I finally got to the theater with my wife last week to see The Blind Side, after wanting to for weeks. We caught a matinee and found the film just as good as I’d been told; The film, which had received mixed and generally unenthusiastic reviews but terrific box office was the kind of film that Hollywood rarely makes–aimed at the huge American flyover demographic (not just the usual targeted teens and young adults, but football-loving, church-going middle America of all ages) that rarely has films very knowing about their culture. The very smart production was directed by John Lee Hancock (The Rookie) who understands this audience, and starred perennial American sweetheart Sandra Bullock who again demonstrated her range as Leigh Anne Tuohy, an ubercompetent mom and interior decorator and a beardless, Stetson-less Tim McGraw as her businessman husband Sean. The lives of this Memphis power couple and their two children changed when, seeing a hulking black teen walking along the road one cold night, they take him home and make him one of their family. Michael Oher has huge educational deficits brought about by his non-existent family life, having been abandoned by his single mother as a child. Michael had previously slept on the sofa of another black couple and the husband had sought Michael’s welfare by placing him in the same all-white Christian school the Tuohy children attended, Leigh Anne, with Sean’s admiring support becomes Michael’s chief advocate. Michael is played by Quinton Aaron, who brings a moving understatement to the gentle giant’s gradual realization that this family loves him and that he has both academic and athletic potential ready to blossom.
Yes, this is another of the triumph-of-the-underdog sports genre that American audiences love, but the football scenes are relatively small compared to the human drama of this true story. The love and faith poured into Michael by the Tuohy’s and his teachers results in his being recruited by Ole Miss and then last year’s recruitment into the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. As a film studies professor interested in all sorts of adaptations, I couldn’t help wondering which moments and incidents were real and what had necessarily been scripted to compress months of relationship development that Michael made with his adoptive family. That side of The Blind Side will be examined tonight, Jan. 29th on ABC’s 20/20 where the real-life family (pictured above) is interviewed. The show’s website features video and text apparently already available before tonight’s airing. I expect the show will confirm just how close the film was to this true-life tale of compassion and triumph.
December 29, 2009
The Blind Side–Reel and Real
December 22, 2009
Movie Review: Avatar
As I had noted in my preview last month, Avatar looked like it was cobbled together from the plots of various older movies like Dances With Wolves, Return of the Jedi(primitive tribes overcome evil, more advanced oppressors), and Cameron’s own Aliens(arrogant and cocky Marines get more than they bargained from resourceful aliens). And folks, that’s exactly what happens. No surprises whatsoever.
And yes, the director does give us spectacle rarely seen in less ambitious films–Cameron knows how to fill up the screen with giant bulldozers and soaring mega-trees. There are moments of visual beauty in his evocation of the alien world Pandora and knowing that the Na Vi, the 12-foot blue-skinned dragon-riding natives are achieved through the greatest advance yet in motion capture technology is indeed a wondrous technical achievement.
But it goes back to the story–Jake Sully, the paraplegic Marine arrives on Pandora to join the Avatar program wherein his brain will be connected to a cloned body of a native, his titular avatar.,From the time we learn that this will allow him to infiltrate and win the hearts and minds of the tribe to sell them on the need to move away from a prized deposit of a rare mineral, we know who the good guys really are.
When Jake gains the confidence of the tribe through a coming of age training and initiation process, we know it’s only a matter of time after he starts walking in another alien’s moccasins that his heart and mind will be with the natives. Thus it is that Jake becomes the race’s leader against the armored might of the invaders. The last third of the movie is the final confrontation between the Na Vi led by Jake and the Marines led by the malevolent Col. Quaritch( below left).
Yes, the soldiers are supposed to be former Marines who now serve as security for yet another evil corporation, but the military bearing, dress and ethos of the boys in green clearly presents itself as the American military, the liberal stereotype of rabid baby killers dominant since the Vietnam war.
