Star Trek TNG Take Down. . .

Today I’m introducing a new feature, which I’ll run every so often on Wednesdays: the Star Trek TNG Takedown. Basically, I’ve been watching a lot of STNG and the daffy liberalisms are swelling my brain. So I’m going to poke a few holes in their goofy world, because there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Jean-Luc, than are dreamt of in your contradictory and nonsensical philosophy!

Today’s takedown involves the episode “The Survivors,” from Season 3. This episode begins with Jean-Luc and the weepy ship Enterprise responding to a distress call from a Federation colony on Delta Rana IV. As they arrive, they discover that the entire planet has been devastated (and not in a good way), except for one square little patch of land.

Ignoring the fact that destruction on that scale would rob the planet of its atmosphere, the crew beams down to discover an AARP couple, Kevin and Rishon Uxbridge, two retired gangsta rappers. We soon learn that Kevin is not what he appears to be. Indeed, it turns out he’s a creature called a (Maureen) Douwd, an immortal energy creature who describes himself as a being “of great conscience.” Uh huh. . . if you gotta tell people what you are, then you probably aren't.

When Jean-Luc queries Kevin about what happened, Kevin tells him that an evil race called the Husnock attacked the colony. Kevin didn’t join the other colonists in defending themselves because he thinks of himself as a pacifist. But when he saw Rishon killed, i.e. when this war affected him personally, he abandoned his pacifistic principles and wished the Husnock into the cornfield. . . all of them. Yep, peaceboy killed 50 billion men, women and children. But don’t worry, they were all bad.

Well, peaceboy turns himself over to Jean-Luc for punishment. And what does Captain Inconsistent do? He whines that Kevin has suffered enough, and he declares “we have no law for what you’ve done.”

WTF?? Are you kidding me?!

Have you ever looked in a law book Jean-Luc? I’m pretty sure in the section “crimes against humanity” (a liberal favorite), you’ll find a little thing called “genocide.” Indeed, you’ve whined about this law before whenever someone wanted to kill a “race” of robots or a unique machine, plant, animal or mineral. . . or eat the last cookie. Kevin is a citizen of the Federation, putting him under Federation jurisdiction -- an issue Jean-Luc rarely lets stand in the way of one of his self-righteous speeches -- and he admits killing all 50 billion. So how about it, Jean-Luc? Slap the cuffs on this space Hitler!

Sorry. Not this Jean-Luc. Oh no. This Jean-Luc thinks Kevin’s “suffered enough.” Really? I don’t recall Jean-Luc (or any liberal for that matter) ever accepting such a defense to a crime they truly despised. Nor does Kevin appear to be suffering as he’s simply recreated his wife, his house and he’s having a good old time continuing to live his life.

What we have here is classic inconsistent liberal justice. Jean-Luc, who loves to throw around the word “genocide” to show his moral superiority to all the people he’s "not" judging, suddenly can’t bring himself to say the word when he’s faced with an honest to Q genocide because he likes Kevin and he feels bad for him. Or, more accurately, he feels like he would feel bad if he were Kevin. He never once thinks about the 50 billion slaughtered aliens, nor does he investigate what really happened here. Maybe they came to arrest Kevin for buggering their sheep? Doesn’t matter, Kevin seems honest. . . apart from his lying to Jean-Luc throughout the episode and his mental battery of Troi. Besides, what’s 50 billion rotting corpses among friends?

Is this justice? Hardly. Jean-Luc whines about justice, but when faced with implementing it, he defaults to an arbitrary rule where he decides right and wrong based on his own whims at the time. And far from implementing any sort of universal justice, he only looks at one side of the equation, i.e. he only considers how this will affect the guy he sees before him. He doesn't think about the victims or the message this sends to the future or to other would be sheep buggerers. How is that justice?

Why have laws at all?

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What's Wrong With Black And White?

I often wonder about black and white films. Filming in black and white was a real art form. Some directors were masters at it. . . others weren’t. Since they didn’t have color, they had to use shades of gray and shadows to convey depth and meaning. And often the results were really impressive. Indeed, many times the images produced were much more striking than color films could achieve. But the thing about black and white is that it’s not my preferred way to watch a film, and I don’t understand why.

I like black and white films, I really do. My list of top 50 films certainly includes a good number of black and white movies. But I admit that watching a black and white film is not my first choice when it comes to picking a movie. I don’t know why this is. My first thought was that this was just because of the era from which these films came. Indeed, between the censorship boards, the more simplistic story telling techniques, and the often stage-like acting, I thought that maybe the problem was one of content?

But then I realized that I would be even less interested in a modern black and white movie. Indeed, for the one or two modern black and white movies that pulled it off, there are a dozen more where this gimmick just turned me off completely. And if you told me that you planned to make a black and white film today, I would probably lose interest in the film at that point.

So maybe the problem is in the black and white itself? Maybe it’s the fact that it’s only “half an image” when movies that include the “whole image” are readily available? But then how do we explain the draw that black and white photography has? And if it is only a problem of being half an image, then you would think that colorizing would have made these films complete. . . but that atrocity only robbed these films of their charm.

In the end, I suspect that the problem with black and white is that it’s become like literary classics: we don’t see them as “entertainment” anymore so much as historically, culturally or educationally significant. Thus, they fall into the same category as Shakespeare. And while I love every word Shakespeare wrote, he’s hardly my first choice of what to read on a lazy afternoon. For that, I look for something “entertaining.”

And that of course begs the question about 3D. Right now, 3D is a gimmick, but it’s becoming a reality. As they develop 3D televisions that don’t require glasses, look for 3D to replace 2D across the board. At that point, all the films we’ve known over the past 60 years will seem as strangely dated as black and white seems today. Will they suddenly seem less entertaining as well?

It's hard to imagine that a film like Predator 2 might one day be seen as a "classic." But then, I'm sure people felt the same thing about Invasion of the Body Snatchers or pulp noir films.

What do you think?

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Film Friday: Deliverance (1972)

At first blush, Deliverance is just the story of four guys who go on a river rafting trip that goes horribly wrong. . . kind of the 1970s version of the modern hillbilly-cannibal slasher flick. But if you dig deeper, it’s actually a social commentary about the changing relationship between modern man and nature. It’s also the movie that solidified two ultra-negative stereotypes that have come to dominate how many Americans see each other today: hicks and elitists.

** spoiler alert **

Based on the 1970 novel Deliverance by James Dickey, the John Boorman directed film is the story of four Atlanta businessmen (Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty and Jon Voight), who go rafting on the fictional Cahulawassee River in rural Georgia. The river is being dammed and will soon disappear, taking several communities with it. As they start down the river, they encounter a group of people who live in backwoods conditions. Toothless, dirty, and with little understanding of the world beyond 1930, these people become the enemy for the four men as they fight for their own survival.

Hillbillies v. Elitists

There has always been a tension between city folk and country folk. But until Deliverance, that tension wasn’t really as nasty as it’s become. Consider the portrayal of country folk in films like The Grapes of Wrath, Sergeant York or any number of films about the American South. Country folk were seen as simple, yet decent people, with a few bad apples in their midsts. At the same time, city folk were typically seen as bright, but impersonal and often yearning to return to the simpler life.

When told that his character "Toothless Bob" would need to rape another man, Herbert "Cowboy" Coward (with the shotgun) told the director: "I done worse."

Deliverance changed all of that when it create highly negative stereotypes for both groups. Instead of yearning to reconnect with the land, the four Atlanta businessmen are seen as condescending elitists who think they have the right to mistreat and ridicule the hillbillies. They see the hillbillies as a subspecies of humanity and are happy to let them know it. Thus, Reynolds goes so far as to insult these people to their faces, showing that he believes he can act with impunity to these inferior creatures. Beatty acts similarly, particularly pointing out their inbreeding, though he is more cowardly and thus talks about them only when he thinks he is protected by the group. Cox doesn't insult them intentionally, but he shows his condescension in the way he treats the hillbillies like children and is shocked when they demonstrate competence. Only Voight treats them as human beings. From this comes the stereotype that urbanites are cowardly and condescending types who see themselves as superior to ruralites and who feel they have the right to mistreat these people and impose their will on them. This has become a widely held stereotype in rural circles.

