I left with the sense that Miller, in his eagerness, took elements of all his favorite movies without regard for continuity and relation, and blended them like a child who thinks a milkshake made of Phish Food, gummy worms, pixie sticks, and Pop Tarts is a good idea. The end result is an overwhelming sludge with underwhelming appeal.
—Lilly Lampe, Venus Zine
In the end, what The Spirit looks like is student work. A lot of times people think that student work looks bad—fuzzy and clumsy and oddly proportioned. To an extent that's true. But from my experience, what characterizes student work is that it's created 'outside in.' That is, students focus almost exclusively on the tropes of authority. So a typical student Photoshop rendering is shiny and slick (always with lots of airbrush rendering and lens flares), but stiff, with no underlying structure. Or a video project has an elaborate title, lots of 35mm rack focuses, excrutiatingly planned-out three point lighting and an extras DVD with outtakes and special effects breakdowns, but again, no underlying structure. Or a student interior design has lots of expensive tile, complex accent walls, painstakingly chosen lighting and hardware schemes, but no underlying structure. Or student writing has lots of big words ('ramification,' anyone?) but no ideas and no structure. That's exactly what The Spirit is like. It's full of in-jokes, 'moments,' cameos, interesting production design and cinematography and plenty of fodder for the DVD commentary. It's all flash and Easter eggs. But it lacks a skeleton to hold it together resulting in a stiff project.
Another student affectation is to emulate a favorite scene thinking that the scene in itself is interesting. So the film spends all of its time aiming toward the scene without the emotional setup that made the original scene so compelling in the first place. That's working outside in—focusing on the things that leap off the screen and forgetting about the rest.
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Spirit - who's bringing it?
More speculation. Still wondering how a film like The Spirit came to be. There are so many things wrong with it that it's not even instructionally useful.
There's probably a bit of the Lucasitis here. Miller is fresh off two hits in Sin City and 300. That, plus his iconic status probably creates a great deal of critical deference. He has two fans in fx supervisor Stu Maschwitz and DP Bill Pope.
I also wonder if the problem is that no one knew who was supposed to "bring it?" Green screen films tend to be multi-modal; the performance is carried in different ways, sometimes by the actors, sometimes by the production design, sometimes by the visuals. On Sin City, Robert Rodriguez served as director, fx supervisor and DP, so he knew how the film was supposed to work. But on The Spirit, I wonder if no one knew who was bringing it?
I can imagine that on Sin City, Frank Miller was more of a kibitzer, offering suggestions here and there. The Spirit has a kind of kibitzed directorial approach in that it's full of details and affectations but there's no structure. It's like Miller didn't fully understand what Rodriguez brought to Sin City and thought that somehow magically, The Spirit was going to come together. It's like Bill Pope thought that Maschwitz was going to bring it and Maschwitz thought that Miller was going to bring it and in the end, no one really did.
A potentially interesting study of art and leadership.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Notes on The Spirit 2
> With The Spirit, Miller seems to have made a big miscalculation and it is this: just because you can appreciate something doesn't mean you can do it. I don't know much about Eisner's The Spirit, but it seems to have a light, loopy, snappy tone. But Frank Miller can't do light or loopy or snappy. He does whores, dames, guys and freaks. Miller knew what how he wanted The Spirit to come across. But it's just not in him to do it.
> Ooh! Ooh! The evil henchman seemed to be clones of officer Tootie in Car 54 where are you?
>Miller makes the mistake of believing that plots are interesting. I realize I'm as down on plots as I am on characterizations and backstory. Plots aren't inherently interesting. No one cares about the "mysterious bond" between The Spirit and The Octopus. But the question remains: if a film doesn't have characterization, plot or backstory, what's left?
>To me the film looks a lot like Sky Captain and not so much like Sin City. Harry Knowles is right. It would have looked better in a kind of super technicolor, like the super 8 of your dreams.
>I thought the women looked terrible in this film, like they were over-inked, giving them a drag-like appearance. The diffusion didn't help much. Sarah Paulson had the same vacant doll's-eye look that Audrey Tatou had in The da Vinci code.
>I was actually a bit shocked that Samuel Jackson spent much of his time in mud-caked blackface.
>The only good shot for me was the one in which young Spirit holds Sand Serif as she hangs off the end of a train. It was a nice twist on the "I'm flying" scene from Titanic. It works because there's action that tells us something about the characters. But wait, I thought I was down on characterization. Hmmm.
