Cinema Sideshow

Hey, Look. It's a Post on Cinema Sideshow!

I don't make New Year's resolutions. And like every other blogger who starts a post with those words, I'm about to tell you all of the things that I'm changing now that the new year has started. But they aren't resolutions. Oh, no. That would be too ... plan-ish. Resolutions require commitment and effort! Plus, one usually slacks on them by mid-February anyway, so what's the point? Screw that. I certainly don't need a special date on the calendar to flake on my promises -- I can do that any time.

But this year, the turn of the page coincides with a few changes that were happening organically anyway, so the time seemed right to suck it up, walk the walk, etcetera, and clean house. To, in the words of the poet Lawrence del Cable Guy, "git 'r done." Most notably in the area of my chosen career, which suffered this past year from what I can only describe as a miniature nervous work-related breakdown.

I won't bore you (or embarrass myself) with the details of why, exactly, I lost my shit so spectacularly this past year. But 2009 was a year for me in which, simultaneously, terrible, stressful things and amazing, life-changing things happened. My response was to spend as much time curled up in a ball as possible, riding out the storm and fulfilling the bare minimum of my responsibilities. 

Writing became difficult. I stopped posting to my LiveJournal blog entirely, the novel on which I was working was shoved into a box untouched, and writing film reviews felt like I was building brick walls while wearing mittens and a blindfold. And trust me, underperforming did nothing to help my anxiety levels, which led to more curling-into-a-ball ... shampoo, rinse, repeat.

But that seems to be over. The clouds have parted, and I believe I see a glimmer of sun shining on the horizon. Oh, a sea bird has just flown over, landing just above my shoulder with a leafy twig captured in his beak! If he doesn't crap on my shoes, we can take this as a good sign.

In no particular order, here are a few things that this change in the weather brings:

A rebirth, and new look, for this blog.  Cinema Sideshow was conceived as a clearing house for all of my film writing elsewhere, offered in one handy location. But I was haphazard about updating and, with the both underperformance and a lack of pride in what I was writing, the site lay fallow. You'll notice the last post was in August. Meanwhile, I've still held onto the domain, which seems rather silly if I don't intend to use it. So this will now be my primary blog, where you'll find links to my writing, updates on my weekly Ham-Fisted Radio podcast, and all sort of other effluvia that jumble out from my head onto the keyboard. Plus, it has a nifty, clean new theme that feels pretty spiffy. So there's that.

A better tracking of the movies I see throughout the year.  This is probably of no interest to you whatsoever, but at the end of each year I envy the film critics who are anal enough to use a spreadsheet and chart all the movies they screen, because when they have to do their end-of-the-year lists they have all that data at their fingertips. My method, conversely, has been to surf other people's lists and go back over my filed reviews to try and remember what, exactly, I saw and what I thought about it, then cobble a list together in a typically half-assed manner. Inevitably, I end up forgetting something awesome (or horrible), and feeling like a failure. So this year, I'm keeping track. Unfortunately, I haven't the slightest idea how to create a spreadsheet and no desire to learn, and my Internet searches for the sort of thing I need comes up with a lot of Excel apps to catalog ones DVDs, but little else. The best I could find was some other guy's spreadsheet already filled out with movies, which I downloaded and can use if I go through and delete all 1800+ entries that are already logged there. Unsurprisingly, I haven't done that yet. But hey, it's the beginning of the year, and so far I've only seen one film in a theater. I have plenty of time to make a mess of this plan.

Better writing, with a stronger voice. Smarter, too.  I came to a realization about why writing about movies had become difficult this past year. It was, I now understand, the end result of a long, long period in which my reviews were first whittled down by space restrictions, then dumbed down by editorial restrictions, and then required to be cute-funny-clever for entertainment purposes. At the risk of sounding waaaaay too full of myself, I was like one of those Sea World dolphins who get bored with balancing balls on their noses and jumping through hoops because they aren't getting enough intellectual stimulation ... but they still have to keep balancing and jumping anyway, so they do it listlessly, without any enthusiasm**. Add to that the Internet chorus of "you suck," and "fuck you," and "you have no business writing about movies" when I'd write about anything more challenging than casting news for the new Green Lantern movie, and I stopped feeling joy at tippy-typing away about film. The cure for this, I think, is to just not give a rat's ass what anyone thinks anymore, write whatever I like, and hope for the best. That may seem like the obvious solution to anyone who doesn't get paid to write for a living, but I've been balancing on other people's balls for so long that I've forgotten how to swim free on the high seas. And yes, you can giggle at the idea of my balancing on other people's ball. It would be hard not to, really.