On the other hand, Dickey/Boorman’s hillbillies are dirty, inbred, toothless people who favor banjos, stills, shotguns and sodomy. This stereotype has easily overtaken the more noble view presented in the past. Indeed, the line “I'm gonna make you squeal like a pig. Weeeeeeee!” has become so infamous with urbanites that all you need to say is “squeal like a pig” and people who have never heard of this film know exactly what you mean.

Neither the hillbilly nor the urbanite stereotype is generally accurate, though there are people who fall into these categories (I’ve met both kinds). Nevertheless, these stereotypes have become so strongly ingrained in the American consciousness that people genuinely believe this is what they will find in the other, alien environment, i.e. small town or big city America. Indeed, the relationship between rural and urban America has probably never been worse than it is today, and these two stereotypes play prominently in explaining why that is. Deliverance is the movie that solidified these stereotypes.

Modern Man v. Nature

But there is more to Deliverance than sodomizing hillbillies. At its core, Deliverance is a movie about how these four distinct modern men handle their ordeal. And therein lies the social criticism and the real interest in the movie.

Three of the men represent distinct archetypes of the modern city-dwelling male. Burt Reynolds represents the throwback. He’s a man who worships sports, hunting and all things physical. He longs for the challenges presented by nature because they appeal to his primitive nature, and he disdains the modern world. He is aggressive, violent and acts without thinking. Ronny Cox is the polar opposite of Reynolds. He represents the modern intellectual. He can see all sides of every issue and is paralyzed by his inability to settle on a course of action. In the civilized world, he probably holds significant power, but his skills at handling theory count for nothing in the wild. Ned Beatty represents what happens when man loses touch with the physical world. He is fat and soft, weak and cowardly. His total surrender to modern convenience has made him helpless. Finally, Jon Voight, the fourth, represents the bridge between them. He is physically capable without being the beast that Reynolds is. He is smart, but in a real world sense rather than Cox’s theoretical sense. And he enjoys the creature comforts, though he has not become dependent upon them as Beatty has.

What they endure becomes a test of these archetypes, a test which all but Voight fail. Reynolds fails because his aggression brings on all of their problems. He alienates everyone they encounter, foreclosing any chance of getting help from the locals and fostering the suspicion that isolates the four. Moreover, his aggressive disdain for the weak Beatty makes teamwork impossible, leading to the two canoes splitting up, which makes them vulnerable to being attacked. Beatty collapses in a pool of his own helplessness and loses his manhood as the self-emasculated Beatty’s fate is to be sodomized by the hillbillies. Cox becomes paralyzed with indecision because he can’t pull his head out of the world of theory long enough to come to grips with the real world. His rather symbolic fate is to die when his head disappears beneath the water. Only Voight is capable of rising to the challenge.

And within this formula, Dickey lodges several criticisms. First, he argues that the throwbacks are the cause of our problems because of their mindless aggression. . . an argument made by elitists today. But he also argues that the intellectuals cannot help us because they can’t come to any conclusions on real world issues. . . an argument made by middle-Americans today. He also argues that modern humans have become so dependent on the comforts of the modern world that they would simply die if left in nature. . . an oft-repeated criticism that has become more and more valid as obesity rates rise and reliance on the internet takes off. And in the end, he tells us that the solution is to be as Jon Voight -- stay in touch with our physical natures but don’t let them dominate us, use our minds but don’t lose touch with the real world for some theoretical existence, and enjoy the comforts of the modern world but don’t become dependent on its conveniences.

These are themes that touch a nerve in modern America, where we are quickly losing touch with nature and what it takes to survive away from our modern conveniences. This is why the past forty years have seen concerns about the Alan Alda-ing of America, why ridiculous camps have appeared for males to “rediscover” their primitive side, and why such an animosity has arisen between city dwellers and country folks. We are living in a moment where our relationship to the natural world is changing significantly and it’s not clear yet how it’s all going to turn out.

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A Chicken In Every Pot, A Gun In Every Film. . .

I don’t find guns fascinating. I do appreciate them and their role in guaranteeing our freedoms, as well as their power to protect the weak from the predatory. But on a personal level, I don’t like them OR dislike them. They are a tool, much like a hammer, a spoon or a power mower, and I don’t have any strong feelings for my tools. But I am getting sick of seeing them in every movie.

This issue actually first came up for me about 15 years ago, when my German grandmother was paying us a visit. After a couple weeks, she suddenly said that she wanted to see a movie that didn’t include any guns. Hmm. At first, I thought this was just German anti-gunism. But it wasn’t. Her point was that every single movie we watched included guns, and she wondered why there were no American movies without guns. No big deal right, I'll just pop in one of them there non-violent films. But guess what?

As I looked at the movies we had on DVD and what was on television, I was amazed to discover that EVERYTHING had guns in it. The action flicks obviously involved guns, as did the westerns and the war flicks. No brainer there. Crime stories? Yep, them too. But what about science fiction? Hmmm. Guns as far as the eye can see. Comedies! Surely comedies are by and large gun free, right? Nope. Comedy after comedy included guns in some capacity. Dramas? Them too. Heck, even the chick flicks occasionally toss in an armed robbery moment.

Now I’m not saying there aren’t movies without guns, there are. But the selection is much smaller than you would think. And many of the movies that you would think wouldn't include guns, do inject them: Airplane had one, so did Vacation, so did Ocean’s 13, as did Legends of the Fall, Beethoven, Back to the Future, Wall Street, and Titanic. Here’s an incomplete but extensive list of guns in movies: Click Me. (Believe it or not, your best bet to find a movie without guns is in the horror genre.)

Why is liberal Hollywood so obsessed with guns that they need to inject them into everything, even films that don’t need them? Would we be better off as a society with fewer films including guns? Probably. Monkey see -- monkey do, after all, and it probably doesn't help that liberal Hollywood solves all conflicts with gun play. But even if it doesn't change society, can't we at least get a break from this? Can't more movies find more creative ways to generate or resolve conflict than reaching for the old warm pistol? We wouldn't accept it if every film involved a knife fight or a briefcase full of money, so why do we ignore the gun-crutch?

Like I said, I have nothing against guns, but this is becoming ridiculous.

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Film Friday: The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Usual Suspects is a neo-noir crime thriller with an intensely intelligent plot that twists and turns and wraps a riddle within an enigma as it tricks the audience with their own preconceptions. Add in stellar acting from an incredible cast, a pitch perfect soundtrack, an absolute lack of mistakes or bad choices by a creative director, and easily the most daring script of any film I’ve seen, and you’ve got one of my favorite movies and a movie you must see.

To discuss this film will require MAJOR SPOILERS. Do NOT read this if you haven’t seen the film.

Directed by Bryan Singer, The Usual Suspects ostensibly is a story of a robbery gone wrong, but that’s hardly a fair description. When all is said and done, The Usual Suspects is a mystery, where different characters give you different facts that you need to piece together to decide what really happened.

The story begins with small-time criminal Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) telling U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) what happened the prior night when a group of criminals attacked a boat in San Pedro harbor. Verbal appears to be the only survivor and he has given testimony in exchange for immunity. Kujan is racing against the clock to question him before he is released. According to Verbal, the robbery began several weeks prior in New York, when the police brought in four hardened criminals (and Verbal) for a lineup after a truck was highjacked. This group consists of Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), and Fenster (Benicio del Toro). They decide to use the opportunity of the lineup to work together on a heist in NYC. After they pull off the heist, they fly to Los Angeles to meet the fence who will sell what they’ve stolen. In L.A., they are forced to perform a robbery for a criminal legend named Keyser Sӧze, who may or may not exist. Sӧze, supposedly, is a ruthless, omnipresent Turkish criminal mastermind who uses other criminals to commit his crimes. The robbery involves forty million dollars in dope and an equal amount of cash on a ship in San Pedro harbor.

