Novelty is something that I like to see in films, and considering how many I watch every year, it's rare to find something truly new. And so, even though there's a lot that feels slapdash and half-baked in "I am Not a Witch," the feature debut of director Rungano Nyoni, I appreciate it because it introduces something wholly novel to the cinematic vocabulary.
Maggie Mulubwa stars as Shula, an eight year-old orphan who is accused of witchcraft. In Zambia, where our story takes place, witches are exiled to isolated colonies where they are exploited as cheap labor and tethered to the ground with long white ribbons on giant spools, so they will not fly away. Shula is told that if she cuts her ribbon, she'll turn into a goat, so she elects to stay with the witches. Soon she's also taken under the wing of a comically corrupt government official, Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri), who takes her to various jobs requiring the special powers of a witch. His wife Charity (Nancy Murilo), who also turns out to be a witch, promises Shula she will be fine if she does as she's told.
The witches with their white ribbons trailing after them and fluttering in the wind are wonderfully distinct from every other depiction of witches that I've ever seen, and make for an immediately evocative, culturally specific metaphor for the wider oppression and exploitation of Zambian women. Shula's adventures are highly satirical, and some are very funny, like her appearance on a local talk show. Others, however, are distressing or intensely uncomfortable to watch. At one point, a tourist sightseeing at the witches' camp intrudes on Shula during one of her rough patches. The woman seems sympathetic to Shula, but only long enough to take a picture.
There are parts of "I am Not a Witch" that feel incomplete or very roughly realized. The whole film is barely 90 minutes and easily could have used another twenty to help fill in some of the gaps. However, what we do see is fascinating, and comes with a very clear, critical point of view. Though the anchoring ribbons are the director's invention, there are real camps for accused witches in Zambia much like Shula's. More importantly, the attitudes we see toward witchcraft and the country's increasing westernization come across as very genuine, and it make the film's commentary all the more sobering.
Now over to Germany, where a new film by director Fatih Akin, "In the Fade," has been making some waves. Some of this is due to its subject matter, confronting the plight of recent immigrants. However, most of the acclaim is directly due to the excellent performance of Diane Kruger, who stars as Katja, a German woman who loses her Kurdish husband and their young son in a horrific bombing that appears to be racially motivated. The film is split into three parts, the first covering the bombing, the second covering the resulting trial, and the final part covering the further aftermath.
If it weren't for Kruger's involvement, the film would be a pretty pedestrian crime thriller. The social commentary is a touch too obvious and the other performances are mostly forgettable stuff. The second segment with the trial is especially humdrum, playing up predictable melodrama and spending entirely too long on familiar courtroom theatrics. The ending feels too calculated, designed to be controversial without really having the guts to be confrontational about its messages. It doesn't help that many characters, despite a few token skeletons in their closets, come across as far too idealized and contrived to be genuine.
Thank goodness for Diane Kruger then, who mostly manages to keep the whole film watchable and is frequently compelling and relatable. It's impossible not to feel for her as she processes her grief and tries to keep her emotions in check during the gruelling trial. The film is better the more it allows her to be active, which is why the last third of the film is easily the most successful. "In the Fade" would have been much better if it had expanded that final segment, with the earlier material limited to flashbacks. As is, the movie is a decent vehicle for Kruger, but it could have been much better.
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Thursday, July 12, 2018
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
"Black Panther" Cometh
It's not often that I can say I see anything really new and novel at the movies anymore, but "Black Panther" definitely fits the bill. The eighteenth Marvel Universe film may have just made the previous seventeen installments worth the trouble, because Ryan Coogler and his crew have pulled off something groundbreaking. It's not just that it's a black superhero movie. We've had those before in "Blade" and "Steel" and "Meteor Man." What we have here is a fully-formed, beautifully realized black fantasy world, on the same level as Hogwarts or Narnia.
The African nation of Wakanda, which is secretly a rich and technologically advanced civilization untouched by Western colonization, has just lost its king. The heir to the throne and the mantle of Wakanda's superpowered protector, Black Panther, is T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), who faces all the challenges of being a new leader. Fortunately, he has a lot of allies including the leader of his personal guard, Okoye (Danai Gurira), his best friend and security chief W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), and his tech genius teenage sister Shuri (Letitia Wright). He's even on good terms with his ex, Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), a formidable warrior and spy. However, threats from Wakanda's past emerge, namely the arms dealer Klaue (Andy Serkis), and a mysterious African-American soldier named Erik "Killmonger" Stevens (Michael B. Jordan).
The Black Panther character was first introduced to audiences in the last "Captain America" move, but his solo film is almost entirely unconnected to anything else going on in the wider Marvel universe. This is a good thing, because "Black Panther" has a lot going on and doesn't need the additional distraction. Fans can expect all of the typical action set pieces and CGI eye candy of your usual Marvel film. Lots of smaller clashes eventually build up to the big, third act battle sequence, where the hero and villain face off in an extended duel. There's a romantic subplot that doesn't get enough attention, the side characters are often more fun than the hero, and the comic book dialogue is frequently ridiculous. The villain, Killmonger, is a much stronger and more sympathetic one than usual, so that's a nice change of pace. However, "Black Panther" is definitely a popcorn movie through and through, and mostly follows the established formula of one.
