance that only the most fastidious of purists would bother to decry.
The next Batman movie won't have Ledger, or his death, to raise its profile, but Downey Jr. will, barring his falling off the wagon or worse, definitely be back for more Tony Stark, and if it's one thing he needs more than anything it's to maintain his fantastic sense of focus on the portrayal of the character. I don't imagine he would have been able to do that if he remained too intoxicated on his success this year. The guy has shown the way for anyone who wants to portray a Marvel character (or anyone who's considering returning to play a Marvel character) and though he no longer has the #1 movie of 2008 on his resume, he's not about to be forgotten anytime soon.
Will Iron Man 2 eventually eclipse the records set by TDK? Well, buoyed as that movie was by all things Ledger, I don't think so. But if solid, if not record-breaking box-office is the tradeoff for more and more amazing performances by the greatest-actor-ever-to-resurrect-his-career-from -the-dead (I'd like to secure a copyright to this phrase if I may) then may Iron Man movies never ascend to the number #1 spot of any year in which they are released. Downey, Jr., and his fans the world over, will be all the better for it.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Ultimate Marvel: Redundant?
When the Ultimate Marvel Universe was launched in 2000, the regular Marvel Universe was a highly problematic place. Quality of the product and sales were both down. Company President Bill Jemas and editor-in-chief Joe Quesada The idea of the new line was to enable a whole new wave of creators to tell stories completely free of the decades of continuity and editorial missteps that now hobbled the mainline universe and the creators working on it.
Well, eight years have passed and now the mini-universe which has grown in both books and characters, is now saddled with continuity of its own, which, in my opinion, has not been very well-managed. From a core universe of three books, Ultimates, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Ultimate X-Men, the line has expanded into four regular books including Ultimate Fantastic Four and a whole slew of miniseries. Of the two creators who launched the books, only Brian Michael Bendis remains, with the likes of Mark Millar, Adam Kubert, Mark Bagley, and Bryan Hitch having moved on to other things.
While he remains the writer on Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis himself, along with Millar, is now one of the pillars on which the mainstream Marvel Universe now stands. (Incidentally, Bendis can claim the sole distinction of having the only comic book published in the 2000s to have gone for over 40 issues with sales in excess of 100,000 units, namely New Avengers.) Morever, because Bendis and Millar have moved over to the mainstream Marvel U, they've bought their "edgy, hip and relevant" sensibilities with them, and as a result the Marvel Universe has taken on a lot of the characteristics that used to be unique to the Ultimate universe with events like Civil War and now Secret Invasion. Sales are good, and even fan reaction to the latest miniseries, so it's clear that the Marvel Universe is a much healthier place than it was when Jemas and Quesada created Ultimate Marvel.
Going back to Ultimate Marvel, it appears, from a creative standpoint, to have taken a nosedive. The line's flagship title, The Ultimates, has, in the hands of new series writer Jeph Loeb, gone from wall-to-wall action interspersed with scathing political commentary to a pastiche of its former self with absolutely infantile dialogue (think of the worst of the 1960s dialogue mixed with the worst of the Rob Liefeld-era Image Comics dialogue, and that's now how the characters talk), gratuitous and meaningless guest appearances by such grossly overexposed characters as Spider-Man, Venom and, of course, Wolverine, and next to no respect for anything that has previously been established. Worst of all, it appears that Quesada is now putting the fate of the line in Loeb's hands, as indicated by some recent solicitations that shows that Loeb is writing several of the line's annuals in addition to the planned miniseries Ultimatum, which is meant to revitalize the line. Sales of Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four, once right up there with the big boys, are barely blips on the radar, and Ultimate Spider-Man, even though it still has founding creator Bendis on board, isn't much better off.
It seems to me like the Ultimate Marvel U has served its purpose of generating interest in Marvel characters again in time for the release of their movies, as was the case with Spider-Man and the X-Men. The unofficially dubbed "616" or mainline Marvel universe is now as healthy as a horse, while Ultimate U has gone from looking like the "New Year Infant" to the "Outgoing Year Old Man" in its nine-year run. The Ultimates is the only title that seems to have any real durability at the top end of the sales charts, and it really seems to have very little left that make it any more "edgy" and "relevant" to readers than the mainline Marvel Universe. I'm sure the question on the minds of Marvel fans is what exactly the company's long-term plan for the line is.
