Archfriend

On the Weekend

2012-01-26T01:03:00.000-08:00

Will I be ready? Probably not. My mind is just not accustomed to drawing-mode, not just yet. It's been a while, and it will take a while before it does. This weekend, I'll write about something else. A movie, perhaps, or a book? Or will it be something else?

Life, and stuff, there is a lot to cover.

Here at least is something to show I've been making progress:
and there's more to come yet, but I can't show anything until I'm done.

Patience.

On Thursday

2012-01-24T12:46:00.000-08:00

Thursday, in my country, will be A-Day. You might be thinking: What's that? Like, Asshole Day or something? Well, close, but it's actually Australia Day, which is also a public holiday. I have no particular reason to celebrate Australia, so I'm dedicating all of my time, energy and caffeine to update this blog.

If I don't finish Thursday, then at least I have the weekend. I fear I'm setting my expectations too high for this next post, and I may never get it done. But it's within my reach, as long as I repeat the four Orwell motivations until they set firmly in my cranium:

1. Sheer egoism.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm.
3. Historical impulse.
4. Political purpose.

Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.

These may also apply to illustration, as we'll see...

Just so this post isn't totally devoid of content, I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about books! I've just finished reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, I won't do a post about it, but I highly recommend it, whether you've seen the film or not. The film is great, but I've seen it so many times it's getting tedious to sit through. The book is so much more grittier, bloodier, mind-bending and totally absorbing.

"We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact," Tyler said. "So don't fuck with us."

Right now I'm currently reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. It's a good read, but anything by Kurt Vonnegut Jr is a good read. I'm currently waiting for my housemate Peter to get off his lazy butt and read Slapstick: or Lonesome No More, or anyone else in my vicinity, so that we can watch the film adaptation Slapstick of Another Kind, because there's no way in hell I'm watching that by myself, and there's no way in hell I'm watching it with someone who hasn't read the book.

But I do want to see it. I've read about it, in the MYOF article, and I get the impression that I will never be more insulted in my life. But that's why I want to see it, I want to know how far my buttons can be pushed. I want to feel my heart sink deeper into despair, for that is the power of film, that is the magic of cinema! I want to post about it too. When Peter did a post about Tank Girl, he told me "it's not so much a review, but a summary", to which I replied "yeah, but a summary with a tone". He liked that, and I like that too. I usually avoid summaries in my film reviews, because I find it's what every other critic does, and they don't dedicate too many words to actually reviewing the movie. But I like the idea of just doing a summary with a tone, as long as I'm not reviewing, and as long as the film is an awful, awful, awwwwful (there's nothing more to add to that).

Music for the depressed

2012-01-16T00:24:00.000-08:00

A couple new ideas emerged from writing my last post, the first of which came from my commentary on George Orwell's third motivation for writing. In it I skirt the edges of existentialism, but held back so I wouldn't detract from the topic at hand. But I wouldn't mind going full existentialist mode some time in the future, addressing the heavy subjects, the big questions about life, love, religion, death, time, space, and so on. I'm pretty easily swayed by philosophy, but could never really get into the big name philosophical authors, as eventually I discovered they were all generally pretty terrible writers. Most of my knowledge about philosophy comes second or third-hand, from more accessible authors, but personally I want to avoid name-dropping as much as possible and just focus squarely on heavy concepts.

The second idea came from the opening paragraph, where I talked about some music I listened to while depressed. I thought this would make a good idea for a post (or even a series as there is a lot of music out there). In the second paragraph I talked about music I listened to while happy, which could itself make an interesting post as well, but for now: let's get on down to Frown Town, and listen to the sounds abound in our down-time! However, before we get on to the music, I'd like to take the time to ask: just what is depression?

The answer is simple: depression is a survival mechanism, naturally developed through millions of years of evolution, so that you can be here now, reading this blog. It's the result of chemicals in your blood, your mind interpreting signals, the sway of the moment. "But why is something so awful so necessary to live?" you may ask, but then maybe you should ask yourself: How do we know what to avoid, if it didn't make us feel so awful? And what is joy without sadness?

What is the cure? All moods will come and go, like rain or sunshine, it's beyond our control. Granted, some people experience depression worse than others, mostly due to a vicious cycle of despair, brought upon by bad parenting, peer pressure or even initiated by one's self (the worse you can do is try and control your moods). You may not have any control over your mood, but you have control over your actions, and the only way to get through depression is to ride it out, like a storm blowing over. It's during this period, however, there is no better time than ever to listen to some sweet, depressing music. And here are some suggestions I have already prepared, just to start you off...

In my last post I mentioned Type O Negative, and three songs from their World Coming Down album. World Coming Down is an acquired taste, if you like fuzzy guitars and a certain low-fi quality, not to mention the slow-paced rhythm of a drum-machine. It's not for everyone, but occasionally I still find myself singing the chorus to the title track:

And I know, I know, I know that my world is coming down, coming down, coming down.
Yes I know, I know, I know that I'm the one who brought it down, brought it down, bring it on down!
Too true, too true. But for a more accessible sound, I would recommend their album October Rust, which has been like my best friend at the worst of times. It has a much softer, fuller sound, like a warm embrace to melt away the icy pangs of loneliness. That is, until the album is finished, and you haste to play it again, or something else, before the cold sets back in. Their last album, Dead Again, also has one particular song I highly recommend giving a listen (depressed or otherwise), called "September Sun".

Another band I mentioned was Khanate, whom I would not recommend listening to while depressed, as they they are a little bit too depressing. All of their songs play like a suicide letter, and only serve to make you feel worse about yourself. Their music is also very much an acquired taste. I only listen to them because I'm rather esoteric and I'm totally into that kind of stuff, but here on I'll stray from the heavier bands and keep my suggestions to the more calmer sounds of melancholy.

A band I've recently grown into is a wonderful bunch from Liverpool, England, called Anathema. They started out making a kind of gritty doom metal, then gradually changed their sound to something more cleaner and atmospheric, retaining their doom-ish qualities. The one album I've listened to time and time over and over again, and willingly go back to in my drearier moments, is A Natural Disaster. It was the track "Closer" which initially caught my attention, where the vocals are filtered to sound somewhat mechanical, and repeats the following lyric:

The dream world is a very scary place...when you're trapped inside.

Ain't it so, Anathema, ain't it so. And after the build up to the big crescendo of "Violence", and the final calm that follows, perhaps the mood is right for the more haunting atmosphere of Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter.

My Introduction to Jesse Sykes was from the collaboration album, Altar, by SunnO))) and Boris. Jesse Sykes' voice was featured on the song "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", singing in her trademark husky voice, blending with the smooth, tingling overtones within melodies within melodies. Members of The Sweet Hereafter (which sounds like a nice name at first until you realise they are referring to being dead) also contributed greatly to the album. Altar, once again, is an acquired taste, but I recommend seeking out "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)" as it is generally a lovely song, and is what made me seek out Jesse Sykes and her own music.

In my search I found her latest album at the time: Like, Love, Lust & The Open Halls of the Soul. Kind of a mouthful of a title, but musically a perfect spoonful of sugar to one's ailment of discontent. Jesse Sykes sounds like she's blowing smoke into your face with every breath, not with the foul stench of a cigarette, but rather like the haze of a daydream. The way she pronounces "s" like "sh", and her whispery voice only compliments the sweet melodic guitars and the haunting background ambience.

The last I have to offer is Life For Rent by Dido. This album didn't have as much impact as her debut, No Angel, which remains to this day one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard. Life For Rent, on the other hand, is a rewarding experience after a few listens, and I can't help but conclude that Dido is a sad little lady. Even with her most intimate songs, like "Mary's in India" or "See You When You're 40", she addresses broader themes, like the insignificance of us all here on Earth compared to the vastness of the universe. It's a horrible thing to feel so worthless, but when listening to this album, you realise just how worthless everything is, and everyone, and you can feel content that we're all worthless together. At least I do anyway, or is that just me?

Sigh.

Archfriend: On Writing part 2: Writing

2012-01-12T23:54:00.000-08:00

Just before I was struck by a certain tragedy, which caused me to fall into a deep depression, leading to repeated listenings of the most depressing Type O Negative (R.I.P.) songs such as "World Coming Down" and "Everyone I Love is Dead" and "Everything Dies", followed by a descension into the deepest abyss of the most depressing music ever made by an obscure band called Khanate (R.I.P.), dwelling in the darkest recesses of their 33-minute magnum opus "Hell Is Every God Damn Thing"...

Just before all that, I was about to write up a long self-motivational piece on writing, on why I write, and more specifically: why I don't write. But I'm feeling better now. I've since ordered a replacement copy of Pokemon White, which I'll have to play from the beginning all over again, but I don't mind, and I am now listening to the super-go-happy music of the J-pop trio PERFUME, who make such delightfully upbeat tracks such as "Oishii Recipe" and "Akihaba Love" and "Computer Shitty". I've also recently bought 13 Assassins on blu-ray, and I love that god damn movie, so it's hard to feel down right now. Right now, I can write about writing again. So here goes!

In part one I wrote about learning Japanese as one of the activities I want to continue this year under a more rigid régime. Another activity is writing on this blog. I've been terribly inactive the past few months, because I felt writing has become a huge strain. Anyone else who writes will agree: it's painful and time-consuming, and it doesn't get any easier. The more you write, the more you aim to get better, and better, and that means more to think about, and that's exhausting for the brain. If you want to be the best, it's going to hurt. When you know something's going to hurt, your initial reaction is that you don't want to do it. Just getting over your initial reaction is painful. It's like adding more fuel to your aircraft just to make up for the extra weight it's gained by adding fuel in the first place.

I guess one might conclude that I hate writing. This is true: I hate writing, but I want to write more. Why? This is the question one needs to ask before engaging any form of creativity, which I will ask again in different forms in my upcoming posts on drawing and music: Why do I want to write more, when I hate doing it?

There are many answers, and I will go over a few which George Orwell has outlined in his short essay Why I Write, but here I've thought about an answer for myself, and this is it: I like to read. Actually, I'll read anything as long as it's in legible English, that includes writing of my own. I suppose when I write, I am writing what I would ideally want to read, and that's where I find the joy of it all. But to re-iterate: it is the act of writing that pains me, and that is why I don't write as much as I want to.

This year I have resolved to write more, particularly in this blog of mine. For one thing, I know I am my own audience here, so quantity over quality is not an issue. That is why I have come up with a schedule to update this blog at least once or twice a week, on Tuesdays and/or the Weekends. I'm not worried about writer's block, as I know there is always something for me to write about. Last year I've wanted to write about many things but never did, but that was because of the pain, not because of lack of topics. This year, however, I want to write more, and so I shall, because I want to read, because I am reading, and I have read much.

George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946, called Why I Write, shortly after he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was in a bit of a rut at the time, and needed to refresh his mind on the purpose of writing. He died before he could finish what he was working on, but I picked up this essay (published by Penguin with a collection of some of his other essays) when I was in a rut myself, hoping to find a way out. It didn't have an immediate effect, but over time I've come to appreciate his conclusions, and adapted them to my own causes. I'll cut straight past the bulk where he talks about his early years and focus mainly on his four motives, which he mentions are not all equally weighted within all writers, and each motive varying from time to time within each individual writer themselves, according to their surrounding atmosphere.

1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc. etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen--in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition--in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the same sense of being individuals at all--and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centred than journalists, though less interested in money.

This motivation, when weighted the heaviest, I think brings out the worst in a writer. I've asked the question "Why should I write?", but if there was an answer to the question "Why shouldn't I write?", it would be sheer egoism. If you think you are a born genius, with a god-given gift of prose to bestow upon the world, that all mankind should bow down in your mastery of language, then you are doing it wrong. Most likely your writing is terrible, and people will say so. It's not bad to have an ego, because you need it to start writing in the first place, but I recommend a humility to accept you are still learning, still open to exploration, and discovery, no matter what point in life you are in.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or a writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

This one is the closest to resembling my own answer: I write because I like to read, and I like to read what I write. If I didn't like reading, or reading what I wrote, then I wouldn't bother. I couldn't imagine a more boring existence for myself, though. And once again, too much weight on this motive will bog you down, without the following two motives to come, you'll resort to writing about just trivial things, which in the end are just trivia, no matter how fancy your words flourish.

3.Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

This motive, albeit short, I think has most importance. You can write your heart out all you want but unless you have something to write about, then your writing amounts to nil. Its description may sound like journalism at first, maybe a bit of egotistic want of being credited for a discovery, but this motive is true not just of writing, but of existence itself. In Renee Descart's simple yet profound quote: "I think therefore I am", he expressed existence as a consciousness. In Brandon Carter's Anthropic Principle, he expressed consciousness as a means of existence, that being here is proven by the fact that we are being here. Socrates expressed "not knowing is the path to knowing", and knowledge is at the heart of writing itself. What would we be without it?

4. Political purpose--using the word 'political' in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Whether you're into politics or not (I certainly am not), I think it's true that all internal conflicts within every individual stems from their political environment. Jean-luc Godard was trying to prove this with his series Histoire(s) du cinéma, that all film, writing and art were products of the political surroundings of its time, one just needs to open their eyes and make the correlations. I think it's certainly true of my own conflict: why I don't write. I don't write because I'm exhausted, because I work full-time to make a living, that my time of leisure is waning at the limits of my expenses: the cost of living rises twice, maybe thrice, every year, and my paycheck only rises once, and not sufficiently. I feel like a proletariat, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto, and my mind goes over the opening sentence: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". I feel I'm being exploited for my labour, and I'm not being compensated for it. I might need another means of income, maybe I should become a writer? An artist? A musician? I know other countries have it a lot worse, and there are places I would rather not be right now. Even right here where I am, I think it could be better. And so I crave, I want, and want, and write, to be better, to better, to bridge the gap between author and reader, between time and space and culture and personality. So God luck and good speed (plus wizard fight)!

And so I leave you, dear reader (that's me!), with one final piece: an excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s final novel Timequake. He wrote this book out of his love of books (as opposed to television), as well as a fine example of the four Orwell motivations above. But here, he moves past the why and on to the how.

Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they're done they're done.

I'm probably more swooper than basher, which probably makes me a bit girly, but so be it! I'm probably about ready to go back to sleep, as I've had enough swooping for these past two days (yes it took two days to write this up), it's done my head in.

Up next in this series, I'll be talking about drawing and illustration, or will I be talking about music? It depends whatever I'm in the mood for. Maybe I'll talk about something else entirely. That isn't to say, I don't have plenty to say about drawing and music, but the pain! O the pain!

Archfriend: On Hold

2012-01-10T01:48:00.000-08:00

I discovered this morning that I've lost my Nintendo DSi LL, which I spent a lot of money to get it imported from Japan, along with my copy of Pokemon White (also imported from Japan). It fell out of my bag yesterday, and I've retraced my steps twice. It's gone forever. I'm a little traumatised, like a significant portion of my life has been suddenly erased, and there's no Ctrl+Z to get it back. It's a bit materialistic to say this about a mere electronic object, but it's kind of like losing a best friend.

Even though it can be replaced, it will take me a few days to get over this. I don't remember the last time I've been so careless...

Archfriend: On Writing part one

2012-01-01T22:08:00.000-08:00

Last year, I never fulfilled my New Year's resolutions because I never made any. It's my tradition to not try and set goals to achieve, because I like to keep my mind free to move in any direction open to it. Recently I've grown older into the age of boredom. New things don't interest me much as they used to, so this year I'll set myself down and carry over last year's activities, only with more rigid régime.

The first activity was getting semi-serious about learning Japanese. Since 2005, I've been on/off with learning this infernal language, but it's mainly because I've been trying to teach myself through books. I'm too busy to take classes, and I don't know any Japanese speakers who can give me the help I need. After a while, I ask myself "why do you want to learn it anyway? Seems like a waist of brain power in the end." But I have plenty of reasons to learn it. Firstly: about half my DVD collections are Japanese films and animation, and I never feel that the subtitles are giving me the complete experience. There are so many subtleties in the language, even the things that go unsaid. Sometimes, there can be more than one interpretation, and the subtitlist (is that what they are called?) only has one to choose from. Secondly: I have some video games in the original Japanese language, before they were either ported to the Western world, or some that haven't been ported at all. I've managed to play them just fine, and enjoy them on some level, but I think there is more to gain from them if I could actually understand the language. Especially the one game I've been playing a lot lately, Pokemon White. Thirdly: I'd like to get into some Japanese authors, such as Haruki Murakami, or many others I haven't heard of yet, to read their novels as they were written, and not through the filter of translation, which always feels weird when you read them. When I read a book, I like to think I'm absorbing the text, being influenced by it and even discovering new things about my own language I never knew existed. I love foreign books because I'm interested by other cultures, and the underlying humanity from all parts of the globe, but I hate how I have to read them through a translation. The English comes off as really weird and unnatural, and the case is ever more present in Japanese. Case in point: here is an excerpt of "Audition" by Ryu Murakami (not related to Haruki), translated by Ralph McCarthy. Admittedly I only read this book because I enjoyed the movie by Takashi Miike.

THAT NIGHT, IN THE hotel room, they watched a triple bill of Rambo films. Midway through First Blood, Shige declared it a great movie, and he even shed a few tears at the ending. But with the second and third instalments he grew gradually disgruntled, and by the time they got to the final scene of Rambo III he was downright indignant.
'What the hell is this? It's ridiculous! How's a guy on horseback gonna take down an attack helicopter with a bow and arrow? They must think we're all morons watching this crap. What's he supposed to be, Genghis Khan?'
It was past two a.m. when the third film ended. Shige said he was going to get online and wanted the room to himself, because he couldn't relax with a computer illiterate looking over his shoulder.
'Go have a drink somewhere, why don't you?' he told his father.

On the one hand, the book was amazing, and gave a much more psychologically involved account of the story than film could ever achieve. On the other hand, the language is so straightforward and flat, even exclamations like "What the hell is this?" seem somewhat reserved. Lately, I've been improving in my ability to read Japanese by playing Pokemon, and even if I don't understand all the words, I've found that I can easily pick up on the tone. The subtleties of politeness levels and familiarity levels, crossed with effeminate or masculine sounding words, or words with harsh consonants, or extended vowels, or diphthongs, etc. it all adds to a tone. When I read "'Go have a drink somewhere, why don't you?' he told his father.", I can't tell if he's being familiarly impolite, or downright rude, or even casually suggestive, just by the words themselves. I have to rely on context surrounding the dialogue, and if I have to do that, then there's something lost in translation. I know English text can be injected with tone, just go read Moby Dick: read it out loud! You'll know when Captain Ahab is yelling at the top of his lungs, or softly rambling in an almost-whisper.

Then try to tell me what is the tone of "Go have a drink somewhere, why don't you?".

What got me semi-serious about learning Japanese last year was when I managed to import a copy of the Nintendo DS game, My Japanese Coach, which is getting harder and harder to find these days. There are a few things this game does right, which no other interactive teaching aid, be it CD-ROM or activity book, ever did: it has a neat game-flow, which uses a kind of reward-based system. You are locked from any future lessons until you earn enough "Mastery Points" (MP) in your current lesson, forcing you to actually learn your stuff before you can move on. You earn MP by playing mini-games that involve a complete understanding of your words, your grammar and, later on, your kanji. Some mini-games were well thought out, and couldn't be beaten without a complete understanding of the lesson. Others were easily beatable without committing a single word to memory. What's more, is that if you upped the difficulty (which mostly just decreases the time-limits), you earned more MP, thereby getting through the lessons faster, spending less time repeatedly drilling every word into your brain. The game was a good idea, but its repetitiousness, its unappealing (plus limited) design and its reliance on the user to do most of the work themselves made it another boring academic textbook on the Japanese language like everything else I've tried. It became another disappointment that never took into account the user, who perhaps wants to enjoy the act of learning. To laugh, to cry, to fall in love, to be in awe, and so on.

It has made me want to take it upon myself to design a learning game of my own, to single-handedly change the face of edutainment. I want a game that teaches you Japanese, but does all the work for you, and all you have to do is sit back and enjoy. And by the end of it, whether you wanted it or not, all of a sudden you have the ability to read, write and speak Japanese. Who says this isn't possible? Why are all teaching aids half-designed by "experts" who say otherwise? Why can't learning be an adventure?

That's what I have in mind, a kind of adventure game, where the user can dictate the course of their learning, but only through unlocking one lesson at a time. I liked the "Mastery Points" idea of My Japanese Coach, so I want to incorporate that into my game, except I would want to give more substantial rewards, like, say, rare sexy video tapes of your teachers when they were young, and it becomes your hobby to gain Internet cred by giving them subtitles. Oh yeah, I should explain that my game is not entirely kid-friendly. If kids want to learn Japanese, they can go take classes, because it's not like they have a full-time job or anything. Most schools have Japanese classes included anyway.

An idea clicked in my head today about this game idea. At the New Year's Eve party I went to, we were all having a go at Wario Ware: Smooth Moves on the Wii. I was dying of laughter and admiration at the various instructions for holding the Wii-remote, the ones that are read out loud by some laid back sleazy guy who calls the Wii-remote "the Form Baton", rambling on and on about how to hold it for the up-coming mini-game, contrasted with an epic writing style begging for a more Shakespearian over-actor, spoken loud and grandiose. These segments were brilliant, and in some cases, I think most people would only play this game for these segments alone. It crossed my mind that instead of teaching you how to hold the "Form Baton", if he was to teach you how to write hiragana, katakana or kanji.

The game-flow of Wario Ware was also ideal. You are first given a map-screen, then one by one you unlock a new area and new characters to go on a new adventure with. In each adventure, you witness an amusing little story, then you start playing mini-games (more like mini-mini-games), and every now and then you are shown how to use the "Form Baton" in new ways. This game-flow seems ideal for the game idea I had in mind: First off you are open to a shop (for when you earn points), and two areas: one to learn nouns and one to learn hiragana and katakana. You earn very few points if you learn nouns written out in roman letters ("romaji"), so ideally you have to start off with hiragana and katakana. Once you have mastered the syllabary, you can then either move on to kanji for earning even more points, or learn some nouns. Once you have learned some nouns, you are then opened up to two more areas: verbs and adjectives. All of these areas start off simple, but get more and more complex when you have to get through conjugation, particles, grammar, phrases, conversations, and so on. But hopefully all the adventures should be sexy and fun as well as educational. I say "sexy" because language is all about connections: the connection of letters to form words, of words to form phrases and sentences, to form ideas and so on. And let's face it: the word "connection" is also a euphemism for "sex". Heck, every second word in the dictionary has sexual connotation, so I don't see why we should ignore it. We should embrace it! I wrote this down today: it is a simple instruction on how to draw the hiragana あ (imagine it read out loud by the sleaziest voice possible).

To master the hiragana あ, first begin at the left of the horizontal line, then ease your way to the right by motion of an effortless flick of the wrist, thus taking care of the first of three strokes: no more, no less.

The second stroke begins gently above left-of-centre of the horizontal line, crossing over it downwards, finishing off with a slight bend to the right, mimicking the natural endowment of man, and ready to penetrate the open loop of the final pass.

Here, we begin at a point somewhere between the ends of the first and second strokes, and move round clockwise in a circular motion, but moving over past the starting position as if to draw a half-hearted spiral. Hence by now it should have wrapped itself around the flaccid tail of the second stroke, hopefully ensuring a rigid unity once completed.

I mean, that's just a first-draft, coming from my mind just rambling on and on when it thinks about drawing a hiragana, but I've been coming up with some lurid stuff for many others, and can't see why this couldn't be applied to just about every hiragana, katakana, and kanji (all thousands of them). This stuff just writes itself!

I do want to make this game, but the only thing holding me back right now is my lack of completely understanding Japanese myself. I was hoping that making the game would force me to learn it, but I doubt I wouldn't end up lost and confused half-way through development. And so I want to take another crack at My Japanese Coach, only this time go from semi-serious to full-on serious, with exercise books and everything. Over the course of learning, more design ideas for the game should come to mind. I mainly need characters, which range from sexy, funny, to cute. And mini-games, or "Tests" as I will call them. And ideas for stories and adventures. And to stray away from the dryness of textbook examples, to keep myself sopping wet with ideas, new ideas, and fun.

(end of part one, next up: writing, and why I write, and why not?)

That whole thing about ghosts?

2011-12-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

False alarm. I don't feel like doing it any more.

If I'm in a writing mood, I might do another movie review or something.

Oh, and the Jules Verne thing a couple posts below? Turns out there are abridged versions of his stories, published by Vintage. I saw the whole paragraph I painstakingly typed out in full reduced to a mere sentence: "For centuries explorers have attempted to reach the South Pole...". Now I feel cheated, going through such laborious text, more like documentation, lists upon lists of fish and underwater life I never cared about, all the minute technical details which I couldn't even follow, and all the other fat which could have been cut out to make a good read, not just by today's standards (it's not like I haven't read plenty of 19th century literature), and all of a sudden, there are versions available that actually do cut out all the fat! If I ever plan on reading his other books, I kind of feel obligated to find the Collins editions that retain the text complete and unabridged. It's a slog, yes, but at least I'm not being cheated.

What will be written next?

2011-12-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

I don't write much these days. I'm still reading books, watching old & new films, and playing some video games every now and then, but it's not like I have the dying urge to write about everything I experience. It always seems bland to me to read a straight-forward review or analysis of something, even when it's humorous. It almost seems cold and mechanic to watch, read or play something and go to your blog and say "this is what I did". Where's the spin? Where's the angle? What am I getting out of it?

This is why I don't write as much as I want to, but I have something in mind which I'm currently preparing. What will it be about? I've seen some great movies lately: Immortals 3D, The Ides of March, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol... I've read some great books: The Hobbit by Tolkien, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, not to mention the entire Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, as well as all the film/TV/animated adaptations, plus a smaller book he wrote called Surprised by Joy, an interesting autobiography and thought-piece on religion. I haven't really been playing many video games, I guess there's Beat Hazard Ultra, an Asteroids-like shoot-em-up which customises itself depending on what music you play to it. This lead me to create two songs for it, which can be heard on my tumblr. But these, I won't be writing about for now. I have something else in mind.

What will it be? I can only give one word as a hint: Ghosts.

Jules Verne

2011-11-17T22:39:00.000-08:00

There is no finer example than Jules Verne for a writer who suffered for their art and inflicts it upon the reader.

Case in point: In chapter 38 of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Captain Nemo has steered his underwater vessel Nautilus into a strange isle within the Antarctic. He means to set foot where no man has set before: the South Pole. In this new land, he waits for the sun to shine its rays at noon, to determine his exact position. Apparently, it's been cloudy for the past two days, and this is the last day the sun will shine before it passes the equinox and doesn't rise again for another six months. Let's take a look, shall we?

Captain Nemo, provided with a reticulated glass which, by means of a mirror, corrected the refraction, watched the sun as it disappeared gradually below the horizon describing an elongated diagonal. I held the chronometer. My heart beat quickly. If the disappearance of half the disc coincided with the noon of the chronometer, we were at the Pole itself.
'Twelve!' I cried.
'The South Pole!' answered Captain Nemo in a grave tone, giving me the glass which showed the sun cut in exactly equal halves by the horizon.
I looked at the last rays crowning the peak, and the shadows gradually mounting its slopes.
At that moment Captain Nemo, resting his hand on my shoulders, said, -
'Professor, in 1600 the Dutchman Gheritk, carried along by currents and tempests, reached 64° of south latitude, and discovered the new Shetlands. In 1773, on the 17th of January, the illustrious Cook, following the 38th meridian, reached latitude 67° 30; and in 1774, on the 30th of January, on the 109th meridian, he reached 71° 15 of latitude. In 1819 the Russian Bellinghausen reached the 69th parallel, and in 1821 the 76th by 111° of west longitude. In 1820 the Englishman Brunsfield was stopped on the 65th degree. The same year the American Morrel, whose recital is doubtful, ascending the 42nd meridian, discovered open sea in latitude 70° 14. In 1825 the Englishman Powell could not cross the 62nd parallel. The same year a simple seal-fisher, the Englishman Weddel, reached 72° 14 of latitude on the 35th meridian, and 74° 15 on the 36th. In 1829 the Englishman Forster, commanding the Chanticleer, took possession of the Antarctic continent in 63° 50 of latitude; in 1832, on 5th of February, Adelaide Land in 68° 50 of latitude. In 1838 the Frenchman Dumont d'Urville, stopped by the icebank in 62° 57 of latitude, sighted Louis-Philippe Land; two years later, on a new point in the south, he named, in 66° 30 on January 21, Adelaide Land; and, eight days after in 66° 30 Clarie Coast. In 1838 the Englishman Wilkes reached the 69th parallel on the 100th meridian. In 1839 the Englishman Balleny discovered Sabrina Land on the limits of the Polar circle. Lastly, in 1842, the Englishman James Ross, with the Erebus and Terror, on the 12th of January, in 76° 56 of latitude and 171° 7 of east longitude, discovered Victoria Land; on the 23rd of the same month he reached the 74th parallel, the highest point obtained till then; on the 27th he was in 76° 8, on the 28th in 77° 32, on the 2nd of February in 78° 4, and in 1842 he returned to the 71st degree, beyond which he could not go. I, Captain Nemo, on the 21st March, 1868, have reached the South Pole on the 90th degree, and I take possession of this part of the globe, equal to the sixth part of known continents.'
'In whose name, captain?'
'In my own, sir.'
So saying, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag, bearing an N in gold, quartered on its bunting. Then, turning towards the sun, whose last rays were lapping the horizon of the sea, he exclaimed, -
'Adieu, sun! Disappear, thou radiant star! Rest beneath this free sea, and let a six months' night spread its darkness over my new domain!'

THE THING (2011)

2011-10-19T01:58:00.000-07:00

(I had this post left hanging half-written in my drafts for about a month. My friend decided to write up a review of John Carpenter's 1982 version, and so I have been compelled to continue where I've left off, which might explain the digression half way through)

I will start on a positive whim, and talk about what I liked about this film. I liked the design of the special effects of the monster thingy--from here on referred to as Thinga-me-bobs--which was impressively sketched out like something from the pages of The Necronomicon, or inspired by the manga Parasyte. The concept of the Thinga-me-bobs was creepy on its own, but then, tragiluckily, they had to go ahead and make a movie about it. I say the special effects were well done, I just take issue with they way they were employed.

Which brings me to what I didn't like about this film, namely: everything else!

The Thinga-me-bobs was quite horrifying, but they lingered on it too long, as if the production team had to pat itself on the back for a job so well done, but the more we see it on screen the sillier it gets. This is due to bad pacing, so let me talk about that for a second.