This sounds straight forward, but director Singer does something daring. As Verbal tells this story, Agent Kujan keeps interrupting him with facts that Verbal either does not know or has lied about. At the same time, FBI Agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) provides us with additional facts. For example, there were no drugs and it appears the true purpose of the raid was to kill a man who could identify Sӧze. When Kujan finally confronts Verbal with what Kujan believes happened, Verbal breaks down and agrees with everything Kujan says. He is then released. But as he leaves, we learn one more crucial fact -- Verbal is identified as Keyser Sӧze by a witness pulled out of the harbor. In this way, Singer presents four different versions of what happened. Verbal tells one story. Within Verbal’s story, we are given a second version by Dean Keaton, the man Kujan thinks is the leader of the group and who Kujan ultimately believes to be Keyser Sӧze. Agent Kujan and Baer give us a third version based on the facts Kujan collected from before the robbery and Baer collects from the harbor. Finally, we are given what appears to be the truth when we learn at the end that Verbal is Sӧze.

This alone makes this a brave script. The use of the four different version plot device (which dates back to Kurosawa’s Rashomon) is very difficult to pull off and extremely confusing when done poorly. Moreover, unlike prior films that used this and which always told the audience what really happened in the final version, Singer only provides some verified facts and leaves it to the audience to piece the truth together. That is a daring choice because it’s by no means certain the audience will be able to put this back together, and a confused audience is an unhappy audience.

What’s more, Singer doubles down on the difficulty by mixing up the movie’s chronology: it starts the night before, moves forward to today, backs up several weeks, swings back to the present, moves back to a different point in the past, and so on, as different parts of the story are told. There are many dangers to this approach. For example, the audience may not be able to put the story back in the right order. Moreover, because the audience knows the ending right at the beginning, there is a real danger the attack on the harbor will lose its drama because the audience knows how it will end. But Singer overcomes these issues brilliantly both by maintaining a strong pace and by giving you characters who seem so determined, so in control, and so competent that you don’t believe they can fail, even though you’ve already been shown that they do.

But even more than these issues, Singer takes a tremendous chance in that ultimately we know nothing of what really happened. Indeed, when we analyze the facts presented and we consider what we actually know to be true, rather than what we think we know, we quickly discover that we can’t believe anything we’ve been told throughout the movie. The only facts we know for certain are (1) Verbal is Keyser Sӧze, (2) Verbal and a group of men attacked the harbor, (3) the four criminals (Keaton, McManus, Fenster and Hockney) are dead, and (4) Keaton’s girlfriend is dead. That’s it. Nothing else in Verbal’s story can be verified and most of it can even be dismissed out of hand. Thus, Singer essentially shatters the entire film. The danger with this approach is that it risks alienating the audience. Audiences don’t like feeling like they’ve been misled or like their time has been wasted, and nothing feels more like having your time wasted than being told that you can’t believe anything you’ve seen over the last two hours. But Singer does something very clever here. Despite telling the audience quite plainly that nothing they’ve just seen can be believed, he also gives them one moment of truth -- when Verbal’s true identity is revealed. This allows the audience to feel that they really do know what happened; indeed, strangely, we take this fact and instantly reassemble the story into a new narrative that makes sense to us. . . even though none of the pieces we use to reassemble that narrative are true.

And that brings us to the twist. Using a twist in a movie is very risky because a poorly done twist, i.e. one that isn’t organic to the story, feels cheap and tacked on and leaves the audience feeling cheated. But making a twist feel organic and still keeping the audience from seeing the twist too early is very difficult and often requires careful slight of hand.

Yet, despite this difficulty, Singer hides nothing. Indeed, from frame one, we are told this will be a mystery and the question will be “who killed Dean Keaton.” Thus, the audience is put on alert from the beginning. Then, throughout the film, Singer constantly gives clues as to Keyser Sӧze’s true identity. For example, Sӧze and Verbal have the same lighter and Verbal clearly is playing with Kujan -- something that should be out of character if he is who he says he is. Yet, the audience overlooks these clues because Verbal doesn't fit our preconceived notions about what a criminal mastermind must look like and act like. In other words, we simply find it impossible to believe that the meek cripple is the Satanesque villain we are looking for (Kujan, by the way, makes the same mistake and indeed tells Verbal repeatedly that a "stupid," "cripple" like Verbal could only be a pawn). Instead, we find it much easier to believe that the menacing, brooding Dean Keaton is Sӧze, just as Kujan urges us to believe.


Which one is the master criminal?


Singer takes a huge risk here that the audience will see the twist coming and link Verbal to Sӧze right away -- which would ruin the movie. He even adds to that risk by warning us that we need to look beyond our perceived notions. He does this when Verbal warns Kujan: “for the cops, there’s no mystery to the street. If you think some guy did it, then you’re going to find you’re right.” And that is exactly what we do in the film: we size up the suspects and we pick the guy it usually would be -- Dean Keaton. Singer deserves tremendous credit for correctly calculating that we would ignore the clues.

That’s why this is easily one of the smartest films you will ever see. It is so tightly written, so daring in its choices, so mistake free, so perfectly acted, and so expertly assembled that a movie that could have been a horrific jumble in other hands turns into an intelligent puzzle in Singer’s hands. And Singer takes real risks and overcomes them brilliantly by skillfully deceiving us with our own preconceptions. The American Film Institute ranked this the tenth best mystery film of all time, I would rank it higher.

Not bad for a six million dollar film no one wanted to fund.

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Film Friday: The Box (2009)

When it comes to films, I’m all for creativity. Interesting camera angles, unique visual tricks, and neat twists of chronology all have the potential to truly enhance a film and make it stand out. But there’s a catch. The creativity needs to serve a purpose, otherwise it’s just a gimmick, and gimmicks get annoying fast. One film that suffers from misuse of such gimmicks is The Box, a 2009 science fiction story based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button.”

** spoiler alert **

Matheson, by the way, is one of science fiction’s greats. His most famous works include “I Am Legend” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” and many of his works have ended up as films or Twilight Zone episodes. Even “Button, Button” was made into a Twilight Zone (1985 version) before it was made into The Box.

The Box is the story of a young couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, who have no chemistry) who receive a box from a mysterious man, who offers them one million dollars if they push the button on top of the box. The catch? Someone they don’t know will die when they push the button. In and of itself, this makes a fairly interesting premise for a psychological character study. Would you push the button? Does it matter that you do or don’t know the people? What happens if you and your spouse disagree? What happens if you push the button and then change your mind?

Yet pushing the button is only the beginning of the plot. Without giving too much away, it soon turns out that the box delivering man, Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), works for some very powerful people, and they have the power to control the minds of people all around the unhappy couple. This turns the film into a mystery the characters try to solve who these people are, how they are controlling people, and why they are doing it. All told, this should make the plot very interesting and well worth seeing. But there are major problems with this film that kept me from enjoying it, and those problems were entirely avoidable.

First, director Richard Kelly sets the film in 1976. So what's wrong with 1976? Well, for starters, this is not the kind of film that benefits from being a period piece, unless there's a good reason for it, e.g. you're spanning time. Here the reason will not be obvious to most people and is not strong enough to justify making this a period piece (he wants the film to coincide with a Mars probe). That makes this feel like a gimmick, and it becomes annoying as you find yourself waiting to find out why the film is set in 1976. . . only to discover there's no real reason. Further, 1976 is not far enough back to be a sufficiently interesting period. Consequently, you end up feeling that the director chose 1976 just so he could play music from that period and have several scenes where the television announces some “new” sitcom that eventually would become a classic -- a total cliché for modern period pieces.

