conformer, posts by tag: movies are shite - LiveJournal

Remakes, covers, revisions, reboots, and retconned updates of all pop culture genres get their fair share of flak, mostly for good reason. Lack of originality, lazy writers, greedy producers, disrespect for established icons, and unreconciled fanboyism; to name just a few of the motivators for rewrites of perfectly serviceable stories, remixes of generally acceptable songs, and re-imaginings of otherwise forgettable movies. It's this last group of mass distraction media that are both the greatest offenders of creative license and the most misunderstood in their intentions.

Some of the most poorly-received film remakes are the ones produced with an opportunistic attitude; as time moves forward, technology, society, and styles change, making many of the films from the past half-century come across as dated, unhip, and irrelevant. What isn't always taken into account are the attitudes, norms, and political climate of the times, which almost always influence any underlying message the film may have more than its visual bells and whistles. 1968's Planet Of The Apes was an obvious allegory about race, class division, and nuclear arms, while Tim Burton's 2001 update was little more than an idiotic costume drama. Manhunter, from 1986, is a sublime and stylish adaptation of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, thanks in no small part to William F. Petersen's hypnotic acting; the 2002 version is a shot-by shot clone, minus any engaging moments. Underneath the garish set dressings, 1975's Rollerball was a subtle societal statement on celebrity and power; while the 2002 remake, thanks to entire scenes filmed through night-vision lenses, is at times literally unwatchable.

The rogues gallery goes on, which is not to say that all remakes are shite. Steven Soderbergh's 2001 Ocean's Eleven was a low-key, not-too-flashy, but still slick-as-snot updating of the mediocre Sinatra caper flick. David Cronenberg's 1986 gross-out retelling of The Fly is a sobering parallel of an AIDS-ravaged America. And while for all intents and purposes Keanu Reeves may as well be a stolid, toneless, charisma-free alien in real life, it in no way detracts from the repurposed message of 2008's updated The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Like comic-book adaptations, remakes are a minefield. If you stick too close to the source material, you get accused of parroting. If you make too many radical changes, you get asked why you didn't just write an original screenplay. If you change the ending, you're made out as a creative pirate. If you add cameos or homages or paradoxical pop culture references the audience will bitch about inconsequential chrome; if you leave them out, they'll say your production is flat and stodgy. If you eliminate key catch phrases and scenes, your efforts are accused of being hollow; if you retain them, it's assumed you're not a progressive artist. Every move you make is, unfortunately, judged against the original, instead of the end result of your own creative efforts. This paradigm has stigmatized many a shite remake like a burst security dye pack on a cute halter top, but it's also unfairly dinged the occasional decent updating of a relevant story.

1951 was a weird year for a world that was finally shaking off the PTSD of World War II; Japan had been tamed by the Allies, a reorganized Europe was rebuilding, and Russia had rediscovered its teeth. All the while, the genie of atomic energy was opening up new avenues of innovation, as well as spurring on the passive-aggressive fear, uncertainty, and doubt of an embryonic Cold War. Out of all this came the cautionary tale of a boy and his robot; alien representative Klaatu (rakishly handsome Michael Rennie) and the eight-foot-tall walking WMD, Gort. The Day The Earth Stood Still is less concerned with wowing the audience with the crude-but-innovative special effects of the day than it is with using the space-age science fiction trend of extraterrestrial interlopers as an allegory for current events. Klaatu comes to Earth with good intentions; bearing a polite warning for Earthlings to curb their aggressive ways or face consequences from an extraplanetary police force. Naturally, and with full-blown irony, Klaatu is gunned down by overzealous Army boys before he can say word one. The action inbetween this initial faux pas and Klaatu's final message is little more than a game of cat-and-mouse, but the message is as relevant today as it was refreshing then: what would enlightened alien visitors think of our relatively barbarous ways, and how would they tolerate such a species let loose upon the larger confines of the known universe?

In 1951, Klaatu is on the run for being suspected of being an instigator, a spy, a Communist, an insurgent, a fifth columnist, or any of the other myriad roles for the enemy spawned by post-war fear and paranoia. In our own post-millenial, post-9/11, post-E. T. world, Klaatu as played by Keanu Reeves is no less feared as an agent of destruction, and probably should be more so, as his orders are much more explicit and immediate than the firm but fair warning given fifty years ago.

