In the wake of finishing "Babylon Five," the obvious science-fiction series to move on to was "Farscape," which started in 1999, roughly four months after "Babylon" ended, and is another of those cult shows with a small, but very dedicated fanbase. I had more familiarity with "Farscape," starting out, than I had with "Babylon 5." I had seen an episode or two already, though totally out of context, and I even have a few fuzzy memories of the series finale. I already knew what the major romantic pairing was going to be, and noted the absence of at least two major characters in these early episodes. But first, lets get to the premise.
"Farscape" follows the adventures of Commander John Crichton (Ben Browder), an astronaut who accidentally slingshots his spaceship through a wormhole, and into an unknown patch of the universe that is teeming with alien life. He has the bad fortune of emerging in the middle of a battle between a group of escaping prisoners and their pursuers, a military force known as the Peacekeepers. The prisoners, aboard their living ship, Moya, take Crichton onboard hoping to pump him for information. They include D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), an aggressive orange Luxan, Zhaan (Virginia Hey), a mellow, blue-skinned priestess, Rygel XVI (Jonathan Hardy), a two-foot tall Hynerian monarch, and Moya's biologically bonded Pilot (Lani Tupu). They're soon joined by a pursuing Peacekeeper, Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), one of the Sebacean race that happens to look identical to humans. She's bent on dragging all of them back to her Captain, Crais (Lani Tupu). Crichton doesn't have the opportunity to choose sides, because it turns out that the arrival of his ship through the wormhole caused the destruction of the Crais's brother's ship, and the Captain is out for revenge. And Aeryn is soon branded a traitor, leaving the ragtag group aboard the Moya stuck with each other as fellow fugitives.
The first thing that jumps out about "Farscape" is the quality of the effects. They are in a word, gorgeous. '"Farscape" was partly produced by the Jim Henson Company, which was responsible for the inclusion of two puppet characters, Rygel and Pilot, and the use of alien makeup with far more sophisticated prosthetics than had been seen in television up until that time. Zhaan and D'Argo, both awash in bright primary colors, are especially eye-catching next to the more muted "Star Trek" and "Stargate" style aliens. Pilot is also an impressive creation, with a giant mushroom cap head and multiple limbs, but Rygel is a Muppet of the old hand rod and wire variety, to his detriment. Though he has a CGI stand-in and spends a lot of time in a floating armchair, his interactions with the rest of the cast are often hampered. He's also not designed very well, his features too broad and cartoonish for the subtlety required of him. Finally, Moya's organic interiors are a nice break from the industrial set design of "Babylon Five," where even the nicest living quarters were predominantly concrete or beige. Here, you get more interesting shapes and a much warmer, rosier color palette.
I wish I could say the writing was up to par, but it's not. At least, not yet. The characters that have been introduced are interesting, and have some facets that are worth exploring, but there hasn't been any real character development. Aeryn and D'Argo seem to be taking their first baby steps toward overcoming some personality flaws, but that's about it. Crichton, our everyman hero, is still settling into the "Farscape" universe and figuring out its mechanics. And this is where we hit the limitations of the show's premise. "Farscape," is far smaller in scope than "Babylon Five" or "Star Trek" right now, and the action is often tightly focused on Crichton. Seven episodes in, he's repeatedly established himself as the show's moral center and voice of reason, which is getting a little old. But far more bothersome is his habit of dropping pop culture references left and right, and laying down the sarcasm awfully thick. It's not easy to sympathize with him, and I can't wait for the series' other major villains to show up and knock him around a little, so we can see what he's really made of.
The rules of the "Farscape" universe also aren't very well established yet, which means its alien cultures and planet-of-the-week adventures tend to come off as pretty derivative. D'Argo is Klingon-ish, Zhaan is Jedi-esque, Aeryn might be a recovering Terminator, and John Crichton is the wisecracking Bruckheimer-disaster-movie hero of your choice. However, the humor is wackier than most, the tone is looser, and the whole style of the show feels open to more diverse possibilities. There have been signs that there's something bigger and more epic in the works. At this point the writers are still finding their feet - there have been multiple instances of weird pacing and clunky dialogue - but I can see "Farscape" getting better in a hurry once we break out of these episodic adventures and hit the serialized stories. On the other hand, two of the four creators of the show were responsible for a wretched mess of a science-fiction series called "seaQuest," which floundered for years in the 90s before finally being put out of its misery. "Farscape" was the show they followed it up with. We'll see if it turned out any better.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
A Super Bowl Unwatched
Event television can be a hard thing to avoid. I'd fallen into the habit of watching the Super Bowl every year, just because it felt expected. I'm not a football fan and I never watch regular season games. However, the American culture insists on making a big deal out of the event. My grocery store had displays for Super Bowl party paraphernalia at least as prominent as the ones for Valentine's Day. Restaurants and bars had their big screens on and their drink specials updated, hoping to attract customers. Traffic was awful at three in the afternoon on a Sunday, and promised to get worse that evening. Super Bowl ratings have just gotten bigger every year, and in the age of a thousand cable channels and ever-more-niche programming, that's a rare thing for advertisers.
Ah yes, the advertising. My excuse for watching past Super Bowls was for the commercials, which were more entertaining for me than the football. I have to say it was a neat trick, advertisers somehow turning beer and insurance advertisements into a reason to tune in, but as advertisements go the Super Bowl commercials have developed an aura of the exceptional around them. They have their own "Best of" specials. They're ranked and discussed around literal and metaphorical water coolers the next day. I've already found dozens of articles sorting out the winners and losers. In short, they're treated like real, legitimate content. People actually pay attention to these commercials, and their creators and the networks selling ad space all know it. This year, it cost almost three million dollars for a thirty second spot, so the ad firms are under tremendous pressure to show something memorable.
Thanks to Hulu and other advertisement aggregator websites that provide easy access to all of the commercials that aired, I don't need to sit through three plus hours of football in order to see them. And I can easily avoid the network spots, the news updates, the program bumpers, and those one or two commercials that always seem to be repeated multiple times throughout the game. Most of these sites even have popularity rankings, so I can avoid the lousier commercials or the ones with content I wanted to avoid. This year, the Groupon ads seemed to be the most universally reviled, so I skipped them without any trouble. The same went for the traditionally moronic Doritos and GoDaddy spots. On the other hand, the buzz was all about a Volkswagon commercial with a mini-Darth Vader. Cute, but not worth all the fuss. I liked both of the Coca Cola ads better, and I'll probably be seeing versions of them in theaters soon.