>Another example of bad blocking. Young Spirit and Sand Serif are rushing away from reporters. "Go away" young Spirit yells (or something like that). But he just sits there waiting for the reporter to accost him. Granted, a lot of films have moments like these, but practically every scene had these kinds of blocking problems.
>The whole film reminds me of noise film's bird scene, the one we reshot four times because it never looked right. Some effects were never meant to be.
>Miller seems to have wanted The Spirit to be a bit of a scoundrel. They needed a different kind of actor. But there's only one Harrison Ford and he's too old. They might have gone craggier, uglier, more square-jawed; tougher.
>Engagement: the dance with death stuff could have worked if something was actually happening in those scenes. Film just works differently from literature. It has to have some kind of movement.
> Ooh! Ooh! The evil henchman seemed to be clones of officer Tootie in Car 54 where are you?
>Miller makes the mistake of believing that plots are interesting. I realize I'm as down on plots as I am on characterizations and backstory. Plots aren't inherently interesting. No one cares about the "mysterious bond" between The Spirit and The Octopus. But the question remains: if a film doesn't have characterization, plot or backstory, what's left?
>To me the film looks a lot like Sky Captain and not so much like Sin City. Harry Knowles is right. It would have looked better in a kind of super technicolor, like the super 8 of your dreams.
>I thought the women looked terrible in this film, like they were over-inked, giving them a drag-like appearance. The diffusion didn't help much. Sarah Paulson had the same vacant doll's-eye look that Audrey Tatou had in The da Vinci code.
>I was actually a bit shocked that Samuel Jackson spent much of his time in mud-caked blackface.
>The only good shot for me was the one in which young Spirit holds Sand Serif as she hangs off the end of a train. It was a nice twist on the "I'm flying" scene from Titanic. It works because there's action that tells us something about the characters. But wait, I thought I was down on characterization. Hmmm.
>Another example of bad blocking. Young Spirit and Sand Serif are rushing away from reporters. "Go away" young Spirit yells (or something like that). But he just sits there waiting for the reporter to accost him. Granted, a lot of films have moments like these, but practically every scene had these kinds of blocking problems.
>The whole film reminds me of noise film's bird scene, the one we reshot four times because it never looked right. Some effects were never meant to be.
>Miller seems to have wanted The Spirit to be a bit of a scoundrel. They needed a different kind of actor. But there's only one Harrison Ford and he's too old. They might have gone craggier, uglier, more square-jawed; tougher.
>Engagement: the dance with death stuff could have worked if something was actually happening in those scenes. Film just works differently from literature. It has to have some kind of movement.
Notes on The Spirit
The Spirit has been beckoning me, calling me. I even bought the $30 art book yesterday. I was prepared to see it last night but that 14 hour island-wide power outage got in my way. So tonight, after Sean went to sleep, I drove out to Koko Marina where Barack Obama was seen eating shave ice yesterday and watched it at the Koko Marina 8.
A lot of people seem to think that the film was smug or self-mocking. I think that Miller et. al. were actually very sincere. The problem isn't the intent behind the film. It's Miller's lack of experience.
MEDIUM
Miller doesn't yet understand the difference between comics and cinema. Cinema is literal. So a lot of things you can do in comics won't work in film. Having someone skulk around neck deep in water works fine on paper. But when you see it on film, all you can do is think about is how cold the water is and wonder why everyone isn't freezing to death and why is he skulking in the first place. It doesn't make any sense.
>You can't have sets that are that minimal. It just looks like bad theater.
>People on screen have to be doing something that makes sense. Miller blocks everything as tropes. People move here and there with no reason. In most of the film, there is no underpinning physical or emotional reality. Miller doesn't understand what makes a world a world. A world continues beyond the screen. It is not just about appearances.
>Scenes are very static. They look like moving storyboards but as such make no sense. A comic book panel of three people talking looks fine. But a few minutes of expository walk and talk with the person featured prominently in the middle saying almost nothing is just incompetent.
EDITING
It seems unlikely that Miller would have final cut on this film. But how else would you explain the lack of editing? Just getting rid of a lot of the cutaways/reaction shots and jokes that didn't work would have helped a lot. When it comes out on DVD I think I might do an edit getting rid of the bad stuff just to see if it works any better.