Where it really excels, though, is in executing the premise of an African hero from an African fantasy kingdom. Two of the MVPs of the movie are production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who put together the fantastic look of the Wakandan utopia from an array of East African influences. Every frame and every object make use of African design sensibilities, including the gadgetry, architecture, weapons, and clothing. We hear multiple African languages used throughout the film, each reflecting the backgrounds of the different characters. Afrofuturism, which looks at African culture's interaction with future technology, has never been brought to screen like this before. Frankly, I'd be hard pressed to name any mainstream film about Africa that has portrayed it in such positive, optimistic terms.
And this is a powerful, necessary thing to have. Wakanda is an ideal, a fantasy land ruled by benevolent monarchs, home to strong and righteous warriors, and able to produce technological wonders that could change the world. It's the kind of ideal that has been missing from black cinema, possibly because only an outfit like Disney could afford to put it onscreen. And Ryan Coogler and company do the heavy lifting of putting Wakanda in proper context too. The characters spend a good amount of the discussing Wakanda's relationship to the rest of Africa, the African diaspora, and their history. There are references to Western colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade, the Boko Haram kidnappings, and the struggles faced by African-Americans. The film's primary villain turns out to be a product of Wakanda's troubling policy of secrecy and isolationism.
"Black Panther" doesn't handle all of these elements in the best way, and it's certainly not the best forum for serious discussion of them. However, it's so refreshing to see these issues acknowledged in the context of such a big, high-profile piece of media.. I love that we now have characters like Okoye and Shuri, fantastic role models for little girls. I love that we now have a reference point when talking about the divide between Africans and African-Americans. I love that audiences are making it clear that "Black Panther" was a movie that we all needed to exist.
More please!
---
The African nation of Wakanda, which is secretly a rich and technologically advanced civilization untouched by Western colonization, has just lost its king. The heir to the throne and the mantle of Wakanda's superpowered protector, Black Panther, is T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), who faces all the challenges of being a new leader. Fortunately, he has a lot of allies including the leader of his personal guard, Okoye (Danai Gurira), his best friend and security chief W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), and his tech genius teenage sister Shuri (Letitia Wright). He's even on good terms with his ex, Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), a formidable warrior and spy. However, threats from Wakanda's past emerge, namely the arms dealer Klaue (Andy Serkis), and a mysterious African-American soldier named Erik "Killmonger" Stevens (Michael B. Jordan).
The Black Panther character was first introduced to audiences in the last "Captain America" move, but his solo film is almost entirely unconnected to anything else going on in the wider Marvel universe. This is a good thing, because "Black Panther" has a lot going on and doesn't need the additional distraction. Fans can expect all of the typical action set pieces and CGI eye candy of your usual Marvel film. Lots of smaller clashes eventually build up to the big, third act battle sequence, where the hero and villain face off in an extended duel. There's a romantic subplot that doesn't get enough attention, the side characters are often more fun than the hero, and the comic book dialogue is frequently ridiculous. The villain, Killmonger, is a much stronger and more sympathetic one than usual, so that's a nice change of pace. However, "Black Panther" is definitely a popcorn movie through and through, and mostly follows the established formula of one.
Where it really excels, though, is in executing the premise of an African hero from an African fantasy kingdom. Two of the MVPs of the movie are production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who put together the fantastic look of the Wakandan utopia from an array of East African influences. Every frame and every object make use of African design sensibilities, including the gadgetry, architecture, weapons, and clothing. We hear multiple African languages used throughout the film, each reflecting the backgrounds of the different characters. Afrofuturism, which looks at African culture's interaction with future technology, has never been brought to screen like this before. Frankly, I'd be hard pressed to name any mainstream film about Africa that has portrayed it in such positive, optimistic terms.
And this is a powerful, necessary thing to have. Wakanda is an ideal, a fantasy land ruled by benevolent monarchs, home to strong and righteous warriors, and able to produce technological wonders that could change the world. It's the kind of ideal that has been missing from black cinema, possibly because only an outfit like Disney could afford to put it onscreen. And Ryan Coogler and company do the heavy lifting of putting Wakanda in proper context too. The characters spend a good amount of the discussing Wakanda's relationship to the rest of Africa, the African diaspora, and their history. There are references to Western colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade, the Boko Haram kidnappings, and the struggles faced by African-Americans. The film's primary villain turns out to be a product of Wakanda's troubling policy of secrecy and isolationism.
"Black Panther" doesn't handle all of these elements in the best way, and it's certainly not the best forum for serious discussion of them. However, it's so refreshing to see these issues acknowledged in the context of such a big, high-profile piece of media.. I love that we now have characters like Okoye and Shuri, fantastic role models for little girls. I love that we now have a reference point when talking about the divide between Africans and African-Americans. I love that audiences are making it clear that "Black Panther" was a movie that we all needed to exist.
More please!