However, my primary interest is always the movie teasers, and this year there were plenty. Most like "Limitless," "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," "Thor," "Rango," "Rio," and "Battle: Los Angeles" had slimmed down versions of the trailers that had already been released, though often with a few seconds of new footage. "Cowboys vs. Aliens" finally let us see what the alien ships looked like up close. There were only a few of the new movie spots that had new material really worth talking about. "Transformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon" rolled out the first real footage from the film, which looks exactly like the last two. "Captain America" and "Super 8" were more interesting. The former gave us a quick look at the creation and training of the superhero the taglines are calling First Avenger, and the latter definitely has an "E.T." vibe with the kids and the alien menace. Not a great bunch this year overall. Notably, "The Green Lantern" was missing from the lineup. What gives, Warners?
I did catch a couple of minutes of the pre-game show, so I saw a few of these live. I also found Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler plugging their new romantic comedy, "Just Go With It," by horsing around with the football presenters. Note that this is the same film that shoehorned an obtrusive promo right in the middle of a Lakers-Celtics game last week, to the fury of basketball fans. It's probably a good thing that they decided to keep away from the actual game this time.
All in all, what I wanted to see of the Super Bowl only took me about half an hour of Internet browsing to see. It makes me wonder why I wasted all that that time and attention watching the actual games. But then, I missed the whole shared experience of seeing the live airings at the same time as everyone else in the country, and that's the real point of event television. The trouble is, the Super Bowl isn't really my event, not like the Oscars or the Olympics spectacles that I actually enjoy watching, so I don't get the benefit of the excitement. The commercials alone don't generate that for me. So from here on out, it looks like my Super Bowl Sundays - will just be Sundays.
Ah yes, the advertising. My excuse for watching past Super Bowls was for the commercials, which were more entertaining for me than the football. I have to say it was a neat trick, advertisers somehow turning beer and insurance advertisements into a reason to tune in, but as advertisements go the Super Bowl commercials have developed an aura of the exceptional around them. They have their own "Best of" specials. They're ranked and discussed around literal and metaphorical water coolers the next day. I've already found dozens of articles sorting out the winners and losers. In short, they're treated like real, legitimate content. People actually pay attention to these commercials, and their creators and the networks selling ad space all know it. This year, it cost almost three million dollars for a thirty second spot, so the ad firms are under tremendous pressure to show something memorable.
Thanks to Hulu and other advertisement aggregator websites that provide easy access to all of the commercials that aired, I don't need to sit through three plus hours of football in order to see them. And I can easily avoid the network spots, the news updates, the program bumpers, and those one or two commercials that always seem to be repeated multiple times throughout the game. Most of these sites even have popularity rankings, so I can avoid the lousier commercials or the ones with content I wanted to avoid. This year, the Groupon ads seemed to be the most universally reviled, so I skipped them without any trouble. The same went for the traditionally moronic Doritos and GoDaddy spots. On the other hand, the buzz was all about a Volkswagon commercial with a mini-Darth Vader. Cute, but not worth all the fuss. I liked both of the Coca Cola ads better, and I'll probably be seeing versions of them in theaters soon.
However, my primary interest is always the movie teasers, and this year there were plenty. Most like "Limitless," "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," "Thor," "Rango," "Rio," and "Battle: Los Angeles" had slimmed down versions of the trailers that had already been released, though often with a few seconds of new footage. "Cowboys vs. Aliens" finally let us see what the alien ships looked like up close. There were only a few of the new movie spots that had new material really worth talking about. "Transformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon" rolled out the first real footage from the film, which looks exactly like the last two. "Captain America" and "Super 8" were more interesting. The former gave us a quick look at the creation and training of the superhero the taglines are calling First Avenger, and the latter definitely has an "E.T." vibe with the kids and the alien menace. Not a great bunch this year overall. Notably, "The Green Lantern" was missing from the lineup. What gives, Warners?
I did catch a couple of minutes of the pre-game show, so I saw a few of these live. I also found Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler plugging their new romantic comedy, "Just Go With It," by horsing around with the football presenters. Note that this is the same film that shoehorned an obtrusive promo right in the middle of a Lakers-Celtics game last week, to the fury of basketball fans. It's probably a good thing that they decided to keep away from the actual game this time.
All in all, what I wanted to see of the Super Bowl only took me about half an hour of Internet browsing to see. It makes me wonder why I wasted all that that time and attention watching the actual games. But then, I missed the whole shared experience of seeing the live airings at the same time as everyone else in the country, and that's the real point of event television. The trouble is, the Super Bowl isn't really my event, not like the Oscars or the Olympics spectacles that I actually enjoy watching, so I don't get the benefit of the excitement. The commercials alone don't generate that for me. So from here on out, it looks like my Super Bowl Sundays - will just be Sundays.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Get Me Out of "Marienbad"!
As a pretentious film fan, I have met my match. "Last Year at Marienbad," the 1961 Alan Resnais French language film, is too pretentious, obscure, and obtuse for me. At only 94 minutes, I just couldn't take it. It's a Luis Bunuel film with no sense of humor. It's a Hitchcock thriller with no twist ending - no ending at all, in fact. It's a beautiful silent film with some long-winded moron yammering over it, who refuses to shut up and let me enjoy the cinematography. I haven't been this simultenously bored and enraged at a film since "Au Hasard Balthazar." There must be some particular, unknown quality of French cinema that provokes this kind of bafflement from me, because it keeps happening with far too much regularity.
Anyhoo, about "Last Year at Marienbad." How to describe this thing? It takes place in an elaborately furnished and decorated hotel, apparently at Marienbad, which Google tells me is located in the Czech Republic, in a region formerly known as Bohemia. There are three major characters, all unnamed. They are a man (Giorgio Albertazzi), a woman (Delphine Seyrig), and the woman's sinister male companion (Sacha Pitoeff). The man spends the entire movie trying to convince the woman that they met a year ago in the same hotel, made plans to run away together, and ultimately agreed to wait a year and meet again. The relationship between the man and the woman is never entirely clear. We also never learn who the male companion is to the woman. Her husband? Another lover?