EXPOSITION
The problem isn't the actual words as much as the way they're used. It seemed like 90% of the dialogue was exposition. Correspondingly, none of the dialogue had any subtext. Everyone just explained what they were doing and if you didn't understand that, The Spirit explained it for you. Further, there was fighting but no action. This is a film. You have to have people -do- things, externalize to show how they're feeling and what they're thinking. You can't talk a film into existence. But the thing is crammed with words that have no function. The Spirit is walking around narrating and then a voice over narration of The Spirit immediately follows. Why? The thing feels like wall-to-wall talking, a cinematic horror vacuui.
EMOTIONAL SENSE
The film made no emotional sense. Imagine seeing your long lost love after years of separation and the encounter is treated like buying a loaf of bread. Miller was just outthinking himself here. Not wanting to go sentimental, he tried to play the scene against expectation. But without enough experience to make it work, the scene came across as nothing. It's almost like Miller took advanced classes in film criticism but no basic classes in film production. You can't do something complex until you can do something simple. Miller gives new meaning to the term "result directing." He knew how he wanted the scenes to work. He wanted to avoid sentimentality, to bring cool irony to the film. But he didn't know how to do it. He didn't as my typography instructor used to say, "stay within himself." Essentially, Miller doesn't know enough as a filmmaker to know what's important and what's not.
CONCLUSION
In the long run, I felt like I always knew what Miller was going for. He just didn't have the experience and know how to make it work.
A lot of people seem to think that the film was smug or self-mocking. I think that Miller et. al. were actually very sincere. The problem isn't the intent behind the film. It's Miller's lack of experience.
MEDIUM
Miller doesn't yet understand the difference between comics and cinema. Cinema is literal. So a lot of things you can do in comics won't work in film. Having someone skulk around neck deep in water works fine on paper. But when you see it on film, all you can do is think about is how cold the water is and wonder why everyone isn't freezing to death and why is he skulking in the first place. It doesn't make any sense.
>You can't have sets that are that minimal. It just looks like bad theater.
>People on screen have to be doing something that makes sense. Miller blocks everything as tropes. People move here and there with no reason. In most of the film, there is no underpinning physical or emotional reality. Miller doesn't understand what makes a world a world. A world continues beyond the screen. It is not just about appearances.
>Scenes are very static. They look like moving storyboards but as such make no sense. A comic book panel of three people talking looks fine. But a few minutes of expository walk and talk with the person featured prominently in the middle saying almost nothing is just incompetent.
EDITING
It seems unlikely that Miller would have final cut on this film. But how else would you explain the lack of editing? Just getting rid of a lot of the cutaways/reaction shots and jokes that didn't work would have helped a lot. When it comes out on DVD I think I might do an edit getting rid of the bad stuff just to see if it works any better.
EXPOSITION
The problem isn't the actual words as much as the way they're used. It seemed like 90% of the dialogue was exposition. Correspondingly, none of the dialogue had any subtext. Everyone just explained what they were doing and if you didn't understand that, The Spirit explained it for you. Further, there was fighting but no action. This is a film. You have to have people -do- things, externalize to show how they're feeling and what they're thinking. You can't talk a film into existence. But the thing is crammed with words that have no function. The Spirit is walking around narrating and then a voice over narration of The Spirit immediately follows. Why? The thing feels like wall-to-wall talking, a cinematic horror vacuui.
EMOTIONAL SENSE
The film made no emotional sense. Imagine seeing your long lost love after years of separation and the encounter is treated like buying a loaf of bread. Miller was just outthinking himself here. Not wanting to go sentimental, he tried to play the scene against expectation. But without enough experience to make it work, the scene came across as nothing. It's almost like Miller took advanced classes in film criticism but no basic classes in film production. You can't do something complex until you can do something simple. Miller gives new meaning to the term "result directing." He knew how he wanted the scenes to work. He wanted to avoid sentimentality, to bring cool irony to the film. But he didn't know how to do it. He didn't as my typography instructor used to say, "stay within himself." Essentially, Miller doesn't know enough as a filmmaker to know what's important and what's not.
CONCLUSION
In the long run, I felt like I always knew what Miller was going for. He just didn't have the experience and know how to make it work.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Adult films + happy birthday to us
It was four years ago this month when I started work on noise film. Happy Birthday to us.