The Thing (2011) is a slow-paced film, which is good for a horror, for it can linger on the atmosphere and build the world around you. You get to know the characters, and you become more vulnerable to shock via loud screeching beasts from Hell. But this is a very boring film, crippled by sloppy writing leaning on "established convention" as a crutch. I'll talk more about the writing later, I want to bring attention to the actors first, and how they contributed to the aforementioned everything else.

Particularly Mary Elizabeth Winstead--from here on will be referred to as MEW--in the lead role, and who was admittedly the real reason I was attracted to this film. I enjoyed MEW in Scott Pilgrim vs The World as Ramona Flowers. She had a laid-back charm, and seemed to affect the way I interpreted her character in the comics (same couldn't be said for most of the other actors). The only other time I've seen her was in Death Proof, where she talked about peeing on some guy, and it was great.

MEW is distractingly beautiful, and I hope that beauty will never be ruined or wrecked by the likes of Zack Snyder or Brett Ratner or some other creep. And although I never saw that dancing movie she did, I hope her talents are recognised and exploited to full potential in the future. In The Thing (2011), however, I'm obliged to say she was a little too beautiful for this role. She was like a void, sucking in the light from the surroundings, rendering my eyes useless to the scenario whenever she was on screen. In her more grittier, muddier moments, I noticed how she would show her face, and behold, no grit or mud! Her face perfectly made up, her big round eyes glaring at whatever CGI thing is getting at her, no tears, no dirt, just MEW in all her unholy glory.

Her interaction with Joel Edgerton didn't so much lack chemistry, but produce an undesired effect. Edgerton--here on referred to as Edgerton (OK I'll stop that)--is basically an Australian-import with an undeniable presence. He's charming, handsome and buff, a true beefcake of a man. He's basically everything Sam Worthington should be. But then his flirty glances at MEW--who in turn gives a lacking response--end up making him out to be a creepy leering rapist, who you don't want to be caught in the same room with alone.

The Norwegians in this movie were awesome, but like the special effects, weren't very effective.

To get back to the writing/pacing, the first encounter between MEW and Edgerton takes place in a helicopter ride to the Antarctic base. Edgerton gives MEW a creepy glance, she returns it with confusion, he indicates headphones and she responds by putting them on. He asks her about a basketball team, she says she doesn't follow football, etc. Some other characters are in the helicopter, I guess, like the token black guy, but Edgerton warns her of a storm and jokes about being shacked up with a bunch of Norwegians. I don't know how long this scene goes for, but I would have cut the whole thing. Everything it establishes is either already established or it will be. All it really gives us is that Edgerton is creepy, MEW is creeped out, and we haven't even got to the Thinga-me-bobs yet!

There is a difference between slow-paced and boring. I've heard someone else say this before, and it's true. Another thing I find boring: predictability.

Some call it the Jack-In-The-Box trick, also known as The Jump Scare and it's inferior off-shoot The Cheap Shot. It goes like this: stuff is happening, then stuff stops happening, the music dies down, absolutely nothing is happening, but it feels like that maybe--BOO! Gotcha! Hahahahaha!

But seriously, the token black guy--OK, I'll call him Triple A--is looking at the ice-block, intensely, and someone behind him actually says "Boo!", and then laughs. And Triple A says "get the hell outta here fool!" and the guy walks away. Oh and then the Thinga-me-bobs jumps out of the ice-block.

And I'm like "pfffffffff".

I'm not against jump-scares, or even cheap-shots. It's all about how they're dealt with. A Jack-in-the-box will always work the same way, and when you consistently see the action coming to a complete halt, you always know what to expect: something's going to pop out, or a sudden noise hit the speakers, whether it's a scare or a false scare. It's a formula, and it's also a cliché. But they can still be employed with tact, since the whole idea of a scare is that the audience is not supposed to predict them.

For the best jump-scares, I will cite The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin. The mother is on the phone, bearing some horrible news, the doctors can't explain what's happening with her daughter, and she seems to feel distressed over the sudden changes in her daughter's behaviour. She hangs up the phone, then looks up the stair-case with a sudden fright...PUDDUMPUDDUMPUDDUMP! the daughter comes spider-walking down the stairs! That scene makes my heart skip a beat, every time. There are plenty of jumpy moments in this film, but it's also just hardcore horror in every respect.

Cheap-shots are a harder kind to pin down. I would cite Jaws, directed by Stephen Spielberg. Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Brody (Rob Scheider) drive their boat to another boat which is a sight for a recent shark-attack. Hooper decides to investigate, and scuba-dives underneath, against Brody's advice. Hooper finds a large hole, which looks like it's been bitten out. He feels around the hole's edge, and picks out a tooth. It looks like a shark tooth--BAM!

A severed head floats out of the hole. He drops the tooth and comes to the surface gasping for air.

Now that's what I call a cheap-shot!

The Sorcerer and the White Snake

2011-10-04T01:24:00.000-07:00

The official Chinatown in Brisbane is in a suburb adjacent to the city called Fortitude Valley. There you'll find a line of restaurants and supermarkets. But the the unofficial Chinatown, where all the Chinese actually are, is in an out-of-the-way suburb called Sunnybank.

Sunnybank is so Chinese their restaurants display menus without English translations.
I'm even intimidated to buy a cup of coffee there, lest I don't know the proper way to ask for one. Their cinema however, located within the Sunnybank Plaza, owned by the Hoyts franchise, is a unique place whereby alongside exhibition of the regular mainstream selection, they also exhibit the occasional Chinese release that no other cinema could find an audience for. This is where I went to see the latest Jet Li fantasy epic 白蛇傳說之法海 (else known as the sorcerer and the white snake).

My personal impression of this film: it was all a bit silly for my liking. The story, while based in a fantasy make-it-up-as-you-go-along setting drawing from traditional Chinese mythology, at its core had some powerful moments. It contained the four elements of a proper epic: romance, melodrama, magic and mystery. The acting was top-notch, quality performances all around from the leading roles to the minute bit-parts. The special effects? They left much to be desired. But here's the problem: this movie was heavily reliant on the special effects. I didn't see it in 3D like I was supposed to, but I'm sure it wouldn't have helped. Quality melodrama and uncanny valley CGI do not mix well in my stomach, and my regurgitation makes an apt meta-metaphor for this pile of pretty colours passing itself off pitifully as a plausible light-show. But that's just my personal impression.

I wouldn't watch this a second time, I wouldn't buy it on blu-ray, but I don't regret the experience. The most interesting part about seeing this movie was seeing it with a Chinese audience, who were all listening to the words rather than reading the subtitles.

There was a scene of light comic relief, where Jet Li--who plays the head arbiter of a monk temple bent on exercising demons from the human realm--hitches a ride in a boat with his protégé to go take care of some demons or something. The boat is driven by a poor medicine man who aspires to run his own pharmacy, and the conversation about aspiration carries over to the protégé who says he aspires to one day become the head arbiter of his temple. Jet Li gets serious and asks something like "and where does that leave me? You want me dead, is that it?" I was half-way across rolling my eyes when I was caught by surprise from the big laughs coming from the audience behind me. I mean proper laughter. I don't know if there was something lost in translation, or if I'd missed some sort of cultural context, but something about Jet Li was apparently hysterical, and so I de-rolled my eyes back to their starting positions. And this happened a few times.

I get easily annoyed whenever I hear someone say they won't watch a film with subtitles. Their typical excuse is they don't feel they should need to use their head as much in reading and watching at the same time. A flimsy excuse to miss out on 50%+ of the greatest films you'll ever see! But now I have to wonder about subtitles: do they properly capture the essence and context of what the characters are saying? Could all of that even be translated into English? Take the above scene, for example. I know the Chinese are deeply rooted in a sense of hierarchy, that there is always a superior and an inferior. Jet Li's underling aspires to one day reach the top, but Jet Li corners him by taking it as an insult, considered to be the ultimate faux pas, pitting the poor guy in a sticky situation indeed. The best way to subtitle this, I suppose, is to translate what's not being said, like: "You wan't me dead, is that it? [Awkward!]"

Although I found the film wholly unsatisfying, I'm glad I saw it in the end. Seeing a movie is much better when you see it with the audience who it was meant for, and I felt like I was involved in something rare. Like a secret.

A couple things.

2011-09-26T00:15:00.000-07:00

Scott Pilgrim vol's 1-6 by Brian Lee O'Malley

After reading Watchmen many years ago, I became disillusioned with comic books. I didn't think anything else could achieve the power and intensity that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons achieved in that magnum opus. Every comic I attempted became cluttered, confusing and by the end utterly inane. Superheroes don't mean anything to me any more, I've moved beyond the hero and villain archetypes and craved more dimensional characters, complex narratives and most of all--resonance.

I wish I hadn't watched the film before discovering the Scott Pilgrim books because now I'll have to watch it again, with the realisation of its hollowness and failure. I mean, it all seems so incomplete.

The past few posts were little thought-pieces on the books I've been reading, but then I came up to Scott Pilgrim and decided to hold off posting until I've compiled all the things I needed for a lengthy, in-depth review of the film. Firstly, I'll say the books were brilliant, and contained everything I wanted in reading a comic. I fear that instead of restoring my faith in the comic format it has repelled me even more from the medium, unless anyone can recommend me any other good ones to read.

Secondly, I'll say now that I'm not sure if I'm ready to take on the task of the Scott Pilgrim vs The World film post. To give an idea, here is the outline of what I have planned:

Introduction

Why the film is a failure: Marketing, as an adaptation, and as a film.

Why I love the film still: A summary of art and pop culture of its time, it's technical achievements, and etc.

A history of art in film, leading up to SPvTW:
(each film mentioned will belong in its own post with a link to it, that I will post beforehand, and an explanation of how they apply to SPvTW).
-Modern Art--Expressionism: Cabinet of Caligari
-Modern Art--Surrealism: Un Chien Andalou
-Contemporary Art--Post-modernism: Contempt
-Contemporary Art--Pop Art/Comic Books: Hulk and Sin City
-Video Games: Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat and Doom

A study of the film's interior logic, regarding absurdist humour, comic-book aesthetics, video-game logic and character point of view.

Character analyses: Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers and Gideon Graves.

And then down in the comments section I'll do a scene-by-scene analysis, including commentary on the shots, technical points, references, comparisons to the books and whatever else pops into my head. So, you know, I'm thinking big, and maybe biting off more than I can chew with this one. Anyway...

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I decided to read this one because I found out about its film adaptation, and thought "just for fun" I would compare the two. Oh boy...

The book is brilliant, amazing, as expected of anything by Vonnegut. It is a great pre-curser to Timequake, pretty much in the same liberal, anti-establishment style but not quite as much of a messy mindfuck on the structural front. I can't resist an excerpt, although I warn that it is a bit of a spoiler. From the start I was wondering what was with all the digressions and the multiple strands of character threads interweaving in and out of the plot. After a while I became desensitised to it and accepted whatever came. Then Vonnegut, about two thirds into the book, explains exactly what he was doing all along, suddenly and brilliantly illuminating everything written before it:

►I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make the poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.
As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.
Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.
And so on.
Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

Then I watched the film, which was made in 1999. I felt like I was watching a bunch of children trying to make their parents and peers laugh, but trying too hard, and harder and harder. It was an awkward mess, and as far as an adaptation goes, it just about sucked out everything that was good about the story. All that was left out, left in, invented and re-invented of the story, none of it mattered, because it was just a bad film, which I felt so sorry to see. But considering the comparisons, in its own way the film ended up falling opposite of everything Vonnegut intended to express. The film has no value, skip it.

Immediately after I watched Slaughterhouse Five, made in 1972, also based off a great Vonnegut novel, perhaps considered his best. Like Breakfast of Champions, the film doesn't hold a candle to the book, understandably, it couldn't possibly achieve the wonderful little literary devices that made the book so great. But it was a great film, beautiful, subtle, complex, emotional, innovative, intelligent and entertaining. It should be seen, whether you've read the book or not.

CURRENTLY:

I am doing two things at once. I'm playing My Japanese Coach on the DS, even though I'm only semi-dedicated and more concerned about finishing it, I'm learning a fair bit. I'm even learning a bit of Kanji! Understanding how the vowels and adjectives work are a pain, I kind of skimmed over them but at least know it's all there if I ever feel more dedicated.

Whenever I'm taking a break from learning Japanese, I'm reading through King Lear by William Shakespear. I got through the first act, tried to summarise it in my head, then re-read over a few parts, then realised I'll have to start again. Also, I don't know how he wrote his plays to be so long...

I don't know if I'll finish King Lear, but I have a whole line of other books on my reading list, and even more on my to-buy list. Authors include H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Jules Verne, John Wyndham and Yevgeny Zamyatin. The classics.

2 MOVIES

2011-09-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

I saw these two great movies in one day which I think is significant enough to commemorate with a blog post.

13 ASSASSINS directed by Takashi Miike, screenplay by Daisuke Tengan (who also did Audition)

I had to go all the way out to Dendy Portside to see this one, it was the only cinema screening it. It was in E-Cinema, which is a type of digital projection at about DVD quality. The curtains were separated for Wide-Screen but the movie was in Cinemascope, letterboxed. Have you ever watched a movie letterboxed at a cinema? The subtitles were over the black bar at the bottom, I guess so it doesn't interfere with the image. The sound was in stereo, I think, I couldn't here any sound directly behind me or beside me, just mainly from the front. Miike films aren't really outstanding for their sound-design though, which makes them so much more fun, in a way.

The movie, none the less, hooked me in. Being roughly 2 hours 20 minutes, the first hour-and-a-half or so was a huge complicated mess of information in typical Miike fashion. If you don't concentrate, you'll easily lose track of who's who and what's happening. In most cases a Miike film is designed to be watched multiple times, so I was used to it. I gathered the basic plot was that there was this evil aristocratic overlord who was killing a bunch of people because he felt like it, this is considering that the film is based in the Edo period, a time of peace after many era's of warfare. A badass samurai called Shinzaemon is summoned to take care of the business. Shinzaemon does what he can to gather as many top-class samurai and ronin as he can muster, which is difficult in a time of peace, when a Samurai's services are hardly needed, which is why he only ends up with a rag-tag group of 12. The 13th assassin is a mystery, barely explained in the film, I think he's some kind of Shinto myth or something, but he was really cool, and the most distinct and recognisable character in the entire film.

The last hour or so is a total bloodbath. The bad guy is lured into a seemingly innocent town, but it's really a trap set up by the 13 assassins. The problem is, the overlord has an entourage of 200+ men and this is where things get completely absurd/awesome. This is probably the most impressive Miike film yet, in his signature over-the-top style the brutality just keeps going and going and going. There's one great shot where a river of blood gushes over the roof of a building, and I still don't know what that's all about!

This is one for the Blu-ray collection.

SUBMARINE written/directed by Richard Ayaode

The guy who plays Moss in The IT Crowd has made a movie! What's so special about an actor who plays a computer nerd making a movie? Because Richard Ayaode is also a huge film nerd. This is evident in his earlier television creation Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a show about bad story-telling. I often talk about jazz musicians who knowingly break the rules they have mastered, but there is another side of the spectrum, is when you unknowingly break the rules you were never aware of. If you watch Tommy Wiseau's The Room or James Nguyen's Birdemic Shock and Terror, there is a strange charm in films that explore the completely wrong way of story-telling. What makes Garth Marenghi's Darkplace such a mindfuck is that Richard Ayaode and Matthew Holness are knowingly breaking rules in a way as if they're unaware of them.

"Rules" are hard to define in cinema, as there aren't really any rules, just guidelines to make sure the audience doesn't become confused, bored, frustrated or unintentionally laughing at a serious dramatic scene. Then you have a "conventional" style of film making that uses and re-uses well established film techniques so that audiences don't have to think or feel too much for themselves. Convention keeps things sterile and can get boring in its own way. Submarine is an unconventional film.

I don't know if it's good or bad to say this, but I am reminded of Stephen Spielberg's early movies, like Duel or Jaws, that felt similar in style to Alfred Hitchcock's movies. Spielberg's stories needed suspense, so who better to borrow from? In the same way, Submarine felt stylistically similar to a Martin Scorcese movie. I can't really define in a few words what that means exactly, but if you watch a lot of Scorcese movies you'll see what I mean. Maybe Scorcese is the master of unconvention?

I loved Submarine, and I must watch it again some time. Ayaode has managed to construct a story out of back-to-back moments that should be nothing but awkward and excruciating, but has made them beautiful and engaging. He employs humour and drama in perfect fluidity. It may be obnoxious for me to say, but the most unconventional thing about this film is how much I invested in the characters emotionally. The most heart-breaking moment is when Oliver Tate, the protagonist, has his heart broken. Etcetera.

I highly recommend this film, I recommend it for all.

BOOK: TIMEQUAKE by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

2011-09-07T01:15:00.000-07:00

A word of advice to any one starting out in creative writing: do not attempt to be anything like Kurt Vonnegut! You will only end up hurting yourself.

I am not quoting anyone in saying that, it comes entirely from me, and if anything, it's a memo to myself. Vonnegut is a rule-breaker. He is a writing equivalent to a jazz musician, who has devoted themselves to mastering the rules of music, that it becomes more interesting to hear them being being broken. Vonnegut has managed to twist and turn written language until it has become something entirely and uniquely his own. Any attempt at imitating his work without understanding the basic rules of English will result in superficially copying language anomalies and absorbing them as mistakes.

I wouldn't recommend it even for novice writers. Vonnegut was and always will be better than anyone in this contemporary age.

I feel I jumped into Timequake a little too early as, I later learned, it was his last novel, published ten years before he died in 2007. Then again it is probably the best place to start, as it is all about Kurt Vonnegut and his life, his books, life (in general) and books (in general). Getting Timequake out of the way first will definitely give you a better understanding of all his other written works when you explore them later on. It's just that this book has such a complex narrative, layered and meta, weaving in and out of fiction, non-fiction, and philosophical asides, it may be a little difficult to get into. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little bit confusing when I try and summarise the plot here.

Written when he was 73, it often felt like I was reading the ramblings of a senile old genius. The story is framed around a fictitious clambake on a beach at the writer's retreat Xanadu, in summer of 2001, six months after the timequake's rerun ended. The timequake itself was a glitch in the space-time continuum, that happened on February 13th 2001, that caused the Universe to go back in time nearly ten years to February 17h, 1991. Everything in the Universe had to run its exact course as it did before, even with the awareness that it's already been done, there was no free will during those second ten years.

At the clambake were a host of characters, real and fictitious, who were or were resembling Vonnegut's close friends and family, as well as himself. The clambake was a celebration for Kilgore Trout, a fictitious science-fiction writer who was also the alter-ego for Vonnegut, whom he created for his undying habit of constantly inventing short stories. The celebration wasn't for Kilgore Trout's writings, however, but for his intervention into the other character's lives by snapping them out of Post-Timequake Apathy (PTA).

PTA is when free will kicks in again after the timequake is over, but the person doesn't realise it and still acts as if their on automatic-pilot, which results in them falling down or being immobilised like a statue. The story of Kilgore Trout's intervention happens in Timequake One, the first version of this book, which Vonnegut decided to cut out the good parts and scrap the rest. He did all this before, of course, before the timequake hit and now he has to do it again.

In Timequake One, Kilgore Trout wrote many short stories, and Vonnegut relays a summary of a few of them, while providing anecdotes of his own. He relates friends and family he knew in his own life to the characters in the story, and it all builds up to a complex and climactic sequence of events that happened when the timequake ended, and free will kicked in again.

In trying to summarise this story, I realise how much I am in love with this book. It is the finest example of a literary novel I have ever read, and will hope to read again and again as I grow older. It contains everything about the world, life and death. I hope it is read by everybody, at some point in all of their precious lives.

UP NEXT: Scott Pilgrim vol's 1-6

I probably won't do a post on these books, as I'm planning to do a post on the movie. I'm just reading these now as I probably should if I'm going to talk in-depth about the movie at some point. So far as I've read, the books and the movie are quite radically different even if they are the same story.

I will also take a bit of a break from reading and focus on a bit of writing, and other stuff I want to work on.

BOOK: EMBASSYTOWN by China Miélville

2011-09-03T02:59:00.000-07:00

Check out this cool picture I found on Google:
Here is an excerpt of the very first paragraph:

THE CHILDREN of the embassy all saw the boat land. Their teachers and shiftparents had had them painting it for days. One wall of the room had been given over to their ideas. It's been centuries since any voidcraft vented fire, as they imagined this one doing, but it's a tradition to represent them with such trails. When I was young, I painted ships the same way.

From reading this you can pretty much gather what you're in for. Unfamiliar words like "shiftparents" and "voidcraft" are not defined, there is no sense of location, time or any of the other five W's. Throughout the prologue, you are only given a sense of mood, but nothing really tangible. Miélville perhaps supposes that the reader will be revisiting the prologue later, when it makes more sense.

After the prologue, there is a preface. Chapter 1 doesn't happen for a while, but here is where you are given background information on the narrator, the world she is from and the reason she is going back. Miélville drops in an outsider character, Scile, the narrator's husband, as a neat way to give a little bit of exposition. Scile is a language academic, and he wants to study the natives of Embassytown and their culture. During his time in the book, he explains everything that the Embassytowners already know, but have never articulated themselves.

What I like about the preface, or the "proem" as it's described in the book, is that Miélville gives you an opportunity to make a choice. If this is your kind of thing, then read on, but if not, then you can put the book down and never pick it up again. You may have a little bug eating away at the back of your brain, a bug called regret, gnawing away at the fact you might have put down the greatest story you'll ever read in your life, but if it's not your thing it's not your thing. That's OK. If you read on, however, then you have just signed The Contract. In my situation my housemate who lent me the book told me I had to read it anyway, not that I wouldn't have if I had the choice.

The sole condition of The Contract is that you are trapped in a binding agreement that you can not put this book down until you have reached the last page. One paragraph after another, the story keeps escalating, and building layers, like a snowball rolling uphill. This book may easily be found in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section, but it's real genre is Thriller, but also just happens to be situated on a cool alien planet at the edge of the known Universe, with properly alien aliens.

I still have trouble imagining what the "Hosts" look like, at one point they are described as something like "insect-horse-crab-coral chimeric beasts", but I imagine if this was made as some kind of film (which would have impossibly-high expectations), there would be a creature-shop department employed by people straight out of a lunatic asylum, or whatever politically correct term they call it now days.

There is a kind of technology in Embassytown called "biorigging"--this basically means every technology is actually a live organism. Imagine a large fleshy gun with a mouth and teeth, and when you pull the trigger its mouth opens and howls a flaming projectile. Even the houses are alive, the wallpaper is actually its skin, and through some orifice, like a fireplace or something, is where you have to feed it. I can't help but think that Miélville is probably a huge GWAR fan or something.

I won't go too specific into the strange world of Embassytown and its story, it probably takes about as long to explain as reading the story itself. I'd like to think the story is very much about language and symbolism, about perception and reality, and probably related to Lacanian psychology. If you're not a thinker, you don't have to think that it's really about anything, as the story itself is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. At least that's what it did to me.

In summary, a great read, highly recommended, I should check out more of Miélville's stuff.

Up next: TIMEQUAKE by Kurt Vonnegut.

The following quote is by Phillip K. Dick, when he took a questionerre for Science Fiction writers back in 1969. It is not about Timequake (which was written in 1996), it's about Vonnegut's first book Player Piano, but it may as well be about any of his books:

Question 11: What do you consider the greatest weakness of science fiction today?

Its inability to explore the subtle, intricate relationships that exist between the sexes. Men, in their relationship with women, get themselves into the most goddamn difficult circumstances, and SF ignores--or is unable to deal with--this fundamental aspect of adult life. Therefore SF remains preadult, and therefore appeals--more or less--to preadults. If SF explored the man-woman aspect of life it would not lose its readers as those readers reach maturity. The novel Player Piano is an exception to this, and I suggest that every SF fan and especially every would-be writer study again and again the details of this superb novel, which deal specifically with the relationship of the protagonist and his wife.

(I should note that Embassytown has a fair bit of exploration of the relationship between sexes, although it's such a different planet and different culture, it keeps the characters at their core fundamentally human)

BOOK: THE PROFESSOR by Charlotte Brontë

2011-08-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

William Crimsworth has become disillusioned with his homeland, namely England, and chances upon the opportunity to go abroad. He is proficient in the French and German languages, and so he settles in Brussels, Belgium, to become and English teacher for boys. His reputation precedes him, and soon he is a teacher for the more highly esteemed girl's school. His reputation extends further, and a young sewing teacher named Frances Henri sits in as a pupil in his class. Her well-spoken English catches the admiration of Crimsworth, and he pays attention to her, but their acquaintance is soon put to a halt under the jealous eye of the school's directress, Mlle Reuter. Etc etc etc.

The story goes on, but first I'd like to pay attention to why I have read this book in the first place. It stems from my personal fascination with the Brontë sisters, mainly Emily, but I have warmed to Ann also. From what I read in their biographies, Charlotte seems to be my least favourite.

That isn't to say Charlotte is not important, and to understand Emily or Ann, you must understand her as well. After reading Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, I thought to read Jane Eyre (I have so far seen two different film adaptations), but came by The Professor in Ann's biography as the primary Charlotte book, the one that she had trouble getting published, and was not until two years after her death. It was after Wuthering Heights/Agnes Grey were published together, that Charlotte went a much darker route and composed her most popular tale, Jane Eyre, arguably the most popular of all the Brontë sister's books combined.

It is hence speculated that Charlotte took inspiration from her sister's more gothic directions, and so it was in my interest to witness that particular development myself, by first reading The Professor then later moving on to Jane Eyre. Then I want to read Ann's Tenant of Wildfell Hall and finally Wuthering Heights a second time.

My general summary of The Professor is that it is a terrible book but well written enough I ended up finishing it anyhow. It is clear that Charlotte Brontë was a talented writer, but was too absorbed in her own indulgence to engage the reader with a proper story. I quote from the first chapter:

My narrative is not exciting, and above all, not marvellous; but it may interest some individuals, who, having toiled in the same vocation as myself, will find in my experience frequent reflections of their own.

In other words, this could be the most thrilling read since The Complete History of Cement Roof Tiles.

While I say it was well written, which I only point out as a precursor to Jane Eyre, it is clear this book is written by Charlotte Brontë. The narrative is in the first person as told by William Crimsworth, but is obviously written from a feminine eye, admiring her school-teacher crush, fantasising about him as a dignified, honest and hard-working man. Particularly in the way she judges every character by their looks and their fashion. There are paragraphs giving elaborate detail describing facial constructions of every character, and their manners and movements and speech patterns. She particularly likes foreheads, as it is a judgement of intelligence. In Charlotte's perfect world, everyone will have giant bulbous foreheads that swell and throb like hot-air balloons. She has contempt for the fashionable and the beautiful, as they are the shallow kind who concern themselves in the superficial and superfluous, and their foreheads are usually of average size.

Charlotte is also clearly writing from her own experiences. She studied languages in Brussels, and there were letters discovered written by her to a certain Professor Hegel who worked there. Passionate letters, you know the kind, which there has not been discovered any replies. Charlotte has inserted herself into the story as Frances Henri, but takes the narrative further by having them get married.

That's not the end, however, as they both decide to run a school of their own, which turns out very successful and profitable. They come to a point where they can even select their students - only the brightest and richest - and their reputation and profit brings them to near-aristocratic status, all through honest hard work and skill. I should point out that Charlotte attempted to start a school herself along with her sisters, which turned out a dismal failure.

So they sell off the school which thrusts them into the upper-class, and they move back to England with a big house and a nice big garden. There is a pathway lined out by daisies, called Daisy Lane, and they raise their son, Victor, in comfort and joy, and are often visited by their good friend and neighbour Husden.

And it keeps going. Husden buys a dog for Victor, and they are inseparable. But the dog gets bitten by another dog with rabies and William has to shoot it dead. Victor, witnessing the event, becomes upset and William has to teach him about life and death and stuff. The story doesn't actually end until Frances literally pulls the pen out of his hand. Which is kind of genius if you think about it.

I suppose a another small issue I had was all the untranslated French dialogue, and how there is no hint whatsoever as to what any of it means. Charlotte must have assumed that anyone with an education enough to be literate - at the time - would know as much French as she did. I understood the general idea of the conversations, it's not entirely necessary to break out the French-English dictionary (I used Wiktionary for some of the words), but once again we have an example of her self-indulgence.

So there you have it. A terrible book, but well written, but go read Jane Eyre instead.

UP NEXT: EMBASSYTOWN by China Mielville.

First impression: It is very confusing at first. It's a kind of science-fiction where you are thrust into the world it is set, with all these new words and terminology you don't understand. I'm reading my housemate's copy and he says it gets easier as it goes along, but being in first-person narrative you're not expected to know what they're talking about at first, as it seems perfectly natural to them. My general take on getting past this is to absorb the mood of the story the first time, and when things are explained later on, read through it all again.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (3D)

2011-08-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

Feminism, in film theory, takes its humble origins from within the female perspective; but eventually unfolds into an entire revelation about how films are ultimately structured.

It begins by acknowledging that cinema is a male-dominated medium; that male producers, directors, writers etc. assume themselves as the primary spectator; leading feminists to observe the portrayal of females on screen being reduced to a spectacle; and the structure of film attributing specifically masculine traits. These traits are what remain as convention, and thus reduced to a common formula:

There are two bodies, the protagonist (P) and the antagonist (A). P is the central character(s) we follow, while A is the opposing character(s) who move the plot forward. Morals have no decision here, though it is conventional for P to be the hero(es) and A as the villain(s), these roles can be switched, or could even be the same character.

I've declared P and A, and now I must declare S - the supporting role(s). S can be a friend, lover or even an object attached to P's affections. Once established, S is already doomed, counting down their time until they are taken away or destroyed by A to further A's personal motive. Thus, A has invaded P's abode and dominated P through the taking of S, instigating the story. This can, and often will, happen more than once, as it provides reasonable motivation to drive P towards a singular resolution - to rise above and dominate A.

Dominance, logical reasoning and singular goals are associated as traits of masculinity. I will not explore the psychology here, as it irritates me to reference Freud as the only resource for psychological understanding, and things like "castration anxiety" are a bit hard to swallow without a long and detailed map of connection. We must acknowledge, however, the call for a more feminine alternative to film - domestic, emotional and episodic - and for females to be portrayed as subjects, not objects. So too must we acknowledge, as well, that we men continue existing; continue relishing our manhood; and celebrating our traits of masculinity!

And there is no better celebration than CONAN THE BARBARIAN (3D).

The film begins with a long-winded exposition, which I later discovered has no importance to the proceeding story, and felt my caveman mind hassled by too much information to process. Once all that was out of the way, the story kicks in with the title character (the well endowed P) being born amid bloody warfare, right in the middle of a battlefield! Blood splattering, guts spilling and bones breaking; a bold preface for the next two hours following.