Of course as long as you are pitting stereotypical noble savages against stereotypical bad soldiers you have to have a hidden advantage for the natives that will give them a way to achieve what has never happened in history when a larger and more powerful force has invaded the land of a primitive people–the Na Vi hold to a pantheistic belief that connects them–literally–to nature. The blue-skinned aliens have braided hair which conceals fine tendrils which bond with the counterparts on their six-legged horse and dragon creatures. The people worship a nature goddess Ewya, which is basically Mother Earth, er, Pandora the spirit that connects all life on the planet. (Possible spoiler alert:) Their sacred trees are large willows with glowing white noodle-like branches and leaves that contain the memories and voices of their ancestors. When you die, your energy returns to the earth and is taken up by the trees in a Circle of Life recycling process. Let’s just say that you don’t want to make Momma angry.
Colonel Quaritch and his corporate superior plan a “shock and awe” campaign on the native in order to fight “terror with terror.” I tried but couldn’t find a relevant subtext of the story with anything going on today. Nobody can with intellectual coherence present current US military efforts in Iraq or Afghanistan as remotely resembling the assault on Pandora. Of course there’s the environmental sermon: Earth is a ecologically devastated brown husk, apparently so because the nations didn’t sign the Kyoto treaty or act in Copenhagen, or do anything to stop global warming back in the 21st century, we’ve now gone on to destroying other planets. Being a big Hollywood director means being able to visualize your most exaggerated fears for profit.
The film is bound to stir controversy on any of these fronts. The spiritual one has already begun with Ross Douthat’s New York Times essay on Hollywood pantheism. It got a sharp retort from blogger David Disalvo. Another blogger is bugged by the long time pattern of Hollywood films featuring white guys who go native and wind up leading the people of color against their enemies.
With a record-breaking December opening, it remains to be seen whether the film with all the aforementioned elements, will have anything like the sustained box office of his last film, Titanic. My hunch, probably not close, at least in the US. The international market, for whom this film, with its nasty take on the American military and New Age feel, should eat this right up and it’s oversees take is already significantly larger than the domestic by more than double. Avatar should be seen if only for its technical achievement as long as you don’t connect with any of the more questionable elements of its ideas.
December 14, 2009
Movie Review: Up in the Air
(Note: I’m back after the last two weeks of teaching classes for the semester with only exam week-ha! Only! left, so please forgive this absence.)
I got an e-mail from a marketing company this past week offering two passes to see Up in the Air, the new George Clooney movie on Thursday. I took my wife and we stood in line before the appointed time–about thirty minutes since it was a first come, first served basis. The line was mostly people over 30, sometimes well over thirty so I wondered if the targeted demographic wanted to reach out beyond the youth demographic, the standard bullseye of most movie marketing for this kind of movie. The film, made by someone not far above that college age range, Jason Reitman, is his third, after the satirical Thank-You for Smoking, and last years wonderful Juno. This kid, son of comedy director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters), got his dad’s talent plus a whole lot more savvy at capturing the secrets of the human soul. Up in the Air is his most impressive film to date–at this rate, I wonder where he’ll be in ten years.
The film’s lead character, Ryan Bingham, flies all over corporate America, hired by cowardly bosses to do their firing and laying off. Bingham is smooth and in control at all times, but the real secret of his success is that he has the gift of sensing just the right thing to say to ease the shocked ex-employee into seeing this not as an end but as a chance for a new beginning, and then he hands them their severance packet and tells them they’ll be called later to follow up on their “transitioning.” Ryan spends more than 300 days a year in the air, happy to be above the entanglements of both things and people. His commitment-free lifestyle allows him to make casual hookups with a like-minded lady business traveler, Alex (Vera Farmiga). His purpose driven life is to acquire a magic number of frequent flyer miles and he’s getting close to this arbitrary goal.
Then he learns that a fresh-out-college new hire Natalie (Anna Kendrick) at his company has sold the management a new plan on doing the same job he does by traveling to the companies over internet teleconferences, a cost-saving, “efficient” means of severing employees. Free spirit Ryan sees this not just as a coldhearted way to do a difficult job, but an attack on his independence from everything and everyone. The prospect of being tethered to a monitor and headset angers him enough for him to convince his boss to let me take the newbie Natalie on the road to show her what she doesn’t know about the people she’d fire by remote control. Therein unfolds the gradual unsettling of a complacent floating island of a man as life eventually forces him to question whether travel connections are the only ones that matter.