Today I was thinking about adult films (films FOR adults). I think it's because of the films that are out now. Sin City and 300 seemed very adolescent to me, like a teenage boy's view of something adult (RE sex and violence). The Spirit seems similar. Benjamin Button is out now which reminded me of Fincher's Se7en. That was another film that wanted desperately to be grown up. To me it came off as stylized, self-conscious and adolescent. Most other 'adult' films seem to be boring and talky or dramas. Films like Midnight Cowboy or The Sterile Cuckoo. So I've been wondering about what would a true adult film look like? What would it be about? What would be its tone and texture?
Today I was thinking about adult films (films FOR adults). I think it's because of the films that are out now. Sin City and 300 seemed very adolescent to me, like a teenage boy's view of something adult (RE sex and violence). The Spirit seems similar. Benjamin Button is out now which reminded me of Fincher's Se7en. That was another film that wanted desperately to be grown up. To me it came off as stylized, self-conscious and adolescent. Most other 'adult' films seem to be boring and talky or dramas. Films like Midnight Cowboy or The Sterile Cuckoo. So I've been wondering about what would a true adult film look like? What would it be about? What would be its tone and texture?
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Frank Miller's Christmas Spirit
I want to see Frank Miller's The Spirit so badly. This tells you what I find interesting about films. Much of the time it's not the pleasure of watching but the curiosity of seeing how thought and process affect the final result. I want to test my conjecture that the film's problems stem from its virtual shooting approach.
This semester I discovered that it's difficult for students to create simple animated virtual shot sequences. For instance, let's imagine you start wide then cut closer then cut to something else. Shooting that sequence in the real world is pretty straightforward. But creating it in After Effects means building everything from scratch. It's a lot harder because you have to control the background size and movement, among other things. I think it's a lot easier to do this sort of thing when you have actual shooting experience first. Without this experience you're practically flying blind.
When Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez directed their Frank Miller stories, they were doing something very difficult, perhaps analogous to writing a good sonnet or song lyric. In these cases, meaning is expressed within a highly circumscribed structure. The storyboard is not the reality, but the form of the film. It's like an actor hitting marks. Good performers make it seem natural. But I suspect that in The Spirit, Miller mistook the storyboards for the reality. Without a reservoir of shooting and editing experience, he made the freshman mistake of shooting his boards.
Storyboards only work when they are grounded in actual shooting experience and even then, they only inform the process of shooting. At their best, they prepare the director to more clearly see the moment of shooting. That's why I'm not too big on using storyboards in class at first. I've seen it over and over—students shoot what they had storyboarded but it always comes out wrong because they are trying to impose a template on reality that blinds them to what's there. Storyboards invoke past shooting experience. They do not create it.
The Spirit seems to be an interesting experiment in the development of virtual filmmaking. What often happens in these films is that the actors' performances become backgrounded, upstaged by the production design (e.g., Keanoshow). Or the work takes on a lifeless, puppeteered quality (e.g., Sky Captain). The Spirit, on the other hand, seems to bypass cinema altogether. It doesn't even seem to be animation, but (even more so than Dave McKean's work), storyboards in motion. I can't wait to see it.
This semester I discovered that it's difficult for students to create simple animated virtual shot sequences. For instance, let's imagine you start wide then cut closer then cut to something else. Shooting that sequence in the real world is pretty straightforward. But creating it in After Effects means building everything from scratch. It's a lot harder because you have to control the background size and movement, among other things. I think it's a lot easier to do this sort of thing when you have actual shooting experience first. Without this experience you're practically flying blind.
When Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez directed their Frank Miller stories, they were doing something very difficult, perhaps analogous to writing a good sonnet or song lyric. In these cases, meaning is expressed within a highly circumscribed structure. The storyboard is not the reality, but the form of the film. It's like an actor hitting marks. Good performers make it seem natural. But I suspect that in The Spirit, Miller mistook the storyboards for the reality. Without a reservoir of shooting and editing experience, he made the freshman mistake of shooting his boards.
Storyboards only work when they are grounded in actual shooting experience and even then, they only inform the process of shooting. At their best, they prepare the director to more clearly see the moment of shooting. That's why I'm not too big on using storyboards in class at first. I've seen it over and over—students shoot what they had storyboarded but it always comes out wrong because they are trying to impose a template on reality that blinds them to what's there. Storyboards invoke past shooting experience. They do not create it.