The man's spoken narration is rambling and endless. He retells the events of his first meeting with the woman over and over, with different variations. The visuals obligingly follow suit. Now the woman is in a white, feathered nightgown in this scene. Now she's in a plain black one. Here, she's dead. No wait, the man has changed his mind and she's very much alive. It's dream logic in its purest form, with a narrative that blends flashbacks and fantasies together until it's impossible to figure out the true version of events - that is, if you can trust the claim that there was a true version of events to begin with. There have been other films, mostly experimental ones, that have told similar stories in a similar fashion, but none as maddeningly as this.
I like Alan Resnais' visuals, full of beautiful black-and-white tracking shots that wander through the impossible hotel. The opening shot starts on the ornately painted ceiling before sending the audience off into the labyrinthine world of long corridors and empty rooms that conform to no real-world architecture. There are shapes and patterns that recur, sometimes almost subconsciously, from scene to scene. The pyramid shape of the matchstick-counting game the man plays with the woman's companion is echoed by the artificially conical trees in the garden, and perhaps the triangular positioning of the three principals in certain scenes. And there's a wonderfully surreal, vertiginous quality to the transitions between one version of reality and the next. The way the camera swoops and drifts through the hotel is breathtaking.
It was the narration that killed it for me though. The narrator, the man, is not only talking over practically every scene, but insists on running through the same story over and over again, and a lot of it is pretty esoteric blather. In the opening sequence, we hear him in the middle of a long, detailed description of the hotel, which he repeats several times without pause. It was like being stuck at a dinner party with a droning guest who has far too much to say about the silverware, has forgetten his point, and so keeps starting all over from the beginning again. The visuals are so evocative by themselves, I hated the constant distraction of the man going on and on about statues and fountains and what he remembers or imagines the woman may have said to him a year ago. Ninety-odd minutes of this felt like an eternity.
"Marienbad" has been treated as a puzzle film by some, and eagerly mined for hidden messages and symbolism. You could project whatever themes you like on the three characters, caught in a seemingly endless loop of meetings and confrontations and indecisions. I couldn't summon up the desire to even make a stab at my own interpretation. But I'll bet someone could make a really good remix video with the footage and the Eagles' "Hotel California."
I have to admit that "Last Year at Marienbad" is a very good film. It is a beautiful film. It is a unique film. It is a culturally and artistically important film. And I was bored out of my freaking mind.
Anyhoo, about "Last Year at Marienbad." How to describe this thing? It takes place in an elaborately furnished and decorated hotel, apparently at Marienbad, which Google tells me is located in the Czech Republic, in a region formerly known as Bohemia. There are three major characters, all unnamed. They are a man (Giorgio Albertazzi), a woman (Delphine Seyrig), and the woman's sinister male companion (Sacha Pitoeff). The man spends the entire movie trying to convince the woman that they met a year ago in the same hotel, made plans to run away together, and ultimately agreed to wait a year and meet again. The relationship between the man and the woman is never entirely clear. We also never learn who the male companion is to the woman. Her husband? Another lover?
The man's spoken narration is rambling and endless. He retells the events of his first meeting with the woman over and over, with different variations. The visuals obligingly follow suit. Now the woman is in a white, feathered nightgown in this scene. Now she's in a plain black one. Here, she's dead. No wait, the man has changed his mind and she's very much alive. It's dream logic in its purest form, with a narrative that blends flashbacks and fantasies together until it's impossible to figure out the true version of events - that is, if you can trust the claim that there was a true version of events to begin with. There have been other films, mostly experimental ones, that have told similar stories in a similar fashion, but none as maddeningly as this.
I like Alan Resnais' visuals, full of beautiful black-and-white tracking shots that wander through the impossible hotel. The opening shot starts on the ornately painted ceiling before sending the audience off into the labyrinthine world of long corridors and empty rooms that conform to no real-world architecture. There are shapes and patterns that recur, sometimes almost subconsciously, from scene to scene. The pyramid shape of the matchstick-counting game the man plays with the woman's companion is echoed by the artificially conical trees in the garden, and perhaps the triangular positioning of the three principals in certain scenes. And there's a wonderfully surreal, vertiginous quality to the transitions between one version of reality and the next. The way the camera swoops and drifts through the hotel is breathtaking.
It was the narration that killed it for me though. The narrator, the man, is not only talking over practically every scene, but insists on running through the same story over and over again, and a lot of it is pretty esoteric blather. In the opening sequence, we hear him in the middle of a long, detailed description of the hotel, which he repeats several times without pause. It was like being stuck at a dinner party with a droning guest who has far too much to say about the silverware, has forgetten his point, and so keeps starting all over from the beginning again. The visuals are so evocative by themselves, I hated the constant distraction of the man going on and on about statues and fountains and what he remembers or imagines the woman may have said to him a year ago. Ninety-odd minutes of this felt like an eternity.
"Marienbad" has been treated as a puzzle film by some, and eagerly mined for hidden messages and symbolism. You could project whatever themes you like on the three characters, caught in a seemingly endless loop of meetings and confrontations and indecisions. I couldn't summon up the desire to even make a stab at my own interpretation. But I'll bet someone could make a really good remix video with the footage and the Eagles' "Hotel California."
I have to admit that "Last Year at Marienbad" is a very good film. It is a beautiful film. It is a unique film. It is a culturally and artistically important film. And I was bored out of my freaking mind.
Friday, February 4, 2011
"Coupling" - Sex and Death, Minus the Death
The notoriety of "Coupling" reached me long before the show did, when NBC tried to launch an American version of the British sex comedy in 2003 to fill the gap left by "Friends" on its Thurdsay schedule. I didn't have any interest in it, and apparently neither did anyone else. The American "Coupling" only lasted four episodes. Too much sex, said some critics. Too much corporate meddling, said others. I never caught any of these episodes, so I can't provide an opinion on the fiasco. However, I'm steadily making my way through the original British version, and I can see why NBC made the attempt, even if it was probably doomed to failure from the start.