I won’t get into any more plot points–but I highly recommend it. One of the genius moves by the young director was to film the interviews of people recently laid off in the recession and get them to relate the traumatic experiences on camera. As this NPR article recounts, these were then edited into the montage of severance interviews Bingham conducts throughout the movie giving the film an authenticity no screenwriter could concoct. This is about as timely a feature film as I have seen.
Up in the Air is rated R for some rough language and brief nudity but for most audiences that would be interested–like those in the line that laughed loudly during the screening–they will find this a very good Hollywood movie that reminds us that anyone who thinks he can float above the messiness of real life attachments is likely to face some real turbulence.
November 23, 2009
Home Video: Star Trek (part. 1)
Now that J. J. Abrams’ successful relaunch of the venerable sci-fi franchise has come to home video, let’s take a quick look at both its achievement and where it fell short. During last year’s theatrical release I posted two times on my reaction to the film. The first was a long and passionate diatribe how the film’s narrative itself was a seeming disposal of everything we knew about Captain Kirk and his crew–by having the antagonist change history at the moment of Kirk’s birth, it created a new timeline effectively changing the galactic status quo, and, to my mind, nullifying the great stories we loved about the series. The second took into account one of the screenwriter’s statements that they weren’t eliminating the original series’ history, simply using concepts from quantum physics to create an alternate reality where the events of the movie and the original timeline exist in separate universes. I understood that this is simply a means for the revived concept to not be obligated to tiptoe around sacred moments in continuity thus freeing future screenplays to tell new stories on a blank canvas. I can live with that–it’s letting us have our Vulcan and blowing it up too.
That event alone changes the dynamic of the Vulcan civilization, creating new possibilities for storytelling with the remnant displaced population. But the film stayed true enough to the familiar world created by Gene Roddenberry so that we can enjoy the best of both universes. Looking back on the movie’s plot, it’s clear that the film got right what it needed to–the core characters of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew. The first theatrical film of the franchise, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, showed us the dismal results when characters are not true to themselves–forced dramatics and unbelievable behavior. Abrams’ young new cast did the more difficult deed of making us believe these are the same characters we knew only from the original actors’ performances, surely a praiseworthy achievement.
The special effects and production design are worthy of the bright shiny future the series always held before us, but which Paramount rarely funded adequately, keeping most of the the films mid-range in budget. The new film’s scope and scale fit the soap operatic nature of Star Trek.
Michael Giacchino’s rousing score reminds me again how much this young composer (Lost, The Incredibles, Up, etc.) is filling the movie score space left by John Williams’ reduced work load. It’s just as merrily bombastic and poignant in places as the original series’ and the Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner’s classic film scores
Now, what still doesn’t work in my estimation: The plot is basically a device to re-launch a next generation of the original crew, with villain Nero, a poor man’s Khan, or any other of the cinematic adversaries who have sat in a captain’s chair plotting against Kirk. His revenge motive seems forced and his time travel conceit allows him to be wherever and whenever he needs to be to force the newly acquainted crew members to work together. I hope future movies find a way to avoid having a single snarling baddie in a ship, which, though it makes for great space battles, already looks hackneyed. Many of the best Trek stories usually were about something other than Kirk ordering “fire!” at his opponent’s vessel.
I still have problems believing that the new Kirk bounced from cadet to captain in about three days of the movie’s story time. I know there was the goal of swiftly getting him in the chair, but realistically, Starfleet has sown the seeds of dismay and discontent amongst their command level officers who see this early twenty-something bouncing in barely paying his dues and getting a genius grant for his potential. At least it wasn’t the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking of production design, the director bragged about getting the use of a brewery to serve as the engine room set that allowed the filmmakers to finally demonstrate the scale of the ship. The problem is, by announcing this, I’ve never been able to see it as anything other than what it is, a factory full of pipes and big tanks of beer–it really doesn’t seem to fit into a star ship. But I’ll bet Scotty likes it.
I got the Blu-Ray disc of Star Trek on its Tuesday release date but have been saving it for Thanksgiving Day when my family and I will have time to watch it after the feast. I’m looking forward to going through the special features and hopefully I’ll have a part 2 of this report next week.