In 1951, Klaatu says:

"The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you."

In 2008, the ultimatum is a little more bald-faced:

"This planet is dying. The human race is killing it. We can't risk the survival of this planet for the sake of one species. If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives. There are only a handful of planets in the cosmos that are capable of supporting complex life. This one can't be allowed to perish. We've watched, we've waited and hoped that you would change. It's reached the tipping point. We have to act. We'll undo the damage you've done and give the Earth a chance to begin again. The decision is made. The process has begun."

Whatever united federation of planets Klaatu represents is taking the decision-making process out of the human race's hands; immediately after collecting as many native Earth species for a cosmic ark, they intend on implementing a scorched-earth policy by way of the robot Gort (a.k.a. G.O.R.T., or Genetically Organized Robotic Technology; a neat little piece of retroactive continuity) which is in reality a man-shaped collection of very hungry nanobots.

Placing the two films side by side reveals the touchstones influenced by their respective times. In 1951, saucers were the vehicle of choice for sci-fi writers; after the millennium, a trend towards sphere-shaped ships was being followed. Klaatu lands his ship in the National Mall in Washington D.C. in 1951, in 2008 multiple spheres descend upon the Earth, but the one Klaatu emerges from lands in Central Park. And in what may at first appear to be a gesture of disrespect towards the original, the iconic safe-word "Klaatu barada nikto" is left out of the 2008 remake; until you realize that it was only relevant in Edmund H. North's 1951 screenplay. Trying to shoehorn it into the updated story would only have made it come across as contrived and disingenuous.

Truth be told, the original The Day The Earth Stood Still may be a classic combination of the "aliens vs. Earth" concept and and an examination of the human race's relatively tiny position in the universe, but it's still only incidentally science fiction. Without the flying saucer and Gort, it could be any of a number of cautionary tales reflective of current world society's tensions. Either way, and in both versions, the Earth really does stand still; both figuratively as all eyes turn towards the planet's first alien visitor, and literally in a global demonstration of the terrifying power that lies in wait just beyond our atmosphere's borders.

Basically, when judging remakes, especially of established cornerstones of popular culture, it's important to try and evaluate objectively and not give in to the stranglehold of tradition that the source material may exude. Because the original may not have been as good as you remember.

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Comic book geeks are their own worst enemy. They want their favorite characters to come to life in the most awesome way possible on-screen, but when an acceptable adaptation is produced, they nitpick it to death for being untrue to the source material. They're never happy.

According to the wildly subjective aggregation of Rotten Tomatoes, Constantine gets a 45% "fresh" rating, which in the black-and-white morality play of film criticism, is bad:

• "You can just picture the meeting: A few guys in Prada suits sit around an L.A. boardroom table going, 'The Matrix meets The Exorcist, huh...? With Keanu? I like it. No wait - I love it.'" (Globe and Mail)
  
• "Despite the professionalism of its stars, Constantine is another rip-off of The Matrix, The Omen and a hundred other films, gussied up with 21st-century effects and attitude." (Film Journal International)
  
• "It's sort of like The Matrix minus all the cool stuff." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
  
• "The Matrix meets The Exorcist (with a little Chinatown thrown in for good measure) in Keanu Reeves's just-below-okay supernatural adventure." (James Rocchi)
  
• "..outside of some nice cinematography, Constantine has few of The Matrix’s virtues." (Andy Klein)

The most annoying thing about almost every negative review of almost every movie that Keanu Reeves has participated in after the success of The Matrix is that whatever movie he was participating in at the time was either a rip-off of The Matrix, not enough of a rip-off of The Matrix, or just not The Matrix.

Here's some news that may hurt some feelings: The Matrix really wasn't all that. (Go here to read why.)

