Front Row Geek

High Rise Review

2017-03-13T19:00:00.003-07:00

May 16, 2016

W.B. Preston

“Power Failure”

High Rise is a labyrinth. Although adapted from a novel of the same name, it fits right in with director Ben Wheatley’s oeuvre. A methodical, blacksmith of a director. He doesn't so much as present a theme, as he breaks it apart and show you its guts. This story is ripe for that technique, and his skill set. I use the word story lightly, as this is not really about the story per se. It’s more an artistic representation of society and the many forms that civilization has assumed, and the singular form of its final form. Annihilation.

There is Kubrickian imagery littered throughout the film, accompanied by similar musical arrangements and allusions to the films of that master, but these are mere moments, and fleeting and irrelevant at the end of the day. This isn’t about paying homage, or lining up behind the greats of the past. This is an auteur stepping out onto new grounds, with the knowledge that the old ground is behind. Kubrick was supremely concerned with the narrative, and how that narrative could be best communicated and effectively delivered through imagery. Here, Wheatley is less concerned about the narrative and more concerned about whether or not the feeling of decadence and decay ripple through the mind of the audience. Can he make you feel?

Make no mistake, the cinematography is gorgeous, paintings drip from the screen in slow motion, as we follow these people up and down the building. The shadows don’t represent corruption, because the corrupt walk in the light. The shadows are for the meek and the frightened to hide and hope that the monsters do not find them. Society is the monster here. Not greed, or survival, or money, or ambition. Hell is other people, and this film exemplifies that to the fullest. What is motivating these characters is not any of those things, though on the surface it would appear so, even in their minds. No what motivates the monstrous acts these villains perpetrate is the fact that they are in proximity with one another, and have the capacity to do so. As the colorful palate cascades down the building, illuminating the faces and the indecent deeds enacted by these animals, it’s clear that at any point, any of these people may choose to leave. In that way, mirroring society, even as it beats on the weak and the poor, and fails to satiate the unending appetite of the rich and powerful, not many choose to leave the cesspool. We crave the comfort of demise. Perhaps we too could dance in the delirium of power. A dance we all make daily, but refuse to see.

There are no heroes here. Except the dogs and the children. Every adult is a villain. The only protagonist is the future where perhaps these kids can create a society that strays as far away from what their parents have created as possible. I was struck while I wondered who’s perspective is the camera from? It isn’t a protagonist. At times the audience is the perspective, not unlike a video game, but this is not the prevailing lens through which the film is told. It isn’t God watching these people, for surely this is a Godless place. We see one child, whom represents a kind of knowing innocents, he sees all the deeds of the adults, and silently judges them. But it is not from his perspective the film through which the film is told. No, upon final reflection the answer is quite obvious. A quasi Nietzschean philosophy pervades the film, where the supermen have glutted themselves to the point of self-destruction. What else is there to indulge in after you’ve devoured the world? Of course the perspective is from the overriding and overwhelming presence of no one.

No one is watching the madness, and it makes the proceedings all the more frightening. At one point a character asks, if a man can fall from the 39th floor without sirens or cops or an investigation, what is going on here? Nothing. As the madness unfolds and the building residents rip themselves apart, no one comes to stop them. No one comes to save the women and children. Towards the end the women must take control themselves, as the men have fallen from all reasonable bounds of sanity. Not even they can save this hellscape. All they can do is provide a barrier between themselves, the children and the vicious marauding packs of wild men that stalk the halls.

As we see where the main character lands after his downward spiral. We understand that this was not a descent into madness. He was insane the entire time. This upper middle class doctor was never stable, was never at ease. He’s just a man trying to deal with society, in any incarnation that may be. If it means eating dog, then so be it. The everyman that we are presented with, is a manic depressive, married, adulterer, and a murdering rapist. He is the representative of the middle class. In the end we are left with the image of a child, who has created a fantasy world of his own to no doubt block out the insanity swirling around him, with a quote from Madeleine Albright about capitalism being the only economic system. The future is in the hands of the children, as usual, but what will the children be taught, and what kind of clay will they use to mold that future? If it’s the clay left to them by their parents, they’ll have quite a bit of molding to do.

Captain America Civil War Review

2017-03-13T18:59:00.001-07:00

I fully intended the first review to be the Blade Runner final cut, as I finally got around to watching the gorgeous blu-ray version, sans voice over. But alas, it will have to wait, for this week brought us a miracle of cinema. The best comic book movie yet made, Captain America: Civil War. Perhaps it is not the best film made from a comic book property,(see The Dark Knight) nor the most interesting film made from a comic book property,(see Batman Vs. Superman) but it is the purest example of a comic book put to film. This film embodies what it feels like to actually read a comic book, better than any film prior. The Russo brothers are to be commended for accomplishing such a feat. It is indeed, no easy task, as countless others have tried, including themselves, and countless others have failed. Although perhaps all others who have braved these particular waters prior were stymied by loftier goals.

Nevertheless, what I witnessed in that theater was breathtaking, exciting, heartfelt and hilarious. Nothing feels out of place, nothing feels at odds with the promise of the film, and of the pulp comics whose pages these heroes have been ripped from. From the opening action sequence, to the second and final stinger at the end with the words, Spider-Man will return following the scene, this movie knows exactly what it is, and who it is playing for. Though it feels familiar to every fan who grew up flipping the pages of a Cap comic, its success and broader appeal is owed to its accessibility to a broader audience.

This is a fun film. It is meant to be a good time for as many people as possible. That is a difficult prospect, when saddled with the hurdle of some 10 heroes, and a complex and twisting plot, weaving in new characters, bouncing from origin story to origin story, laying the foundation for the next phase of Marvel films, alluding to past Marvel films, dropping in a few easter eggs for hardcore fans, and giving proper screentime to each character, providing each a satisfying and believable arc, including a villain who ties up the third act with a nice colorful bow. This film is stuffed. But stuffed in a good way. Like a kid after Christmas dinner and dessert, and a stocking full of candy, arms full of toys. It’s too much of a good thing, and that’s a good thing.

There is no less than 10 action beats that I for one have never seen in any film, digitally enhanced or not, and being this is my first review for the site, you’ll have to take my word for it that I’ve seen quite a few action beats. All this is not to say the film is perfect, but in a world where this film can exist right alongside something more ambitious in terms of narrative choices like Batman vs. Superman, what does perfect even mean? Perfect for whom? Do some of the older Avengers get short shrift due to extra attention paid to the newer additions? Absolutely. Does the film suffer for it? I’d argue not. Is this truly a Captain America film? It certainly begins with Iron Man, but many films begin with the antagonist, even a pseudo-antagonist like Tony Stark.

Somehow the film juggles a timely plot about the powers that a unilateral organization like the Avengers, or America, with the ability to wipe out any enemy, perceived or otherwise, without oversight from anyone, anywhere. Should an organization or an organism exercise this power just because it can? That seems to be Captain’s position. Or should that organization give up some of this power in order to limit the civilian casualties, the collateral damage in the fog of war, in order to police the world in a safer more transparent way? That’s Iron Man’s position. The villain is a terrorist, the personification of blowback from an Avenger mission that killed innocent people, including children. How many hospitals have been destroyed by American missiles containing Doctors without borders in the past year?

This is how villains are created, how terrorists are created, it’s not always a power hungry madman that needs to be stopped, sometimes it’s just a grieving father and husband with the heart for revenge. And is he not right? Should there be no justice for his dead family. A family killed at the very least because of the actions of the Avengers? Cap says some innocents have to die so that many more may live. These are some of the messy politics that the film plays with, that are believable and timely while also a backdrop to amazing action and beautiful choreography and cinematography. It is a candy colored feat to behold when the avengers meet up for a sparring session in an airport. An action set piece that is worth the price of admission alone, and serves as an all time moment in the history of the field.

Even the relationships have begun to twist and turn on each other, as the Winter Soldier’s actions while under Hydra’s spell becomes a plot turn that further antagonizes Tony Stark and complicates the relationship between he and Cap. The climax of the film is set up to be yet another big action showdown, but is only a red herring as the true climax, refreshingly, is an emotional climax, backed up by an awesome fight sequence, but the core of the resolution is an emotional core. A resolution that ends with Black Panther hugging our terrorist villain to keep him from killing himself. Finally a marvel film gets the third act right. 13th time’s the charm.

The Conjuring: Hollywood Horror Perfected

2013-07-21T19:24:00.002-07:00

The Conjuring: Hollywood Horror Perfected

W.B. Preston

(– ***Spoilers For The Above*** –)

I have a deep and abiding love for horror films. Much of my early exposure to films stemmed from the horror genre, so believe me when I say, The Conjuring is nearly flawless. I say nearly due only to the veracity with which it sticks to the tropes of the genre. However those tropes have been executed flawlessly by James Wan and the writers Chad & Carey Hayes. I think it is safe to say that Mr. Wan has conquered the horror genre with Saw, Insidious, and now The Conjuring. I have not seen a Fast & Furius film since Tokyo Drift however I am quite tempted to see what Wan will do with FF7.

This film is beautiful to look at, the coloring is sumptuous, and the cinematography not only has depth, but is meaningfully designed. A lot of love and care went into the making of this film, as evident in the hiring of cinematographer John R. Leonetti, whom served as DP on many of my favorite childhood films including, Hot Shots! Part Deux, The Mask, and Mortal Kombat, just to name a few. His IMDB page has the rest of his more recent films in case you’re curious. There is so much to love about his work here, I don’t quite know where to begin. This continues his work with James Wan, whom he colaborated with on two films prior, and their working relationship fully blossoms here in spectacular fashion.

As I said before, the film is a standard horror flick from start to finish, including a family moving into a haunted house, and a ghostbusting couple played by Patrick Wilson who gives a campy performance stradling the line between cheap carsalesman and superhero. He shines in his scenes with his on screen wife Vera Farminga who inhabits the role of real life and still living medium Lorraine Warren with grace and power. Mrs. Farminga is in dire need of a meaty role so she can have her Oscar already. She presents her character with love and seriousness that raises the stakes on the story, and helps to elevate the film to its lofty status, atleast to this reviewer.

I was shocked to find a bad review on Salon, where the critic points to the female characters as a point of derision. I found the actresses portraying all of the female characters to be not only the highlight of the film, but the rock on which the films foundation is built upon. Without their solid performances this would be just another standard horror film, although gorgeously shot and directed. There are shots in this film that I wonder a) how they were concieved, and b) how they were executed to perfection. Each set piece is perfectly paced and excellently designed, there is not a single wasted frame in this film. I for one was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and being a horror veteran I knew exactly where the story was headed, and where each plot point was taking us, yet because of the excellence with which the film was written, photographed, acted, and directed none of that mattered. I was completely focused on the film at all times, and I will admit to jumping out of my seat twice, and letting out a yelp once.

I don’t feel the need to deconstruct the story or offer my own opinion on some of the allusions, metaphors, or symbology present in the film. However I would like to defend the film against that Salon piece, whose criticsm is based purely on the critics personal hang ups, and never meets the film on its merits as a beautiful piece of art. The critic attakcs the film because of its connection to the Salem Witch Trials, which the film is never really about, it is only mentioned once in a scene as being connected to the infamous Trials. To this critic I say, horror films are based on the fears of their audience. In America, there is a fear of witchcraft, dating back to, oh I don’t know, the 17^th century and the Salem Witch Trials, and even before that. So it makes sense to me, that the writers, the filmmakers, and the studio would exploit that fear.

And to suggest that this film has a religious or female depowerment agenda is asinine and a really misguided attempt at politicizing a film that is apolitical. Excorsism films tend to have a religious component to them, it kind of goes with the territory, so to critisize this film for using religion to defeat evil, is missing the point entirely. To say that this film paints women in a bad light, is completely ridiculous, when the film has a female antagonist, and two female protaganists. While yes it takes a male character to perform the excorcism, to disregard the work of his wife is again a complete misreading of the film. Lorraine Warren is constantly pushing her husband to take the case, when he was relunctant. When he tries to leave her at home, she forces herself into the position of protaganists time and time again, and he would never have even been in position to perform the excorsism in the first place if it was not for her work as the medium. And on top of all that, it can be argued that his excorsism does not even work, and really it was the connection between the two female protaganists that allows for them to purge the demon from the house.

4 out of 5 Stars, only because of the cliché horror tropes.

@WBPreston_

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

The Conjuring (captainklerk.wordpress.com)
A Glamberous Movie Review: The Conjuring (glambergirlblog.com)
The Conjuring (weeklyfilmreviewer.com)
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‘The Conjuring’: Haunting, in all the best ways (wenatcheeworld.com)
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‘The Conjuring’ Reviews: Should You See The Haunted House Thriller? (hollywoodlife.com)
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Lunopolis: Conspiracy Dreams Created With Care

2013-07-14T12:33:00.001-07:00

Lunopolis: Conspiracy Dreams Created With Care

W.B. Preston

(– ***Spoilers For The Above*** –)

Lunopolis is on the of the best films I have seen in quite some time. Let me calm your excitement now, this is not a movie I would call a crowd pleaser, in fact, it at times seems to prefer to scare off any popular audience it may have won with its first thirty minutes of run time. Its narrative jumps from shaky cam thriller, to conspiracy documentary, to science fiction action film. I, finding great enjoyment in a good old fashion conspiracy theory, found this film to be at the apex of films based on the subject. It not only excels at creating, or recreating, a believable world of conspiracies for its theorists to inhabit, it pays homage and touches on all the “real” conspiracies that have preceded the film. Director Matthew Avant has clearly spent a lot of time delving into the world of conspiracies and folding them into his own story, in a gorgeous documentary style film that lags a bit in the middle,but bring everything together in a satisfying, and dramatic conclusion.

