Going Back to (Film) School

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Way back in February I wrote a post called "Filling in the Blind Spots" over on Celluloid Moon.  You can read it in its entirety here, but the following excerpt pretty much tells the story:

I mentioned in my first post that I had two over-arching goals:

  1. Improve my overall writing with regards to film criticism
  2. Expand the breadth and scope of the films I see... and try my damnedest to erase the enormous stockpile of DVDs I have lying around the house.

 Embedded in the second item is catching up on those movies that seem to be required viewing for anyone who wants to claim to be a "cinephile" or even a "film buff" in like company. The problem is I've always been pretty resistant to people pushing stuff on me, especially when it comes with the tag of:

"You're not a real ________ unless you've seen ________."

(fill in your preferred term/film)

Time to "Man up" and admit it: There's a gaping hole in my film vocabulary that can't be completely explained away by things like scarcity or disinterest. I've been plugging those holes a few at a time, usually late at night so as to not cause a stir in the hen house that is my circle of friends/acquaintances I can discuss movies with. But in the interest of full disclosure I think I'll turn my education process into a monthly (to start) feature here at Celluloid Moon. Every month I'll take one movie and go into a little more detail than the general reviews that are posted, and talk about the film's impact both on the world of cinema and me personally.

And of course I left it at that.

Oh, I watched a lot of film.  Even had a small schedule of which films I wanted to hit, beginning with RAGING BULL, a particular sore spot considering how much I revere Martin Scorsese as both a director and a film historian.  Watched it, let a couple of days pass, and forgot about it.  

In April I picked up the Criterion edition of Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING, meaning for that to be the second in the series.  Still haven't watched it.

Things were looking pretty grim.  I was watching movies, sure, but the desire to really watch them, pick them apart and see what makes them tick couldn't have been further away.  Maybe it didn't help that most of what I was watching was on a similar level to TERMINATOR SALVATION, but this wasn't something I could lay at the feet of Christian Bale.

A few weeks ago, however, a biography of 70s film icon Hal Ashby came out.  Ashby was a director I knew nothing about.  I had heard his name before, and years ago I had seen THE LAST DETAIL during a Jack Nicholson marathon, but his filmography and influence as a whole had escaped me.  It didn't escape the people I read, though: everywhere there was talk about the incredible run of films he had in the 70s, topped only by his downfall and early death in the 80s.  The more I got to reading, the more surprised I was that I was so unfamiliar with any of his films.

So, to kick things off again, I'm starting with a look at some of his films, beginning with the cult classic HAROLD AND MAUDE, moving to BOUND FOR GLORY and finally settling on a film I have been meaning to see for years, BEING THERE.

When that's done I'll circle around back to RAGING BULL and finally get to DO THE RIGHT THING.  In the meantime, to keep my chops up I'm going back to writing short, quickie reviews for everything I watch in between.  Don't know if I'll post everything over at Celluloid Moon and refer to it here or go hog wild and post it everywhere, but hopefully this time the 2009 movie goal will stick.

As they pop up feel free to leave your thoughts, agreements, disagreements, or suggestions for films I can see to "shore up the cracks" so to speak.

A Forgotten Fragment

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I was cleaning out some of the files on my laptop when I came across what looks like the opening paragraph to something, although for the life of me I can't recall where I was going with it.:

 

 “Don’t stop looking.”

The loose array of particles that constituted his body hurtled forward, the air screaming in a rush around him, through him. The sound was so loud it was almost silence, white noise that allowed him to pick up on the calls of the universe.His form no longer solid, he still recalled his body, and it was that shadow of form in his memory that processed the sensations as he moved faster and faster.

I haven't made any progress on the novel from last November - it sits there casting a baleful glare every time I open my Documents folder.  Another novel idea, which is basically a series of short stories wrapped in an ill-fitting narrative also plaintively begs for attention - maybe even more than the straight novel since it's the one my wife read and really enjoyed.  There's a single piece of "flash fiction" written: ostensibly a Western, although there's the faintest echo (more in the backstory I created in my head to frame the thing than in the actual words themselves) of fantasy in there.  It's done, and I'm reasonably happy with it, enough that it's currently sitting somewhere waiting on someone to decide if/when they're going to publish it.  If not, there's a better-than-average chance I'll post here for anyone interested in what kind of fiction I write.

My coffee's cold, I need a shave, and the crickets in the basement are frightening my wife.

Where is My Vote

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When I initially heard about the elections in Iran and the subsequent claims of vote tampering, riots, and communication blockades, I opted not to mention it on the blog.  Better people than I am are talking about it: CNET has a great article about the fumbling of the US major media outlets (particularly CNN) while all the real action was out of necessity happening over on Twitter and Facebook.  The New York Times and the BBC have been posting some great information on the larger scene, providing comprehensive stories and facts on the larger aspects of the trouble in the country.

But the real action - the shutting down of bandwidth, detaining of journalists, and the massive rioting and terror were passed and transmitted underground - via whatever means were available to the people ducking in alleys and corners, away from the gas and batons.  For a truly visceral, "on-the-street" look at what's happening, Andrew Sullivan over at the Atlantic has been updating constantly, showing the tweets and messages Iranians are posting in an attempt to get the word out about just how bad things have devolved since the results of the elections.  Back-pedal to June 12th and read - the terror of what's going on is balanced by how incredible are the efforts of everyday normal people to get the truth out.