Well, eight years have passed and now the mini-universe which has grown in both books and characters, is now saddled with continuity of its own, which, in my opinion, has not been very well-managed. From a core universe of three books, Ultimates, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Ultimate X-Men, the line has expanded into four regular books including Ultimate Fantastic Four and a whole slew of miniseries. Of the two creators who launched the books, only Brian Michael Bendis remains, with the likes of Mark Millar, Adam Kubert, Mark Bagley, and Bryan Hitch having moved on to other things.
While he remains the writer on Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis himself, along with Millar, is now one of the pillars on which the mainstream Marvel Universe now stands. (Incidentally, Bendis can claim the sole distinction of having the only comic book published in the 2000s to have gone for over 40 issues with sales in excess of 100,000 units, namely New Avengers.) Morever, because Bendis and Millar have moved over to the mainstream Marvel U, they've bought their "edgy, hip and relevant" sensibilities with them, and as a result the Marvel Universe has taken on a lot of the characteristics that used to be unique to the Ultimate universe with events like Civil War and now Secret Invasion. Sales are good, and even fan reaction to the latest miniseries, so it's clear that the Marvel Universe is a much healthier place than it was when Jemas and Quesada created Ultimate Marvel.
Going back to Ultimate Marvel, it appears, from a creative standpoint, to have taken a nosedive. The line's flagship title, The Ultimates, has, in the hands of new series writer Jeph Loeb, gone from wall-to-wall action interspersed with scathing political commentary to a pastiche of its former self with absolutely infantile dialogue (think of the worst of the 1960s dialogue mixed with the worst of the Rob Liefeld-era Image Comics dialogue, and that's now how the characters talk), gratuitous and meaningless guest appearances by such grossly overexposed characters as Spider-Man, Venom and, of course, Wolverine, and next to no respect for anything that has previously been established. Worst of all, it appears that Quesada is now putting the fate of the line in Loeb's hands, as indicated by some recent solicitations that shows that Loeb is writing several of the line's annuals in addition to the planned miniseries Ultimatum, which is meant to revitalize the line. Sales of Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four, once right up there with the big boys, are barely blips on the radar, and Ultimate Spider-Man, even though it still has founding creator Bendis on board, isn't much better off.
It seems to me like the Ultimate Marvel U has served its purpose of generating interest in Marvel characters again in time for the release of their movies, as was the case with Spider-Man and the X-Men. The unofficially dubbed "616" or mainline Marvel universe is now as healthy as a horse, while Ultimate U has gone from looking like the "New Year Infant" to the "Outgoing Year Old Man" in its nine-year run. The Ultimates is the only title that seems to have any real durability at the top end of the sales charts, and it really seems to have very little left that make it any more "edgy" and "relevant" to readers than the mainline Marvel Universe. I'm sure the question on the minds of Marvel fans is what exactly the company's long-term plan for the line is.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Hollywood vs. Comics: Let's Get it On!
Forget any perceived/contrived battle between Iron Man and The Dark Knight. This summer a much more momentous battle is taking place which could determine the future of comic book movies in general: the battle between the studio making a superhero movie without a comic-book origin, and the comic-book company making a Hollywood blockbuster without a Hollywood studio.
In one corner, we have Marvel studios which has come out with two self-produced movies this year, the first being the wildly successful Iron Man and the second being the somewhat more low-key Incredible Hulk. In the other corner, we have Hollywood, which has had varying degrees of success with its comic-book free superhero movies, the best of which would have to be The Incredibles while the worst of which would have to be the abysmal My Super Ex-Girlfriend. The latest addition to this line of comics-free superhero movies is Sony Pictures' Hancock, starring Hollywood's closest thing to a sure thing, Will Smith.
Iron Man and Incredible Hulk carry impressive budgets, casts and overall production value. The Incredibles won two Oscars, while Hancock stars the most successful movie star in Hollywood today, and boasts the visual effects talents of multiple-Oscar winner John Dykstra (Spider-Man).
Iron Man opened to critical accolades and box-office success. The Incredible Hulk was less warmly received, but was still considered by many to be a step-up from its studio-generated predecessor, 2003's The Hulk.
Hancock, while a genuine box-office success, was met with derision from reviewers and some fans.
So the question arises, between Hollywood studios and comic-book companies (i.e. Marvel only, so far), which player is winning the battle to make a successful, durable movie franchise without the help of the other?
My money's on Marvel.