There is an imaginative quality to the film, a sense of wonder and excitement that is greatly missing from Hollywood film making. The film unfolds from beat to beat, with genuine surprises and holds your attention to the mystery as we travel with the protagonists, and learn only what they themselves learn. It sounds simple enough, but it seems Hollywood has forgotten how valuable mystery is to any medium of storytelling. This is not a problem here, as we learn more about the story and the world in which Lunopolis takes place,that world unfolds unto us and builds a huge story that could be a 200 million dollar blockbuster itself, though we will have to settle for this low budget version for now.

The effects are sparse, I’d say probably averaging one per act, but when they occur they are filled with meaning and beautifully rendered. The designers get it right, partially because of a small budget, but partially, i’d like to think, because effects are more effective when serving the story rather than themselves. That is to say, when a story is engaging in and of itself, the use of cgi or what have you, are not the sole reason for the films existence. Therefore if the storytelling is sub-par, I don’t care how amazing your visuals are, your movie will still be sub-par. Whereas if the story is good, but the cgi is lacking or few, the film will still triumph, as I will have been entertained,and vindicated and rewarded for watching your film. Hollywood seems content with tricking audiences to go see movies based on marketing that focuses on cgi, rather than on great characters and competent storytelling. This has been met with varying degrees of success, some huge highs, but also some lowest of lows.

All that to say that this film, exceeds where most Hollywood films fail. It’s thoughtful, well crafted, well written, created with care, and does not rely on cgi. Instead it relies on the curiousness of people, which unfortunately will not yield much in terms of profit, however I for one hope Mr. Avant to make another film asap. Until then, I’ll have to settle with watching Lunopolis again. Which is available on Netflix streaming right now.

4 out of 5 stars

@WBPreston_

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Art of Invisibility

2013-07-10T19:47:00.005-07:00

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Art of Invisibility

W.B. Preston

(– ***Spoilers For The Above*** –)

The irony of the Ninja Turtle phenomena of the late eighties/early nineties is the discrepancy between the huge marketing potential for the green foursome on multiple platforms (graphic novels, video games, movies, cartoons, action figures, live action television shows, on ice, etc), the attempt to cash in on that potential, and the unique failure to do so. It was bubble like, that perhaps better invested in would have yielded greater results than the retro, 80's, nostalgia, cash grab, quasi-renaissance that the franchise is experiencing now. No the crime fighting brothers have never truly ceased to exist in the overall consciousness of pop culture, but they have waned in their popularity and influence over said popular cultural sphere. An oddity at that, the series was arguably more popular with my generation than Transformers or G.I. Joe, not really arguably, the turtles could be experienced on far more platforms than either of those series combined, yet there is a tendency to misremember the past.

There has been a reconstructed past, where the turtles were a passing fad, and the giant robots and muscular soldiers dominated the pop culture landscape. No doubt this ruse has been perpetrated on an unsuspecting public by the generation of men who grew up in the decade before mine,who saw the turtles benefit from the foundation laid by the Transformers, G.I. Joe's, Go-Bots, Voltron, Thunder Cats, Robotech, etc, the turtles came about at the right time and was able to cash in. Yet it was all very tongue in cheek, as the creators of the turtles have intimated in recent years, their creations were a joke to begin with. A joke that grew larger and encompassed more people than they could have ever imagined, but if they were not serious when they constructed it, how could it have become as popular as it did?

The mythology of Ninja Turtles, the archetypal characters, the relatability, and the foundation of psychology, the cross sections of spirituality combined with the philosophy of ninjutsu, and they joked their way right into a four quadrant story, aimed at kids, which turned into a marketing bonanza and spawned a million copycats. It was as if the investors saw it as a passing fad and treated it as a cash grab, in the era of Oliver Stone's Wall Street, they were buying low and selling high, except the stock never really crashed, the bubble never popped. The turtles had staying power, and even when their popularity faded somewhat in the late nineties early 00's they still had an audience all over the world and still do. It seems the current investors have adopted the former's philosophy of cash grab mentality, rather than learning from the mistakes of the past and building a franchise on the already firm and well established foundation of the original property, especially the good will created by this film.

A great film by the way, never quite equaled in any form afterward,only bested by the original comic book, which was 'dark and gritty' before those words became synonymous with the industry pitch, the whole enterprise was mishandled from the start and seemingly continues to be, although the Bay film remains to be seen, pre-production has been rocky at best.

The original film was modeled after the success of Burton's Batman, some cheese, a little wink wink with the audience, but a film marketed for children and filmed for adults. There is never a flat frame, we are constantly invited into the world of the Turtles with deep focus, and interesting framing. Obviously this is pre-Cgi era, however that makes the achievement even more impressive. The rhythmic editing coupled with the well timed sound design creates an almost poetic flow to the scenes, woven together with gorgeous sets and costume design captured with beautiful cinematography, which in some scenes is quite stunning. There is a scene in this film, which stood out to me as a child but at the time I knew not why, now I know it is an artistic expression by the filmmakers to add soul to what was supposed to be a soulless corporate scheme.

Watching this film we get the sense that the filmmakers actually studied the philosophy and religion being espoused by a giant Ninja mouse. There is care and love put into every scene, and no I am not decrying the work of crews on films that don't turn out so well, I am merely applauding the outstanding work done on this film, by all involved. The film is a treasure and a lingering artifact from the era of 80's film making marked by practical effects, a child's story told for adults. It's full of mystical and sagely advice, and underpinned with a spirituality and a soul that is seriously lacking in most product made for kids today. It's full of emotion and mournfulness, it's meandering and thoughtful, unafraid to take risks. The action pales in comparison to anything from the past twenty years, and there are a myriad of cheesy one liners, but none of that detracts from this gem of a movie that will no doubt leave you contemplating and smiling.

The characters are round and whole, multidimensional, mostly played by fully formed adults, with one supporting turn from a teen. There is a youthful presence however, and my girlfriend rather astutely made the observation that it was smart to make the young thieves, with souls hanging in the balance, the same age as the target audience. They run rampant over a pleasure island type warehouse where the foot clan make their residence. Overall a superb screenplay that feels lived in and organic. The characters bounce off of each other and change with the scenes. At one point they are forced to retreat to a farm and the characters are scattered all over a large house. Casey Jones makes breakfast and chops veggies with Leonardo's sword. I'm not sure if this was written in the original script, but it reveals character and makes connections with the new environment in a way that cgi and a million fight scenes never will.

4 out of 5 stars

@WBPreston_

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

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Europa Report: Actionless Videogame Cut Scene

2013-07-07T12:57:00.002-07:00

Europa Report: Actionless Videogame Cut Scene

W.B. Preston

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

(– ***Spoilers For The Above*** –)

Europa Report is a film bursting with ideas and narrative techniques that are utilized effectively and proficiently yet do not always serve the story being told. The editing is impeccable, highly accomplished and professionally cut, with the sound design not far behind that. Kudos all around to those teams, unfortunately they could not overcome the limitations of the third act. The screenplay is competent, especially in regards to the dialogue and character design, the science is believable, at least it sounds believable, until the second half of the film. Which is to be expecting because the second half is where our knowledge of how an actual manned flight ends. As the film points out no human has ever gone past the moon, and this is where the film starts to lose credibility. However not only does the science become faulty the character motivations and the plot points become mechanical and forced, and the film loses our trust. Upon completion we find a film whose entire construction was predicated upon the final image. Every action every story beat was meant to lead us to this final moment and unfortunately the payoff is not worth the trip.

Prior to the half way point there is plenty of fun character interaction that all rings true with lines delivered by actors whom seem to embody their characters well. No one is out of place or a bad fit for the crew. They have a collective charisma that I found interesting and fun, and would not have minded just watching the relationships between the crew play out rather than the silliness that follows this initial setup. However the intro is broken up with footage of the scientists on earth responsible for the mission, and their explanation and celebration of the mission at a press conference. The unfortunate problem with this, and the rest of the film, is none of it seems cinematic. They have chosen to present the images as a found footage film in the vein of Paranormal Activity, or VHS, yet they have removed the hand held quality of those successful franchises and opted for more static framing. Every shot is either a news camera or a camera attached to the walls of the ship. Occasionally we see the cameras on the space suits but this is not really utilized until the third act, and in varying degrees of success therein.

The final problem with the film is the time manipulation aspect of the editing. We jump from the middle back to the beginning, then the whole film is inter cut with interviews from people after the mission is over kind of documentary style, but not as entertaining as a documentary would be. All of this editing and jumping around and switching narrators and it is unclear what the purpose of all this technical gymnastics actually is. Again they have executed these techniques in a proficient manner, yet I am left wondering why didn’t you just tell a good story? Then if it required and could be enhanced by the shifts in time, so be it. The story just isn’t good enough to merit all the technical wizardry. The flat framing, the lack of any depth of field, bores the eyes, and unlike Paranormal we are never searching the flat frame for a sign of a monster or ghost or clue to anything. The few moments when we are prompted to investigate the flat frame, we are never rewarded for our participation. We are shown a dark image or a fuzzy screen, indicating that we have wasted our time, and should no longer trust this story. Our mistrust is substantiated when we are finally shown the creature at the end of the film. A creature beautifully designed and rendered, but ultimately unexploited in the visual storytelling of the film.

Coupled with the poor decisions being made by the characters, over and over again, the film becomes unbearable and less Space Odyssey and more actionless video game cut scene.

2 out of 5 stars

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Nights of Cabiria: Love for Sale

2013-07-06T11:01:00.001-07:00

Nights of Cabiria: Love for Sale

W.B. Preston

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

(– ***Spoilers For The Above*** –)

Giulietta Masina stars in Fellini‘s Cabiria as the title character, as she does eight years later in Fellini’s Juliet. The two characters could not be more different, however in someways I can not help but see Juliet as the continuation of Cabiria. She is a continuation of the character in terms of the character’s journey, and the theme of that journey, and this is due more to the writing than to the acting. Both characters are lonely, though for differing reasons. Cabiria is lonely because of her place of birth, at fourteen her mother taught her to become a prostitute in order to contribute to their financial situation. There was no mention of a father or any other siblings to Cabiria,so I assume it was just the two of them. By the time we meet her she has been at the profession for twenty years or more, and is a scrappy veteran. Although we never see her succeed in acquiring any real customers in the duration of this film, she owns her own home, and has money saved, so it is safe to assume she is at least semi-proficient at her work.

Ownership of her small shack in a field outside of Rome is her main source of pride, and something she flaunts at anyone suggesting she is of a lower caste. She often gets into shouting matches with the other woman in her line of work, as she attempts to prove her worth and status above those around her. She is fiercely independent, and refuses to accept the help of anyone, for fear that they may have ulterior motives, or may hurt her in someway. This fear is objectified in a scene at the beginning of the film where she is frolicking in the fields with a man, who proceeds to push her into a river and steal her purse. She returns to her shack looking for the man, convinced that it was an accident, but has her fears confirmed when he does not return. This proves that she can trust no one, especially a man, and reinforces her journey on the lonely path. Her friend’s pimp offers her his services, and she refuses, citing the amount of money he would take from her for services rendered. There is something sympathetic about a character willing to face danger rather than receive help from nefarious people.

The film follows her on her journey from scene to scene. The episodic nature of this film suggests further its comparisons to Juliet. It’s interesting to point out that this film was released in 1957, the year of the final season of I Love Lucy and the first season of Leave it to Beaver. Two wholesome American black and white television classics in which the depiction of a married couple in bed was considered risqué. In Cabiria we find racy sexual innuendos, the hilarious use of slang and subject matter that even today would garner an R rating. It is an interesting juxtaposition of the squeaky clean tone and image of old fashioned American Hollywood film making and the more mature and adult characteristics and themes of foreign films. Much of Masina’s performance is steeped in the old vaudevillian, over the top, slapstick stage acting,yet we also see the more realistic, subtle and emotional performance when the film requires it. There are moments where she is channeling the likes of The Three Stooges, or The Marx Brothers, that then give way to heartbreaking moments of emotional release. It’s as if we are watching the last gasps of the old timey vaudevillian performance give way to the new Stanislavski method acting right before our eyes. Though the shift in tone can be somewhat off putting narratively, historically it makes perfect sense.