---
Sunday, July 8, 2018
"Channel Awesome" Clearly Wasn't
I had to dig back into the archives for this one, but I did write up a few posts about the "Channel Awesome" critics way back in the early days of this blog, talking about how new media and and old media were getting along, and the changing the nature of media criticism. I was one of their regular viewers when they were at the height of their popularity around 2010, happy to waste hours on the reviews and video essays of a dozen different contributors.
I haven't really kept up with Channel Awesome since the departure of a big chunk of their talent in 2014 and 2015. I still watch Lindsay Ellis and Kyle Kallgren, but stopped paying much attention to the rest. I just didn't have the time anymore, and frankly there are a lot of better alternatives. I'm not surprised they hung around though, with the site hitting its tenth anniversary this year. Doug Walker of "The Nostalgia Critic" is still railing against the mediocre media of our childhoods with no end in sight, a gimmick that his audience still loves. Chris Stuckmann, anime fan and movie reviewer, was apparently also affiliated with the site for a few years, though he's primarily known for his Youtube channel. Really, since the Blip video hosting service folded, all of these smaller video producers are Youtubers by default. The last time Doug Walker popped up in my line of sight was when he posted a video in 2016 railing against Youtube's overzealous content flagging system.
And it also doesn't surprise me that Channel Awesome is by all measures an awful, awful mess of a company. There have been reports of the site's dysfunction and behind-the-scenes drama going back years, but this past March several of the old contributors took to Twitter and really went into detail about the level of mismanagement and incompetence they experienced. A 70+ page document has been in circulation, cataloguing instances of harassment and mistreatment by the site's leadership. Much uglier stuff has come out since. #ChangetheChannel was organized shortly thereafter to boycott Channel Awesome, and all of the remaining contributors left in April - Stuckmann included. The subscriber base has also taken a significant hit.
This is a sad fate for a site that I really enjoyed and was rooting for back at the beginning. In 1998, when Channel Awesome predecessor "That Guy With the Glasses" started out, Youtube wasn't nearly the ubiquitous video hub it would become, and there was still some space for these scrappy, smaller content producers to establish themselves on the digital frontier. Nobody at that point had really made much headway with producing online content for profit, so there weren't any rules. "The Nostalgia Critic" was a rare popular success in the early vlogger era, and it was a truly independent venture, made by a couple of midwesterners who had no experience with the established entertainment world. They made vlogging look fun, like something anyone could do, and their format became very popular and influential. That's what made Channel Awesome such an attractive platform, and why it became a launching point for so much younger talent. There were next to no barriers to entry, and the no-budget DIY aesthetic was actually kind of charming.
My hope was that Channel Awesome would be a good alternative to the status quo at the time, and maybe establish a different model for content production. And this did happen to an extent. Creators like Lindsay Ellis were able to build audiences through affiliation with Channel Awesome, and figure out monetization models that worked for them. Quite a few of the producers who are still active, get by on a combination of platform ads and Patreon campaigns. However, with Youtube having grown so dominant, and social media providing many new avenues for self-promotion, the cachet of being part of a portal site like Channel Awesome has shrunk considerably. And they never figured out how to grow or improve themselves the way that other outfits like College Humor and Rooster Teeth did.
It's fascinating to trace the company's ups and downs over the years, and they way they reacted to each new change to the indie content creator ecosystem. They were clearly too dependant on Blip for too long, and didn't handled the switchover to Youtube very well. They took advantage of Indiegogo, but were resistant to individual Patreon campaigns. There's still next to no social media presence. The site itself now looks so rudimentary and badly organized compared to its competitors, it's no wonder why most of the smaller producers didn't see much reason to stick around. It's apparent that the early success really went to the heads of the guys in charge, and a few pet projects got completely out of hand . This coupled with their continued resistance to innovation severely hindered their ability to adapt.
There's no shame in being an amateur, but after ten years, it starts to look disingenuous or just plain incompetent. The recent drama revealed some very shady practices and bad behavior, but it's really the site's stagnation and inability to change with the times that has turned Channel Awesome into a cautionary tale.
---
I haven't really kept up with Channel Awesome since the departure of a big chunk of their talent in 2014 and 2015. I still watch Lindsay Ellis and Kyle Kallgren, but stopped paying much attention to the rest. I just didn't have the time anymore, and frankly there are a lot of better alternatives. I'm not surprised they hung around though, with the site hitting its tenth anniversary this year. Doug Walker of "The Nostalgia Critic" is still railing against the mediocre media of our childhoods with no end in sight, a gimmick that his audience still loves. Chris Stuckmann, anime fan and movie reviewer, was apparently also affiliated with the site for a few years, though he's primarily known for his Youtube channel. Really, since the Blip video hosting service folded, all of these smaller video producers are Youtubers by default. The last time Doug Walker popped up in my line of sight was when he posted a video in 2016 railing against Youtube's overzealous content flagging system.
And it also doesn't surprise me that Channel Awesome is by all measures an awful, awful mess of a company. There have been reports of the site's dysfunction and behind-the-scenes drama going back years, but this past March several of the old contributors took to Twitter and really went into detail about the level of mismanagement and incompetence they experienced. A 70+ page document has been in circulation, cataloguing instances of harassment and mistreatment by the site's leadership. Much uglier stuff has come out since. #ChangetheChannel was organized shortly thereafter to boycott Channel Awesome, and all of the remaining contributors left in April - Stuckmann included. The subscriber base has also taken a significant hit.
