A few days ago, I noticed that the Oriental Theater was playing four movies. The order may not be correct as billed on their marquee, but the four movies were The Wrestler, The Reader, Doubt, and Milk.
It is my firm belief that whenever an array of movie titles can be formed into a comprehensible sentence, they should be so arranged; thus it is that this slate of films presents a tragically missed opportunity:
DOUBT
THE WRESTLER
MILK
THE READER
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
1.30.2009
12.29.2008
stupid career moves, pt. 372
I read a review (probably in The A.V. Club) of a film called The Reader, which features an actor named David Kross. Now, apparently that's his real name - he's German, and sometimes spells it with the funny capital-B-looking thing Germans use for double S's - but it's positively silly for any actor beginning his career now to use the name "David Kross" even if it's the name he was born with. Because he'll spend his entire career going, no, not David Cross, the stand-up, actor, and co-star of Mr. Show, but David Kross - with a K, the obscure German guy whose agent and manager are clearly woefully uninformed. Almost anything would have been better than "David Kross": "David Krauss," even "David K. Ross," hell even "The Great Grimpen Mire"... But "David Kross" - that's just silly. That's like someone calling himself "Phillip Seymore Hoffmann" or something...
11.29.2008
in defense of Terry Gilliam's Tideland
As I often do after I watch a movie, I read a selection of online reviews after watching Tideland earlier this evening.
And it seems to me that a whole lot of professional critics are quite adept at point-missing. (There will be a minor bit of spoilerage in this entry, so if you haven't seen the movie, stop reading, if that matters to you.)
First: critics generally responded in an entirely wrongheaded way to what they were pleased to call hints of "pedophilia" in the movie. Although I wish it weren't necessary (and I don't know if it was in the theatrical release), the movie does begin with a Terry Gilliam talking head telling us audience members to please remember that this movie is to be viewed through the eyes of its main character, ten-year-old Jeliza-Rose, and that our adult view of things is not her view. So it is: when the brain-damaged adult character Dickens and Jeliza-Rose indulge in their "romance," it is almost exactly as innocent as Jeliza-Rose thinks it is, in her fairy-tale ideal of romance. Almost: because Dickens is still a man, and a man who, despite his diminished mental capacity, still has a man's urges...but also, inklings of a man's conscience. If he's smitten by the sweetness Jeliza-Rose shows him (and she, in turn, seems to regard him as an overgrown boy), it's fairly clear that at some level he knows he should back away from any affection stronger than the "silly kisses" the characters indulge in. Gilliam does not relent in the face of the squeamish, but he is smart enough to know his characters, and know that even if both Dickens and Jeliza-Rose, in their own, very different states of innocence, went any further, we as audience could not follow.
Not that Gilliam doesn't challenge us: most reviews seemed willing to close their eyes rather than confront Jeliza-Rose's damaged world head on. As the film begins, her parents (Jeff Bridges - playing the dark side of "The Dude" - and Jennifer Tilly - channeling one's worst nightmares of Courtney Love) are hopelessly washed-out junkies...and yet, calling them "abusive" (as several critics did) misses the point: Tilly alternates between contempt and spasmodic love, but Bridges seems genuinely fond of Jeliza-Rose...even if he has no idea what to do with her. That he has taught her (it seems) to assist him in his heroin fixes surely is abusive in a technical sense...but Jeliza-Rose seems to accept that this is simply Daddy's way of taking "vacations" (as he calls them). Despite his pathetic and desperate incompetence at life, he seems to love her and be affectionate toward her. He's simply incapable of being any kind of father to her.
And while the grotesqueries the film heaps upon us seem to bear little resemblance to anything we'd call "realistic," such a complaint misses the point: Gilliam is a fabulist, and his story here (and many elsewhere) update the classic world of what we, rather obliviously, simplify and infantilize as "fairy stories"...stories whose content, robbed of the buffering of cliché and history, are often shockingly grotesque and cruel in content. Place those characters in a contemporary setting, and "realism" is beside the point...but resonance is not.
The clearest aspect of Tideland is the utter incomprehensibility of the adult world to the child...and the dangers to a child of that world, which we see in this film with queasy-making clarity, but which a child might be all but oblivious to (to her peril). As a counter to that, we also see the ways in which "innocence" can be extraordinarily harmful...when it essentially equates to a decoupling of cause from effect, of emotional understanding, here played out in the character of Dickens, whose fantasies culminate in dreadful, real-world form...yet it's unlikely that any of that real-world terror ever entered his mind, except (again) as a sort of storybook fantasy: the brave submarine captain killing the monster shark.
It's that counterpoint (and the extraordinary performance of Jodelle Ferland as Jeliza-Rose...and her four talking doll heads) that gives the movie its emotional force...and which makes the critical accusations that Gilliam's worldview is capriciously sadistic so absurd - because I think what finally emerges from this movie is how fragile even the most resilient child might be, ultimately, and how much we as adults need to make sure children can negotiate the desperate and immense gap between their world and our own. We see Jeliza-Rose as extraordinarily resourceful, capable of transmuting (or ignoring) the most horrific situations imaginable...yet the most villainous character in the movie (the "witch" Dell) is clearly presented as an adult warped and undone by her own childhood trauma...and Dickens, too, suffered abuse at the hands of an adult, abuse which scarred him beyond the physical and mental scars of his apparent lobotomy. The fact that nearly all the adults in the film are tremendously damaged suggests something about Jeliza-Rose - and that something isn't pretty: that the trauma she's now able to transmute into storybook fantasies may eventually well up and overwhelm her psychic defenses. (The movie might be said to literalize the way the past brutally insists upon its physical presence beyond its supposed passing...)
The other striking aspect of this movie is the sheer isolation of its world. Bridges and Tilly begin the film in what appears to be some sort of derelict hotel (Bridges is apparently a rock musician...though whether the scenes of him playing to an enthusiastic crowd are current, past, or sheer fantasy remains unclear), in which their noisy playing-out of their pathetic yet perversely domestic routines goes on without the slightest interest from anyone else. The southern gothic set of decayed houses in which most the movie is set, too, exists in utter, desolate isolation from the rest of the world. Only two scenes in the movie are set in any sort of social world: one, in the bus on which Bridges and Jeliza-Rose flee the scene of their girlfriend and mother's death (during which the passengers' annoyance at Bridges' drunkenly oblivious carryings-on is kept, for the most part, to an uncomfortable distance); two, the aftermath of the movie's closing scene (which critics were all too cheerfully apt to label self-referential: it's a train wreck). This isolation only emphasizes the idiosyncratic view of its ten-year-old protagonist: only one character in the entire film acts at all like a responsible adult, and even her regard is tainted a bit by the desperation of the scene.
Tideland is unquestionably a difficult movie to watch (this despite cinematography that is frequently achingly beautiful). I'm just glad someone's bullheaded enough to refuse the imperative to make movies "watchable" - while also resisting the equally stupid urge to glory in unpleasantness for its own sake under cover of its "reality."