We follow her as she is betrayed by another man, this time a famous actor of some sort, whom lures her to his home after a fight with what surely is his model or actor girlfriend, only to leave poor Cabiria to sleep in the bathroom as he sleeps with the model. She then hitches a ride with a man whom drives around the poor parts of Rome feeding the hungry who live in caves and holes. She and her prostitute friends wind up out in the country and get swept up in a religious ceremony, that reduces Cabiria to tears,as she begs for the mercy of God and for the forgiveness of her sins. After the ceremony she realizes that she and her friends were not miraculously changed by the hand of God, and is distraught over this. She wishes to end her current mode of living yet lacks the faculty to do so. She winds up at a show where a magician is hypnotizing members of the audience. She is called up on stage, he waves his hand above her head and gets her to reveal her innermost innocence, in front of the laughing audience. After the show, a man approaches her and tells her of what she did up on the stage, he tells her that he wishes to court her. She, having been spurned by many men before, as we have seen, refuses his advances, though she tells him where he can find her again.

They date for a while, though they never have sex, and he asks her to marry him. She tells all of her friends about it, she sells all of her things, including her house, and she meets him to move to their new home. Of course her worst fears are confirmed yet again, as he lures her to a cliff with the intention of pushing her off and stealing her money. Her breakdown in this scene is truly mesmerizing as she begs him to end her suffering, just as when she begged for God to do something similar. He takes the money and runs, and she is left sobbing on the the edge of the cliff. She awakens and begins walking on a path alone, just as when she began, betrayed and lost. However a troupe of musicians and young people appear all around her, singing and dancing , and she smiles and is happy as the film ends, though in worst shape, financially then when the film started, perhaps she is in better shape spiritually and emotionally. This is the final comparison to Juliet, in which in the end she walks down the path alone, here she is walking with what seems like jovial spirits summoned to brighten her horizon and remind her of the true joys of living. Maybe she was killed on that mountain, and these are the angels guiding her to her paradise, or she is dreaming, having fallen asleep after her assailant scurried off, and this dream will help her cope with the loss upon her awakening. The ambiguity is both off putting and somehow comforting.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Epilogue

This is the New Wave film making that is somewhat parodied in Frances Ha. In Cabiria we have a character that is supposed to be traditionally unlikeable due to her profession. Though even in the way she is drawn up, she has unlikeable characteristics, we are still given the opportunity to sympathize with her and relate to her struggle and she is made likeable, even lovable by the end.

Juliet of the Spirits: Dangerous Nightmare Poetry (frontrowgeek.com)
The accidental genius of “8 1/2″ (salon.com)
Here he is: Zampanò! (spfilmjournal.wordpress.com)
Elliott Broidy and Online Funding Platform IndieGogo Mobilize Support… (prweb.com)
Sophia Loren returns to movies in ‘La voce umana (The Human Voice)’ (examiner.com)
Dino De Laurentiis, 1919-2010 (somecamerunning.typepad.com)
My weekend movie – Double Bill: Waterloo Bridge (1931 and 1940) (knittednotes.wordpress.com)
Review: The Wall (Die Wand) (cihannarin.com)
FILM REVIEW: ‘Shame’ (Steve McQueen, 2011) (sexinthecinema.wordpress.com)

World War Z: Zombies Ate My People

2013-07-02T17:01:00.001-07:00

World War Z: Zombies Ate My People

W.B. Preston

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

(– ***Spoilers For The Above*** –)

The myriad gossip behind the very troubled and very public making of World War Z fascinated me. I find it difficult to recall a production whose tribulations were so intriguing to the trades and even to general audiences. What was it about this film and its production that caused such fascination amongst not only film journalists and budget hounds, but film goers as well? Perhaps Brad Pitt's involvement is the source of all the extra attention this film received, he's been a tabloid fixture for decades now. Possibly the loose adaptation of a well known novel, of which many writers took many liberties with in their translation of the book to the screen can be blamed for all the added scrutiny. Quite possibly the balloon like nature of the budget itself brought the ravenous hunger of rubbernecking gawkers hoping for a crash. In the end, all the attention helped to bolster the films relative popularity and weekend gross, all but assuring Pitt's, or some other star's, continuing bout with a world over run with zombies. However if the film had been less entertaining, all the naysayers would have been vindicated in their hope of failure.

This is an entertaining film. A solid genre exercise in the vein of 2012 or Contagion, Z is almost a mash-up of the two, with a little bit of Shaun of the Dead thrown in for good measure. Pitt continues his Robert Redford screen persona, but here performs almost a caricature of that persona, while simultaneously expanding upon it by adding his own personal experience to the mix. He is the uber father, adopting the world, however reluctantly, and bearing the cross for what is surely the sins of others, the creators of these zombies/ the men who have abandoned their children, or the man/God abandoning humanity, leaving only Pitt/Gerry to collect and rescue the abandoned. This is as subtle as subtext can get, but I felt a sense of guilt in Gerry, possibly for living such a privileged life, while working in mostly unprivileged parts of the world for the U.N. When he speaks of the work he did in various parts of the world, he seems almost ashamed at what they were unable to accomplish there. Is it this guilt, or some other unacknowledged past sin which causes him to bear the burden of saving humanity from this epidemic. His family's safety obviously is his main catalyst, but there is something behind his actions that suggests more in his psyche than just the protection of his clan.The extension of his familial clan to include the human clan in general.

Immediately we see Pitt's influence with the first part of the film focusing on the family, and Gerry's struggle to protect them and keep them from harms way. We get a believable performance from Mireille Enos, who stars as Detective Linden on The Killing, a television show I have followed since the pilot and have much to say yet will refrain from saying it at the moment, although I never quite believe in their love for one another enough to truly become invested in their story. Both give dutiful performances and create some semblance of a dutiful marriage devoted to the children. As they run from the outbreak we get the standard apocalyptic movie and video game tropes, they steal a car and stop for groceries, and have to fend off not only zombies but humans turned monsters by fear. Most of Gerry's encounters with the zombies are marked by his detective work in figuring out the tendencies of the zombies. He watches the way they move, he figures out how long it takes to turn once bitten, he studies who they eat and whom they spare, and uses this information to varying degrees of success in the fight against them. This along with the CGI extravagance separates the film from most zombie movies.

In the store we see an interesting encounter between Gerry and a gun toting young man in a pharmacy. Gerry needs albuterol for his daughter and the young man seems to have taken the drug center as his refuge. He is a thief with a heart however, and gives Gerry more than what he needs. A moment of humanity amongst the madness that ensues in this store. Another trope of zombie or apocalyptic films. I was actually reminded of the film Blindness which too has a frightening grocery store visit. After this they flee to an apartment building and find sanctuary with a Hispanic family. Gerry has his U.N. connections arrange for a helicopter to extract him from the roof of the apartment building but the patriarch of the Hispanic family refuse to accompany Gerry. Gerry tells him that people who stay in one spot usually don't survive in situations such as these. After Gerry's family leaves the apartment to head for the roof, the Hispanic family is immediately attacked. They are all killed presumably except for the eldest son whom speaks English and makes his way to the roof and is carried off in Gerry's helicopter. This is the first of Gerry's adoptions, as this boy stays with his family through the end of the movie.

They are transported to a ship in the Atlantic ocean, where important people and their families are being held. In order for Gerry to keep his family there he must go out and track the virus back to its originator. There is much irrelevant and time filling exposition and ridiculous introductions to characters whom are quickly and in some cases quite hilariously killed off. The rest of the film devolves into a video game of sorts, where Gerry lands in one part of the world and is immediately given the clues to send him to another part of the world to find more clues. However what is interesting about the Jerusalem scene is that the city is protected from the outbreak by a man who received an email containing the word zombie in it. More accurately he sits on a council who received this email and it was his job to disagree with this council in their assessment of the email and prepare the city for a zombie apocalypse. They are all safe and sound until the people begin singing a religious song, and the zombies act as an ant hill in single minded fury creating a hill of zombies which allows them to scale the walls of Jerusalem and devour the people.

This is where Gerry adopts another child, who is more a young woman than child, she is a soldier whom is infected while protecting Gerry, and he is forced to slice off her hand. They go on to survive an airplane ride which is oddly, funny and tense, a Zombies on a Plane situation,and a plane crash reminiscent of The Grey. The third act redeems the silliness of the second with an intimate and personal climax and denouement that I, having not cared much about the production of this film,was completely unaware of and unprepared for. The majority of this film is filled with big summer blockbuster, over the top, zombie action,and it all winds down to a quiet and tense standoff in a World Health Organization laboratory. We endure more video game antics here, Metal Gear Solid, or Resident Evil sneaking around zombies and hoping they don't hear you, however it is all capped off with quite a moving and emotional ending. This is what was chosen to end the film with,and cost the studio a hefty price to include, rather than the typical blow everything up cause it's summer blockbuster ending that we usually get, and have repeatedly received this summer. This is Gerry's final adoption, in which he adopts all the sins of the world, and sacrifices himself, by injecting a deadly disease, into his body. I thought it was a clever and jarring displacement of energy and a welcomed subversion of expectations, that left me happy to see the hokey ending where Gerry is reunited with his family including the new adopted children.

Is it silly? Absolutely. Is there bad dialogue? Yes. Are there plot holes and leaps of logic, and sometimes jarring shifts in tone? This is Hollywood we're talking about here. But I was generally entertained and pleasantly surprised by most of the choices made here by committee. Considering the production and what we could have seen up on that screen, it's a miracle this thing turned out as good as it did.

3 out of 5 Stars

VHS 2 - Horror CLinic

2013-06-22T17:55:00.004-07:00

VHS 2 – Horror Clinic

(– ***Spoilers For All The Above*** –)

W.B. Preston

frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

The mayhem this series is able to unleash on such a small budget and with limited funds is astounding. The second film is more accomplished technically accomplished in comparison to the original, which was a little rougher around the edges. VHS 2 is cleanlier edited, a more polished project; it flows from one story to the next seamlessly. They have found multiple imaginative ways to inject the camera into the found footage genre and have found innovative ways to get the camera in position both naturally and aesthetically pleasing in order to capture just the right image. For all of this it is an achievement and a improvement over the original.

Yet the stories themselves felt lacking this time around, while full of gore, retaining the series creep factor, and providing plenty of jump scares, I felt the absence of my own confusion I experienced while watching most of VHS. Specifically Amateur Night and The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger, both are chalk full of craziness that made me fall in love with the film. The sequel is skimp on the weird factor, and high on the random. Random in terms of some of the images and villain motive and operation. The stories themselves are also generic, not in content but in form. There are no real surprises in the order of events, and segments seem hell bent on getting to the end, getting to the money shot, rather than setting up the audience anticipation, or giving the viewer an opportunity to care for the characters. Most successful in this capacity is A Ride in the Park and Slumber Party Alien Abduction, both of which are my favorite segments from this sequel.

Unfortunately there are no curve balls thrown, so no real suspense is built. The dialogue is spotty and the performances are passable, both of which were problems that afflicted the original but were forgivable due to the oddity of the material. The sequels problem is not being interesting enough to forgive the poor delivery of poor dialogue. None of this is in detriment for this film in having all the elements for an entertaining and joyful movie, and achieving that goal. I look forward to the next one.
The first segment is Tape 49 and is about some kind of private eye, I was instantly reminded of Bored to death, searching for a missing college student. He and his friend or girlfriend, it is never really addressed, break into a house and find a similar setup of screens and computers and tapes from the original film. It is a different house however, and this initial scene is quite creepy. Of course the guy leaves his companion in the room in order for him to search the house for its owners presumably, and her to watch the tapes to perhaps find clues to his whereabouts. They find a video of the kid in question and decide not to watch it, while he continues searching the home and she watch other vhs tapes. The first she pops in is Phase 1 Clinical Trials, which has all the makings of an insane ghost story, but settles for set pieces and jump scares rather than fully delve into the quite interesting story. There is zero character development and we are left with a decent opener but a story lacking any depth or true fear or audience investment.

The second tape is the aforementioned A Ride in the Park. The most innovated segment, it is a fresh way of telling a zombie story, from the perspective of a person, whom we witness turn into a zombie and then precede to accompany him on a zombie attack. The ingenious camera placement provides this segment and film with an ingenious device and opportunity to reveal something quite interesting in the zombie lore. At one point the Zombie becomes aware of itself and we almost feel sorry for it. At the very least we understand his plight, his thought process. Unfortunately it’s a straightforward conventional story and we have no surprises to take this segment to the next level.

The third tape is Safe Haven a story involving a cult and a compound, this is the strangest and most insane segment of them all, but that also lends it to the randomness and the unconnectedness of the events and motivations. What the cult leader says he is doing at the beginning does not actually match up with what he actually does. The segment is eerie and disturbing and even realistic and believable but I never felt a sense of cohesion to the whole affair. It does however provide a hint of sorts as to an interesting cause to the events taking place in the entire world of VHS, in that the cult leader may have spawned some of the events. Again excellent staging and editing and effects and set design and cinematography, but the story was lacking and again, not a lot of surprises to be found.

The last segment is Slumber Party Alien Abduction, which is a gorgeous portrayal of exactly what the title suggests. The images are brilliantly blocked and framed and the creeping terror builds in a way unlike I have seen portrayed on film. We see the aliens and also hear them before the actors can. It’s a jarring and surprising effect but not really used to enhance the story or the plot. Beautiful colors and sound design make the invasion quite effective and believable. Some of the actions of the characters are unbelievable and is a problem throughout this film, but everything looks so great, all of the segments are frightening to a degree, and deliver the promises made by watching a film like this, however they lack the quirkiness of the first of which I was quite fond.

