I like both Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, but I don't think either of them have had enough chances to show us much beyond the likable screen personas we tend to associate them with. They both make excellent movie stars, no doubt, but their darker, more interesting roles, have a tendency to be overlooked. Hathaway is probably better remembered for hosting the Oscars than being nominated for one, and Gyllenhaal can't seem to escape the vestiges of his lovable loser role from "Donnie Darko," whether he's playing a gay cowboy or a shell-shocked jarhead. Edward Zwick's "Love and Other Drugs," seemed to be a good opportunity for both of them to stretch a little, playing caustic lovers who trade sarcastic barbs instead of sweet nothings, but the film is a real mess.
Set in the mid 90s, "Love" comes off as a dark, satirical comedy at first. It charts the rise of Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal), a newly minted drug representative for Pfizer, trained to push new drugs samples on doctors, using any means necessary. Jamie goes to war with a rival (Gabriel Macht) to win over the influential Dr. Knight (Hank Azaria), with the goal of getting him to replace prescriptions of Prozac with prescriptions of Pfizer's new Zoloft. Through Knight, Jamie meets Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway), a young woman suffering from early-onset Parkinsons disease. Maggie wants nothing to do with romance, but is all for enthusiastic, no-strings-attached sex with Jamie. Of course the relationship gets complicated, which means it falls right back into the pattern of a very generic movie relationship. Jamie finds new success shilling Viagra, Maggie's illness worsens, and suddenly the snark gives way to sentiment, and the satire all but evaporates without a trace.
Gyllenhaal and Hathaway have some good charisma together, but their performances just aren't very interesting. Gyllenhaal's starts out as a brash, fast-talking serial womanizer who seems like a junior version of Aaron Eckhart's character in "Thank You For Smoking." Hathaway's Maggie is the dark version of the manic-pixie-dreamgirl, who is artsy and impulsive, but also brimming over with ironic dialogue and salty insults. And then the film has them slowly reveal that they're both just damaged, fluffy bunnies underneath all the snark and defense mechanisms. Sure, they have their problems, but it's nothing that a good last-minute confession scene won't solve. The portrayal of the romance is somewhat more daring than the norm, I suppose, in that we see several shots of Hathaway's character naked, and her nickname for Gyllenhaal includes a loving expletive, but it's all way too self-conscious and on the nose.
What I found the most disappointing abut "Love and Other Drugs," though, was how it failed to do anything interesting with all the material about drug industry practices, which the first half of the film does a great job of setting up. We're shown that Jamie and his fellow reps are unscrupulous, but there's very little negative fallout from their tactics. We don't hear anything about the adverse effects of Zoloft that were subsequently discovered, or the ethics concerns about doctors having such close ties to major drug companies. Eventually Jamie's rivalry with the Prozac pusher disappears into the background, and we start to get the feeling that maybe everything involving the prescription drug racket was window dressing to begin with. Or maybe Pfizer sicced their lawyers on Zwick and had the latter half of the film neutered.
Speaking of Zwick, this is his first attempt at lighter material since the early 90s, after a string of epic dramas like "Defiance," "Blood Diamond," and "The Last Samurai." The first half of "Love and Other Drugs" was a little bumpy, but I enjoyed it, especially the early scenes of Gyllenhaal behaving badly. I'd be happy to see Zwick try his hand at another comedy, because he does show promise with this kind of material, and it's good to see him doing something different. In this case, however, much like his lead actors, he ends up falling back on what he's most comfortable with - heartfelt drama and an uplifting ending. It wouldn't have been so bad if there hadn't been that tonal 180 in the last act, and the various pieces of the picture didn't end up so mismatched.
Finally, I want to point out some of the film's strong supporting performances that deserve attention. Josh Gad as Jamie's brother is an earthy, lovable lug with a good character arc. Oliver Platt shows up for too few brief scenes as Bruce, an older drug rep. Hank Azaria's Dr. Knight is just neurotic enough without going over the top, and I wanted to see more of George Segal and Jill Clayburgh as Jamie's parents.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Life With the NY Times Paywall
It's been nearly a month since the New York Times enforced its paywall, and a month since the blog post where I freaked out about the paywall. So how am I doing? Surprisingly well.
I still visit the New York Times website daily and spend a lot of time with the "Most-Emailed" and "Most Blogged" stories pages. I've still been reading more of the World News than anything else, especially the coverage of the Japanese tsunami aftermath, which has been excellent. However, I haven't hit my twenty-story limit for the month yet. I've been pretty good about only reading one full story per weekday. There were a few early mishaps, where I clicked on links to stories without remembering that I wasn't supposed to, but that only happened a few times. Now I go to the Times website directly and take a look at all the headlines before I figure out what I want to read.
In the course of the last month, the biggest change was really that I became more self-aware of my browsing habits. According to the Times' hit counter, I racked up nearly two hundred articles in the month before this, but I wasn't really reading all the articles. More often than not I just skimmed a few paragraphs before moving on to something else. I could get the gist of many pieces simply by reading the headlines and brief descriptions that were provided on the aggregation pages, and usually that was all I wanted from them. For instance, the most controversial New York Times story of the past month was probably "Is Sugar Toxic?" published on April 17th, which profiled the research of Dr. Robert Lustig. While I was curious about the alarmist article title, I wasn't in the mood to read a multi-page analysis on the evils of refined sugar, so I just did some Googling and figured out the gist of Lustig's arguments.
However, opinion pieces and reviews have gotten more of my attention, since these are the articles containing information that really can't be found elsewhere. I tried reading other writer's counterpoints to the various New York Times opinion columnists, but I kept running into too many recontextualization problems, especially with anything political. Eventually I concluded that you really can't get the impact of an opinion article from a response piece. Most of the people who take David Brooks to task simply don't write as well as David Brooks, and it's often not the opinion itself that makes an op/ed worth reading, but the expression of it.