We track his progress through childhood as he playfully slays three formidable intruders and learns, through his father (Ron Perlman - the first S), about the Secret of Steel. Progress is cut short when Khalar & co. (A and all his salivary excretions) intrude upon Conan's abode; destroys Ron Perlman and retrieves a hidden piece of McGuffin that will make him a god or whatever, instigating Conan's inevitable singular purpose to rise above and dominate him; via barbaric brute force!

Conan grows into Jason Momoa; tall, dark, handsome and ripped. Alongside his bandit friends, he frees slaves from oppressors; then single-handedly overturns a prison just to extract directions from the warden (one of Khalar's ex-minions), pointing the way toward his antagonist. Khalar & co., meanwhile, have been occupied by searching far and wide for the last vital ingredient to the McGuffin; the pure blood of the female descendent of a long line of necromancers - Tamara (the well endowed second S) - who will later become Conan's love interest, thanks to a conveniently placed sex scene.

At first, Conan uses Tamara to lure Khalar into a fight, but fails to rise above and dominate; which is expected as it's only an hour into the movie. Conan escapes with Tamara, followed by some bone-breaking violence, followed by said sex scene, followed by Khalar's minions collecting Tamara for completion of his McGuffin and instigating further, yet more immediate, motivation for Conan's singular purpose, squaring towards the final showdown.

There is a side-plot with a thief guy I've brushed over, but he scarcely fits into the story here, and is more likely a mainstay for the sequels. There is also Khalar's daughter, also inconsequential, and probably dies anyway. I fell asleep during the falling CGI rocks, so I don't really know.

I had this curious dream where a girl I had a major crush on rejected me for a more muscular man, not unlike Jason Momoa. So I resolved to win her back by lifting weights and pumping iron. Every time I lifted a weight, my arms and chest would tighten and bulge into toned, muscular beauty; but when I let go my body would resort to flabbiness, even more so than I had before. So I kept lifting weights growing bigger and bigger, but letting go getting fatter and fatter. I became grossly obese when I remember feeling anxious, I will never win my dream girl at this rate; then I woke to the credits rolling. I figured Conan got his dominance over Khalar, through blood, guts and bones, or whatever.

I mean, we can't break conventional structure, can we? That would mean there would be no complacency; and if there were no complacency, well, I don't even know what that would mean! We have to have complacency, don't we?

Second top 10

2011-08-16T01:29:00.000-07:00

A couple posts down there is a top 10 list of favourite films, the idea was to design alternative posters for each one (I'm working on them I swear), well, I've done a second list of top 10 films that didn't make it on the first list:

DOLLS
PERFECT BLUE
RUSSIAN ARK
SORCERER
SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK
THE FOUNTAIN
THE SEVENTH CONTINENT
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
TRON LEGACY
WAKING LIFE

Plus a third and fourth list for good measure:

Bladerunner (workprint version), Contempt, Drop Dead Fred, Four Lions, Funny Games, Glengarry Glen Ross, Inglourious Basterds, The Birds, Vampire's Kiss, Whisper of the Heart.

A Serious Man, Caché, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Last Days, Mind Games, The Box, The Matrix Revolutions, The Room, The Trial, 12 Angry Men.

They don't challenge me enough at my work. Not that I want them to.

A quote from Moby Dick

2011-08-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

(image marginally related)
I've been reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville lately and I came across this wonderful paragraph which I must share here. I thought about providing context, then twice thought against it as it is most effective on its own, granted I may leave the reader in the dark, as its context is no less curious than the prose itself.

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all around; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

To think the whole book is like this.

Top 10

2011-08-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

While I'm not usually a fan of top ten lists, I thought I'd compile one of my own anyway. This is a list of my favourite movies, which I've given some thought, and think it should be as flawed and personalised as the compiler themselves. The main flaw is that not all my favourites will end up on this list - there is no P.T. Anderson, Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Charlie Kaufman, Gaspar Noe or Richard Linklater here, nor can I bring myself to include more than one movie from the same film maker, otherwise I would've included Funny Games.

A favourite movie greatly differs from a great movie. Although the two can cross over, a favourite movie is usually flawed, niche, specialised, to your own senses. I think this is why a "top ten favourites" can not be disagreeable, because it's about me. My only problem here is to figure out what order to put them in. I'll go the Roger Ebert route and put them alphabetically:

ALPHAVILLE
DAS SCHLOSS
DEAD OR ALIVE
END OF EVANGELION
FALSTAFF - CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
HERZ AUS GLAS
IL BUONO IL BRUTTO IL CATTIVO
PRIMER
THE NEW WORLD (extended edition)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

The main reason for doing this is that I want to get off my lazy butt one day and design alternative movie posters for all of these, kind of like what the Mondo Collection did, only nowhere near as good, and they'll just be for myself. If I get to complete all ten of these, then I'll do another ten - The Top Ten List Of Movies I Feel Gutted For Not Including In The First Top Ten List Of Favourite Movies. Synecdoche New York will be at the top.

CAGE-THON -- FRIDAY NIGHT

2011-08-04T06:21:00.001-07:00

Pay no attention to the DVD's behind, even though they are the ones actually in focus for some reason.

I've had a tiresome week this week, and it's about time I wind down with some raw Nicholas Cage movies - the cream of his crop, so to speak.

First we begin with Vampire's Kiss, a classic vampiric tale about madness and teeth(?). Followed with The Wicker Man, a cult classic remake of a cult classic about a classic cult.

Then we step up to the blu-ray quality. In full high-def immersion, we take on Michael Bay's brilliant parody of the emptiness of Hollywood action blockbuster - The Rock, renowned for being his first foray into the hall of fame that is The Criterion Collection. Finally we round off the night with the ultimate Cage vehicle, the one and only Con-Air. Need I say more? Need I?

I haven't actually watched these movies yet, except Con-Air, back in the 90's, but I can't remember it too well. Should be a night of awe and/or intrigue. In any case, bring your own lube.

HANNA a Joe Wright film

2011-07-30T02:55:00.000-07:00

I just came from seeing Hanna, the current better alternative to Captain America - although it came out a couple months ago in USA, when it was a better alternative to Thor - but that's all I can really say about it. The best it can achieve right now is that it's the most "underrated" movie this time of year, among a list of forgettable and mind-numbing comic book flicks.

My short definition of Hanna would be "revisionist popcorn action-thriller". I concede it was well made, at times awe-struck by its masterful technical precision. I loved its look, the gritty reality of the photography, and impressed by the lack of noticeable CGI (for I picked a couple objects with indifferent lighting, but I won't spoil the reader with untrained eyes for such things). And I can not complain for a lack of plot, which moved briskly yet casually, just the way I like it.

To summarise, this is a story about a girl raised in the snowy forests of somewhere in Europe by her father, trained to be a perfect killer and soldier. When she is ready, she flips a switch to set off a beacon for some CIA (or something) agent to find her and hunt her down. The movie kicks off from there and she travels around Europe on a great chase, discovering the truth about herself and the joys of finding independence and freedoms she was deprived of in her past.

My concern is that I did not gain anything out of it by the end, either intellectually or emotionally. Should it be a complement to say you can switch your brain off during this movie, but not required to go all the way off, but more like "standby" mode? Perhaps I have entered the dark side of film viewing, expecting a film to be about something, and if not, then be a riotous piece of camp. This was my same problem with watching The Dark Knight. Perhaps there is something if you look for it, but in my mind, I've had much more fulfilling experiences with other films. Great films.

It makes me think of another film from a while ago, Sucker Punch a Zack Snyder film. What both films have in common, besides sexy action-babe female protagonists, is the point of being cool for no sake other than being cool. The difference is that Sucker Punch fails, because it tries way too hard to impress with established "cool things", and Hanna succeeds, because Joe Wright seems to know what it means to be cool: to be oblivious of the fact that he is being cool. He has a cool story, cool characters, a cool soundtrack (by the Chemical Brothers), and instead of saying "OK let's make the coolest movie ever!" Joe Wright would settle on "whatever bro, yeah". The movie isn't about being cool, and that's what's cool about it.

But for me, cool is not enough. If it is for you, then knock yourself out, you'll love it.

Now I want to talk about style, something which stuck out for me in this movie. There are times when directors will decide to go in an unconventional direction. This is great when it serves the story, to surprise the audience, to move, to express. But then, as I noticed in Hanna, it seems to draw attention to itself. The first thing I noticed in the opening credits is when it felt the duty to mention this is "a Joe Wright film". This is a sign of a pretentious director, whether or not they are good, but it's not enough to simply give themselves directing credit. They have to establish this is their film, told in their voice, the auteur. When Hanna is running down a large tunnel, escaping from this strange facility, lost, all new to her experience, the camera spinning around and the editing cutting quickly up close and out wide, in time to the music, and spinning and spinning, seems to draw too much attention to itself, but pulls me out of the story. It does nothing to truly serve the story. Yes, she's confused, lost, panicking even, I can tell by Soairse Ronan's performance. Her performance is good enough, there is no need for the director to step in and make up for a short-coming that wasn't there. Unless there is really a point, such tomfoolery becomes superfluous.

Watch a film by Martin Scorcese, for instance, and you'll see what I mean. Scorcese makes many unconventional film-making choices, but they all serve a purpose to the story, or the point of. He really does make the best films.

So what did I really want out of Hanna? How could it have improved? I think in the end, all I really want to do is go watch a different movie, and let this one fall in the pile of obscurity where it belongs. It's an underrated, forgettable...thing. I don't think I'll be getting it on blu-ray, but I highly recommend the soundtrack, at least.

New ideas!

2011-06-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

I'm all for new ideas. I was thinking, as inspired by my last post, instead of posting actual articles, I'll just post about what I've written up as drafts, or ideas I had for new articles, and then let the reader speculate the discussion in their own minds. It probably sounds like a lazy concept but I'll give it a try, and it may even be all the better as the articles would seem to have more of an air of myth and greatness, the less they are actually seen.

Firstly, I wrote up a quick draft for an article about James Nguyen's infamous runaway hit, Birdemic Shock and Terror. The article was to defend the movie as a great movie, a genuinely great movie with a genuine defence that relies on grounded and consistently reliable film theory - namely structuralism and semiotics. The main reference was to the Whitney character's ringtone on her mobile phone, which I remember has two occurrences in the film. If you know the story behind the ringtone, and about the structuralist theories of "the signifier" and "the signified", you'd understand how mind-blowing the whole movie is, as it's full if these little instances.

Secondly, I wrote up a lengthy draft (two drafts in fact) on the subject of the video game Mario Kart wii, which I have been playing a lot recently. I'm not entirely satisfied with the article, as most of it reads more like an instruction manual, or a FAQ, where I spend too many syllables giving exposition. Such that cannot be easily dismissed as it all plays vitally in the follow-up anecdotes, and felt that's where all the real juice was contained. The anecdotes were all a big lead up to a grand moral, and the article was really less about the video game itself and more about life, and such. By the end, the whole thing becomes a cathartic revelation, and all who read would find total enlightenment, a new outlook on life and new-found determination. It was truly a brilliant article, but a shame about the exposition parts. I also found the anecdotes would little apply after mere days as the game keeps bringing newer experiences after every play, and my growth in skill constantly increases. I'd look back and feel ashamed that I would ever consider displaying crude, unrefined technique I have long trampled out. I don't know. Maybe I'll try a third draft.

I liked the part in one of the anecdotes where I get really frustrated at the game and decide to listen to the CD, "KILL" by Cannibal Corpse, after which I lightly mention within parentheses "because, you know, the time to kill is now". Such beauty in prose - wasted.

Thirdly, something I haven't drafted yet, is an essay I call "Cinema as Invocation". I think modern mainstream cinema is lacking in the primal purpose of art - that is to invoke. I've been feeling lately that I want to make a film, even one with no budget, just some kind of story. I want to know if I'd have it in me, in my bones, to make something great - or at least interesting. I'm pretty sure I don't lack the resources, but I do seem to lack people around me, to motivate and give support. But that aside, I wanted to write this essay on how a film should be composed. Perhaps it's more like a manifesto. The original idea is that cinema is comparable to music, but I couldn't get my brain around how cinema could be like music if music can itself be included in cinema. Michael Haneke, who also advocates cinema's relation to music, gets around this by not scoring his films at all (except ironically in Funny Games). I'm not so much against score, but I'm against score that lacks invocation, or tries too hard and only becomes distracting.

I'm currently reading the poetry of Emily Brontë, who is probably my favourite Brontë, as I like the way she talks about the world she lives in, the moors, the woods, the skies, and all that. It struck me how it's in the specific way she uses language to visually invoke her world in conjunction to her feelings - and that the same actually applies to cinema. In this way, cinema is more akin to poetry. Firstly, the images of film could be compared to musical notes and chords, but when images move combined with sound and music, it's more like lyrics, where you can simultaneously read on paper and read out loud - visual and aural - and let the language dictate the rhythm and melody, all for the purpose of invocation. A film should be like a melody made up of invocations, but it shouldn't fluctuate too rapidly, or too dire. Once the melody is invented, then the story writes itself.

That's what I think anyway. I should explain that invocation could be anything, ranging from nostalgia to excitement to horror. The only thing I think should not be invoked is "you are watching a movie", or my personal peeve "cool, huh!?". This might contradict my defence for Birdemic Shock and Terror, above, as that movie fails to invoke anything but incompetence, but at least that's what it wasn't intending.

All these things left unwritten, and who's going to say anything of value was lost?

Dead

2011-05-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes this blog has a way of getting shot dead. I often forget why I have this blog in the first place. I know my first post is some kind of a manifesto, plus another post which is more Alice-related, but ideas have a way of evolving and I'm sure this blog has turned into some other kind of monster by now.

In my previous post I blindly praised Rango without getting into the meaty specifics and justification of its genius. This is due partly because I'm going through personal motivational issues and also partly because I can't find my notes I wrote in a frenzy at the time of planning that post, and to top that the notes are incomplete (I figured I would just improvise the unwritten parts). I also have notes lying around for a review of Sucker Punch and the general descent of Zack Snyder.

For anyone interested, the second part of the Rango review involved discussions on 4th-wall, Greek chorus, homage, cameo appearances, narrative structure, humour, symbolism and metaphor. And that was just for the story, character designs also play a strong part, and in the case of this movie, they related heavily with homage and cameos. The 'homage' aspect was going to take up the bulk of the discussion, as I was going to do a comparison review with the movie Shiki-Jitsu ("Ritual") directed by Anno Hideaki. They are two very different movies, but they share a fundamental similarity on the significant choices of actors and especially who those actors are portraying.

I guess with a bit of research one could come to their own conclusion with what I was planning to go on about. I know my friend Peter was going to do a review, as he mentioned that it's the first non-Pixar 3D animated major motion-picture that he has really enjoyed, but I guess he's busy right now.

With that out of the way, I can plan my next step in the evolution of this blog. I want to try out some creative exercises. I often think it would be fun to challenge myself - just as an exercise - in making improvements in failed ideas and stories. I've been currently reading some fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, and although they were recorded in another time, probably more spoken than written, I could imagine handing one of those to a University-level creative-writing lecturer as an assignment and getting it back with red scribbles crossing out entire sentences, if not paragraphs. Brothers Grimm stories have become popular again recently, what with the new version of Sleeping Beauty coming out this year featuring Emily "Babydoll" Browning in the lead role. I get the impression that the original texts are more like starting points, ready to be revised and expanded upon, much like what Disney has been doing time and time again, only they can't seem to bare the morbidity and the occasionally absurd bloody violence.

I would also find it interesting as an exercise to try and adapt a story from unconventional sources. Things like abstract non-story video games (Tetris, for example); a piece of instrumental music, or a song/poem with vague lyrics; a photograph or a painting; a joke or anti-joke; a piece of food; an alarm clock, maybe. I'm just trailing off here, listing things in my immediate view, but it's about thinking laterally.

I've always wanted to be a part of a blogging community (a blogosphere?) who operate as a kind of online writing-workshop for stuff like this. I could search for one, but I'm not very fond of random people who post on the Internet, who mostly end up pissing me off. I'd rather do it with a group of friends who have similar interests and who I know can construct a logical argument. But this is hard to organise, I may as well just remain the ever-persistent one-man-band.

I think the real reason for having this blog at all is because I think about things too much, and after a while without any articulation, my head begins to hurt.

RANGO.

2011-03-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

Rango turned out to be a pretty good movie.

In this discussion I will have to address two previous posts I made.

The first post is where I made a premature speculation about this film predicting it's going to be terrible, based on my disappointed reaction after a somewhat high expectation due to two names I came across when I first discovered this movie's existence:

1. Gore Verbinski as director, who has always put extreme care and detailed thought in all of his stories.

2. Industrial Light & Magic as the studio, being the forerunners of CGI and special effects, it is exciting to hear of them creating their first completely animated feature.

To me this is a big deal. A big enough deal to say that this could be a contender to Pixar. Then I saw the trailer.

And the groaning began.

Immediately I lost faith. It was a little early to tell, but I thought Gore Verbinski may have pulled a Zack Snyder and jumped the shark in quality. I had two main gripes with the trailer that deflated my hopes:

1. Choppy/snappy non-sequiter type of humour with no context.

2. Another god damn anthropomorphic 'arena'-based animal movie.

While the latter remains true, and rightly so (I'll explain later), the former thankfully stays behind in the trailer, and all its parts have actual context within the movie itself. It's not my place to complain of marketing tactics, as I'm sure the department knows what they're doing, but I found it a shame they had to appeal to the Dreamworks/Blue Sky (etc) crowd.

The second post is where my expectations remained high, due to the Verbinski/ILM factor, I still had a duty to see this film for what it's worth, and I'm glad I did. My expectations were met and I am ashamed I ever doubted Verbinski in the first place.

From an adult perspective one might say that the story is a bit too advanced for children - the target audience - and some jokes and references will go way over their little heads. I must contradict this and say a child could easily enjoy the story on their own level. I remember when I was a child I couldn't remember a thing about the actual story of any movie, as long as there were colourful characters and exciting moments, which Rango is not without.

Here is the simple version, fun for all the family:

A nameless chameleon is thrust out into the Nevada desert and finds his way into a small town called Dirt, occupied by various desert animals and live on a currency of water. The town is currently in a water crisis and the townfolk are bullied by a group of cronies who work for the mayor, who are in turn terrorised by a large eagle. The chameleon adopts a new heroic personality, using his own acting and story-telling aspirations, and calls himself "Rango". Through sheer luck he defeats the predatory eagle and the town rejoices, sending him to the mayor who assigns him as the new sheriff. When the last of the bank's supply of water is stolen, Rango and friends set out on a new adventure to discover the mysteries and secret plots of this town, uncover the dastardly schemes of the mayor and eventually face off against his greatest nemesis - "Jake" The Snake.

It sounds typical enough, but it's a bit more complicated than that. To explain how, I'll have to get techinical, and, well, that's all for another post, another day. 'Till next time.

"My Fairy" by Lewis Carroll

2011-02-25T22:59:00.000-08:00

This poem was written when he was 12 or 13, but still remains my favourite of all his works.

My Fairy (1845)

I have a fairy by my side
Which says I must not sleep,
When once in pain I loudly cried
It said, 'You must not weep.'

If, full of mirth, I smile and grin,
It says, 'You must not laugh';
When once I wished to drink some gin
It said, 'You must not quaff.'

When once a meal I wished to taste
It said, 'You must not bite';
When to the wars I went in haste
It said, 'You must not fight.'

'What may I do?' at length I cried,
Tired of the painful task.
The fairy quietly replied,
And said, 'You must not ask.'

Moral

'You mustn't.'

New realisation for THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY

2011-02-01T01:38:00.000-08:00

I guess this is the value of reading books on a whim, even if you don't end up finishing them.

What I noticed is that the characters are introduced in the reverse order to the title, which had always bugged me ever since I laid eyes on the film. Although the plotting shouldn't be laid out any other way - Clint Eastwood's introduction incorporates both Tuco and Angel Eyes in the same setting, after which we have been introduced to both of these characters - I always wondered why the title couldn't have been the more appropriate "The Ugly, The Bad and The Good", despite its lack of verbal elegance.

What I recently discovered is that this is a device called "hysteron-proteron", commonly employed by Homer in his epic The Odyssey, where this technique was brought to my attention. It is considered rhetorical, and therefore played for effect.

This, however, was unintentional, as the original Italian title is ordered "The Good, The Ugly and The Bad", however the rhetoric remains, and sets us up for a homeric grandiose epic all the same.

My logical conclusion for The Social Network

2011-01-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

I watched The Social Network recently, despite its alleged inaccuracy to the real world and cultural references that will date this movie a few years from now, the film nonetheless was well crafted enough it will become a staple of cinematic history in years to come and its ideas immortalised. So, here are three main ideas/themes I extracted in my viewing:

1. The basis of networking (socially or technologically) is communication via signals (sound frequency or electronic charges). These signals are shrouded in noise - ie unavoidable entropy - and it is only a human mind that has the ability to filter out the noise and interpret the appropriate messages. This was emphasised beautifully by the score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, designed as a melody enshrouded by a noisy drone. Compare the score to the scenes in bars or clubs with a lot of distracting noise in the background, forcing the viewer to listen especially closely to the dialogue (I suppose could be interpreted as a metaphor for each character's level of clarity in thought at the time).

2. The Internet is never perceived as a faceless machine or computer monitor. It is always portrayed on screen as people interacting with a computer. This perhaps identifies the 'social network' aspect of the story's title, but also represents the idea of consequences and reaction. I would also like to note this film has some of the best computer hacking I've ever seen portrayed; it is not treated as some sort of wizardry, but as a logical science. The methods he described of extracting all those photos at the beginning were straight-forward, almost making it look easy, and without any h4x0r mumbo-jumbo like "re-routing the decryption protocols" or "what's behind door #3".

3. Society works on the basis of exclusivity, from elite clubs to a circle of friends to an individual. Such an example was based on the original idea of thefacebook.com, being only exclusive to Harvard students. From there it expanded to other colleges and universities, then publicly, and still remains as the greatest means to compete in popularity contests.

The ideas of 1 and 2 relate like this:

1 - The human mind filters noise in communication, unlike a machine who can not filter noise on its own.

2 - The Internet is not a machine on its own, it is people (or as they say in Tron: "Users") who are communicating through the machines.

Therefore: The Internet is group of noisy machines, and the noise is filtered out by the people who use the machines together in a group effort.

Relate this to idea 3: people group themselves using the method of both inclusion and exclusion.

Therefore: A large amount of people (society) functions as both noise and its own filter. Zuckerberg simply enhanced a way for people to filter themselves into a network of clusters. Thus creating 'The Social Network'.

I hope this makes sense when I come back to read it later.

Story & Plot

2010-12-29T02:15:00.000-08:00

(This is a summarised post, I want to see if I can elaborate on some things later on, particularly the points about character designs in MvA, as I think it makes a great metaphor on its plot/story on the whole. Plus some extra elaborations on torture-porn as a film genre).

You can be forgiven to think that the words "story" and "plot" are essentially synonymous, and maybe one day they will be, but at this point in time they contain two entirely different meanings. Need more proof? Check out their wiktionary definitions: story and plot.

Rather than arguing over the specific dictionary meanings of words, however, I will simply state my own definitions for the ease of understanding how I use them. To break it down, the story is not something that can be communicated on its own, since it is not a single time-line, it is multiple events and ideas all happening at once - like a structure. Think of seeing a building, taking it all in on the whole. The plot is a way to relay the story in sequential time - to focus on details and specific events. You see the building, now you have to describe it. What is its colour? What is its shape? Its history? Where do you begin describing? Where do you end? So obviously, in order to start describing this building, there must first be a building to exist before you begin to describe it, right?

The human mind has an amazing ability to connect pieces of information into a logical form. While it is processing information based on what pieces of plot it is given, it will automatically update the structure of the story on a whole, and in turn re-order the plot into a coherent chronology. It is the author's job to craft the plot in such a way as to communicate the story in a specific way they want the viewer's mind to see it. The real art is to shape the story starting from a single piece of information and ending with a large tangled web of intricately designed tapestry that weaves in and out of itself forming a larger 'picture' or concept. This applies to fiction or non-fiction. It especially becomes overwhelming when the story is something abstract or complicated that in some cases will be too much for a mind to take in one single participation.

Then there are authors who simply skip straight to communicating a plot without having conceived any kind of story behind it. When the story loses integrity it starts to break down, crumble and eventually cease to exist. It can take a single miscalculated plot point to do this, but the mind is creative enough, I think, to forgive a mistake in the knowledge that it has been acknowledged as a mistake. But sometimes it is not a mistake, it's just calculated sloppiness, which brings me to Monsters vs Aliens, a 2009 Dreamworks animated film I watched recently.

There is plenty to say about the character designs in MvA, but I will summarise briefly by saying that they all look like some cartoonist's crude disproportionate caricatures of random people handed down to the animation department and forced by the producers to model them exactly as they are. Under expert hands they would have been convincing if animated in 2D (I'm reminded of 'Mok' from Rock & Rule), however in 3D they come off like stretchy rubber puppets. They don't follow any solid form or structure which leads the designs to be less functional or appealing to work with, which is something that could also be said of the film's story and plot.

I will use one scene as an example, which I take as a synecdoche to describe the whole movie. It is the scene where we enter the war-room and the President of USA, fed up with facetious solutions to the giant robot invasion, gets up and walks over to press a big red button, panicking the advisers sitting at the round table behind him, warning that the button will set off all their nuclear missiles. He then stands confused and asks which button makes the latté, and someone replies it's the other button right next to the nuke-launching one, where the camera pulls back to reveal another big red button that looks exactly identical. OK, I'm following so far, there was a gross error in the design of the war room. So the President presses the other button and it pours coffee into a mug. The President irately questions "what idiot designed this thing?", to which an off-screen voice answers "you did, sir". Calmly, the president says "fair enough" and goes about drinking his coffee.

That is the plot of the scene, in order as it appears in the film, specifically designed in such a way to pile on more and more new pieces of information that shape an entirely absurd premise, which can't really hold itself together unless you conceive it to be designed specifically to serve the convenience of the gag. So let's try to regurgitate the story back out into a more coherent order, just to attempt to make sense of it all.

So there is this dimwitted nutjob who can not tell the difference between left or right and has somehow been elected the President of USA - leader of the entire nation - and somehow he has been allowed the responsibility to make integral design choices to the architecture of the official war-room, specifically adding a large red button to indicate the launch of all their nuclear missiles, without a safety-net or a prompt to ask if you're sure you want to launch all nuclear missiles in case, as may often happen, the button is pressed by accident. Perhaps he liked the big red button so much that he used its exact same design again to operate a coffee machine and place it right next to the nuclear missile launch button. Mad with power, he did not listen to anyone who would obviously contest his design flaw, only to later discover the flaw for himself, forgets that he was responsible for it, shrugs it off and accepts the fact he has placed the world in imminent danger in every waking moment, which might just be the spice he needs to make his coffee taste that much better.

How much of that sounds completely stupid, riddled with holes and convenient coincidences of idiocy? All of it? I ask how does this scene exist?

"But Jim!" The voice of reason cries out. "It's supposed to be stupid, that's what makes it funny!"

I don't think that's how humour works. I wasn't laughing, anyhow. Instead I had my palm to my face thinking about how this script was approved by a line of producers who were paying for this to be made, and probably handed over through many script-polishers who decided not to change it in any way to make the least bit of logical sense, and then screened before test-audiences who did not seem to pick up on how absurd this all is, and my final thought is the one I dread the most - they probably laughed.

I'd like to think that humour works best when you have 1. a plot point that serves a purpose to tell the story, 2. a story that doesn't break down and crumble when you start to think about it and 3. well timed communication of the plot. The scene above contains number 3, but misses out on 1 and 2.

This kind of gag is technically known by its Latin name: 'non sequitur' but in layman's terms is often called "Family Guy humour". However the staple of Family Guy is in its non sequitur gags typically laced with pop-culture references, they still originally served to develop or stabilise the attributes of the main characters in a punchy and surprising way. I'm not a fan of Family Guy and it pains me to use it as a positive example, but I understand that it has become a staple of pop-culture itself, so much so that its name has become synonymous with its own brand of humour.

In this scene from Monsters vs Aliens, the non sequitur may be developing the character traits of the President, but how does this help to develop the overall story? What is the role of the President (voiced by Stephen Colbert) in this movie? Let's see.

1. To goof off.
2. To be as stupid as possible.
3. Probably some kind of inside joke that Stephen Colbert plays a president.
4. oh yeah, and this is not as much of a big deal, but he also needs to move the plot forward by approving the release of the monsters to fight the aliens.

I've had to stop myself writing this at least two times now, to prevent myself from throwing up and crying myself to sleep. I don't enjoy writing this, but I feel I have to, because it's this kind of shit that keeps me awake at night. I need to express that bad movies do exist whether or not you actually like it, or if it made a lot of money, or if it makes people other than me laugh.

"But Jim!" the voice of reason returns. "It's supposed to not make sense! That's the fun of it!"

OK, I don't think every movie needs to be perfect. Some of my favourite movies take huge liberties with logic and reality all the time (eg. Synecdoche New York, Dead Or Alive 2: Birds, Drop Dead Fred, Chimes At Midnight, The Room). MvA could have been an enjoyable film for me if 1. the characters weren't so ugly and 2. the humour came from the heart and not from obvious devices and plot convenience. It's starting to depress me, so I would like to add a good example of how story and plot can be executed. This brings me to the 2008 French film Martyrs, another film I have watched recently.

Martyrs is an example of how "torture porn" or "gorn" can be done well. I often cite Funny Games as how torture porn is simultaneously great and awful as a genre of film, but the difference between the two movies is that Funny Games is a deconstruction, criticism and example of its very own type of movie, while Martyrs is more of a reconstruction.

As much as I would argue that Martyrs is in no way pornographic, it still contains the conventions to what we know as "torture porn", as has been defined by movies like Saw, Hostel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and most recently The Human Centipede. It especially understands the aesthetic of being THE MOST EXTREME MOVIE EVER! - where it seems to have succeeded. Martyrs has gained notoriety as being the most repulsive, gruesome and disturbing movie ever made; it is designed to test the viewer's threshold of pain. I felt nothing but dread sitting through this movie, and although it was torture to sit through, it was no where near as torturous as sitting through Monsters vs Aliens.

However you want to describe your unpleasant experience of Martyrs - its unsettling themes, its kitschy representation of metaphysical concepts, its constant shifting of central characters, the several plot twists and revelations, the final act reminiscent of the first Guinea Pig film - despite it all the story still holds up.