3 out of 5 stars

V/H/S/2 Review (horroraffair.org)
V/h/s/2 (2013) (horror-movie-a-day.blogspot.com)
Movie Review - VHS 2 (2013) (adventureamigos.net)
V/h/s 2 (2013) (chadwickhsaxelid.typepad.com)
Film Review: V/H/S/2 (pandemoniummovies.wordpress.com)
V/H/S/2 (2013) - Movie Review (mathewsmovies.wordpress.com)
V/H/S/2 detonated my skull into a million little pieces (ohbuckhecrushedit.wordpress.com)
VHS 2 Movie Review (shockya.com)

Juliet of the Spirits: Dangerous Nightmare Poetry

2013-06-20T19:38:00.002-07:00

June 21, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Preface

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t daunted with the task of writing anything about Fellini’s Juliet. There is nearly fifty years of criticism on the film, preceding my own, so forgive me the insolence it takes to even put fingers to keys on the subject. If there is a pantheon of directors surely Fellini resides there. In danger of sounding like a film snob, I argue there is a difference between movies and cinema. An idea expressed many times before, a Movies is entertainment, while Cinema is art. As such I’d call this my first attempt at a critique of cinema, coming hours after my first viewing of the film.

Storytelling takes many forms. Within one culture there are multiple styles and techniques for conveying a story, so to begin comparing storytelling techniques from different countries would be pointless. However I find it necessary to address this here because this story is told in a fashion unlike that which American audiences are accustomed. Not only is the storytelling foreign to American Hollywood conventions but also the images chosen to convey that story are composed and captured in a way quite contrary to most American films. Lastly this film comes from an era of filmmaking several generations removed from our own, and I believe this may be the largest gap with which a modern audience would have to contend in order to fully appreciate Fellini’s film.

Juliet of the Spirits: Dangerous Nightmare Poetry

W.B. Preston

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

The establishing shot is captured by a floating camera. It glides and hovers, ethereal, as in a dream. Rarely is the frame static, it rocks to and fro, like a motorized crib, gently lulling us to sleep. Horns, drums, strings blast us awake again, as the invisible orchestra ushers us into our dream. His dream. I’d like to mention this now as I wish not to spend much time in comparison, especially in light of the preface, Inception is purportedly a film about dreams, yet very rarely does it feel very dream like. There are a few visual gags here and there, but for the most part it felt like a reality in which I was waiting for the dream to begin. With Fellini’s Juliet, I felt myself in a fevered dream, waiting for scenes of reality to anchor me, to steady the ship.

This should prove once and for all that all the money and cgi in the world cannot replace proper use of a camera, editing, actors, and a set. Not a spinning, water filling set, but a normal set, in which editing and camera work provide all the special effects needed.

I was quite disturbed by this film at several points throughout, some of the images are quite haunting, and I found myself, and still find myself, unable to shake them from my minds eye. Soaring through a play land, suddenly the camera passes through a nightmare, filled with demons and ghosts. The music often changes to a haunting repetition, unmistakably similar to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. In fact there are many images between the two films that seem to share a common core. Clearly Kubrick attempted to use Fellini as a template for his own dream, or nightmare, film.

However it is not merely an exhibition of slick camera movements and editing. There is a story being told here on the surface, a melodrama about a housewife suspicious of her husband’s infidelity. However the film weaves in and out of this story culminating in Juliet’s realization of her true self. With this realization is she freed or dammed? We do not know, as she walks her own path, either to her death, or having been reborn, towards a new life.

The dream like qualities of the film are created by a sense of madcap illusions, a framing device which allows for reappearing and disappearing characters, and scenes. There is a pervading sense that anything can happen at any time, while we here in 2013 know that with the limits of technology in 1964 it would be impossible for just anything to happen, the sense that it could is more powerful than anything that can be rendered with CGI. There is a constant investigation that is simultaneously text as well as sub textual, into the human psyche and our perception of what reality truly is, and having found this truth, what is it exactly we are supposed to do with this information? Fellini is scouring his own consciousness for hints at uncovering his subconscious for answers, while juxtaposing his own ideas against those of his heroine, concurrently struggling with conveying this information through text and film aesthetics. The snake eats its own tail.

Juliet is a bit of a cipher; however she occasionally strikes out and makes decisions with repercussions reverberating throughout the film. She mostly serves to be the dreamer, whose ghoulish subconscious jumps out at her in multiple forms, many of them sexual gods and goddesses, representing temptation and her own sexual repression. As with many dreams, they happen to the dreamer, rarely, unless focused and trained, is the dream steered by the dreamer. And so it is with Juliet as she is led to many different locations by a parade of characters, colorful and bright. Some are smiling and happy, others are in immense pain and sorrow, representing the dichotomy of life. Perhaps her final romp is upon the middle path, neither ecstatic nor tormented.

The traveling circus, the misfit troubadours, which are a staple in mid-sixties culture, are found here throughout the film. In a way they carry Juliet from one dreamscape to the next, laughing and jumping and singing. Yet there is a dark troupe that bookends the film. On a trip to the beach Juliet envisions a boat full of ghastly warriors, some kind of Vikings or conquerors who died on the shores of Italy. She is frightened greatly and recoils at the sight, as it is shocking and full of death.

It is interesting that Fellini chose to begin her entrance into the spiritual realm with the ancients. Those whose souls were full, and more than likely were exposed to all sorts of magic and witchcraft that Juliet encounters to begin her journey. Her husband brings a medium to their house for their anniversary; a sign of his romantic qualities, and this medium opens up not only Juliet but also the house to the spirit realm. This marks the beginning of her journey outward and inward. Upon the medium’s entrance we hear him speak of the ancient occult magic practiced by the Egyptians and other ancient civilizations. Thus the ancient warriors on the beach. Her entry, as I suspect all entry into the spirit realm, begins in the ancient world.

I feel Fellini was dealing with some of his own fears and doubts about his life, somehow finding comfort in creating images of his nightmares, and chronicling his own investigations of our reality. There are three modes of investigation he details, loosely the three acts. The first is séance. The séance opens up her soul and prepares her for all that is to come. She begins to question reality and look for signs of truth behind the masks of existence. This séance is also where she meets the ghost that will haunt her, till the end of the film, or presumably for the rest of her life. It serves as her conscience, although it is unclear if the voice is only her own memories, however I took it as the voice of a mischievous ghost, leading her down paths, some to dead ends.

The second mode of investigation is through sex, or the body. She is taught about the Kama Sutra, and told to release herself physically and to truly please her husband to end his infidelity. A shaman hermaphrodite teaches her this, in a hotel of some sort with impossible architecture. The shifting walls, hallways, doors and stairwells, entering a room through one door then exiting it through another, never to return from whence we came, adds to the dream like quality of the film. And this shaman of sex is a nightmare ghoul from the depths of Juliet’s, or Fellini’s subconscious. Sex frightens her fully, and she never opens up this side of her self, at least we never witness her open up sexually. There is a moment where it seems she might, but she is burdened by her religious youth. This is a major point of her frustrations and sadness yet she never realizes it. Or possibly she does and rejects its healing powers.

I do not feel the auteur agrees with our heroine here. The film is full of sexual images and models of physical youth perfected. The human body is on display here and celebrated, and engaged in the act freely. Yet our heroine must remain pure if we are to fully invest in her struggle. Her religiosity is furthered when she confesses to private eye whom disguises himself as a priest. Her sin is the mistrust of her husband, her father, her God. She has lost her faith in her marriage and must confess this transgression to the private eye in order to know the truth. She rebukes her faith in a scene of passion and fire that we rarely see from Juliet who is usually passive and quiet. Her demand to know that her faith is being honored is the end of faith.

Once the private eye shows her the truth, she is truly lost, and follows her neighbor to an orgy party, where she very nearly succumbs to her sexual desires. She is haunted by images of a religious ritualistic play, in which she is demanded by a Roman Emperor to renounce her faith. She refuses and is burned on a pyre. As she is about to give herself to some random man, the image of herself, or her friend whom committed suicide for a lost love, is recalled burning on the pyre. She flees from the orgy and continues her search, as now she realizes that the truth of her husband’s infidelity was not the truth of which she sought.

Finally the third mode of investigation is psychoanalysis, or the mind. She must open up her thoughts to the possibilities of what she truly is. Her own history revealed to her, she sees her father as a man whom replaced God. Her father then replaced by her husband. She never allowed herself to worship her own thought. Through this final investigation she must unshackle herself from her religious repression, physically manifested in the form of her father, whom she had previously replaced with her husband. With him now out of the picture due to his unfaithfulness, she again turned to the image of her father, a memory, a specter, whom informs her that he is only a figment of her imagination and she must let him go. She does and is released to find her own path.

None of this is explicitly said in the text, all of this is my own gathering from an oddly musical and esoteric film, which I found both intriguing and disturbing, profoundly. I am confident that anyone can see whatever they want to see in this film, the same can be said of any film, but this film asks the viewer to dig into his or her own experience and psyche and search for your own answers. I encourage the same, for this jewel of a film, and this type of film making is sorely lacking in American cinema, and begs to be explored and perpetuated.

5 out of 5 stars

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Fellini’s Cafe (mouthbrothels.wordpress.com)
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Film Review: 8 1/2 (tomassparups.wordpress.com)
Romeo and Juliet Resource Guide (costumediscounters.com)
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Cannes Film Review: ‘The Great Beauty’ (variety.com)
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Relentless Bombardment – Part III: The Great Gatsby – Superheroes & Explosions (frontrowgeek.com)

Relentless Bombardment - Part III: The Great Gatsby - Superheroes & Explosions

2013-06-19T07:03:00.002-07:00

Part III: The Great Gatsby – Superheroes & Explosions

(– ***Spoilers For The Above*** –)

W.B. Preston

     I walked into this film expecting to hate it. Not because I hate the material, I barely remember reading it in high school, and I casually flipped through it during the weeks leading to its theatrical release. No I expected to hate it because it is a Hollywood film based on a beloved American Classic, and this corporate machine has a tendency to screw these kinds of things up. However I must admit I was quite mesmerized by the entire spectacle of the thing. Although I would not begrudge an English professor his particular criticisms on the poor translation of Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, of which there are many liberties taken by the filmmakers with the old master’s work, I must say this is quite the entertaining piece.

It has all of the brightness, calamity and destruction of the rest of these pre-summer releases, yet the driving force behind this film is not superpowers, explosions and gargantuan vulgarity, but rather an exhibition of decadence of style, and emotion. An overindulgence in extravagance, a display of waste and excess of wealth stacked to dizzying heights, a tower whose fall unfortunately is nowhere near as exhilarating as its construction. The parallels between the production of the film, the time period for which the film takes place, and the current socio-economic atmosphere are uncanny. The film itself is said to have cost in the upwards of 200 million dollars, however its producers used some sort of tricky tax credit money switcheroo so they can write it off as only a 120 million dollar film. Basically they spent an ungodly amount of money to make this film, but in order to save face on the films returns, they had their lawyers and banks and governments provide them with the unique opportunity to discount 80 million dollars, because they were so gracious enough to make the film in Australia. In this world of cynicism, duplicity, and sarcasm, does irony even begin to define anything anymore?

     Essentially this is a classic 1930’s ‘talky’, in every sense of the word, but photographed, edited, colorized and costumed as if it were The Avengers. Every penny is up on that screen, and we are in awe of the sheer spectacle. The sheer hedonism at display here is enough to justify capitalism’s current fall from grace, as well as the fall prophetically hinted at in Fitzgerald’s book, but largely ignored in this adaptation. Thinking back on those party scenes, to describe them as lavish would be asinine, I can’t help but deem a future as bleak as Oblivion to be well deserved.

   I’m no fan of the voice-over narration technique, especially when that voice is Tobey Maguire, and add to that the unnecessary conceit of changing Fitzgerald’s work to shoehorn in a bewildering plot involving Nick Carraway in an addiction clinic, it’s enough to drive me crazy. However once we get passed the rather odd prologue, I was whisked away into this cinematic treat, the whirling camera and the candy colored costumes, the frenetic editing and Fitzgerald’s words peppered throughout, I half forgot that the voice-over was there.

     This is Baz Luhrmann’s greatest cinematic achievement, surpassing Romeo & Juliet, and a reorganization of the sweeping scope of his Australia, which I found to be an interestingly odd film. I however was far away from any film criticism at the time and went into the movie on DVD without any preconceived notions about it, and quite enjoyed its weird comedic elements and strange mysticism, even if it was a bit gaudy, with it’s emotion hanging on its sleeve and its dialogue being a bit too on the nose. Some of that unsubtleness can be found here as well, however there is a visual focus that exemplifies the emotion on display, which neither of those other two films can boast. These visual cues and technical decisions often contrast with my preconceived notion of the material, yet these decisions were not made arbitrarily, and most serve to reveal subtext and allow the story to bloom colorful images.