We like Keanu Reeves. He gets a lot of shit for his wooden acting, bland good looks, and apparent zero aptitude for inflection and affect. (except, of course, when he's emoting "Whoa!" That never gets old.) Still, he's paid his Hollywood dues and can be considered a veteran of the business, having made over forty movies in the past twenty years; some dumb fun (Speed, Point Break, the Bill & Ted duology) some extraordinary, (River's Edge, Permanent Record, My Own Private Idaho) some criminally underrated (The Replacements, A Scanner Darkly, The Lake House) some woefully overrated, (The Devil's Advocate, the Matrix trilogy) and some just tragically ill-advised. (Chain Reaction, Johnny Mnemonic) Basically, he's done it all; action-adventure, science fiction, drama, romance, comedy, good, bad, and ugly. He even had the stones to do Shakespeare, although he's yet to do a musical or a western. The fact that he continues to place himself in risky projects again and again is a testament to his passion as an actor and his desire to grow as an artist. His style may not speak to everyone and his ability to transform into characters may fluctuate more rapidly than the Italian government, but he's managed to parlay what he possesses and make himself into a mainstay of popular media.

And part of the reason he's been taking on so many "square peg" roles is probably at least partially an effort to get out from under the shadow of the Matrix movies, which have typecast him as severely as any appearance on Star Trek or Doctor Who would have. That said, Constantine's Los Angeles set pieces trump the Wachowski's mold-tinted Sydney shot after shot, by tempering them with influences from another notable L. A.-photographed film, Seven. From the opening exorcism in sun-yellowed apartment projects, to the hazy reds and blues of Papa Midnite's, to the high-constrast finale of light, water, and pitch; the path that Constantine stumps through is as bipolar as Reeves' character, his Oxfords making tracks in the dirt of both Hell and Earth.

There are thousands and thousands of problems when it comes to translating the extended histories of graphic novel storylines to the screen, and one of the most cardinal ones, along with maintaining the accuracy of the origin, is getting the look right. In this sense, Constantine is the spiritual thriller equivalent of the film adaptation of High Fidelity; America instead of the U. K., Elvis-brunette instead of Sting-blond, "Constant-TEEN" instead of "Constan-TINE," etc. Ignoring the fact that the comic book universe is a virtual spaghetti strainer of parallel and alternate planes of reality, where character analogues and other victims of retroactive continuity pass between worlds like so many bus station transfers, casting Reeves as Constantine's virtual evil twin does as much damage to the source material as any other heavily edited and modified screenplay. That is, not a lot, because the source material still exists. If you don't like the movie, just go re-read the stupid funny book, fanboy scum.

Constantine also benefits from the standing of John Constantine in the superpowered community. Due to their far-reaching canon, the DC multiverse is known to have a inordinate number of headlining magicians, sorcerers, and occultists in its pantheon, of which Constantine is but one, and a relatively obscure one at that. Doubtful? Try and name at least one more big-name wizards from both DC and Marvel books, and see from which house you find one faster. While Constantine's low face ranking shouldn't be used as a rationalization for sexing up an otherwise perfectly dowdy, world-weary, arrogant character, if there was any fit for Constantine's quiet cynicism, black-hearted charm, and overall fuck-the-world attitude, one could do worse than Keanu's dark steely glare, careless strut, and obstinate forthrightness.

Constantine isn't The Matrix; it never aspired to be. Its special effects are too spooky to be cool, its script doesn't have very quotable Zen-bullshit lines, and, save Tilda Swinton's half-mad, cross-dressing Gabriel, none of the costumes would look good on an action figure. But transpose the fanatical prophecy of "The One" with the playground God and Satan have made of Earth, and the two stories aren't so different after all. The trick is to watch Constantine without the self-righteousness of the critics above, without the unrealistic expectations of a post-Matrix fan community, and without the romantic notion that the protagonist has to be selfless, reasonable, or even a nice person.

John Constantine is an asshole. But it takes one to beat one.