This is a sad fate for a site that I really enjoyed and was rooting for back at the beginning. In 1998, when Channel Awesome predecessor "That Guy With the Glasses" started out, Youtube wasn't nearly the ubiquitous video hub it would become, and there was still some space for these scrappy, smaller content producers to establish themselves on the digital frontier. Nobody at that point had really made much headway with producing online content for profit, so there weren't any rules. "The Nostalgia Critic" was a rare popular success in the early vlogger era, and it was a truly independent venture, made by a couple of midwesterners who had no experience with the established entertainment world. They made vlogging look fun, like something anyone could do, and their format became very popular and influential. That's what made Channel Awesome such an attractive platform, and why it became a launching point for so much younger talent. There were next to no barriers to entry, and the no-budget DIY aesthetic was actually kind of charming.
My hope was that Channel Awesome would be a good alternative to the status quo at the time, and maybe establish a different model for content production. And this did happen to an extent. Creators like Lindsay Ellis were able to build audiences through affiliation with Channel Awesome, and figure out monetization models that worked for them. Quite a few of the producers who are still active, get by on a combination of platform ads and Patreon campaigns. However, with Youtube having grown so dominant, and social media providing many new avenues for self-promotion, the cachet of being part of a portal site like Channel Awesome has shrunk considerably. And they never figured out how to grow or improve themselves the way that other outfits like College Humor and Rooster Teeth did.
It's fascinating to trace the company's ups and downs over the years, and they way they reacted to each new change to the indie content creator ecosystem. They were clearly too dependant on Blip for too long, and didn't handled the switchover to Youtube very well. They took advantage of Indiegogo, but were resistant to individual Patreon campaigns. There's still next to no social media presence. The site itself now looks so rudimentary and badly organized compared to its competitors, it's no wonder why most of the smaller producers didn't see much reason to stick around. It's apparent that the early success really went to the heads of the guys in charge, and a few pet projects got completely out of hand . This coupled with their continued resistance to innovation severely hindered their ability to adapt.
There's no shame in being an amateur, but after ten years, it starts to look disingenuous or just plain incompetent. The recent drama revealed some very shady practices and bad behavior, but it's really the site's stagnation and inability to change with the times that has turned Channel Awesome into a cautionary tale.
---
Friday, July 6, 2018
"Ready Player One" (With Spoilers)
Spoilers ahead.
So, I didn't get most of the video game references. And most of the music references. And I definitely missed the "Excalibur" reference. I spent quite a bit of "Ready Player One" wondering what the experience of watching the movie would be like for someone who hardly knew any of the references. In thirty years, is this movie even going to be watchable for kids who have no idea what any of this is referencing at all?
Well, Steven Spielberg is a good enough filmmaker that the basics of the treasure hunt are still going to come across. However, if you're not pop culture savvy to some extent, so much of the experience of watching "Ready Player One" is lost. There's an undeniable pleasure to spotting King Kong during the first race, or recognizing those couple of notes from Alan Silvestri's "Back to the Future" score when the Zemeckis Cube is deployed. I'm glad the filmmakers cast the net wide enough that there's something for everyone. The Gundam should be a hit with Asian audiences. The Iron Giant is a favorite for Millennials. My favorite, no surprise, was the recreation of the Overlook Hotel from "The Shining."
And it is a stunning recreation, put together by Spielberg, who we know was a friend and a fan of Stanley Kubrick's work. And it's a good reminder that Spielberg is himself a fan like his young protagonists, and a pretty good candidate for a James Halliday-like figure himself. I suspect this is a big reason why he took pains to minimize the appearance of his own movie creations in the world of the Oasis. The whole point of "Ready Player One" is allowing him to play with the cool toys created by other artists. This is why I don't buy the criticism that some of the pop culture characters are being misused. The Iron Giant who appears here is not the friendly star of 1999's "The Iron Giant," who learns about non-violence. He's just a facsimile being borrowed by Aech in the big robot battle.
So the movie often strikes me as just one big, expensive game of pretend, and didn't we all want to play our favorite movies and comics for pretend when we were kids? You can even see some of those old schoolyard negotiations going on if you squint. Ernest Cline gets to keep in the DeLorean from "Back to the Future" and Spielberg gets to bring in "The Shining" ghoulies, and our neighbor said that we could play with their Gundam as long as we're careful with it. And like all games of pretend, the logic is often precarious, and the story is derivative to the extreme, but you can't help getting caught up in the excitement and the creativity of the players. Or at least grin at how much fun they're having.
I have some major reservations about what kinds of mixed messages the film is ultimately conveying, even if it's not on purpose. It's frustrating to see a film that gets so much right about fandom and online interactions largely ignore their dark sides. At the same time, I feel like a Grinch coming in and ruining people's fun by dictating how they're supposed to play with their toys. Then again, the movie clearly isn't meant just for kids, and the toys mostly come from the childhoods of people who are in their thirties and forties - people who it's perfectly right to remind that nostalgia comes with consequences, and that the nerds need to work on being inclusive just like everyone else these days.