The show is about the romantic and sexual adventures of three men and three women, all in their late twenties and early thirties. First there's the show's central couple, Steve (Jack Davenport) and Susan (Sarah Alexander). Both have recently ended relationships with Jane (Gina Bellman) and Patrick (Ben Miles) respectively. Both of the exes are on the more sexually confident end of the scale. Balancing things out are Steve's best friend Jeff (Richard Coyle) and Susan's best friend Sally (Kate Isitt), who are more neurotic and self-conscious about sex. The first episode of the first series starts with Steve and Susan meeting, and the show proceeds to follow them through several stages of their relationship.
The DVD covers proclaim that "Coupling" is all about sex, but more that, it's about a certain attitude of openness and candor about sex. We never see anything onscreen that wouldn't pass muster on prime time American television, but the characters talk about sexual topics constantly, without hesitation. They talk about porn. They talk about impotence. They talk about accidental nudity etiquette. Sex isn't treated as taboo or romanticized all out of proportion, but rather as something matter-of-fact, just another part of everyday life that can cause all sorts of unique aggravations. There are certain topics that are handled more delicately than others, but there's never a sense that anyone's holding back.
Most of the action, that is to say the discussion of the action, takes place at a local bar. Usually at some point the male and female trios break off to hold their own chats, sometimes dissecting the same problems or events from different points of view. Series creator Stephen Moffat gets a lot of comedic mileage from the gender-balanced approach, exploring a full range of sexual insecurities and dilemmas. Sally obsesses about getting older and rounder with a saggy neck. Jeff finds it impossible to hold a conversation with a woman without blurting outrageous lies. Jane pretends to be bisexual and doesn't understand why this means gay men still doesn't want to sleep with her. Steve, when cornered, has a habit of going off on rants about minutiae like bathroom privacy and couch cushions. Susan slept with Australia. Patrick is a tripod.
My favorite character, who seems to be the most universally popular one, is Jeff. He's obsessed with women and sex and has a massive catalog of favorite fantasies and deviances in his head. He's the one who is always ready to offer advice about common pitfalls like The Sock Gap and the Giggle Loop. However, he's so nervous and ill at-ease with actual women, he is by far the least lucky in love of the group. Instead, Jeff has real knack for getting himself into ridiculous situations like going on a date where he has to pretend to only have one leg. His finest moment may have been an attempt to compliment a beautiful foreigner, which turns into an extended ramble on keeping women's ears in a bucket. Oh, Jeffrey.
All the performances are great, and the actors have great chemistry with each other, but the bulk of the credit for the show's success has to go to Stephen Moffat. His scripts are fantastic throughout, and once in a while he'll do something really ambitious like a split-screen episode, or a story told out of chronological order, or one memorable effort where a key scene is played out twice in different languages. As a result, he helps make a fairly small-scale comedy often feel like a much bigger one. And most impressively, I didn't find the show until this past December, and I couldn't tell that it was made ten years ago. Aside from the odd glimpse of an ancient Playstation, "Coupling" still feels contemporary.
Alas, British TV seasons are so short - only six to eight episodes apiece! And the show only ran four years! This means my fling with "Coupling" must be brief. I'd better enjoy it while it lasts.
---
The show is about the romantic and sexual adventures of three men and three women, all in their late twenties and early thirties. First there's the show's central couple, Steve (Jack Davenport) and Susan (Sarah Alexander). Both have recently ended relationships with Jane (Gina Bellman) and Patrick (Ben Miles) respectively. Both of the exes are on the more sexually confident end of the scale. Balancing things out are Steve's best friend Jeff (Richard Coyle) and Susan's best friend Sally (Kate Isitt), who are more neurotic and self-conscious about sex. The first episode of the first series starts with Steve and Susan meeting, and the show proceeds to follow them through several stages of their relationship.
The DVD covers proclaim that "Coupling" is all about sex, but more that, it's about a certain attitude of openness and candor about sex. We never see anything onscreen that wouldn't pass muster on prime time American television, but the characters talk about sexual topics constantly, without hesitation. They talk about porn. They talk about impotence. They talk about accidental nudity etiquette. Sex isn't treated as taboo or romanticized all out of proportion, but rather as something matter-of-fact, just another part of everyday life that can cause all sorts of unique aggravations. There are certain topics that are handled more delicately than others, but there's never a sense that anyone's holding back.
Most of the action, that is to say the discussion of the action, takes place at a local bar. Usually at some point the male and female trios break off to hold their own chats, sometimes dissecting the same problems or events from different points of view. Series creator Stephen Moffat gets a lot of comedic mileage from the gender-balanced approach, exploring a full range of sexual insecurities and dilemmas. Sally obsesses about getting older and rounder with a saggy neck. Jeff finds it impossible to hold a conversation with a woman without blurting outrageous lies. Jane pretends to be bisexual and doesn't understand why this means gay men still doesn't want to sleep with her. Steve, when cornered, has a habit of going off on rants about minutiae like bathroom privacy and couch cushions. Susan slept with Australia. Patrick is a tripod.
My favorite character, who seems to be the most universally popular one, is Jeff. He's obsessed with women and sex and has a massive catalog of favorite fantasies and deviances in his head. He's the one who is always ready to offer advice about common pitfalls like The Sock Gap and the Giggle Loop. However, he's so nervous and ill at-ease with actual women, he is by far the least lucky in love of the group. Instead, Jeff has real knack for getting himself into ridiculous situations like going on a date where he has to pretend to only have one leg. His finest moment may have been an attempt to compliment a beautiful foreigner, which turns into an extended ramble on keeping women's ears in a bucket. Oh, Jeffrey.
All the performances are great, and the actors have great chemistry with each other, but the bulk of the credit for the show's success has to go to Stephen Moffat. His scripts are fantastic throughout, and once in a while he'll do something really ambitious like a split-screen episode, or a story told out of chronological order, or one memorable effort where a key scene is played out twice in different languages. As a result, he helps make a fairly small-scale comedy often feel like a much bigger one. And most impressively, I didn't find the show until this past December, and I couldn't tell that it was made ten years ago. Aside from the odd glimpse of an ancient Playstation, "Coupling" still feels contemporary.
Alas, British TV seasons are so short - only six to eight episodes apiece! And the show only ran four years! This means my fling with "Coupling" must be brief. I'd better enjoy it while it lasts.
