http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:55:14 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/07/24/195514.php AkromatikaIn a rare moment of unscripted candidness, American President George Bush spent time away from answering questions at a recent speech to students at the University of Kansas to voice his displeasures and concerns about small countries."Small countries complicate everything and end up attacking each other a lot," the President stated, "not to mention that it's hard to find them on maps."Bush said he remembered the simplicity of the Cold War, and sometimes wished back to the days when there were only two countries in the world."Even though we didn't like each other, at least we knew where the other guy was coming from. Nowadays, I can barely keep up with all these new countries, let alone know what they want. Sure, I can still find Russia, and Canada, and China's not too much trouble, and Australia's the big island. But the rest of them, it can be difficult."As for Mexico, "It's not really small, but it'd still be better if we could make a state out of it."Bush then praised the pioneering efforts of the European Union to simplify the world's geography."At a time when countries seem to be splitting up rather than joining together, I applaud the efforts of the European Union to act a little bit more selflessly," said Bush. Adding, "It's about time a fairly big country like Germany took matters into its own hands and decided to unite the continent."Still, according to the President, the European Union is the exception. And there are plenty of examples of small countries only leading to trouble."Take the Middle East. The biggest trouble spot in the world today, and it's absolutely filled with dinky, little countries. But just imagine how quickly they'd all make peace if someone went there and made a Middle Eastern Union. One country, no more fighting."This need to unite was especially true of countries with similar sounding names, Bush continued."Iraq and Iran are right next to each other and only one letter different. Why are they two countries? If they'd have joined together five or six years ago, then we'd only have to invade once. And God Almighty knows what the world needs is less wars."Asked if that was a reasonable and realistic solution, Bush answered by drawing on the experience of the United States itself."Just look at us. We're a great example of what I'm talking about. Each of our states is like a little country in itself, but we've got a whole fifty of them in what we call America. Now, wouldn't the whole international situation be a heck of a lot simpler if North and South Korea just followed the lead of North and South Dakota?"Bush then switched tone, becoming more philosophical, as he speculated on how smaller states would fare in the arena of politics in the years to come."I don't think they'll do well," the President stated bluntly. "Just imagine what it'll be like once we discover extra-terrestrial lifeforms. The big countries won't have any problems, because you can see them well enough from up in space. But if you're one of those small countries, then how are the aliens ever going to see you, let alone be able to make out what you're called."He then held up a map of the world and demonstrated how larger countries will take the lead in inter-planetary trade based on the fact that they have more physical space on which to write their names."The United States, for example, will be able to use a much bigger font than, say, Greece. As a result, Americans will thrive in the Martian markets while the Grecians will fall more and more behind."The American President finished his speech by thanking the enraptured students but urging patience and caution."Obviously, a world government, one really big country, will be an ideal solution for the future. But we need to take baby steps first. After all, small countries are countries, too. And they can tie up military resources just like the big ones. You can't change horses in mid-stream until the mission's accomplished," he concluded. Politics66774@blogcritics.org Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:55:14 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/07/24/155918.php AkromatikaSeattle Mariners GM Bill Bavasi ended weeks of speculation on Monday by re-signing current wife, Mrs. Bavasi, to a new seven-year, $170 million contract. The agreement, which nearly doubles what Mrs. Bavasi would have made this year under her old contract, will see the couple live out their marriage until at least the 2014-5 season, and will prevent Mrs. Bavasi from testing the free agent market next summer."I'm ecstatic we could work something out, it's a wonderful outcome," Bavasi said in a morning press conference at which he announced the much-anticipated deal. "It was a tough slog of a negotiation at times, but our agents knew how to compromise and we were finally able to get the papers signed and that's all that matters.""I also love my wife," he added.Asked about specifics in the negotiation, Bavasi went on to explain, "It was all rather simple. Taking into account that my wife is now 36 years old and no longer in the prime years of her career, I wanted something short-term, in the three-to-five year range, while she wanted something substantially longer. In the end, it really all came down to trading bonuses and conditions for length."Although the details are not yet available and Bavasi refused to comment on the subject, several baseball insiders have speculated that these conditions include clauses which will force Bavasi to cut the grass at least once a week and help out around the house when necessary, as well as the so-called "fidelity clause", which will see substantial bonuses headed Mrs. Bavasi's way if Mr. Bavasi so much as looks at another woman."What's important is not who this deal benefits more, myself or my wife, but rather that we can both look forward to seven more years of marriage, and that the Mariners organization can now focus solely on resigning Ichiro Suzuki."However, not everyone is as pleased. And at least one rival husband and lifelong Mariner fan is doing something about it. Jimmy Helm, a 42-year-old from Seattle, has started a website to protest Mrs. Bavasi's deal.His mission, Helm said in an interview, is to make husbands all across America aware of the deal and its consequences."I don't think men realize what this deal means. It's a precedent. It will set expectations. This deal will destroy marriage as men have come to enjoy it. Can you imagine what will happen if our wives start demanding similar conditions?"Until the contract is rescinded, Helm and the nearly five thousand signatories on his site will be boycotting all Seattle Mariner and Major League Baseball merchandise. But they will still watch the games on television."Of course we'll watch. The enemy is not the player who goes out every day and plays hard to get the win. The enemy is that godless shrew and her husband."Although