And it seems to me that a whole lot of professional critics are quite adept at point-missing. (There will be a minor bit of spoilerage in this entry, so if you haven't seen the movie, stop reading, if that matters to you.)
First: critics generally responded in an entirely wrongheaded way to what they were pleased to call hints of "pedophilia" in the movie. Although I wish it weren't necessary (and I don't know if it was in the theatrical release), the movie does begin with a Terry Gilliam talking head telling us audience members to please remember that this movie is to be viewed through the eyes of its main character, ten-year-old Jeliza-Rose, and that our adult view of things is not her view. So it is: when the brain-damaged adult character Dickens and Jeliza-Rose indulge in their "romance," it is almost exactly as innocent as Jeliza-Rose thinks it is, in her fairy-tale ideal of romance. Almost: because Dickens is still a man, and a man who, despite his diminished mental capacity, still has a man's urges...but also, inklings of a man's conscience. If he's smitten by the sweetness Jeliza-Rose shows him (and she, in turn, seems to regard him as an overgrown boy), it's fairly clear that at some level he knows he should back away from any affection stronger than the "silly kisses" the characters indulge in. Gilliam does not relent in the face of the squeamish, but he is smart enough to know his characters, and know that even if both Dickens and Jeliza-Rose, in their own, very different states of innocence, went any further, we as audience could not follow.
Not that Gilliam doesn't challenge us: most reviews seemed willing to close their eyes rather than confront Jeliza-Rose's damaged world head on. As the film begins, her parents (Jeff Bridges - playing the dark side of "The Dude" - and Jennifer Tilly - channeling one's worst nightmares of Courtney Love) are hopelessly washed-out junkies...and yet, calling them "abusive" (as several critics did) misses the point: Tilly alternates between contempt and spasmodic love, but Bridges seems genuinely fond of Jeliza-Rose...even if he has no idea what to do with her. That he has taught her (it seems) to assist him in his heroin fixes surely is abusive in a technical sense...but Jeliza-Rose seems to accept that this is simply Daddy's way of taking "vacations" (as he calls them). Despite his pathetic and desperate incompetence at life, he seems to love her and be affectionate toward her. He's simply incapable of being any kind of father to her.
And while the grotesqueries the film heaps upon us seem to bear little resemblance to anything we'd call "realistic," such a complaint misses the point: Gilliam is a fabulist, and his story here (and many elsewhere) update the classic world of what we, rather obliviously, simplify and infantilize as "fairy stories"...stories whose content, robbed of the buffering of cliché and history, are often shockingly grotesque and cruel in content. Place those characters in a contemporary setting, and "realism" is beside the point...but resonance is not.
The clearest aspect of Tideland is the utter incomprehensibility of the adult world to the child...and the dangers to a child of that world, which we see in this film with queasy-making clarity, but which a child might be all but oblivious to (to her peril). As a counter to that, we also see the ways in which "innocence" can be extraordinarily harmful...when it essentially equates to a decoupling of cause from effect, of emotional understanding, here played out in the character of Dickens, whose fantasies culminate in dreadful, real-world form...yet it's unlikely that any of that real-world terror ever entered his mind, except (again) as a sort of storybook fantasy: the brave submarine captain killing the monster shark.
It's that counterpoint (and the extraordinary performance of Jodelle Ferland as Jeliza-Rose...and her four talking doll heads) that gives the movie its emotional force...and which makes the critical accusations that Gilliam's worldview is capriciously sadistic so absurd - because I think what finally emerges from this movie is how fragile even the most resilient child might be, ultimately, and how much we as adults need to make sure children can negotiate the desperate and immense gap between their world and our own. We see Jeliza-Rose as extraordinarily resourceful, capable of transmuting (or ignoring) the most horrific situations imaginable...yet the most villainous character in the movie (the "witch" Dell) is clearly presented as an adult warped and undone by her own childhood trauma...and Dickens, too, suffered abuse at the hands of an adult, abuse which scarred him beyond the physical and mental scars of his apparent lobotomy. The fact that nearly all the adults in the film are tremendously damaged suggests something about Jeliza-Rose - and that something isn't pretty: that the trauma she's now able to transmute into storybook fantasies may eventually well up and overwhelm her psychic defenses. (The movie might be said to literalize the way the past brutally insists upon its physical presence beyond its supposed passing...)
The other striking aspect of this movie is the sheer isolation of its world. Bridges and Tilly begin the film in what appears to be some sort of derelict hotel (Bridges is apparently a rock musician...though whether the scenes of him playing to an enthusiastic crowd are current, past, or sheer fantasy remains unclear), in which their noisy playing-out of their pathetic yet perversely domestic routines goes on without the slightest interest from anyone else. The southern gothic set of decayed houses in which most the movie is set, too, exists in utter, desolate isolation from the rest of the world. Only two scenes in the movie are set in any sort of social world: one, in the bus on which Bridges and Jeliza-Rose flee the scene of their girlfriend and mother's death (during which the passengers' annoyance at Bridges' drunkenly oblivious carryings-on is kept, for the most part, to an uncomfortable distance); two, the aftermath of the movie's closing scene (which critics were all too cheerfully apt to label self-referential: it's a train wreck). This isolation only emphasizes the idiosyncratic view of its ten-year-old protagonist: only one character in the entire film acts at all like a responsible adult, and even her regard is tainted a bit by the desperation of the scene.
Tideland is unquestionably a difficult movie to watch (this despite cinematography that is frequently achingly beautiful). I'm just glad someone's bullheaded enough to refuse the imperative to make movies "watchable" - while also resisting the equally stupid urge to glory in unpleasantness for its own sake under cover of its "reality."
11.10.2008
from the ADS "Last Year's Films" files
I was amused to discover that Atonement won an Oscar for Best Original Score...because in viewing the film the other night, I thought the score was the main element that kept the film from being truly outstanding. (A few scenes somehow came across as more familiar on film than they had in the novel, and I really could have done without the enormous MESSAGE COMING IN! of Cecilia's posture in her watery death.) First of all, while scores are meant to underline a scene's emotions, this one often did so by a forceful triple set of slashes that no doubt broke the pencil's lead. A couple scenes in particular had me wishing there was a selective mute button (dialogue and diegetic sound only). And the composer's device of using the sound of a typewriter as percussion was only cute at first (if marred by being way too high in the mix) but quite clickly became cloying. We get it: writers and writing are a key part of the movie!
I guess Oscar voters must have thought that last bit very clever, and apparently approve of emotional hammering over the head. Too bad: the rest of the movie nicely compressed a novel to the smaller scope of a movie without losing its essence.
I guess Oscar voters must have thought that last bit very clever, and apparently approve of emotional hammering over the head. Too bad: the rest of the movie nicely compressed a novel to the smaller scope of a movie without losing its essence.