From here on I will be spoiling some major plot points that may soften the effect of some of the surprises. I doubt many would want to subject themselves to this film, but to the few who may be enticed or challenged to see it and haven't yet I suggest you stop reading here. I have pretty much touched on all that there is to say about the subject, as I mentioned earlier I am only including this example as a way to cheer myself up.

*SPOILER ALERT*
In the scene where the family are eating breakfast, we get a glimpse into the lives of these relatable three-dimensional characters. There's the sibling rivalry, the father's insistence on the son's future direction, the high-and-mighty younger daughter, and the mother bringing in a dead mouse she just retrieved from the water pipes and dangling it in front of everybody's faces. She says "yes, it's gross, but at least we have running water now". Much later we find out why the running water was such an important issue for them. After spending time torturing their victims in the secret dungeon they are required to routinely shower off before returning upstairs - hygiene is important to these people. The family almost appear as a non-sequitur, but it turns out their relevance to the story is highly integral. The plots are constantly twisting and turning but they all serve to give us relevant pieces of information in a consistent, methodical order. It's like we begin by focusing on a tiny detail of a painting and then slowly pulling back to reveal a larger, more complex image. In such a way, the revelation of the larger picture puts all the smaller details in perspective and we begin to appreciate them even more, which we otherwise wouldn't have done if we began by overseeing the whole picture beforehand.

"But Jim!" the voice of reason won't go away. "You can't compare a film like Martyrs to Monsters vs Aliens, it's apples and oranges!"

While I can point out many vague similarities between the two films, the biggest similarity is much like the big similarity between you and me: we are both human beings who think and breath. These are two movies which function on both story and plot. All movies work this way, and as there are some people deficient in thinking, some movies are also deficient in story. Perhaps the two are made for each other? YOU DECIDE.

The 'lowering your expectations' facade

2010-12-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

It's now so very common, especially with the slew of crap coming out, that the most acceptable attitude when seeing a movie is to lower your expectations, otherwise you're just setting yourself up for a disappointment, they say. People want to make sure they get their money's worth, since there's no refunds, so if you didn't enjoy the movie then it's just as if you flushed your money and time down the toilet, right?

No.

Disappointment is a good thing. I'm here to say it's OK. It's perfectly healthy to have a bad movie experience, at least you will know where your standards are. I think we need high standards, as high as you can go. It's worth it, when you actually find something that exceeds your expectations there is no greater feeling of elevation and stimulation. Of course, I understand everyone will have different standards based on their experience. Not everyone has sat through every Stanley Kubrick film, or enjoy foreign subtitled films with foreign eyes. Some movies are made with the intention of audiences who watch many movies, but many people aren't interested in the art of cinema. I guess there's a large fascination with celebrities and the rich & famous - do they really work hard enough to earn the enormous amounts of money they get?

I doubt most people watch a movie for such superficial reasons, there is a crowd of people who do, but they are a minority, and need medical attention. I'm certain most people watch movies to watch a movie. The most profitable films usually go into family-orientated entertainment - but only if they're really well made. As long as kids can enjoy it, and they have the least film experience of us all, then the parents are happy.

But if a movie sucks, and you know it, you have a right to say you were disappointed. It doesn't mean you just wasted your money and time, because that's what experience is about. Do you see what I'm saying?

OK, here's an example. Recently my friend and I went to go see TRON: Legacy. I didn't get a free pass for it so I had to pay for it myself. My friend hadn't seen any pictures or trailers on it and he expected some trashy piece of stitched-together device-driven crap (he didn't even think Jeff Bridges was going to be in it, mind you). I was the one that convinced him to see it with me, since I had seen trailers and posters on it, plus I listened to the soundtrack and loved it. I thought the story was going to suck but I had hopes that the visuals and the soundtrack would be cool enough that I was going to enjoy the hell out of it. Keep in mind, this doesn't mean we had our standards lowered, we retained our high standards and were ready to tear it to pieces like vultures to a fresh corpse. We both were surprised at how well the film turned out, it met our high standards and we enjoyed the hell out of it, like I expected.

I should contrast that example with a bad experience. In 2005 there was a movie called Doom. I'm a fan of the games (except Doom 3, which sadly the film most resembles) and maintained an interest in how the film was going to turn out. I figured it would suck, but I saw screen-shots of the first-person mode scene and thought "this will probably be pretty cool after all". It wasn't.

The first-person mode was great, but it was all too brief, and didn't save the grueling nothingness the rest of the film plodded through to fill up its feature-length time. My friend (the same from before) often says that if the whole movie was in first-person, it would have been the best movie ever made. Some people think he's crazy, but I whole-heartedly agree. In fact, two movies come to mind which are entirely in first-person. One is a recent film called Enter The Void, directed by Gaspar Noé, which is no doubt a masterpiece, the most amazing film experience I've ever had yet. The other is Russian Ark, directed by Alexandr Sokurov, which only becomes more and more amazing the more you learn its story, and by its very existence is convincing evidence of divine intervention. However, those two aren't 'mainstream' films designed for a general audience. Then what does that make Doom? It definitely was not designed for a general audience. I think Doom is worthy of being analytically scrutinised scene by scene in its own post, but in the end what was really wrong with it is that just about every scene is trying to remind you that it's based off a video game series, especially if you've played the games and know about the company who made them, and played all their other games, including Commander Keen. Doom is a movie for a very specific audience, and my ultimate disappointment was that it failed to appeal to that audience (which I feel I am a part of) on many levels.

Doom is an especially sad case for me because it's one of those movies that nerds can point their fingers at and say things like "see this is why video games shouldn't be made into movies". Film makers like Uwe Boll don't help either, but fortunately I think he's more recognised as a terrible film maker rather than his films being bad adaptations of video games.

I would like to think there is a good movie behind any idea that inspires it, granted that it takes hard work to chip away at the rough edges and polish it until its ready. Ideas for movies should be sourced from whatever media is available, even as far as online drama on an Internet message board (eg: All About Lily Chou-Chou), as long as it's told effectively and with care.

Disillusioned with movies

2010-12-02T04:49:00.000-08:00

It's beginning to dawn on me, movies are starting to really bug me on the whole. I see all the signs that Hollywood is going to burn itself to the ground, but I doubt it will. It always survives, somehow. Where to begin?

Firstly, what has been bugging me is the accessibility. Movies I have no interest in seeing are within a stone's throw away. Movies I want to see, on the other hand, require me to travel across town to the one goddamn cinema that decides to screen it (if at all). I don't know if this is based on my judgment on what's "good" or "bad", since I can't even tell anymore, it all has to do with whatever the distributors decide. Their decision is not based on the merits of good film-making, they are based on trends in society and what people will most likely spend their money on. People will spend their money on anything, if you can sell it to them. So why don't distributors promote the hell out of their better films? Because those films weren't made with the largest target audience in mind, they weren't targeted towards lifestyle choices discovered by "focus groups" and online social network queries. Specifically, they're not business-friendly, and therefore too risky to invest a great deal of money into. There may be a couple exceptions, I'll go ahead and name Toy Story 3 as one of them.

This is all common knowledge, or at least should be by now. This is natural business, I understand that. There are more sides to it that bugs me.

A good start is to watch the first part to Mr. Plinkett's review of Star Trek 2009, to get a better understanding of what I'm talking about.

They just don't make movies like they used to. Blockbusters used to be great movies, and the film-makers could get away with it too, because there wasn't much alternative. The rule was that if your movie sucks, your movie will flop, and your career starts going downhill. The same rule applies today, but your movie can still make money even if it sucks. Why? It might have to do with the marketing team skilfully addressing the mass audience's interest long enough to get them to buy a ticket (one thing they're not relying on is word-of-mouth, which only comes as a cherry on top, so you can save your hopes of all that business for the more obscure films tailored towards the snobby critic-types), or it could be a variety of other things, like:

* Ticket prices being raised (here we also have cinemas who have a "Gold Class" or some equivalent option which is over double the normal ticket price).
* Ever-increasing population of people who lack taste or self-awareness (the complacent audience).
* Ever-increasing number of people becoming parents which automatically washes them down into bland personalities due to some kind of moral standard to be a role-model for children, meaning they are able to put up with as many shitty movies as it takes to keep the little ones distracted.
* All of the above combined.

Of course, this doesn't apply to as many people as possible, I haven't lost faith in humanity just yet. Statistically, in Australia at least, only about 30% of the population still go to the movies (maybe less) and it is dwindling. An obvious issue is the ticket prices. We can see through the bullshit. Digital cinema was created firstly for the sake of a proper 3D viewing experience, but also for lowering costs on printing and distribution. It costs around $3000 to print a single copy of film on to celluloid (depending on the size and quality), however it is roughly $150 to make a digital copy on to an external hard drive (the way my company works is that they rent out the hard drives for a period of time, then we return them to be re-formatted for the next movie). A typical celluloid movie would weigh 20-21kg, and would be inside a carton about .027m³, whereas a hard drive weighs 3-4kg and belongs in a carton about .012m³, essentially lowering the freight-cost by triple (plus you only need one hard drive for multiple screens at once, unlike celluloid), and how do cinema complexes respond? By adding an extra $2 on an already inflated ticket price!!!

They can give you all the bullshit they want about the cost of the new projectors to run them, and the distributor fee to exhibit the film (they take 80% in the first two weeks of release), but money is being saved, at least it should be! I guess it isn't, because no one wants to see your inferior product! There is a Yiddish word for inferior product, it is schlock!

Wait, schlock is a value in commodity these days, isn't it? I'm sorry for using three exclamation marks earlier, I know that's not very grammatical.

Where was I? Yeah, so, people aren't going to cinemas as much as they used to. As it has been explained in Mr. Plinkett's Star Trek 2009 review, there is a rise in media-saturation and preference to home-video. People are beginning to make choices and think for themselves. I suppose this is what is also bugging me. I love film, I obsess over it every day. I've even gone beyond the point of wanting to be a "critic" because it's too boring for me, film is something I can enjoy as an expression. But as I said before, the best films are the ones that gain little exposure, and they get lost in the tangle of hundreds of millions of other events going on around the world, and they are forgotten as soon as they are mentioned. What is the point of good film-making any more? You may gain a small audience, maybe a few people on the Internet will write about it in their blogs. But is that enough?

I don't think it is.

There are many of us who have the irrepressible will to express ourselves, no matter if there is an audience or not. That's fine. But film-making is an expensive, long and tiresome effort. You're not going to make a film unless you fucking mean it, and unless you want it to be seen.

Film is a dying art, I can foresee that there will be something else to replace it. I think the Internet already has - the whole idea of social networking is a form of entertainment to many. Plenty of drama around, if you know where to look.

Based on this, I will make some predictions.

Ticket prices will inflate to enormous rates. I will say in at least five (5) years time a normal ticket will be about $50. Maybe a "family package" will be $80. In a fit of desperation to keep the cinema houses going, their screens will get even more bigger and every movie out of Hollywood will be 3D; without having to use glasses.

Any movie not in 3D will be an independent production, and there will be a lot of them, due to evolving sophistication in high-definition quality pictures able to be filmed by cheap hand-held cameras (possibly webcams even!). Actors will not be paid in advance, instead they work on commission. There will be more animation studios, but none will be able to rival Pixar in terms of quality and gross profit because they will all be pumping out the same device-driven crap. Not even the well established Industrial Light & Magic with highly respectable directors like Gore Verbinski. Seriously, "Rango" looks terrible. They've fallen into the Dreamworks trap on the method of compiling an animated film - adapting to the typical "blockbuster" formula that works better for live-action. I know it's going to make money, because Paramount is going to market the shit out of it. But it won't make as much as it could if they paid more attention to what makes good animation successful. I wonder if anyone has drawn any conclusions between "Rango" and this post by John Kricfalusi? I'm drifting off here. It's late. But I'm glad to finally get this whole thing off my chest.

There will be more to come. Perhaps this blog will be more about my current anxieties, kind of like a therapy session. I've made a tumblr account with the concept of writing about specific pieces of movie/book/music from specific collections, plus an occasional embedded sound/song you are not obligated to listen to.

Explanation of the Jabberwocky (2nd draft - re-blocked).

2010-11-08T02:35:00.000-08:00

I will begin to attack what I wrote last night with extreme gusto.

Keep in mind this is meant to be recited orally, so it is written in such a way. The first step is to read each sentence aloud and attempt to clarify anything that might sound confusing. Secondly I will break up the lines, kind of like a poem, not that this is poetry, but good speech is about rhythm. I want to be able to chew these words up like mashed beans.

Originally I stated that I would explore the examples I've seen in the multiple adaptations I've seen, but I could squeeze those throughout the video itself. I'd like to just leave this text as is, come back some time later and possibly make some adjustments.

(UPDATE: I got tired of scrolling down this lengthy post, so I've re-blocked the sentences into paragraphs).

THE JABBERWOCKY

One must naturally think that any film-maker who dares try to adapt a highly regarded classical work must have at least done their research or hired a research assistant or has sought advice from an expert on the source material. In the case of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' by Lewis Carroll, it is not so inaccessible a story as modern editions have come provided with annotations containing thorough history and information regarding the text, much like reading a play by William Shakespeare. Through-out the century the original story has been celebrated so often it is permissible now-a-day to curse anyone who still believes it was invented by Walt Disney (with extreme prejudice).

I've witnessed many film interpretations of the Alice story and thus it is my understanding that film-makers, while acknowledging the information readily available, by choice continue to make additions and alterations for the purpose of either keeping a fresh perspective or maintaining a unique vision. This is what's called a 'happy accident', whereby a creative discovery is made which happens to enhance the material in such a way like being a great metaphor for the whole piece
(or for the human condition in general). These freak discoveries are mostly not so bad. However, my only other conclusion is that they just did not do their research. The most common scenario I find is the inclusion of the Jabberwocky.

And so to begin, for the uninformed, I will recap the story of the Jabberwocky, with all of my information provided by what I have read within the annotations given through-out 'Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There', plus some common-sense knowledge about dreams.

Alice begins her adventure on a winter day by playing with her cat, Dinah, and her two kittens, Kitty and Snowdrop. She soon falls into a daydream and begins to elaborate an entire world behind the looking-glass. On our side we may see a normal reflection, on the other side, however, is when everything becomes totally different.

It is safe to say Alice has by now fallen asleep and begun dreaming, for in her discourse she has ended up on top of the chimney-piece and has advanced through to the other side. In the real world this is impossible because a mirror is simply
reflective glass that bounces light exactly in the opposite direction. In dream logic, mirrors work differently. A dream is designed to make you always think you're not really dreaming. Since light does not exist in dreams, the other side of a mirror is really another room generating a reverse facsimile of every object that is on your side! It is a trick!

Continuing, Alice arrives on the other side of the Looking Glass and witnesses the events of some of the chess-pieces come to life for a while before she discovers a book lying on a table next to her. At first, she believes it's all written in some foreign language she cannot read, but happens upon a page containing words she can recognise however the text is printed in reverse. She realises this is a Looking Glass book and must hold it up to the glass to make the words appear the right way,
and suddenly the entire poem reveals itself. It is a poem entitled 'JABBERWOCKY'.

Notice when you first see the poem printed in reverse that you are only given the first stanza (and title). According to a letter that Lewis Carrol wrote to his publisher in January 1868, he may have implied that he wanted the entire poem to be printed in reverse. His publisher responded that it was definitely possible but would cost 'a great deal'. The result of showing only the first stanza may have inadvertently worked better for the story as written text in dreams tend to become muddled and constantly changing. One could interpret that Alice, holding the book up to the glass, was actually reading and re-reading the one stanza over and over as the words kept changing and including a vocabulary of gibberish nonsense.

In actual study of the poem, we unfold a story about a boy who slays a kind of a beast called the 'Jabberwock' and triumphantly returns home carrying its head. There is also a brief mention of the 'Jub Jub Bird' and the 'Bandersnatch', however they remain without description.

The story conflicts with the provided illustration by John Tenniel who has clearly represented a young girl (resembling Alice from behind) swinging her sword against the Jabberwock. It must be here that stems the confusion--or intentional misinterpretation--within the many adaptations of this story. But the truth is simple.

Lewis Carroll originally intended this image as the frontispiece for 'Through The Looking-Glass' but upon receiving suggestions that it is (quote) 'too terrible a monster, and likely to alarm nervous and imaginative children', he succumbed and submitted the image to its rightful place next to the poem, replacing the frontispiece with a much more serene illustration of Alice and the White Knight. Obviously it would have been much too bothersome, even to think about, changing the Alice-resemblance to a boy as the original poem describes. So it has been left as is, giving way to new interpretations and restructuring of sub-plots
for the chance to add the Jabberwocky as a new character (always a villain), after all it does make a great metaphor for the human condition.

I have gotten rid of the (horrible) first draft, but in case you want to read it for comparison I have re-posted it in the comments.

I ENDORSE: Moving Pictures by (Sir) Terry Pratchett

2010-10-28T00:07:00.001-07:00

Imagine the highest tower of Ankh-Morpork, a 50 foot tall woman climbing to its peak holding a screaming ape in one hand (the Librarian for Discworld buffs), swatting a couple of wizards flying around on a broomstick.

This is the sort of thing you'd expect from a Discworld novel called Moving Pictures. I originally bought this book to read Pratchett's thoughts on movies (as he has a way of wonderfully lacing his opinions into his stories), and secondly because I know I'm always in safe hands when I'm reading a Discworld novel. To my delightful surprise, it turned out to be more of a love-letter to H.P. Lovecraft and all that eldritch lore.

I was satisfied with my need for Pratchett's thoughts on movies with the following passage:

'I was doing OK,' she said. 'Nothing special, but OK. I was getting quite a lot of work. People thought I was reliable. I was building a career--'
'You can't build a career on Holy Wood,' said Victor. 'That's like building a house on a swamp. Nothing's real.'

Which pretty much sums up my job, and anyone's job in the movies, only the difference is you can build a career in Hollywood. It almost seems unsettling, which is why it perhaps leads so well into Lovecraftian territory.

This post is not a review, it is a recommendation, so I don't want to spoil too much. The story represents more of the earlier days of film, it never gets past the silent-film era, for example. However the films are in colour, not in black and white, since the technology involves little imps painting images really quickly, then projected out of the 'other-end' of a light-eating lizard. There are examples of how films turned into commercial endeavours from artistic endeavours, the whole studio-system of the pre-50s, the guilds and union systems, primitive special-effects, talking animals and perhaps some other things I've left out.

Perhaps it is not a book that so much enriches the exploration of Discworld, and maybe it was written as a way for Terry Pratchett to reach his quota of two books a year, or probably it is just some funny idea he had that seemed to solidify itself. Despite these thoughts which came to my mind it is still enriching and satisfying on its own merit, and so far my personal favourite.

So, go on you monkeys! Get out of the house and read a book!!

B&W lighting - The Lady From Shanghai

2010-10-22T15:23:00.001-07:00

I either hate or love a black & white film. I love a b&w film if the photography tries to emphasise the art of silhouette and understands the complexity of simplification. I hate watching a b&w film if it's a bunch of uninteresting grey objects not knowing their places in any order of focal points, as if it's yearning to be in colour but the technology was too expensive at the time (or didn't exist yet).

The best example of b&w photography I seen so far is in The Lady From Shanghai by Orson Welles. There is a famous back-story behind this movie, and perhaps lead to the result of its failure to make a profit.

At the time Orson Welles was married to Rita Hayworth, the most famous pin-up model in her day well known for her luscious long red hair. The marriage was rather shaky, by then they had a daughter but even that couldn't keep the two together. Rita suffered from abuse as a child and Orson didn't know how to deal with that. Orson was doing a stage production of "Around The World in 80 Days" but was in debt to the costume company and needed the money to get the costumes the day before the play opened, so he called the head of Columbia pictures and borrowed the money to pay off the debt, in return he would make a picture adapted from the closest book within his reach, which happened to be some pulp-fiction noir his secretary was reading. When it came time to make the film his wife, Rita, wanted to co-star in the picture in an attempt to bring the two closer together. Orson reluctantly agreed, but he knew her trademark red hair would not work in the kind of film he was making. After all, what is red hair in b&w photography? Just some useless grey. So he made her cut her hair short and become an extreme blonde. Perhaps he knew there would be a public backlash to changing Rita Hayworth's famous pin-up look, however Orson only had one thing on his mind - to make a good movie - and so he did.

Some time after the movie was wrapped up, Rita and Orson decided it wasn't working out and got a divorce. The film was released two years later and in the public mistakenly viewed it as the cause for the break-up, and so fell out of the public favour and flopped.

Story-wise, The Lady From Shanghai plays out like a typical noir page-turner. Each scene keeps revealing new and intricate turns. To describe its plot properly would take about the amount of time to watch the film itself. But say what you want about the story, the film's look is a marvel on to its own. As an example I will take a single-shot from one of my favourite scenes - besides the house of mirrors climax - in the aquarium. The complexity of the lighting is a feast for the eyes, and I still can't tell whether it's in a real aquarium with strange refraction tricks or if it's a processing-screen behind them. The fish are distractingly huge, like Werner Herzog would say, they seem to be a metaphor for something but I don't quite know what.

Here are some screen-shots from one of the final moments in the aquarium, all taken from a single shot of Orson and Rita walking past the camera.

The beginning of the scene. Rita's full figure as she is walking and her face is half-cast in shadow. Orson is about to walk into frame.

Now we have both Orson and Rita in frame, walking towards us. The camera is currently stationary. Notice the shades of their clothing. Rita's coat is a pure black over a lightly shaded dress, you can't see the shape of her arms or chest, but you see her hands coming out, clinging on to a black purse. Orson is in a totally dark suit(in some shots it's all pure black), with a slightly less darker shirt underneath, along with his black hair, he's just a walking shadow save for his face and hands. It is to due to his dark attire that we can keep an eye on the white piece of paper he is holding, as it plays an important role to the story (I won't go into it here, I recommend watching the film).

They walk closer, the light has shifted a little darker in this shot. In movement, the light is constantly shifting up and down due to the water bouncing light in all sorts of directions. This is why it was important to separate the extremes of dark and light, because all the medium greys in between were going to be constantly shifting.

They come closer into a medium shot. Here, the camera begins to slowly turn right, constantly keeping the two slightly left-of-centre.

Even closer, and as the camera turns Orson's head casts a shadow over Rita's face.

I particularly love this frame. As Rita's face is being eclipsed, her eyes still glow out of the darkness. Their silhouettes become extremely defined in front of the bright fish-tanks.

However, notice when they're in front of a pure-black column. Rita's face and hair has become much brighter, but her body has completely disappeared. Orson is now walking in front of the camera as we come to the apex of its turn.

Both characters have switched sides, however remain left-of-centre. Rita still has glowing eyes and now she has gained glowing teeth!

Orson is the first to completely turn his back on us. Rita's face is becoming much darker, however when she's in front of a black column her blonde hair is lit up.

The camera has stopped turning and it is now tracking behind Rita and Orson. Pay attention to Orson's signature cheek, and how the light shifts as he walks past a black column. Keep in mind, this is all in the same shot.

For a while the camera tracks both characters as they talk with their backs turned towards us. How often do you see that in movies? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but if it does, then it's usually for a reason. In this shot, it's totally casual, and it helps that it's just two characters - a man and a woman - so we can distinguish the voices.

The shot ends with both characters turning in profile looking at each other and the camera has stopped moving. Both faces are engulfed in shadow, with a bit of light outlining them both to separate them from the dark-grey background.

It's after that final turn, Rita talks for a bit, then there is a cut. To me this is the greatest example of black & white cinema. In the old days there was a lot of cigarettes being smoked on the screen, to create a constant movement even when the characters are static. To me it seems cheap and easy to just have someone smoking, especially if it adds nothing to the character. That's why I liked Orson Welles' films as he would always be inventive with movement. So go watch The Lady From Shanghai and see how film is really made!

Feminism +Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland

2010-10-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

I've been reading some interesting stuff about feminism in cinema. It's a blatant fact that cinema is a male-dominated medium, and therefore we may not realize how conditioned we are to accepting masculine-driven stories (even by female directors eg Kathryn Bigelow). What we normally have is a story starting with a central character in the centre of a social disruption, then the central character must find a way to resolve the disruption through a linear process, step by step. The typical layout is a male hero versus a male villain, and the male hero has a male buddy and/or female lover who will die, or at least be in hopeless peril, by the hand of the male villain which justifies the hero conquering the villain via horrible death or humiliation.

What, then, is the femenine-driven story? I don't know if it's been clearly defined, but characteristics include an episodic narrative, emotionally based conflict and resolve, often (but not always) melodramatic. Opposed to the masculine identity of going out on epic adventures and quests, the feminine story is typically domestic, reflective and explores personal identity. A feminist often asks what is the role of a woman in the story? A mother? A wife? A daughter? A damsel/princess in distress? A whore? It is important to understand the location (place and time) of the female character, as different cultures/timeframes will have different, sometimes severe, social expectations for her.

This brings me to Tim Burton/Disney's recent version of Alice In Wonderland. Perhaps I looked at it in the wrong light in my harsh review a while back, perhaps I wasn't considering the feminist point of view. I have to ask, then, is this version of Alice In Wonderland a femenine story?

Of course it isn't!!

It's just the same as any masculine story only the genders have been reversed. In doing so they have turned Alice into a...

...a man!

Defined muscular exterior, phallus in hand...is this an appropriate role model for little girls? To become a man? Not that there's anything wrong with it, however I preferred the original book - episodic, emotional, reflective of personal identity - seems a more feminine type of story. Perhaps we're too conditioned, the female audience included.

There is more to explain but I want to leave that for whenever I may get around to making a video-review of this movie.

Voice-over narration in movies.

2010-10-07T23:42:00.000-07:00

Observe the following chatlog:

[03:30] hobblin> ya idk blade runner just didnt deliver to me
[03:30] hobblin> maybe i had too high expectations
[03:30] hobblin> oh and dear god the voice overs by harrison ford
[03:30] hobblin> they were just awful
[03:30] hobblin> it was like B movie quality
[05:51] Archfriend> hobblin
[05:51] Archfriend> you watched the Theatrical cut?!?!!
[05:51] Archfriend> no wonder why you thought it sucked

This gets me thinking how there are some movies that get a "Director's Cut" and the first thing they do is eliminate the voice-over narration that featured prominently in the theatrical release. Bladerunner is an example, another I can think of is The Dark City. In both cases, the directors (Ridley Scott and Alex Proyas, respectively) decided the voice-over was disengaging for the audience. A deconstructionist like myself may lead to the conclusion that it was an executive decision, seeing as these were both big studio films. This is where we come to an audience-divide, where the executives are both right and wrong.

The main clash between the executives and the directors comes down to whether profit should get in the way of good film-making. An executive believes the largest portion of consumer-market are morons, it is these people who they are aiming to extract all the money from. So what satisfies the moron? How do we appeal to them?

What morons want, no, what they need is security. They need nurturing; everything must be spelled out clearly. Subtlety does not work, it has to be over-the-top for the moron to even register the moment. They have to have their hands held like little babies, then have a road-map spread out in front of them with a red mark circling the destination point and a dotted line indicating the journey. Then the journey must be safely completed in a three-act structure.

A (good) director, on the other hand, assumes the general audience is intelligent enough to know their algebra and they don't always need their variables to be constants. They can put the pieces together - and enjoy doing it! Perhaps the theory might be uncertainty generates excitement and excitement generates profit.

So who's right?

Just kidding, that was a trick question. Right and wrong doesn't even apply to this argument. Both types of movies have made lots of money and both types of movies have also flopped.

Bladerunner and The Dark City could both fall under the science-fiction-slash-noir category, however Bladerunner was more successful due to its grandiose visuals being so new at the time and The Dark City flopped due to its grandiose visuals not being such an appreciated spectacle as other films of its time plus the story failed to be engaging (most likely due to the voice-over giving away the big twist at the beginning of the film, effectively amputating its own legs it was to stand on).

Perhaps there are many films that could do with a make-over and dropping its voice-over all together. For example, I perceive How To Train Your Dragon would be ten times better without it. Another example is Kick-Ass.

((try to think of more examples later))

But when does voice-over actually enhance a story? I may be exploring the executive's nightmare-realm here, but I can think of two examples based on movies I've enjoyed:

ONE - THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR
This is when the narrator can speak only from their own perspective and they may or may not be wrong. This unreliability becomes a type of brain-food for the audience as we now have to sift through the given information and sort out for ourselves what could be fact or fiction, and how it is necessary to understand the story.

TWO - SPEAKING IN PAST-TENSE
When a narrator is speaking from the future, most likely in a period piece, the film can give the sense of being very novel-like, whether being adapted from a novel or not. The enjoyment comes from the narrator revealing the story as it's happening, or perhaps sharing information that can not be shown. Sometimes the narrator might not be talking about the story at all, just rambling on some obscure philosophy about something.

It is also entirely possible to have a combination of the two, like in Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon.

To be honest, there should be more to this blog post, but this is as far as I got in my draft. I could be exploring and deconstructing some examples of good voice-over (and maybe some bad ones), but the effort to slug through all that is more than I could ever muster. I can not even bring myself to give empty promises on future blog posts about the subject. If the discussion should go any further, I suppose that can be done in the comments.

My Favourite Quote From S.NY.

2010-09-29T23:33:00.000-07:00

There is a part in Synecdoche New York, which I must emphasise how I've previously mentioned is a film that observes itself from beyond the 4th wall, where Caden Cotard is walking home with his wife, his wife's friend and his mother and father after a viewing of his latest theatre production, "Death of a Salesman" - the twist being all its actors comprise of young people playing old characters ("It was a choice, Dad" Cotard explains, "I'll explain later.") - and yet his wife is lauding him about working on pre-sourced material, that any personal connection will always be eluded until he can work on something of his own creation. He defends himself by saying "people are walking out of the theatre, crying!" to which his wife deflates all his ego flat with the ultimate retort:
"Great! You're a fucking tool of suburban blue-haired regional theatre subscribers."
From this quote I realise, myself, even considering the fact I am watching this movie, that I am indeed a blue-haired film buff. The common analogy is to refer to a true jazz enthusiast, the kind of person who's experienced a life of music that abides by the formulae, who have also dedicated themselves in understanding the concept of music (or music theory), and now desires to transcend the repetitious formula-driven melodies the mainstream readily has on offer and to discover a challenge! To learn of the art of a master musician who has already devoted their life to the "rules" and to challenge themselves - and their listeners - by breaking them. This is how I define "blue-haired". To me it's more rewarding to watch a film by Charlie Kaufman, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, The Coen Brothers or Richard Linklater than it is to watch a film by James Cameron, Stephen Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Peter Jackson, (heck I'll throw in Christopher Nolan as well for elitist satisfaction) and others who play it "safe" and make the most money for it. That does not make me any more of an intellectual than the average die-hard Avatar fan, it only means my hair has turned blue and I spend more time analysing and deconstructing films than I do with developing my social-life. If it just so happens that I am more intelligent, it's probably due to my genetics and nothing to do with my taste in the arts whatsoever.