So that's pretty much it. There are a few other things that I'm changing, like eating less sugar and wearing slippers more often, reading more and learning how to cook a wider variety of vegetables. But the important things are the work things. Everything else will probably take care of itself. But as the captain of this tugboat, I'm the only one who can steer it into the harbor. Which reminds me -- I'm also going to try and use fewer similes this year. I have a real problem with overusing them, I think.

**  I almost went with a comparison to circus elephants who become enraged at being poked with sticks and forced to do stupid tricks, then ultimately go on a killing rampage and trample the people in the stands. But that would have been a bit overdramatic. Plus, I have body issues and don't want to compare myself to an elephant.

People Are Drooling Idiots: 'Transformers 2' Makes $60 Million in One Day

A few days ago, I wrote a review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for a new outlet. The piece was short, and didn't say anything that hasn't been covered by every other right-thinking critic in America (in other words, it's very loud, very long, and sucks). I thought it was going to be my premiere piece for the site, but now know that it's going into storage so I'll have a backlog of reviews already written when the site's overhaul is unveiled in July.

This is just as well, really. Since I wrote it, I've read far, far better reviews than mine. Mike Russell of the Oregonian called Tranformers 2 "a barely strung-together collection of visual ideas and set pieces, with some of the most hilariously stupid and generic dialogue ever financed by hundreds of millions of dollars." Roger Ebert said that it was "a horrible experience of unbearable length."

And over at the site io9.com, Charlie Jane Anders wrote a lengthy, awe-inspiring deconstruction insisting that the film's really a post-modern masterpiece, "like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane."

My review was not as good as any of these. Mainly because my own limited resources were unable to come up with the words to convey how aggressively wretched Transformers 2 actually is. It's so awful, it made me want to punch Michael Bay in the cock ... with Shia LaBeouf's face. And I kind of like Shia LaBeouf.

Now, today, comes the unsurprising news that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made a record-breaking $60 million on its first day in theaters. This, after almost every review tried to warn people that it's incomprehensible dreck, and that the sight of Megan Fox licking her lips in slo-mo is no trade-off for two-and-a-half hours of being bombarded by Michael Bay's obscenely expensive, ear-splittingly loud, stupidstupidstupid Monster of the Id on celluloid. They went to see it anyway. In droves.

Because most people, it turns out, are morons. Whenever that thought crosses my mind, and it does fairly often, I usually put it down to my admittedly curmudgeonly nature. But no, it's now official -- a very large swath of America is made up of drooling retards with enough leisure time and enough disposable income that they can throw it away on fucking terrible, ass-stupid, ridiculously long wastes of time even after they're warned not to do it. These are the people we're saving by passing seatbelt and helmet laws, by the way. And they breed. Also, this is why the rest of the world hates us.

Mike Judge's Idiocracy is becoming more and more prescient with each passing year. If the one-day landslide business for Transformers 2 is any indication, in a few generations Americans will live exclusively on fast food, all television will be reality shows in which people compete for prizes by kicking each other in the crotch, and movies will be three-hour extravaganzas consisting entirely of loud explosions, barely legal titties, and fart jokes.

The first two paragraphs of my inadequate Transformers 2 review, by the way, go like this:

In the old Looney Toons cartoons that I watched every Saturday morning, Foghorn Leghorn would torture his farm-dog nemesis by jamming a metal bucket on his head and then banging on it with a wooden spoon. I never knew what that felt like until Michael Bay did to me for two-and-a-half hours with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

At once a feature-length ad for the military, a soft-core Maxim spread featuring Megan Fox, and an extremely loud music video, Bay's second shot at turning the popular 80's toy/cartoon into an action flick is the sort of film that people suggest you "turn your brain off" to watch. It would be nice if that actually worked, but with Bay insisting that you pay attention to EVERY! LOUD! THING! that he throws at the screen, you can't even allow your mind to wander to, say, your grocery list, or what you had for dinner, the way you can with a normal bad movie.

But as I remember the actual experience of watching the movie, I realize that the above is painfully weak. Honestly, having my head inside a metal bucket upon which someone is hammering with a spoon would be an improvement on watching Transformers 2. Comparatively, it might even be a pleasure. Because I left the theater actually feeling stupider for having watched it, as if exposure to two-and-a-half hours of maximum Bay-hem caused genuine brain damage. Had I checked, I might have found bits of soft, greyish-pink brain matter oozing from my ears as I staggered through the lobby, bumping into walls.

Which might, in fact, be Michael Bay's master plan. Perhaps he's found a way to literally make his target audience mentally retarded through repeat viewings of his films, thus assuring that they'll continue to enjoy his work even more as his career progresses. And maybe he figures that if he can make film critics into babbling, single-digit-I.Q. mongoloids as well, we'll all be unable to type, and then we can't review his movies anymore.