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A lot of venom, vitriol, and vehemence has been laid at the feet of those responsible for the tenth feature-length Star Trek film, Nemesis. This wouldn't be so bad if the positive viewpoints were given equal time, but the surface archives only seem to favor snarky, snooty, smarty-pants blurbs like these:

• "Well, there goes the theory about the even-numbered ones all being good." (Nick Rogers, State Journal-Register)
  
• "A movie that blandly goes where too many Star Trek pictures have gone before." (Neil Smith, ViewLondon)
  
• "There's no ambition, no attempt to take the franchise in a new direction." (Mike McGranaghan, Aisle Seat)
  
• "Après 10 films, l'empire Star Trek devrait mourir de sa belle mort. Nemesis est le film qui devrait réussir à le faire." (Nicolas Lacroix, Showbizz.net)
  
• "Nemesis? Try 'NUMBesis.'" (Steve Crum, Kansas City Kansan)

While I tend to agree with Roger Ebert when he said "Star Trek was kind of terrific once, but now it's a copy of a copy of a copy," there's still a part of me that would live or die for this franchise, despite the fact that it is a franchise at all. Still, at the same time, as much as the Star Trek rules (and to a lesser extent, the Star Wars mythos) are held up as the gold standard of science fiction, you want to think that there is innovation and imagination and wonder left in the genre to propel it forward into the future it sketches, without having to use Roddenberry's much-abused canon as a crutch. We had a brief look at that potential a few years ago with Serenity, but it might take quite a few more voyages with that spirit of fearless experimentaion before science fiction properly enters a new age. Like the continuing mission of the spaceborne wagon that is the Enterprise, sci-fi has to continue to explore and take risks and discover new things in order to survive and thrive and define itself.

Truth be told, Star Trek Nemesis is not the best of the Next Generation films, but to its benefit, none of the Next Gen ever reached the level of sophistication, introspection, and existentialism that the television series achieved. The show had the benefit, at least for the length of the run, an open-ended environment where ideas could be played with. Making the change from that kind of creative freedom to the constriction of a motion picture's running time has hobbled each of the feature films in one way or another.

One of the more observant complaints about Nemesis is that it's essentially a Next Gen recreation of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan:

• Both films were directed by relative strangers to science fiction.
  
• Both films revolve around revenge schemes by the antagonists.
  
• Both films feature doomsday devices.
  
• Both films have shoot-outs in a nebula.
  
• Both films climax with the death of a beloved, iconic character.

And while all this cinematic cannibalism unfortunately jives with Ebert's "copy of a copy" assessment, if you're going to rip something off, at least make sure you choose the best source material. In addition, both have similar underlying themes. Wrath Of Khan took pains to depict the original crew, including the Enterprise as old, tired, and nearing mandatory retirement. Nemesis made several similar points, including the Troi wedding and Riker's captainship, in an effort to drive home the fact that this was the last of the Next Gen adventures.

But the sticking point for the majority of Nemesis's detractors is the death of Brent Spiner's Data, which admittedly, could have been delivered with a little more purpose and handled with a lot more pathos. However, since Data's death happens so closely to the end of the film, it's naturally the last thing people would take away after watching the movie and the first thing that comes to mind when people recall the movie at a later date. But what makes Data's death a bad one? Barring any snowballing complaints about the ham-handedness John Logan's screenplay or Stuart Baird's direction, why is Data's sacrifice in Nemesis less meaningful than Spock's in Wrath Of Khan?

Ultimately, what is the point of either death? Spock uses McCoy to save a copy of his katra and Data's neural net is bootlegged into B-4's brain. Are these outs just unfortunate side effects of writers and producers who are less in tune with science fiction's credo of casting off old ideas and embracing strange new ones?

Besides, there are countless other infractions in the movie that are a lot worse than whacking an android.

Things I hate about Star Trek Nemesis that do not include Data getting killed:

• Hotdogging on an alien world in an off-road rig.
  
• Lore? Lore who?
  
• Worf is Starfleet's bitch.
  
• Picard fucking up yet another piece of Federation equipment.
  
• Riker leaving his post for personal vendetta purposes. Who else smells court-martial?
  
• The annoying chain lightning of electrical short-outs on the bridge.
  
• If Romulan ale is so illegal, why is it so readily available?
  
• How many goddamn decks does this blinged-out space turkey have, anyway?
  
• Retroactive continuity is bullshit.
  
• Three words: bald Cadet Picard.

On one hand, Star Trek Nemesis does not suck. It's not a perfect movie, or even a great movie. But as a whole, taking into account a risky storyline, the mystique of the Romulans, solid performances from the cast, above-average effects, and a nifty mirror motif, it's a perfectly acceptable entry into the Star Trek canon.