Hancock may have benefited from some pretty snappy special effects and Will Smith's megawatt charisma, but apart from a brilliant premise it's little more than empty spectacle. It may have made money, but I believe it will go down in history as just another feather in Will Smith's cap, another movie that his starpower sold, rather than something that can stand on its own merit.
Iron Man, however, is something else altogether. It has, in a word, outclassed every single superhero movie that has come before it, in terms of story, character development, AND overall production value, the film is just about beyond reproach. It strikes the perfect balance between fun and gravitas that has eluded even the more ambitious comic book adaptations. Furthermore, it and Hulk have laid the groundwork for SO much more to come. Not only that, it effectively resurrected the career of a man once thought to be one of Hollywood's greatest wasted talents: Robert Downey Jr.
So Marvel, in my opinion, has gotten the message across to Hollywood in general and Sony Pictures in particular that the studios still need them a lot more than they need the studios.
THAT'S a wake-up call that creativity-challenged Hollywood would do well to heed. If they want to come up with really GOOD superhero movies, they should learn that you don't just build a rich superhero mythology at some stupid studio pitch meetings.
In one corner, we have Marvel studios which has come out with two self-produced movies this year, the first being the wildly successful Iron Man and the second being the somewhat more low-key Incredible Hulk. In the other corner, we have Hollywood, which has had varying degrees of success with its comic-book free superhero movies, the best of which would have to be The Incredibles while the worst of which would have to be the abysmal My Super Ex-Girlfriend. The latest addition to this line of comics-free superhero movies is Sony Pictures' Hancock, starring Hollywood's closest thing to a sure thing, Will Smith.
Iron Man and Incredible Hulk carry impressive budgets, casts and overall production value. The Incredibles won two Oscars, while Hancock stars the most successful movie star in Hollywood today, and boasts the visual effects talents of multiple-Oscar winner John Dykstra (Spider-Man).
Iron Man opened to critical accolades and box-office success. The Incredible Hulk was less warmly received, but was still considered by many to be a step-up from its studio-generated predecessor, 2003's The Hulk.
Hancock, while a genuine box-office success, was met with derision from reviewers and some fans.
So the question arises, between Hollywood studios and comic-book companies (i.e. Marvel only, so far), which player is winning the battle to make a successful, durable movie franchise without the help of the other?
My money's on Marvel.
Hancock may have benefited from some pretty snappy special effects and Will Smith's megawatt charisma, but apart from a brilliant premise it's little more than empty spectacle. It may have made money, but I believe it will go down in history as just another feather in Will Smith's cap, another movie that his starpower sold, rather than something that can stand on its own merit.
Iron Man, however, is something else altogether. It has, in a word, outclassed every single superhero movie that has come before it, in terms of story, character development, AND overall production value, the film is just about beyond reproach. It strikes the perfect balance between fun and gravitas that has eluded even the more ambitious comic book adaptations. Furthermore, it and Hulk have laid the groundwork for SO much more to come. Not only that, it effectively resurrected the career of a man once thought to be one of Hollywood's greatest wasted talents: Robert Downey Jr.
So Marvel, in my opinion, has gotten the message across to Hollywood in general and Sony Pictures in particular that the studios still need them a lot more than they need the studios.
THAT'S a wake-up call that creativity-challenged Hollywood would do well to heed. If they want to come up with really GOOD superhero movies, they should learn that you don't just build a rich superhero mythology at some stupid studio pitch meetings.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Wish Fulfillment
My return to comics after several months of doing other things isn't exactly a permanent one but it was motivated by something I never thought I'd have the pleasure of seeing: Chris Bachalo's art in a Spider-Man comic-book.
Now, in the second half of my two decades of collecting comic books, there's always been something that's bothered me. It has struck me that every single A-list artist of the last twenty years or so has, at one point or another, worked on a book starring Wolverine, while the same cannot be said for Spider-Man, who is arguably Marvel's flagship character. The legendary Jim Lee, my favorite example, had never drawn more than a cover or cameo appearance by Spider-Man before he took seemingly permanent residence over at DC, where he has drawn, by contrast, a rather healthy selection of their characters on several occasions. Name any high-profile Marvel artist who's done Spider-Man, and the odds are high that he's drawn Wolverine too. Romitas Sr. and Jr., David Finch, Steve McNiven, Humberto Ramos, and Joe Quesada, to name a very, very few, all drew Wolverine, with Quesada doing enough Wolverine covers to fill a freaking poster book.