Don't think I didn't notice the distinct lack of references to media aimed at girls and women in "Ready Player One." That dance club sequence easily could have featured a "Dirty Dancing" or "Flashdance" homage as easily as it did a "Saturday Night Fever" one. And the parallels to "Labyrinth" were obvious. I have a very different image of '80s pop culture than Ernest Cline and Steven Spielberg do, one that wasn't always positive. And though I love many of the same pieces of it, I'm not onboard with pretending that it was nearly as universal or accessible or as inclusive as the movie might suggest. And there's no shame in not getting the reference or being bad at video games or not liking the things that other people love.
---
So, I didn't get most of the video game references. And most of the music references. And I definitely missed the "Excalibur" reference. I spent quite a bit of "Ready Player One" wondering what the experience of watching the movie would be like for someone who hardly knew any of the references. In thirty years, is this movie even going to be watchable for kids who have no idea what any of this is referencing at all?
Well, Steven Spielberg is a good enough filmmaker that the basics of the treasure hunt are still going to come across. However, if you're not pop culture savvy to some extent, so much of the experience of watching "Ready Player One" is lost. There's an undeniable pleasure to spotting King Kong during the first race, or recognizing those couple of notes from Alan Silvestri's "Back to the Future" score when the Zemeckis Cube is deployed. I'm glad the filmmakers cast the net wide enough that there's something for everyone. The Gundam should be a hit with Asian audiences. The Iron Giant is a favorite for Millennials. My favorite, no surprise, was the recreation of the Overlook Hotel from "The Shining."
And it is a stunning recreation, put together by Spielberg, who we know was a friend and a fan of Stanley Kubrick's work. And it's a good reminder that Spielberg is himself a fan like his young protagonists, and a pretty good candidate for a James Halliday-like figure himself. I suspect this is a big reason why he took pains to minimize the appearance of his own movie creations in the world of the Oasis. The whole point of "Ready Player One" is allowing him to play with the cool toys created by other artists. This is why I don't buy the criticism that some of the pop culture characters are being misused. The Iron Giant who appears here is not the friendly star of 1999's "The Iron Giant," who learns about non-violence. He's just a facsimile being borrowed by Aech in the big robot battle.
So the movie often strikes me as just one big, expensive game of pretend, and didn't we all want to play our favorite movies and comics for pretend when we were kids? You can even see some of those old schoolyard negotiations going on if you squint. Ernest Cline gets to keep in the DeLorean from "Back to the Future" and Spielberg gets to bring in "The Shining" ghoulies, and our neighbor said that we could play with their Gundam as long as we're careful with it. And like all games of pretend, the logic is often precarious, and the story is derivative to the extreme, but you can't help getting caught up in the excitement and the creativity of the players. Or at least grin at how much fun they're having.
I have some major reservations about what kinds of mixed messages the film is ultimately conveying, even if it's not on purpose. It's frustrating to see a film that gets so much right about fandom and online interactions largely ignore their dark sides. At the same time, I feel like a Grinch coming in and ruining people's fun by dictating how they're supposed to play with their toys. Then again, the movie clearly isn't meant just for kids, and the toys mostly come from the childhoods of people who are in their thirties and forties - people who it's perfectly right to remind that nostalgia comes with consequences, and that the nerds need to work on being inclusive just like everyone else these days.
Don't think I didn't notice the distinct lack of references to media aimed at girls and women in "Ready Player One." That dance club sequence easily could have featured a "Dirty Dancing" or "Flashdance" homage as easily as it did a "Saturday Night Fever" one. And the parallels to "Labyrinth" were obvious. I have a very different image of '80s pop culture than Ernest Cline and Steven Spielberg do, one that wasn't always positive. And though I love many of the same pieces of it, I'm not onboard with pretending that it was nearly as universal or accessible or as inclusive as the movie might suggest. And there's no shame in not getting the reference or being bad at video games or not liking the things that other people love.
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Wednesday, July 4, 2018
"Ready Player One" (Without Spoilers)
I have a lot to say about Steven Spielberg's adaptation of "Ready Player One," and a great deal of it doesn't actually have to do with the movie itself, but its subject matter, which is all about a certain breed of media fans and fandom. So I'm going to break this up into two parts. This entry will give only a brief, spoiler-free review of the film and discuss it in the context of everything else currently going on in fandom circles. The next post will discuss the film in more detail with spoilers, and we can get into the specifics of the film's many, many nerdy references. Capisce? Good.
In the world of 2045, the world has fallen into ruin, and many people find escape in the virtual reality world of the Oasis, a digital wonderland created by a man named James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Upon his death, he leaves behind an "easter egg," giving over control of the Oasis and his fortune to whoever can solve a treasure hunt full of clues and games based on the pop culture that he was obsessed with. A boy named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), who goes by the avatar Parzifal in the Oasis, and his friends Aech (Lena Waithe) and Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), become the frontrunners in the game. Against them are the evil Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) and the IOI Corporation, who want the Oasis for themselves.