---
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Watch Your Step in "Animal Kingdom"
There are many films about young men who become criminals or delinquents thanks to the bad influence of unscrupulous relatives, but I don't think there have been any quite like "Animal Kingdom," an Australian crime film about a tight-knit family of career criminals. Our teenage hero is Joshua Cody, nicknamed J (James Frecheville), who moves in with his grandmother, Janine (Jacki Weaver), after his mother does of an overdose. J is quiet and keeps to himself, showing no interest in the dealings of his uncles, Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), Darren (Luke Ford), and Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), and their pal Baz (Joel Edgerton). Instead, he prefers spending his time with his girlfriend Nicky (Laura Wheelwright), and does his best to distance himself from his home life. However, all Cody brothers either live with Janine or are at the house constantly, making it difficult for J to avoid being present at the wrong times. Eventually a job goes wrong and the police start to take an interest, led by Officer Leckie (Guy Pearce). Suddenly J may know too much, and his loyalties are called into question.
A key element that makes "Animal Kingdom" distinctive from so many other similar crime stories is its suburban setting. The Cody brothers are not ghetto dwellers or suit-wearing sophisticates. They plan their jobs in living rooms and bedrooms, often with their mother or their girlfriends in close proximity. This does not mean that their crimes are more innocuous. The film depicts several acts of violence, heightened by the fact that they take place in backyards or familiar neighborhood streets. The most intense and upsetting one plays out on Janine's living room couch. Likewise, the characters behave like normal, everyday people. All the various relationships within a criminal hierarchy we usually see in mobster films like "The Godfather," are condensed into the simplest family dynamics. How the Cody brothers relate to each other, and how their mother figures into their operation is vital to understanding their actions and motivations.
I wish I'd seen the film before knowing that Jacki Weaver's performance was getting accolades left and right, including a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She maintains a wonderful, warm presence as a loving mother and grandmother for so much of the film, with all these little domestic mannerisms that totally put the viewer off guard. And then her dark side emerges, without warning, and it's absolutely terrifying. Her performance is only one of several excellent ones in the film. Ben Mendelsohn as Pope, the most dangerous and unstable of the brothers, manages to be a real menace and a pathetic figure at the same time. And then there's James Frecheville, who will be one to watch in the future. He keeps J such a stoic presence, but not so much that you can't sense the conflicted emotions and adolescent frustrations below the surface.
In the wrong hands, this story could have been maudlin or overly bleak, but there's a good balance to "Animal Kingdom," particularly in the way that it uses J as an observer. His dialogue is sparse in the early going, and his relatives have such big personalities that the audience may forget, as the Codys sometimes do, that J is there with them in the scene. There are some instances where he provides narration of his inner thoughts, but these are brief and mostly disappear after the initial introductions to the characters. This means that while J is certainly the protagonist and always has our sympathies, the audience isn't privy to what he's thinking most of the time, and his actions can be unpredictable. The POV will also switch among the various members of the family, giving us different, revealing views of each character. Some of J's most interesting character development happens when he isn't onscreen, through his uncles or Janine by proxy.
The film's weakness, perhaps, is that the narrative ends up a little scattered, and some of the characters get lost in the shuffle. I got tripped up by the Australian accents here and there, but I was left far more disoriented by abrupt cuts and some rushed events. Nicky's family appears a few times and would seem to be important to later events in the film, but they curiously disappear. I liked the ending scenes, but the sequence immediately leading up to it feels slightly incomplete, like several important details were forgotten or left out. Too little exposition is always better than too much, but this was one of those cases where we could have used a little more.
But these are small complaints about one of the better coming-of-age crime stories I've seen in a while. Jacki Weaver's got my vote on Oscar night, and I'm glad her nomination means more people will be seeking out this film.
A key element that makes "Animal Kingdom" distinctive from so many other similar crime stories is its suburban setting. The Cody brothers are not ghetto dwellers or suit-wearing sophisticates. They plan their jobs in living rooms and bedrooms, often with their mother or their girlfriends in close proximity. This does not mean that their crimes are more innocuous. The film depicts several acts of violence, heightened by the fact that they take place in backyards or familiar neighborhood streets. The most intense and upsetting one plays out on Janine's living room couch. Likewise, the characters behave like normal, everyday people. All the various relationships within a criminal hierarchy we usually see in mobster films like "The Godfather," are condensed into the simplest family dynamics. How the Cody brothers relate to each other, and how their mother figures into their operation is vital to understanding their actions and motivations.
I wish I'd seen the film before knowing that Jacki Weaver's performance was getting accolades left and right, including a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She maintains a wonderful, warm presence as a loving mother and grandmother for so much of the film, with all these little domestic mannerisms that totally put the viewer off guard. And then her dark side emerges, without warning, and it's absolutely terrifying. Her performance is only one of several excellent ones in the film. Ben Mendelsohn as Pope, the most dangerous and unstable of the brothers, manages to be a real menace and a pathetic figure at the same time. And then there's James Frecheville, who will be one to watch in the future. He keeps J such a stoic presence, but not so much that you can't sense the conflicted emotions and adolescent frustrations below the surface.
In the wrong hands, this story could have been maudlin or overly bleak, but there's a good balance to "Animal Kingdom," particularly in the way that it uses J as an observer. His dialogue is sparse in the early going, and his relatives have such big personalities that the audience may forget, as the Codys sometimes do, that J is there with them in the scene. There are some instances where he provides narration of his inner thoughts, but these are brief and mostly disappear after the initial introductions to the characters. This means that while J is certainly the protagonist and always has our sympathies, the audience isn't privy to what he's thinking most of the time, and his actions can be unpredictable. The POV will also switch among the various members of the family, giving us different, revealing views of each character. Some of J's most interesting character development happens when he isn't onscreen, through his uncles or Janine by proxy.
The film's weakness, perhaps, is that the narrative ends up a little scattered, and some of the characters get lost in the shuffle. I got tripped up by the Australian accents here and there, but I was left far more disoriented by abrupt cuts and some rushed events. Nicky's family appears a few times and would seem to be important to later events in the film, but they curiously disappear. I liked the ending scenes, but the sequence immediately leading up to it feels slightly incomplete, like several important details were forgotten or left out. Too little exposition is always better than too much, but this was one of those cases where we could have used a little more.