8.21.2008
things I didn't realize I didn't know, and things I know but keep forgetting
I keep confusing Brian Dennehy with Brian Cox.
Anyone else have that problem?
Also: as Flasshe notes, it's important for bloggers in particular to keep cameras with them at all times - you never know what you might see. For example, today I saw this vehicle on the road - and even though the website I've linked to was printed on the vehicle, so that I could find and share that image, it would have been much more fun to actually photograph it: "I was there!" All I know is, this is what I'd want to be driving in a rollover accident. Also, given the name of the organization, I keep thinking the vehicle should have a sound system playing the Who's "Now I'm a Farmer" (and I'm diggin diggin diggin diggin diggin!).
Gourds.
Anyone else have that problem?
Also: as Flasshe notes, it's important for bloggers in particular to keep cameras with them at all times - you never know what you might see. For example, today I saw this vehicle on the road - and even though the website I've linked to was printed on the vehicle, so that I could find and share that image, it would have been much more fun to actually photograph it: "I was there!" All I know is, this is what I'd want to be driving in a rollover accident. Also, given the name of the organization, I keep thinking the vehicle should have a sound system playing the Who's "Now I'm a Farmer" (and I'm diggin diggin diggin diggin diggin!).
Gourds.
6.08.2008
O Atlantis!
I've been busy with lots of stuff, and next week I'm going on vacation (although I'll have my laptop with me), but I thought I'd post an oldie here, inspired by the recent review of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? at the Onion's A.V. Club. (Please note: the title is not "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" - as if the idea were that it doesn't much matter what happened to Baby Jane - it's "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?": that is, we don't know what happened, but we want to know. Also: "never mind" is two words, not one.)
I wrote this several years ago for the Loud Family/Game Theory mailing list, during one of the periodic resurgences of interest in the alleged synchronicities between Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. Having sync'd up the movie and the CD per instructions, it seemed to me that the "amazing!" coincidences people were seeing were simply a matter of looking for similarities – or grasping so hard for them that shoulders were doubtlessly dislocated in the process.
I decided to pick a movie nearly at random and see what happened when I sync'd it up with Game Theory's classic (and, shamefully, out of print) Lolita Nation. Sure enough, gobs of incredibly coincidental events revealed themselves, persuading me – who also believes 9/11 was forecast in scenes depicted when you fold American money, and that you, reader, have a fantastic deal for me to purchase a well-known bridge in Brooklyn – that Scott Miller and cohorts wrote the album as a secret soundtrack to the movie I chose, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Here's the proof:
The most obvious proof is, of course, the fact that if you sync up the very beginning of Lolita Nation to the initial appearance of the title card of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? that reads "1917," the title phrase of Lolita Nation (from the song "We Love You, Carol and Alison") is sung just when the title of the film appears on the screen.
Want more?
1. Several cuts in Lolita Nation's opening sound collage "Kenneth - What's the Frequency?" correspond to cuts in the film: the first appearance of the little girl corresponds to the first guitar chord, the clown in the film is sync'd with the next image, and the bells on the recording sync up with the image of a horse-drawn truck in the film.
2. Baby Jane dances in time with the music of "Not Because You Can." She begins to sing just at the song's guitar break. At the words "a show of hands," Baby Jane raises her hands to toss a paper into the air. The song ends just as Baby Jane's dance numbers end. (And of course, the line "eyes of green" in "Not Because You Can" signifies the film's theme of jealousy.)
3. The creepy doll's initial appearance corresponds with "Shard" ("close out sound and sight").
4. As Scott Miller sings "dripping with looks," the young Blanche gives a dirty look.
5. The line "private heaven" is sung while two characters in the film attend a private screening of a film.
6. At one point during "Exactly What We Don't Want to Hear," there are two backing vocalists and one lead singer - the film shows two men in a theater, and one man in the projectionist's booth.
7. Shortly after the line "well-trained ears," a chorus girl passes by with huge, ear-like feathers atop her head.
8. Shortly after the line "the sugar was dazzling" ("We Love You Carol and Alison"), another chorus girl walks past the characters - in a dazzling, sparkly outfit.
9. Just as Donnette Thayer sings "take a seat in our dream car" in the backing vocals, Blanche's white car appears (a contrast to the line of black cars that precedes it).
10. Right when the man on the right of the screen smiles, the line "with the smile" is sung.
11. Just as Scott Miller sings about "the shoulder upstairs," the credits - indicating those folks "upstairs" who actually control things, like the studio, director, etc. – begin.
12. Both titles occur simultaneously.
13. The film comes to the present moment ("YESTERDAY" caption) just as the first line of "The Waist and the Knees" is sung.
14. As Scott Miller sings about a "fantasy dreamed of," two characters on a TV screen kiss.
15. Gil Ray's big drum hit (just before the silence) coordinates with the cut away from the TV screen.
16. There's a shot of trees in the background as Scott sings about "rings of smoke through the trees." (Unconfirmed reports have it that in the background of the film, if you look closely, you can see an extra killing herself by jumping from a passing aircraft...a zeppelin! And of course, the lyric is a quote from Led Zeppelin.)
17. There's a painting of a big-eyed child holding a cat in the background - just as the band makes weird cat-like noises during the breaks in "The Waist and the Knees."
18. As Scott Miller sings "no place you can go," a television screen in the movie shows a shot of a man confined to a bed.
19. Cut to an exterior shot...just as Scott Miller sings "on the outs" ("Nothing New").
20. Scott Miller sings "you can't walk" - and the film shows a shot of Joan Crawford in a wheelchair.
21. Joan Crawford picks up a phone - Scott Miller sings "I'm going to phone you" ("The Real Sheila").
22. As Crawford closes a door - wait! Donnette Thayer sings "it was an open door" (irony!). But then...she sings "windows opened" - and Crawford's at an open (but barred) window. Plus - there are shots of a garden – and all this is during...the song "Mammoth Gardens."
Whew! Of course there are more - you have to start the CD over again, but I'll leave all the other clues to others. Further, no one has ever bothered to explain "why choose The Wizard of Oz as the movie to soundtrack with Dark Side of the Moon?" But the reason Miller chose What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? as the template for Lolita Nation is so obvious, it hardly needs explaining - but in case anyone can't figure it out, here goes:
A simple manipulation of obvious numerological cues (rather like that used by the authors of The Bible Code) makes clear why this album was chosen to sync up so hauntingly with this film. First, the movie was released in 1962. Disregarding the century year, that gives us "62" - and 6+2=8. Lolita Nation was released in 1987. Again disregarding the century, that gives us "87" - 8+7=15, and 1+5=6. Now 8-6=2...and recalling that Scott Miller, born in 1960, was 27 in 1987, 27-2=25.
Recall that the bulk of the film is set in "Yesterday" - that is, 1962. 1987-1962 gives us 25 again. Plus, subtracting Scott Miller's age at the time of Lolita Nation from the "current day" of the film (1962-27) gives us 1935: the year of the car "accident" in the movie. There's more, of course: the opening scene is set in 1917. Note that 1+7=8, 3+5=8 (1935), and 6+2=...of course, 8. And what is 8x3? That's right: 24 - a Scott Miller song!