There are also a few sections that I've given up reading almost completely. I skip the travel and business articles pretty much without a thought now, where I used to feel a little guilty about it. Ditto the food and wine pages. I used to read through them for fun, but the truth is that I'm no big fan of alcohol, any profiled restaurants are usually well outside my price range, and I've never used a single recipe I've ever gotten out of a newspaper. I've also drastically cut down on the local New York stories, and instead have been making an effort to pay attention to what's going on in my own neck of the woods. There's really no excuse for knowing New York politics better than my own state's, no matter how much fun Eliot Spitzer is. New York is not the center of the universe, and the New York Times need not be the center of my online news media galaxy.
Or so I thought. One thing that surprised me as the weeks went on, was that I still found myself reading up on all the biggest news stories on the Times website, including those that were being heavily covered elsewhere, that there were plenty of other sources I could have gone to instead. The New York Times simply has the better journalists in most cases, and they turn out better written and more comprehensive articles than I'm going to get from the Associated Press or Reuters. Faced with a decision between a smaller story with content only the New York Times was going to feature and a bigger story that every publication would have something to say about, I usually went with the bigger story. I want to see what the Times has to say about the events of the day. That's why I've been putting up with all the hassle of counting my page hits and weighing articles against each other. It's why I still automatically go to the New York Times website first, out of all the news sites I browse.
Paywall or no paywall, I still think of it as my newspaper, even if I can't afford it. And even if it can't afford me.
I still visit the New York Times website daily and spend a lot of time with the "Most-Emailed" and "Most Blogged" stories pages. I've still been reading more of the World News than anything else, especially the coverage of the Japanese tsunami aftermath, which has been excellent. However, I haven't hit my twenty-story limit for the month yet. I've been pretty good about only reading one full story per weekday. There were a few early mishaps, where I clicked on links to stories without remembering that I wasn't supposed to, but that only happened a few times. Now I go to the Times website directly and take a look at all the headlines before I figure out what I want to read.
In the course of the last month, the biggest change was really that I became more self-aware of my browsing habits. According to the Times' hit counter, I racked up nearly two hundred articles in the month before this, but I wasn't really reading all the articles. More often than not I just skimmed a few paragraphs before moving on to something else. I could get the gist of many pieces simply by reading the headlines and brief descriptions that were provided on the aggregation pages, and usually that was all I wanted from them. For instance, the most controversial New York Times story of the past month was probably "Is Sugar Toxic?" published on April 17th, which profiled the research of Dr. Robert Lustig. While I was curious about the alarmist article title, I wasn't in the mood to read a multi-page analysis on the evils of refined sugar, so I just did some Googling and figured out the gist of Lustig's arguments.
However, opinion pieces and reviews have gotten more of my attention, since these are the articles containing information that really can't be found elsewhere. I tried reading other writer's counterpoints to the various New York Times opinion columnists, but I kept running into too many recontextualization problems, especially with anything political. Eventually I concluded that you really can't get the impact of an opinion article from a response piece. Most of the people who take David Brooks to task simply don't write as well as David Brooks, and it's often not the opinion itself that makes an op/ed worth reading, but the expression of it.
There are also a few sections that I've given up reading almost completely. I skip the travel and business articles pretty much without a thought now, where I used to feel a little guilty about it. Ditto the food and wine pages. I used to read through them for fun, but the truth is that I'm no big fan of alcohol, any profiled restaurants are usually well outside my price range, and I've never used a single recipe I've ever gotten out of a newspaper. I've also drastically cut down on the local New York stories, and instead have been making an effort to pay attention to what's going on in my own neck of the woods. There's really no excuse for knowing New York politics better than my own state's, no matter how much fun Eliot Spitzer is. New York is not the center of the universe, and the New York Times need not be the center of my online news media galaxy.
Or so I thought. One thing that surprised me as the weeks went on, was that I still found myself reading up on all the biggest news stories on the Times website, including those that were being heavily covered elsewhere, that there were plenty of other sources I could have gone to instead. The New York Times simply has the better journalists in most cases, and they turn out better written and more comprehensive articles than I'm going to get from the Associated Press or Reuters. Faced with a decision between a smaller story with content only the New York Times was going to feature and a bigger story that every publication would have something to say about, I usually went with the bigger story. I want to see what the Times has to say about the events of the day. That's why I've been putting up with all the hassle of counting my page hits and weighing articles against each other. It's why I still automatically go to the New York Times website first, out of all the news sites I browse.
Paywall or no paywall, I still think of it as my newspaper, even if I can't afford it. And even if it can't afford me.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Grades? Stars? Perfect 10s? No Thanks
I'm about to get into some navel gazing here. You may have noticed that I don't give out scores or use scaled measures when writing up my movie reviews. I don't give my favorite films A grades, five stars, or perfect tens, though I admit that I do use one of these ranking systems in my own offline records. However, I'm not comfortable using them for the reviews I post on this blog.
Let's use the example of "Burlesque," the Christina Aguilera film about burlesque performers. It's a terrible film and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Rated by the usual grown-up movie critic measures, the highest score I can give it is something like 5/10, or rating only a marginal recommendation for its artistic and cultural value. However, on a pure enjoyment level, it's closer to 7/10 or even 8/10, and something I'd recommend to many of my girlfriends for good, brainless fun. In good conscience, I can't put it up there with films that are better on a technical level, such as the Coen brothers' "True Grit," though I actually liked them about equally. It makes no sense to me to try and evaluate the two films on the same scale, when they might end up with the same grade for entirely different reasons, or totally divergent ones that don't reflect how I ultimately feel about them. I know other reviewers use multiple means of valuation or will give more than one score to a film, but I honestly don't think it's necessary to use scores at all.