The Spirit seems to be an interesting experiment in the development of virtual filmmaking. What often happens in these films is that the actors' performances become backgrounded, upstaged by the production design (e.g., Keanoshow). Or the work takes on a lifeless, puppeteered quality (e.g., Sky Captain). The Spirit, on the other hand, seems to bypass cinema altogether. It doesn't even seem to be animation, but (even more so than Dave McKean's work), storyboards in motion. I can't wait to see it.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Santa's cheeks are rosy tears
In other posts I wrote about trying to create "impossible plotlines." I think the same can be said for "impossible tones." How can you make a movie that has an unlikely tone? Like something about Christmas that is positive yet not self-conscious and not about the "wonder" of Christmas? I got this idea from reading something by Scorsese. He said one problem of student films is that they aren't about anything. A film needs content, he said, even if it's just setting a certain mood.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Gertrude? Gertrude? Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
When we were kids, my classmates and I were somehow always able to cajole our parents into letting us stay up late to watch an occasional network "late night movie," something that doesn't exist anymore. We watched Journey to the Center of the Earth and Hitchcock's The Birds over and over. Unlike a lot of old movies, this one retains its charms. We had no idea who Pat Boone and James Mason were, but there were dinosaurs! I still remember a lot of the film which has been inscribed into memory. Some things I picked up on this viewing—
>I was listening to the music thinking, who did this Citizen Kane sound-alike soundtrack? I mean it sounds exactly like Kane, with the vibraphone and everything. The answer, amazingly enough: Bernard Herrmann.
>The movie has a serious Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe. The team finds the path to the center of the earth because of the way the sun beams through a rock feature, laser-like, on a particular day of the month. There's a rolling boulder which almost flattens the heroes. Of course, there's lost treasure and—Atlantis!
>There's an interesting use of sound. Our heroes are walking deeper and deeper into the earth. We then cut to a close up of walking feet. Normally, we'd assume that these were our heroes' feet. But in this case, we know these are the villain's feet because we hear our heroes' voices in the background, all echoey and distant. In this case, a sound cue is used to provide geographical clarity.
>There's an interesting example of bad misdirection at the beginning of the movie. Professor Lindenbrook is in a foul mood because he just received some bad news by mail. As he storms into the library, his daughter (?), Jenny runs up a step ladder to avoid him. After discussion, Lindenbrook and McKuen hatch their scheme to journey to the center of the earth. Expressing her shock, Jenny, who has been listening, bumps down the ladder one step at a time. As I watched the scene unfold, I wondered, why is she running away from him up a ladder? Weird blocking emphasized by an edit. Then, of course, there's the payoff. I often think that conjuring is a good metaphor for film. To continue with the metaphor, the setup attracts too much attention to itself, like a feint that that doesn't work.
Watch it on Netflix instant.
>I was listening to the music thinking, who did this Citizen Kane sound-alike soundtrack? I mean it sounds exactly like Kane, with the vibraphone and everything. The answer, amazingly enough: Bernard Herrmann.
>The movie has a serious Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe. The team finds the path to the center of the earth because of the way the sun beams through a rock feature, laser-like, on a particular day of the month. There's a rolling boulder which almost flattens the heroes. Of course, there's lost treasure and—Atlantis!
>There's an interesting use of sound. Our heroes are walking deeper and deeper into the earth. We then cut to a close up of walking feet. Normally, we'd assume that these were our heroes' feet. But in this case, we know these are the villain's feet because we hear our heroes' voices in the background, all echoey and distant. In this case, a sound cue is used to provide geographical clarity.
>There's an interesting example of bad misdirection at the beginning of the movie. Professor Lindenbrook is in a foul mood because he just received some bad news by mail. As he storms into the library, his daughter (?), Jenny runs up a step ladder to avoid him. After discussion, Lindenbrook and McKuen hatch their scheme to journey to the center of the earth. Expressing her shock, Jenny, who has been listening, bumps down the ladder one step at a time. As I watched the scene unfold, I wondered, why is she running away from him up a ladder? Weird blocking emphasized by an edit. Then, of course, there's the payoff. I often think that conjuring is a good metaphor for film. To continue with the metaphor, the setup attracts too much attention to itself, like a feint that that doesn't work.
Watch it on Netflix instant.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Discoveries
Having found that discoveries are an important part of pushing a film forward, here are a few I've cataloged:
>Anamorph: a drunk couple fumbles as they try to get into their hotel room. The woman falls onto a door and it swings open revealing a terrifying scene.