But these are small complaints about one of the better coming-of-age crime stories I've seen in a while. Jacki Weaver's got my vote on Oscar night, and I'm glad her nomination means more people will be seeking out this film.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The 1998 Best Picture Deathmatch Revisited
Oh boy. Here we go again.
"The King's Speech" cleaned up at the Director's Guild and Screen Actor's Guild Awards over the weekend, and picked up a Best Picture win from the Producer's Guild before that. Since these are the people who will actually be voting for the Academy Awards, "The King's Speech" is now the frontrunner at the Oscars. Up to this point, the favorite had been "The Social Network," which dominated the major categories at nearly every critics' award, including Best Picture, Director, and Writing at the Golden Globe's. "Social Network" boosters, with the help of many still-smarting Christopher Nolan fans, are putting out conspiracy theories left and right. The Academy Award voters are older and more conservative, so they're more receptive to a WWII British costume drama than a movie about social networking. Richard Corliss over at TIME magazine suggests that sentiment tends to win out over daring.. And there's been one common refrain in many of these arguments - if "The King's Speech" does win Best Picture, it'll be just like what happened with "Shakespeare in Love" and "Saving Private Ryan."
Because "Saving Private Ryan" was cheated, you see. According to a very vocal and insistent group of cinephiles, Steven Spielberg's WWII epic was the clear and obvious choice to take home a Best Picture Oscar over the period romantic comedy, "Shakespeare in Love." The 1998 race was a memorable one, where "Private Ryan" was the early favorite that won many key awards, including the Best Picture Golden Globe in the Drama category. It was the highest grossing film of 1998 in the U.S., and the second highest worldwide. It was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Tom Hanks, both multiple-Oscar winners at the height of their popularity. It was built up by the critics and the press and the advertising gurus as the major event film of the year. So how on earth did "Shakespeare in Love" run away with the big prize? Fingers are often pointed at Harvey Weinstein, the head of Miramax at the time. He poured money into advertisements for "Shakespeare in Love," aggressively campaigning for Oscar gold on an unprecedented level. Was it hype and Hollywood politics that helped "Shakespeare" to the win?
Possibly. The campaigning certainly raised awareness, and that awareness might have been what pushed "Shakespeare" over the top. However, that doesn't mean the movie wasn't a deserving winner. I've had to be a defender of "Shakespeare in Love" many times. I adore the film. I think it deserved to win Best Picture. It's one of the few non-animated features I actually own a copy of. This is not to say that I dislike "Saving Private Ryan." It's technically immaculate, beautifully directed, and an epic in every sense of the word. But that said, you only have to look at which film won which awards on Oscar night to see where its weaknesses are. "Saving Private Ryan" picked up five statuettes, for Best Director, Cinematography, Editing, and two technical awards for Sound and Sound Editing. "Shakespeare in Love" took home seven, including Best Actress and Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Score, Art Direction, and Costumes. What "Shakespeare" lacked in visceral technical craft, it more than made up for with a brilliant Tom Stoppard script, top caliber performances, and spectacular design work.
And yet "Private Ryan" continues to be canonized as one of the Academy's most shocking mistakes, right up there with "Citizen Kane" losing to "How Green Was My Valley" and "Brokeback Mountain" losing to "Crash." Frankly, I'm not sure "Saving Private Ryan" was even the best WWII film nominated for 1998. Terrence Malick's meditative "The Thin Red Line" was also up for Best Picture that year, but couldn't dream of summoning up the kind of clout or goodwill behind "Saving Private Ryan" to keep in in contention. If "Shakespeare in Love" won Best Picture due to hype and pandering, it's only fair to point out that "Saving Private Ryan" didn't have any deficit of them either. I mean, really. A WWII epic about bringing a last surviving son home to his mother, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks? With buckets of weepy sentiment, mostly of the male-bonding variety, that no doubt went straight for the jugular of those older, more conservative Academy voters? This had Oscar bait written all over it from the start, and it's no wonder so many people thought it was a sure thing.
Picking "Shakespeare in Love" was actually a pretty bold break from tradition, as a romantic comedy hadn't won Best Picture in over twenty years. And its status as an upbeat crowd-pleaser didn't necessarily factor in its favor. "Shakespeare's" win followed a string of Best Picture winners with tragic endings like "Titanic," "The English Patient," and "Braveheart." I can sympathize with the fans of "Saving Private Ryan" who believe that a lesser film with limited prospects only won because an overzealous promoter drummed up massive, but only brief support of the film. Current Amazon DVD sales rankings say differently, though. There's every indication that people still love both films.
In the end, I almost never hear either "Saving Private Ryan" or "Shakespeare in Love" brought up in any nerdy film discussion these days except to reference that bygone Oscar battle. This tells me that the campaigning for the films ended up overshadowing the films themselves. And which of the Best Picture nominees has been gaining the most in reputation, prestige, and visibility in the intervening years? "The Thin Red Line." And Terrence Malick's gone and made himself the next Stanley Kubrick while we weren't looking.
I think "The King's Speech" and "The Social Network" are about equally deserving of Best Picture. Who will win may have nothing to do with their actual quality, of course, but that doesn't mean that the old v. young, sentimental v. intellectual, and populist v. critical narratives people are trying to shoehorn the race into are good reflections of what's actually going on. Who wins may say everything or nothing about the direction or biases or relevance of the Academy. As always, it's a mystery.
It's possible that the Academy voters will vote for the film that they like best. Or the film they think had the most artistic merit. Or the most popular and hyped up film with the best ad campaign. The important thing to remember is that these categories are not mutually exclusive and never were.
"The King's Speech" cleaned up at the Director's Guild and Screen Actor's Guild Awards over the weekend, and picked up a Best Picture win from the Producer's Guild before that. Since these are the people who will actually be voting for the Academy Awards, "The King's Speech" is now the frontrunner at the Oscars. Up to this point, the favorite had been "The Social Network," which dominated the major categories at nearly every critics' award, including Best Picture, Director, and Writing at the Golden Globe's. "Social Network" boosters, with the help of many still-smarting Christopher Nolan fans, are putting out conspiracy theories left and right. The Academy Award voters are older and more conservative, so they're more receptive to a WWII British costume drama than a movie about social networking. Richard Corliss over at TIME magazine suggests that sentiment tends to win out over daring.. And there's been one common refrain in many of these arguments - if "The King's Speech" does win Best Picture, it'll be just like what happened with "Shakespeare in Love" and "Saving Private Ryan."