The only reason I can see to have ratings is as a handy shorthand for the reviews, but I haven't found that they're particular good for this, except in the cases of very high or very low scores. Also, using them tends to negatively affect my writing. I did write reviews for anime in the past that used a ranking system, since that's what everyone else was doing. However, I found that many times I'd end up spending the whole review trying to justify the score I gave a show or film, and sometimes I would be overly critical or laudatory to try and offset a score I was worried might be a little too low or too high. For instance, I might give four stars to a film and then spend the whole review giving caveats because I wasn't so sure it really deserved the high rating. If I don't have to worry about the scores, then I find it easier to get what I really want to say about a film out on the digital paper.
And I don't think that this applies to just me. I find less structured reviews tend to be much more fun to read or listen to. The absolute worst are the reviewers who want to break a film down into its base components and assign scores to every single aspect of a film, from the music to the cinematography, even if they didn't make much of an impact on the viewing experience. Better, but still often tedious, are the reviews that are mostly made up of pro and con arguments for why you need to see a certain film in theaters, or why you should wait until it reaches rental stores, or just hold off until it shows up on basic cable and you have two hours to kill. Reviews built around these basic recommendations are the standard, of course, but you can do so much more with a film review.
I like more free-form reviews that give me context for the viewing experience, that talk about the career of the director, or that point out the contributions of the sound designer, or that highlight the performance of an oft overlooked character actor in a minor role. Even better is when reviewers get personal and get meta and get ambitious. Sometimes a film is just a film, but sometimes it's part of an art movement, or indicative of a cultural trend, or maybe a harbinger of someone's creative downward spiral. Are these notions better suited for features and editorials? Maybe, but with many films it seems a shame not to talk about the issues that go beyond simply liking or disliking it. But then how are you supposed to quantify all of this was a simple letter grade or a couple of stars?
This is not to suggest that the reviews I write are in any way superior for getting all pretentious and not using a ranking system. I'm an amateur scribbler who uses dodgy grammar and this blog is a totally self-indulgent enterprise. Right now my reviews primarily consist of whatever thoughts and impressions I want to remember from seeing a film. I hope they can be helpful to other viewers, but mostly they're written for my own benefit. And I guess in the end that's why I don't use rankings. I almost always write reviews that gauge what I think of a film after a single viewing, but my relationships with certain movies can get complicated over time. Scores are often very arbitrary, but awfully permanent. So not using them essentially allows me more wiggle room to reevaluate or even outright change my mind later, especially when measuring up films against each other. It's not like you can work out any kind of numerical score just from the text of a review anyway. At least, not any I think are worth reading.
Let's use the example of "Burlesque," the Christina Aguilera film about burlesque performers. It's a terrible film and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Rated by the usual grown-up movie critic measures, the highest score I can give it is something like 5/10, or rating only a marginal recommendation for its artistic and cultural value. However, on a pure enjoyment level, it's closer to 7/10 or even 8/10, and something I'd recommend to many of my girlfriends for good, brainless fun. In good conscience, I can't put it up there with films that are better on a technical level, such as the Coen brothers' "True Grit," though I actually liked them about equally. It makes no sense to me to try and evaluate the two films on the same scale, when they might end up with the same grade for entirely different reasons, or totally divergent ones that don't reflect how I ultimately feel about them. I know other reviewers use multiple means of valuation or will give more than one score to a film, but I honestly don't think it's necessary to use scores at all.
The only reason I can see to have ratings is as a handy shorthand for the reviews, but I haven't found that they're particular good for this, except in the cases of very high or very low scores. Also, using them tends to negatively affect my writing. I did write reviews for anime in the past that used a ranking system, since that's what everyone else was doing. However, I found that many times I'd end up spending the whole review trying to justify the score I gave a show or film, and sometimes I would be overly critical or laudatory to try and offset a score I was worried might be a little too low or too high. For instance, I might give four stars to a film and then spend the whole review giving caveats because I wasn't so sure it really deserved the high rating. If I don't have to worry about the scores, then I find it easier to get what I really want to say about a film out on the digital paper.
And I don't think that this applies to just me. I find less structured reviews tend to be much more fun to read or listen to. The absolute worst are the reviewers who want to break a film down into its base components and assign scores to every single aspect of a film, from the music to the cinematography, even if they didn't make much of an impact on the viewing experience. Better, but still often tedious, are the reviews that are mostly made up of pro and con arguments for why you need to see a certain film in theaters, or why you should wait until it reaches rental stores, or just hold off until it shows up on basic cable and you have two hours to kill. Reviews built around these basic recommendations are the standard, of course, but you can do so much more with a film review.
I like more free-form reviews that give me context for the viewing experience, that talk about the career of the director, or that point out the contributions of the sound designer, or that highlight the performance of an oft overlooked character actor in a minor role. Even better is when reviewers get personal and get meta and get ambitious. Sometimes a film is just a film, but sometimes it's part of an art movement, or indicative of a cultural trend, or maybe a harbinger of someone's creative downward spiral. Are these notions better suited for features and editorials? Maybe, but with many films it seems a shame not to talk about the issues that go beyond simply liking or disliking it. But then how are you supposed to quantify all of this was a simple letter grade or a couple of stars?