Well, I have news for you, Mr. Bay. This future retard isn't going to go along quietly. You can have my brain cells when you vacuum them from my cold, dead, Transformers-desiccated skull. After I punch you in the cock.

Ask Pixar to Make a Film About Girls? Why, That's Just 'P.C. B.S.!"

 


(The following is a longer version of a piece that I posted to Cinematical, which I edited a) for space, and b) to make it a tad less ... strident. You can read that version here.)

Over at NPR.org, writer Linda Holmes dared to blog an open letter to Pixar politely asking to see a few adventures with, maybe, girls as the main characters. Her tone was set nicely in the opening of her piece, titled "Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees":

This is not an angry letter. It is especially not an angry letter about Up, which I adored. I could have sat in the theater and watched it two more times in a row. I cried, but I also laughed so hard in places that it wore me out.

So I'm not complaining; I'm asking. I'm asking because I think so highly of you.

Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.

Holmes points out that of the ten features that Pixar's released theatrically so far, all ten have been boy's adventures. She acknowledges that the movies "feature women and girls to varying degrees -- The Incredibles, in particular -- but the story is never 'a girl and the things that happen to her,' the way it's 'a boy and what happens to him.'" She mentions again that she loves Pixar's movies ... she'd just like to see a character like Up's Ellie or The Incredibles' Violet as the main character for a change.

There are over 100 comments on the piece and, this being NPR, the overwhelming majority of the responses are intelligently expressed and in agreement with Holmes point of view. But if you skip over to Jerry Beck's animation blog, Cartoon Brew, you'll find a lot of readers with a different perspective.

It doesn't help that Beck's post, which links to Holmes' piece, immediately colors her thesis with its own title, “Dear Pixar, How About a Chick Flick?” (his emphasis) even though a chick flick was decidedly not what Holmes was proposing. And from the tone of many of comments that follow, you'd think she'd suggested that Pixar fire all the male animators and hire angry lesbians in big, stompy boots to wipe boys off the Pixar landscape by brute force.

 "I suppose all the Disney Princess and Tinkerbell movies don’t count for anything? You have to try to force your P.C. B.S. on Pixar now?," writes one of the earliest commenters. "Come on! I’m sure when an interesting story with a female protagonist develops organically at Pixar, they will make that movie. Until that time, stop trying to ruin the fun for the rest of us." (Yes, it would seem that Pixar's films "develop organically," grown on a farm on the Pixar compound, perhaps, and no one there has any control over what gender the main character may turn out to be.)

"Let Pixar make the movies for boys and leave the chick flicks/teenybopper movies to Disney itself," writes another (male) reader, while yet another fellow says, "Everybody has an agenda. I’m sorry if this delightful movie didn’t service yours."

Why is it that when women -- who make up over half of the species, by the way -- respectfully point out that they're underrepresented in movies, it's seen as some sort of angry feminist screed? I've been writing about film for over ten years, and I've been hit with this accusation myself a number of times -- most recently, when I wrote here of my disappointment in that one aspect of the otherwise terrific Star Trek (and if you haven't read the comments there, check 'em out -- some of them are doozies.)

Some readers respond not with anger, but with puzzlement that we womenfolk aren't satisfied with the secondary roles that we continually play in films. Regarding Holmes' Pixar piece, one commenter wrote, "What about Jessie from Toy Story 2?? She is not the main character of the film, but her story is an integral part of the movie and I hope she will be back for Toy Story 3?. Eve also has an integral role in Wall-E."

Well, yes. But in each case, the movie isn't about them. It's not their adventure, any more than Finding Nemo is Dory's adventure, or A Bug's Life is about Dot. And the answer isn't sexing up Pixar to make girl's adventures for slavering pubescent boys, as one commenter suggested when he wrote, "Maybe Pixar should make a CGI adaptation of Tomb Raider or Aeon Flux. Those are franchises that feature strong, female leading roles that AREN”T princesses." Yep, that would be real progress, you betcha. And fun for the kids, too.

Pixar is a powerhouse in the entertainment industry. More importantly, they make family films that are watched, over and over, by children. And the prevailing message that Pixar's otherwise extraordinary body of work promotes is that males have adventures, and that females are second bananas or love interests. It doesn't take an angry feminazi to figure out that lessons -- both intentional and unintentional -- are being taught by their pictures, and this lesson, when combined with the overwhelming amount of "Disney princess" product being thrown at little girls, isn't setting an especially strong example.

A culture that promotes strong, adventurous boys while telling girls that their primary function is to be a support system and a pretty, pretty princess doesn't serve either men or women well. It also creates unrealistic ideas of what men or women are really like, as expressed in this comment on the Cartoon Brew blog:

I think the problem with girls in Pixar movies is that most of them are tomboys. Its not impossible for a guy to write a really strong female character, but more often the girls are saddled with boy qualities which is more often than not the creators trying to work out their own issues through that character.