Oh...

2010-09-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

Crap! I forgot I had this whole Napalm Death thing to finish.

It's kind of boring me right now so I'll save it for later and hide it for now.

There's plenty of other things to ramble on about..

Interlude - Bill Comic

2010-08-29T04:35:00.001-07:00

I found this old thing on my hard drive. I still think it's one of my best.

(Click to enlarge)

Another thing coming up

2010-08-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

Another thing to add from two posts back:

Dead or Alive trilogy
Not the video game, not the movie based on the video game, but the original direct-to-video "V-movie" cult classic trilogy of films by Takashi Miike. I only discovered these recently, but has piqued my interest in terms of its absurdity - almost at PFFR level - and exploration of false symbolicism. The art of mis-leading an audience into thinking there is something of substance when in its depths there is emptiness. It's almost like a satire on actual symbolicism. Is this what post-modernism is? Perhaps I should throw in a parallel analysis of Final Flesh - the mysterious Vernon Chatman (of PFFR) project which in my opinion crowns him as the King of Absurd.

Tideland
The ultimate disasterpiece of Terry Gilliam (that is if Brazil can be considered his masterpiece). There is that kind of movie which can only be reviewed by analysing a whole career (before and after the work in question) of the artist. Haneke as Funny Games, Lynch has Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Herzog has Fitzcarraldo and Gilliam has Tideland. This movie is the example of what movies should not be, and could only be pulled off by Gilliam, and only in the headspace that he was in at the time. I see it as a summary of Gilliam's career, and what he is. Just wait until I make the post. Perhaps a long wait, but just wait. In the meantime feel free to discuss in the "abominable scrawls".

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

2010-08-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

I feel I should update this blog with something. I finished reading a book, which is an accomplishment by my standards, and so perhaps I should review it? I don't want this blog to go stale, so yes, I will review it (no pictures for this post).

Can I really comment on style if the book is translated from another language? If I'm talking about style, I would be addressing the translater, Philip Gabriel, and then I'd easily be straying from the point. No, I have to address structure, then I'd be getting to the guts of the original author (I'm sure he wouldn't mind, he seems to have plenty of fascination with guts and intestines in the story). So let's jump straight in the dirt and see what we can flesh out.

I happen to notice this book in a bookstore simply by its cover, specifically the word "Kafka", but when I read the blurb on the back I knew right away I would want to read it. I love anything with surrealism and mysterious symbolism. Even if this book has nothing to do with Franz Kafka, I figured it shouldn't be an accident that Murakami used his name in the title. In reading the book I find out he used the name for two specific reasons: firstly because the protagonist is a fan of Franz Kafka, secondly because "Kafka" is the Czech word for "Crow", and he wants to be strong and independent, like a crow. There is a mysterious imaginary friend called "the boy named Crow" who plays a role in the overall mythology of this world. Among the specific reasons, the protagonist, who has run away from home on his 15th birthday, renames himself "Kafka", which plays a significant part in the big coincidence later on, that is the resemblance to the fictional 60's pop-song "Kafka on the Shore". I would like to mention briefly in regards to the translation; the lyrics of this song are laid out in full at one point and it is strange - to me - that they have rhythm and rhyme. I have to wonder how much alteration took place in the translating to achieve that.

However, on to the structure, the story is an overall modern retelling of Oedipus Rex. I didn't have to figure this out myself, though, the book lays it all out for me. It even explains the whole play in detail! But there is a twist, not only does Kafka sleep with his mother, but with his (foster) sister too! I didn't have to figure out that twist myself, the characters explained all this in the story as well. Here begins my complaint. The book is really fat. Too much fat! It could have been slimmed down about 20% without the unnecessary repetition or the drawling explanations of its own references. There's even a point where a character explains Chekhov's Gun! Is it supposed to be clever or 4th-wall breaking to point out your own plot devices? I don't know. But this is the extent of my complaining, this book may be fat but it's not grossly obese. Heck even I learned a couple new things:

p. 379:

"...It's a labyrinth. Do you know where the idea of a labyrinth first came from?"
I shake my head.
"It was the ancient Mesopotamian's. They pulled out animal intestines - sometimes human intestines, I expect - and used the shape to predict the future. They admired the complex shape of intestines. So the prototype for labyrinths is, in a word, guts. Which means that the principle for the labyrinth is inside you. And that correlates to the labyrinth outside."

Which brings me to the guts. I mean of the story. This is the part of the book I liked. Every alternating chapter switches back and forth between the two lead characters, with the exception of the introduction and another small interlude titled "The Boy Named Crow". Firstly you have Kafka Tamura, the run-away 15 year old kid, told in first-person narrative. There are plenty of hormonal-angst-driven monologues and strange existential observations, including the occasional erotic fantasy. Most of all, Kafka is just describing his actions. He is well introverted, even to the reader, which is somehow alienating and engaging at the same time. It's in Kafka's chapters I find the most frustration as I've explained above. Secondly there is Mr Nakata, first introduced through uncovered military reports about a strange event that happened during World War II. Once we get into the actual narrative, when Nakata is an old man in retirement, the story is told in third-person. Later in the novel we are not just limited to the point of view to Nakata, but to other supporting characters as well. I find these chapters are the most exciting to read, for example we are introduced to Nakata when he is speaking to a cat, investigating another missing cat. The most interesting thing I find about Nakata, and later his accomplice, Hoshino, is that they are two lovable dunces, yet somehow not subdued to an Idiot Plot. They might say and think a bunch of stupid things, but somehow manage, often thanks to mysterious outside influences, to make all the right moves and advance the story where it needs to go.

Speaking of mysterious outside influences, it's time I start to mention David Lynch. I can not say if either Murakami or David Lynch bear any influence on each other, but there is definitely a resemblance between their stories. It's in these stories we find an access to a "hidden" world and a cast of mysterious conceptual characters, bearing influence on our own world and forcing us to confront events that we may not fully understand. I'm thinking of the David Lynch characters like the bald creepy guy from Lost Highway, the cowboy from Mulholland Drive, Bob and a whole cast of spirits from Twin Peaks or those strange rabbits from Inland Empire. Likewise, Murakami revels in these strange characters and hidden worlds. The primary difference, I've noticed, is that David Lynch will use these characters to throw a curve-ball and twist the story's conclusion to completely unforeseen locations. Places we were never invited or dared to tread, and they tend to be unforgiving and merciless. Murakami, on the other hand, uses his mysterious characters to eventually set things right, only after a long way into the story we have figured out that there are many things wrong in the first place. I could summarise by saying that Murakami sets things right, and David Lynch sets things wrong.

Perhaps this book is a good companion to anyone who is a fan of Lost. Apart from when the nameless villain explains he is "in limbo", something the Lost creators militantly denied, both stories are equally referential to outside-sources and mysterious events or characters described as "concepts". The whole mythology of these worlds are fully fleshed out, yet not completely explained. If I ever get around to it, I should get myself into a regular schedule of watching Lost, at least one episode per night.

That's it for the review for now. I have tried not to give away too many things about what happens in the story, I mainly just wanted to touch on the essential impressions it has made on me. I'm currently caught up in the TV show, The Wire, and it has sucked up all my concentration for the time being. I'd like to leave this post with one last passage from the book, which resonated with me in a special way. If I were to ask myself where my point was, it would have been around when I was 12-13 years old, maybe younger.

p. 173:

Oshima reaches out and lays a hand on my knee in a totally natural gesture. "Kafka, in everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in very few cases, a point where you can't go forward any more. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive."

Coming up

2010-07-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

There are many topics I want to touch on in this blog, however I am restricted with time (my job) and resources (no computer). I am currently moving houses right now too so it's going to be a rough few weeks. When I'm settled I'm thinking of getting a credit card and max it out on things I need right now but can pay off later. Here are some upcoming ideas I have in mind:

Writing a novel
I'm currently writing a novel. Do I have a novel in me? Maybe just one, and it's this one. I can not divulge in what it's about right now, but it will be interesting to see how far I can take it. Will it get published? Will it be shelved, unread? Will it ever be finished? The experiences I'm going through will be exercised here, hopefully.

The films of Krzysztof Kieslowski
Once I get around to watching Dekalog and Three Colours Trilogy I hope there will be some fuel for reviewing and commentary.

Shakespear, WIlliam
My Hitchcock phase has fizzled recently and has been replaced by a new fascination with another highly overrated icon. This and other book reviews may be in the works.

The dying art of 2D animation
This is probably going to be a series of posts. To keep it interesting I may have to work other angles than the many series of posts at John K. Stuff, who comes more from inside the animation studio system, whereas I am just a spectator and amateur practitioner of 2D animation, I would like to discuss the aesthetics of the medium, why it's so appealing - or at least should be - and what is its purpose? How this purpose is lost in what the studios are doing to it now. I'd like to point out that "dying" does not mean "dead". It won't ever be dead, save for the end of the world, but it is suffering.

Hitchcock's ROPE - a brief review

2010-07-06T00:57:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing Hitchcock was best known for it was his total exaggeration of subtlety. Take PSYCHO for example: we find Norman Bates' office filled with taxidermy - an allusion to the real-life Ed Gein's hobby of dressing up in his victim's skin. In ROPE, we have a tale of two inexplicit homosexual lovers who commit a murder. We're never told they are homosexual, it is only subtly implied, then the subtlety is exaggerated by the plot - they share a unique moment together in murdering their inferior classmate.

The charm of ROPE, and the reason I think it stands above Hitchcock's other works, is primarily due to its two ultimate gimmicks. The first ida Hitchcock had was to make a film that gives the viewer the feel of watching a stage play. This means the entire story must flow in real-time and the film will not have any editing. ROPE was not so much "cut" but "stitched" together, with a couple minor exceptions. Wherever one roll of film had ended (usually with someone or something passing in front of the camera) the beginning of the next roll was attached, giving the illusion of one long continuous take. While this gimmick does remain obvious, the technical precision between the minor shortcomings is still impressive. The second gimmick was the film was to be shot in glorious Technicolor. Back in 1948 this was very new technology which required a high-maintenance beast of a camera:

This is comparible to the cameras used for shooting in 3D in use today. The combination of these two gimmicks have, in my view, clearly raised the game of everyone involved in the movie - from Hitchcock to the D.P. to the actors to the stage-hands and grips and everyone inbetween. I would like to think Hitchcock was too pre-occupied with the technicalities of this picture than to deal with the details, since unlike his other movies I can see the actors have some room to become their characters, there is even overlapping dialogue! While this movie is much more reliant on the characters not screwing up thanks to the first gimmick, the result is a film with watchability.

I would typically complain that Hitchcock's films are well written but poorly filmed. Perhaps not "poorly", but "disagreeable", none-the-less worthy of debate. In the case of ROPE it is the other way around; well filmed but a kind of disagreement in the writing. It's not very badly written in terms of plot, but seems hardly informed in understanding Nietzsche's philosophy on the übermensch (translation - "over-person" or otherwise "superman" in the context of this movie). The two lead characters were supposedly raised on the philosophy of the superman, only grossly mis-interpreted, not unlike Hitler only without the racism. The main scenario where this idea was revealed was when the murder-victim's father questions one of the leads: "So you subscribe to Nietzsche's theory on the superman?" and the protagonist replies with "yes" to which the father responds "so did Hitler". Of course, the protagonist goes into a passionate rant of why Hitler got it wrong, yet he does not justify that he gets it right himself. I can understand this film was made not long after World War II had finished, and Nietzsche's "übermensch" philosophy was probably losing favour thanks to Hitler, but in a story keeping an open mind on homosexuals, I don't see why the writer could have done some extra research and have an open mind on Nietzsche.

The übermensch is not very easy to explain, but the list of the many things it is not, by contrast, is very large. The concept was introduced in the book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" which briefly explains the übermensch is a new step in evolution for mankind. It is not a biological evolution but a mental one (the first thing the Nazi's got wrong), suited more specifically for the individualist who wishes to be seperated from the "herd mentality" (the second thing the Nazi's got wrong); in other words more suited for a hermit. It is in my observation that even someone who posesses extreme intellect, perhaps even an athiest, is still prone to fall into the "herd mentality". Nietzsche was a hermit, he invented the übermensch as a way to overcome the crushing despair of nihilism. It should also be mentioned that he was born in a family with strong religious conviction (Lutherianism to be precise) and in his dissatisfaction with the pre-conceived God he invented a new God, one that belongs to the individual.

To stray a little from the review, I personally have found contentment in nihilism. I think the destruction of belief is both liberating and also revealing of a much deeper truth: you don't have to believe in existence of things for it to exist, you can simply accept it as knowledge. I haven't read "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" all the way through. Firstly it's a very difficult book to read (an explanation of this is that Nietzsche had no peer-commentary, plus wasn't well known in his lifetime, so any criticism and affirmations come only from himself - within text itself - leading to laborious repetition and self-rebutal monologues). Secondly I found the book about as preachy and self-righteous as any other religious text.

I conclude by saying ROPE is neither right or wrong, it remains open for discussion, perhaps more about the nature of mis-interpretation. Zarathustra himself was constantly concerned with the mis-interpretation of his messages. My take on the übermensch is that it is really only a task meant to be learned by the individual, individually, and that there is no "one-size-fits-all" teaching method.

REVISED EDIT: I hadn't made any mention of James Stewart's character (the "Professor"), who was the only one vaguely approaching a proper understanding of the übermensch philosophy, however I'm only going by the plot of the film. Stewart is one of the most stale actors who has ever graced the stage in front of Hitchcock's camera lens, probably why Hitchcock liked him so much up until Vertigo. I haven't seen him in a non-Hitchcock movie yet, perhaps I will make that my next assignment.

D-D-L-THON AT MY PLACE

2010-06-30T05:41:00.000-07:00

A MARATHON OF DANIEL DAY-LEWIS MOVIES TOMORROW NIGHT!

- Eversmile New Jersey -
- My Left Foot -
- The Crucible -
- The Last of the Mohicans -
- The Ballad of Jack and Rose - (this one is to clear the room in case any one is still here)

See you there!

PS - My ex-housemate took away his projector so we'll have to watch it on a small television screen.

Time to get personal.

2010-06-30T04:33:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take some time off talking about movies and start talking a little bit about my job - the movies. I can't talk about my job too often to people because it turns out that not many people really care all that much about movies. I've seen people roll their eyes at me when I tell them what I do, other people say "oh, the movies, huh? Must be good money in that!" Well, no, there isn't, but there is a lot of sentimentality for my work, if I cared any less about film I would have left a long time ago.

I have been given the immense responsibility to make sure certain blockbuster events have their exposure to many locations all around Queensland (basically I despatch boxes of 35mm film and/or hard drives to cinemas). The distributers I work with are "clients", but they really function more like my bosses, as they are the ones ultimately responsible for my paycheck. This week I was responsible for the third installment of the TWILIGHT saga, "ECLIPSE", and although I will never see this movie in my life (the only exception is if it gets a Rifftrax commentary) I can say I have had a kind of connection with this movie, a bonding, in a special sort of way.

Each movie title I deal with, there is always a kind of bonding with it. I make sure I am aware of what the film I'm dealing with is about - and I don't really have to - and take special care of the distribution, because I do care, even if I don't care about the movie. Some films I am extremely glad to have had a relationship with, particularly some Universal titles like A SERIOUS MAN or CORALINE, two films that constantly give me despatch troubles to this day, but they are truly worth the effort for they are excellent films. I regret that INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS has fallen flat, because that film was great too. But even films like BABY MAMA, THE MUMMY III and MAMMA MIA! (all of which were being screened at different places at the same time) are memories that have shaped my journey. That's more than I can say about some of my favourite films of all time.

Up until now with TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE - where every cinema wanted to marathon the first two prequels on the opening night causing one of the most busiest and emotional weeks in my life -, a film distributed by Hoyts (who I started working for only this year), I would have to say the two other biggest ordeals of this job were involving Twentieth Century-Fox, namely AUSTRALIA and AVATAR. Other than having to send out ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW at least thrice a year, these two films have had the biggest impact on me (the result of big-shot directors making last-minute adjustments), and I haven't even seen AUSTRALIA. But perhaps I am fortunate enough to start this job when I did (I started in July 2008), hearing stories about what the guy before me had to go through with the STAR WARS movies (Episodes I, 2 and 3), and TITANIC as well.

I can't say my clients are wholly dependent on me to make sure their blockbusters or whatever film of the week gets its complete exposure; if I were to quit on the spot then someone else will easily replace me. But responsibility is responsibility, and although times get stressful, thinking about how big a role I have in looking after an entire state of a country makes it all worth while. Just don't talk to me about the fucking A-TEAM. Just...don't.

HITCHCOCK-BLOCKED

2010-06-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

(This post will remain pictureless)

1.
I have recently been going on an Alfred Hitchcock-spree, not so much "getting into" his movies but more like "catching up". I've already seen PSYCHO and I think enough has been said about that movie by others so I will not go into length about it right now. I recently caught up with ROPE, which I consider more of an experiment rather than a film, however I still enjoyed it and not much needs to be said other than appreciating it for its technical feats (and follies) --NOTE: between writing the first draft of this post and now I also saw THE BIRDS and it was fantastic, but will require its own posting after this-- The film I will be discussing here is VERTIGO, but first I must express my feelings towards Hitchcock in general.

2.
I am not a Hitchcock fan. The closest I can get to love the majority of his work is if I loved to hate them (THE BIRDS and ROPE excluded). The reasons why will be discussed using VERTIGO as the prime example, but the fact remains is that Hitchcock is a lasting influence for film-makers and story tellers to this day, if not then he is an influence of the influences. I can understand this, although I'm a fan of Orson Welles and he is considered influential to Hitchcock (compare TOUCH OF EVIL where Janet Leigh gets into trouble at an out-of-way motel with PSYCHO where Janet Leigh gets into trouble at an out-of-way motel). Hitchcock did things differently and told stories in new and exciting ways, in doing so creating everlasting conventions which have stuck with the modern film-makers of our time. Very often you find people making films refering to a scene as a "Hitchcock moment" or talking about "what Hitchcock would do", so where else is a better place to look for the leading moments of cinema than from the leader himself? This is when I decided to watch VERTIGO.

3.
VERTIGO contains everything I love and hate about Hitchcock. VERTIGO was apparently Hitchcock's "personal masterpiece", the one he self-indulged in the most out of all his films, the one he had to struggle with the most to get made. All the greats have them: Miyazaki has PRINCESS MONONOKE, Kubrick has EYES WIDE SHUT, Welles has CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, Hanake has TIME OF THE WOLF, Kurasawa has RAN and Werner Herzog has just about every film he's ever made. These are the films that are the most difficult to sit through but the most revealing of its creator; and the most rewarding to the creator's ardent fans. You only really watch them in order to understand your heroes on a more personal level, like they are opening up their deepest secrets and fears just for you, but you have to prove your worth by actually making it to the end of the film first (not as easy as it sounds), then you can start appreciating the depth of what you just saw. Research is an important factor in understanding these types of movies, it's equally important to have seen the entire body of work from the director, or as much as you possibly can. Naturally, I dived right into VERTIGO without doing any of this, so my review will be biased towards the more "casual viewer" mentality.

4.
VERTIGO suffers from an ailment in film-maiking I call the "Hitchcock Stale". Many horror movies and, oddly enough, comic-book adaptations suffer from this. It's not to say Hitchcock invented it, but Hitchcock truly defines it and mastered it as his trademark. The "Hitchcock Stale" is made up of a combination of many symptoms, mainly to do with the director's total demand for complete control. Firstly, Hitchcock commisions a script to be written, commonly adapted from a book - sometimes the book is commissioned by Hitchcock - and adapted by a rotation of screenwriters. Once the script is approved by Hitchcock then he will never deviate from it. These scripts, by the way, are written more like shot-lists; basically the movie is already made before it is even filmed. It is frustrating for me when I can clearly notice a film-maker unable to "let go", the ones who suffer the most are the actors. The actors are not given any breathing room to give life to their characters. The spoken lines are flatly delivered, the movements are mechanical. I don't think it should be required of me to pay extra attention to a casual mundane conversation when it reveals required exposition. It's hard enough in an Orson Welles movie where he constantly provides visual distractions during an important complex conversation, Hitchcock on the other hand is boring me to sleep.

Another symptom of "Hitchcock Stale" is almost metaphorically egregious in VERTIGO. The protagonist's acrophobia - irrational fear of heights - seems to reflect Hitchcock's irrational fear of shooting on location. I wouldn't be surprised if all the outside scenes were shot by second-unit. A particular moment of conspicuous staleness is a scene with James Stewart and Kim Novac supposedly on a bay of rocks by the ocean, but obviously super-imposed over a pre-photographed movie behind them (including complimentary fake wind generated by off-screen fan). Hitchcock believes that close-ups must be shot with studio lighting, however I'm too distracted by the studio lighting on the actors mis-matching with the natural lighting of the outside location (a common problem that is noticeable on compositing special effects to this day). I'm guessing Hitchcock wanted to time a specific tidal-crash to a specific point of the conversation, but really, who cares?

5.
Despite its staleness, there are parts of VERTIGO I found extremely impressive, and I see in these parts where the Hitchcock inspiration comes from. Perhaps Hitchcock's inability to "let go" comes from the great ideas he has to tell a story. I think the parts that shine the most in VERTIGO are the parts where Hitchcock puts faith in his collaborators. After a particularly long and boring expositional conversation (where I mentioned I nearly fell asleep) there is an extremely long set of scenes - almost like a slowed down montage - that eliminates dialogue altogether. It is here when the music of Bernard Hermann does the talking and I was able to become emersed in the world of the film. I don't know whether it's true or not that Hitchcock snatched Hermann from seeing CITIZEN KANE, but he certainly saw the benefits of putting more trust in the composer than anyone else (Bernard Hermann was even given credit as "sound adviser" on THE BIRDS, which was a scoreless movie save for the synthesised bird sounds).

I liked the editing of VERTIGO. There is a particular moment when James Stewart is following a car that seems to drive endlessly down-hill, which we can see is an editing trick that cuts out any flat-road or up-hill driving, but also an editing effect which expertly inserts the protagonist's distorted perspective into the viewer. Another distorting effect on the viewer is when it gives an "ending" about half-way through the film, and then provides a coda which seems to keep going and going, then you realise after thirty minutes or so that maybe there is more to the story, and you have to kind of re-position yourself to get back into the movie again. Unless that's just me, I don't know.

6.

(more to come)

HOW OFTEN DOES FUNNY GAMES BREAK THE FOURTH WALL?

2010-06-11T01:26:00.000-07:00

More often than you think. The story imposes itself as a challenge for the viewer to deconstruct, constantly alienating while manipulating them simultaneously. The film is drawn into its own self-awareness, as if giving criticism of the story within the story itself.

DISCLAIMER:
Of the two characters interchangebly called "Peter and Paul", "Tom and Jerry" or "Beavis and Butt-Head" (I can't remember who's called what), I will refer to them as "the tall one" and "the fat one" based on Haneke's own explanation that they are modelled off a stereotypical clown duo.

FIRST EXAMPLE - THE MUSIC

The opening titles at the very beginning contains a visceral moment of immediate alienation. The family are enjoying a road game of "Guess the Opera" when all of a sudden Haneke deploys non-diegetic music with no warning whatsoever. It is a very loud, brutal and dissonant type of art/noise-thrash (by New York art/jazz musician John Zorn) purely designed to shock and put you into discomfort. Even for a lover of abrasive noise music like myself, it's the juxtaposition of the sound against the smiling, loving faces of the family that conveys the sense of bother.

The brilliance of this moment is only realised much later in the film; the scene when the boy escapes to their neighbour's house to hide. The tall one chases after him and plays a sort of "Hide and Seek" game in the house. Here he puts on a CD and once again it is John Zorn, only this time it's diegetic. The first logical question to ask is "where did this CD come from?" Certainly a burgeois household of this sort wouldn't have anything of such taste in their collection? It's not impossible, but it is extremely out of character. The answer might be that the tall one (who has by now physically looked past the fourth wall and spoken words to the viewer) must have brought the CD with him. One could even say that Haneke passed it over from behind the camera while we were looking somewhere else. Thinking back to the opening title sequence, and even the ending credits, perhaps the tall one has some control over the film's output from behind the fourth wall the whole time?

SECOND EXAMPLE - NARRATIVE DEVICES

FUNNY GAMES is so full of blatant narrative conventions it almost feels like Haneke's great big inside joke. I won't be able to discuss all of them here, but there are a few subtle examples that stick out in my mind more than any others.

Firstly there is the boat's knife.

Although it has already been established that the boy has borrowed a knife and taken it to the boat, Haneke wanted us to make sure we notice that knife by giving it its own insert-shot. In fictional analysis this is referred to as "Chekhov's Gun" (Chekhov says that if you introduce a rifle in the first chapter it must absolutely go off in the second or third chapter, otherwise don't introduce it at all). If it's not obvious enough that we see the knife, when the rope pulls it in the boat we get an exaggerated whooshing sound which indicates about the same amount of power as Xena: Warrior Princess waving around her broad-sword. The knife turns out to be a Red Herring (when "Chekhov's Gun" turns out to be completely useless) but we do see the real gun at another point in the movie.

So anyway, why does the dog bark so much at these two guys?

We saw it just earlier when it was much more playful and obedient. It doesn't seem like the vicious protective type, but then it goes berserk as soon as--oh.. oh right, they're the bad guys.

Then there's the golf ball.

The same could be said about the eggs, but what does the golf ball represent? It seems to come off as being significant as it makes pivitol appearances in the story. Is it a symbol of anxiety? The every-day noose around the neck one is trying to escape from in this sport, or rather luxury, designed for the upper-middle class? But really, I think it's just a McGuffin. It pretends to signify something important but its only use is to say "here I am! Time to move the plot forward." It's a kind of device that stares at you directly, and silently, so in reality it's not directly criticising you, it makes you resort to criticising yourself.

The golf ball is one of many psychological effects this movie has on the viewer. My favourite scene is also the most difficult scene for me to sit through. It is when the fat one is innocently asking for some eggs on behalf of the neighbour. Although the characters are polite and well adjusted, there is an incredible tension building increasingly as the scene goes on, and it's always there no matter how many times I watch it. You know the plot of the film - two intruders enter a family's vacation house and terrorise them until they are all slaughtered by the morning - so the eggs scene is the obvious build-up before the terror; we only came to see this movie for the terror. But the scene, it is drawn out for an excruciatingly long time, in my head I'm screaming "TAKE ME TO THE VIOLENCE ALREADY!!!" It is here when Haneke shows you who you really are. He says so himself in an interview:

Basically, you have the option to sit there and take it, or just walk away.

Just walk away...

THIRD EXAMPLE - THE ACTORS

(more to come)

Aesthetics.

2010-06-08T00:39:00.000-07:00

A few years back I watched a Korean movie called The Tale of the Two Sisters. I found the actresses who play the "two sisters" cute looking, like I do with most Koreans, so I thought I'd check it out for cuteness sake. It was pretty good, but spoiled with a cliché ending that ripped off another movie that begins with "F" and ends with "ight Club". Unlike that other particular movie, the ending of Two Sisters didn't manage to invoke a second viewing, so I left it at that.

Last year, a film was released called The Uninvited, and it was an American remake of Two Sisters. My first thought was "oh jeez" but then I noticed one of the actresses was Emily Browning, who previously made it big in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events; which I haven't seen but I often noted the remarkable cuteness of Browning. In The Uninvited she's now a semi-grown up young woman but still retains the baby-cuteness that draws me in to the places I often forbid myself to go (I'm talking about bad movies *er-her-hem*).

A pre-warning: I'm not going to be posting pictures in this one. Due to technical difficulties it is too much effort, so just go on imdb and see the pictures there for reference.

I watched The Uninvited recently, and it was pretty bad by the standards of a critical thinker like me. To briefly point out the things that turned me off: It was really awkward to sit through. Even if it is your intention to make a scene awkward, it doesn't make it any easier to watch, so I'd make sure to handle awkwardness with a deep purpose and to a total effect (I had the same problem with Where the Wild Things Are even though it was an exercise in eye-guaging beauty). It has one long drawn out scene with a therapist, which turns me off instantly. I consider the process of making a film itself as a form of therapy, so it's redundant (not an enhancement) to add a therapy session in the story. There was Internet-searching as plot development. No amount of horror in movies will reach the amount of horror that is the Internet, not to mention it was handled a bit sloppily. To a seasoned horror-movie watcher this film's "scary" moments are pretty tame, and they didn't add much to the story, they seemed just slapped in as some kind of unexplained supernatural existence for the sake of shock value. The twist ending was an anticlimax, which I don't think was intentional.

This movie was worth sitting through, in the end. It was saved by the sublime beauty of Emily Browning. If ever the film were to veer off into awkwardness and drawling plot development, my eyes can wonder and absorb the unending aesthetic overload of Browning's presence; since fortunately for me, she is the film's centre. Whether or not she was capable of carrying the film on her shoulders I couldn't care less, I was too busy getting lost in her hazel eyes, her perfect lips, the contours of her cheeks, the softness, the perfection. She is the highest achievement in beauty, she is Beethoven's 9th, she is Pachelbel's "Canon in D Major" sung by the voices of the Angels in Heaven. In every scene I'd fall in love, then fall in love with falling in love, then fall in love with falling in metalove, then fall in metalove with falling in metalove. You get the picture. I need a girlfriend, I know.

Emily Browning is an Australian actress. If you've lived in Australia then you'd notice she is undeniably Australian looking, some might say she's a "bloody fine sheila" (other acceptable mysoginistic Aussie white trash terms might be "hot chicky-babe" or "you-little-beauty"). It's hard to get past the opening scene where she's kissing some surfer dude at a party (the kind where little kids get naughty), but he dies (whoops! Spoiler) so I got over it eventually. The original Korean version didn't have any love interest, which is probably what ended up bothering me about it. The older sister, played by Arielle Kebbel, was also nice looking, but she had this "Maggie Gylenhaal from Donnie Darko" party-gal feel which didn't interest me very much. There was plenty of eye-candy to be had with bathing suits and a bit of (body double?) underwear nudity, oh yeah and that dress with maximum "whoah-mama" cleavage.