     The utter control and the successful execution of a devised plan must be applauded here. There is not a wasted shot, nor a dragging moment to be found in this film. There is no doubt that every moment, every sound, every color, every word and every distortion of time was planned, well thought out, and then applied with a singular vision and voice. Clearly I was stunned by the aesthetic applications only glimpsed in the trailers, I was unprepared for what I witnessed. It was after this film that I began noticing a strand of themes running through this film, from Oblivion to Iron Man to Gatsby. The wealthy, the privileged, the 1%, singular in their narcissistic ambitions, which manifests itself physically in the case of Oblivion’s protagonist Jack, even as the world descends, or has descended into ruin and chaos, they struggle to find a truth, or peace, or love, things which can never be derived from money or power as ideals.

     Perhaps for this reason the American audiences no longer connect with most American films the way we did some forty or fifty years ago. This is well before my time, but I know my history. As the filmmakers made more and more money, the goal of filmmaking became making more and more money. A filmmaker’s goal was always to make money going back to the nickelodeons, but in the time when film was unabashedly adored, there was a code of honor, of artistic integrity that was lost, serendipitously in the mid seventies with Jaws and Star Wars. Even those films had a sense of moral weight, a modest ambition, made unselfishly with money in concert. Now money is the only goal, or fame, or power, and the average American can no longer relate to the filmmakers. Possibly a similar situation presented itself in the late fifties and early sixties. Yet at that time there was an idealistic love of cinema, while today we cinephiles love film cynically, or ironically. We live to bash the lofty ideals that today’s filmmakers work with. They make pessimistic, artistically unambitious films, and we love them for it. Most of their accomplishments can boast merely of dollars and cents but where is the human spirit? Consequently Oscar bait films make so much money now, because the rest of the year is devoid of actual human stories told by actual humans. Resulting in directors like the Coen brothers, David Fincher, and Darren Aronofsky have a devoted fanbase and have enjoyed recent financial success, because their films do not appear to be motivated by monetary goals alone.

     Back to Jay, in his fervor to attain Daisy’s love, and his unbridled attempt to belong to the upper echelon of society, he amasses huge amounts of wealth, fame and seemingly power, all through nefarious means. He is fixated on winning Daisy’s affection, so much so that his achievements mean nothing unless he can share them with her. However her love is not enough, he must possess her, wholly, and this is where the truth comes. He not only wants to take her from her wealth-born husband, he wants to embarrass Tom, he wants to show him up. Gatsby must have Daisy, but she must renounce her love for Tom, she must say that she never loved him. Then and only then can Jay be happy, however this is not love, and this is why he loses her. For Jay it was never about love, it was about showing the rich and privileged that he is better than they are, and this is his downfall.
Some have said that this represents a self-realization, as Jay got what he thought he wanted but really he never wanted it at all. I think this is a false criticism, I believe he fails because his motivations were askew. He was motivated by revenge, not love, and for this he must pay the ultimate price. He gained his power and his wealth through nefarious means; he sacrificed his soul, not for love, but for vengeance. A vengeance he sought in the name of love, and for this betrayal of truth he had to pay with his life. The moral here is be true to thy self and you shall receive all that you truly want. Here I am reminded of a film that many compare this novel to, Citizen Kane:

     “If I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.”

Some critics have said that Citizen Kane is the best adaptation of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece that has ever been made, or is likely to ever be made. I’m not sure if that is true, however Orson Welles’ words apply unequivocally to Mr. Gatsby.

If Mr. Lhurmann and co-writer Craig Pearce were going to make any alterations to Fitzgerald’s work, it should have been the ending. The roaring twenties, during which the ratio of wealth was collecting in the hands of the few, while the masses scraped by on nothing, ended with one of the most epic failures in the history of Western society. This was a time of great excess and decadent spending. It was a decade of the amassing of great wealth and simultaneously the fabrication of paper empires. Fitzgerald foresaw the matches lying at the base of these paper skyscrapers. Matches that the wielders of wealth were too busy in their indulgences to notice. They built towers atop these paper foundations, which once were set ablaze they were too high up to smell the smoke. As the towers, the monuments of wealth fell, so did the men as they jumped from their windows. Fitzgerald saw this fall, perhaps not to the extent or nature but he saw men living well beyond their means, lofty and arrogant. The higher the living, the harder the ground.

     This should have been juxtaposed with Gatsby’s fall, the film is already over the top and outrageous, why not make the fall doubly so? A movie whose beginning is so audacious and awe-inspiring ends in a whimper, and quietude. They obviously had no problem altering the text; why not go out with a bang? They, rather ham-fistedly, had juxtaposed the wealthy men with the poor throughout the film already, I say take the final plunge; the actual history supports the drama.

     Regardless of this odd and fairly obvious omission, the screenplay is well written, and the dialogue expertly delivered by all involved. Perhaps Leonardo DiCaprio’s finest and most nuanced performance. While I loved his portrayal of a slave master in Django Unchained, I found his Jay Gatsby to be more insightful. Candie was a sneering caricature, a character far outside Leo’s perceived range that he nailed perfectly. A comedic villain whom he fully committed to and clearly enjoyed inhabiting. However his work in Gatsby seems more accomplished in my eyes, as it is a character he has played time and time again, yet he still brought something new, something fresh to. I was impressed by the variance from prior roles in a performance of a character that is in many ways similar to many of his prior roles. I enjoyed Carey Mulligan’s performance in this film, which is not always the case. I’ve seen five of her other major releases and she just doesn’t seem to get what being an American actually means. Here she is portraying a character far enough removed from contemporary Americanism to be believable. The always-reliable Joel Edgerton is again reliable. Despite the terrible decision to use voice over, Tobey actually does a fine job as Nick, although it would have been nice to seem him developed a bit more as his own character rather than a glorified cipher, or stand in for the audience.

     There are shots in this film that seem like paintings on the giant canvass, the film is quite beautiful to look at, from beginning to end. The 3-D is unnecessary, a word that describes much of this film, but not a distraction and certainly helps to engross the viewer by insulating peripherals.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Up Next:

Part IV: Star Trek: Into Darkness – Edge of Anger

The Great Gatsby (charlinewton.wordpress.com)
[Review] The Great Gatsby (2013) (supermarcey.com)
The Very Great Gatsby. (justonegirl123.wordpress.com)
THE GREAT GATSBY: The Irony and the Ecstasy (filmgrouch.wordpress.com)
Gatsby, Baz and Fitzgerald (5fifteenblog.wordpress.com)
The Great Gatsby (crookedfilmreview.wordpress.com)
The Great Gatsby (phiaandloathing.wordpress.com)
The Great Gatsby (2013) (consumedbyfilm.wordpress.com)
The Pretty Good Gatsby: Because I've Never Seen Such Beautiful Shirts Before (moviefellas.wordpress.com)
Why I Disagree With Critics Of The New Gatsby Film (101books.net)

Man of Steel: Evolution Wins

2013-06-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

Man of Steel: Evolution Wins

(– ***Spoilers For All The Above*** –)

W.B. Preston

frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

This Superman issue has been a problem for a while now. It has taken quite a long time to produce a film that adequately presented Superman on screen in a fashion that resembles the comic book while simultaneously representing his powers in a realistic fashion. The word of the last ten years in comic book films and fantasy or science fiction films in general has been gritty. Gritty used as a substitute for some kind of realism that was lacking in these genres prior to Blade. Some say X-Men, I think Blade was the original “gritty” comic book movie. Regardless, I think we can all agree that the previous Superman films were lacking in this grittiness factor, and thus lacking the realism required for an audience to become invested in such a fantastical world. Finally with this incarnation of the Superhero of all Superheroes, we can rest assured, he has been done right.

Zach Snyder has created something visually that is quite unlike anything I have ever seen, and that is not the first time I’ve said this about him as a director. It’s clear that he has taken from his experiences on his past films of varying artistic and financial success, which were all visually gorgeous, and presented some of the most not only efficient and technically proficient action set pieces I’ve ever seen on film, but also accomplishing this with an artistic integrity that is sorely lacking in blockbuster film making. Yes this thing is full of cgi so if that automatically turns you off then do not go see this, but you will be missing out on some of the most beautiful CGI work to date. What irks me about people that simply hate CGI just because it’s CGI is that they do not take into account the technical aspects of making CGI that not only works, is seamless and fits with the tone and flow of the film. Someone has to plan those shots, someone has to frame and set up the shots and light and get the actors to give believable performances and block and edit. It’s not as if the computers are creating the movie, you can have the greatest CGI generator in the world but if you don’t know how to use those images to tell a compelling story in a visually interesting and believable way than you do not have a movie. This is a movie. A damn good one.

That isn’t to say it’s without its faults. The film is riddled with bad dialogue, it’s just a little too on the nose. Some of Zod’s lines come to mind, however it is not bad enough to make the film bad. There is so much good here that negatives are mostly nitpicks. I wish Lois Lane had more of a story, she has plenty of screen time, but we never really get to invest in her arc, it happens too fast and is all but over before the third act begins, and its an extended third act to be sure. Also an issue for a grumpy cinephile like myself is I’m still not sure Henry Cavill can act. He’s not asked to do much here except grit his teeth and lock his jaw and look exhausted, all of which he does a fine job of, but there is never a moment when I feel like we get a peek into who he really is, who Clark really is under the determination and duty. Even before he is Superman we get glimpses at his life but we never really get to hear him tell his side of things, he mostly just holds his tongue and slinks away silently, allowing his actions to speak for him. And actions do speak louder than words, but it makes for an uneven portrait of a character and a question mark as to whether the actor can actually act.

Everyone else is spot on, I fully expected Michael Shannon to go way over the top with this, and he has his moments, but that’s all they are, moments, flashes of going too far, which makes sense given the character motivations. He actually gives a nuanced and subtle performance of a murderous villain, at points we sympathize with his plight as he is only carrying out his duty as was passed to him through his DNA. This is one of a plethora of ideas bulging this films belly. A kind of Nietzschean philosophy runs throughout this film, obviously, this is Superman after all. A character actually says, “…evolution always wins.” This idea that evolutionary perfection is the goal of a species, or perhaps the Universe, pervades the motivation of the films Villains, which is essentially all of Krypton. This is juxtaposed with Clark’s own evolution, as he is the top of the evolutionary scale on Earth, it causes him to be ostracized, and alone, and for his Earth Father to sacrifice everything, including his life, for his son to hold onto his anonymity. To have Clark burry his superiority so that the regular earthlings will accept him, countered with Zod’s literal unearthing of the weaker species, the weaker planet as to supplant or transform it into Krypton or a superior species. It’s quite a compelling idea that is tied into tighter and tighter knots until we have the two representatives of the two sides wrapped around each other in a fight to the death.

A quick side note, there is a dream sequence here rendered beautifully and executed to perfection, that is full of the surrealism that was sorely lacking in Nolan’s own Inception. The influence of Nolan elsewhere in this film is unmistakable, most notably with the narration and narrative discontinuity. There are other Nolanesque moments, such as the dead wife theory that keeps popping up in his films. Obviously a necessary death, but here framed in such a way as to call attention to itself, and thus the theory.

There are moments when Superman is flying around the globe and the film looks grainy and old, like shots from the old Technicolor show from the 50’s, I’m not sure if that was the intent, but that’s what I saw. I also noticed quite a bit of Matrix imagery, especially in the final battle between Superman and Zod. There is also the shot of the embryo fields, with one of the embryos being plucked by a spider robot. The fields are utilized many times. Also there are spider robots drilling into earth while missiles are shot at them, reminiscent of Revolutions . More interestingly Laurence Fishburne has two Matrixy moments, one involving Lois Lane. While he is on the phone with her, FBI agents show up at her building and are trying to apprehend her. There is another, towards the end after the planet-destroying device has been stopped, he looks up and realizes that Superman/Neo has saved humanity. Again not sure this was intentional, just something I thought was interesting.

This is a story brimming with ideas. It is the Antithesis to The Avengers, which had no ideas, or maybe one. Man of Steel has so many ideas; it can’t even fit in enough character development for our two protagonists. There’s the idea that evolution with efficiency as its sole purpose, can lead to destruction. As Krypton is destroyed by the efficiency of its own perfected society. This is never explicitly stated, but the subtext is there. In the hunt for natural resources, the artificially crafted society of beings perfectly suited to accomplish their jobs with the highest level of efficiency and duty, they began harvesting from the core of the planet, and set off a chain reaction that destroyed Krypton. It was this idea of evolutionary perfection that caused their planet to be destroyed. It is the same reason Zod was destroyed, he was bred down to the cellular level to protect Krypton, everyone of his actions, down to his final attempt at villainy, were motivated by the protection of Krypton.

The destruction of Krypton an obvious connection to the natural resource mining on Earth, but also the idea of DNA ownership that has come up over the last few years. Will we begin moving into the arena of human being construction? Engineering a race of people? There are many many more ideas flowing out of this film, and I look forward to seeing it again to catch them, more fully.

However there was one last thing I’d like to talk about, this continuing 9/11 imagery, of New Yorkers running away from falling building amidst rushing clouds of dust and cement. It’s really sad that Hollywood continues to use this image of death and destruction as an entertainment tool. I’ve seen it over and over again, more frequently as of late; the first to my memory was Cloverfield. I felt it was in poor taste then, and now I find it appalling. I wish to never see that kind of set piece used in a blockbuster again.