Secondly, even though this film could have taken place anywhere in the world, Kelly chose Richmond as a setting. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except that Kelly uses the setting as a reason to have Cameron Diaz fake a “Virginia” accent, something she does very, very poorly. Again, there is no reason to have done this and it comes across as yet another gimmick.

Third, Kelly tries to build drama by stretching out his scenes. This is a trick that various great directors have mastered -- Quentin Tarantino comes to mind. But whereas Tarantino fills his scenes with compelling dialog and a steadily building level of tension, Kelly just stretches each scene. This causes the film to feel slow and meandering, even though the nature of the plot should make it fast-paced. It also comes across like a heavy-handed, film-school gimmick.

Kelly also repeatedly demonstrates a lack of faith in his audience. For example, he keeps beating you over the head with the idea that he's withholding key elements from the audience and that this is the kind of film that won’t explain everything. But at the same time, he tells you the information he is supposedly withholding if you just pay attention to what the radio and the background characters tell you. And in case you miss it the first time, they repeat themselves a dozen times. And just in case you still missed it, he repeatedly interjects scenes where two characters suddenly begin explaining to each other what is about to happen (or what just happened) and what it means.

Yet, at the same time, Kelly is too coy and waits too long to get into the plot details. Thus, you’re confronted with scenes like the opening scene, where a student humiliates Diaz seemingly for no reason. You will understand much later what possessed the student to act this way (though Diaz’s reaction makes no sense), but until that happens you’re left with a scene that just strains credibility and drags the movie down.

Continuing the lack of faith issue, Kelly doesn't trust that his audience will accept his characters' choices, so he stacks the deck. Indeed, rather than letting the young couple decide on their own whether or not to push the button, the first several minutes of the film are a set up where everything the couple has relied upon financially is slowly taken away from them. Thus, the film itself justifies their decision to push the button and thereby resolves the moral issue that theoretically sits at the center of this movie, i.e. the film excuses their behavior. Kelly then repeats this trick several times throughout the film to make the paths the couple should choose obvious in each instance. It would have been much better not to manipulate the circumstances, but to let the characters deal with their own thoughts and emotions honestly.

All in all, Kelly had in his grasp a fantastic story with incredible potential. But he kept mucking it up with pointless gimmicks that did nothing but distract from the film, and he weakened the underlying dilemmas by manipulating the circumstances to make the moral decisions much easier for his characters. If he hadn’t done these things, I would be screaming that everyone should see this film. As it is, all I can really say is that it was an interesting film that I'm glad I saw, but I don’t want to see it again, and I can’t help but think that I would have been better off just reading the short story.

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Modern Literary Fiction Stinks

Do you know what literary fiction is? Literary fiction is fiction that doesn’t fit into other genres and is somehow supposed to be above other forms of fiction. People believe this because literary fiction traces its roots through a line of authors like Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and Updike, whose books did indeed change the world. Whether it was simply changing the way Americans saw each other, or sparking legislation to change the injustices identified in their books, these literary giants helped shape our country. But those days are over. . .

If modern literary fiction could be summed up in one word, that word would be pretentious: self-indulgent themes, a disdain for its audience and the public at large, the use of erudite sounding but actually quite poor analogies, and a continuing struggle to use larger-than-necessary words that don’t fit the meaning as well as they should. Those are the hallmarks of literary fiction today.

Though, in truth, I don’t think literary fiction can be entirely defined with one word. It takes two. And the second word is cliché. Most literary fiction offers little more than well-worn clichés masquerading as intellectual depth. Indeed, which of these stories isn’t about the repressed wife who puts on the happy facade as everyone around her dies of cancer?

The problem with modern literary fiction is that it has lost its focus. Old school literary fiction didn’t view the public as evil or corrupt and didn’t look down its nose at its audience. It wanted to elevate the audience. Today’s fiction wants you to wallow in the author’s imagined pain. Moreover, literary fiction used to look out at the world, hunting injustice and pointing accusing fingers at the indefensible. Today, literary fiction isn’t concerned with injustice, it’s concerned with the inner struggles of characters in the mistaken belief that this somehow tells us something about ourselves.

They even have an excuse to justify their own aim-low approach: “the American scene is just too complex -- and too aware of its own complexity” for the likes of an Updike to come along again. That’s loser speak.

Time magazine just did a story on the latest “greatest” in the field. His name is Jonathan Franzen and even the article about him is pretentious. His last novel “told the story of a Midwestern family that goes to pieces spectacularly as the father succumbs to Parkinson’s.” Uh huh. His new one is about a “superficially happy household” in the Midwest where everyone is really dissatisfied with their lives, especially the repressed housewife. Oh, and there’s an alcoholic father and a date-rape. Nope, no clichés there.

What really bugs me about the Time article, aside from horrible writing and the pointlessness of it all, is that the “journalist” completely buys into the rather stupid idea that this form of literature has any real meaning to us: “he shows us how we live” gushes the “journalist.” Really? Or does he show you how you coastal liberals want to think the rest of us live? Are we really all unhappy alcoholics in Hicksville just wishing we could be like you? Or is that just wishful thinking by liberals who tend to be horrified when they run into genuinely happy people in Mid-America?

The truth about fiction is that it’s fiction. It’s not real. To the extent that it includes facts, it can inform us. To the extent it teaches us reasoning or logic, it can educate us. But teaching us something about ourselves by looking at made up, clichéd characters? Nope. That it cannot do. All it can tell us in that regard is what the author thinks, nothing more.

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How To Un-Cliché Your Villain

A cliché is an artistic idea that has been so overused that it offends the patience of the audience. It’s the kind of thing that gets an audience rolling their eyes and saying, “oh no, not again! Can’t they think of anything new?!” And nothing ruins a movie quicker than a clichéd villain.

Examples of cliché villains include anything resembling a James Bond villain and the evil corporation as the bad guy motif. Other examples include the liberal boogeymen trinity: greedy corporate bosses, bloodthirsty military men and perverted religious leaders.

What is it that each of these have in common? Two things: simplistic, unrealistic motivations and melodramatic characteristics.

Humans come with a whole range of good and bad motivations. But this is too complex for Hollywood. Instead, Hollywood follows a formula where each villain they use has only one motivation, and that motivation is an amplified form of the most prominent characteristic of that character’s profession or role. Thus, for example, because business strives for profit, the corporate villain is always motivated by greed, and only greed. Because the job of soldiers is to kill the enemy, the soldier villain is always motivated purely by bloodlust (ditto on “the hunter"). The politician is always motivated purely by power. And so on.

But humans aren’t like that. Humans are complex creatures with many motivations. And this is where you need to begin your search for the non-clichéd villain. Indeed, the surest method for avoiding a clichéd bad guy is to employ a motivation other than the one Hollywood always uses. Thus, avoid the greedy businessman. Instead, consider a businessman who might act out of fear of being replaced. Avoid the power hungry politician and go for a politician with a pathological need for approval. Avoid the bloodthirsty solider. Instead, consider a soldier like Captain Stransky in Cross of Iron, who tries to send the heroes to die to keep them from reporting his cowardice.

Still, these are dangerously close to the clichés, so let’s dig a little deeper.

As I’ve pointed out before, it is a fact that real life villains never think of themselves as villains. They may recognize that they’ve done evil things, but every single one of them thought they were justified in doing so -- either to rectify some injustice done to them or to further some “noble goal” they wanted to achieve. For example, serial killers often report that their victims wanted to die or that they were doing the work of God. Hitler viewed himself as the savior of the German people, and he justified his evil as necessary to achieving that purpose. Ultimately, his justifications were insane, but they made sense to him, and that’s the key here: people just don’t see themselves as evil.