Despite the fancy technology, there's nothing too complicated here. The story is a basic fetch quest, the goodies are the usual band of scrappy kids, and the baddies are cartoonishly evil. Ben Mendelsohn and Mark Rylance are the MVPs, playing the loathsome corporate shark and the kindly eccentric genius respectively. Olivia Cooke is the standout among the kids, especially in the cat-and-mouse infiltration scenes in the real world. Despite the pop-culture references aimed at Gen Xers, this is a children's film from top to bottom. With its thrilling chases, monster brawls, and awkward teenagers going on first dates, "Ready Player One" shares more DNA with "The Goonies" than "TRON." Oh, and sensitive parents should take note that Spielberg has fully embraced the S-word.
It is great to see a depiction of the internet that handles things like digital avatars in such a competent fashion. At least a third of the film takes place in entirely virtual environments, so we're often following CGI animated characters modeled after common video game types. And it's one of the movie's better tricks that Parzifal and A3ris and the rest are actually about as compelling in virtual form as they are in the flesh. The characters aren't all that deep, mind you, but this is still something I've never seen handled so well in a live-action film, and it gives me hope for future media about life online. A "Snow Crash" movie, for instance, could definitely use the Oasis as a template for the Metaverse.
And it's also nice to see the characters interacting with pop culture in a more realistic way, cataloguing and obsessing over trivia, and sometimes literally speaking in references. Thanks to Spielberg's clout, the pop culture being invoked is actually real, and we get to see the interaction of items from fandoms as disparate as Japanese mecha, Monty Python, ancient Atari video games, and the recent "Suicide Squad" movie. A lot of the fun of "Ready Player One" is spotting and recognizing the various toys that Spielberg and company were able to clear the copyrights to play with here. On the other hand, the whole thing also smacks of a somewhat troubling kind of wish fulfillment.
At its heart, "Ready Player One" is all about elevating the James Halliday character, a socially challenged nerd obsessed with the pop culture of his childhood in the 1980s. And he's beloved to the point where Wade and his friends are obsessed with everything that Halliday was obsessed with, largely ignoring anything made after the late '90s. A character named "Kira," for instance, is immediately assumed to be a reference to 1982's "Dark Crystal" rather than 2006's "Death Note" or 2013's "Orphan Black." The movie does its best to downplay or lampoon the more unhealthy forms of geekery, and one of its morals is that it's important to go outside and live in the real world. Still, troubling behaviors slip through.
It's downright uncomfortable watching scenes of Sorrento reciting trivia about John Hughes films to Wade, in an attempt to persuade him that he's trustworthy. Nearly as bad are the breathless exposition dumps where characters have eureka moments about old video games or movies. There's this sense of desperation to show there's real value to parroting all this obscure minutiae, or really that there's value in being this kind of overzealous fan. And I'm not convinced there is - at least not the way "Ready Player One" suggests. Halliday is set up as a cautionary figure, but only to an extent. The rest of the movie is all about celebrating the joys of fervent, passionate nerdom.
Over the past few years we've seen the kind of damage that fandom gatekeeping and us v. them mentalities can wreak. The movie is a fun romp, but it also reflects more worrying ideas and values. I count myself a fan of many of the '80s and '90s pop culture referenced in the film, but I'm not really a fan the way the characters in the movie are because I'm not an obsessive. I'd lose any challenge of my bona fides in a hot minute. And what's worse, I'm decidedly not a fan of some of the properties referenced. "Buckaroo Banzai," for instance, always struck me as pretty dull. And I don't think you're allowed to be critical of much in the "Ready Player One" world.
More on that next time...
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In the world of 2045, the world has fallen into ruin, and many people find escape in the virtual reality world of the Oasis, a digital wonderland created by a man named James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Upon his death, he leaves behind an "easter egg," giving over control of the Oasis and his fortune to whoever can solve a treasure hunt full of clues and games based on the pop culture that he was obsessed with. A boy named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), who goes by the avatar Parzifal in the Oasis, and his friends Aech (Lena Waithe) and Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), become the frontrunners in the game. Against them are the evil Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) and the IOI Corporation, who want the Oasis for themselves.
Despite the fancy technology, there's nothing too complicated here. The story is a basic fetch quest, the goodies are the usual band of scrappy kids, and the baddies are cartoonishly evil. Ben Mendelsohn and Mark Rylance are the MVPs, playing the loathsome corporate shark and the kindly eccentric genius respectively. Olivia Cooke is the standout among the kids, especially in the cat-and-mouse infiltration scenes in the real world. Despite the pop-culture references aimed at Gen Xers, this is a children's film from top to bottom. With its thrilling chases, monster brawls, and awkward teenagers going on first dates, "Ready Player One" shares more DNA with "The Goonies" than "TRON." Oh, and sensitive parents should take note that Spielberg has fully embraced the S-word.