This is not to suggest that the reviews I write are in any way superior for getting all pretentious and not using a ranking system. I'm an amateur scribbler who uses dodgy grammar and this blog is a totally self-indulgent enterprise. Right now my reviews primarily consist of whatever thoughts and impressions I want to remember from seeing a film. I hope they can be helpful to other viewers, but mostly they're written for my own benefit. And I guess in the end that's why I don't use rankings. I almost always write reviews that gauge what I think of a film after a single viewing, but my relationships with certain movies can get complicated over time. Scores are often very arbitrary, but awfully permanent. So not using them essentially allows me more wiggle room to reevaluate or even outright change my mind later, especially when measuring up films against each other. It's not like you can work out any kind of numerical score just from the text of a review anyway. At least, not any I think are worth reading.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Guys Like "My Little Pony," and That's Okay
It's always bothered me that we have a double standard that says boys are not allowed to like the media that is primarily created for girls, and men must be viewed with suspicion for admitting a penchant for media aimed at women. Girls can play with Hot Wheels cars and watch action movies without too much fuss, but boys are not allowed to play Barbies or read romance novels unless they want their sexuality questioned. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as we're still living in a society where the innocuous act of painting a little boy's toenails pink can get "traditional values" watchdogs worked up into a lather. This ends up devaluing the media aimed primarily at women and girls, which often get characterized as having limited appeal because it seems like it's unacceptable for half of the population to think these shows and films could possibly have any appeal for them.
So I was happily surprised to discover that the new "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" cartoon, created for Hasbro's fledgling Hub Network, has amassed a huge Internet cult following among young adult and adult males since it premiered last year. This isn't the first time that a cartoon for kids has found an unintended audience. "Spongebob Squarepants" was famously popular with the college crowd and Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" block has found success programming nostalgic content in the late night hours. Animated features have been cleaning up at the multiplexes with all audiences. But wait, "My Little Pony"? The Hasbro 80s toy line was associated with the most pandering, hyper-feminized depictions of girly girlhood from day one, all cuteness and sparkles and light. I had a Princess Sunbeam and a So-Soft Sundance when I was a kid, who came with magic glitter wands and mane-and-tail-brushing accessories. What on earth could possibly be drawing grown menfolk to this?!
The new "My Little Pony" differs in some significant ways from the old. From what I've seen of the cartoon, it's a modernized revamp with many similarities to "The Powerpuff Girls" in style and humor. And no wonder, since series creator Lauren Faust worked on both "Powerpuff" and "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends." There are six major characters, all female, big-eyed, candy-colored little ponies with names like Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle. "My Little Pony" still caters to a traditional feminine visual aesthetic, and vehemently so. Yet there's nothing overtly girly about the stories or the jokes or the show's messages. Popular tomboy characters like Rainbow Dash and Applejack balance out the lone glamor girl, Rarity. And with such a diversity of personality types, there's almost no gender stereotyping to speak of. The show comes off very positive and bright and fun, with lots of universal appeal. I don't see why cartoon-loving guys shouldn't be fans of the new "My Little Pony," except the mainstream American culture insists that anything cute and cuddly and aimed at little girls is absolutely verboten for their demographics.
Well phooey to that, I say, and I'm not alone. There's been a proliferation of male "My Little Pony" fans, who have been dubbed in some circles as "bronies." You still see a lot of self-hatred, a lot of mockery, and a lot of plain old fear of ridicule emanating from some male viewers. The naysayers can get pretty vicious. However the fansites have been popping up like daisies, the fanart has gone nuclear, and the Internet memes are everywhere. I haven't been able to get through a message board lately without seeing Rainbow Dash or Twilight Sparkle graphics. And what I find most encouraging is that this isn't ironic fannishness or trend following or some retro nostalgia thing going on. The guys who like the show tend to genuinely like the show for being exactly what it is. The sincerity, the lack of cynicism, and the sunny attitude of "My Little Pony" are taken as good points. I think part of the reason why so many guys are flocking to this cartoon is because these are qualities often lacking in the media aimed at them.
Pulling out the armchair psychologist for a minute, media folks often seem to forget that boys have protective, nurturing instincts and get warm and fuzzy feelings just like girls do. It's not a bad thing to encourage this. I mean G.I. Joe and He-Man and the Transformers have their place, and I certainly don't want to devalue the merits of a good Ninja Turtle martial arts battle, but I see nothing unmanly about getting some joy out of the adventures of a couple of cute, wacky little ponies too. It's always good to have some balance in your media consumption, and maybe it's time to broaden the ambit of masculinity, just a little. The new "My Little Pony" is really pretty darn awesome, and nobody should feel bad for being a fan.
So I was happily surprised to discover that the new "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" cartoon, created for Hasbro's fledgling Hub Network, has amassed a huge Internet cult following among young adult and adult males since it premiered last year. This isn't the first time that a cartoon for kids has found an unintended audience. "Spongebob Squarepants" was famously popular with the college crowd and Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" block has found success programming nostalgic content in the late night hours. Animated features have been cleaning up at the multiplexes with all audiences. But wait, "My Little Pony"? The Hasbro 80s toy line was associated with the most pandering, hyper-feminized depictions of girly girlhood from day one, all cuteness and sparkles and light. I had a Princess Sunbeam and a So-Soft Sundance when I was a kid, who came with magic glitter wands and mane-and-tail-brushing accessories. What on earth could possibly be drawing grown menfolk to this?!
The new "My Little Pony" differs in some significant ways from the old. From what I've seen of the cartoon, it's a modernized revamp with many similarities to "The Powerpuff Girls" in style and humor. And no wonder, since series creator Lauren Faust worked on both "Powerpuff" and "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends." There are six major characters, all female, big-eyed, candy-colored little ponies with names like Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle. "My Little Pony" still caters to a traditional feminine visual aesthetic, and vehemently so. Yet there's nothing overtly girly about the stories or the jokes or the show's messages. Popular tomboy characters like Rainbow Dash and Applejack balance out the lone glamor girl, Rarity. And with such a diversity of personality types, there's almost no gender stereotyping to speak of. The show comes off very positive and bright and fun, with lots of universal appeal. I don't see why cartoon-loving guys shouldn't be fans of the new "My Little Pony," except the mainstream American culture insists that anything cute and cuddly and aimed at little girls is absolutely verboten for their demographics.