>Ghost Rider: young Ghost Rider notices something in the wastebasket. He fishes it out and finds his Dad's medical test results.
>Amelie: Amelie is watching the TV news. She drops a ball which rolls to hit and reveal a secret door.
>Coraline: Coraline sees a doll. She walks up to it and then notices a trap door behind the chest.
>Cars: Lightning kicks a can in disgust. It lands near Doc's garage which Lightning proceeds to enter.
>Anamorph: a drunk couple fumbles as they try to get into their hotel room. The woman falls onto a door and it swings open revealing a terrifying scene.
>Ghost Rider: young Ghost Rider notices something in the wastebasket. He fishes it out and finds his Dad's medical test results.
>Amelie: Amelie is watching the TV news. She drops a ball which rolls to hit and reveal a secret door.
>Coraline: Coraline sees a doll. She walks up to it and then notices a trap door behind the chest.
>Cars: Lightning kicks a can in disgust. It lands near Doc's garage which Lightning proceeds to enter.
Anamorph, Basic Instinct, Dark Knight, The Host
Not much happening on the noise film front. Just finishing up with school. Finally taking a break and watching a few movies.
Anamorph
There's one point in the movie where I thought, "Oh my God... they're doing a serial killer flick based on actual aesthetics." There's a copycat killer on the loose. In a lecture, the detective played by Willem Dafoe talks about photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson saying that he was trying to capture "the moment of truth." And I'm thinking, "that's how he's going to get the copy cat--the copy cat can't capture truth, he can only create a lifeless semblance of it!" But then the movie veers off into the domain of not caring and making no sense. This is the way NOT to make an ambigiuous ending. The anamorphic images, the camera obscura and giant pantograph are, in the end, just gimmicks. But I like the idea of creating a mystery in which aesthetics is part of the solution.
Basic Instinct
Watch this for free on hulu. I never saw Basic Instinct before but a few minutes into it, it became obvious that from the mysterious blonde to the psychological gobbledy gook to the Northern California scenery, this is an homage to Hitchcock. Paul Verhooven's talent lies in his ability to cartoonishly stretch believability without breaking the film. The sex scenes, for instance, were more funny than sexy but not so much that they take you out of the movie. Basic Instinct is less about erotic thrills and more about cinema in its purest form. Like a good Hitchcock film, Basic Instinct isn't about anything in particular. It simply does what cinema does best which is build suspense and jerk you around.
The Dark Knight
The newest Batman movie is similar to Basic Instinct in that they exist primarily to jerk you around. What makes The Dark Knight more distasteful than Basic Instinct (or Nolan's similarly jerk-you-around The Prestige) is its aspirations toward profundity. Beyond the plot twists and turns, Nolan wants to ask questi0ns about the human condition: What's more important--personal or global good? What is the nature of sacrifice? What is heroism? What motivates the psychopath? How do we maintain our humanity in the face of life and death decisions?
The problem is that these concerns are all driven by the film's antagonist. My friend who worked at a music store told me that his boss would swipe any money he found lying on the counter by the cash register. This was meant to be a lesson about putting money away quickly and not leaving it out in the open. The lesson my friend learned was not that someone might steal money but that his boss was a jerk. Same here. The Joker's simulated crises tell us only one thing—he is a jerk. So the movie is over two hours of watching a jerk doing things that jerk you around. I found it exhausting.
The Host
I posed the following conundrum to Maria awhile ago. There are two planes, exactly the same, experiencing the exact same engine problem. One is filled with Americans, one is filled with Koreans. The planes descend and the air masks pop out. When they land, all of the Americans are alive and all of the Koreans are dead. If you know the answer to this problem, then you'll understand why The Host is so Korean. That and the part about not being able to feed the hero when he was young contributing to his off-kilter demeanor.
Anamorph
There's one point in the movie where I thought, "Oh my God... they're doing a serial killer flick based on actual aesthetics." There's a copycat killer on the loose. In a lecture, the detective played by Willem Dafoe talks about photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson saying that he was trying to capture "the moment of truth." And I'm thinking, "that's how he's going to get the copy cat--the copy cat can't capture truth, he can only create a lifeless semblance of it!" But then the movie veers off into the domain of not caring and making no sense. This is the way NOT to make an ambigiuous ending. The anamorphic images, the camera obscura and giant pantograph are, in the end, just gimmicks. But I like the idea of creating a mystery in which aesthetics is part of the solution.