Everything in this post is true - try it for yourself!
I wrote this several years ago for the Loud Family/Game Theory mailing list, during one of the periodic resurgences of interest in the alleged synchronicities between Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. Having sync'd up the movie and the CD per instructions, it seemed to me that the "amazing!" coincidences people were seeing were simply a matter of looking for similarities – or grasping so hard for them that shoulders were doubtlessly dislocated in the process.
I decided to pick a movie nearly at random and see what happened when I sync'd it up with Game Theory's classic (and, shamefully, out of print) Lolita Nation. Sure enough, gobs of incredibly coincidental events revealed themselves, persuading me – who also believes 9/11 was forecast in scenes depicted when you fold American money, and that you, reader, have a fantastic deal for me to purchase a well-known bridge in Brooklyn – that Scott Miller and cohorts wrote the album as a secret soundtrack to the movie I chose, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Here's the proof:
The most obvious proof is, of course, the fact that if you sync up the very beginning of Lolita Nation to the initial appearance of the title card of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? that reads "1917," the title phrase of Lolita Nation (from the song "We Love You, Carol and Alison") is sung just when the title of the film appears on the screen.
Want more?
1. Several cuts in Lolita Nation's opening sound collage "Kenneth - What's the Frequency?" correspond to cuts in the film: the first appearance of the little girl corresponds to the first guitar chord, the clown in the film is sync'd with the next image, and the bells on the recording sync up with the image of a horse-drawn truck in the film.
2. Baby Jane dances in time with the music of "Not Because You Can." She begins to sing just at the song's guitar break. At the words "a show of hands," Baby Jane raises her hands to toss a paper into the air. The song ends just as Baby Jane's dance numbers end. (And of course, the line "eyes of green" in "Not Because You Can" signifies the film's theme of jealousy.)
3. The creepy doll's initial appearance corresponds with "Shard" ("close out sound and sight").
4. As Scott Miller sings "dripping with looks," the young Blanche gives a dirty look.
5. The line "private heaven" is sung while two characters in the film attend a private screening of a film.
6. At one point during "Exactly What We Don't Want to Hear," there are two backing vocalists and one lead singer - the film shows two men in a theater, and one man in the projectionist's booth.
7. Shortly after the line "well-trained ears," a chorus girl passes by with huge, ear-like feathers atop her head.
8. Shortly after the line "the sugar was dazzling" ("We Love You Carol and Alison"), another chorus girl walks past the characters - in a dazzling, sparkly outfit.
9. Just as Donnette Thayer sings "take a seat in our dream car" in the backing vocals, Blanche's white car appears (a contrast to the line of black cars that precedes it).
10. Right when the man on the right of the screen smiles, the line "with the smile" is sung.
11. Just as Scott Miller sings about "the shoulder upstairs," the credits - indicating those folks "upstairs" who actually control things, like the studio, director, etc. – begin.
12. Both titles occur simultaneously.
13. The film comes to the present moment ("YESTERDAY" caption) just as the first line of "The Waist and the Knees" is sung.
14. As Scott Miller sings about a "fantasy dreamed of," two characters on a TV screen kiss.
15. Gil Ray's big drum hit (just before the silence) coordinates with the cut away from the TV screen.
16. There's a shot of trees in the background as Scott sings about "rings of smoke through the trees." (Unconfirmed reports have it that in the background of the film, if you look closely, you can see an extra killing herself by jumping from a passing aircraft...a zeppelin! And of course, the lyric is a quote from Led Zeppelin.)
17. There's a painting of a big-eyed child holding a cat in the background - just as the band makes weird cat-like noises during the breaks in "The Waist and the Knees."
18. As Scott Miller sings "no place you can go," a television screen in the movie shows a shot of a man confined to a bed.
19. Cut to an exterior shot...just as Scott Miller sings "on the outs" ("Nothing New").
20. Scott Miller sings "you can't walk" - and the film shows a shot of Joan Crawford in a wheelchair.
21. Joan Crawford picks up a phone - Scott Miller sings "I'm going to phone you" ("The Real Sheila").
22. As Crawford closes a door - wait! Donnette Thayer sings "it was an open door" (irony!). But then...she sings "windows opened" - and Crawford's at an open (but barred) window. Plus - there are shots of a garden – and all this is during...the song "Mammoth Gardens."
Whew! Of course there are more - you have to start the CD over again, but I'll leave all the other clues to others. Further, no one has ever bothered to explain "why choose The Wizard of Oz as the movie to soundtrack with Dark Side of the Moon?" But the reason Miller chose What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? as the template for Lolita Nation is so obvious, it hardly needs explaining - but in case anyone can't figure it out, here goes:
A simple manipulation of obvious numerological cues (rather like that used by the authors of The Bible Code) makes clear why this album was chosen to sync up so hauntingly with this film. First, the movie was released in 1962. Disregarding the century year, that gives us "62" - and 6+2=8. Lolita Nation was released in 1987. Again disregarding the century, that gives us "87" - 8+7=15, and 1+5=6. Now 8-6=2...and recalling that Scott Miller, born in 1960, was 27 in 1987, 27-2=25.
Recall that the bulk of the film is set in "Yesterday" - that is, 1962. 1987-1962 gives us 25 again. Plus, subtracting Scott Miller's age at the time of Lolita Nation from the "current day" of the film (1962-27) gives us 1935: the year of the car "accident" in the movie. There's more, of course: the opening scene is set in 1917. Note that 1+7=8, 3+5=8 (1935), and 6+2=...of course, 8. And what is 8x3? That's right: 24 - a Scott Miller song!
Everything in this post is true - try it for yourself!
5.18.2008
for lead is the metal that my true love wore, and what's more...
Not everyone knows that Rose's initial major in college was engineering. This should shed some light on the fact that it was Rose who dragged me off to the theater to see Iron Man earlier this evening.
It was kind of fun...although it's also odd that I've seen Robert Downey Jr. play the same self-centered, smarmy, yet charming smart-ass in like three movies in a row (we saw Zodiac the other night, and of course there was his wonderful turn in A Scanner Darkly). Not a masterpiece by any means, but fun. I should state that I'm not a comics-head, and I was utterly unfamiliar with any premises of the back story beforehand. There were some implausible points: maybe I missed any explanation, but at one point a character surprises Tony Stark (Downey's character) at Stark's home...as if a tech-head multibazillionaire like Stark wouldn't have a serious security system. And the building of the first suit (what? there's a suit? and it's made of metal? How dare I give away key plot points!) took place directly under the noses of some of the apparently least suspicion-prone guards ever (poor job fit).