November 15, 2009
TV Review: Mad Men, Season Three
After last week’s third season finale, the AMC drama about early 1960s Madison Ave advertising executives did what it needed to cement viewers for next season. A game changer that had been in the works through the season, it felt exciting and logical but managed to surprise and delight nonetheless without being an unsettling cliffhanger. I first reviewed Mad Men in its first season and rereading that post, agree with my initial assessment and can now see how well planned creator Matthew Weiner’s scope for the series is.
I think the reason for Mad Men’s devoted, if small by cable standards, following is that its storytelling is underplayed and rewards its audience’s close attention. Scenes are mostly about subtext, the real reasons driving characters to say something in a world about appearances and hype. In fact, so subtle are the performances that it’s the only series I sometimes go back and watch scenes again for their rich texture and density.
This season, the downward trajectory of Don Draper, captured every week in the classic animated opening sequence, reached about as far as it could go as his deepest secrets, locked away in his desk drawer, came into his wife Betty’s hands. This emotionally blocked but incredibly talented man who doesn’t have a clue about true love faced the loss of everything he’d so dysfunctionally undermined by repeated affairs and lies. Now that he and several of his most gifted co-workers and colleagues have risked all to gain greater independence, there’s a new chemistry to the show that makes me wonder if there’s a chance Don can begin his own climb into a somewhat more functional human being who truly values relationships. It was a season that, at one point, I almost despaired of ever seeing a chance for Don to change–yet another affair, this time with his daughter’s school teacher, for heavens sakes, had me thinking that the man was stuck in a cycle that he could never break and thus any hope of moral progress seemed lost, yet he wound up being broken anyway as Betty, exhausted by his behavior and fighting with her own demons, finally had enough.
Though I and so many viewers had held out hope for some sort of rapprochement between two of the best-looking characters on television, it was pretty unrealistic to not let this marriage crack under so heavy a weight. And knowing what we do about Don/Dick, why do we still root for him? Because he’s a stud and looks great with that suit and hair? Or does Jon Hamm’s incredibly nuanced performance let us glimpse the tortured soul beneath the tanned face?
I’ve been scarce with plot details in this post because I want those uninitiated to discover this shows pleasures and rewards for themselves. If this intrigues you, you might want to check out the first two seasons on DVD (via sources like Netflix) and if you’re get hooked, iTunes has season 3.
I wonder if Weiner has an endpoint in mind for his admen that will allow the epic/intimate period piece to somehow resolve itself, rather than going into a slow decline. Such an endpoint would help Mad Men stand as one of television’s enduring works of art, not just mere entertainment.
November 8, 2009
Movie Preview: Avatar
Now that the trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar is out, we can get a better idea of its plot. Cameron has said he had the idea for the 3-D film (due out Dec. 18) many years ago but waited until digital technology caught up with his vision. However, based on what the trailer tells us, that vision now looks pretty stale. Watching it, I couldn’t help feeling how very familiar it seems to both Cameron’s and other films of various genres.
Take for instance its story of the paraplegic marine whose consciousness is placed into genetically bred body of a race of indigenous humanoid inhabitants of a planet rich in ore. Earth corporations (that is, according to the accents, Americans companies) send their military to eradicate the blue skinned creatures standing between them and the valuable metal. The young marine, now undercover among the “aliens,” grasps how this low-tech culture is doomed by human greed and decides to go native and join the resistance, sort of like Dances with Aliens. And of course we see the military evil incaranated in the officer with the southern accent, Stephen Lang, who probably loves the smell of napalm in the morning. And we see the aliens fight back against a supposedly superior force, drawn from every movie from The Return of the Jedi’s cuddly Ewoks to Cameron’s own Aliens. This is Cameron’s first directing of a fiction film since Titanic, 12 years ago and I’m getting the idea that this will be no more original than the recent films of another once cutting edge director, George Lucas, who gave us so much empty eye candy spectacle in the Star Wars prequels. In fact, like those bloated CGI behemoths, Avatar’s battle scenes look a lot like video games, smooth and pristine but lacking the feel of real. With his long record of success, Cameron should not be underestimated but based on the trailer that’s supposed to entice viewers, it offers little we haven’t seen before.
November 3, 2009
DVD Review: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
For the last couple of years, Warner Premiere,has been releasing direct to video animated features of DC Comics superheroes. Some of these are great (the superb DC: The New Frontier) and the not-so-good (Superman: Doomsday). The most recent release, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, is right behind The New Frontier in successfully bringing comic book thrills to home video. On a high definition screen, the Blu-Ray version is incredible.