Chris Bachalo was once among the Wolverine/X-Men artists who'd never drawn Spider-Man in a mainstream comic book, and that happily changed when he was drafted to join the Brand New Day crew. He didn't quite give me goose pimples of joy like Steve McNiven did last January with his run, but I have wanted to see this guy's take on Spider-Man for a long, long time and he does not disappoint.
The three-part story, written by Zeb Wells, which pits Spider-Man against a Mayan god of mischief and the scientist who unleashes it, and a blizzard, is nothing particularly new or earth shattering, which is just fine with me. After seeing Spider-Man's world turned upside-down and inside out, I could use a little settling into a new status quo. It ties up nicely after the three issues are done without shameless nods to future stories down the line (though they're there if you want them) or hints that "everything will be changed forever." In short, I can go back to not collecting with more or less complete closure.
What I enjoyed, apart from Bachalo's art, which was the main attraction, was how FUNNY Spider-Man was again. Dan Slott did it well, and now Wells, who's actually no stranger to Spider-Man has done a good job, too. It really makes me wonder why J. Michael Straczynski never seemed to know how to make Spider-Man crack wise.
I'd only just been exchanging e-mail with someone asking me if and when I'd get back into comics and even suggested I check out a new Wolverine (ugh) arc drawn by McNiven, which from the outside looking in feels like yet another "The End" story which is silly considering Paul Jenkins practically just did one. Well, I found a reason to pick up some comics again, and I dare say I enjoyed them, though not quite enough for me to decide I'm back for good.
Now, in the second half of my two decades of collecting comic books, there's always been something that's bothered me. It has struck me that every single A-list artist of the last twenty years or so has, at one point or another, worked on a book starring Wolverine, while the same cannot be said for Spider-Man, who is arguably Marvel's flagship character. The legendary Jim Lee, my favorite example, had never drawn more than a cover or cameo appearance by Spider-Man before he took seemingly permanent residence over at DC, where he has drawn, by contrast, a rather healthy selection of their characters on several occasions. Name any high-profile Marvel artist who's done Spider-Man, and the odds are high that he's drawn Wolverine too. Romitas Sr. and Jr., David Finch, Steve McNiven, Humberto Ramos, and Joe Quesada, to name a very, very few, all drew Wolverine, with Quesada doing enough Wolverine covers to fill a freaking poster book.
Chris Bachalo was once among the Wolverine/X-Men artists who'd never drawn Spider-Man in a mainstream comic book, and that happily changed when he was drafted to join the Brand New Day crew. He didn't quite give me goose pimples of joy like Steve McNiven did last January with his run, but I have wanted to see this guy's take on Spider-Man for a long, long time and he does not disappoint.
The three-part story, written by Zeb Wells, which pits Spider-Man against a Mayan god of mischief and the scientist who unleashes it, and a blizzard, is nothing particularly new or earth shattering, which is just fine with me. After seeing Spider-Man's world turned upside-down and inside out, I could use a little settling into a new status quo. It ties up nicely after the three issues are done without shameless nods to future stories down the line (though they're there if you want them) or hints that "everything will be changed forever." In short, I can go back to not collecting with more or less complete closure.
What I enjoyed, apart from Bachalo's art, which was the main attraction, was how FUNNY Spider-Man was again. Dan Slott did it well, and now Wells, who's actually no stranger to Spider-Man has done a good job, too. It really makes me wonder why J. Michael Straczynski never seemed to know how to make Spider-Man crack wise.
I'd only just been exchanging e-mail with someone asking me if and when I'd get back into comics and even suggested I check out a new Wolverine (ugh) arc drawn by McNiven, which from the outside looking in feels like yet another "The End" story which is silly considering Paul Jenkins practically just did one. Well, I found a reason to pick up some comics again, and I dare say I enjoyed them, though not quite enough for me to decide I'm back for good.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Meryl Streep: Superhero Killer?
I've a few minutes before I'm off to work so I'll squeeze in just one more blog post...
Two years ago, 20th Century Fox's The Devil Wears Prada opened the same weekend as the much-hyped Superman Returns in American cinemas, in what is known in Hollywood as a counterprogramming maneuver. The idea was that considering that SR was by and large a male-oriented movie, women were a neglected audience for that weekend and would want to watch something else.