I will say this: Stark's last line and the credits that follow immediately thereafter? Best filmic punchline ever. And stay through the credits. (Because if you can give the name of at least four accountants involved with the making of the film, you get free admission to the sequel! Credits-bloat: when will it end?)
It was kind of fun...although it's also odd that I've seen Robert Downey Jr. play the same self-centered, smarmy, yet charming smart-ass in like three movies in a row (we saw Zodiac the other night, and of course there was his wonderful turn in A Scanner Darkly). Not a masterpiece by any means, but fun. I should state that I'm not a comics-head, and I was utterly unfamiliar with any premises of the back story beforehand. There were some implausible points: maybe I missed any explanation, but at one point a character surprises Tony Stark (Downey's character) at Stark's home...as if a tech-head multibazillionaire like Stark wouldn't have a serious security system. And the building of the first suit (what? there's a suit? and it's made of metal? How dare I give away key plot points!) took place directly under the noses of some of the apparently least suspicion-prone guards ever (poor job fit).
I will say this: Stark's last line and the credits that follow immediately thereafter? Best filmic punchline ever. And stay through the credits. (Because if you can give the name of at least four accountants involved with the making of the film, you get free admission to the sequel! Credits-bloat: when will it end?)
3.10.2008
query
Just saw The Wicker Man - and I'm wondering if anyone knows whether the Peter Brewis credited in the film as "musician," and who has had a film composing career to the present, is any relation to David and Peter Brewis of Field Music (father, I'm presuming)?
3.03.2008
And Stephin Merritt wants a cut of that "turned to steel" action, too
So apparently there's a new Iron Man movie - but Ozzy Osbourne doesn't have the title role! That's just nuts.
(Although Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers would disagree.)
(Although Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers would disagree.)
1.06.2008
Batman Begins...to tediously paulrusize*
It took me nearly a full year...but I finally have an answer to the question I raised in this post. We're visiting our friends Tonia and Cason in Dallas, and as it happens, Cason is a major fan of Batman (or, as he might insist, "the Bat-man") and, when for some reason my dumb little theory about the musical access code in Batman Begins came up, he felt compelled to check it out. So, courtesy a bootleg DVD of the Batman TV series (incomprehensibly, still not out on DVD - maybe it'll come out on Blu-Ray...) and a perfectly legitimate copy of Batman Begins, I can provide the following comments:
1. I theorized that the little three-note sequence of clusters Bruce Wayne plays on the library piano, which allowed access to the Batcave via an entryway hidden behind a set of bookshelves, might have been the same three-note sequence of clusters often heard as brass blats during fight scenes in the 1960s Batman TV series. While I thought I had a clear memory of how that brass blat sounded, as it turned out, at least in the couple-few episodes of the show we skimmed, those brass blats had no particular scoring: they seemed merely to be groups of two-note clusters (at the interval of a major second) overlaid on the underlying fight-scene score when punches were thrown...but which notes seemed variable and irregular.
2. In the first instance of the piano key (har...), the notes Bruce plays are as follows (and I haven't found a good way to put musical notation in these posts): the C and D two octaves above middle C; the B and C a seventh above that; and the F and a fourth down from the second cluster. Amusingly, one musical figure abstractable from this is D-B-G...a sequence identical in intervals to the well-known NBC musical call-sign. (This would be significant except that the TV series ran on ABC.) Neither of us was patient enough to listen closely enough to the second instance (during the fire) of this piano business to note whether it's the same as the first one - except that I did notice that the notes are detuned in the second example (presumably to indicate fire damage to the piano), implying either that the access is mechanical rather than sound-based, or that I pay far too much attention to detail and I should really just relax.
3. Still: that the TV series used a series of two-note clusters based on simultaneous seconds, and that the movie used the same musical idea as a key, is similar enough to suggest that this just might not have been an accident. Finally: the second-based clusters are a key sonic element of the well-known theme to the TV series (the various interjections that sound like "Batman...").
* a new verb, coined based on the image here, and derived from the "Paul Is Dead" craze and the way fans desperately squeezed the most vague traces of significance from the most recondite, trivial, and incidental atoms in the Beatleverse in order to support a patently absurd notion...
1. I theorized that the little three-note sequence of clusters Bruce Wayne plays on the library piano, which allowed access to the Batcave via an entryway hidden behind a set of bookshelves, might have been the same three-note sequence of clusters often heard as brass blats during fight scenes in the 1960s Batman TV series. While I thought I had a clear memory of how that brass blat sounded, as it turned out, at least in the couple-few episodes of the show we skimmed, those brass blats had no particular scoring: they seemed merely to be groups of two-note clusters (at the interval of a major second) overlaid on the underlying fight-scene score when punches were thrown...but which notes seemed variable and irregular.
2. In the first instance of the piano key (har...), the notes Bruce plays are as follows (and I haven't found a good way to put musical notation in these posts): the C and D two octaves above middle C; the B and C a seventh above that; and the F and a fourth down from the second cluster. Amusingly, one musical figure abstractable from this is D-B-G...a sequence identical in intervals to the well-known NBC musical call-sign. (This would be significant except that the TV series ran on ABC.) Neither of us was patient enough to listen closely enough to the second instance (during the fire) of this piano business to note whether it's the same as the first one - except that I did notice that the notes are detuned in the second example (presumably to indicate fire damage to the piano), implying either that the access is mechanical rather than sound-based, or that I pay far too much attention to detail and I should really just relax.
3. Still: that the TV series used a series of two-note clusters based on simultaneous seconds, and that the movie used the same musical idea as a key, is similar enough to suggest that this just might not have been an accident. Finally: the second-based clusters are a key sonic element of the well-known theme to the TV series (the various interjections that sound like "Batman...").
* a new verb, coined based on the image here, and derived from the "Paul Is Dead" craze and the way fans desperately squeezed the most vague traces of significance from the most recondite, trivial, and incidental atoms in the Beatleverse in order to support a patently absurd notion...
1.02.2008
a tale of three buckets
2007 was the year of the LOLCAT...and, of course, the LOLCAT's buddy the LOLRUS and the sad tale of his missing bucket.
Before the whole meme becomes hopelessly last year (oh wait: it is), I found myself free-associating some of those ideas, which led me to make the following quick-n-dirty image -
- which I think should be called I AM THE PAULRUS. (Okay. No, it shouldn't.)