Because "Saving Private Ryan" was cheated, you see. According to a very vocal and insistent group of cinephiles, Steven Spielberg's WWII epic was the clear and obvious choice to take home a Best Picture Oscar over the period romantic comedy, "Shakespeare in Love." The 1998 race was a memorable one, where "Private Ryan" was the early favorite that won many key awards, including the Best Picture Golden Globe in the Drama category. It was the highest grossing film of 1998 in the U.S., and the second highest worldwide. It was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Tom Hanks, both multiple-Oscar winners at the height of their popularity. It was built up by the critics and the press and the advertising gurus as the major event film of the year. So how on earth did "Shakespeare in Love" run away with the big prize? Fingers are often pointed at Harvey Weinstein, the head of Miramax at the time. He poured money into advertisements for "Shakespeare in Love," aggressively campaigning for Oscar gold on an unprecedented level. Was it hype and Hollywood politics that helped "Shakespeare" to the win?
Possibly. The campaigning certainly raised awareness, and that awareness might have been what pushed "Shakespeare" over the top. However, that doesn't mean the movie wasn't a deserving winner. I've had to be a defender of "Shakespeare in Love" many times. I adore the film. I think it deserved to win Best Picture. It's one of the few non-animated features I actually own a copy of. This is not to say that I dislike "Saving Private Ryan." It's technically immaculate, beautifully directed, and an epic in every sense of the word. But that said, you only have to look at which film won which awards on Oscar night to see where its weaknesses are. "Saving Private Ryan" picked up five statuettes, for Best Director, Cinematography, Editing, and two technical awards for Sound and Sound Editing. "Shakespeare in Love" took home seven, including Best Actress and Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Score, Art Direction, and Costumes. What "Shakespeare" lacked in visceral technical craft, it more than made up for with a brilliant Tom Stoppard script, top caliber performances, and spectacular design work.
And yet "Private Ryan" continues to be canonized as one of the Academy's most shocking mistakes, right up there with "Citizen Kane" losing to "How Green Was My Valley" and "Brokeback Mountain" losing to "Crash." Frankly, I'm not sure "Saving Private Ryan" was even the best WWII film nominated for 1998. Terrence Malick's meditative "The Thin Red Line" was also up for Best Picture that year, but couldn't dream of summoning up the kind of clout or goodwill behind "Saving Private Ryan" to keep in in contention. If "Shakespeare in Love" won Best Picture due to hype and pandering, it's only fair to point out that "Saving Private Ryan" didn't have any deficit of them either. I mean, really. A WWII epic about bringing a last surviving son home to his mother, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks? With buckets of weepy sentiment, mostly of the male-bonding variety, that no doubt went straight for the jugular of those older, more conservative Academy voters? This had Oscar bait written all over it from the start, and it's no wonder so many people thought it was a sure thing.
Picking "Shakespeare in Love" was actually a pretty bold break from tradition, as a romantic comedy hadn't won Best Picture in over twenty years. And its status as an upbeat crowd-pleaser didn't necessarily factor in its favor. "Shakespeare's" win followed a string of Best Picture winners with tragic endings like "Titanic," "The English Patient," and "Braveheart." I can sympathize with the fans of "Saving Private Ryan" who believe that a lesser film with limited prospects only won because an overzealous promoter drummed up massive, but only brief support of the film. Current Amazon DVD sales rankings say differently, though. There's every indication that people still love both films.
In the end, I almost never hear either "Saving Private Ryan" or "Shakespeare in Love" brought up in any nerdy film discussion these days except to reference that bygone Oscar battle. This tells me that the campaigning for the films ended up overshadowing the films themselves. And which of the Best Picture nominees has been gaining the most in reputation, prestige, and visibility in the intervening years? "The Thin Red Line." And Terrence Malick's gone and made himself the next Stanley Kubrick while we weren't looking.
I think "The King's Speech" and "The Social Network" are about equally deserving of Best Picture. Who will win may have nothing to do with their actual quality, of course, but that doesn't mean that the old v. young, sentimental v. intellectual, and populist v. critical narratives people are trying to shoehorn the race into are good reflections of what's actually going on. Who wins may say everything or nothing about the direction or biases or relevance of the Academy. As always, it's a mystery.
It's possible that the Academy voters will vote for the film that they like best. Or the film they think had the most artistic merit. Or the most popular and hyped up film with the best ad campaign. The important thing to remember is that these categories are not mutually exclusive and never were.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
About That Psycho Ballerina Movie
Once upon a time, a filmmaker named Darren Aronofsky had the bright idea to make a film about ballet, specifically about a chaste, sheltered young ballerina named Nina (Natalie Portman) struggling to dance the role of the Swan Queen in a new production of Swan Lake. The Swan Queen is a dual role that requires the dancer to embody both the White Swan, a fragile innocent, and the Black Swan, a dark seductress. Nina, obsessed with perfecting her performance, has the tragic White Swan down pat, but is unable to summon her evil twin. Nina's sexual awakening and the emergence of her inner demons parallel the plot of the ballet. This includes the presence of Lily (Mila Kunis), a sexually adventurous rival who may be out to sabotage Nina, and a fickle male savior in the form of the ballet company's director, Tomas (Vincent Cassel).
Two older women also help drive the story and serve as cautionary examples for Nina. A constant pressure is Nina's relationship with her suffocating mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), an embittered former dancer. And then there's Beth (Winona Ryder), the company's prima ballerina who is being forced into retirement and not taking it well, to say the least. Aronofsky's approach is to take all of these elements and push them to almost ridiculous extremes. It's not enough that Lily threatens to seduce every male in sight, but she also targets Nina, leading to the much ballyhooed lesbian sex scene in the second act. Beth not only becomes self-destructive, but self-mutilating and barking mad. And then there's Nina's transformation into the black swan, literally, with the help of makeup effects and CGI animation. The movie only gets away with it because Nina may be imagining some or all these things, as part of an intense mental breakdown.