4 out of 5 stars

Brainscan: The last of Us

2013-06-15T07:43:00.003-07:00

Brainscan: The Last of Us

W.B. Preston

I first saw Brainscan (Edward Furlong, Frank Langella) in late summer 95’. I remember it vividly, as I knew I only had a few short weeks of vacation left before school started. I was ten-years-old. The movie was premiering on HBO and I was well on my way to becoming a film fanatic. I was especially interested in this because it was the first film I had seen Mr. Furlong in since Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the movie that I consider to have begun my love of the cinema experience, and more generally, the summer Hollywood blockbuster. Needless to say, I was anticipating viewing this film because of Mr. Furlong’s name on the marquee.

I had been inducted into the horror genre years prior, my mother was a huge horror fan, and as a small child I had already consumed the entire Elm Street series up to that point, as well as the majority of Friday the 13^th and the Halloween series respectively. However my childhood horror diet did not consist solely of these legendary, if fading, horror sagas, I also consumed one offs and lesser known horror series such as Candyman, Cape Fear, Troll, Poltergeist, Leprechaun, Child’s Play, Rumplestiltskin, Kujo, The Gate, Pet Cemetery, Puppet Master, Critters, Gremlins, Hellraiser, Killer Clowns From Outer Space, Night of the Living Dead, The Lost Boys, The Monster Squad, Predator, The Fly, Little Shop of Horrors, The Lawnmower Man, Dr. Giggles, Serial Mom and It.

If you were a kid in the early 90’s or late 80’s and were a horror junky like me, you probably had a similar early film curriculum. As you can see, my education consisted of every kind of genre at every level of quality, from classic to, uh, not so classic, and from hard R adult fair, to light kids horror stuff, so when Brainscan was advertised on HBO that summer, I knew it wouldn’t be a classic, but I was interested nonetheless, and well prepared. I was also a video game nerd, so if you’ve seen the film or played the game The Last of Us, you know where I’m going with this, and if not then stay with me, this has a point.

In the movie, a kid, Furlong, gets a videogame on CD-ROM, that is a kind of virtual reality experience, in which you become a killer, and must commit murder under a certain time limit. Well eventually the kid realizes that his murders are really happening, and he must figure out a way to stop it. It’s kind of silly, and thinking back on it, it was kind of like an episode from the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark. This all sounds quaint to a modern audience, but at the time there really were not video games whose specific task was murder. Sure there was shooting games, like Doom, and fighting games of all sorts, there was a game on Sega CD that I recall titled Night Trap, in which you were in a house with a group of teenagers and as vampires descend upon the kids, you must use traps to kill the vamps. Again, the aim of the game was not simply to murder.

So I remember distinctly thinking that a game about murder could never happen, and would never happen, and the world would be safe from any such nonsense, and I ate dinner and went to bed and dreamed of candy canes and lollipops. Fast-Forward fifteen years and quite a few ‘killing’ games have been released, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, just to name two, but in the case of Grand Theft Auto, the murder aspect feels more like a video game fantasy then a real life snuff film. And Call of Duty is a war game, so obviously you are shooting people in the head, but again it doesn’t feel like a snuff film, it feels like you are fighting for some cause, and the action is kind of on the cartoon side. It wasn’t until The Last of Us that I felt the promise of Brainscan had finally began to be fulfilled.

Most notably the multiplayer mode in The Last of Us in which groups of players from around the globe are pitted in four-on-four teams in different locales, a university, a small town, etc. and must stalk members of the other team and eliminate them one by one. Sounds similar to Call of Duty, but this is not a war. There is not a bunch of shooting and groups of people armed to the teeth with the latest technology in weaponry and armor. Call of Duty is a fantasy, this is a snuff video game. These are regular people, in jeans and jackets and beanies, some are unarmed, as the premise of the game takes place in an America after the fall of society. So ammunition, weapons and food is scarce, and you have to survive with what ever you can scrounge. Some people are armed with shanks, some just have their fists. The ones lucky enough to have a gun are able to defend themselves, but are also given the ability to inflict murderous carnage on the unarmed. What’s worse is you don’t just shoot someone or hit them and then they fall to the ground dead. Oh no, that would be like games of the past. In this game you tip toe around a building and quietly sneak up on an unsuspecting victim and attack them. They then fall to the ground on their knees, and you kick them to the floor pressing the barrel of the gun to their temple and execute them, in a fashion so realistic that the first time I witnessed it I actually flinched at the shock of it.

From the description of my childhood, it should be clear that I was not some sheltered from violence bubble boy religious fanatic, out here trumpeting against violence in videogames. No far from it. I’m a gamer through in through, and a horror fan. I’m the gamer that wishes Manhunt was still around on these new systems, or that Hitman was more realistic. But this game takes it to a new level, especially in a society that has had quite a run of armed madman killing innocent people, do we really need all of these pill popping, gun toting, madmen playing this game which depicts such realistic acts of inhumane violence, and getting a hankering for the real thing?

What is even more disturbing than all this is the game is called The Last of Us. If society does in fact fall, if there is no government to at least seem like it is interested in stopping bad guys, then this game is how it all ends. Packs of murderers roaming the country executing the unarmed and taking their goods. As I sat in horror watching my brothers play feverishly and enthralled, it seemed like a training simulation for the end. An end in which the right wing nuts with their huge gun collections and stash of millions of bullets and ammunition, and thousands of hours logged at the shooting range are in charge. Maybe the armed militias are not forming to defend themselves from the government, maybe they are forming to defend themselves when the time comes and there is no government.

Or perhaps I’m being dramatic. The point is The Last of Us is the first step towards a real Brainscan, which is kind of cool and kind of scary.

2013-06-12T17:14:00.001-07:00

Relentless Bombardment Part II: Iron Man 3 – Bullets and Tanks

June 12, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Relentless Bombardment:

Part II: Iron Man 3 – Bullets and Tanks

frontrowgeek

W.B. Preston

Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, Robert Downey Jr.) is on the opposite technical spectrum of Oblivion in just about every respect. The framing is bland and conventional, the photography is mostly forgettable and the themes are coloring book outlined, connect the dots; fill in the blank spaces we’ve provided. Yet somehow it all works. I had the pleasure of seeing this movie in IMAX 3D, the 3D was non-existent and merely served to drive up the price and darken the screen, but the IMAX was glorious, as usual. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a bad IMAX experience.

America is attempting to strengthen its stronghold in the Middle East; an insane terrorist is retaliating by killing innocent Americans. Sound familiar? Well it should. This movie is a commentary on America’s role in the world and our responsibility and connections with the monsters we’ve created. The whole trilogy has been. And they have ensured that we get it. And we get it. And we get it.
But this time things are different. The brazen billionaire is scarred from the events of The Avengers and he can no longer handle the life threatening antics of being a superhero. He can’t sleep through the night, and has panic attacks at the very mention of New York, or Aliens, or Worm Holes, etc. So he begins tinkering with his suits in order to bolster his ability to ensure his survival at any cost. He can no longer take the risk of losing Pepper played by Gwyneth Paltrow. This is shown in the character of Aldrich Killian played by Guy Pearce. He is an old inventor who is slighted by Tony Stark thirteen-years prior.

Mr. Killian is back, and is trying to get Stark Industries to buy his new interesting but unstable technology. He arranges a meeting at Stark Industries that not only ends with him being rejected as a business prospect by not Tony this time but Tony’s girlfriend, it also serves to have him and his henchmen followed by Happy played by Jon Favreau who winds up at the scene of their next crime, a terrorist attack on Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Happy’s presence and injury at the hands of Killian’s henchmen raises the ire of Iron Man who embarks on an investigation, which involves more detective work than Batman did in the entire Dark Knight Trilogy.

None of this matters because Tony Stark goes on national television and gives out his address and is immediately attacked by famed terrorist the Mandarin in a hilarious portrayal by Ben Kingsely. As you can see the plot is quite ridiculous. However the unveiling of the plot is what is done with such precision and control as to warrant (more so than The Avengers) the massive billions it will make. For The Avengers was empty, not plot-less, but thinly plotted. While Iron Man 3 may be over plotted. And just where is Iron Man? Tony Stark is too busy hyperventilating and tinkering with toys in a shed, or running around with Don Cheadle aka Rhodes aka War Machine aka Iron Patriot aka Terrence Howard.

It is actually an interesting story, a superhero afraid to be Super. I think this was the most interesting thread in the tapestry of the film, obviously from an adult cinephile’s perspective. Tony actually saves a group of falling Air Force One passengers while remote controlling the suit. The scene is breathtaking and completely awesome, Tony Stark operating the suit from a far is not. You cannot put your life on autopilot; you cannot let robots take the jobs humans are supposed to be doing. All facetiousness aside, if he isn’t in the suit, then all danger is lifted, and along with it all dramatic tension, a hero must put his life on the line. And watching Tony grapple with this fact is intriguing although briefly sketched and never really properly engaged, it has all the surface and thin representation required of a popcorn blockbuster flick.

This film paints a scary, dark, and violent picture of America, and the world at large. It depicts a place where a mad man can kill anyone at anytime. This is also a re-occurring theme through these spring films. Death can and will come for the innocent as well as the wicked. Although the culprit often goes unpunished. However this is not the case in Iron Man. No here the bad guys always get their comeuppance. Even when those bad guys are American Army Veterans, no doubt disgruntled due to multiple tours and an inability to get Veterans benefits, they meet their doom at the hands of Iron Man, or Men. A chickens-coming-home-to-roost scenario that has been utilized in both of the other Iron Man films as well.

The theme here seems to be a commentary on defense, and arms build-ups, a sort of power breeding corruption; a greatest strength is also a greatest weakness. The U.S. has the most powerful Department of Defense in the world; this power invites an attitude of policing that world. This attitude paints a target on the country’s back for all the worlds’ problems. Dangerous people then attack the big bad country on the block, for pushing the little countries around.

The world as it is in the twenty-first century, a powder keg about to erupt. This is the foreground for Oblivion, Gatsby being the foreground for Iron Man, and Star Trek being a kind of Utopia where the countries of the world have put aside their differences and redirected their energies towards the ascension of mankind. Of course that Utopia is disrupted in Into Darkness but that’s for a later discussion. The future of Iron Man 3 is undoubtedly Oblivion, a world destroyed and mankind living in small desperate packs, the future of human civilization dependent on their survival. So Iron Man 3 is and isn’t about the end of the world. Perhaps it is a 200 Million dollar over-the-top mirror to our present predicament. Will we blow ourselves up or find a way to live in harmony with each other?
At the heart of the entire Iron Man Trilogy is the subtext of American Corporatism and Capitalism. Should the free market be free no matter the consequences? Do the ends always justify the means? Should stockholders and quarterly earnings always trump world peace, the moral core of the United States, the blood of children? Weapons manufacturers looking to bolster their profits, sell old weapons to Middle Eastern thugs who, surprise surprise, turn out to be terrorists, or affiliated with terrorists. So when the U.S. is attacked, or threatened, and the same Manufacturers then sell newer more deadly weapons to the U.S. Defense Department resulting in unending wars that drain the world’s economy as war profiteers line their pockets with green blood.

This is Mandarin’s/Killian’s plot to gain power and wealth, to squeeze the world between fear and economic turmoil, so that eventually the people will turn to him for protection, no doubt giving up their rights in the process. They will turn to him because he has the newest death dealing technology that will protect the world from bad guys like Mandarin/Ben Kingsley. Interesting that he began working on his technology before Tony Stark built Iron Man, yet it was only after the success of Iron Man that Killian’s biological weapon found proper funding.
Tony Stark is the billionaire responsible for this new technological boom in Marvel’s Universe, and also responsible for the escalation that this technology has caused. I’m reminded of something Jim Gordon said in Batman Begins:

“We start carrying semi automatics, they buy automatics, we start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor piercing rounds, and you’re wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops.”

In his attempt to police the world and fix the damages made by he and his father’s corporation and their contribution to the military industrial complex, he has created the opposite effect. His weapons are on steroids, and evil men have followed suit. Killian’s weapon is never referred to as nanotechnology but it is essentially placing some kind of computer chip or weaponized robotic virus in the body to override the human physique and enhance its powers. He gives this power to disgruntled veterans and uses them as his guinea pigs; those that survive become his henchmen. However some become addicted to it like a drug, partly because in order to sustain equilibrium with the human body, the nanos must be injected at regular intervals. Otherwise the human specimen explodes, not unlike a suicide bomber.

This is precisely how Killian uses the addicts, to strike fear into the hearts of U.S. citizens as well as government officials, whom along with Tony Stark believes that the Middle Eastern Mandarin/Ben Kingsley is responsible for the attacks, and not the rich, white, corporate Mandarin/Killian/Guy Pearce. Everything seems to be going swimmingly for our villain, until his own hubris and pride persuades him to antagonize Tony Stark by kidnapping Pepper Potts, blowing up Stark’s mansion and nearly killing Happy Hogan. All of which is done voluntarily by Killian without provocation, on the eve of the fruition of his evil plot. Had he not involved Tony Stark at this point in time, he would have successfully taken over the Government and used his Super Soldiers in coordination with the U.S. department of defense to take down Iron Man at his leisure. It would have been interesting to see how Iron Man wriggled his way out of that one.