Basic Instinct
Watch this for free on hulu. I never saw Basic Instinct before but a few minutes into it, it became obvious that from the mysterious blonde to the psychological gobbledy gook to the Northern California scenery, this is an homage to Hitchcock. Paul Verhooven's talent lies in his ability to cartoonishly stretch believability without breaking the film. The sex scenes, for instance, were more funny than sexy but not so much that they take you out of the movie. Basic Instinct is less about erotic thrills and more about cinema in its purest form. Like a good Hitchcock film, Basic Instinct isn't about anything in particular. It simply does what cinema does best which is build suspense and jerk you around.
The Dark Knight
The newest Batman movie is similar to Basic Instinct in that they exist primarily to jerk you around. What makes The Dark Knight more distasteful than Basic Instinct (or Nolan's similarly jerk-you-around The Prestige) is its aspirations toward profundity. Beyond the plot twists and turns, Nolan wants to ask questi0ns about the human condition: What's more important--personal or global good? What is the nature of sacrifice? What is heroism? What motivates the psychopath? How do we maintain our humanity in the face of life and death decisions?
The problem is that these concerns are all driven by the film's antagonist. My friend who worked at a music store told me that his boss would swipe any money he found lying on the counter by the cash register. This was meant to be a lesson about putting money away quickly and not leaving it out in the open. The lesson my friend learned was not that someone might steal money but that his boss was a jerk. Same here. The Joker's simulated crises tell us only one thing—he is a jerk. So the movie is over two hours of watching a jerk doing things that jerk you around. I found it exhausting.
The Host
I posed the following conundrum to Maria awhile ago. There are two planes, exactly the same, experiencing the exact same engine problem. One is filled with Americans, one is filled with Koreans. The planes descend and the air masks pop out. When they land, all of the Americans are alive and all of the Koreans are dead. If you know the answer to this problem, then you'll understand why The Host is so Korean. That and the part about not being able to feed the hero when he was young contributing to his off-kilter demeanor.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Feedback on beta 2
Showed beta 2 to Craig today. He's the first person with an art background to see the footage (who has not seen any of the film except for a few shots). I showed it on one of our projectors through the class sound system It looked a little washed out and I realize that my blacks aren't zeroed out as I thought. Ben's voice sounded good.
Some of his comments...
1. The codex video looks too digital compared to everything else. He thinks it needs to look more authentic. This was a good observation I thought.
2. I asked him to categorize it. He called it "mystical science fiction." Hmmm.
3. He said it was reminiscent of "Lost" the TV show that I've never seen. Something about the way the video seems to indicate a scientific backstory and or conspiracy.
4. He also said it reminded him of WWII era Disney instructional videos. That was a good observation since we use a lot of AV material from the mid-century And, as an instructional designer, the fact that the film has an instructional video in it causes me no end of amusement.
5. I think the main thing that comes across is a sense that someone's thought this thing through, so it's not just smoke and mirrors, but it's also not obvious what that is. Perfect.
6. He also said it reminded him (thematically) a bit of the duh... Vinci code.
My basic feeling now is that we're hitting the target consistently and the film is functioning like I want weaving between clarity and ambiguity. Also, one thing he said that made me happy was that he now felt like going out and making a film. That was always the point... making something homely enough to be inspiring.
Some of his comments...
1. The codex video looks too digital compared to everything else. He thinks it needs to look more authentic. This was a good observation I thought.
2. I asked him to categorize it. He called it "mystical science fiction." Hmmm.
3. He said it was reminiscent of "Lost" the TV show that I've never seen. Something about the way the video seems to indicate a scientific backstory and or conspiracy.
4. He also said it reminded him of WWII era Disney instructional videos. That was a good observation since we use a lot of AV material from the mid-century And, as an instructional designer, the fact that the film has an instructional video in it causes me no end of amusement.
5. I think the main thing that comes across is a sense that someone's thought this thing through, so it's not just smoke and mirrors, but it's also not obvious what that is. Perfect.
6. He also said it reminded him (thematically) a bit of the duh... Vinci code.
My basic feeling now is that we're hitting the target consistently and the film is functioning like I want weaving between clarity and ambiguity. Also, one thing he said that made me happy was that he now felt like going out and making a film. That was always the point... making something homely enough to be inspiring.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