Taking the other half of the walrus/bucket combo, I of course thought of this -
But here's the curious thing: seeing those two next to one another reminded me of another image, one that was in the Beatles' ill-fated Magical Mystery Tour television special, one that appeared in the accompanying album's booklet...one which seems an obvious predecessor to Mr. Creosote, especially given that the Python guys and at least one Beatle (George) knew one another by the time of The Meaning of Life -
Before the whole meme becomes hopelessly last year (oh wait: it is), I found myself free-associating some of those ideas, which led me to make the following quick-n-dirty image -
- which I think should be called I AM THE PAULRUS. (Okay. No, it shouldn't.)Taking the other half of the walrus/bucket combo, I of course thought of this -
But here's the curious thing: seeing those two next to one another reminded me of another image, one that was in the Beatles' ill-fated Magical Mystery Tour television special, one that appeared in the accompanying album's booklet...one which seems an obvious predecessor to Mr. Creosote, especially given that the Python guys and at least one Beatle (George) knew one another by the time of The Meaning of Life -
11.29.2007
I'm under your spell
Finally got around to seeing Secretary (I'm going to wear a nametag that says HELLO MY NAME IS SEVERAL YEARS AGO), partly upon recommendations of friends (yes, some of them are just pervs) but mostly because of Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance in Stranger Than Fiction. Without doing a full-on review, I'll say only that I thought the movie was quite good, but I was curious, in reading several reviews afterwards, to find two points left unmentioned.
One triviality a lot of critics noted, as a sign of the oddness of James Spader's character, is his insistence that his letters be typed on an old IBM Selectric. While it's true that's eccentric, it's surprising that few critics seem to have noticed that, so far as I can tell on two viewings (one with commentary), no object in the film seems to be dated past the mid- to late-eighties (the cars are the most obvious instance) - which makes sense in a way, given that the short story the movie's based on (by Mary Gaitskill) was written in 1988. Granted: even in the mid-eighties that would have been a bit old-fashioned...but nowhere near as much as it would now.
The other is an extended sequence late in the movie (without providing spoilers, I will simply say that it involves Maggie Gyllenhaal's character seated at a desk) seems far more legible as at least partly fantasy than as reality. At least part of it is accompanied by the usual movie signifiers of fantasy - blurry slow zooms, overlaid exposures of Gyllenhaal's face and the faces of others - but mainly, the scenes involving large crowds, TV crews, and the like seem dramatically out of character with the rest of the film...as actuality. They fit quite well from Gyllenhaal's character's POV at that point in the film, though...which is to say that ultimately (and this is a point indirectly made in the commentary track by director Steven Shainberg) it doesn't much matter, since both diegetically and emotionally the scenes bring us to the same place. Some clever graduate student, by the way, has probably made a big deal out of the handful of subtle Christ references recurring throughout the movie...
Finally - and as a reward for viewers masochistic enough (ahem) to sit through the entire credits sequence - this shot just might illustrate the funniest closing credits bit ever:
(This will probably make no sense if you haven't seen the film...)
One triviality a lot of critics noted, as a sign of the oddness of James Spader's character, is his insistence that his letters be typed on an old IBM Selectric. While it's true that's eccentric, it's surprising that few critics seem to have noticed that, so far as I can tell on two viewings (one with commentary), no object in the film seems to be dated past the mid- to late-eighties (the cars are the most obvious instance) - which makes sense in a way, given that the short story the movie's based on (by Mary Gaitskill) was written in 1988. Granted: even in the mid-eighties that would have been a bit old-fashioned...but nowhere near as much as it would now.
The other is an extended sequence late in the movie (without providing spoilers, I will simply say that it involves Maggie Gyllenhaal's character seated at a desk) seems far more legible as at least partly fantasy than as reality. At least part of it is accompanied by the usual movie signifiers of fantasy - blurry slow zooms, overlaid exposures of Gyllenhaal's face and the faces of others - but mainly, the scenes involving large crowds, TV crews, and the like seem dramatically out of character with the rest of the film...as actuality. They fit quite well from Gyllenhaal's character's POV at that point in the film, though...which is to say that ultimately (and this is a point indirectly made in the commentary track by director Steven Shainberg) it doesn't much matter, since both diegetically and emotionally the scenes bring us to the same place. Some clever graduate student, by the way, has probably made a big deal out of the handful of subtle Christ references recurring throughout the movie...
Finally - and as a reward for viewers masochistic enough (ahem) to sit through the entire credits sequence - this shot just might illustrate the funniest closing credits bit ever:
(This will probably make no sense if you haven't seen the film...)
11.24.2007
here is your throat back, thanks for the loan
If someone had told me, around the time of the first few Sonic Youth albums, that one day they'd perform quite possibly the best and most comfortably fitting cover on a collection of Bob Dylan songs, I don't think I would have believed you. But in fact, Sonic Youth's cover of the obscure (i.e., massively bootlegged but unreleased until now) Dylan song "I'm Not There" is a highlight of the soundtrack to the film of the same name. (I haven't seen the film yet, but I intend to.)
The world evoked by Dylan's music of the period this song comes from (1967, recorded at the same time as the songs later released as The Basement Tapes) is shadowy and carnivalesque: images of drifters, gypsies, and other dubious characters recur - the sleeve art for The Basement Tapes gives you a good idea. Dylan's music at this time tended to feature at least two guitars (electric and acoustic), both piano and organ, and bass and drums, along with Dylan's vocals and harmonica. The interplay among the instruments, and the circus atmosphere evoked by the garish organ and Dylan's wheezy, neon-blue harmonica, complemented that imagery so effectively that musicians still evoke it in their arrangements if their lyrics are particularly Dylanesque. Dylan's version of "I'm Not There" doesn't feature his harmonica, but the calliope-like organ wheeling away steadily in the background against the somewhat tentative mix of strummed guitar and loping bass (clearly an early take, since there are several clams in that bass part) suggests shady proceedings just outside the door or around the corner.
Sonic Youth's version, by contrast, has a slightly more threatening pulse in its rhythm, the heavy drum strokes seeming to stalk the beat. In the background, replacing that carnival organ, there's the ghostly, corroded, metallic code of distorted electric guitar. That sound evokes archetypal Sonic Youth of the late '80s and early '90s, when their music was steeped in the mise en scene of Bladerunner, William Gibson, and Philip K. Dick, an imaginary realm of iffy reality, multiple yet sketchy identity, infinite mobility beyond the physical, the guitar seeming far less embodied than Dylan's organ.
I think it works, though, because there are similarities between the old, weird America of Dylan's mid-sixties work, the underworld whose surrealistic menace seemed indebted both to Nathanael West and to the Marx Brothers, or an inversion of Whitman's exuberant and muscular democracy of the body. Gibson and Dick also seem concerned with limning the coded imaginary linking their everyday, underground characters with those from the powerful elite, and despite the way a wired interconnectivity extends characters' reach outside the bounds of their bodies, those bodies tend to reassert themselves, or be reasserted, in both writers' often pungently physical descriptions of sex and violence - a directness powerfully present in the music of Sonic Youth as well.
Though Sonic Youth is more aggressive in staking out such claims for itself and its listeners, both musicians explore a rootlessness, an absence and lack of home, in their music. I'd say it's no coincidence that the two recent film treatments of Dylan and his influence have been titled No Direction Home (Scorcese's 2005 work) and I'm Not There. And Dylan's role-playing - so at odds with the early '60s folk community's emphasis on authenticity and genuineness, and later at odds with mainstream rock's fetishization of the authentic - seems almost postmodern in advance, a public figure glorying in being who he's not: an Okie, a holy clown, a mystic recluse, and so on...all the while enjoying what would seem to be transparent attempts at "putting on" the press (most notoriously in Don't Look Back's "science student" scene). Sonic Youth don't overtly role-play in the same way (sometimes I think they'd be better if they did: when they're too sincere they approach insufferability), but the world of their music - both lyrically and sonically - certainly deconstructs the notion of a single, stable identity.