On the other hand, five fingers: yes, Star Trek Nemesis sucks. But only because all the Next Generation movies suck.

At least Whoopi Goldberg wasn't in it.

⎋

Expanding a little on a blurb featured in a previous fragment included in a preceding statement, to wit:

"Still undecided about movies, but dead-set against movie-going. (because there's a difference)"

There is a difference, and not to put too fine a point on it, buttercup; it is the movie-going experience that Your Humble Narrator rails against so vehemently. (or at least as close to vehemently as one can achieve in the current climate) Admittedly, the actual core experience of experiencing hasn't changed much; audiences still laugh and cry and point and shout and talk during the quiet parts and talk louder during the violent parts and ask their neighbor what just happened and finish 75% of their refreshments during the previews and occasionally get a bit of lip or finger or fist. Sometimes the movie doesn't even matter, it's an ancillary device used to get companions out of their respective living rooms and within range of your personal buffer bubble for a while; so everyone can have skin time, so everyone can soak up the alpha waves, so everyone gets their dose of airborne serotonin so they don't go completely schizo.

It's an exercise in social intercourse. Whenever you put more than a hundred people into the same room, whether they know each other or not, there's going to be some interaction.

But the labyrinth one must negotiate in order to reach that stuffy orgy of shared experience; that's what's changed. As has the availability of the celluloid backcatalog; with sharing and piracy and compatibility with multiple media formats, one would think that more people would stay away from the moldering converted burlesque halls that pass as air-conditioned fire traps, and they do, that's not the problem.

The problem is the people who keep coming, mistaking a theatre for their living room.

But enough bile. Your Humble Narrator's status as a recovering recluse hardly places me in a position to debate the economic, social, and artistic irrelevancies of the modern motion picture.

I'm not even sure why I started writing about it in the first place.

...

Oh, I remember now.

But, no time.

⎋

Pencils down.

Answers to the unanswerable unanswered:

• "'Cause I'm your doctor! Do as I say!" Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters; (2007) Err (voiced by Matt Maiellaro) taunts Ignignokt after feeding him a jar of rancid mayonnaise.
  
• "I think my bunny slippers just ran for cover." Mulan; (1998) Mushu, (voiced by Eddie Murphy) in response to Mulan's "war face."
  
• "Don't even think about takin' the convertible. It might loosen your mousse." 2 Fast 2 Furious; (2003) Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) negotiates with Brian O'Connor over federal vehicle delivery.
  
• "..." Any given silent movie. Shenanigans? Maybe...
  
• "You, who are without mercy, now plead for it? I thought you were made of sterner stuff." Transformers: The Movie; (1986) Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) parleys with Megatron during the battle of Autobot City.
  
• "With friends like you, who needs friends?" Rushmore; (1998) Dirk Calloway (Mason Gamble) confronts Harold Blume about his affair with Rosemary Cross.
  
• "So what? Big deal." The final lines from The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, (1984) spoken by a snarky Black Lectroid.
  
• "Who gets hit with a fucking pie, anyway? Did anyone ever throw a pie at Thomas Jefferson? Or Buzz Aldrin? I doubt it. But this is like the ninth time I got...
  (beat)
  "Clowns get hit with pies." Dave Spritz, (Nicolas Cage) the titular weatherman from The Weather Man, (2005) wondering internally why people throw shit at him in public when his forecasts are wrong. (the "pie" in question was actually a hot apple pie from McDonald's)
  
• "Once it escalated into a murder one beef for all of 'em after they killed the first two guards, they didn't hesitate. Pop guard number three because...what difference does it make?" Heat; (1995) Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) analyzes the M.O. of Neil McCauley's bank-robbing crew.

So, what's the difference between a good movie and a movie that is merely quotable? The overall trend appears to be that the worst movies are the most quotable, (2 Fast 2 Furious, The Weather Man) while the better movies have less memorable one-liners (Rushmore, Heat). Then there are the ones that straddle the boundaries; good movies that are infinitely quotable, (like Office Space) and bad movies that are also infinitely quotable, usually to the point to where one is tempted to smack the wanker who won't stop quote-unquoting in their gibbering gob. (like the Austin Powers series)

The point, briefly, is this: quotes, whether they come from films or books or songs, are all fluff from someone else's dandelion. We quote them and repeat them because for one reason or another they connect us to a larger sphere of existence, one that we share with a larger circle of people, strangers and friends alike, which gives us the reassurance that not only are we not alone physically, but we belong to a community of like minds as well.