But without a great story, the pretty colors wouldn’t mean as much. Based on an story from Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuiness’ run on the Superman/Batman comics title, it asks you to accept that, in a time a great national crisis, the American electorate chooses as president, Lex Luthor. Okay, yeah, that’s really impossible to swallow, even by comic books standards, but if you can just go with it, it sets up the title characters as the only DC heroes standing against Luthor’s schemes in the White House. Once I forced myself past that, the story took off. We see DC’s top characters in fine form as they are forced to fight other superheroes, deputized to enforce the president’s “policy” against “vigilantes” as well as supervillains aiming to collect the billion dollar reward offered for the capture of the Man of Steel. This makes for a series of the most well-executed battles I’ve seen in an animated feature of this kind. I was actually cheering at one point as Supes shows just how much of a threat he is to those seeking to keep him from pursuing truth, justice and the American way.
And the actually more popular Batman is on an equal footing in the heroics department–never has animation managed to show just how cool the Dark Knight is, and best of all, both roles are voiced by the actors who are most closely associated with the animated heroes, Kevin Conroy and Tim Daley reprise their roles as Batman and Superman that they created on their respective animated series produced by Bruce Timm. The writing is sharp and it’s a pleasant surprise to have the characters actually trading quips in ways true to their personalities. This is a great reminder of why these superguys are the world’s finest.
October 29, 2009
The White House’s War on Fox News–by the numbers
This blog rarely discusses politics–it’s about culture after all and political topics can quickly blow up into heated conflicts. But I do want to observe one point about the recent attacks by high-level White House officials against the cable news channel. Having singled Fox News out as “not a news outlet,” or “a wing of the Republican party,” the White House has generated attention from other news outlets and when Fox was told it couldn’t participate in the pool coverage of a Treasury official, the other news channels refused to participate without Fox, putting free press principles above whatever feelings they may have about Fox News.
I doubt the White House would be so heavy handed if Fox’s ratings weren’t so big. Look at these viewer rankings and be amazed. Based on which grouping you look at, total viewers, individual shows, audience demographics, Fox News rates two to three times as large as the competition. Other news channels are small by comparison (but of course, most news audience size is small in comparison with entertainment audiences).
Would the Obama administration be so acrimonious if Fox News got CNN’s or others’ lower than half a million viewers? It would seem pettier than it already looks for the executive branch to be complaining about a news outlet that regularly questions its policies and actions. Of course, given that survey’s show that sizable portions of Fox’s audience is made up of independent and Democratic voters, perhaps President Obama should put on his Happy Warrior face and confidently and boldly engage that audience, trying to persuade them–after all, he’d be reaching a lot more people more quickly than at the other news channels.
October 18, 2009
Classic Movie Review: The Man Who Laughs
For years I’d heard that Batman creators Bob Kane and Bob Finger drew their inspiration for the Joker from the title character, Gynplaine, in the silent film, The Man Who Laughs, although, as the Wikipedia article on the Dark Knight’s uber-villain states, another Batman pioneer, Jerry Robinson claimed the idea came more directly from the Joker playing card. So, I finally rented the movie from Netflix and it was a revelation. It didn’t resolve the Joker’s origin source but it did remind me how great silent Hollywood films could be and how under-appreciated that era is.
As the marvelous special features point out, Universal Studios, hoping to perpetuate their successful series of Lon Chaney horror films, which included an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, next chose another of the author’s books, The Man Who Laughs. The historical epic, set mostly in the early 1700s, concerns the son of a British nobleman, Gwynplaine, who is ordered by the king to be mutilated. Gypsies fulfill the king’s command by carving the boy’s mouth into a permanently gruesome grin. The abandoned boy trudges through the snow and discovers an enfant in the arms of his dead mother, Taking the baby in his arms the boy eventually comes upon some traveling performers whose leader, Ursus, adopts them both. He soon discovers that the girl, whom he names Dea, is blind. The children grow up under his care, joining the troupe with Gwynplaine (played by the great German actor Conrad Veidt) becoming the star of the show as “the Man Who Laughs,” a draw for the commoners who flock to his performances that includes Dea. She has fallen in love with Gwynplaine, who knows she would spurn him if she knew what he really looked like. This YouTube ten-minute segment, part of what appears to be the entire film, indicates the visual beauty of the production.