Sonic Youth's done a lot of cover songs over the years - but it's curious that my two favorites might be this one and "Superstar" (the Carpenters' song, apparently about a stalker, whose inherent creepiness Sonic Youth's version brings well forward). A curious side note: Todd Haynes, who directs I'm Not There, also directed Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (that's the one that uses Barbie dolls...)
Sonic Youth "I'm Not There" (I'm Not There soundtrack, 2007)
Bob Dylan and The Band "I'm Not There" (I'm Not There soundtrack, 2007)
These are DivShare downloads, so right-clicking won't work...
The world evoked by Dylan's music of the period this song comes from (1967, recorded at the same time as the songs later released as The Basement Tapes) is shadowy and carnivalesque: images of drifters, gypsies, and other dubious characters recur - the sleeve art for The Basement Tapes gives you a good idea. Dylan's music at this time tended to feature at least two guitars (electric and acoustic), both piano and organ, and bass and drums, along with Dylan's vocals and harmonica. The interplay among the instruments, and the circus atmosphere evoked by the garish organ and Dylan's wheezy, neon-blue harmonica, complemented that imagery so effectively that musicians still evoke it in their arrangements if their lyrics are particularly Dylanesque. Dylan's version of "I'm Not There" doesn't feature his harmonica, but the calliope-like organ wheeling away steadily in the background against the somewhat tentative mix of strummed guitar and loping bass (clearly an early take, since there are several clams in that bass part) suggests shady proceedings just outside the door or around the corner.
Sonic Youth's version, by contrast, has a slightly more threatening pulse in its rhythm, the heavy drum strokes seeming to stalk the beat. In the background, replacing that carnival organ, there's the ghostly, corroded, metallic code of distorted electric guitar. That sound evokes archetypal Sonic Youth of the late '80s and early '90s, when their music was steeped in the mise en scene of Bladerunner, William Gibson, and Philip K. Dick, an imaginary realm of iffy reality, multiple yet sketchy identity, infinite mobility beyond the physical, the guitar seeming far less embodied than Dylan's organ.
I think it works, though, because there are similarities between the old, weird America of Dylan's mid-sixties work, the underworld whose surrealistic menace seemed indebted both to Nathanael West and to the Marx Brothers, or an inversion of Whitman's exuberant and muscular democracy of the body. Gibson and Dick also seem concerned with limning the coded imaginary linking their everyday, underground characters with those from the powerful elite, and despite the way a wired interconnectivity extends characters' reach outside the bounds of their bodies, those bodies tend to reassert themselves, or be reasserted, in both writers' often pungently physical descriptions of sex and violence - a directness powerfully present in the music of Sonic Youth as well.
Though Sonic Youth is more aggressive in staking out such claims for itself and its listeners, both musicians explore a rootlessness, an absence and lack of home, in their music. I'd say it's no coincidence that the two recent film treatments of Dylan and his influence have been titled No Direction Home (Scorcese's 2005 work) and I'm Not There. And Dylan's role-playing - so at odds with the early '60s folk community's emphasis on authenticity and genuineness, and later at odds with mainstream rock's fetishization of the authentic - seems almost postmodern in advance, a public figure glorying in being who he's not: an Okie, a holy clown, a mystic recluse, and so on...all the while enjoying what would seem to be transparent attempts at "putting on" the press (most notoriously in Don't Look Back's "science student" scene). Sonic Youth don't overtly role-play in the same way (sometimes I think they'd be better if they did: when they're too sincere they approach insufferability), but the world of their music - both lyrically and sonically - certainly deconstructs the notion of a single, stable identity.
Sonic Youth's done a lot of cover songs over the years - but it's curious that my two favorites might be this one and "Superstar" (the Carpenters' song, apparently about a stalker, whose inherent creepiness Sonic Youth's version brings well forward). A curious side note: Todd Haynes, who directs I'm Not There, also directed Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (that's the one that uses Barbie dolls...)
Sonic Youth "I'm Not There" (I'm Not There soundtrack, 2007)
Bob Dylan and The Band "I'm Not There" (I'm Not There soundtrack, 2007)
These are DivShare downloads, so right-clicking won't work...
11.09.2007
everything's coming up MiSTie...
Something funny must have gotten into the water up there in Minneapolis, because all of a sudden, the more-or-less dormant brilliance that was Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K to its friends) has made a reappearance...or rather, as if it had ventured into one of those scifi matter-duplicating machines, has made three reappearances.
Let's see if I can get this straight:
1. Original MST3K'ers Joel Hodgson, Josh Weinstein (now calling himself "J. Elvis Weinstein," which you've got to admit is a much better name), and Trace Beaulieu, along with slightly later crew Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl, have a new bad-movie-mocking enterprise called Cinematic Titanic.
2. Another batch of MST3K crew - Kevin Murphy, Mike Nelson, and Bill Corbett (who did Crow's voice after the departure of Trace Beaulieu) - have four DVDs full of their own movie-mockery under the name of The Film Crew.
3. Finally, not to be left out, Jim Mallon (producer and voice of Gypsy), Paul Chaplin (writer and "Brain Guy"), and a guy whose name I don't recognize, James Moore, have teamed up with animator Maxeem Konrardy to produce a series of animated short online films featuring Tom Servo (now voiced by Moore), Crow T. Robot (now voiced by Chaplin), and Mallon. They apparently have rights to the MST3K name, since that's their URL.
Whew!
I have no idea whether these three groups are all throwing darts at one another, or whether it just happened that they got their own ventures going separately and are perfectly happy to hang out downing beers and scarfing cheese together - but hopefully more is better. The first animation from MST3K.com looked pretty good but didn't strike me as all that funny. I haven't seen any of the Film Crew's stuff yet - although one of their DVDs is sitting a few feet from me, probably to be watched this evening. I must admit I'm looking forward to the Cinematic Titanic thing the most - if only because I haven't heard anything about Joel or Frank for years, and in some ways their characters (and characterizations) were the most idiosyncratic of all the MST3K folks.
Let's see if I can get this straight:
1. Original MST3K'ers Joel Hodgson, Josh Weinstein (now calling himself "J. Elvis Weinstein," which you've got to admit is a much better name), and Trace Beaulieu, along with slightly later crew Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl, have a new bad-movie-mocking enterprise called Cinematic Titanic.
2. Another batch of MST3K crew - Kevin Murphy, Mike Nelson, and Bill Corbett (who did Crow's voice after the departure of Trace Beaulieu) - have four DVDs full of their own movie-mockery under the name of The Film Crew.