This translates into the story arena as well. Think of the best film villains and you will find a group that rarely sees themselves as evil. Darth Vader thought he was bringing peace to his Empire. The Borg in Star Trek were simply doing what came naturally, as did the Alien and Jaws. The Terminator was just following its programming. Captain Bligh was a sadist, but thought he was in the right. Bartholomew in Rollerball thought he was doing what had to be done to protect society. Dean Corso in Ninth Gate was just doing his job and following his curiosity. Even the guys in Rope thought they had the right (if not the duty) to murder their friend. These are all characters who would be shocked to hear that they were cast as the villains in their stories.

Here’s another great example of this. In the Star Trek episode “Conscience of the King,” the character Kodos was the governor of Tarsus IV. When a famine wiped out their food supply, he ordered the execution of half the colony to save the rest. He thought he was doing the right thing. Or look at the bureaucrat in Torchwood: Children of Earth (left), who makes the cold-blooded calculation that turning several thousand children over to a horrible fate is worth it to save millions more, and then goes about callously selecting them. Both of these characters did what they thought they had to do, even though it pained them personally.

What this tells us is that the easiest way to avoid a cliché is to remember this key fact: if your villain can’t legitimately explain how they’re justified in doing what they’re doing, then you’re probably on the precipice of a cliché.

Moreover, there isn’t always a direct link between the motivation and the end result. In other words, the villain need not always be motivated to cause something evil, sometimes it’s just a byproduct of their misbehavior. A perfect example of this would be a scientist who thinks he’s doing something great, but actually invents something horrible, or a bureaucrat who turns a blind eye to right and wrong because he’s unwilling to act outside of his assigned box, or even a prosecutor who pushes a little too hard even where they suspect the defendant might be innocent (see Breaker Morant).

If you want a great example of this evil by-no-design, look at the movie Cube, which had an incredible premise (ignore the sequels). The premise was that people awoke trapped inside a huge cube that is full of traps. Why? Who built it? Apparently, no one did. . . at least not intentionally. It was built by thousands of people, each doing their parts, without ever knowing exactly what they were creating. And the reason it was built? Again, no one knows. They speculate it was just some bureaucratic idea that took on a life of its own -- which happens more than you would think in the modern world.

Also, keep in mind, that sometimes the villain is simply someone who was put in a situation way beyond their competence, and they didn’t have the strength of character to admit that. So as things spin beyond their control, they get busy trying to cover their rear ends to hide what they’ve done or they try to fix things and only make them worse (see Brazil).

Finally, there is one more thing that needs to be done to avoid the cliché: drop the melodramatic traits. The truly evil among us don’t go prancing around reveling in their evil and shooting henchmen for sport. And if you think about it, you’ll understand why: it doesn’t make sense in the real world. Could someone as unstable as the Hollywood “greedy businessman” ever make it to the top of a corporate empire? Would anyone promote the soldier who laughs maniacally as he gives insane orders to shoot his own troops? Would anyone work for the villain who shoots his henchmen when they get his coffee order wrong? No. It is the rarest of rare stories where something like this could make sense.

That’s my thinking.

Ultimately, the key to avoiding clichés is to avoid over-used motivations and the melodrama that always attaches to those clichéd motivations. Understand your characters. Make sure they would feel justified in every action they take, and avoid ever thinking that they would see themselves as evil. If you do this, you’ll also find that your story necessarily adjusts away from cliché storylines because those types of storylines can’t reflect the character’s more natural motivations and responses.

Or maybe it’s best summed up like this: realism kills clichés.

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Film Friday: Surrogates (2009)

Surrogates could have been a fascinating film about the consequences of losing ourselves to the virtual world. But it wasn’t. The writers never could look beyond their knee-jerk liberal worldview to create a believable future and they were terrified to explore any of the issues that arose. At the same time, the director couldn't decide if he wanted to make a science fiction film or a summer blockbuster. He ended up with neither: an action movie without any thrills and an intellectual movie without any brains.

** spoiler alert **

Surrogates takes place in the near-future when mankind has invented human-like drones that people literally use as substitutes for themselves. As the operator lies in a sensor chair, the drone lives their lives for them, obeying all of their commands. Theoretically, this premise makes the film ripe for a fascinating set of philosophical questions and social commentary. For example, you’ve got questions of privacy, questions of anonymity and knowing who or what you’re really dealing with, questions of people losing touch with the real world, questions of the loss of our physical health as people vegetate in front of computers, and questions of what defines us.

That’s a lot of fertile ground for a pretty compelling and interesting take on the modern world. Indeed, this is the kind of premise that could easily showcase both the best and the worst of our increasing reliance on the internet, and could result in a film that is simultaneously both inspiring and deeply disturbing. But it wasn’t. And there are two main reasons the film never came anywhere near its potential: (1) The knee-jerk liberal worldview adopted by the writers (it actually came from a comic book) and (2) the director’s desire to appeal to a mass audience.

Bad Writers

Right out of the gates, the audience is hit with a liberal worldview that matches nothing that thousands of years of human existence have shown us about human nature. Consider this: what would happen if people suddenly learned they would no longer bear any of the negative consequences of their actions? In other words, they could no longer get hurt no matter what they did, they could look however they wanted no matter how they maintained themselves, and they could move through the world anonymously. If you said, “crime and discrimination would disappear,” then you’re an idiot. . . or you’re one of the writers. No rational person would believe this. It makes no sense. Put humans in a consequence free environment and they take advantage of it, they don’t suddenly lose their worst instincts.

Yet, the film starts with this nonsensical premise -- which is based on the liberal fallacy that crime is supposedly the result of disadvantages and is not a conscious personal decision. And in so doing, the writers immediately create a huge disconnect with the audience, which makes it impossible for the audience to relate to the people in the movie.

Moreover, this premise falls apart immediately as the writers introduce all of the standard liberal boogeymen. You have the blood-thirsty military, the corrupt cops, the dirty businessmen, the religious fanatics who are actually hypocrites and really work for the corrupt businessman. Yep, the only thing missing was Dick Cheney. And each of those standard issue boogeymen was made all the worse because they found themselves in a consequence free environment. . . the exact opposite of the premise upon which the movie world is based. Thus, the writers undercut their very own liberal knee-jerk world when their other liberal knee jerked. Jerks.

Further, the writers were clearly too afraid to touch upon the issues that would make this film so much more interesting. Willis suffers from anxiety when he’s out in the street in person rather than in his surrogate. But it passes right after it’s mentioned. People who have done nothing but lie around for ten years immobile, can suddenly get up and walk around without showing any signs of the atrophy that comes with being bedridden. It’s mentioned several times that you never really know who is operating the surrogate (as you can look like anyone), but we aren’t shown any of the kinds of depravity or betrayals this would lead to . . . and which occur every day on the internet where predators and perverts lurk anonymously. And for all the talk in Hollywood about racism, they never touch upon this subject even though the obvious question would be: would minorities continue to be minorities in public? They also completely skip over the question of kids being raised by parents acting through robots. And they utterly fail to grasp the social consequences of any of this. For example, if people are partying through their robots and never really meet in the flesh, who is getting married and having kids? Wouldn’t there be a population plunge? What about the irresistible human desire to pull pranks, to hack, or to exploit a system? Nada. What about the herd instinct? Wouldn’t everyone try to look like the latest supermodels? And how exactly do people in the poorest parts of the world afford these surrogates? And so on. . . all skipped.

In short, they hint at some interesting issues, but they whitewash them all, and they ignore a great many more -- especially those that would require them to think of how the world would actually change. In other words, we’re supposed to accept the premise but not really think about what the premise would mean. This makes the film bland and pointless. And it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the writers are the same team that wrote Terminator Salvation, another pointless, lifeless, generic yawner meant to keep your brain from ever coming on.