In conclusion, the faults of the film were of no faults of the actors, they did the best they could with what they had. The story and the scenes were not completely thought through, there are better ways to convey the feelings of dominance or fear in characters, there are better ways to convey a sense of unease in a viewer, it doesn't have to result and resort to awkwardness; unless the story truly calls for it. But I pose the question: Can bad films be saved by beauty? My answer is that it makes it easier to stomach, like a spoonful of sugar to make the pain more swollowable.

IF HANEKE MADE A SUPERHERO MOVIE

2010-06-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

When I went and saw Kick Ass, thanks to the highly esteemed recommendation from a friend - whose opinion I trust - it was unfortunate that I was gritting my teeth through the whole film and could only breathe a sigh of relief when the credits rolled so I could get the hell out (I only sat through the whole movie to give it the benefit of the doubt, thanks to the "friend"). My thoughts while watching it were "what the heck are they doing? How can our society take such backwards strides into its own depravity?! Do these people know what they are?" and I realise it is because I have already previously seen Funny Games - multiple times - and Kick Ass seems to obvliviously commit every sin that Haneke has been criticising all these years, not to mention other master film makers like Sergio Leone, Kubrick, Orson Welles, Scorcese and even Tarantino. These sins include - glorifying violence for the sake of being so bloody it loses any effect, which includes the act of drawing out the violence for an extremely long time, being unaware that the viewer is an accomplice to the acts of violence this is also a very sadistic thing to do. There is no build up to the violence, the violence doesn't happen in quick bursts. I figured it was universally known that violence in cinema is about an emotional response, therefore it must be over almost just as it started, so that the pain of the act lingers as we have to think about it. If the violence is drawn out then the effect is quickly drained and all we are left to think about is what kind of make-up job did the actor(s) have to get to make it look like they're so bruised and bloody. Kick Ass has its few moments of genuine shock value, but they amount to nothing if the rest of the film is just some escapist teenage high school drama. Its overuse of campy indie-music soundtrack and lazy voice-over narrative doesn't help the film either.

I propose a thought experiment. The premise is this: What would a comic-book superhero movie be like if it was made by Michael Haneke? Now there is already a superhero deconstructionist story in Watchmen, yet I think Zack Snyder's film also suffers from the same sins as Kick Ass; explicit on-screen gore, choreographed fight scenes, over-indulgence in music choices which only devalues the intensity of the story and the power of music itself. Watchmen was a good effort, I particularly loved the opening sequences, but it suffered from style-over-substance which could not keep up with how well written the graphic novel is. I propose a different kind of superhero movie, and this is it how it might turn out:

All of a sudden, brutal acts of violence are cropping up around the city against criminals, who are all usually killed in some horribly painful way and left with a note signed by the mysterious masked vigilante. There is one criminal who survives but is in a critical state and remains in hospital. The masked vigilante's identity is never revealed throughout the movie, but we have our suspicions on an ensemble of cast memebers who are effected by the events. Is it the nurse who watches over the hospitalised criminal (who also takes martial arts classes for necessary self defense)? Is it the police man (or woman?) who is working on the case to find the masked vigilante, and who is also trained in martial arts? Is it the journalist who is covering the story? The vigilante is covered in the media in negative bias, but we learn the public have a secret yearning for a "hero" and lap up all the sensationalisation in the news. After some brutal confrontation, the next note left by the "hero" is leeked to the newspapers and published in full. It says that the next criminal to be caught will face a public execution. Tensions rise in the air, but finally a gang of twenty or so criminals plan a mass escapade of crime. The hospitalised criminal eventually dies and his daughter is now orphaned, she starts taking martial arts classes and the first thing she is taught is that the art of fighting is to "fight without fighting". That night the large gang of criminals go on a spree and sure enough our "hero" shows up and displays an inhuman fighting power - twisting the words "fighting without fighting" to a dark interpretation being more like a one-sided slaughterfest. None of the violence is explicitly shown on screen which only makes it more visceral (except maybe an arm break). Naturally the music will only be diegetic, else none at all - long moments of stark silence to represent the tension of piling guilt. The next morning will reveal the shocking climax, all criminals in the gang are hanging by their necks in the area for all the public to witness in horror. Following this is a public outcry through the media leading to the politicians announcing a decree of vengeance against the "masked villian who has overstepped the line of vigilanteism". Finally, the costume is burned in small fire in the outskirts of the city, the shadowy stranger walks away in the night, never to be known. Oh yeah, and the children will cry at some point.

...

2010-06-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

I know I have left previous posts unfinished. The truth is I have prematurely reached catharsis a lot earlier than I originally planned the post-length to be. If anyone reading this wants me to finish them then just say so, otherwise I will go on assuming that I am only writing these for my own self-fulfillment; however shallow that fulfilling may be.

JENNIFER CONNOLYTHON AT MY HOUSE

2010-05-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

JENNIFER CONNOLY DOUBLE FEATURE PLUS OPTIONAL EXTRAS:

The Labrynth
Requiem for a Dream
Dark City (optional)
Hulk (optional)
He's Just Not That Into You (not optional)

See you there!

Witnessing the nth dimension

2010-05-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

I'd like to experiment on exploring the difference between a description of something and the actual experience of it; in this case I will be talking about music and film. My choice in the mediums will be ones of particular complexity, so I can emphasise the mutual difference between feeling and understanding.

First I would like to relate this text from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, when Alice is having a conversation with the Duchess:

___'I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; 'and the moral of that is - "Be what you would seem to be" - or if you'd like it put more simply - "Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."'
___'I think I should understand that better,' Alice said very politely, 'if I had it written down: but I ca'n't quite follow it as you say it.'

The trick of the passage is that it is written down, and in such a way you can read over it and follow its description and understand it. But imagine if it was said to you out loud. This is when it becomes an experience, and may put you at either a)a disadvantage due to being unable to follow its complex pyramid structure grammar or b)an advantage due to previously studying the phrase and dissecting its grammar so that it can be properly followed and understood as a sensible sentence.

The purpose of this exercise is to hopefully place one in situation (b), if one ever has the opportunity to come across any of the subjects of my experiment.

In Music

"Metal Machine Music" by Lou Reed

Description:
Taking an electric guitar and giving it an unusual tuning, Lou Reed would place it at various distances and positions close to its amplifier. The result is a feedback, which the frequency would hit the strings depending on the particular tuning, creating an overtonal vibration, The frequency of this overtone will collide with the overtones (or undertones) of other feedbacks when all mixed together, creating new overtones which collide with other new (and old) overtones - and on and on and on. All these feedback tracks were recorded on to tape, then manipulated and mixed together by Lou Reed's careful controlling hand. This constant infinite loop provides a sort of "therapy" for feedbackphiles, placed in 4 segements of 16 minutes (originally intended for it to played on vinyl), with the 4th segment infinitely looping in the ending groove around the centre of the disc.

Experience:
Unfortunately, I haven't experienced it on vinyl yet as it's a fairly difficult record to find. I do have it on CD, which provides an extreme outburst of high frequency noise, tediously carrying on like some kind of torture method. I still enjoy it immensely, and it only gets better with every listen.

The recent works of Meshuggah

Description:
In music, the rythm of a song is usually denoted by a time signature. The time signature looks like a fraction (eg. "3/4" or "4/4") whereby the denominator indicates the amount of equal parts the beat is divided into, and the numerator indicates how many of these beats will fill up the bar. Along come Meshuggah who decide to take the idea of screwing around with the weirdest and most unlikely time signatures in existence, then take it to further complications by having multiple time signatures playing at once, usually the hands of the drummer will be doing something manageable like 4/4 or 5/4 and the feet are off in their own world doing what's best described as "revolving time signatures". Mathematically, the combination would result as some twisted revolution of different time signatures I'm not even going to pretend to know or count. Sometimes the guitars are off on their own timings which complicates things further. Currently, Meshuggah reign as the kings of "Math Metal". Not only do they achieve inhuman possibilities in their composition, but they achieve machine-like precision in their sound.

Experience:
With the addition of a screaming vocalist, the lack of melodies give an overall thrash-sensibility, only the guitars seem to be strumming at any given random moment, fooling the listener in to headbanging when there is not a beat, and missing a potential headbang when the beat arrives. However, after many obsessive repeated listens, a headbanger will begin to understand the chaos and make sense of when to appropriately headbang. The consolation is in the fact that the guitar strumming and off-rythms are NOT random, the ultimate proof is in seeing this band perform live. An experienced listener will be able to headbang adjustingly - or just jump around and collide with other people in the mosh pit and crowd surf and stuff.

In Movies

"Adaptation" written by Charlie & Donald Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze

Description:
During the production of "Being John Malkovich" Charlie Kaufman was given an assignment to adapt the book "The Orchid Thief" by Susan Orlean - a book mainly about flowers. It was Kaufman's decision to stay true to the book, to keep away from Hollywood conventions and just write a film that mainly concerns flowers. Meanwhile, 3 years ago, John Laroche (the "Orchid Thief") has been caught extracting various orchids from a state-protected swamp, only he was using the aid of native American indians to legally exploit a loophole to be able to extract them. During his court case, Susan Orlean enters the story to approach Laroche about making him the subject of her column in The New Yorker. By the way, I'm not just making an introduction to lead up to what this movie is about - this is all in the actual movie! The whole scene with Laroche and Orlean is the actual adaptation which Charlie Kaufman is writing. The movie proceeds to take us back and forth between Orlean's slow development of understanding Laroche, and never being able to, and Kaufman's slow development of his script, but never being able to write it. Enter Donald Kaufman, Charlie's twin brother, who has also decided to become a screenwriter. He attends a lecture by Robert McKee and suddenly decides he's going to write a thriller - one that he doesn't realise is the most conventional derived regurgitation of what has already been done a hundred times before. Over the course of the movie, we learn the past of John Laroche, yet haven't really gone anywhere with him yet, Charlie Kaufman enters himself and his brother into the script, plus his warts-and-all failed romance with his love interest, and we come to the end of the book - a failed search through the swamp which Laroche takes Orlean to find the elusive "Ghost Orchid". The story is only half-way finished, there's not enough here for a feature-length film, Charlie is at a loss and doesn't know what to do. He tries to arrange an interview with Orlean but can't bring himself to do it, so he bails out and decides to situate himself in a lecture by Robert McKee. McKee convinces Kaufman to bring his brother in on the script, just like the twin screenwriters of Casablanca - the greatest screenplay ever written (I'm pretty sure that was a joke, or in my opinion it should be). Now Donald Kaufman has taken over the script and handles it like it's one of his conventional thrillers, he throws in all the things Charlie said he wouldn't at the beginning - car chases, drug running, a love triangle - so technically Charlie has kept to his word. I should mention at this point that the characters in this story are based off real people, similar to how John Malkovich played a dramatised version of himself (I guess in "Adaptation" he appears to play a dramatisation of himself playing a dramatisation of himself). Nicholas Cage plays a dramatisation of Charlie Kaufman, Meryl Streep plays a dramatisation of Susan Orlean, Chris Cooper plays a dramatisation of John Laroche and Brian Cox plays a dramatisation of Robert McKee. Donald Kaufman, however, is a completely fictional character. He is also played by Nicholas Cage (in trick photography), but somehow he has also received writing credit for the film itself. So in short, this is a movie written by its own characters, who are dramatisations of real characters except for one guy who is entirely fictional, or perhaps a manifestation of Charlie's own split personality?

Experience:
To watch this film, although it is highly ambitious, it still plays out like a normal film. Each scene is logically followed by another, it is a complex narrative with broken chronology, but we can follow it just like any other film. It's hard to wrap your mind around how this film seems to have perpetuated itself, the film was created within itself and somehow we are able to see it, but is this film even real? There is a duality in understanding this is a self-perpetuating story and it's also one that was created in the real world. The biggest unanswered question, which I think makes it the loudest answer to be unanswered, is why didn't Spike Jonze make an appearance at the beginning during the production of "Being John Malkovich"? We know he's the director of that film, but he's also the director of this film, but, I guess he can't be director of both at the same time. "Adaptation" still remains a difficult puzzle from the nth dimension, but if you've seen it as many times as I have, it is manageable to get your head around. Besides, as we shall see, there are many other films that take complexity to new heights; even Charlie Kaufman's own movie "Synecdoche New York" (which I've talked about at length in previous posts so I will skip it here).

"Primer" written and directed by Shane Carruth

Description:
In a voice over - via telephone monologue - by Aaron3 we are introduced to four young engineers who decide to build some sort of machine (a kind of gravity-blocking device, I think). Upon building this machine, two of the engineers who are more closer friends than the other two; Aaron and Abe, have decided to take this machine further, then accidentally stumble upon a device that recycles the same minute 1300 times. They don't know why, but they explain how it works is that there is a time-point A and a time-point B (one minute into the future). Between point A and point B is a parabolic curve which moves the object in the machine from point A to point B back to point A. All of this is explained to an impatient Aaron2, who knows all this already. Abe, however, has already decided to build a bigger, smarter, version of this machine that allows one to carry an object from point B to point A - effectively travelling back in time. Abe establishes the testing of this machine to Aaron through a past-voiceover conversation laid over a future montage of events which show both of them setting the timer on the machine (which is when they will be coming out of them) and then disappearing in a hotel room for the day, then going back to the machine and sleeping inside them with oxygen tanks and coming back out a day earlier, when the timer reaches zero. This establishes a specific kind of time-travelling, where you travel backwards in real-time - no instantaneous zipping back to the past - and only to a point which the machine can allow; no going back to shake hands with Einstein. Now Aaron has also discovered Abe has secretly made a "failsafe" machine, this is when he becomes Aaron2 and carries back his own machine (which can be folded up and duplicated in another machine), then tampers with Abe's failsafe. The reason for all this is due to an event at a party, where Abe's love interest, Rachel, is confronted by her ex-boyfriend and his shotgun. Aaron decides to tamper with the timeline to become Aaron2 and go back to the party and become the "hero". Due to this situation, Abe has now become Abe2 and Rachel's father seems to have found out about the time machines and becomes Mr. Granger2, although we aren't told how he found out about the machines, it is only implied in some previous timeline that no longer exists because it's been "revised" by Aaron3. There is one part in the movie where we see Aaron2 drug Aaron's breakfast and then drag him into the attic, then Aaron3 struggles to fight Aaron2 but he's too weak to overcome him, yet convinces him to become Aaron3. In the end, Aaron3 saves the day at the party and becomes the hero, then disappears forever. Abe2 decides to constantly tamper with the original time machine so that the original Abe and Aaron never build one in the first place, and the whole story we just watched never happened.

Experience:
I feel justified in giving away the ending because it is a film that you will have to watch many times to even begin to understand what is going on. The clever thing about this film is how extremely low their budget was, so every shot was maticulously planned out and rehearsed. In a low budget film, there will be many things that will not be shown, but here they are vaguely explained and so we are to work it out in our own minds. It plays well with the natural sense of curiosity for a human inquisitive mind, by logical thinking we can try to understand who is who, what is what and how it all comes together. Then it breaks apart because of timelines that never happened seem to explain things that did happen. One important aspect about the experience of this film is the dialogue never comes down to "our level", we have to keep up and go to their level. The explanations aren't simple, because if they were then the story just wouldn't work. What I wrote in the description could be entirely wrong, but the film hasn't told me so, I've had to try and work this all out myself. In the first experience it is a bit overwhelming, you won't get it and you know you will have to watch it many more times. The difficult part is to commit to doing that, because does it really matter in the end? The charm of a film like this, to me, is that it is presented as a challenge, it wants you to solve it, and if it is not in your interest to be challenged then you will not be interested in this movie at all. There is no reward in the form of a tangeable prize at the end, but for me, the real reward is the journey itself.

"The Fountain" written and directed by Darron Aronofsky

Description:

Experience:

"Funny Games" written and directed by Michael Haneke

(more to come)

Das Schloss, ein film von Michael Haneke (a quick analysis)

2010-05-19T01:29:00.000-07:00

This is quasi-Alice related, but I'll get to that later. I would really like to talk about this film, and how I find it a)thoroughly more enjoyable than the book and b)irresistable to rewatch over and over again. I have not done too much research on this movie, there is very little information about its production. All that I know is that it was made for television. I have a theory that Haneke simply made it for the money to make ends meet on his production of "Funny Games", which was also completed in the same year (1997) and with some of the same actors. But I could be (and should be) wrong. It seems like a much "lesser" Haneke film, but it's become one of my favourites for many reasons as I will discuss. So from an un-researched viewpoint, I will not be able to draw on too many facts other than comparisons to the book and comparisons to other Haneke films. This will be a pure analysis based on what is presented on the screen.

The book was written by Franz Kafka (translation: "The Castle") back in 1926. I was interested in reading this book because Kafka's name was dropped in another book I was reading called "Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy" - a nice book about philosophy but a terrible book about interpritations of the Alice stories - there was one chapter about the art of nonsense in literature. The chapter, written by Charles Taliaferro and Elizabeth Olson argues that nonsense is a wonderful literary device if there is a grounded protagonist who gives the perspective of sanity, and through their eyes the nonsense remains alien and/or humourous. Then they argue the dangers of absurdity, such as Kafka, Nikolai Gogol or Eugene Ionesco, where "these works tread deeper and deeper into senseless strife and violence... life and death itself become almost meaningless." I thought this was pretty cool, so I went out and bought a copy of "The Castle", translated by J. A. Underwood (who I later discovered is more of a "Kafka-purist", in terms of style that means he translated the original untainted manuscripts and left the lengthy paragraphs unbroken) and started reading right away. One thing to note on Kafka's book, in fact on his three only novel attempts, is that they were never completed before he died. "The Castle" even breaks off at mid-sentence, which plays to great emphasis in Haneke's adaptation.

There are two ways I can relay the story, the normal way in which I simply explain the entire event and give exposition in an orderly structured fashion, or relay the events and exposition as they are chronicled in the story, so as not to spoil the experience of the way it presents itself. Alternatively, I could not relay the story at all, which is what I'm going to do. For those who know the story, it would just be a tedious exercise in revising what you know already. For those who don't know the story, I would hate to spoil the joy of having it unravel in the way it should be experienced. This goes for either reading the book or watching the film by Haneke (I have not seen any other adaptations). Haneke has managed to follow the events of the book exactly as they are ordered, easily deceiving the audience in thinking it is a faithful adaptation. I don't think it is all that faithful, not in the sense of its compression of the events and dialogues, but in its stylistic display it is more of a Haneke experience than Kafkaesque.

In adapting the book to film I have noticed Haneke making considerable changes, each with a variety of reasons which I can only assume, however I will discuss each type of change with an example. They are:

Compression
There are events and, most notably, dialogue which are hugely compressed. This is the key reason for my enjoyment of the film over the book. Kafka was able to explore the extremes of novel-writing when he was able to give each character their own 10-page monologue about this and that, except not to say it's this, but as it is that then this will lead to that, not because of this but because of that. It's bad enough to stop the story dead within a book, since reading is a whole different psychology to watching, but to do that in a film will virtually stop the world turning - birds will fall out of the sky and anyone with a pacemaker will die instantly. One moment of extremely clever compression I noticed was the dialogue between K. and the landlady of the village inn, the next morning after Frieda had decided to leave her position at the Herrenhof. K. decides that he wants to talk to Klamm, but the landlady argues it is impossible. Haneke's reduction of this dialogue is beautiful, for the film there was no need for backstories, over-exposition or "this and that", K. just wanted to get out and find answers. It is a joy for me to watch this scene (all framed in a single shot) inversely proportional to how much it was a pain to read it in the book.

There are two other big compressions, one I would deem an omission, so that makes one other compression, which I couldn't help noticing. The conversation between Olga and K. at Barnabas' house, which takes up several chapters in the book, was reduced to a very small conversation. This was a part of the book I did enjoy reading, there were a lot of revelations discussed about the beaurocratic nature of village and its castle, and a whole history of the downfall of the Barnabas family. While it was all fascinating, the compression here was also necessary to Haneke. The beaurocratic nature is already discussed two other times (which I will including in the "keeping" section), and there is also Haneke's sense to leave explanations open - and this is what greatly intrigued me about the film - which has this strange incompatibility with Kafka's writing yet still makes for a compelling story.

Omission
There was one particularly large omission I couldn't help but notice. Well, make that two, except the other would be better off under "changing". And then there are another two I can think of, one of which I mentioned before under the "compression" section. Firstly, I will discuss the scene when K. talks with Erlanger at the Herrenhof Inn, then Erlanger leaves. In the book there is a giant display of chaos involving messengers and the gentlemen from the castle. Doors are flying open and slamming shut, messengers are taking letters and giving letters, then fighting or playing mind games with gentlemen in order to get messages from them or deliver messages to them. Then one gentleman in particular starts yelling and making a whole lot of noise and rings his bell, to which all the other gentlemen respond by joining in, then the landlord and the landlady walk in and grab K. by his arms and drag him out of the scene. K. only then learns that he was the reason there was so much noise and trouble, that he should have left immediately after Erlanger gave him his message. K. then has some absurd discussion with the landlady about the clothes she wears. All of this is completely gone in Haneke's adaptation. There was one important detail in this whole scene, as soon as the chaos dies down one of the messengers still has a single note left undelivered. K. wants to see what it is, but before he gets a chance the messenger rips up the note and puts it in his pocket. Such an action gives confirmation to the Mayor's long speech about how such gross miscommunication can come about and result in a mistake such as K.'s arrival to the village. There are two reasons why I can think this scene was ommited entirely. First is the budget would probably have no room for it, and considering Haneke's demand for absolute technical precision, such a thing would be out of the question. Second is that it has already been explained by the Mayor (see the "keeping" section), and thus is my argument for this film being more Hanekesque than Kafkaesque. It's almost like a mathematical elegance, to cut down the fat and give you the absolute essential information. The rest of the information around it is all there, but you don't need to be told explecitely what it is, like Kafka would tell you, but rather it's all the things you can assume on your own.

Changing

Keeping

(more to come)

The Characters of Tim Burton's version.

2010-03-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

Have you ever asked yourself after watching Tim Burton's version "what's with those characters? They're nothing like how I remembered them from the book/Disney's animated version!"

Ever wonder why Johnny Depp's characterisation of the Hatter just wasn't mad enough?

I know why. I hope you can follow without the aid of pictures. It all starts with the Red Queen.

Or is she the Queen of Hearts?

She's both. That's how it works, that's what they did. You can see the consistency in Crispin Glover's performance as the Red Knight/Knave of Hearts. Now you can notice a pattern, see the March Hare in the White Queen's kitchen throwing pots and pans and yelling "Pepper!!"? That's because he's also the "Duchess' Cook", which means the White Queen must also be the Duchess (who I can only think of as the biggest rival to the Queen of Hearts in AAIW).

So what does that make the Hatter? Well, he seemed to be the direct opponent to the Red Knight, so I guess that makes him the ....

So what does that make the Dormouse? Why was he so hyperactive rather than sleepy? And what about the Cheshire Cat, or Tweedledum and Tweedledee? The White Rabbit? The Dodo??

Minor adjustment to my Tim Burton version post

2010-03-11T07:17:00.000-08:00

In my post about Tim Burton's version last week I mentioned that I gave the film zero stars. I now change that to at least one star.

One might expect that I should give it at least something due to Tim Burton's effort to cover over the sloppy writing with his fantastic graphics and designs, but my argument is that as long as the story is so glaringly bad I can not forgive a movie for its superficial production value.

What I do forgive the movie for is the one particular actor who graced the screen, without me realising it until at least three or four days after seeing it:

Crispin Hellion Glover is a man I've recently become fascinated with. I did mention in the post that I thought it was an interesting idea to get up and close to the Red Knight, it was only a few days of thinking about it that his performance was rather excellent, and it gelled harder when I realised it was this particular eccentric, whome I've seen in at least ten other movies but never pinpointed him out until only recently when I've started reading about him.

The role I remember him the most was as "The Thin Man" from the Charlie's Angels movie (haven't seen the sequel), a film I'd give two stars - one for Crispin Glover gracing the screen with his almighty presence, another for Tim Curry and Bill Murray battling each other in those sumo suits. I would like to watch more movies that feature Crispin Glover, but like most great actors you have to take the bad with the good, for example: Like Mike. I don't think I could sit through that, ever.

What really brought my attention to Crispin Glover is one time reading about these two strange art-films, "What is it?" featuring a cast of actors with downs-syndrome, and another called "It is Fine. Everything is Fine!". There is a third movie to complete the "It" trilogy, but no one can tell when it will be completed. I wanted to hunt down these movies to watch, but much to my chagrin (I'm sorry but I love that word) you are only able to view them when Crispin Glover decides to screen them at some independent American arthouse cinema, then have a Q&A session afterwards. Currently there are no plans to release them for home-viewing. This is all well and good for an artist to protect his work and integrity, but I REALLY want to see these movies, and I haven't the money or time to travel to USA to locate a place to see when Crispin Glover will eventually show them again. I'm hoping once the trilogy is complete, then they might be released in some awesome box-set.

In conclusion, keep an eye out for this guy, next time you decide to go watch Alice again. If you don't want to sit through that again, then check out his next film coming out soon: "Hot Tub Time Machine". Should be a good one.

UPDATE: 26 July 2010
After watching "Hot Tube Time Machine" I concluded that it was pretty crap, but worth seeing for Crispin Glover only.

Top 3 snapshots from the Walt Disney version.

2010-03-08T02:57:00.000-08:00

3.

2.

1.

ALICE IN UNDERPANTS - Thoughts on Tim Burton's version.

2010-03-05T23:21:00.000-08:00

I figured I will post a pictureless afterthought on this film. I am still posting this from my Playstation 3 so don't expect anything fancy.

FIRST NOTE: SPOILERS!!
I will not hold back on stating anything that could be a potential spoiler, as this post is more intended for those who have already seen the film.

SECOND NOTE: I GIVE IT ZERO STARS!
To get this out of the way before hand I will say now that I did not like this film, so you can expect the kind of tone my writing will be. This should not discourage anyone to not see the film, rather, one should watch this movie and share their thoughts based on one's individual experience.

THIRD NOTE: I WATCHED IT IN 3D, FOR FREE.
The film was shot in 2D and converted in post-production. The 3rd dimension was not spectacular enough for me to warrant sitting through the entire feature-length with the discomfort of the one-size-fits-all glasses. Basically, it was no where near the immersion you'd expect after seeing "Avatar" in 3D, so I suggest seeing this film in 2D on a day when tickets are on discount.

PART ONE: WHAT I DID NOT LIKE

I found this movie abysmal. The saddest part is that it looked fantastic and the design was amazing, yet all this talent was gone to waste on such clumsy story-telling. I feel the best place to begin my elaboration is on the leading lady herself: Alice.

Alice was too erotic. She was sexy, but not too permiscuous. The result is a fine balance which should be able to please the majority of the audience. As she shrinks or grows, her dresses do not shrink or grow with her (which I thought was a clever idea). When Alice shows off her body the sex-appeal is enough to turn heads of a male audience, yet her beauty and self-confidence will bring out admiration from the female audience. It sounds like a perfect plan on paper, yet it somehow diminishes any interesting qualities in her character. If she is too busy thinking about how her dresses are fitting it is any wonder how she is capable of carrying the plot forward. There is nothing wrong with a good fashion sense in film, the dresses were very lovely indeed (although perhaps more suited to the catwalk over any practical use), but they should not get in the way of the story unless they have a purpose. Take for example the film "The Devil Wears Prada". Despite its disappointing ending (I think she should have stayed with the magazine) it is a great example of a fashion-driven movie, as it is a story about fashion-journalism. In Tim Burton's "Alice", the fashion seems to serve no other purpose than diverting the viewer's attention from the sloppy writing. This film was not so much movie-magic but a movie-magic-trick. The razzle-dazzle graphics are like this wavering hand which distracts your gaze from the other hand reaching into a pocket, except instead of pulling out a coin or some object the hand stays in the pocket and furiously masturbates. The other hand just keeps on waving about yet some of us have already noticed the pocket and all we are waiting for is to see how much of a load he's going to shoot in his pants.

It is about time I discuss what it is about this story I found made it so awful. I imagine the screenwriter (Disney's all-time hack Linda Woolverton) probably thought the "Alice" books would have been better written by J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. Either way I could not seem to find any appreciation for Lewis Carroll in it whatsoever, in terms of the story that is, I must stress I loved the visual designs of the movie.

There were many moments in this film I deemed Tolkienesque; riding on the backs of large beasts, menacing flying monsters, when the Hatter was reciting the Jabberwocky poem as if it were a legend of history, big castles, etc. The most obvious Tolkienesque moment staring you right in the face is the large battle sequence - the ultimate showdown - except the sequence felt like it was handled like the croquet-game in the book (was it intentional?). It all ended up very silly, no sense of real danger to "our favourite" characters. After all, they are merely fighting a bunch of vector floating-points generated from computer software. I'm not saying that a sense of danger can't be achieved with CGI, as long as the story is told well enough for the viewer to suspend their disbelief and build up enough interest in a character for us to care about. The best example in my opinion is Golem from Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but you can't get more Tolkienesque than Tolkien. I think the writer should have stuck with being Carrollian.

Among many downsides to the story, I think the biggest culprit is the Cheshire Cat. The execution of the cat was flawless; the design, the animation and Stephen Fry's voice - all perfect, all wasted on his role as the biggest pitfall of the story - to be used as a device for the writer to resolve any challenge, any obsticle, as they see fit, also known as the "God Machine". If you think about it, the film never explains what the Cheshire Cat can't do. We see him de-materialise, re-materialise, fly, grow, shrink, transform to perfect detail into another character (save for his eyes and grin, kind of like a pokémon?) and oh yeah - you see that moon? That's actually the Cheshire Cat! One can argue that his allegiance belongs neither to the red side or the white, he acts upon his own motivations, except that he's always conveniently helping the good guys. To think, the Hatter managed to escape the Red Castle with Tweedledum & Tweedledee, with the Dormouse and with the dog's wife and pups all unscathed all because the Cheshire Cat wanted to wear the Hatter's hat! An idea struck me - imagine if the Cheshire Cat was the villian. The story would become at least a hundred times more compelling! Imagine the ultimate challenge is to defeat the Deus ex-Machina himself! Alice would have more reason to break down and cry, just at the hopelessness of it all. The Jabberwocky would not even stand a chance, Cheshire Cat would swallow it whole and then vanish like it never existed. Then everything doesn't have to be resolved. Alice could end up doing more harm to "Underland" than good, but just the task of defeating the Cheshire Cat alone would render enough catharsis from the story. An example of this kind of story can be found in Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo". The protaginist ultimately failed in his goal in building an opera-house, but still accomplished the colossal feat of shifting a boat over a mountain! It was a real live boat too, no scale-models, special effects or studio tricks. Of course it is debatable wheter one considres "Fitzcarraldo" a good film, but in the end you can claim you have had a real film experience. Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" left me feeling defeated, like realising Alice died a long time ago and this is the final nail in the coffin. I feel even more defeated in that I might be in a minority of a minority of those who thought this was a bad film.