Well phooey to that, I say, and I'm not alone. There's been a proliferation of male "My Little Pony" fans, who have been dubbed in some circles as "bronies." You still see a lot of self-hatred, a lot of mockery, and a lot of plain old fear of ridicule emanating from some male viewers. The naysayers can get pretty vicious. However the fansites have been popping up like daisies, the fanart has gone nuclear, and the Internet memes are everywhere. I haven't been able to get through a message board lately without seeing Rainbow Dash or Twilight Sparkle graphics. And what I find most encouraging is that this isn't ironic fannishness or trend following or some retro nostalgia thing going on. The guys who like the show tend to genuinely like the show for being exactly what it is. The sincerity, the lack of cynicism, and the sunny attitude of "My Little Pony" are taken as good points. I think part of the reason why so many guys are flocking to this cartoon is because these are qualities often lacking in the media aimed at them.
Pulling out the armchair psychologist for a minute, media folks often seem to forget that boys have protective, nurturing instincts and get warm and fuzzy feelings just like girls do. It's not a bad thing to encourage this. I mean G.I. Joe and He-Man and the Transformers have their place, and I certainly don't want to devalue the merits of a good Ninja Turtle martial arts battle, but I see nothing unmanly about getting some joy out of the adventures of a couple of cute, wacky little ponies too. It's always good to have some balance in your media consumption, and maybe it's time to broaden the ambit of masculinity, just a little. The new "My Little Pony" is really pretty darn awesome, and nobody should feel bad for being a fan.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
"X-Men" Marketing Fail
This post marks the inaugural use of my new marketing tag, because even though many of us film nerds don't like to think about it, marketing efforts and ad campaigns play a huge part in the business of moviemaking these days and are a major determining factor in how well they perform at the box office. Which brings us to one of this summer's blockbuster hopefuls, "X-Men: First Class," a prequel film to the popular "X-Men" series. Today we saw a new international trailer released, and yesterday there was a new poster, both unremarkable and not very exciting. They're only the latest in a stream of muddled or mediocre marketing material that has some "X-Men" fans worried about the new film.
While there are a lot of rumors flying around that director Michael Vaughn was stuck with a very rushed production schedule, which is never a good sign, I still think there's a good chance that the new "X-Men" film will be decent. Vaughn is a good director and he's a assembled a lot of good actors for this, including James Avery, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Kevin Bacon, and Jennifer Lawrence. Having seen the trailers multiple times now, what's interesting is how little they show us of the film. There's barely any dialogue, lots of effects shots, and the whole things is hampered by a distracting framing device that hammers us over the head with the fact that the main characters are younger versions of Professor Xavier and the villain Magneto. You can also see the efforts to link the older and younger versions of the duo in these very nice posters and these amusingly bad ones.
This signals that 20th Century Fox's marketing team really has no idea how to sell this movie, aside from getting us to associate the new film with the original trilogy. I sympathize with them to some extent. "X-Men: First Class" is not only a prequel, but a period piece set in an alternate version of the 1960s. The iconic badass Wolverine is not in this movie, having been spun off to do his own series. Neither are Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Storm, Iceman, or most of the other mutants from the older films. Instead, "First Class" is sending out several of the lesser-known "X-Men" characters for this outing, including Moira McTaggart, White Queen, Banshee, Sebastian Shaw, and Havok. The marketing campaign has done a terrible job of introducing us to any of them. Emma Frost, the White Queen, is one of my favorite "X-Men" characters, but at the moment she's being presented as little more than a statuesque blonde in campy, revealing outfits. Almost nothing has been said about the plot of the film, though from the trailer and the characters I've guessing it involves an early version of the Hellfire Club and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Another tactic has been to mirror elements of the marketing campaign for the older "X-Men" films, which didn't have the greatest marketing to begin with. I've seen early teaser posters and theater standees clearly based on the teaser image for the first "X-Men" film, which can be seen here. The big metal X is the door to the X-Mansion's Danger Room, and of course X is for "X-Men." For the new film, since there's no Danger Room yet, the X forms the center of a big metal school seal, with "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters" and "First Class" written around the edges. The trouble is that the text is difficult to read and nowhere does "X-Men" appear on many of the marketing materials that use the seal. It's often not clear what the title of the film is, and those who aren't familiar with the older marketing campaign might not be able to link it to "X-Men" at all. And really, am I supposed to get excited about a theater standee that's just a big, gray circle with an X on it, sitting in the middle of the lobby? Where are the mutants? Where's the excitement?
The "X-Men" film franchise has had its ups and downs and been saddled with its share of bad marketing decisions before this (Does anyone refer to the second film by its official title, "X2: X-Men United"?). However, Fox's efforts to promote "X-Men: First Class" have been remarkably poor, to the extent that it might adversely affect the film. And this is a shame, because "First Class" could be a good opportunity to revitalize the series. Matthew Vaughn is hoping it will be the first of a new trilogy of darker, more challenging "X-Men" films. I could get behind that. It's a shame Fox can't seem to.
While there are a lot of rumors flying around that director Michael Vaughn was stuck with a very rushed production schedule, which is never a good sign, I still think there's a good chance that the new "X-Men" film will be decent. Vaughn is a good director and he's a assembled a lot of good actors for this, including James Avery, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Kevin Bacon, and Jennifer Lawrence. Having seen the trailers multiple times now, what's interesting is how little they show us of the film. There's barely any dialogue, lots of effects shots, and the whole things is hampered by a distracting framing device that hammers us over the head with the fact that the main characters are younger versions of Professor Xavier and the villain Magneto. You can also see the efforts to link the older and younger versions of the duo in these very nice posters and these amusingly bad ones.