Bad Director

Beyond the writing problems, lies the problem of the director: Jonathan Mostow. Mostow either didn’t quite know if he wanted to make a contemplative science fiction film or a summer action film, or he was too afraid to lose the summer kids because he never veered from the summer formula -- and he doesn't even do that with any creativity.

Bruce Willis plays the same character he always plays. . . a middle-aged, slightly out of place cop (FBI) with an unhappy family life. The story takes place when Bruce and his partner (Radha Mitchell) discover that someone has a weapon that lets them fry surrogates and kill the user in the process. This of course turns into a global conspiracy involving the standard bad guys: the U.S. military, corrupt cops, evil corporations, and a psychotic inventor who is the real mastermind behind whatever the evil plot actually is. Bet you never saw that coming! The plot is generic. The characters are generic -- Ving Rhames, Rosamund Pike, and James Cromwell are all wasted in this. The plot twists are generic. The pacing is generic. And the ending is uninteresting -- in fact, the movie beats you over the head with “the right answer” so much that when Willis finally is called upon to makes his decision, there’s just no suspense. Nothing interesting, original or spectacular happens in this film. It's entire potential is squandered and it ends up neither as a good action film nor an intelligent science fiction film.

It’s kind of sad that a movie with this much potential achieved so little. In this regard, it reminds me a lot of I Am Legend, which had so much potential, but chose to ignore it all for fear of losing the summer kids.

Oh well.

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Shine On You Crazy Diamond

The music industry claims that its collapsing sales are the result of piracy. Arrrrrrgh. . . give me a break. The music industry has been making mistake after mistake for decades now. It got greedy and lazy and risk-averse, and now it’s paying the price. The reality is they haven’t turned out anything worth listening to in years. Their biggest failure is. . .

. . . hold on, we'll get to that in a minute.

I miss progressive rock. Yep. It’s true. Normally, “progressive” is a dirty word, but not in this instance. In this instance, progressive means “experimental,” and that’s a good thing.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the music scene was very different. You had pop bands. You had stoned hippies with guitars. You had country. And you had this thing known as progressive rock. Bands like Pink Floyd, Supertramp and pre-pop Genesis roamed the music world turning out strange, sometimes-horrible, and often times completely brilliant music.

What made progressive rock what it was, was that its creators wanted to experiment musically and lyrically. They wanted to expand the bounds of music and try things that hadn’t been done before. Instead of the 90 second songs of the 1950s, they introduced 5, 10 and 15 minute songs. They introduced concept albums. They added new instruments and new sounds. And lyrically, they took on topics that no pop song would dare touch: some were philosophical, some were angry, some were full of angst, and some were utter nonsense. But most were interesting and deeply thoughtful. Indeed, it's the kind of music you listen too when you want to ponder the imponderables.

It's true a lot of progressive music turned out to be garbage, but a heck of a lot more turned out to be original, intense and brilliant. Moreover, the influence of progressive rock spilled over into every other aspect of music. Even 1970s pop music was much more varied that the pop music of other eras because of the influence of progressive rock. But those days are over and those bands are all on social security. And there is nothing comparable today.

Since the mid-1980s, the music industry has played it safe. They no longer experiment, they manufacture. They’ve been repeating the same sounds and the same mindless lyrics. The only thing that changes is the bimbo or pretty-boy doing the singing. And bimbos and pretty boys they are because the music industry is more interested in selling images than music.

Until and unless this changes, the music industry will continue to turn people off until there is no music industry left, and that's the problem with the music industry.

I miss progressive rock.

What do you think?

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The End of Toontown

I’m a big fan of cartoons. Done right, cartoons are the purest form of escapism. They are also a fascinating storytelling medium because they literally have no bounds. You can use any type of characters, any style of drawing, and any storylines. The story need not even make sense or follow conventional story-telling techniques, and deus ex machina reigns supreme. At least, that’s how it was. Modern cartoons depress me because they’ve surrendered their unreality and they replaced it with an uncomfortable mimicking of the real world.

Now before I start, let me say that there are a handful of amazing cartoons today. For example, Up and Wall-E are incredibly subtle and intelligent movies. And South Park is the best social satire since Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Futurama is what The Simpsons once was. But then it starts to get a little iffy.

The problem with so many modern cartoons is that they’ve discarded the very things that made cartoons such a wonderful medium. They've tried to grow up, and in the process they lost the fairy dust. Consider what modern cartoons have lost:

1. Cartoon Physics: The biggest loss to the cartoon world is the loss of cartoon physics. What is cartoon physics? It’s the physical reality in which cartoons used to operate. In other words, this is what let toons run off a cliff, but not fall until they became conscious of their mistake. This is why traps never sprang on good guys, only bad guys, why good guys could pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnels, but bad guys couldn’t, and so on. This was the innocence of their world.

(FYI, many of these rules are on display in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, an excellent film that really shows a love for its subject matter. . . “You could [escape from those handcuffs] the whole time?!” “No, only when it was funny!”)

Unlike cartoons of yesteryear, today’s cartoon characters live in a world that largely approximates our own. The physics of their world is slightly exaggerated, but not by much, and certainly nowhere near as much as it used to be. If you run off a cliff, you fall. If you walk into a wall, you hit the wall. Thus, many of the most memorable moments from cartoons of old could not be repeated today. But more importantly, this has made modern cartoons much more “real-world” in their look and feel, and this has killed their essence. Indeed, there is little distinction today between cartoons and live-action movies.

In addition to the sadness of this loss, there is a danger element as well. If we take at face value the complaint people used to make about kids not being able to tell the difference between cartoon violence and the real world, what should we make of modern cartoons? In the past, when you smacked a cartoon cat in the face with a frying pan, something unreal happened: its face took the shape of the frying pan before it returned to normal. Nothing similar happens today. In fact, the outlandishness of the violence is gone today, i.e. it is much more real. But since cartoon violence still doesn’t result in realistic injury, are we not sending a worse signal today than we were in the past?

Also, doesn’t the violence seem a little more disturbing? When Jerry smacks Tom with a hammer, we laughed. But would we laugh if someone smacked Dug from Up with a hammer or would we recoil?

2. Indestructibility: By the same token, cartoon characters have lost their indestructibility. I’m not saying modern cartoon characters can be killed, but you certainly get the feeling they could. Think about it. In the past, you could blast a toon full of holes and water poured out when they drank. They could take an explosion, a shotgun to the face, a dissection from falling knives or any one of a dozen other Rube Goldbergian deaths. . . but they never died. They weren’t even hurt.

Yet, today’s characters get hurt when they are assaulted. They scream and try to avoid the danger, rather than facing the inevitable with a sarcastic stoicism and a sign that reads “Help!” Modern cartoonists even wrap their injuries in bandages and let them express the pain they’ve endured. Seriously, think about this: is there anything you can think of that could kill Bugs Bunny? Now, what about Buzz Lightyear?

Once again, the problem here is that we are wiping out the consequence free world that makes cartoons so escapist. In their place, we are seeing real world consequences, that change the look, feel, spirit and purpose of cartoons. Indeed, rather than dealing with fantasy, cartoons now become nothing more than live action films done on the cheap with computer graphics instead of film and sets.

3. That’s “Daffy,” Not “Stupidy”: Something else that really bothers me is the change in the kinds of defects cartoon characters display. It used to be that toons suffered from a variety of defects, all brought about by “bad” characteristics. In other words, their flaws were the result of inflated egos, hubris, obsessions, and other negative human traits. This made them daffy, and it made it easy to laugh at the egotistical jerks as their elaborate schemes blew up in their faces.

But modern cartoons are different. Now villains all suffer from megalomania and sidekicks all suffer from low self-esteem. Gone are the overly-elaborate plans, the Yosemite Sams who blinded themselves with anger, and the Elmer Fudds who could always be talked into making a huge mistake. Gone are the "tragic" villains, in the classic sense of having a tragic flaw. In their place are characters who are simply stupid, pathetic or rotten. Consequently, the very nature of the characters has become more nasty and less interesting.