Now, counterprogramming doesn't always work. It didn't work too well for Sony this year, which tried to counter the Paramount release Iron Man with chick magnet(TM) Patrick Dempsey's Made of Honor, only to discover that women liked Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow better than Dempsey and his leading lady. If I could think of more examples of counterprogramming, I'd love to make this post about the phenomenon in general, but none spring to mind right now.
Going back to Streep, the stratagem of opening against SR paid off for Devil. Whether it was because it was a genuinely good movie or because there was absolutely zero romantic chemistry between Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane and Brandon Routh's Superman, the women who went to see Devil paid a total of $27 million dollars during a weekend the Man of Steel had been expected to crush all box office records. Though SR still opened at number 1, it was an underwhelming opening at best and it was observed that Streep had stolen some of its thunder.
Oddly enough, Universal Pictures has decided to pull something similar by releasing the film adaptation of the popular musical Mamma Mia on the same weekend as the massively-hyped The Dark Knight. The adaptation stars Meryl Streep.
I don't see Streep pulling off a similar upset with TDK, which will draw on a solid fanbase due to the success of Batman Begins three years ago. SR was always iffy considering that the last Superman film nearly twenty years earlier had tanked and there was still a question mark as to how much demand there still was for another movie starring the character. (For the record, there was enough for the film to gross $200 million dollars flat, but not enough for it to recoup its nearly $300 million price tag, including production and marketing costs.) TDK faces no such question marks. People definitely want their Batman.
But I find it very interesting that based on the grosses of one movie, a studio seems to think of Streep as the anti-DC hero. This could be coincidence, but then one wonders why Universal didn't try to play its film against Iron Man or Indiana Jones.
Well, arguably, Batman doesn't have any real love interest. Katie Holmes was most definitely one of the weak links of a mostly sublime Batman Begins. Sure, some mention is made of the fact that Maggie Gyllenhaal, has replaced Holmes as Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes, but that's never been much of a selling point. So maybe that lack of a romantic angle influenced Universal's choice of release date.
However, the dynamic hyped up in the trailers appears to be that of Christian Bale's Batman going up against Heath Ledger's Joker and this could ultimately be Mamma Mia's undoing on its opening weekend. Ledger's death is something women have most certainly mourned, and the fact that TDK contains his last complete performance may have just provided the movie with some entirely unsolicited and scathingly effective publicity. In short, it's possible to the point of being probable that people who don't give a damn about Batman will line up to see Heath Ledger's last hurrah.
Of course, movies made for women tend to be the kind that play on and on (like Titanic) and don't just depend on an opening weekend bonanza (though the recent Sex and the City, which made a killing on its opening weekend only to plummet in the weekends that followed, seemed to buck that trend), unlike their testosterone-fueled counterparts, so maybe all is not lost for Meryl Streep's latest effort.
However, if the marketplace is broad enough to accommodate both films, as it appears to have been this weekend with both Wanted and WALL-E raking in over FIFTY MILLION dollars apiece in the United States on opening weekend, then maybe fans of both Batman and Streep covering Abba songs will have reason to cheer in three weeks' time.
Two years ago, 20th Century Fox's The Devil Wears Prada opened the same weekend as the much-hyped Superman Returns in American cinemas, in what is known in Hollywood as a counterprogramming maneuver. The idea was that considering that SR was by and large a male-oriented movie, women were a neglected audience for that weekend and would want to watch something else.
Now, counterprogramming doesn't always work. It didn't work too well for Sony this year, which tried to counter the Paramount release Iron Man with chick magnet(TM) Patrick Dempsey's Made of Honor, only to discover that women liked Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow better than Dempsey and his leading lady. If I could think of more examples of counterprogramming, I'd love to make this post about the phenomenon in general, but none spring to mind right now.
Going back to Streep, the stratagem of opening against SR paid off for Devil. Whether it was because it was a genuinely good movie or because there was absolutely zero romantic chemistry between Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane and Brandon Routh's Superman, the women who went to see Devil paid a total of $27 million dollars during a weekend the Man of Steel had been expected to crush all box office records. Though SR still opened at number 1, it was an underwhelming opening at best and it was observed that Streep had stolen some of its thunder.
Oddly enough, Universal Pictures has decided to pull something similar by releasing the film adaptation of the popular musical Mamma Mia on the same weekend as the massively-hyped The Dark Knight. The adaptation stars Meryl Streep.