These are all obviously comic book conventions, so we cannot decry a film based on its leanings towards its own comic lineage. However we can criticize the ‘blow everything up’ third act tactics that seems to be utilized by Iron Man, if not the Marvel cinematic Universe at large. It’s lazy screenwriting, by one of my favorite Hollywood writers Shane Black, but I cannot place all the blame on his shoulders as this kind of climax has been implemented on both of the other Iron Man films. Rather than untying the climax and bring it to its logical conclusion with strands from the first and second acts, we have the classic, more Iron Men is cool writing philosophy. Obviously this is designed for children and merchandising purposes, yet that in and of itself is not an excuse for lazy writing. The Toy Story franchise has been about selling merchandise since its beginning, yet it had one of the more satisfying climax and denouements to a film/trilogy in recent memory.

The Pepper Potts superhero moment is not a bad idea, yet here, it is merely mishandled. This brings me to my only real major gripe about the film. Tony Stark has no problem killing all of the war veterans turned walking bombs throughout the entire film, yet when Pepper is afflicted with the same problem he leaps at the opportunity to find the cure.

Somewhere along the line during this era of capitalizing off of comic books and the utilization of the anti-hero and the more ‘gritty’ style of film making, these corporate entities forgot that these protagonists are supposed to be heroes. Obviously Tony Stark was busy trying to foil the Mandarin’s plans as well as fix his suit (which by the way was his only means of communication with Jarvis to address some other criticisms of the film which I found invalid) and uncover the mystery behind the Mandarin. However he showed that he empathized with the veterans and had more than one opportunity to investigate the corpse or unconscious body of these nano-afflicted ex-U.S. soldiers. At any point he could have made even the gesture of attempting to find the antidote for these men rather than killing them all. If this were an actual subplot of the film it would have made his finding the cure at the end rewarding for the audience rather than off-putting.

In all this is a solid and entertaining popcorn blockbuster, with the best third act of the trilogy, by default.

3 out of 5 stars.

Up next –

Part III: The Great Gatsby – Superheroes & Explosions

Relentless Bombardment: Part I Oblivion Review – Twisted Hymn

2013-06-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Relentless Bombardment: Part I Oblivion Review – Twisted Hymn

June 8, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Relentless Bombardment: Oblivion, Iron Man 3, The Great Gatsby, Star Trek – Into Darkness, and the Spring Ramp Up to Hollywood’s Summer ‘13

(– ***Spoilers For All The Above*** –)

W.B. Preston

Part I: Oblivion – Twisted Hymn

So I never intended on seeing any of these movies. Yet I had them graciously thrust upon me by friends and family, so I’ve decided to write something about my experience of the ramp up to Hollywood’s Summer ’13. My immediate impression to all of these movies was to convulse wildly in response to the relentless bombardment to my senses. The editing technique of this twenty-first century New-Wave or the era of Action Hollywood has never been better. Or should I say more efficient.

The lens is never allowed to linger for very long, and an explosion of angles and perspectives infiltrate my retina in rapid procession. Not even in the expansive lingering desert scenes of Oblivion – (Joseph Kosinski, Tom Cruise) are we allowed to take a moment to reflect, nor is the lens allowed to remain on any one subject for more than a few seconds. Rather the shots merely seem to linger in comparison to the rest of this film and its pre-Summer ’13 brethren. The film is actually quite contemplative, or the material suggests a certain contemplative attitude at some level in the creative process. The final product is in some sort of wavering opinion of itself. Unsure if it is as smart as the various films it borrows from. If the writers (Joseph Kosinski, Karl Gadjusek, Michael Arndt, Michael deBruyn) had ventured on with their own story they might have made a film to rival those great Science Fiction classics. This will be a theme found throughout all four of these Spring 13’ blockbuster films.

There is much to admire in Oblivion in fact, Andrea Riseborough as Victoria for one gives a memorable performance. She is chilly, and distant, cold and isolated, yet always seeking Jack’s affections, just as a once jealous lover who successfully wooed the source of her passions would be. Perhaps her frozen exterior hints at something to be revealed later in the plot. She is robotic and alien, an abominable android, yearning for something that no longer exists, and perhaps never did. Her eyes in the final moments before she dies are full. Risenborough’s eyes are full in every scene. Full of what, I cannot always tell, but whatever the emotion, she at least attempts to portray it.

Tom Cruise on the other hand seems hell-bent on creating character after character as the same man. Which is the plot of the movie. He is the last man, the omega man ad infinitum. The aliens have cloned Jack and Victoria, and spread them across the globe monitoring and securing a system of drones and water collectors. Mostly Cruise wonders around earth for the first 20 minutes fixing stuff and gazing into the distance in awe, or something resembling awe, a kind of confusion, which is not off par with Cruise. Or he is busy having daydreams about Julia (Olga Kurylenko) of which are impossible because they take place during a time when the earth had not been destroyed during the war with the aliens. Now the population lives in orbiting space ships, and Jack and Victoria are monitoring water retrieval for the surviving population of earth.

Yes it is all very complex and filled to the brim with ideas and material and strange science fiction images and devices to the hilt. Yet none of the themes can be fully explored, the ideas are hinted at but ultimately unfulfilled. – The loneliness of a dead planet, the longing for a distant past and reveling in the items from a forgotten time. – Led Zeppelin is in constant rotation on my ipod, so I can relate to the motif of idealization of the past. However there is no confrontation and no connecting of this idea with the characters or the plot. Its just kind of there, on Jack’s hat, the same hat from War of the Worlds? Or perhaps in the rubbled stadium from which Jack tells his rousing story of a heroic sporting event. A moment lifted by MiB3 no doubt, but also put to better use there. I suppose this longing is objectified and personified in Julia, but she does not seem lost in this new future, she seems robotic and unaffected. More concerned with Jack’s recognition of the past than with what the world has become.

At the center is Jack. He must face himself and own up to being the last man. He must destroy the machine that duplicates his likeness, over and over and over again, bombarding the planet with the same Tom Cruise again and again. In the process of killing the alien machine, he destroys himself, and all his future selves. Though he is not the last man on Earth. There is a band of resourceful Natives, hidden amongst the ruins of a defeated civilization. They are led by an old black man named Beech played by Morgan Freeman. He has been waiting for a Tom Cruise like Jack to be filled with doubt and remember enough about his past to throw off his chains held by the alien overlords and help the rebellion stop the draining of the planet. That’s right, Jack was really the bad guy all along.
This reveal is not handled with great gusto or showmanship, as with the rest of the film, and with a few other anticlimactic reveals in the other films of this Spring season. Kosinski is almost too subtle in his handling of his material here. It is rather drab and sparse with its action beats, almost uneventful. It’s like an exercise rather than a visual expression of art. The few scenes that have a visual flare involve the landscapes of Earth, or the alien machine at the end. A scene while confusing and strangely shot and edited, is as interesting a scene as you’re likely to find anywhere this year. There are many gorgeous shots of nature and the variety of Earth’s environments that serve as backdrops behind the vehicle Jack travels in.

He who was once the villain can be redeemed, with repentance and sacrifice; what turns out to be the ultimate sacrifice for Jack. He must destroy his creator. His creator is simultaneously his commander and his warden. His God and his Satan. He is the one that gives him infinite life as well as the one that damns him to a life of repetition and infinite betrayal. Jack is charged with destroying the world and sucking it dry of all its resources. And for his services he will live forever, although in many different bodies. He is given a wife and shelter, and a cool flying vehicle, and weapons to shoot things too.

The obvious biblical overtones, or anti-biblical depending on your perspective, are exemplified in the one-man one-woman imagery, as well as the empty earth, untouched by man, or once touched by man but now cleansed from his sinful pride and hubris. This is a twisted hymn. With Jack, Tom Cruise, as both anti-Christ and messiah. He is a fallen angel, whose task is the extermination of what is left of the human population. Yet his chance encounter with Beech persuades him to rebel against his creator.

However it is not only the plight of humanity that dissuades Jack from helping the Alien-Machine-Deity complete its plan of total human destruction. It takes another fallen angel, an embodiment of his connection to a past earth and his nostalgia for a dead civilization. Julia is his wife from the past; she has been orbiting the earth for the interim between Earth’s destruction and this current form of Jack and his awakening. She along with several other of Jack’s cryogenically frozen and sleeping crew members from his past life have crash landed on Earth just outside of Jack’s supervisory boundaries. This crash was orchestrated by Beech and the surviving human clan, in hopes that this current incarnation of Jack would find and save his past wife, be filled with inquiry, and rebel against his creator. Yes it is convoluted, but also very interesting.

Beech is banking on Jack’s nostalgia for the past to inspire him to keep searching for the truth and eventually fight for the rebellion. It’s a long shot, but faith is a requirement for achievement, and a cornerstone to any religious myth. And this is most definitely at least inspired by religious stories. With that said, the awakening of sleeping pod people will pop up later on in the spring ramp up to Summer ’13. This sort of post-apocalyptic, after Revelations story is not new amongst science fiction and Hollywood, yet now that we are actually living in this time, it seems there is an uncertainty, a kind of grasping for the past, a nostalgia for a simpler forgotten Armageddon. It’s become quaint to depict the end of civilization. The bleakness and solitude of this prophesized vision of the Earth will be in sharp contrast to the other films on this list. Though the theme of humanity threatened runs throughout all four.

Jack’s ultimate sacrifice, in which he kills himself in order to kill his creator and humanity’s destroyer the alien computer, is made digestible by having the other Jack that the protagonist-Jack met in the desert, marry his wife and help raise his child. Setting up a world in which there are many other Jacks, whom all can be played by Tom Cruise forever. A sequel perhaps, where an evil Jack is trying to kill all the other Jacks in order to usurp their powers ala Jet Li in The One? The possibilities are endless and as infinite as Jack, and the standard Tom Cruise action vehicles that he will star in. Up next, Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise in All You Need Is Kill.

Oblivion is a vast improvement over Tron: Legacy, Kosinski’s first film, a film I happened to quite enjoy actually, A bit more than most it would seem. However it had many scenes that were poorly executed and strangely paced, his second outing proves to be far more cohesive and consistent, however it still suffers from odd tonal shifts and disorienting action beats. The ‘strange’ factor kept me interested till the end, I was left wondering what exactly I had just watched.
Parts of it are not unlike Twilight Zone, with the strange and ethereal Victoria as the uptight housewife, and the eerie atmosphere draped over those early suburban establishing scenes. To the frozen electronic boss Sally played by Melissa Leo. There is much here that can be mined for future Science Fiction writers. Perhaps Kosinski himself can take some of the successful themes that the film can only hint at and try to focus on them in the graphic novel.

This film is beautiful to looks at, and the CGI is seamlessly integrated in virtually every shot where it is utilized. Really outstanding work done by the photographer (Claudio Miranda), as well as the entire visual and special effects teams. And of course M83’s score or one half of M83, is encompassing, yet never quite rises to the heights of insanity and beauty of their albums.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Up next –

Relentless Bombardment:

Part II: Iron Man 3 – Bullets and Tanks

Geek Pic 6/11/13

2013-06-11T09:06:00.001-07:00

Frontrowgeek's 10 Favorite Films of 2012

2013-01-02T23:28:00.000-08:00

January 3, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Its 2013, and with another year of movies behind us we decided to list our favorite 10 films of the year past. First up honorable mention.