4. Voices In My Head: Modern cartoons also have given up on finding talent like Mel Blanc. Instead, they now use famous actors to play the majority of the parts. This is done to help market these cartoons. But in the process, we’ve lost the believability of the characters. Indeed, you no longer see Bullwinkle or Scooby Doo, you see Robin Williams, Dan Aykroyd or a dozen pop stars. It’s like hiring Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger to star in Star Wars just because they’re famous, not because they fit the part. This makes it so much harder to “get into” the cartoon. Also, doesn’t this just reinforce our vapid celebrity culture?

5. $$$$: Finally, we come to the blatant commercialization. In the past, cartoons were drawn to satisfy the creative process. Animators created what they envisioned and they pioneered various interest techniques to improve their processes. Today, cartoon characters are designed to make merchandizing easier. When sales considerations trump creative considerations, we all lose.


That’s my problem with modern cartoons. At one point, these were pure escapist fun, though they often held interesting satire and hidden meanings. But today, they’ve mostly become disturbingly realistic and bland. In fact, part of what made cartoons so fun in the past was seeing how creative the cartoonists could be. But today’s cartoons are so restrictive that they might as well shoot them as live action films and just convert them to cartoons with a paint program.

To me, this represents a real loss of innocence and creativity.

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Film Friday: Smokin' Aces (2007)

Smokin’ Aces fascinates me, but for the wrong reasons. On paper this movie must have looked great. You’ve got a solid cast, a director with a hip style, and a downright clever script. But something went wrong on the way from paper to film. As I see it, the director worked too hard to be clever and not hard enough on getting control over his film reality.

** spoiler alert **

Problem No. 1: Script-Abuse

If you just consider the script itself without paying attention to the final film product, you would think this would be a pretty good movie. For one thing, the story has an interesting premise: Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven) is a Vegas magician/mafia associate, who wants to turn informant. As Piven waits in the penthouse of the Nomad Casino in Lake Tahoe, while his agent negotiates a deal with the Department of Justice -- headed by Andy Garcia, the mob puts a massive bounty on Piven's head. This gets half a dozen assassins racing for the million dollar prize. Sounds like fun.

Further, script-wise, everything ties together nicely. Everything that needs to be foreshadowed is foreshadowed. All the motivations make sense. The dialog fits the personalities. The characters are interesting and there are dozens of moments of cleverness, both verbal cleverness and plot cleverness. But something has gone wrong from script to screen.

Specifically, the film feels gimmicky because the director ties together each scene by having the first line of dialog in each scene reference the last line of dialog in the prior scene. Thus, one scene might end with a character saying: “what time it is?” and the next scene would begin with a character in a different scene saying something like: “Five o’clock is when it happened.” This was used incredibly effectively in The Fifth Element, where multiple scenes were sometimes combined into one through interlaced dialog. It allowed the director both to speed up the story AND to bring the characters together -- giving the movie a more tied-in feel. But in Smokin’ Aces, this was done in a such a heavy-handed, obvious and unrelenting way that it screams: “look how clever I can be!” It's like giving the punchline to a joke in the middle of the next joke, and while that can be clever if done sparingly, it becomes unpleasant done constantly. Indeed, it quickly becomes tiring trying to sort out the double meanings of each scene transition.

Problem 2: Too Many Lead Actors

The next problem comes from the use of the cast. The cast is very large and mostly famous: Ben Affleck, Common (Terminator Salvation), Alicia Keys, Jason Bateman, Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal), Chris Pine (Star Trek), Matthew Fox (Lost), and a couple more you’ll recognize. And it’s hard to complain about this group as they all do a pretty good job. But the director decided to give them all “a moment.” Thus, the film starts to feel disjointed as each character is given time to do their “shtick,” whether it helps the movie or not. And some scenes do nothing but distract from the film, e.g. Jason Bateman's scenes could be removed entirely.

Problem 3: Loss of Control

But the real problem with this film is that the director loses control over the film’s reality. Smokin’ Aces feels like the director shot seven or eight distinct stories with each character eventually ending up in the same place, then cut each film into equal length segments and assembled the movie by alternating these segments starting from the end of the film and working his way to the beginning without regard for how they fit together. This causes an amazing amount of time distortion in the film.

For example, one character starts up in the elevator toward the penthouse but somehow doesn’t reach the top floor before another character can drive from across town to the casino, interview staff members about the assassin in the elevator, get into a second elevator, and meet the assassin at the penthouse. In the same amount of time, another character flies from Los Angles to Tahoe and still arrives only a few seconds after everyone else. In another egregious example, one character actually gets shot in the parking lot, dumped in Lake Tahoe, finds his way out, runs into a stereotype white trash family, takes a bath, borrows a gun, returns to the hotel, hops in the elevator and rides to the penthouse in the same amount of time that the guys who shot him take to make it from the parking lot to the penthouse.

The director also lets characters see things and know things they couldn’t possibly see or know. Thus, one character in a hotel 1000 feet across the street can shoot through walls that she can’t see through and hit specific targets in the main hotel without wasting a shot. Others seem to know where their competitors are, even though they don’t actually know there are competitors. Characters also seem to be able to suddenly appear wherever they are needed to make a scene work. Moreover, the ending makes no sense except to allow for a dramatic conclusion.

These are the kinds of problems that really make the film feel unbalanced and strange, and keep you asking “when did he have time to do that?” and saying “that doesn’t make sense.”

In the end, this was a clever script and a solid cast ruined by a director who never had control over his sequence of events and who tried to substitute hip for smart. And that’s why I find this film so fascinating. If you had looked at this project before it was shot, this movie must have appeared like it couldn’t fail. But it did.

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Newsvertising

A lot of people talk about the blurring between news and entertainment. That’s certainly a problem because it’s led to the dumbing down of the news to a point where you need attention deficit disorder just to watch it. But I’m more concerned about the blurring of news and advertising. I see this as a very serious problem.

I first noticed this phenomenon when a free subscription to Entertainment Weekly appeared in my mailbox. Not only was this turd of a “magazine” written at the first grade level, but it didn’t take long to realize that this “magazine” was nothing more than one giant ad for the movie industry. Page after page were “stories” whose sole purpose was to get me to go see various films. Even when they panned a film, they still somehow managed to suggest that I see it. . . just not in the first week.

Soon I realized that the entertainment “news” presented on the nightly news was no different. The days of a reviewer cautioning you to avoid a lousy film were gone. In their place were pretty boys and ditzy girls who showed you promotional clips and gushed about every film; they even developed ways to sell the bad ones. . . “so bad it’s good.” And when they weren’t selling the movie directly, they did stories hyping these films as “events,” and encouraging you to take part in the “excitement” leading up the film. Basically, they ceased being reporters and became salespeople.

Then they added “gossip.” But there’s something you need to know about this gossip: most of it is manufactured to promote a film. It’s no coincidence that you will see a “random” story about Actor X’s new house or some “funny moment” Actor X had at a night club, the week before Actor X’s new film hits the screen. This is all intended to create a buzz. . . which will, of course, lead to stories about the buzz. That's called marketing, not reporting.

Then Hollywood hit upon a brilliant stroke. You know those interviews where some reporter sits down with Actor X to "discuss" their new film? Do you know how those are done? It's not actually a one on one experience. Instead, a slew of reporters show up to a pre-set location. Actor X sits in front of a blue screen as each reporter is cycled through. Each reporter is usually allowed only a couple questions, so they know to stay on script. And what's really key is that the actor will pretend to know the reporter. Thus, each reporter gets to look like they are “players” in Hollywood because their viewers think they managed to finagle an interview with a busy actor that they know personally. In exchange, the studio gets a couple hundred free ads on the local and national news. This is a quid pro quo, and reporters aren’t supposed to do that.