At the same time, it runs both ways. Think of the satisfaction it would give you to bark out a quote of your own and be able to take credit for it when someone mistakes it for just another splinter of pop culture.

⎋

Most recently from vertigo1021:

• Pick 15 of your "favorite" movies.
  
• Go to IMDb and find a "quote" from each movie. (or in some cases, just "remember" them.)
  
• Post them here for "everyone" to guess.
  
• Strike one out when someone "guesses" it correctly, then put who guessed it "correctly" as well as the name of the "movie."

Optional: no Google/IMDb/Wikiquote search functions. As if anyone would know, and like it would help.
Double optional: kiri_l adds the challenge of naming the actual character who spouted said quotable.

1. "'Cause I'm your doctor! Do as I say!"
   
2. "Normal view...Normal view...Normal view...NORMAL VIEW!" Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, (1996) correctly guessed by scheru.
   
3. "I think my bunny slippers just ran for cover."
   
4. "No reward is worth this!" Star Wars: A New Hope, (1977) correctly guessed by kiri_l.
   
5. "Don't even think about takin' the convertible. It might loosen your mousse."
   
6. "I swallowed a bug!" Serenity, (2005) correctly guessed by kiri_l.
   
7. "Please, God. I still love him. But I don’t want to love him anymore. I don’t want to hurt anymore. Please. Help me forget. Help me let him go. Please, help me let him go." Bruce Almighty, (2003) correctly guessed by xellyfer.
   
8. "..."
   
9. "You, who are without mercy, now plead for it? I thought you were made of sterner stuff."
   
10. "With friends like you, who needs friends?"
    
11. "A great big bushy beard!" Hot Fuzz, (2007) correctly guessed by lucydoll.
    
12. "So what? Big deal."
    
13. "Who gets hit with a fucking pie, anyway? Did anyone ever throw a pie at Thomas Jefferson? Or Buzz Aldrin? I doubt it. But this is like the ninth time I got...
    (beat)
    "Clowns get hit with pies."
    
14. "Once it escalated into a murder one beef for all of 'em after they killed the first two guards, they didn't hesitate. Pop guard number three because...what difference does it make?"
    
15. "Hello, Charles." The Ice Storm, (1997) correctly guessed by roastbeast.

Note from conformer: In a number of the examples below, the whole of the source material from which the sampled quote was extracted has insufficient merit to qualify as a "favorite." These isolated lines emphasize the occasional power a single part has over the sum of its comrades.

⎋

In light of recent haranguing, I caught myself reviewing this damn movie before I even saw it. What to do?

Midnite screening, that's what, altho not by choice. To-morrow everything gets switched up for another summer hero.

( Collapse )

Things I learned from Iron Man:

• Afghanistan looks a lot like the Santa Monica hills.
  
• Ghostbuster proton packs are easily jerry-rigged into IEDs.
  
• You can't spell "Homeland Security" without "S.H.I.E.L.D."
  
• "Training exercise," 2008 = "Weather balloon," 1947.
  
• The A-Team never built anything like this.
  
• Since when does the Financial Times have a crossword puzzle!?
  
• Build the suit out of iron if you want, but you have to make the codpiece out of titanium.
  
• "Iron Dude? You're being very un-Dude!"
  
• Speak up, I'm in the suit!
  
• Clothes make the man.

⎋

Cloverfield (2008) vs. DJ Shadow Flying Saucer Attack Photek: Fight!

The Blair Witch Project + Godzilla / Barefoot In The Park = Cloverfield.

Oops.