Chronicle and Cabin in the Woods.
These two genre pieces began the year off with a bang, along with another movie we will get to later on down the list. Chronicle feels like an inevitable entry, a cross between the contemporary trend of superhero movies and found footage, shaky cam, first person perspective movies. An interesting first film from Josh Trank, a fresh eye definitely enhanced this cautionary tale of youth and power being a disastrous combination.
Cabin in the Woods deconstructs the horror genre beautifully while at the same time being a more than competent entry into that genre. It’s hilarious and gruesome, while at the same time providing a commentary on the 30 plus years of fans whom flock every year to watch teenagers die painfully. Perhaps fulfilling some sort of fantasy of middle aged men watching ungrateful teens full of life and vigor unappreciative and unworthy of such endowments. Some say it announces the death of the genre, I say it announces the rebirth.
And on to the ten.
#10 Cloud Atlas

The idea is wonderful, the imagery is gorgeous, the music is sublime, the acting serviceable, the direction workman like, the script is ambitious to say the least. Taken altogether unfortunately it does not quite fit. My favorite section is the bit about the music being written by the great Ben Whishaw, which I think could have been a film unto itself, obviously with the inclusion of his past and a bit more about his love affair. I found this portion of the film hypnotic and wondrous, and I was upset every time we were torn away from it, not unlike being torn away from a lover, when all you wish to do is hold them in your arms. And this brings us to my main issue with the film. The inter-cut narratives send us hurdling through space and time every few minutes. From a slave ship in the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic jungle colony, and back to a 21st century nursing home. I love every segment differently and for separate reasons, and I feel like a lot of people loved individual sections of the film, and had we been able to stay with that character, latch on to that conflict, hold on to that lover for just a bit longer, the film would have been embraced by many more viewers. But alas, we must make do with what we have, and what we have is an ambitious, epic, serene film, that reminds us we are watching a movie every few moments rather than allowing us to get lost in the whole affair.
#9 The Raid

Nonstop action. I don’t want to sound like a poster quote, but wow, what beautiful chaos. An astounding feat was pulled off right beneath the noses of the movie going public. Also something that has not really been available to mainstream niche audiences. A film that mostly only die hard action/cinema (cinephile- I hate the term) fans have seen, and did not crossover to general audiences. This film was not hijacked by popular culture, to feature on some fraternity nitwits t-shirt. (No axe to grind here) The Avengers are cool now. Let me say that again. It’s cool to be a fan of the Avengers. Obviously talking about them incessantly isn’t going to get you laid anytime soon, but the fact that the girl you are hitting on has more than likely seen the movie and knows who Tony Stark is makes my point. I remember a time when only true geeks knew what an Avenger was and we were a tight nit community. My digression is not without a point, The Raid is kind of a niche geek film that not many people have seen, or will likely see. Yet it’s phenomenal, and dare I say, a better genre exercise than said Avenger flick, for my money any how. The two films have much in common. Cliche video game story lines, and goofy dialogue. You can watch both with the sound off and you won’t miss a beat. But The Raid articulates its genre with vision and preciseness, maybe a luxury a small film has that a large blockbuster does not. It serves the blockbuster to paint with large strokes, film making with a hammer, The Raid is image capturing with a scapel. The result is a kick to the head.
#8 Project X

An instant classic. The Party movie of all party movies. Yet there was a strange reaction from my generation of film fanatics, they claim to have hated it. They say its a hipster movie or a bro movie or some sort of perversion on the party film. No it isn’t. Its the eventuality of Animal House, Bachelor Party, PCU, Old School, Superbad. Those films made a promise, and that promise was Project X. The film delivers on all fronts, its literally about nerds throwing a party and trying to get the girl. They get the girl, they throw the greatest party ever, and they suffer the consequences. The fact that it’s found footage only serves to tie it to this generation, to the youth of this time even more. I said it before, it is my opinion that if this movie had come out in the 80′s, obviously with the caveat of changing social mores and language to fit the time period, my generation, the same people that claim they hate it, would unabashedly love this film. So do yourself a favor, sit down, have a few drinks and laugh your ass off as you watch this movie.
#7 Looper

Whoa. This movie kept catching me by surprise. Just when you think you’ve got an idea what is going on, it flips your idea over on its head. It didn’t shatter any ideas that came before it, but it takes all of those ideas and takes a long hard look at them and reconstructs them into something you’ve never seen before. It’s a visceral experience, one that is at the same time painful and joyous. You get the sense the characters are folding into one another, as the story folds into itself. It’s a heady, complex, sci fi, action, coming of age story , with western sensibilities and a dose of mob drama. If that doesn’t pique your interest, stop watching movies. This is why movies exist.
#6 Moonrise Kingdom

His movies feel like dreams, and this one the most lucid of all. A dream of young love, of first love, unjaded and ignorant of the truth, juxtaposed with the jaded, faded love of yore. Burnt out love that perhaps once resembled the young love at the center of the story, now a distant memory. Love becomes a prison to escape from with secret midnight trysts with a mistress. But before all of that, before the fighting and crying and pain and resentment, you were young once, and in love. This is that dream. Try to remember why you fell in love in the first place.
#5 Prometheus

Breathtaking cinematography, and harrowing imagery puts this film here on my list. I don’t care that some of the plot lines go unexplained or explained away in a silly matter. You have never seen Sci Fi this big, on this scale, in this way. I don’t want to spoil this for anyone but monster aliens fighting each other on an alien world is awesome. Period. And when it is captured with such a keen eye it literally takes your breath away. It might be silly, but it’s never stupid like an Event Horizon. It takes great care to keep you invested and interested and never misuses your trust. The last thirty minutes is batshit but it at least has the decency to bring you along for the ride. I will watch this many times.
#4 The Master

“You tell me what you think this movie is about.” might just be the theme of the year. Some dislike the ambiguous nature of the films that have been coming out as of late, I saay there’s room for a bit of ambiguity. Let the audience think for themselves a bit. It won’t hurt them. This movie however requires the audience to do a lot of heavy lifting, although both principle actors do quite a bit of lifting themselves. It’s not about any one thing, how could it be? It’s a journey into the self, or selves of the principles involved. Including PTA. Why would it have a pinpoint thing its about. Does life? What’s a flower about? I sympathize with bewildered audiences, sitting there in the dark watching this movie, waiting for a story, or a conflict, or a purpose. If your looking for any of that here, you’ll be searching for a long time. Go watch the Avengers, plenty of that in there. It’ll tell you exactly what it’s about, over and over and over again. You know, I forgot to say something.
#3 The Grey

More Ambiguity. Why live? Why die? Why fight? Why give up? Why do anything? The film asks these questions, more subtly than I, and its answers lay in the viewer. A strangely quiet and introspective thinking man’s action flick. It glides and drifts like snow, in and out of light. There are truly terrifying scenes of horrific violence and pain, but this film is constructed in such a way as to never let us take death for granted. Its unflinching and unwavering gaze on death put chills in my spine, not for the images on the screen, but for the thoughts roaming in my own head. Watch it in the dark if you dare, but you won’t fear the wolves. What can man do?
#2 Skyfall

This movie takes all that is Bond, and turns it up a few notches. It borrows heavily from the blockbusters and action flicks from the last decade, all of which owe there very existence to the Bond series, and rolls them into one gorgeous package. It’s sleek, it’s stylish, it’s shot with perfection, and it’s cool. Really cool. Too cool in fact, it winks and laughs along with the audience, and it never misses a beat. The third act is problematic, but everything else is so sumptuous it doesn’t even matter. I love this movie. It confronts Bonds past, blows it up even, making a statement for this being the definitive Bond. Which it is.
#1 Django Unchained

I was worried about this one. The subject matter, the controversy, Foxx and DiCaprio in roles I never would have chosen them for, yet now I have trouble seeing anyone else in those boots. Tarantino’s masterpiece. It tackles controversy by spitting in its face, and laughing. Kill your past, it cries, in blood. Unchain yourself from your burdenous history. Be becoming, always. It’s not only stylish and expertly crafted, its hilarious, and never holds any punches. This is one Tarantino has wanted to make for a long time. Cool, calm and collected, it never betrays history, yet it captures the sentiments of the now. Yes this was a terrible time in our nations history, terrible things were done to people because of ego and pride, but can we not rise above it? Can we not behave as civilized people? Even if our ancestors could not? Let us learn from the past and leave it there, not be shackled to it like Prometheus, allowing our painful histories to gnaw at our hearts forever more. He blew himself up too, which was pretty awesome.

Geek Pic of the Day #2 12/13/12

2012-12-13T11:37:00.001-08:00

Via
http://www.fnaok.com/index.cfm

Geek Pic of the Day #1 12/12/12

2012-12-12T13:10:00.003-08:00

Here’s your first official Geek Pic of the day! It’s a Beauty from Noriyoshi Ohrai‘s original Empire Strikes Back one sheet. It was remastered for the 30th Anniversary of the great film, and we thought it was perfect to be our first Geek Pic of the Day. Enjoy!

Thanks to Geek Tyrant for the pic!

http://geektyrant.com/news/2010/5/24/remastered-reprint-of-noriyoshi-ohrais-the-empire-strikes-ba.html

Movies With the Title in the Movie

2012-02-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

If you Haven't Been Watching Supernatural...

2012-02-20T12:25:00.003-08:00

: Image via Wikipedia

By W.B. Preston @prestonwb
Don't Start Now! This would be the worst time to flip to the CW at 9 P.M. on a Friday night. Believe me, this goes against my best interests, cause I love the show, and would enjoy a few more seasons of Dean and Sam kicking demon ass all over the country. But It's because of my love for the show that I must beg you not to tune in now. If everyone that reads this blog tuned in to watch the show next Friday, the network would certainly extend it another season. (We are well aware of our readership, and yes, the CW is that desperate.) And if you did tune in, you would see a show that is a shell of its former self. Bad scripts, worse dialogue, terrible direction, and a fragmented plot, with zero focus and even less drive to get to whatever hazy finish line there might be. No, I'd rather you go watch Season 1 on Netflix watch instantly, take the ride in the Impala at the beginning of the road trip, and thank me in a couple days, cause you will binge watch. And don't worry about getting addicted to a show that goes off the hinges in its final two seasons, that won't matter much because for all intents and purposes, the season 5 finale is the the true end of the show. Believe me, you will be satisfied.
For those of you still unconvinced, I will catch you up to speed- Dean and Sam are hunters. They hunt demons and ghosts and urban legends. They are brothers and Dean is the oldest. Their father raised them to be these demon hunting warriors, but when Sam turned 18 he went away to college. He was pre-law at Stanford on his way to law school before his older brother Dean came along and brought him back on the road to find their missing father. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose from there. Now if you are not dying to see these guys hunt ghosts, well then you're probably on the wrong website. So if you haven't been watching Supernatural, go. Watch. It. Now.

: Image via Wikipedia

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If You Haven't Been Watching Saturday Night Live...

2012-02-20T12:25:00.001-08:00

By W.B. Preston @prestonwb
Congratulations! You have a life. The show is unfunny, uninspired, and mostly terrible. Which is odd considering the wealth of talent the cast has to offer.(Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis, Taran Killam, Andy Samberg, Bobby Moyniham, and Keenan Thompson). This is a veteran cast with years of experience and comedic chops, yet some how most of the skits miss more often than they hit. This failure I must lay at the feet of the writers. But more accurately perhaps the blame lay at the feet of the institution. Perhaps this just is what SNL is. A mostly unfunny vehicle for a few comedians to showcase their work. Sure there are a few bright spots here and there, but the show is largely about promoting the host and the performer. The rest is just filler. Going back into the 70's and 80's most of the skits are corny and safe. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, just this Saturday the intro poked fun at race relations in sports concerning Jeremy Lin and his new-found fame. It was shocking at how risky some of the jokes were, but considering the target, not surprising. Not much risk involved, but well more than anything the show has put on in the last few years.
Another problem the show has is a suspicious lack of diversity. I know, Jewish comedians in New York is a staple, but to have a show, in 2012, without a single Asian, Hispanic, Indian or Arabic person, or a Black woman, speaks to some of the issues the show is having in being fresh and boundary pushing. I think most people agree the early 90's is the golden age of Saturday Night Live, but this cast has such potential, it's sad to see it wasted like this. Obviously I can't speak to whether or not there are egos among the cast or if there are jokes that are not making it into the skits, but the product we get on a weekly basis is not up to snuff. In the past it was the hosts job to match the witty and outrageous cast, now when the show is good, it is the cast trying to match wits with Galafanakis or Deshanel or Emma Stone. And they called in Maya Rudolph, Amy Phoeler and Justin Timberlake this past week to add some energy to the lackluster bunch. So in summation, if you haven't been watching SNL, you aint missin much.

: Image via Wikipedia

: Comic-Con 2006 - Snakes on a Plane Keenan Thompson (Photo credit: PopCultureGeek.com)

: Image via Wikipedia

: Image via Wikipedia

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Watch: Sleigh Bells Perform, Justin Timberlake Impersonates Bon Iver on "Saturday Night Live" (pitchfork.com)
Mike Ryan: Taran Killam: The Future of 'Saturday Night Live' (huffingtonpost.com)
PMT on SNL: Saturday Night Live Spoofs Piers Morgan Tonight (piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com)
WATCH: Beyonce & Jay-Z SNL Skit With Prince, Nicki Minaj & Others (997now.radio.com)
Maya Rudolph's 'Saturday Night Live' promo: Complete with salmon, sharks, and sunglasses - VIDEO (popwatch.ew.com)
Fox's Bill O'Reilly Appears On Saturday Night Live's 'What Up With That' (mediaite.com)
Here's What You Missed At The 'Portlandia' Premiere Party With The Cast Of 'SNL' (PICS) (businessinsider.com)
Mike Ryan: SNL Scorecard: Channing Tatum's Shirtless Night (huffingtonpost.com)
Mike Ryan: âSNLâ Scorecard: Jimmy Fallon And The Assault On Tim Tebow (huffingtonpost.com)
Mike Ryan: Who Scored Big On 'SNL' This Week? (huffingtonpost.com)
Watch Maya Rudolph's SNL Promos; What Former Characters Might She Reprise? (VIDEO) (tv.com)
SNL Promos: Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg Wear Sunglasses (shoppingblog.com)
ArtsBeat: Secret Policeman's Ball Adds Kristen Wiig, Sarah Silverman, Aziz Ansari and More (artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com)
Just Received 2 Tickets to Saturday Night Live - Unbelievable! (asicsmom.com)
Confirmed: @LindsayLohan to host Saturday Night Live on 3 March (bazaardaily.com)
Watch SNL Poke Fun At Jeremy Lin Racism Controversy (thejnlgroup.wordpress.com)
SNL Live Thread Tonight! [Snl] (jezebel.com)

Movie Posters!

2012-02-20T12:24:00.000-08:00

Check out these movie posters. There's more over at http://www.thepopcornjunkie.com

The amazing Spider-Man New Trailer

2012-02-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

New Spider-Man trailer, with a few new scenes.

Super Social Media

2012-02-20T12:19:00.002-08:00

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