3. Finally, not to be left out, Jim Mallon (producer and voice of Gypsy), Paul Chaplin (writer and "Brain Guy"), and a guy whose name I don't recognize, James Moore, have teamed up with animator Maxeem Konrardy to produce a series of animated short online films featuring Tom Servo (now voiced by Moore), Crow T. Robot (now voiced by Chaplin), and Mallon. They apparently have rights to the MST3K name, since that's their URL.
Whew!
I have no idea whether these three groups are all throwing darts at one another, or whether it just happened that they got their own ventures going separately and are perfectly happy to hang out downing beers and scarfing cheese together - but hopefully more is better. The first animation from MST3K.com looked pretty good but didn't strike me as all that funny. I haven't seen any of the Film Crew's stuff yet - although one of their DVDs is sitting a few feet from me, probably to be watched this evening. I must admit I'm looking forward to the Cinematic Titanic thing the most - if only because I haven't heard anything about Joel or Frank for years, and in some ways their characters (and characterizations) were the most idiosyncratic of all the MST3K folks.
10.18.2007
the big red font of dumbness
For some time I've noticed that a certain type of movie - the kind in which fart jokes, it can cogently be argued, reach their absolute apogee - tends to feature gigantic red print, most typically a sans serif, all caps. At first I was thinking this look originated (appropriately) with Dumb and Dumber...but my memory's misled me, because the images of that movie's posters I've been able to find display the type in blue. The font is similar, though.
Anyway, as it turns out someone else has already gone through the trouble of creating a collage of many of the movies featuring the Big Dumb Red Font. It is a nice sort of consumer-alert feature (aside from the presence of Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, etc.), in that the promotion for these movies instantly informs viewers that they can park their IQ at home.
Update: And here's another page...
Anyway, as it turns out someone else has already gone through the trouble of creating a collage of many of the movies featuring the Big Dumb Red Font. It is a nice sort of consumer-alert feature (aside from the presence of Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, etc.), in that the promotion for these movies instantly informs viewers that they can park their IQ at home.
Update: And here's another page...
7.29.2007
animation derby
Naturally, various popular cartoons have inspired websites which allow folks to generate images of themselves rendered in the style of the cartoon. Here are three examples:
Unlike the two Simpsons images below, the site I used to generate this (can't remember where it was, sorry!) has no connection with South Park, as far as I can tell.
This is from the "Simpsonize Me!" website (courtesy yellojkt), which is pretty obviously sponsored by Burger King. It is also slower than Hans Moleman - and it requires you to upload a large-ish image (480x640). It's pretty dumb at recognizing faces as well: of the two images I tried to use, both of which were closely cropped to remove extraneous details like beer bottles and papier-mache aliens, it could find a face in only one of them. (To be fair, that might be my fault. I'm not sure, though, why it thinks I'm Ringo Starr.)
This one's from the site for the Simpsons movie (warning: intrusive sound effects). This site requires no image to begin with (and I should note that the "Simpsonize Me!" site modifies the image so much, it bears almost no resemblance to the source anyway), so it's a bit quicker. As a Bearded-American, however, I'd say its selection of facial hair leaves a bit to be desired...rather amusing since, in fact, I've been told more than once that I sorta look like Matt Groening.
My verdict? The South Park site looks way more like me than either of the Simpsons sites. (Incidentally, I used this photo by Moxiemoo as source for the Simpsonizer site.)
Unlike the two Simpsons images below, the site I used to generate this (can't remember where it was, sorry!) has no connection with South Park, as far as I can tell.
This is from the "Simpsonize Me!" website (courtesy yellojkt), which is pretty obviously sponsored by Burger King. It is also slower than Hans Moleman - and it requires you to upload a large-ish image (480x640). It's pretty dumb at recognizing faces as well: of the two images I tried to use, both of which were closely cropped to remove extraneous details like beer bottles and papier-mache aliens, it could find a face in only one of them. (To be fair, that might be my fault. I'm not sure, though, why it thinks I'm Ringo Starr.)
This one's from the site for the Simpsons movie (warning: intrusive sound effects). This site requires no image to begin with (and I should note that the "Simpsonize Me!" site modifies the image so much, it bears almost no resemblance to the source anyway), so it's a bit quicker. As a Bearded-American, however, I'd say its selection of facial hair leaves a bit to be desired...rather amusing since, in fact, I've been told more than once that I sorta look like Matt Groening.My verdict? The South Park site looks way more like me than either of the Simpsons sites. (Incidentally, I used this photo by Moxiemoo as source for the Simpsonizer site.)
7.15.2007
Sunday trivia
So, the new movie by French director Luc Besson features a character named "Angela." She's an angel. And - the movie's title is...Angel-A.
It's the ability to weave such gossamer latticework of subtle interrelationships that makes European films so superior to our American product.
Also, I received a spam from someone named "Jesus Price." By this point, I should have started about twenty bands just to use all the excellent band names those clever spammers have created for me.
It's the ability to weave such gossamer latticework of subtle interrelationships that makes European films so superior to our American product.
Also, I received a spam from someone named "Jesus Price." By this point, I should have started about twenty bands just to use all the excellent band names those clever spammers have created for me.
7.02.2007
What? No Duff?
In response to this idea, I'm waiting for local dives to proclaim themselves "Moe's"...
6.09.2007
shiver me timbers, blow me down, etc.
Here's a little item gleaned from the latest installment of "The Hater" by Amelie Gillette (who's my secret girlfriend): a chain of movie theaters plans on introducing a little device whereby viewers can summon an usher to shush blabbers for you. Anyway, apparently the device will come with buttons you can press for various annoyances, including one marked - no joke - "Piracy." (Insert obvious joke re using this at Pirates of the Caribbean.) I mean, really: theater owners expect there to be enough piracy that one of a handful of buttons is specifically dedicated to spotting it out? And that people in the theater are going to be oh so concerned - dearie me, that young fellow is recording this movie so people can see the same movie we paid nine bucks for on a teeny screen with crappy resolution, for free?
It reminds me of when our local Cable Bastards(tm) put up billboards on every corner, encouraging a vigilant citizenry to be on the lookout for those dangerous rogues who might be stealing cable service. Because, you know, if someone else is getting cable for free, that costs me a whole lot of money. Unlike, say, the cost of hundreds of pointless billboards trying to scare cable pirates.
It reminds me of when our local Cable Bastards(tm) put up billboards on every corner, encouraging a vigilant citizenry to be on the lookout for those dangerous rogues who might be stealing cable service. Because, you know, if someone else is getting cable for free, that costs me a whole lot of money. Unlike, say, the cost of hundreds of pointless billboards trying to scare cable pirates.
6.03.2007
movies and escapism (hurr!)
Intriguing article...and don't you think it's a perfect source for...a movie treatment? (Then Wired can write a behind-the-scenes article on the movie, just to get more meta...)
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