Read that again. The writer believes that strong females -- even in the context of secondary cartoon characters -- exhibit "boy qualities." Because real girls and women are weak, and soft. And they don't have adventures.

This is a what Holmes was writing about, what women in our culture have to contend with, and what Pixar can, in a very real way, help to overcome.

For Christmas 2011, Pixar will release The Bear and the Bow, directed by Brenda Chapman, a woman with a long animation resume going back to Disney's The Fox and the Hound. It's an adventure-fairy tale about a girl who strives to become a great archer.

Oh, yeah ... and she's a princess. Of course.

Ramblings: "Last Holiday" and the critical eye

For reasons best left undisclosed in this forum, Cinema Sideshow spent the morning curled up on the couch with a mug of coffee and a cigarette, watching Last Holiday, the chick flick about Queen Latifah getting a brain tumor and spending all of her money at a fancy resort. And you know what? We liked it.

The thing about reviewing movies professionally that civilians don't understand is this: When you see every movie (or, at least, a much higher percentage than the average film-goer) and you watch with a critical eye, it erodes your ability to enjoy movies as entertainment. You start to discern that 99 percent of Hollywood's output is created to an established template. All the constructs become transparent -- the three-act structure, the major plot point that comes every 20 minutes, the cute-meets and the predictable happy endings and the tertiary character who'll (surprise!) turn out to be the bad guy. You've already seen it all hundreds of times already, and this version is just more of the same. The Emperor is buck-ass nekkid, and your job is to point and laugh.

Last Holiday is written to one of those templates. There isn't a single unexpected moment in the picture -- even as the premise is laid out in the beginning, you know precisely how it's going to turn out. So the question, therefore, becomes whether or not the people making this particular version of this tired story will do it with competence.

And here, they do. Queen Latifah is an exceedingly charming woman, and a good, natural actress. Sitting on our couch as we were, looking for entertainment that would be amusing and unchallenging, we found ourselves pleasantly surprised by the entire, predictable exercise. But then, we were sitting on our couch watching it for entertainment, not sitting in a theater watching it in a professional capacity.

Which brings us to another truth about the job of a critic that laymen don't understand. Watching a movie as a critic is different than watching a movie as Joe Ticket Buyer. We've found that the differences in critical movie experiences can be broken down in such a way that there are four different ways in which we view a film:

• In a theater/Reviewing the film
• In a theater/Watching for pleasure
• At home, on DVD/Reviewing the film
• At home, on DVD/Watching for pleasure

The truth is, we most assuredly would have been harder on Last Holiday had we seen the movie in a theater full of people -- the audiences who attend the early screenings via free passes are almost always loud, rude and annoying, no doubt because they didn't actually lay out any money for a ticket,  and it tends to make your average critic crankier than they might be otherwise -- and with the intention of critiquing it in a review. Because it was predictable as hell, and a few of the slapstickier scenes were a bit embarrassing. We would have found that annoying, and we would have had to point that out in our review. It's like we switch our brains over to a different frequency when reviewing movies, because that's our job.

Which brings us to another film that we saw recently, in a different setting: 3:10 to Yuma. We attended a press screening with five or six other critics, on a weekday afternoon in a local theater. We took a seat, pulled out a notepad and prepared to take notes ... then realized that we didn't have to review it (although we definitely will when it's released), so we could could just sit back and allow ourselves to be entertained.

3:10 to Yuma, a remake of the 1957 Glenn Ford/Van Heflin Western, is very, very good. We'd feel that way even if we'd been furiously scribbling notes (and we did grab the notepad to scribble a few, so as to recall particularly juicy bits of dialogue), but the fact that we were there purely for enjoyment and not for work made the experience all the better.

Critics sometimes forget that it's okay to just ... enjoy. To let a movie be dumb, or predictable, or even poorly directed if there are elements that are entertaining. We're never able to completely turn off that critical perspective, but it's possible to shove it to the sidelines now and then.

So we at Cinema Sideshow feel no shame in admitting that we enjoyed Last Holiday. One reason that so many film critics become art-movie snobs is simply because they offer the most opportunity for us to see something unique, when almost all Hollywood pictures are simply rehashes of formulas that have made money in the past. But it's dangerous to become an elitist when you're tasked with critiquing popular entertainment. You can't always be a critic, and you can't do your job well if you believe that your tastes are better, and more refined, than those of your readers. Foie gras is divine, to be sure -- but when you eat a really well-prepared cheeseburger, there's nothing wrong with saying that you enjoyed the hell out of that cheeseburger.