This signals that 20th Century Fox's marketing team really has no idea how to sell this movie, aside from getting us to associate the new film with the original trilogy. I sympathize with them to some extent. "X-Men: First Class" is not only a prequel, but a period piece set in an alternate version of the 1960s. The iconic badass Wolverine is not in this movie, having been spun off to do his own series. Neither are Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Storm, Iceman, or most of the other mutants from the older films. Instead, "First Class" is sending out several of the lesser-known "X-Men" characters for this outing, including Moira McTaggart, White Queen, Banshee, Sebastian Shaw, and Havok. The marketing campaign has done a terrible job of introducing us to any of them. Emma Frost, the White Queen, is one of my favorite "X-Men" characters, but at the moment she's being presented as little more than a statuesque blonde in campy, revealing outfits. Almost nothing has been said about the plot of the film, though from the trailer and the characters I've guessing it involves an early version of the Hellfire Club and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Another tactic has been to mirror elements of the marketing campaign for the older "X-Men" films, which didn't have the greatest marketing to begin with. I've seen early teaser posters and theater standees clearly based on the teaser image for the first "X-Men" film, which can be seen here. The big metal X is the door to the X-Mansion's Danger Room, and of course X is for "X-Men." For the new film, since there's no Danger Room yet, the X forms the center of a big metal school seal, with "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters" and "First Class" written around the edges. The trouble is that the text is difficult to read and nowhere does "X-Men" appear on many of the marketing materials that use the seal. It's often not clear what the title of the film is, and those who aren't familiar with the older marketing campaign might not be able to link it to "X-Men" at all. And really, am I supposed to get excited about a theater standee that's just a big, gray circle with an X on it, sitting in the middle of the lobby? Where are the mutants? Where's the excitement?
The "X-Men" film franchise has had its ups and downs and been saddled with its share of bad marketing decisions before this (Does anyone refer to the second film by its official title, "X2: X-Men United"?). However, Fox's efforts to promote "X-Men: First Class" have been remarkably poor, to the extent that it might adversely affect the film. And this is a shame, because "First Class" could be a good opportunity to revitalize the series. Matthew Vaughn is hoping it will be the first of a new trilogy of darker, more challenging "X-Men" films. I could get behind that. It's a shame Fox can't seem to.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Looking for Alternatives to Cinematical
I wish I could say something insightful about the unfortunate demise of my favorite movie blog, Cinematical, but all I can really offer by way of commentary is that I think the situation sucks, AOL and the Huffington Post are run by reprehensible twits, and I feel awful for all the writers who have been drop-kicked out the door. This also leaves me without a primary movie blog to follow, and on the lookout for potential replacements. What I liked about Cinematical was that it pulled together so many different types of content:
News - Deadline Hollywood Daily gives me the basics on deal reports and production announcements, though the commentary and the context provided aren't great. What Cinematical did so well was filter and condense the disparate bits of information into a much quicker and easier read, occasionally expanding on some of the bigger stories. They were also very good about pointing out trailers for smaller films, interesting shorts, and special screenings that that the big shots would often ignore.
Reviews - I follow several reviewers individually, including Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott, but Cinematical was great for general reviews because it covered a broad range of titles, including the occasional indie and foreign film. The early festival reviews were especially nice to have. I first heard about films like "Slumdog Millionaire" and the upcoming "Meek's Cutoff" through Cinematical's early reviews, and I often built "to watch" lists around their festival coverage. I know that Eric Snider and Todd Gilchrist and the rest are still out there and easily followable, but it's just not going to be the same.
Columns - Like everyone else, they did box office predictions and DVD release roundups, but Cinematical also had "Criterion Corner," "Scenes We Love," "Their Best Role," "Stars in Rewind," and "Actors We Miss," which I don't think need any explanation. There was also "Framed," devoted to favorite single frames in films, "Doc Talk" for documentaries, "Shelf Life" to reevaluate older films, "400 Screens, 400 Blows" to spotlight limited releases, and many more I know I'm forgetting. My favorite was Monika Bartyzel's "Girls on Film," which was always good for some Monday night girl power. And I'm going to miss following along with Jacob Hall as he tackled cinema classics he hadn't seen yet in "Where Everyone Has Gone Before."
Features - Festival reporting, interviews, editorials, set reports - we got everything from in-depth interviews with Mike Leigh to a visit to the set of "Bridesmaids" in the last few months. Again, what I loved about Cinematical was the breadth of their coverage. They couldn't afford to send people off to Cannes or Venice, but they could cover the hell out of Sundance, SXSW, and Comic-Con. And they would interview everyone from B-movie directors to Hollywood stars to documentarians to the guy who runs the Alamo Drafthouse. Nowhere was it more evident that the editors understood and loved films and the creative culture around them.
Geekbait - Occasionally there would be random posts linked to fanart, humorous Youtube videos, really cool movie-related T-shirts, a pizza cutter shaped like the Starship Enterprise, and other things that only a movie fan would geek out over. I probably enjoyed these posts more than I should have, but these offhand oddities were like getting best of Reddit without actually having to wade through Reddit.
And the Rest - The commenting system was a royal pain to use since AOL took over the blog over a year ago, but it was nice to see some actual discussion in the comments of many posts, some of which could get pretty heated. Sure, there were the bots and the trolls, but there were also some good regulars who stuck with Cinematical over the years, and as much as I'm going to miss the writers, I'm going to miss some of the readers too.
I visit several other film sites daily that cover many of these categories, but not all of them and not as well. I've still got the LA Times' entertainment blogs, Aint it Cool News, The Vulture, the Wrap, HitFlix, Deadline, Roger Ebert, and a couple of others, but there are no easy substitutes to be found. What I'm really going to miss are those Cinematical columns, that let the individual writers explore their own interests and further develop their own voices. I hope they all manage to land somewhere that lets them keep doing what they love.