It is great to see a depiction of the internet that handles things like digital avatars in such a competent fashion. At least a third of the film takes place in entirely virtual environments, so we're often following CGI animated characters modeled after common video game types. And it's one of the movie's better tricks that Parzifal and A3ris and the rest are actually about as compelling in virtual form as they are in the flesh. The characters aren't all that deep, mind you, but this is still something I've never seen handled so well in a live-action film, and it gives me hope for future media about life online. A "Snow Crash" movie, for instance, could definitely use the Oasis as a template for the Metaverse.
And it's also nice to see the characters interacting with pop culture in a more realistic way, cataloguing and obsessing over trivia, and sometimes literally speaking in references. Thanks to Spielberg's clout, the pop culture being invoked is actually real, and we get to see the interaction of items from fandoms as disparate as Japanese mecha, Monty Python, ancient Atari video games, and the recent "Suicide Squad" movie. A lot of the fun of "Ready Player One" is spotting and recognizing the various toys that Spielberg and company were able to clear the copyrights to play with here. On the other hand, the whole thing also smacks of a somewhat troubling kind of wish fulfillment.
At its heart, "Ready Player One" is all about elevating the James Halliday character, a socially challenged nerd obsessed with the pop culture of his childhood in the 1980s. And he's beloved to the point where Wade and his friends are obsessed with everything that Halliday was obsessed with, largely ignoring anything made after the late '90s. A character named "Kira," for instance, is immediately assumed to be a reference to 1982's "Dark Crystal" rather than 2006's "Death Note" or 2013's "Orphan Black." The movie does its best to downplay or lampoon the more unhealthy forms of geekery, and one of its morals is that it's important to go outside and live in the real world. Still, troubling behaviors slip through.
It's downright uncomfortable watching scenes of Sorrento reciting trivia about John Hughes films to Wade, in an attempt to persuade him that he's trustworthy. Nearly as bad are the breathless exposition dumps where characters have eureka moments about old video games or movies. There's this sense of desperation to show there's real value to parroting all this obscure minutiae, or really that there's value in being this kind of overzealous fan. And I'm not convinced there is - at least not the way "Ready Player One" suggests. Halliday is set up as a cautionary figure, but only to an extent. The rest of the movie is all about celebrating the joys of fervent, passionate nerdom.
Over the past few years we've seen the kind of damage that fandom gatekeeping and us v. them mentalities can wreak. The movie is a fun romp, but it also reflects more worrying ideas and values. I count myself a fan of many of the '80s and '90s pop culture referenced in the film, but I'm not really a fan the way the characters in the movie are because I'm not an obsessive. I'd lose any challenge of my bona fides in a hot minute. And what's worse, I'm decidedly not a fan of some of the properties referenced. "Buckaroo Banzai," for instance, always struck me as pretty dull. And I don't think you're allowed to be critical of much in the "Ready Player One" world.
More on that next time...
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Monday, July 2, 2018
The July 2018 Follow-Up Post
For the uninitiated, my "follow-up" posts are semi-regular installments where I write about recent developments related to topics unrelated I've blogged about in the past, but which I didn't think needed a whole new write-up to themselves. The original posts are linked below for your convenience.
The MoviePass Math, Part 2 - We all knew that this wasn't going to last. After several months of little adjustments to the terms and services, Moviepass has removed the option for unlimited plans for new customers at the lower prices. Repeat viewings of the same movie are no longer allowed. It's also teamed up for a promotional tie-in with I Heart Radio for some reason. From the financials that Moviepass's parent company has released, it's still totally unclear how the business model makes any sense, and the end is almost certainly near. I expect that we'll be seeing more limitations placed on existing customers as time goes by. Also, their claim that they aren't selling the data collected on their users is pretty preposterous. Of course they're selling the data. It's what everybody does. At least they're riling up some comeptition - see AMC's newly announced subscription plan.
Netflix v. Cannes - And the cold war has officially begun. The biggest story out of Cannes was the movies that didn't play the festival, namely Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma," Jeremy Saulnier's "Hold the Dark," Paul Greengrass' "Norway," and the long awaited reconstruction of Orson Welles' "The Other Side of the Wind." Frankly, both parties are going to be just fine. Cannes had plenty of big names this year, including Spike Lee, Terry Gilliam, Lars von Trier, and Asghar Farhadi. Netflix clearly doesn't need any of the bona fides that Cannes could bestow on their content, having become too big to ignore over the last year. They also made some small but important inroads during awards season too. The extent of the protectionism around French theatrical runs is pretty absurd, and Netflix is definitely overreacting, but all of this is really just symbolic posturing in the end.
Roll the "Oats" - A couple of additional shorts were released on the Oats Studios channel since I posted. However, the biggest development is Neill Blomkamp's rather reckless attempt to crowdfund a feature film based on the "Firebase" short. Frankly, I thought "Firebase" was one of the least effective of the Oats shorts, though I could see some potential in the premise. At least it didn't feel as derivative as some of the others. However, the way that Blomkamp went about trying to raise funds, not using Kickstarter or Indiegogo, not having a concrete dollar amount as a goal, and scoffing about contributor rewards, was pretty suspect. The campaign lasted all of nine days before being pulled, and it was obvious that Blomkamp had severely underestimated the amount of interest in a "Firebase" feature. No word yet on whether the Oats shorts still listed as being in the works, like "Lima," will still be released.