And it’s not just Hollywood. Sports “news” also has entered the pimping world. For generations, sports news meant providing a box score, a quick description of the key moments in the game, and a few quotes from one side or the other. No longer. First, they added highlights, which is understandable as television is a visual medium. But then they started adding “top ten hits of the week” and other segments that look an awful lot like advertisements for the league.

Then the NFL hit upon a great idea: use the promise of access to control the media. In exchange for locker room access and press access to Super Bowl week, the NFL began telling the media what they could or could not report. This included, for example, removing the journalistic “credentials” of people who criticized the NFL, and it included limits on what kinds of videos the media could use and for how long they could use them (nothing longer than 45 seconds and must be removed from websites in 24 hours). The media caved without even a whimper. Soon, the NFL was providing canned “news” stories to the media, which the media dutifully reported without change. Suddenly stories about brain damage resulting from concussions, drug use, arrests and labor unrest disappeared or became dismissive. In their place were NFL-approved stories about “the NFL experience,” the importance of new stadiums to cities, and NFL efforts to make sure that merchandise was high quality. . . usually accompanied with a mention of where you could buy said merchandise.

And lest you think, “well sports and entertainment people really aren’t journalists,” it’s hit the business news as well. CNBC doesn’t send reporters out to uncover news and report upon it. No, they let the "news" come to them. Thus, their programming days are packed with fund managers who come to say something generic about the market as they pimp their funds. They bring in CEOs to talk about new products or their latest books. And they’ve become a vehicle for damage control. Whenever a company gets caught doing something it shouldn’t, you can bet the CEO will appear on CNBC within a couple days to provide a whitewash version of what happened and to tell us about all the great things the company is doing. And don't think the reporters use this moment for a couple of hard-hitting questions. No, they put on well-practiced stern looks and then pitch a few softball questions before concluding: “I’m glad to hear you’re fixing this.” Then they trot out an analyst to tell you that now (or maybe in a week) is the time to buy the company’s stock, right before they cut to commercial, which (purely by “coincidence”) will be a paid ad for the company. Finally, they take the segment highlights and replay them ad nauseum.

Even the “regular” news is slowly giving way to product tie-ins and segments that look like sponsored ads. That story about how hard it is to find certain toys? That was suggested and assisted by the marketing department at ToyCo. That story about which national chain has the best fries or “will Company X’s new product sell”? Ditto. The story about the new healthy menu at Restaurant Z, or the new innovations at Tech Company A? Same thing. The story about the “latest trend” that just happens to tell you what brand you need to buy and where to buy it. . .

In each instance, what you have is a symbiotic relationship between the media and business. Business has learned that it can use the news to advertise its products. It offers ready-made stories and incentives to the media to report these “stories,” and the reporters accept them because it makes their jobs easier. . . just sit back and a script will come to you.

So why does this bother me? Two reasons. First, I want news that I can trust, and that requires an impartial media that seeks out the truth, rather than just passing along marketing-department-created propaganda.

Secondly, I hate sounding like the left, but I am concerned about the effects of this on society. Science has shown that humans are very susceptible to the cumulative effects of advertising; and the effects are much stronger when the advertising comes from a trusted source. I suspect that advertising is largely responsible for driving consumers to the point of bankruptcy, increasing patient demands for drugs, increasing obesity, and a host of other bad behaviors. But as bad as this is, at least with advertisements, people know that Madison Avenue is attempting to brainwash them. That’s no longer true when “the news” starts telling you what to buy and where to buy it. And that is truly insidious.

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Films: Down With The Apocalypse!!

There was a time when I used to enjoy a good end of the world movie. But I’ve gotten to the point where I really can’t stand them anymore. This has me a little perplexed. What’s changed my opinion about these movies? After careful deliberation, I’ve concluded that the nature of these films has changed: they no longer have a point except to present grotesque imagery. And that makes them kind of sick.

Apocalyptic films trace their history way back. Indeed, the term “apocalypse,” a Greek word meaning “lifting the veil,” derives from the Bible’s Book of Revelations, though every culture had its own version of the end of the world story. It seems that as a species, we are fascinated with our own demise. And I suppose that’s natural because humans are social creatures and we’re big on trying to control our own destinies. Apocalyptic stories sit at the crossroads of these two impulses, as they are warnings about what can go wrong if we let society do the wrong thing.

This, I think, is what made the early apocalyptic films so interesting: they were warnings, i.e. message movies. The writers/directors saw something in our world or in our behavior that troubled them, and they created their movies as a warning about what they saw. Hence, you had films warning about everything from the dangers of nuclear/biological/chemical weapons to the dangers of robots and automation to the dangers of not being able to cooperate to meet challenges to the dangers of divine retribution for our sins. And because these were message films, the majority of the film was about showing us both how we could avoid such a fate or, alternatively, how we could end up rushing head-long into it. In other words, they were lessons.

Now let me be clear: I am not saying that these films were all great or that I believed the messages. In fact, most of the messages were laughable, e.g. their “science” was usually truly awful, and the apocalypts’ interpretation of human nature was pathetic, they seem incapable of grasping that there is a good side to human nature that balances and checks the bad. But at least these films were working on exploring something worth exploring, and the themes were interesting: will weapon X be our undoing? If we give in to our darker sides, what kind of damage can we cause? How will humans respond to such horrors? Etc.

But today, this has all changed. And nothing shows this more than the change in what causes our demise in the films. In the past, our demise was always caused by something that society found acceptable, like our own chemical or nuclear weapons, or science that we marveled at even though we were not yet ready to control it. Because of this, these films always gave us something to think about. When Chuck Heston cursed us all in Planet of the Apes, we wondered if we could really knock ourselves down the food chain if we pushed the button. When we saw humanity enslaved by a computer in Colossus: The Forbin Project, we wondered how far we should trust computers to control our weapons. When Matthew Broderick nearly kill us all in War Games, we wondered how secure our weapons really were? And so on. In each instance, our comfort with the status quo was questioned, and we were asked if we really felt comfortable with things as they were.

Conversely, today the causes are either beyond our control (like an asteroid) or they are the result of criminal behavior by clichéd bad guys. Consequently, there is nothing for us to consider anymore. Indeed, while we may have wondered about the wisdom of hording nuclear weapons after seeing Fail Safe, no one thinks “gee, maybe we should make it more illegal for corporations to make killer, mutant viruses” after watching Resident Evil.

Thus, the nature of these films has changed before a single frame of film is even shot: modern apocalypse films all but wipe out the social commentary aspect of the genre.

Moreover, the focus of the story has changed. The older films dealt mainly with the events leading up to the disaster, with the intention being to warn us of the dangers we supposedly faced and how we could bring about our own demise as a result of those dangers. Even when these films did deal with the after-effects, it was done mainly to add emphasis to the story. By comparison, today’s apocalypse films are all about the after-effects. Indeed, whereas the older films were intended as critiques of human nature, the new films are slick CGI snuff films showing the many ways the film crew could come up with for killing human beings.

What this means is that whereas the older films served a purpose, the newer ones are purely gratuitous. In the older films, the slaughter, when shown, was intended to heighten the drama or to heighten the impact of the consequences of ignoring the director’s warning. But in the new films, the slaughter is what is being sold to you. It is the backdrop for an otherwise bland action story, and it is the action itself. The difference between these two approaches is the difference between a treatise on humanity and a book of gory pictures.

And I that’s why I don’t like apocalyptic films anymore. Even though I disagreed with the older ones (and found many of them laughable) at least they were earnest and the drama was interesting. They had a purpose. Today films have lost all of that. They have instead become mass snuff films, whose only purpose is to satisfy our bloodlust.

I guess I just don’t find that cool.

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