And I want something suitably nasty to happen to whoever fired everyone, possibly involving Kate Hudson rom-coms and the "Clockwork Orange" eyeball machine.
Thanks for everything Cinematical.
News - Deadline Hollywood Daily gives me the basics on deal reports and production announcements, though the commentary and the context provided aren't great. What Cinematical did so well was filter and condense the disparate bits of information into a much quicker and easier read, occasionally expanding on some of the bigger stories. They were also very good about pointing out trailers for smaller films, interesting shorts, and special screenings that that the big shots would often ignore.
Reviews - I follow several reviewers individually, including Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott, but Cinematical was great for general reviews because it covered a broad range of titles, including the occasional indie and foreign film. The early festival reviews were especially nice to have. I first heard about films like "Slumdog Millionaire" and the upcoming "Meek's Cutoff" through Cinematical's early reviews, and I often built "to watch" lists around their festival coverage. I know that Eric Snider and Todd Gilchrist and the rest are still out there and easily followable, but it's just not going to be the same.
Columns - Like everyone else, they did box office predictions and DVD release roundups, but Cinematical also had "Criterion Corner," "Scenes We Love," "Their Best Role," "Stars in Rewind," and "Actors We Miss," which I don't think need any explanation. There was also "Framed," devoted to favorite single frames in films, "Doc Talk" for documentaries, "Shelf Life" to reevaluate older films, "400 Screens, 400 Blows" to spotlight limited releases, and many more I know I'm forgetting. My favorite was Monika Bartyzel's "Girls on Film," which was always good for some Monday night girl power. And I'm going to miss following along with Jacob Hall as he tackled cinema classics he hadn't seen yet in "Where Everyone Has Gone Before."
Features - Festival reporting, interviews, editorials, set reports - we got everything from in-depth interviews with Mike Leigh to a visit to the set of "Bridesmaids" in the last few months. Again, what I loved about Cinematical was the breadth of their coverage. They couldn't afford to send people off to Cannes or Venice, but they could cover the hell out of Sundance, SXSW, and Comic-Con. And they would interview everyone from B-movie directors to Hollywood stars to documentarians to the guy who runs the Alamo Drafthouse. Nowhere was it more evident that the editors understood and loved films and the creative culture around them.
Geekbait - Occasionally there would be random posts linked to fanart, humorous Youtube videos, really cool movie-related T-shirts, a pizza cutter shaped like the Starship Enterprise, and other things that only a movie fan would geek out over. I probably enjoyed these posts more than I should have, but these offhand oddities were like getting best of Reddit without actually having to wade through Reddit.
And the Rest - The commenting system was a royal pain to use since AOL took over the blog over a year ago, but it was nice to see some actual discussion in the comments of many posts, some of which could get pretty heated. Sure, there were the bots and the trolls, but there were also some good regulars who stuck with Cinematical over the years, and as much as I'm going to miss the writers, I'm going to miss some of the readers too.
I visit several other film sites daily that cover many of these categories, but not all of them and not as well. I've still got the LA Times' entertainment blogs, Aint it Cool News, The Vulture, the Wrap, HitFlix, Deadline, Roger Ebert, and a couple of others, but there are no easy substitutes to be found. What I'm really going to miss are those Cinematical columns, that let the individual writers explore their own interests and further develop their own voices. I hope they all manage to land somewhere that lets them keep doing what they love.
And I want something suitably nasty to happen to whoever fired everyone, possibly involving Kate Hudson rom-coms and the "Clockwork Orange" eyeball machine.
Thanks for everything Cinematical.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Picking a Fight with "The Fighter"
I've found the hardest reviews to write are the ones where you have nothing particularly good or bad to say about a film. This was the case with Ben Affleck's "The Town," and it's in the same with David O'Russell's similarly Boston-based boxing film, "The Fighter." While I like many of the actors who appear, I didn't find the the characters particularly compelling. David O'Russell partially uses a pseudo-documentary format, and does fine job of recreating boxing matches and bringing a certain degree of realism to the film, but otherwise I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
"The Fighter" follows "Irish" Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg), starting at a low point in his boxing career. He has plenty of potential, but suffers from the inattention of his mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), and brother Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale), who act as his manager and trainer respectively. Alice's mismanagement puts him in fights he's ill-suited to win. Dicky, a crack addict and former boxer best known for once knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard, is distracted by his habit and his participation in an HBO documentary. Mickey's personal relationships don't fare much better. He struggles to stay in his young daughter's life, despite the hostile attitude of her mother. Alice is preferential to Dicky, and both are very good at out-talking Mickey when he tries to bring up any concerns, backed up by a passel of Mickey and Dicky's foul-mouthed sisters. However, things start to turn around when Mickey begins a relationship with Charlene (Amy Adams), a feisty bartender. He also finds new success in the ring with the help of his father George (Jack McGee) and a new trainer, Sal (Frank Renzulli). Mickey has concerns about abandoning Dicky and Alice, but reconciliation seems impossible as the two sides of the family only come together to clash in spectacular fashion.
As you may have gathered, while "The Fighter" is billed as a sports film, it's largely a domestic drama. Mickey's contentious relationships with the various members of his family are far more exciting than any of the matches he fights. The boxing aspects of the film follows the conventional sports movie formula to the letter, with the setbacks and big wins in all the usual places. The personal conflicts going on, however, aren't as predictable. If "The Fighter" strives for anything, it's authenticity. And it's to O'Russell's credit that he brings just as much care and attention to detail when portraying Mickey's messy home life as he does to the training and fight scenes. The characters scream and yell profanities at each other, there's no trace of Hollywood sugarcoating, and as it's been widely reported, several of the actors, including those who play Mickey and Dicky's vociferous sisters, are non-professionals who were chosen for their hard-knock looks and genuine Bostonian accents.