It's not only that choosing an alternate soundtrack for Cloverfield was so difficult, it's also the question of should such a post-postmodern movie have a score at all? There is no underlying music in the movie save the end credits, but if you were going to score a pseudo-documentary-style first-person account of a monster attack on Manhattan, what would it sound like? A quick survey of those who had already enjoyed Cloverfield suggested, "people screaming and lots of explosions," which sounds like the soundtrack should have been something like metal or grindcore or something equally obnoxious to match the onscreen chaos. But there was also the notion of a soundtrack that was completely incongruous to the genre, like pairing this nouveau horror movie with idealistic lounge music or feel-good bubblegum pop. And then there was the idea of dark ambient, which, had it worked, might have lifted the whole experience to another level.

If the hallmark of a good soundtrack is that you notice its effects on the film more than the music itself, then using Photek's downtempo debut Modus Operandi could be considered a success. If however, the point of a score is to create a fusion of sound and vision, then maybe we would have been better off using the dronecore tones of Flying Saucer Attack. Still, the cold, paranoid breaks of Rupert Parkes fit into a scene here and there; the opening pre-beat synths of "The Hidden Camera" seem to follow the "Bad Robot" robot as it makes its way thru the fields, and the syncopated bleeps of "124" clash nicely with the panic that ensues after the Clover attack on the Brooklyn Bridge. Otherwise, the tunes just dissolved into the background, which can be partially credited to the sequencing of the film itself, which is constructed much like a ride in an F-16; long stretches of inactivity broken up by vicious bursts of concentrated terror.

In any case, Cloverfield the movie does mark, if not a complete paradigm shift in filmmaking, at least a sideways shuffle out of the box. Logistical faux pas aside, it freshens the genre by utilizing on a larger scale the Blair Witch effect(which postulates that the harder it is to see the monster, the scarier it is), the X-Files factor(in the sense that not everything needs to be explained by the time the story ends), and the quasi-tragic stigma of the protagonists, such as they were, presumably perishing at the conclusion.

Unfortunately, even tho it's neat to look at and everything, it ultimately remains, like most movies, forgettable.

O well.


Next: Microcosmos versus...?

Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4.

⎋

Battleship Potemkin (1925) vs. Interpol: Fight!

Silent films are a different kind of product than their talkie brethren, and possibly closer to a form of art than the latter, altho still far and away the farthest point from the bright center of the universe. Simply by the use of the limited technology of the day, filmmakers were able to recreate the goings-on of a world that no longer exists, and to the eyes of the modern post-postmodern audience member, often appear to have been filmed on a different planet as well as in a different time.

They are also, invariably, terminably goofy; special effects amount to little more than crude dissolves, make-up is either clown-like or nonexistent, and the acting, as a carryover from stage technique, comes across as exaggerated and schizophrenic.

Less so with Sergei Eisenstein's crucial Battleship Potemkin, possibly because it was made more as propaganda than entertainment, but more likely because it's a Russian film. What does that have to do with anything? Maybe nothing, but when compared to European and American productions from the same time, Battleship Potemkin comes across as less of a recreated stage show and more of an actual filmed document, due to Eisenstein's visionary montage techniques; a procedure that is still employed to-day. Battleship Potemkin also has the unenviable honor of being the most emulated film in film history; whether directly or by diffusion, by film school student or veteran director, whether gangster romance or sci-fi western, elements of Eisenstein's storyboarding, frenetic editing, and that goddamn baby buggy scene are evident everywhere.

Interpol's moody, minimalistic, dirgey post-punk was chosen as a soundtrack simply because the band's music sounds black-and-white.

Notable syncs:

• The nocturnal strains of Turn On The Bright Lights' opener "Untitled" match the dark solitude of the sleeping Potemkin crew, swinging in their hammocks as a senior seaman makes his rounds to the words of "I will surprise you sometime/I'll come around."
  
• As the ship's doctor declares the maggoty meat provided for the sailors fit to eat, we hear the jabbing refrain from "Obstacle 1:" "And you go stabbing yourself in the neck."
  
• After liberating the Potemkin, the mutineers send a launch to the pier of Odessa bearing the body of the lead instigator Vakulynchuk to the maudlin melody of "Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down" and its evocative chorus "She was all right because the sea was so airtight, she broke away."
  
• The tsarist Cossacks' massacre of citizens on the Odessa steps is accompanied by the pseudo-march rhythm of "Evil"(from Antics) and the words "Saying, 'why can't we look the other way?'"
  