Aronofsky has gone and pulled a Quentin Tarantino on us. "Black Swan," which is ostensibly a melodrama about pressures and rivalries in the world of classical ballet, turns out to be a slasher flick in disguise. And it's not only a slasher flick, but one that also has elements of 70s sexploitation, horror films, and more than a little camp. They're all elevated and refined to a degree, of course, but you can spot the genre influences everywhere. The first half of the film is similar to psychological thrillers in the tradition of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby." And then comes the gore and the sex and the CGI feathers, and suddenly the picture takes a hard left turn straight into flesh-melting David Cronenberg territory. It's awfully fun to watch, but also very disconcerting for any viewer caught unawares by all the graphic content.
Compared to Aronofsky's other films, "Black Swan" may have structural similarities to "The Wrestler," but its use of magic realism and a smorgasbord of visual tricks, recalls the visceral misery of his drug-addiction epic, "Requiem for a Dream." As an audience, we're used to seeing ballet from a distance, enjoying the illusion of seemingly effortless physical grace. In "Black Swan," we get an uncomfortably up-close look at the demands of maintaining that illusion. The costs of being a professional dancer of a certain caliber are high, and it's hard to keep from wincing at the lengths Nina is willing to go to in order to acheive perfection. Aronofsky spares us nothing, focusing on warped limbs and abraded skin, and turning a simple act of personal grooming into one of the most nerve-wracking moments of the film.
The director's shock-and-awe tactics aside, the movie belongs to Natalie Portman. After years of manic-pixie-dreamgirls and comic-book heroines, it's good to see her branching out into more interesting territory. The physical demands of the role alone are staggering, but Portman plays so many different facets and projections of the fractured Nina, in several scenes she's effectively acting against herself. Aronofsky uses tight shots that focus on her upper body, possibly to help fudge some of the dancing, but this means that Portman looms intimately large in the frame, often dead center, for most of the film. And we never see her falter for a second. Her performance is vital in grounding the outlandish elements that Aronosky keeps throwing at us, especially the campier sexual encounters that could have gone very wrong if Portman wasn't so convincing.
I liked the other performances, especially Winona Ryder and Mila Kunis making the most of smaller roles, but the narrative doesn't linger for very long with any of them. Rather, Matthew Libatique's hallucinatory cinematography, Clint Mansell's thunderous arrangements of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," and Craig Henighan's sound design come off as the more vital contributions to "Black Swan." I wouldn't be surprised if Swan Lake sees a resurgence in popularity after this film, though the usual, older audience for ballet is probably going to be very put off by it. My only real complaint about "Black Swan" is with its marketing. Ever Oscar ad and commercial has been signaling that this is a typical awards' season prestige pic, when in fact it's one of the most intense and effective horror films in years.
So if you see one bisexual ballerina blood-curdler this year, see "Black Swan"!
Two older women also help drive the story and serve as cautionary examples for Nina. A constant pressure is Nina's relationship with her suffocating mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), an embittered former dancer. And then there's Beth (Winona Ryder), the company's prima ballerina who is being forced into retirement and not taking it well, to say the least. Aronofsky's approach is to take all of these elements and push them to almost ridiculous extremes. It's not enough that Lily threatens to seduce every male in sight, but she also targets Nina, leading to the much ballyhooed lesbian sex scene in the second act. Beth not only becomes self-destructive, but self-mutilating and barking mad. And then there's Nina's transformation into the black swan, literally, with the help of makeup effects and CGI animation. The movie only gets away with it because Nina may be imagining some or all these things, as part of an intense mental breakdown.
Aronofsky has gone and pulled a Quentin Tarantino on us. "Black Swan," which is ostensibly a melodrama about pressures and rivalries in the world of classical ballet, turns out to be a slasher flick in disguise. And it's not only a slasher flick, but one that also has elements of 70s sexploitation, horror films, and more than a little camp. They're all elevated and refined to a degree, of course, but you can spot the genre influences everywhere. The first half of the film is similar to psychological thrillers in the tradition of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby." And then comes the gore and the sex and the CGI feathers, and suddenly the picture takes a hard left turn straight into flesh-melting David Cronenberg territory. It's awfully fun to watch, but also very disconcerting for any viewer caught unawares by all the graphic content.
Compared to Aronofsky's other films, "Black Swan" may have structural similarities to "The Wrestler," but its use of magic realism and a smorgasbord of visual tricks, recalls the visceral misery of his drug-addiction epic, "Requiem for a Dream." As an audience, we're used to seeing ballet from a distance, enjoying the illusion of seemingly effortless physical grace. In "Black Swan," we get an uncomfortably up-close look at the demands of maintaining that illusion. The costs of being a professional dancer of a certain caliber are high, and it's hard to keep from wincing at the lengths Nina is willing to go to in order to acheive perfection. Aronofsky spares us nothing, focusing on warped limbs and abraded skin, and turning a simple act of personal grooming into one of the most nerve-wracking moments of the film.
The director's shock-and-awe tactics aside, the movie belongs to Natalie Portman. After years of manic-pixie-dreamgirls and comic-book heroines, it's good to see her branching out into more interesting territory. The physical demands of the role alone are staggering, but Portman plays so many different facets and projections of the fractured Nina, in several scenes she's effectively acting against herself. Aronofsky uses tight shots that focus on her upper body, possibly to help fudge some of the dancing, but this means that Portman looms intimately large in the frame, often dead center, for most of the film. And we never see her falter for a second. Her performance is vital in grounding the outlandish elements that Aronosky keeps throwing at us, especially the campier sexual encounters that could have gone very wrong if Portman wasn't so convincing.
I liked the other performances, especially Winona Ryder and Mila Kunis making the most of smaller roles, but the narrative doesn't linger for very long with any of them. Rather, Matthew Libatique's hallucinatory cinematography, Clint Mansell's thunderous arrangements of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," and Craig Henighan's sound design come off as the more vital contributions to "Black Swan." I wouldn't be surprised if Swan Lake sees a resurgence in popularity after this film, though the usual, older audience for ballet is probably going to be very put off by it. My only real complaint about "Black Swan" is with its marketing. Ever Oscar ad and commercial has been signaling that this is a typical awards' season prestige pic, when in fact it's one of the most intense and effective horror films in years.
So if you see one bisexual ballerina blood-curdler this year, see "Black Swan"!
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