Night of the Living Cancellation, Part II - Well, the success of "Roseanne" really did it. Now there are plans to revive just about every sitcom that ever saw much success, even fairly recent stuff like "30 Rock" and "The Office." At this rate, they'll be bringing back "MASH" before the year is out. The most high profile one is on the horizon is "Murphy Brown," which I have very mixed feelings about. I loved the early years of "Murphy Brown," and the thought of the characters having to navigate the horrors of the vastly different TV news world of 2018 could be interesting to see. Also, Grant Shaud is coming back as Miles Silverberg, which is a big plus for me. The show was never the same after he left. Then again, I can think of so many different ways this could go wrong. Again, see "Roseanne."
Cancellation Watch 2018 - And while we're on the subject, a few of of the other higher profile cancellations did wind up being shuffled to other platforms. "The Expanse" was picked up by Amazon Prime and Netflix saved "Lucifer." As for "Roseanne," those high ratings meant the show was bound to live on in one form or another. I'm planning to write a full post on that situation later on.
Candy Crushin' - After a multi-year break, I'm playing again, and it's kind of awe-inspiring looking at all the new mechanics that have been added to the game since 2014 to keep you playing and incentivize other behavior. They even worked some limited video ads into the game, trading views for extra boosters.
Cliffhanger Crisis - "Eerie, Indiana" producer Karl Schaefer finally cleared up the origins of Dash X for me via a Reddit IAMA. Spoiler: He's an alien!
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Sunday, July 1, 2018
Harlan Ellison is Dead
Harlan Ellison was a petty, vengeful, and all around unpleasant man who was also one of the greatest writers of science-fiction (never "sci-fi") of the twentieth century. As timid young person, who wished I could a fraction as outspoken or self-assured, I adored him from afar. From afar is the important part. I suspect that if I'd ever met the man in person I would have hated him immediately.
Ellison was the kind of person who was frequently terrible, but so entertaining in his horribleness, and often so principled in his awfulness, you just had to admire him. More than for his contributions to English literature, I loved him for his unrelenting support for the rights of authors and creative people - often backed by insane acts of stubbornness. Everyone had a story about Harlan Ellison going too far. There was the time he sent 213 bricks to a publisher he was having a contract dispute with, followed by a dead gopher via fourth-class mail. There was the time a fight with an ABC censor resulted in the censor having his pelvis broken by a model submarine. There was the time Ellison was fired from Disney on his very first day for jokingly pitching a porno featuring Mickey Mouse. There was the time he called Oreo cookies the "baked good personification of the anti-Christ." There was the time he groped Connie Willis onstage during an awards ceremony. That was a bad one.
And then, famously, there were the lawsuits. The man never met a grudge he didn't like. He sued James Cameron to get credit for concepts in "The Terminator" that were purportedly lifted from Ellison's episodes of "The Outer Limits." He sued AOL after users posted some of his stories to Usenet newsgroups in the early days of the internet. He sued the owners of the film "In Time," sight unseen, upon learning that it had some superficial similarities to his famous short story, "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman." He harped on the changes made on his initial script for the classic "Star Trek" episode "City on the Edge of Forever" for decades. Once he felt he was wronged, Ellison couldn't keep quiet. He even wrote an infamous essay, "Xenogenesis," attacking certain science-fiction fans for the awful liberties they took during interactions with various authors.
In addition to "Star Trek" and "The Outer Limits," Ellison also contributed to the 1980s version of "The Twilight Zone," "Babylon Five," "Burke's Law," and several other television programs. He also created a series called "The Starlost" that he ended up disavowing completely. Due to his aggressive insistence on retaining creative control of his work, few of his stories have been adapted. The film version of "A Boy and his Dog" was one of the biggest exceptions, which kept the controversial ending, but made other changes that Ellison predictably hated. I wonder if we'll see film versions of "Repent, Harlequin!" and the rest, now that Ellison is gone. What about the last volume of his anthology series "Dangerous Visions," for that matter?
Ellison was also a movie critic, off and on. He wrote reviews and essays on current films for a number of publications in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them collected in "Watching." He famously hated "Star Wars," and called out every scientific inaccuracy in science-fiction films he could spot. He spent significant time and effort charting what went wrong with the handling of of productions like "Brazil" and "Dune." He did hand out positive marks to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Harry and the Hendersons," though, and was a fan of the old school "Doctor Who." As much as he seemed to hate media, he clearly loved it too.
It's his stories that will make him immortal, of course. Vic and Blood, the Harlequin, Jeffty, AM, and the Beast that shouted "Love!" at the heart of the world are some of the most well known characters. And then there's the Paladin of the Lost Hour, Jack the Ripper, Levendis, The Discarded, The Soldier, The Deathbird, and the man who was heavily into revenge. And Harlan Ellison himself, of course, was his own greatest character, featuring in many stories and essays to this reader's delight and occasional revulsion. There will never be another one like him, and I find it very hard to say goodbye to that cranky, cantankerous, vertically-challenged, old bastard.
Wherever you end up, give 'em hell Harlan.
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