• The film concludes with a relatively long sequence of nautical scenes of the commandeered Potemkin playing hide-and-seek with the Tsar's interception squadron. The most notable sync comes during "Take You On A Cruise:" "There's nothing like this built today/You'll never see a finer ship in your life/We sail today."

Again, true synchronization was never really achieved, and the trouble of pacing was again encountered(one sequence in the film consisted mostly of pigs and chickens being loaded onto the Potemkin), but this was a fair trade-off as both the film and its ad hoc soundtrack were both evocative enuf to induce a tryptophan-like hypnosis upon Your Humble Narrator. This is not to say that either source was boring, rather it's a weird social experiment to place a 21st century citizen into a room with an artifact barely out of the 19th and watching what happens. There are so many things in modern film we're exposed to; color, sound, CGI, that we almost take them for granted, and when they are absent in something presented to us, the effect can be both dissonant and soporific. Certainly filmmaking was no easier a hundred years ago than it is to-day, but the results of that time suggest a modicum of black magic was used to create something that perhaps only a person out of time could appreciate.


Next: Cloverfield versus...?

Previously: 1, 2, 3.

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Fantastic Planet (1973) vs. The Flaming Lips: Fight!

This idea is not a new one, but it is, apparently, a lost one. Legend has it that a discussion in the forums on The Flaming Lips site suggested that René Laloux's surreal sci-fi sleeper meshed with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The thread has since been deleted, but that doesn't mean the problem has gone away.

Problems, actually, plural; the most glaring of which from a technical standpoint is the yawning chasm when it comes to timing:

• Fantastic Planet: ~71 minutes.
  
• Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots: 47 minutes, 24 seconds.
  
• Synchronization deficit: about 25 minutes.

The easiest solution would be, naturally, to just put Yoshimi on repeat, but not only is that a cheap way out, but it all but invalidates the emotional center of both the record and the film by creating an unnecessary overlap of themes. A song that may strike a chord with an early scene may wreck a later one when repeated. No, to maintain aesthetic integrity, the next logical conclusion was to "fortify" Yoshimi with selected tracks from its follow-up, At War With The Mystics. A slight jarring is inevitable, as the idea behind this mash-up was most likely because a lot of people consider Yoshimi to be a concept album; it then became only a matter of cherrypicking songs from Mystics that most closely emulated the Yoshimi style.

Notable syncs:

• "It's Summertime," an otherwise quaint and sentimental track is given a quirky new life as Tiva is taken to her first meditation and the off-white sky fills with fleets of floating orange spheres.
  
• "Do You Realize??" coincides with Terr's escape from the Draag city and meeting up with the wild tree-dwelling Oms, where Wayne Coyne croons "Do you realize/That everyone you know/Someday will die," as a Draag trap kills an unsuspecting Om.
  
• When the Draags launch an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Oms, the weird technology of the alien's war machine eerily parallels the Pink Floyd-like tones of "The Wizard Turns On." (this sequence also prompted the evening's winning MST3K moment: as a group of retreating Oms are gassed to death in the pit they were taking refuge in, xellyfer breaks in with "Someone set up us the bomb!")
  
• After the survivors of the first de-Oming regroup and are discovered by two surly Draags, the wild Oms attack and kill one of the blue giants as "It Overtakes Me" buzzes along.
  
• "The W.A.N.D." crosses over both the Draag's more extreme de-Oming of the countryside and the Om's departure to the Strange Planet, underlined by the narration of "They have their weapons/To solve all your questions/They don't know what it's for."

The other problem with this mash-up is that while The Flaming Lips' nouveau-psychedelic style fits the art-house animation of Fantastic Planet, the film itself is hampered by tepid scenes of plot exposition. True synchronization never really happened, instead, the record enhanced the film the most with its more expansive and thematic tracks("Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon," "Pompeii am Götterdämmerung," "The Stars Are So Big... I Am So Small... Do I Stand a Chance?"), as opposed to songs with more evocative lyrics attached to them.

Still, even if the movie hasn't aged very well over the past thirty years, at least we have an alternate visual painting to unfurl in our heads now.


Next: Battleship Potemkin versus...?

Previously: 1, 2.

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