Normally, this isn't something I would comment on in this blog: when I'm not writing about horror novels, video games, giant robots or other geek-related pursuits, I tend to stick to more innocuous, family stuff...whatever happens to be personally affecting me at the time.  But after reading the stories, it refused to go away.  I know part of it is due to the straight facts of the story, the repression of speech and other basic freedoms we take for granted, the parallels (tenuous or otherwise) to what happened here in 2000 (a lot less violent, though when viewed in the long run one could and probably has argued that point as well), but there's something deeper that's catching in my gut, hooking in and refusing to come out.

I think it's a feeling of hopelessness, not for those in the country dealing head on with events, but for myself, for feeling like there's something I should do, but knowing what it is, or even where to begin to search for an answer.  A lot of people are showing solidarity by using the green box image above as their profile picture on Facebook and Twitter (or, alternately, this image from The Atlantic) - when I get home tonight I'll be doing the same, but it seems woefully inadequate. 

Right now I think the best thing I can do is read, learn, and pass on.  Click on the links, follow your own sources, and see what's going on. 

I don't have the words to impress how big I think this issue is, but they do, those who are there and those with a louder voice and a wider reach than someone like me, just sitting here frustrated and trying to learn what I can.

NYT article about the CNN "fail" and the underground transmitting via Twitter

The start of Andrew Sullivan's coverage (starts about halfway down the screen).  This is where it all is - if nothing else the photographs will tell you everything you need to know.

image taken from Andrew Sullivan and The Daily Dish @ The Atlantic

Terminator Salvation (2009)

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It’s impossible to point a finger at any one person or thing that brings TERMINATOR SALVATION down to such a mediocre movie. Movies are a collaborative process (so “bunk” to the whiners who argue over whether the screenwriter or the actor or the director is the sole architect responsible for a film), and as much as I would like to lay blame on the all-over-the-place script, Christian Bale’s performance or McG’s overall direction, I can’t. Everyone has a piece of this mud pie.

It’s not a total disaster by any stretch of the imagination, and I went into things hopeful for some fun action if nothing else. And I got that – the action scenes are spectacular. McG rails against the current fad of close-up, shaky camera movement that turns most action scenes into a jumbled mess (which is why it’s so weird that the fad persists) and keeps everything very clear and fluid, never letting the audience get lost in the sequence. When he struts his stuff it’s amazing: there’s a helicopter crash scene that’s perhaps one of the best camera moves I’ve seen in years.

There are some good performances to be had as well: Sam Worthington plays the real “lead” (as far as I’m concerned) of TERMINATOR SALVATION and gives us a preview of what he’ll be bringing to the table in the much anticipated AVATAR coming later this year, and Anton Yelchin does a great Michael Biehn playing a young Kyle Reese, which is kind of funny when you think about his role in STAR TREK channeling Walter Koenig’s Chekov. Even Moon Bloodgood, whom I only know as a television actress brings a spark to the scenes she’s in.

But unfortunately none of that is enough to overcome complete non-performances from the likes of Bryce Dallas Howard and Common, both of whom have proven they can give good performances in other films. But the real culprit is bale, who uses one setting the entire movie, which is basically a riff on his BATMAN persona. His John Connor scowls and broods, shouts odd phrases for no reason, and basically detracts from the story in almost every scene he’s in. I’ve heard that originally John Connor was supposed to be a minor role in SALVATION, which the focus being on Worthington and Yelchin’s characters, but when Bale came aboard the script was overhauled to feature him.

Bad mistake if that was the case. Connor’s presence only serves to cut from a more interesting story, one that has parallels to the other TERMINATOR films. And since those scenes need to be cut into the film, the story of Worthington’s Marcus Wright, a condemned man in 2003 who awakens in 2018 in the middle of the war between humanity and the machines, suffers.

I feel bad for McG. He’s got a definite eye for things, and even though I wasn’t the target audience for them, the CHARLIE’S ANGELS films were fin and striking in a way that was fresh and new at the time they were released. Maybe a lot of this was studio interference: how else to explain the cumbersome and sloppy prologue that’s tacked on to the beginning, the text exposition that immediately follows? All of this could have been integrated with a lot more finesse into the middle of the movie, except that no, we have to make room for all the Bale brooding. The editing and assembling of the different storylines does nothing except to ramp up tension only to deflate it a few moments later.

I wish we had a great TERMINATOR film for the 21st century. I wanted this to be it. My hope now is that the inevitable deluxe/ultimate/limited DVD that comes out has some sort of “Director’s Cut” that addresses some of these issues. A few suggestions from this humble (and admittedly inexperienced, as mentioned before) writer follows:

  1. Ditch the opening scene with Marcus and Helena Bonham Carter’s Cancer Lady character, as well as the scrolling exposition. Open with the battle. You can always communicate the lost information later in the scenes between Marcus and Bloodgood at the fire.
  2. Cut back Bale’s role. After the opening battle, let’s stay on Marcus’s story until he’s brought to John Connor at the resistance headquarters.
  3. Ditch Bryce Dallas Howard all together. Nothing against her, but she’s useless in this particular role. It’s kind of embarrassing, actually.
  4. The ending: without giving too much away, there’s a great opportunity to “fix” John Connor in the labs, essentially making him like Marcus and setting up a larger inner conflict for future use instead of the ultimately wussy “heart” scene that coincidentally makes John Connor look like a huge dick instead of the hero he needs to be.

Come on guys, I know there a really good, if not great movie in here somewhere…