Things really get complicated when the Duchess who has been granted Gwynplaine’s father’s hereditary estate sees the deformed man’s performance and, perversely drawn to him, bids him meet her at what is actually his own family residence. In an horrendous scene, she tries to seduce him as Veidt acts entirely with his eyes, wide with terror, his fixed grin partially covered by a scarf. Things get only more difficult from here.
Universal poured all of its resources into a splendid production and integrated elements of German expressionism, with it’s use of emotional acting styles and shadowy sets. In 1928, sound recording on film had just arrived and the studio had to decide whether it would be a silent or talkie. The issue was resolved when the dental prosthesis that kept Veidt’s mouth in its hideous grin made it impossible for him to say his lines and dialogue was kept to the title cards but the musical accompaniment and some sound effects and crowd vocalizations went on the soundtrack. The film’s director Paul Leni, keeps the camera moving throughout the film to dramatic effect reminding us just how dynamic silent film was. The film is unforgettable and I can see why Batman’s creators could claim it inspired the Joker. This side by side comparison looks like pretty solid substantiation of the inspiration. If you’re looking for a high-class Hollywood horror film this Halloween season, I suggest you treat yourself to The Man Who Laughs.
October 12, 2009
Go Fish
The Christian community has always had varying attitudes toward the surrounding culture. From the church’s early days when believers shunned the Roman games to the established church’s condemnation of the theater, there have been times when entertainment was seen as threatening. Other times culture arose from within the church with medieval miracle and morality plays. American evangelicals have a long history of eschewing the “idle amusements” of the novel, theater, and other popular entertainments, often condemned from the pulpits in 19th century as diversions from the pious life. Thus disengaged from the surrounding culture, Christians were unable to contribute much in the 20th century except protests when the new media of film, radio and television shaped society.
Now in the 21st century, attitudes have to some degree moderated with the recognition that all creative efforts aren’t necessarily evil, frivolous or corrupting. But wishing to avoid the bad and appreciate the good, many may find that the tastes of mainstream media critics don’t always align with their own biblical worldview and seek intelligent reviews that aren’t preoccupied with counting bad words or focusing on exposing supposedly nefarious ideologies in popular culture.
I’ve read reviews in print media ever since I was a boy reading my dad’s Time magazine and today read Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide to keep up with new programs and movies. But I know those critics simply don’t grasp the values I and a lot of my fellow Christians have that establishes certain basic parameters of taste founded in our view of human dignity arising from being made in God’s image–thus the extremes of exploitation of human sexuality makes many wary of shows such as you’d find on cable television–which often feels obligated to flaunt it’s greater freedom to show skin and sex regardless of the lack of artistic justification.
Thus I appreciate when publications like World newsmagazine reviews movies, books and new musical releases. But I’m also excited about a new site dedicated entirely to reviews of movies, television, books, music and even video games. The Fish is all about keeping up with the latest in pop culture, but with a Christian sensibility. To those who think such a site is needlessly sectarian, think of The Fish as an evangelical version of Latino Review, an excellent site offering “the Latin Perspective on all movies and pop culture.” That site exists because the second largest ethnic group in the US has interests in reviews that take its cultural distinctives into account. Similarly, the Fish has its Christian audience in mind when reviewing many of the same items found in mainstream publications and seeks to take those values into account.
That’s the nature of our widely diverse digital landscape–yes, it’s narrowcasting but the web makes niche criticism relatively more affordable in an era of declining newsstand publications suffering from a dearth of advertising revenue. The Fish is part of Salem Communications, the company behind the big Christian radio group and two other big sites Christianity.com and Crosswalk.
Finally, this is a plug for a site that I write for, fulfilling a long time dream of doing reviews of popular culture, which for the most part, will be television reviews. And the site will feature posts from The Culture Beat that I hope will direct attention here as well.
I think you’ll find The Fish is a place you’ll want to bookmark and visit regularly, with discerning and discriminating writers you’ll enjoy reading who love popular culture as much as you do.