PART ONE POINT FIVE: OTHER THINGS I DID NOT LIKE

The pacing was too erratic. Many parts were slow or fast at random, a lot of things were dwelt on that had no relevence or point, any thing that did have relevence or plot-movement was rushed. It felt like there was this one deleted scene, which forced a huge chain upon chains of other scenes to be taken out. There was a definitely a whole air of something missing. I felt cheated as we rush straight to the mad tea party, it's about the second thing that happens to Alice once she walks through the door. From there we are introduced to the Hatter, whose presence remains throughout the entire film. He kind of wears out his welcome, mostly due to his madness being toned down (or 'held back'). And his dance at the end? After all that build up? I could have cried. Whether the dance works for the film or not is debatable, but I didn't like it.

If there were something missing in this film it would be a whole cast of other interesting characters. Off the top of my head I would have liked to see Tim Burton handle the Gryphon, the Mock Turtle, the Newspaper-man, the Goat, the Lion & the Unicorn, the Sheep, Humpty Dumpty, maybe even the Walrus & the Carpenter. We are only stuck with the most popular or widely known characters, ones that people who haven't read the books would even know about. Come to think of it, whatever happened to the Dodo anyay?

I found Alice to be rather bland and uninteresting, when you look past all the nice clothes she wears. In the story it is noted she has lost much of her "muchness", yet even as she regains her "muchness" (could it pinpoint down to when she crosses the moat to enter the Red Castle?) there isn't much there.

The film was far too over-scored. A typical treatment one might notice in high-budget studio films is when they are drowned from start-to-finish in music. It has been proven that if you want intensity, take the music out! Exciting, swelling fast paced score will destroy the mood by the fact that it's trying to dictate it. When there is a tender emotional moment, the cliché violin will only serve to break away your empathy. Music can serve many purposes, it can even set a mood, but what it can't do is take you on a rollercoaster of mood-swings, especially on a film as erratic as this one.

Lastly, that parchment-thing with the illustration of Alice slaying the Jabberwocky (a nod to John Tenniel I'm sure), just where the heck did it come from?!

PART TWO: THINGS I DID LIKE

As I have stated before, I loved the visual interpretations of the characters, I only wish there were more characters and that they were written better.

I thought the floating heads in the moat were morbidly awesome. When Alice had to climb over them, and her foot fell into the gaping mouth, was delightfully creepy.

I always love to see visual interpretations of events in the book, especially the obscure events or if they were handled differently. I was a bit unsure with seeing Alice fall down the rabbit-hole so quickly, but it went on for a fairly long time which brought me momentary satisfaction. She lands hard on the floor, as if it barely hurt, so once again I'm confused as to whether we have warped gravity or Tim Burton just being weird. My answer arrives when we discover Alice is really upside-down and falls through another floor - Tim Burton is just being weird. It is around here where Alice goes through the routine of the events in the book; she tries all doors, key on table, tries key on doors, finds little door behind curtain, key works, can't fit through, drinks from labelled bottle, shrinks, forgot key on table - we break away from the routine when a couple of omnipresent voice-overs discuss "you think she'd remember all this from before", "I told you she's not the right Alice!", I almost begin to switch off but then Alice finds the cake, eats cake, grows, gets stuck, and it's here that she doesn't cry, so then I switch off again. What I noticed what was unique to this interpretation was how Alice does not talk or think to herself as she does so much in the book and other films. This allowed the scene to be played out more like a routine, rather than an adaptation, and it gave way to a more smoother pacing, which for some reason I really enjoyed.

One more brief moment I liked was a shot of the Hatter in prison, similar to an event in "Through the Looking Glass" where the White Queen relays this information to Alice, there was an illustration of "Hatta" in prison by John Tenniel, so I found that particular shot in the film interesting, whether it is what they intended or not.

FINALLY: ISSUES I TAKE NEUTRALITY WITH

When a writer feels they need to diverge away from the story of the book, this is a valid form of creativity. What went wrong here is the drastic changes to the heroine. Granted, she is grown up, but the book had the character portrayed so right - you fall in love with Alice much more than you'd want to have sex with her, even if you were as much of a pedophile as Lewis Carroll himself - and the film failed to accomplish this. Fortunately you don't have to be a pedophile this time around to find Alice sexy.

In diverging from the books (even for those who aren't) it is common-practice to cross elements from Looking Glass into Wonderland. This time we have "Underland", probably a portmanteau of the original manuscript's "Under Ground" and "Wonderland" (as the film describes Alice as simply misinterpreting when she was little). I often describe crossing the two books as "playing chess with a pack of cards", only that's what sort of happens in the film anyway. At least I was assured that when we entered through the rabbit-hole and not through the looking glass there would be no clever Looking Glass logic or intricate chess-game structure.

I thought I'd have an issue with the merging of the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts, but it surprisingly worked well i.e. from a design standpoint. It contributed to the story as a Red Queen having an ironic fascination with the heart symbol - as a pre-ordained desire to be loved more than feared - versus the White Queen, who I can't really describe more than any kind of symbolic interpretation of whiteness can. The merging of Red Queen and Queen of Hearts is complimented by the Red Knight being merged with the Knave of Hearts. I thought it was an interesting idea to get to know the Red Knight more up close and personal, as we are hardly acquainted with him in the book, it becomes an area open to creative licence.

An unlikely merging was that of the March-Hare and the Duchess' Cook, I don't have much comment on that.

I don't take issue with "Underland" being a real place rather than Alice's dream, as much as I hate the whole "you have to believe" schtick. Perhaps it wasn't as thought through by the writer, but it can be read into much deeper. The ending of "Through the Looking Glass", as well as dialogue from Tweedledee & Tweedledum, suggested that these stories were not dreams of Alice but dreams of the story teller. It all gets a bit meta when we talk dreams about dreams but you don't really need to dwell on it too much.

A final thought goes to how much attention was payed to the Jabberwocky poem. In the book the poem plays no significant role to the story on a whole, even its creatures are not considered as chess-pieces by Carroll's "Dramatis Personae". I have more to say about the Jabberwocky in another post, once I am able to post pictures again.

Well that's it, that's all I have to say. Stay in school, read more books, and I'll see you in court.

computer died

2010-02-20T23:55:00.000-08:00

I am out of action until I buy a new one (something that's been a long time coming).

I am posting this from my PS3, but the browser is really basic, I can't post images or anything fancy!

agh

I will resume shortly

2010-01-16T22:14:00.000-08:00

but as for further reading, I recently bought

Lewis Carroll The Complete Works

so maybe I can be a bit more informed in my reviews. I haven't started reading it yet, but as a hint, the first review I do will be for a really bad one, so I probably won't need to go too much into the other works of LC.

EDIT (19/5/2010): I've been reading Sylvie & Bruno, and it's far superior to Alice in every way.

2010-01-10T12:18:00.001-08:00

I'm currently working seven days a week so all my free time is sapped up. Once this thing at my work is all over I'll delete this post and get back to it.

more attempts

2010-01-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

Alice fanning herself with her hat:

Not quite what I'm after, I'm thinking I'm going to have to try it digitally.

Mission Statement

2009-12-31T20:46:00.000-08:00

On January 1st, 2010, I have started off the new year with an explosion - of embarrassing memories involving the New Year's Eve party I had last night. But I am now compelled to begin with the following mission statement and adhere to it commencing today.

Only recently I have become obsessed with Lewis Carroll's twin stories of Alice - Alice's Adventures (in Wonderland) and Through the Looking Glass (and what Alice found there) - and since reading the books and everything about the books, I have had a keen interest in the film interpretations of the books. What I found in these interpretations was the joy of learning other perspectives, also the joy of immersing myself within the books deeper as I unravel these perspectives. I'm constantly discovering new things - which can be said of just about any novel, but the Alice books are ones I find the utmost pleasure in reading which sets itself above any other book in the place of being my favourite.

In this very blog of mine I feel that it can be used as my medium to completely share my discoveries. In plain terms: I will write a review for every filmed interpretation I can get my hands on. There are rules to set myself, the main point will be to know how far a story can go before you can call it an "Alice" story. There are shows like Lost or movies like The Matrix which make allusions to Alice, but they are not exactly adaptations of the Lewis Carroll books. The SyFy 2009 television version of Alice however has extracted characters and events that take place in the books and twisted it into its own tale, therefore warrants a review. Basically, if a girl called Alice has followed a white rabbit down a rabbit hole (or through a looking glass) then I will want to review it.

I will have a format for every review to follow. It will be in this order:

Relating to the books - to observe exactly how the film-makers have interpreted the very words of the books, and how closely (or loosely) they have stuck to them. I also bring up concerns about the separation between Wonderland and the Looking Glass events and characters, and how some film makers have brought them together under the same roof. I bring these up more out of interest than spite, so bear with me. I will not pretend I know everything about Lewis Carroll, the Liddell sisters or any other person Carroll knew, but I know as much as I have currently read (which is not enough) and use whatever knowledge I can to help explain myself in this section of the review.

Creative liberties outside of the books - observing events or characters that have nothing at all to do with the books, and see how they interact within the story. It might be strange but this kind of thing occurs very often and sometimes they work really well, other times they completely miss the mark. I think this should be explored as thoroughly as the book itself, for it will explain either the mentality of the film-makers, or the logic of Wonderland/Looking Glass much further.

How the film plays out - split into two segments:

Storytelling structure - the pacing and overall dynamic of how the story plays out. Weather it's engaging or boring, comedy or tragedy or anywhere in between.

Filming technique - visually dissecting the scenes in terms of cinematography, movement, acting, dialogue/monologue, editing, music, sound, stage, props, special effects (CGI/puppets/compositing). If it's an animated film I'd like to observe its animation technique and technicality. If there's anything I've forgotten please tell me.

It is important that I remain objective and never use an example of "how I would have done it". These reviews are all about the films themselves and respecting how it has been done. Anything about "how I would do it" will belong in their own separate posts.

Now I would like to list all the characters of Wonderland and Looking Glass for I will often refer to who is included and not included since I believe it's a matter of importance. These lists will help not only anyone unfamiliar with the books (but familiar with the movies) but also help myself to constantly check off the characters and see who's who and what's what. I will often include characters in terms of how I interpret the story, but without breaking my own rule I will write additional notes at the end to basically say that these issues can be disregarded, yet still carry an importance in my mind when writing a review. There are also characters repeated many times, since as I see it that every time they come and go they seem to have a different behaviour. In terms of dream-logic I'd like to think they are different characters all together, this however can also be disregarded if you please.

Wonderland

Alice and her older sister
White Rabbit (down the rabbit hole)
Dinah (Alice's cat)*
White Rabbit with kid gloves and fan
Mouse
other animals and birds inc. Dodo, Duck, Eaglet and Lory
White Rabbit (thinks Alice as "Mary-Ann")
White Rabbit (voice)
Pat (voice)*
other various voices
Bill (sounds and voice)
a crowd of animals and birds inc. Bill (a lizard) and guinea pigs
Giant puppy dog
Caterpillar (smoking hookah on a mushroom)
Old Father William and his son
Pigeon (crying "serpent!")
Fish footman
Frog footman
Duchess
Baby
Cook
Cheshire cat
Baby (pig)
Cheshire cat (talking to Alice)
March Hare
Hatter
Dormouse
Five, Seven and Two (of spades - gardeners)
the Queen's parade -
-ten soldiers carrying clubs
-ten courtiers ornamented with diamonds
-ten royal children ornamented with hearts
-guests (Kings and Queens)
-White Rabbit
-Knave of Hearts
-The King and Queen of Hearts
Croquet game - hedgehogs and flamingos
Cheshire cat
the executioner (an ace of clubs)
The Duchess
The Queen (of hearts)
The King
Gryphon
Mock Turtle
The trial -
-King (as the judge)
-Queen
-White Rabbit
-Knave (in chains)
-the whole pack of cards
-birds and beasts (as the jurors inc. guinea pig)
Hatter
Dormouse
March Hare
Duchess's cook
Alice's sister

*Dinah appears when Alice falls into a dream during her fall down the rabbit hole, then she wakes up from that dream when she lands in a pile of sticks and begins her adventure. To me this represents more than a dream-within-a-dream, but more like a new dream followed by another new dream, as if this was the proper procedure to access Wonderland. I would imagine the White Rabbit must go through the same thing. This is all just my own speculation, and the Dinah-dream is often excluded from adaptations. It just occurred to me that perhaps the White Rabbit has a more exclusive access as it's presented this way in Jan Svankmajer's version, I'll post more about that in its respective review. The only time we see an illustration of Dinah is right at the end of Through the Looking Glass, but when Alice has her dream while falling is when I personally would consider Dinah as a proper character of the story, although unseen.

*As I read it in the book, the moment when Alice is stuck in W. Rabbit's house she is interpreting within her own mind what is happening outside, through voices and sounds that she can hear. I love when books use literary devices like this and doesn't just go for an all out visual description of where the characters are and what they see. The book's illustrations depict what is happening outside, but only as it's described through Alice's interpretation. So in this instance, we never actually get to meet Pat in person, other than hearing his voice and knowing he's probably Irish or something. Every film adaptation I've seen seems to depict what is going on outside as if that's how the story actually is, so then Pat now becomes a fully developed character.

Looking Glass

Here I'll decide to use the book's original "dramatis personae" and show the characters as they are representatives of chess pieces. This involves pretty much every character of the book, except a few I will add on to afterwards. The "pieces" are arranged in the order Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, Bishop, Knight, Rook.

WHITE

PIECES:
Tweedledee
Unicorn
Sheep
W. Queen
W. King
Aged man
W. Knight
Tweedledum

PAWNS:
Daisy
Haigha
Oyster
Alice (replacing "Lily")
Fawn
Oyster
Hatta
Daisy

RED

PIECES:
Humpty Dumpty
Carpenter
Walrus
R. Queen
R. King
Crow
R. Knight
Lion

PAWNS:
Daisy
Messenger
Oyster
Tiger-lily
Rose
Oyster
Frog
Daisy

Other characters include:
Dinah
Kitty (black kitten)
Snowdrop (white kitten)
Jabberwocky and other creatures from that poem:
-toves
-borogroves
-raths
-Jubjub bird
-Bandersnatch
The train guard
Man dressed in white paper
Goat
Beetle
Gnat (tiny insect voice)
a hoarse voice (Horse) followed by other voices
Looking-glass insects:
-Rocking-horse-fly
-Snap-dragon-fly
-Bread-and-butter-fly
Leg of mutton
Plum-pudding

if there was any more I missed out please let me know.

Alice with a hat?

2009-12-29T13:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a thumbnail sketch I did a while ago. If I had time I'd scan some other attempts I made, but maybe in the future I'll show what my progress is like as I keep re-attempting these images until I've perfected them.

The story behind it goes like this:

I've often said (not on this blog but elsewhere) that if I were to do an interpretation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland then I would leave out any element from Through The Looking Glass. There are many reasons, but the biggest one is that Looking Glass has its own logic which is more self-contained outside of Wonderland, mixing them up will not so much taint Wonderland but more-so on the genius of Looking Glass. More explanations on the separate logics of Wonderland and Looking Glass will come later.

HOWEVER, if I were to interpret Wonderland, perhaps I might take liberties in adding elements of the original MS - "Alice's Adventures under Ground". Now what is in the original MS that is not included in Wonderland? We all know that there are many things in Wonderland not included in the MS, many of the best parts, but if you read the MS much closer it will certainly have a different feeling to it. What I like about Under Ground is that it is much more directed as a gift towards the Liddell sisters, whereas the Wonderland story is more directed to a general audience, but with parts that still honour the idea of being a gift to the Liddell sisters. Oh yeah, and there's also this one small detail, mentioned only once but sparked a whole new world of ideas in my mind:

"And yet what a dear little puppy it was!" said Alice, as she leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with her hat, "I should have liked teaching it tricks, ..."

I thought it interesting, since the illustrations by Lewis Carroll in the MS (which he stated he drew them much later after writing down the words) depicted Alice without a hat. Maybe he forgot about it? Maybe he thought it was too hard to draw? His drawings aren't very good by illustration standards, I could imagine him having nightmares about trying to draw a hat. I remember the difficulties of hats back when I was a crude artist. Then when it came time to write Wonderland, he probably considered the illustrator John Tenniel would be drawing Alice with no hat, so he changed the text:

"And yet what a dear little puppy it was!" said Alice, as she leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with one of the leaves. "I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, ..."

So what is the true Carrollian intent? Did he want a hat, but thought it too difficult to predict visually? It makes sense to me, since Wonderland is set in summertime, a hat would be useful, plus being the Victorian era when it was common practice to wear hats. Or was it more "Carrollian" to have Alice fan herself with one of the leaves? She was shrunk down so small that a leaf would be sufficient to be a fan.

In my mind, I want to see more Alice wearing a hat. I would want an interpretation that other people may not have seen before, and still back up my points with quoting the text to support my ideas (without having to twist words, but just leave the words as they are).

I've run out of time so maybe I'll expand this later.

Although I did fail the challenge

2009-11-20T00:02:00.001-08:00

I wasn't afraid of doing so!!

What I learn.

2009-11-12T23:41:00.000-08:00

I set a challenge for myself recently on DeviantArt. For 15 days in a row, I will draw one picture a day and submit it to my gallery regardless of quality and completion. One hope is to make a habit out of drawing pictures more, but along the way I found myself overcoming many weaknesses I have had that held me back. These are weaknesses I would outright deny, or even worse proclaim them to be my strengths! Here are the two generalised weaknesses with expanded insight explaining just about everything in the universe: Fear of Failure and Perfectionism. I am NOT trying to write an inspirational piece! This is entirely personal, only fit for me. If anyone else relates to it then that's fine, but there is no gospel here.

1. Fear of Failure.

This one was hard to admit at first, but looking at my results in the past (or lack of) I had to seriously analyse myself and open my mind to any new possibilities if it had a chance of helping me. I'm only up to the 6th day in my challenge and I've already noticed how fear of failure has consumed me in the past.

The way it works is this: I draw a picture and it's chock full of mistakes, I hate the drawing. It doesn't meet the minimum standards of quality I'm looking for and so I discard the drawing. The thing is, my standards of quality are much higher than anything I've ever produced in my life. They are based on other people's drawings that I'm aiming for! In order to reach that standard it takes A LOT of hard work and most importantly, the know-how.

Contrariwise (I couldn't resist), you may learn new tricks all by yourself in your own experimentation, but if you don't know how to do something you actually want to do then you won't always accomplish it through sheer luck. It takes research, practice, mastering, THEN you're open to experimentation. Above all, A LOT OF HARD WORK.

This is what fear of failure is about. I think about attempting what I don't know, but because I don't know then I haven't begun, and all that hard work that could have happened never will happen. The irony of having fear of failure is that in the end you fail anyway.

To overcome the fear of failing, I have completely eliminated the standards of quality I'm after, and I just draw what I want draw without worrying how bad it looks. If I end up hating it afterwards, at least I made something, and the failure doesn't taste so bad after all. In the end the only person I'm trying to impress is myself. I'm more impressed that I can come up with any output at all.

I am in favour of quality over quantity, but I can't handle it. I can't privately draw a thousand bad pictures for every good one I show. Keep in mind, this is only addressing my own personal issues, I wish not to inspire others to think like I do.

2. Perfectionism.

If you think too hard, you may think perfectionism is the same as fear of failure. If you think even harder, you'll find that it's in a completely different league all together. You may have heard many clichés like "nobody's perfect!" or "perfection doesn't exist!". They basically summarise everything I'm about to say, but I would really like to expand on the inherent problem of perfectionism with a couple of examples.

Firstly, perfectionism comes after the step of overcoming fear of failure, and you are ready to start working hard. But where is the point that you will be truly completed? Through the following examples I will demonstrate that no matter what state your work is in, it's always never finished and in a constant state of work-in-progress.

I'd like to use the example of a blu-ray disc I spent a lot of money on recently called Rebuild of Evangelion 1.11 - You Are (Not) Alone. I also have the DVD of Evangelion 1.0 as a comparison, not to mention the original TV series which the movie was based on (virtually identical to the first few episodes). One of the special features was a musical vignette charting the progress of "rebuilding" the Evangelion 1.0 movie into 1.01 (the version 1.11 is rebuilt even further). There are many scenes deconstructed by starting off with an animatic, or a pencil test, or primitive CGI graphics, then constantly reshowing the scene in motion as it's being worked on. The scenes would usually come to a point of being acceptable of being published on the screen, but then it gets taken further and further. More sparkles, more subtle movements, more lighting effects. It becomes excessive. I think the point that they are trying to illustrate (even from the numbering "1.11" in the title) is that there will never be a definitive, final, "perfect" version of the film. There's no reason why there can't be an Evangelion 1.2 or 1.21, up to a 1.99999999 and so on. It's possible to keep it going and going and going until it becomes the most excessively expensive and technically accomplished animation of ALL TIME (as if it wasn't already).

The other example is on another blu-ray I spent a lot of money on, being the "Definitive" Blade Runner. What they have now claimed is that this is the ABSOLUTE FINAL cut of Blade Runner. There are already 4 other versions floating around, so it was time to take all the footage they had, re-master it, fix up some scenes, piece it together under the final decisions of Ridley Scott, release it and say "No more! This is it! The DEFINITIVE FINAL CUT!!". What's to say Ridley Scott could be watching it two years later and thinking "damn it! I liked it when he said "fucker" instead of "father" like he originally did!".

The possibilities of reworking the film are endless! Scenes could be taken out for pacing, or scenes could be re-arranged. How about putting the Unicorn dream at the very beginning, opening shot of the film? Harrison Ford wakes up to it, and as for the actual opening where the last blade-runner gets shot, that information can be slowly divulged over time when they re-play the footage throughout the movie! I only just thought of that on the spot! Of course, just about every scene would have to be re-arranged to play out differently, all I'm saying is that it will NEVER be perfect. Never truly, definitively, finally completed.

Everything produced is always still in its work-in-progress, this includes work-in-progress itself. Say a film is only half completed, the rest is only shown in storyboard animatic, or missing footage, unrendered CGI effects etc. That to me is just as valid as a product you will see on the screen in the cinema (half the time they are even reworked further for the home video release). It may not look as spectacular, but the point is that it's there. The point is - there is another point relating to the last point.

If nothing is ever "complete", then when is the best time to stop working on it? First answer: when you're exhausted (either your health or even your funds). Second answer: when you hit the deadline. If you have no more time to spare, that's that and that's it. You may think you have no deadline, but that's where you're wrong. We all have a deadline, if you think about it. My deadline for this particular challenge I'm doing is midnight every night. You can set your own deadlines for yourself if you're unsure. Working without a deadline is like working without anything, but if that must be the case, then you might as well go with the first answer. I usually stop drawing when I'm completely exhausted, then I go and watch a movie or play a video game for the rest of the night.

Overcoming perfectionism is coming to accept that there is no completion. Every species on the planet is still evolving. Everything you do will always be work-in-progress (WIP). You must accept that early stages of WIP and later stages of WIP are one in the same blanket. When you need to stop, then just stop! You can always re-work it later when you've gained some know-how, or you can just move on to something else!

Lastly.

A smaller thing for me to overcome right now is laziness. I just generally feel too tired a lot of the time to ever work on anything. Firstly, I know there is no such thing as "artist's block", it's just an excuse for your laziness. If I'm out of my own ideas, then I'll draw some fan-art. My mind is always banging on about something, so it's not hard to draw anything related to what I think about.

An obvious improvement over laziness, even general fatigue, is analysing your own diet. If food is supposed to supply you with energy, then why do I get tired when I eat so much of it? Firstly, it's hard to have energy when you're not up and exercising physically, and drawing pictures or writing isn't about developing your six-pack no matter how you think about it! Secondly I'm eating too much crap and I'm not eating enough vegetables and raw fruits.

I read some blog post from a vegan talking about how milk isn't good for you unless you have four stomachs like a cow, and how his health has improved after he started eating more vegetables and raw fruit. I was slightly irritated by a sudden turn in vegan-preaching, but simultaneously I was desperate enough to try something new anyway. I went down to the fruit-store and bought some pears and mandarins and experienced it myself. I started feeling a bit ill, which is apparently normal as the "toxins" were being "flushed out", but then I felt fine a little while later, and rather energised too! To me it felt like a cleansing process, and the thing about me is that I kind of like the cleansing process, enough to go "play in the dirt" just so I can get cleaned out again. I still drink milk, I enjoy my calcium, but I make sure I eat some raw fruit afterwards. I've taken it upon myself to eat more fruit, I feel it's done me well. You don't get an energy "kick" like a caffiene buzz, but it's more like a healthy energy spread out over time, which is exactly what I want for non-physical exercise and long-lasting concentration.

Overcoming laziness is the biggest challenge, but the best way I can think of is through the art of habit. We live our lives by habits, we make them and break them all the time. Most habits are formed without us even realising, but the most important thing to remember is that you can make your own habits. It takes patience, hard work and fanatical dedication, but you can do it.

The trick is to give yourself at least 30 days for the challenge (this is also a trick some advertisers try when they ask you to "take the 30 day challenge", so that you form a habit of buying their product intuitively against your will). Keep repeating your action over and over, mentally aware of it at first, every day. Eventually you won't have the mental awareness, it will soon become second-nature. You will just keep doing it out of the plain fact being it's what you do. Breaking habits is just as much a mental task as making them. Personally I'd like to say it's 15 days, but I haven't really tried it seriously until now, so we'll see.

Nohow.

RED NINJA video game review

2009-09-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Firstly I watched the opening movie, laughing at how corny it is, probably written by a 13 year old boy, being appalled by its choppy Uwe Boll-esque editing, I was a bit disappointed in the lack of personality or charm in the main character, a shame because she's designed so cute.

So I started playing the game, I figured out the right analogue stick controlled the camera, so I immediately went for the up-skirt and felt I've accomplished all I needed to in this game. I proceeded to turn it off and put it away, forever.

Ponyo ~ a review (pictures to come)

2009-09-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I decided to make the trip to Dendy cinemas in Portside, since it's the only place screening "Ponyo" in its original Japanese language (with subtitles). I am of the opinion, although it still lies at the heart of the fundamentals of animation, that the voices must be recorded BEFORE the animation and not after. The animators must make a performance based on the voice work! If you add voices after an established performance you are going to ruin it!!!!! The last (and only) Ghibli film I heard in English dub was "Spirited Away" which tore at my heart like a rain of knives. It's worse than listening to a ballad by Britney Spears! (I was going to say "shards of glass scraping across a blackboard" but I concluded that that might sound pretty cool)

So anyway, the movie, in its original Japanese...it's beyond words. It's what animation should be, and so much more, to the point of being excessive (which is a good thing). But what should animation be? Let me explain. Animation is about giving life to the drawings on your piece of paper. Animation should make you put aside your disbelief of what's real and what's not real - without you even realising it! This involves more than just illustration principles, there is also heavy reliance on sound-design, and also good story-telling. In this sense an animator is more like a wizard, a grand conjurer, a mage who defies the laws of energy-conservation and creates something from nothing. Hayao Miyazaki has shown with "Ponyo" that he is the grandest, most majestic magician alive. From the opening sequence of sea-life, watching hundreds of jellyfish moving across the screen all individually, and all of it drawn by hand!! It is absolutely captivating from start to finish. When Ponyo is running across the water, chasing the car, I was truly overwhelmed.

I love how Studio Ghibli is one of the last few Japanese studios to practice FULL animation. It doesn't associate itself with any of the other traditions and clichés that have befallen the rest of the market, which in turn has alienated the dedicated fans of the 80's and 90's pre-"Love Hina" anime who found something decent to escape into, but now is tainted with a system of executives and market-research to find out what "sells". Studio Ghibli still concerns itself with good, unconventional story-telling. The mood of Ponyo is like a rollercoaster that doesn't stop. All the characters are lovable, even Ponyo's father (who plays a bit of a villain, but not in a generic "evil" way). This is important, it makes me want to keep watching, knowing I'm in safe hands without awkward uncomfortable moments like heart-break and betrayal, the kind of Disney/Don Bluth stuff that rapes you and tries to hug you afterwards. Some people might crave that kind of stuff but I've been through it too many times, I'd rather a true sense of purity like a Miyazaki film, and then his own sentimentalities that come out (i.e. caring for the elderly and pollution in nature) have much more effect.

In summary, "Ponyo" was amazing. If you had any decent sense you would make it your NUMBER ONE priority to watch this film (providing it is in its original Japanese).

In other news I bought a scanner recently and I intend to use it.

2009-08-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

I get lots of cool ideas, but when the opportunity comes to write them down it never crosses my mind and I'm sidetracked ALL the time. I might as well do it here right now while I have blogger open.

Firstly, before I get to the game, I should mention one idea that's been brewing lately: Tap-Dancing Metal. If done right and taken seriously enough it would be brutal as hell! Just think about the blistering-fast tempos!

I guess the world isn't ready for it yet. Oh well, back to the game.

I won't go into the details of the inspiration behind this, I'll just start right off the bat with the premise.

I call it "Roleplay Overlord". You begin with your character (I'm thinking you customise their look) with enough money to buy 1 of 3 different RPG's from the video-game store. In the start there are a total of 5 RPG's you can buy but you'll have to save up enough money to get them all. To make money you have to play your RPG (a game within the game) until you build your characters strong enough to enter tournaments (kind of like Golden-Sun battles or like Pokemon battles), which start off as local tournaments (a prize might be another RPG game), city-wide tournaments, state-wide tournaments, country-wide tournaments then you get accepted in the world-wide tournaments. For those tournaments you need to make enough money to buy a 2-way ticket, and if you lose the tournament you don't get your money back so you better be really good at your RPG! Once you become the world champion, you get an e-mail inviting you to the underground high-stakes tournament where it's REALLY difficult and expensive but you get A LOT of money if you win.

Now, these 5 RPG's are all different and equally rich in depth as each other (maybe the more expensive ones have more depth), you carry around a save-card that holds your character data to take into the tournaments. There are particular secret bonuses and items that can cross over the RPG's for extra advantages, so keep that in mind. When you have mastered all 5 RPG's you will unlock the 6th RPG, which is a game where your character has enough money to buy 1 of 3 RPGs in the video-game store, but in this game (within the game) there is only a total of 3, but over-all it works the same as the main game described in the above paragraph, not to mention there are items and bonuses can carry over to the original 5 RPG's. These 3 RPG's should have simpler graphics, all in 2D and 16-bit colour pixels which will make them distinct, but they still are rich in depth as the original 5 RPG's in the main game.