I don't see Streep pulling off a similar upset with TDK, which will draw on a solid fanbase due to the success of Batman Begins three years ago. SR was always iffy considering that the last Superman film nearly twenty years earlier had tanked and there was still a question mark as to how much demand there still was for another movie starring the character. (For the record, there was enough for the film to gross $200 million dollars flat, but not enough for it to recoup its nearly $300 million price tag, including production and marketing costs.) TDK faces no such question marks. People definitely want their Batman.
But I find it very interesting that based on the grosses of one movie, a studio seems to think of Streep as the anti-DC hero. This could be coincidence, but then one wonders why Universal didn't try to play its film against Iron Man or Indiana Jones.
Well, arguably, Batman doesn't have any real love interest. Katie Holmes was most definitely one of the weak links of a mostly sublime Batman Begins. Sure, some mention is made of the fact that Maggie Gyllenhaal, has replaced Holmes as Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes, but that's never been much of a selling point. So maybe that lack of a romantic angle influenced Universal's choice of release date.
However, the dynamic hyped up in the trailers appears to be that of Christian Bale's Batman going up against Heath Ledger's Joker and this could ultimately be Mamma Mia's undoing on its opening weekend. Ledger's death is something women have most certainly mourned, and the fact that TDK contains his last complete performance may have just provided the movie with some entirely unsolicited and scathingly effective publicity. In short, it's possible to the point of being probable that people who don't give a damn about Batman will line up to see Heath Ledger's last hurrah.
Of course, movies made for women tend to be the kind that play on and on (like Titanic) and don't just depend on an opening weekend bonanza (though the recent Sex and the City, which made a killing on its opening weekend only to plummet in the weekends that followed, seemed to buck that trend), unlike their testosterone-fueled counterparts, so maybe all is not lost for Meryl Streep's latest effort.
However, if the marketplace is broad enough to accommodate both films, as it appears to have been this weekend with both Wanted and WALL-E raking in over FIFTY MILLION dollars apiece in the United States on opening weekend, then maybe fans of both Batman and Streep covering Abba songs will have reason to cheer in three weeks' time.
R.I.P. Michael Turner
I neither personally knew nor was I a fan of the recently departed comic-book artist and creator Michael Turner, but I found myself affected by news of his death just the same considering that at 37, he was barely four years older than me. There's something particularly perturbing about people going well before what appears to be their time. It wasn't a year ago that Mike Wieringo, another comic book artist, a health nut and a vegetarian, suddenly died of a heart attack. Turner, in comparison, had been battling with cancer for the better part of a decade, if not longer, so his may have been a little less of a shock, but is no less tragic.
Whether it's the fact that I suffered my own recent loss, or the fact that young death simply doesn't feel right, I find myself mourning these deaths even though these people, Wieringo and Turner didn't have anything to do with me or vice versa. As a collector of comic books (once and possibly someday again) it's always sad to see the talent pool shrink, especially in the case of Wieringo, as I followed his last regular series, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, until his departure in issue 11 or so.
My wife tells me that people have been dying young since the beginning of time, to which I replied that precisely what saddens me is how, in this day and age, with so much medical technology at people's disposal, they can't seem to eradicate things like disease and the death of young people.
If there's any comfort I can take it's that these guys lived and died doing what they loved; they were comic-book creators, and both of them had stuff in the pipeline right up until the time of their death. They were, in that sense, at least able to live life on their own terms.
And who knows, with no end to the oil price rise in sight, maybe they're the lucky ones...
Whether it's the fact that I suffered my own recent loss, or the fact that young death simply doesn't feel right, I find myself mourning these deaths even though these people, Wieringo and Turner didn't have anything to do with me or vice versa. As a collector of comic books (once and possibly someday again) it's always sad to see the talent pool shrink, especially in the case of Wieringo, as I followed his last regular series, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, until his departure in issue 11 or so.
My wife tells me that people have been dying young since the beginning of time, to which I replied that precisely what saddens me is how, in this day and age, with so much medical technology at people's disposal, they can't seem to eradicate things like disease and the death of young people.
If there's any comfort I can take it's that these guys lived and died doing what they loved; they were comic-book creators, and both of them had stuff in the pipeline right up until the time of their death. They were, in that sense, at least able to live life on their own terms.
And who knows, with no end to the oil price rise in sight, maybe they're the lucky ones...
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