But what does all this authenticity add up to? While I can appreciate the efforts to be true to life, that doesn't mean it makes the story any more interesting to watch. As someone who isn't a boxing fan, I found that not enough attention was focused on Mickey's boxing career to really set up the stakes for the audience. Though I could more or less follow what was going on, I still don't understand why Mickey Ward is worth following, and I found the context for the big fight at the end of the film severely lacking. I've had similar problems in the past with films like "The Damned United" and "Invictus," where the filmmakers assume a certain level of sports knowledge from the viewer that I just didn't have. And looking at the drama going on behind the scenes, the constant bickering was grating and difficult to sit through, especially whenever the female characters got confrontational. Just because the real life characters might get into catfights doesn't mean that we necessarily need to see them up close and personal. The subtler relationship bits were fine, but had a tendency to be overpowered by the big personalities until the last act.
The performances could have made up for some of these problems, but unfortunately this is another area where I found some significant weaknesses. Melissa Leo and Christian Bale brought home Oscar statuettes for playing Alice and Dicky, and they're both very good. Their performances are loud and flashy, but taken on their own, they're sound. Amy Adams as Charlene was a nice break from her usual good-girl roles, giving her a chance to play someone harder and more aggressive. However, I could never get away from the fact that I was watching Amy Adams rather than her character, and it didn't help that she was stuck with some of the worst lines in the film. Similarly, Mark Wahlberg is well cast as Mickey Ward, but though he sells those fight scenes, he isn't doing much heavy lifting in the acting department. He plays essentially the same tough-guy character that he always plays, though at his most sympathetic.
I have no special beef against "The Fighter," but I didn't particularly enjoy it. It's well made with plenty of style, but the substance is a little lacking. Some of the supporting performances were exemplary, but others only so-so. In the end, I felt exactly the same going into the film about Mickey Ward and his family as I did coming out if it, which is totally ambivalent. I don't think that reflects too well on the film.
"The Fighter" follows "Irish" Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg), starting at a low point in his boxing career. He has plenty of potential, but suffers from the inattention of his mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), and brother Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale), who act as his manager and trainer respectively. Alice's mismanagement puts him in fights he's ill-suited to win. Dicky, a crack addict and former boxer best known for once knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard, is distracted by his habit and his participation in an HBO documentary. Mickey's personal relationships don't fare much better. He struggles to stay in his young daughter's life, despite the hostile attitude of her mother. Alice is preferential to Dicky, and both are very good at out-talking Mickey when he tries to bring up any concerns, backed up by a passel of Mickey and Dicky's foul-mouthed sisters. However, things start to turn around when Mickey begins a relationship with Charlene (Amy Adams), a feisty bartender. He also finds new success in the ring with the help of his father George (Jack McGee) and a new trainer, Sal (Frank Renzulli). Mickey has concerns about abandoning Dicky and Alice, but reconciliation seems impossible as the two sides of the family only come together to clash in spectacular fashion.
As you may have gathered, while "The Fighter" is billed as a sports film, it's largely a domestic drama. Mickey's contentious relationships with the various members of his family are far more exciting than any of the matches he fights. The boxing aspects of the film follows the conventional sports movie formula to the letter, with the setbacks and big wins in all the usual places. The personal conflicts going on, however, aren't as predictable. If "The Fighter" strives for anything, it's authenticity. And it's to O'Russell's credit that he brings just as much care and attention to detail when portraying Mickey's messy home life as he does to the training and fight scenes. The characters scream and yell profanities at each other, there's no trace of Hollywood sugarcoating, and as it's been widely reported, several of the actors, including those who play Mickey and Dicky's vociferous sisters, are non-professionals who were chosen for their hard-knock looks and genuine Bostonian accents.
But what does all this authenticity add up to? While I can appreciate the efforts to be true to life, that doesn't mean it makes the story any more interesting to watch. As someone who isn't a boxing fan, I found that not enough attention was focused on Mickey's boxing career to really set up the stakes for the audience. Though I could more or less follow what was going on, I still don't understand why Mickey Ward is worth following, and I found the context for the big fight at the end of the film severely lacking. I've had similar problems in the past with films like "The Damned United" and "Invictus," where the filmmakers assume a certain level of sports knowledge from the viewer that I just didn't have. And looking at the drama going on behind the scenes, the constant bickering was grating and difficult to sit through, especially whenever the female characters got confrontational. Just because the real life characters might get into catfights doesn't mean that we necessarily need to see them up close and personal. The subtler relationship bits were fine, but had a tendency to be overpowered by the big personalities until the last act.
The performances could have made up for some of these problems, but unfortunately this is another area where I found some significant weaknesses. Melissa Leo and Christian Bale brought home Oscar statuettes for playing Alice and Dicky, and they're both very good. Their performances are loud and flashy, but taken on their own, they're sound. Amy Adams as Charlene was a nice break from her usual good-girl roles, giving her a chance to play someone harder and more aggressive. However, I could never get away from the fact that I was watching Amy Adams rather than her character, and it didn't help that she was stuck with some of the worst lines in the film. Similarly, Mark Wahlberg is well cast as Mickey Ward, but though he sells those fight scenes, he isn't doing much heavy lifting in the acting department. He plays essentially the same tough-guy character that he always plays, though at his most sympathetic.
I have no special beef against "The Fighter," but I didn't particularly enjoy it. It's well made with plenty of style, but the substance is a little lacking. Some of the supporting performances were exemplary, but others only so-so. In the end, I felt exactly the same going into the film about Mickey Ward and his family as I did coming out if it, which is totally ambivalent. I don't think that reflects too well on the film.
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