Now, beating those 3 RPG's within the game within the game, you unlock a 4th RPG, except it doesn't start with you buying RPGs and entering them in tournaments, it's just another typical fantasy RPG but it's REALLY HARD, you're expected to grind for HOURS before you can move to the next area and there are confusing mazes that require you to draw your own maps, and all the items are really expensive so you have to grind even more. The bosses are next to impossible and they kill you every time, unless you grind for DAYS or WEEKS and if you beat the bosses then you get super secret special items that can carry over into the previous 3 RPG's and even the main 5 RPG's. There is a special place in this ultra-hard 4th RPG where you will get the opportunity to play a simple text-based RPG, so now we have a game within a game within a game within a game and this is the ULTIMATE challenge, because it's REALLY SUPER HARD and there are barely any graphics, just large 8-bit pixels of a guy reading a page (he's kind of like the "Dungeon Master" of a D&D game) and occasionally your dice rolls. It would be a good idea in the "4th RPG" you're playing to collect as many dice as you can to give yourself the upper hand in luck. In the ultimate text-based RPG is where you find the real beneficial bonuses that will make you near-unstoppable in the other 3 RPG's or the main 5, but not so much in the underground high-stakes challenge where most players will probably have these items anyway.

In summary, here's the hierarchy:

"ROLEPLAY OVERLORD"
. . . . |
. . . . |
RPG1--RPG2--RPG3 -(RPG4) -(RPG5) ((RPG6))
. . . . . . . _____________________|
. . . . . . . |
(rpg4)- rpg1-rpg2-rpg3
. . . |
. . . |
text based RPG

The idea is that this game is to be the most time consuming game ever made. Ever.

GEORGE CLOONEYTHON AT MY HOUSE

2009-08-06T02:18:00.001-07:00

Come to my house on the night of nth of m, 20xx and we will watch the following:
From Dusk Till Dawn
Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind
Good Night And Good Luck
Leatherheads
Syriana (optional)

See you there or maybe not!

Video Game reviews.

2009-08-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

Even though I have a full-time job, this doesn't mean I can't spend late nights enjoying emersive video games. Here are a few reviews for recent ones I picked up:

FALLOUT 3

This game is really good and found myself playing it up until the point I stopped playing it, then I found I haven't played it since then. I do hope to pick it up again soon!

Now apply this same review to LITTLE BIG PLANET, DISGAEA 3, RHAPSODY: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE and METAL GEAR SOLID 4.

Here are a couple more games:

DOKIDOKI (heartbeat?) MAJO (witch) SHINPAN (hunt-down) DUO (2)

I don't know what it is with the Japanese and their witches but they seem to really like witches, especially cute little girl ones or sexy ones that aren't really witches by definition and don't do anything witch-like, and ones that attend middle-school and worry about un-witchly things like romance with a boy who has no personality and looks really creepy when you rarely see them. I think the Japanese have done as much research on witches as they have done on chimeras, behemoths and the laws of physics.

But as for this game, you'd only appreciate it if you're a pervert, and even then you'd have to be dedicated enough to beat this game without knowing how to read walls of Japanese text (pro tip: hold down the Y button to zip through the text). I've beaten this game twice.

PANGYA! GOLF WITH STYLE a.k.a. SUPER SWING GOLF

So here we have more Japanese witchery (the girl in the foreground of the above image). Here is a game that I have been obsessed by for the past few weeks - and I don't even like Golf! I must say the concept of "fantasy golf" is more appealing than "EA Sports Tiger Woods Generic Golf Game Two Million Seven Hundred And Ninety Six Thousand Four Hundred And Eighty Eight This Time With High Definition Grass Texture!". But why am I so obsessed with Pangya!?

I'm not ashamed to admit that I have a gross fascination, shall I say "fetish", with the concept of dress-up games. I never played with dolls, but somehow I feel I've missed out on so much enjoyment when it comes to dressing up characters in little cute costumes, then throwing them out into the world and make them do things. This game gives me the pleasure of dressing-up, but at a price. The game is incredibly slow-paced, the costumes are incredibly expensive and what's worse is that I have to play freakin' GOLF to make my money! ("pang" as it's called in this game). AND LOTS OF IT.

When I unlocked the final character, Kaz, who is a really cool demon-looking boy with sharp hair and sharp eyes with razor sharp dress-sense, the game got pretty interesting. But I've reached my thresh-hold, I'm now playing against perfect calculators with little margin of error. No matter which way or how strong the wind blows, no matter what ground the ball is on, no matter what club is used, the ball will perfectly go straight towards the hole in god-like shortcuts that I've broken my knuckles punching walls from frustration in trying to replicate. I've reached my thresh hold in sheer frustration and I doubt the rest of the costumes are worth unlocking anyway.

I see that there has been a sequel released in the US and I really want to play it!

The Fate of Lost?

2009-05-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

I just watched the season 5 finale of Lost. Don't worry there won't be any spoilers (although there may perhaps be spoilers for previous season finales), my main mind-defecation for this blog post will be more about my concern of where Lost is heading, and my internal-conflict of how I want it to keep doing what it's doing for the final season but I'm afraid at what cost?

I loved how season 5's finale gave me an overload of mindf*ck through pure storytelling, but only just the right amount of overload to keep me sane. Any more and I'd be decorating my walls with mind-defecation instead of my blog...and it might just come from more places than the mind if you know what I mean.

I thought I had a mind-bender with season 3's finale, but that was just from a writing device that caught me off guard. Up until that point we've just been getting flashback structure, then BAM we're hit with a flash-forward. Season 4 kept going with flash-forwards, but also throwing in the occasional trick like mixing in a flashback. I loved season 4 for constantly blowing my brain and mending it again just so it can be blown once more, however the finale was just more of a cliffhanger than an amazingly spectacular (there is no word that can go here to describe what I'm trying to say). Perhaps it was due to the high quality of storytelling of the previous episodes that they couldn't really reveal anything too amazing but just give off a big explosion of light and settle with that. I did like the secret compartment behind the secret compartment though.

Now we come to season 5. Without giving anything away, I just loved how we are given an answer but only at the expense of a Pandora's Box opening full of new questions. I don't think a story has been told this well since End of Evangelion, but that brings me to my ultimate conflict concerning the fate of Lost.

My favourite kind of stories are the ones that require you to have your brain switched on. I love complexity, I need to think more than I could handle, so that when I sleep my brain will grow and evolve enough to handle it, and then I need more. From my experience with people, and perhaps it's not as much experience as a normal socialite would have but also is the precise reason why I'm not a socialite, is that people tend to scoff at the idea of using their brain when it comes to entertainment. People want to be entertained with something simple and not thought-provoking. Explosions and tits accommodate to these tastes, it doesn't really matter the context of where they came from just as long as it's a bunch of pretty colours. Lost contains explosions, tits AND lots of pretty colours but they all belong to a context, so it's been doing pretty well so far.

Now, though, Lost is getting more and more complex, as it needs to, but all the explosions, tits and pretty colours are starting to fade away. Maybe not the explosions, but if they're caused by electromagnetic fields and other science mumbo jumbo then it won't hold for long. I hope it gets even more complex in the next season, but if it does it might lose a lot of its ratings and will probably be canceled before it even ends. All I can hope for is that fans of Lost, the ones who are just there for the fireworks, don't lose faith in the show and will keep supporting it. Something like this is hard for me to hope for because I've already lost faith in humanity. I know there are a lot of smart people out there, I know there are probably a few million Lost fans who love it because it provokes thought, but that's not enough against the tens of millions who'd rather watch American Idol and a bunch of mindless light shows.

Theory on "Synecdoche New York".

2009-05-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

WARNiNG: This post will contain spoilers for anyone who has not seen this film at least twice!

I have just watched Synecdoche New York at a cinema and it was absolutely thrilling. For the first time I fully appreciated the effect of the lights dimming when the picture started, then the lights coming up when the picture ended. The reason why is outlined in my previous post about this film, but that post is a jumbled unstructured mess so I will outline it here once more. The lights dimming indicates going to sleep, the picture appearing before your eyes is told like a dream with dream-logic and the lights coming up when the picture ends indicates waking up. I believe the best way to completely enjoy Synecdoche New York is in this way. Combined with the uncovering of this theory I am about to explain, overall the experience was more than overwhelming. I could have stood up and punched the nearest person in the face. It was also interesting to notice the scenes that made other people (watching it for the first time) laugh out loud. This was my third time so I laughed at a lot more scenes, but the comedy was more about how much I love watching this film. In the second viewing I hung on every word, while the third viewing I was able to look all around at other details while still gripping on dialog, making even more sense of the film.

I also discovered an amazing feeling of paradox. The ending of the film was so climactic, because to explain it properly you have to explain the entire movie, scene by scene, as it finally builds up to this amazing conclusion. But the conclusion is played out so subtly, so gently and softly. The context is HUGE but the scene is so small. It's the same paradox as the theater production itself getting bigger and bigger, but smaller at the same time. There might be more paradoxes in the film that I haven't noticed, so I will have to look out for them in further viewings.

My theory will be explained in two parts, the context of the ending (**SPOILERS!!**), setting up the scene and also the beyond the 4th wall meaning of it all. Or perhaps, going beyond the 4th wall is also another context, hidden from view.

1. CONTEXT

I will mainly center the context around the character of Ellen, the cleaning lady. I think she is a very important clue to the story. Caden Cotard goes on a search for his first wife, Adele (who is a painter), and when he's at her apartment he is mistaken for the cleaning lady "Ellen", but he assumes the role of Ellen anyway because it allows him to be inside his first-wife's apartment.

While seeing one of Adele's exhibitions he finds a portrait of Ellen. Where this portrait came from is a complete mystery, but my thinking of its origin is in my "beyond the 4th wall" theory that I will explain later. I haven't yet analyzed the film entirely scene by scene, perhaps there is a little detail I overlooked. I notice there was a scene of Ellen's dream on a television commercial much earlier in the film, but I don't think that has anything to do with the origin of the portrait. There is also the "dream logic" that crops up in the film but I like to think there's more to it, but I'll get into that later.

So, in the real world, Caden Cotard assumed the role of Ellen. In Cotard's play, he decides to recreate the scene where he assumes the role of Ellen, except use Ellen as an actual character based off this mysterious portrait. Then we get to a point where Hazel, the assistant and love-affair of Caden, dies and Caden decides to base the play on the final day before she dies. He needs a new actor to play himself (not including the actor who was playing the original actor (who comited suicide earlier) who plays himself), so in an amazing twist the actress playing Ellen convinces Caden that she can play him. After a successful rehearsal of the new version of the play (an overly dramatic version of a play within a play) Caden Cotard feels he has exhausted his creativity. The actress playing Cotard suggests she should take over the actual directing while he rests, and that he could fill the role of Ellen (in the play).

So here's the context: The actress who was playing Ellen is now playing Caden Cotard, but because Caden Cotard is now playing Ellen, the actress is playing Cotard playing Ellen BUT also directing the play at the same time. It's something that can be thought of in a single moment but will take forever to explain because your words will keep going around in circles. But when you understand it completely, you can then entirely take in the subtle, soft ending as an overwhelming climax.

But where did the portrait come from?

2. NO 4TH WALL

The easiest part to understand about Synecdoche New York is when Caden Cotard is making a play where actors are playing actors, then actors are playing the actors playing actors, and so on. But here's where my theory is: what if, from the beginning, we have been watching actors playing characters and not the actual characters themselves? Put it this way: we are watching a film by Caden Cotard, and we are not watching Caden Cotard on the screen, but we are watching Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Caden Cotard on the screen!

This could have been the original intention of Charlie Kaufman the whole time, that there is this world beyond the 4th wall that the actual events on the screen are merely imitating, taking artifacts from and playing them in the film. Not that it's based off Charlie Kaufman's own life, although maybe it is, I wouldn't know. We don't see what's behind the 4th wall, we are just seeing what's being reflected from it (perhaps represented by seeing Caden through his reflection in the mirror in the opening scene?).

A theory shouldn't be without evidence, so here are a couple moments that I think are essential clues:

Firstly when we see Caden directing the young actor in "Death of a Salesman". He gives him advice to acknowledge the fact that the audience knows that he is a young actor playing an older character who will meet his demise, and feel the tragedy of it. I find this a suitable allegory to the whole film if you take my theory into practice. Most of the actors (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener etc) are younger than the characters they play in the film, and we know they all meet their demise, if we're already acquainted with the story that is.

Secondly when we are watching the rehearsal of Ellen outside Adele's apartment in the play, Caden hears the voice of Adele (on a tape-loop) and attempts to open the door to the apartment himself. The actress playing Ellen says "You're breaking the 4th wall!". My thoughts are too scrambled to put this into words, but I think it's a very important clue.

As for the mysterious portrait of Ellen, well that may just be an artifact from the existence behind the 4th wall that somehow creeped its way into the 3-wall story. And if that's the case, then my hat goes off to Charlie Kaufman for blowing my mind harder than double-barreled shotgun ever could, and I don't even wear a hat!!

---

One more thing to mention about this film. I have read some scathing reviews about it and it mainly concerned how uncomfortable it is to watch at some points. For me it's when Caden gets his head split open at the beginning, but other than that I am absolutely enthralled and spellbound by this film. I think I could watch it a hundred times and never get sick of it. It makes it even harder to watch it analytically because I get so easily drawn into the story. I think it has something to do with the music (notice how many times Charlie Kaufman's name appears in the song-writing credits), as if the music plays the film and not the other way around like we usually perceive. I think this film is crafted to the finest detail, even everything we barely see out-of-focus in the background. Everything. Synecdoche New York could possibly be my number 1 film of all time, surpassing 2001: A Space Odyssey. I love this film and that's the brutal truth. Brutal.

Brutal.

Movie Night at my house! (photos taken with my DSi)

2009-04-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

Hello! Welcome to Movie Night at Archfriend's House! All of these will be played from our living-room projector on to our large blank white wall (ignore the stains) and everyone will be served with a complimentary glass of Vodka.

First off we begin the night with -

Falstaff (Chimes At Midnight)

Specially imported from Spain (don't worry it's in English, well, Shakespearian English) this is the rare post-Citizen Kane masterpiece by Orson Welles, one that he himself always raved on about, and that's saying something! The story is a compressed version of both Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare, with elements of Richard II, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor thrown in. Centered around Shakespeare's original character, John Falstaff, it is here that Orson Welles summarized a sprawling Shakespeare epic into film-format, using bits of material that otherwise suited the theatre. The film is wall-to-wall (except for the giant battle scenes) with Shakespeare-talk so if you aren't learned in complicated English words then you'll be left behind. However, with intense active listening skills you might just be entertained with the high-brow comedie experience.

Up next we have -

Love & Pop* and Shiki Jitsu ("Ritual")

Specially imported from Japan (the US version of Love & Pop is out of print) comes these two rare masterpieces of cinema. After finishing the animated world of Evangelion, before starting on the adaptation of Cutie Honey, estranged yet highly respected story-teller Anno Hideaki decided to make these two very personal projects. Love & Pop is an interesting exercise in obscure film techniques you'll never see anywhere else plus dynamic editing that thrusts you into the story weather you can follow it or not. Shiki Jitsu is the most significant film in existence, adapted from a book written by Ayako Fujitani (Steven Seagal's daughter) AND she also acts the leading role as her own fictional character! On top of that, we have cult film director Shunji Iwai also acting in the lead male role, a big deal because this is the only film he's acted in! There are more things to explain about it but I would be just rambling on about something which could easily just go into its own post. I'll do that later.

*no subtitles

If you're still around then get ready for -

Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo

Specially imported from Italy this is the original 168 minute version which Sergio Leone originally intended! This will also feature the underwhelming monoreal soundtrack complete with sound-drops and all the static crackles and pops!! It's all in Italian with no subtitles so you will have complete purist-enjoyment.

And now to take us into the early hours of the morning we will watch -

Droopy, the complete theatrical collection

Get ready for non-stop laughing (on the inside) as this specially-imported-from-the-USA 2-disc set of 24 theatrical shorts climaxes all over the screen! After leaving the Warner Brother's studio tired of such bland characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck or Porky Pig, Tex Avery went to MGM with complete freedom to make fully animated shorts of his own character, Droopy. These are non-stop gag based animations the way Tex Avery imagined cartoons to be. They will be watched in chronological order in its entirety so we can count gags being recycled 1, 2, 3 even 4 times! Also, witness the crude racial humour that reflected the times in American society from when these were made! You'll be dying of laughter (on the inside)!!

Well that's it. After all that you will be kicked out into the cold grey morning and you'll have to make your own way home because I don't drive a car.

Smashing the Antiu, once a year.

2009-04-20T09:45:00.001-07:00

Performance video for "Execration Text"

It's still unclear to me why John Vesano is no longer the bassist/vocalist for Nile. Just look at him! (in "Execration Text" and "Black Seeds of Vengeance" videos) He is a beast of a man. If I were in a death metal band I would want to keep that guy no matter what the cost.

Live performance for "Black Seeds of Vengeance"

Before Vesano there was a guy called Chief Spires but I don't know what he looked like. That's a pretty cool name though. Strangely enough after John Vesano left (after completing the "Annihilation of the Wicked" album) Nile's songs became a lot more catchier.

Demonstration of the guitars in "Papryus Containing the Spell to Preserve It's Possessor Against Attacks from He Who is in the Water" - Karl Sanders on the Left and Dallas Toler-Wade on the right.

The melodies are a lot more stronger on their last album, "Ithyphallic". It also helped that Karl Sanders and Dallas Toler-Wade weren't focused on the drumming side, as they left that up to their drummer (George Kollias). That is pretty logical to me. If a guitarist, who in most circumstances wouldn't know how to drum in the first place, wrote the drumming parts would it be anywhere near as creative as it would be if the drummer wrote his own part? Just listen to a song like "Eat of the Dead" from their last album, compared to a similar type of song from the previous album "Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten". Both are great songs, but Eat of the Dead has so many little subtleties in its drumming (try air-drumming to it) that you know only the genius of a proper drummer could come up with that.

Preview of George Kollias' "Intense Metal Drumming" DVD

I've been listening to Nile lately, partly because Karl Sanders' new solo album "Saurian Exorcisms" is coming out next week and I've already pre-ordered it. His last solo album "Saurian Meditations" is excellent, it took a while to really grow on me but now every time I listen to it only gets better and better. It's almost like a soundtrack to a forbidden movie. I think the best two songs are "Of The Sleep Of Ishtar" and "Contemplations Of The Endless Abyss", the latter being relevant to my interest of avant-garde soundscapes that creep me out.

OK now I have to go and find all these youtube videos..

Thinking about thoughts on "Synechdoche New York"

2009-04-19T04:56:00.000-07:00

Warning: this post may contain spoilers to the films "Human Nature", "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation", "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" and "Synechdoche New York".

I re-watched this film just now. I can't really say what my thoughts are, they're too complicated to put into words, I don't think my head has really wrapped itself around this film enough. In the fashion of the film itself, or in the fashion of Charlie Kaufman's beyond-the-4th-wall mind, I will share my thoughts about the thoughts of the film.

Because I see the film itself about being a film in itself. One thing Kaufman himself pointed out is that he was interested in dream-logic, which this film contains, yet I don't think it's all just one big dream. I see this film as being a story told in dream-language. It goes back to the old analogy that the cinema is a portrayal of a dream. Think going to the cinema, past all the trailers and commercials, the lights dim and it's totally black in the room (ignore the glowing exit sign down the bottom corner, or do your best to), this is like closing your eyes and then suddenly without noticing a moving picture with sound plays before you in your mind. This moving picture seems to have a story, familiar characters that you know or feel, but it doesn't play like real life. Time is not linear, people don't act the way you expect or sometimes they are exactly what you expect, the logic is nonsense but it doesn't mean it's not logical. When the film ends the lights go up and you stretch and feel like you've just woken, but the story plays through your mind and the more you think about it the more it gets weirder and weirder. The great thing about films opposed to dreams is that you can watch them over and over, so that if you forget something you can re-visit it again.

In "Synechdoche New York" the story is like a dream, but it's not the main character, Caden, who is dreaming, it's you - the viewer. That's what I'm trying to say.

The one thing I really love about watching this film is that it's completely the vision of Charlie Kaufman. This story wouldn't have worked if he didn't direct it. Everything about the film is complicated, like it complicates complexity and turns into itself to make the complex complications multiplying by its own value. I will talk about turning points later. As for what I'm talking about now, I'd like to explore Charlie Kaufman's other works.

I usually hate to admit that to understand a masterpiece you will usually have to understand the artist who created it. I hate to admit it because it's just too much work. I also like the idea of separating myself from "who done it" syndrome so I can try to appreciate the piece (in this case the film) from the point of view from someone who has no idea what it is, what it's about and who made it. I like that feeling of being amazed for the very first time. But then there's that part of me that says it's not enough, I need to know more and understand it more.

I've been a follower of Charlie Kaufman since "Being John Malkovich". I thought that movie was great, especially how you can watch it again and pick up things you didn't notice before but were of great importance to the story. I see "Being John Malkovich" as a self-contained movie, it works without working against anything else. It was a couple years later when I heard about "Adaptation". I saw that film and then I saw it again. I later found it on DVD and watched it plenty times more. It was in this film that Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into his own story, and Susan Orlean's story. Both "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" were directed by Spike Jonze, which were his first two feature films. "Adaptation", as opposed to "Being John Malkovich", was not a self-contained story. It contained references to Charlie Kaufman's own (split?) personality, it even contained behind-the-scenes of "Being John Malkovich" as a reference-point of who Charlie Kaufman is. It is a story about him adapting a book, "The Orchid Thief", then we see the actual film-adaptation of the book (which we know Charlie is working on), but then it turns around and Charlie's fictional twin brother, Donald, decides to finish the adaptation by involving himself and Charlie in a thriller ending that breaks the rules by following them, which in turn is breaking them. It doesn't make sense in words, but happened in the film and that's the only way to accept it. Watching these films I can't help but notice the creative influence of Spike Jonze when it comes to this strange deadpan realism of Kaufman's fantastic psychological experience.

I'll briefly touch on George Clooney's "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind". In this one George Clooney commissioned Charlie Kaufman to adapt a book by Chuck Barris, infamous TV show producer and host of the original "Gong Show", where he confesses that he was really leading a double life as a hired assassin working for the CIA. A story like this seems right up Kaufman's alley, riddled with a confusion of truth and fiction, and easily complex storytelling. But George Clooney and Kaufman didn't really have too much communication, if any, and the film turned out to be more to Clooney's vision more than Kaufman's. I still think it's a great film, as a George Clooney project, and Charlie Kaufman's presence is vaguely there through some of the writing and humour.

Now we have Michel Gondry's side of Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman's first adapted screenplay, "Human Nature", was relatively obscure compared to his other stories. From the get-go "Human Nature" was an already complex narrative, starting as a story being told by a man who is dead. What we eventually get is a story being told from three different viewpoints, piecing together a whole story about a man who grew up in the wild, was taken out of the wild by a nature-loving woman and a nature-hating scientist. The scientist decides to use this man as a subject to prove that manners and sophistication can be taught to the most primitive beast, but we learn from an alternative viewpoint that the man was only willing because he wanted to impress women and get laid. Thus we have sophistication as being a result of primitive desire, which is also prevalent in the nature-woman's character to impress the scientist. My favourite line is "Words are evil!". The other Gondry-Kaufman project is of course "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind". I'll briefly try to explain the complex narrative of this one: We start at the conclusion of two people who don't know each other but feel like they do because they get along so well, then we start from the start, when these two people actually did know each other but they broke up, it's important to note that we are in the memories of the main character, but this isn't obvious until we're up to the point where the procedure of his memories being erased begins within his memories. At this point his memories start moving backwards, but outside his mind there is also the forward-narrative of the people erasing his memories. The people have trouble along the way because when he discovers that he doesn't want to continue the procedure (in his mind), he starts to complicate things by hiding in points of his past that are buried deep down and can't be tracked. There's an important subplot with the people carrying the procedure which leads to the important discovery when we're at the conclusion (continuing from the beginning of the movie) and the ultimate answer to all the problems: "Yes".

I don't know why I even tried.

Now I'd have to talk about Michel Gondry's influence on these films. I've been a fan of some of his most iconic music videos, and his "how did they do that? That must of been hell to pull off" experimental techniques in film. One in particular is Kylie Minogue's "Come Into My World" music video. I can see that Gondry also likes to play with dream-logic. Most of his work is usually set within a dream or memories of the main character(s). He has made films that he wrote and directed himself. I've only seen "Be Kind Rewind" which was a truly fascinating experience. I see Gondry as more of a playful film-maker, whereas Spike Jonze is more of a hybrid of deadpan realism and fantasy, as if they were the same thing.

Now we come to "Synechdoche New York", a film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. My first viewing of this film I felt he had a style that might have been cross-between Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, but then afterwards I realised that it's really not like that at all. It's all Kaufman. There are so many things so subtle and complicated that you're forced to view it multiple times, even freeze-frame it and notice things that you will only notice by doing that. I would think only Charlie Kaufman could put subtle hints into backgrounds/foregrounds, even if they're out of focus, that you would notice important plot points. The stalker who eventually plays Caden in his play, is the most obvious one. And then there are the turning-points, as I mentioned earlier. Every scene seems to have a turning point, which turns into itself but also moves the story forward. Imagine a wheel turning and moving along the ground, and then a wheel inside the wheel, turning as caused by the overall turning of the larger wheel, and another wheel inside the smaller wheel, etc. The wheel is an analogy of the plot.

Here are a couple examples still fresh in my mind: When Caden is at the after-party of his opening-night of Death of a Salesman, he talks with Hazel and she suggests they get stoned. He says he gets "bothered" when he gets stoned so he has to turn her down. He gets home the next morning and finds his wife Adele and her friend Maria have gotten stoned, they say they can't wait to see the play but he seems to take it with a grain of salt (because they're stoned). They do see the play that night and Adele hated it because Caden borrowed something that wasn't his so it couldn't be entirely truthful to him. Caden doesn't defend himself, even so the play turned out successful, but he decides to make something original and truthful to himself. There's always this constant struggle between people not doing things and other people doing that very thing, turning themselves and it creates a self-perpetuating momentum. Another example is how Caden decides to assume the role of an elusive "Ellen", the cleaning lady of Adele's apartment, then in his play he casts a woman to play Ellen based on a portrait painted by Adele. Meanwhile Caden mentions when he has an affair with Tammie (an actress in a whole other complex twist and turn in the story) that he thinks if he were a woman he'd be better at it than being a man. In the play Caden decides he needs a new actor to play himself, the woman playing Ellen convinces him that she can play the role, but then a new turn happens when Caden decides he needs time off, but the role of Ellen (who he originally was in the real world) is open and that he will play her. So now the role of Caden is played by a woman and Caden is playing the role of a woman. It is after this turn that the whole story is now about Ellen, a woman who never really existed because it was Caden all along, but Ellen is being played by Caden, who is being directed by the woman who was acting as Ellen but is now acting as Caden. At this point I think the wheel has now turned into a spiral but I still haven't quite wrapped my head around it.

Another aspect of Kaufman's directing is the dream-logic, that the story isn't really a dream but it's not really real either. It's like it's self-conscious of being a film. I also kept trying to analyze Kaufman's directing style but I couldn't help myself being so immersed in the story I had to actually snap myself out of it from time-to-time, only because I was trying to watch it objectively and not really trying to enjoy it as it is, which I'll do once I get all the pieces put together. Some examples of the dream-logic are quite obvious: the house on fire, the dark novel written by a four-year-old, Caden constantly seeing himself used as images in commercials and cartoons and of course the heavy time-jumps between scenes, among other things. My favourite example is one I had to freeze-frame, when it shows a close up of the book that Caden is reading which was given to him by his therapist. The therapist's voice is narrating the words, which don't see, but when we do see the words I noticed there is a paragraph of absolute nonsense, either that or way too complicated for anyone to understand. This is the kind of dream-logic where you are reading something, but the words are always changing when you read them, and they don't make sense the more you read them.

My final point on Charlie Kaufman's directing style is the structure. This is more relating to the turning wheel analogy. This isn't a film with "acts" or "set pieces". You could say there are major plot sections, but each of them roll into each other with these turns and twists, each happening in every scene. This is not a story for people who want simplicity and clarity (which is why we have "acts" and "set pieces"), but at the same time there is no reason why a film like this shouldn't be made, especially if it has something important to share.

There are more things to talk about in Kaufman's style, like his visual complexities in every frame, every scene, but I couldn't begin to describe them unless I had accompanying screen-shots, which I don't have on me at the moment.

When I go through all the previous works of Charlie Kaufman, I also notice how they seem to be from a researcher/writer point-of-view. "Human Nature" had the scientist, "Being John Malkovich" had the puppeteer (a form of story-telling), "Adaptation" had Charlie Kaufman himself writing a screenplay, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" had the confessions written by Chuck Barris and "Eternal Sunshine" had a poet, although I can't remember what Jim Carey's character did for work..but that's besides the point. It's amazingly appropriate then that Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut is a story about a theater director. Especially with some scenes where he's directing actors, saying things like "the audience should be conscious of you being a young actor who is aware that he's not going to make it by the end" (in referring to the performance of the actor playing an older man in "Death of a Salesman"). Or when he's directing in his own play he says "Now you two are having an affair off-set, which isn't good for the show. Keep in mind you're actors playing actors. And you (to actor playing a cameraman), you're not just filming the scene, you're in the scene, so act like you're in the scene!"

Charlie Kaufman has worked his way from writing about writers to directing a story about a director, directing an actor who's playing a director (both inside and outside of the story, take your pick).

I should pay more attention to this!

2009-03-04T00:09:00.001-08:00

Aarg! I'm busy. For my next post I need to gather specific screenshots and examples for what I'm trying to talk about. I might end up doing some non-image posts but then you're just subjected to my opinion without evidence and I don't want that!

I also want to mention this next paragraph just to get it out of the way, but I might be repeating it later anyway.

One purpose of this blog is to challenge myself as an animator. I'm not a professional artist and I currently don't work in a studio so there is no means of me posting my works in progress (for I have no current works to work on). So right now I'm in the "finding my grounds" stage which is probably the most fun stage of life to be in, before your soul gets drained from turning your art into a job.

But it would be a miracle for me to get anything done. I have a full-time job where I move around boxes and I get home feeling too lethargic and sleepy to do anything. I get paid on a monthly basis which is incompatible with my budgeting expertise (which means I spend it all on the day I get paid), but hopefully that will change soon to weekly payment. Once that happens I can then buy little packets of miracles which is also known as CAFFIENE, and spend my nights relentlessly drawing and my days relentlessly moving boxes.