the protests have so far come almost squarely from married men, some bachelors are also starting to take notice."Used to be that all you needed to get a woman and get married was a car and some kind of job. So I put off marriage and went out drinking with my buddies every night. But now I'm getting older and I'm thinking about getting hitched, and suddenly it's looking like I'll actually have to do housework and stuff," bemoaned a 27-year old single man from Cincinnati.Bavasi, however, refuses to acknowledge any far-reaching consequences of his deal. "It's just one contract between two people. It's getting blown out of all proportion. In seven years, it'll be over and no one will be any better or worse for it except me."Asked by a reporter if this meant that he already had a replacement for his wife lined up, Bavasi simply smiled."I've been doing some scouting in the Minors, sure," he confessed. "But you have to understand, in my profession, the future is always the first thing on your mind." Sports66724@blogcritics.org Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:59:18 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/25/220759.php AkromatikaWhat Happened?The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shut down the Elite Torrents website (http://elitetorrents.org) early this morning, and only days after the site put up a link that allowed users to download Star Wars III: The Revenge of the Sith several hours before the film hit theatres. What Is This BitTorrent Anyway? (copyright infringed from BitTorrent)BitTorrent is a free speech tool.BitTorrent gives you the same freedom to publish previously enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment and lots of money. ("Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one" -- journalist A.J. Liebling.)You have something terrific to publish -- a large music or video file, software, a game or anything else that many people would like to have. But the more popular your file becomes, the more you are punished by soaring bandwidth costs. If your file becomes phenomenally successful and a flash crowd of hundreds or thousands try to get it at once, your server simply crashes and no one gets it.There is a solution to this vicious cycle. BitTorrent, the result of over two years of intensive development, is a simple and free software product that addresses all of these problems.The key to scalable and robust distribution is cooperation. With BitTorrent, those who get your file tap into their upload capacity to give the file to others at the same time. Those that provide the most to others get the best treatment in return. ("Give and ye shall receive!")Cooperative distribution can grow almost without limit, because each new participant brings not only demand, but also supply. Instead of a vicious cycle, popularity creates a virtuous circle. And because each new participant brings new resources to the distribution, you get limitless scalability for a nearly fixed cost.BitTorrent is not just a concept, but has an easy-to-use implementation capable of swarming downloads across unreliable networks. BitTorrent has been embraced by numerous publishers to distribute to millions of users.With BitTorrent free speech no longer has a high price. Tell Me More!Elite Torrents, which had 133,000 members, relied on the innovative BitTorrent technology (For a comprehensive and technical explanation see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent) and supplied pointer files (or links) to tens of thousands of films, music albums, games, applications, books, comics, and many other types of files that users could download using any BitTorrent client software. In other words, Elite Torrents did not actually host any copyrighted materials. Furthermore, some of the files that were linked to (such as taped concerts or amateur media of any kind) were made available completely legally or by the artists themselves.The closure of Elite Torrents is the latest in a series that peaked a few months ago with a flurry of activity by the MPAA that forced the closure of several other BitTorrent sites, including the popular Supernova site.Anyone who visits the Elite Torrents site is now greeted by a bright red screen, the insignias of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and this message:This site has been permanently shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement. Individuals involved in the operation and use of the Elite Torrents network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement." Quack's Take On It AllI'm sure all Americans (and democratic people of the world) are thrilled at these great achievement by the American authorities who are doing their best to curb the threat that pixelated, work prints of Revenge of the Sith pose to America and the world. Obviously the work of terrorist organizations, BitTorrent is worthy of a red alert and is as, if not more, dangerous than nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It's also a relief to see different branches of government finally working together.I, for one, am happy at the attention being given to these evil sites and sincerely hope that in the future no one will be able to discover the musical genius of Miles Davis or Mozart, or watch a Luis Bunuel or Werner Herzog film, without paying insanely inflated priced to the "middle man" companies who profit from the work, talent and imaginations of others, often after the creators themselves are dead.I am doubly shocked that science and math textbooks and classic works of literature are available for download on these sites. Not only will these materials educate anyone who reads them, but they may also open the minds of our children. And if there's one thing worse than a dumb, fat kid who smokes crack and sniffs gasoline, it's a kid who actually knows something. Why should someone get ideas and ambition into their heads and [knock on wood!] become interested in the Arts or Science when they can lead a wholly fulfilled life in a haze of working six days a week, stuffing themselves with fast food and smoking cigarettes. Not only will they contribute the grunt work that keeps our economy going, but they won't live long after they become physically useless.Also great is the vilifying of a free technology that allows for the extremely fast transfer of information. It's worse than the printing press, I say. But the FBI isn't going far enough! Crank calls should lead to the banning of telephones, highways and roads should be closed because terrorists can drive on them, and literacy should be limited to those deemed wise enough to handle it.And don't get me started on the ethics of sharing!*At this point, Quack's tongue ripped painfully through his cheek and he was rushed to the hospital in severe pain and looking like a bloody mess* Big Brother is dead; Long live Big Brother. Sci/Tech30145@blogcritics.org Wed, 25 May 2005 22:07:59 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/19/161520.php AkromatikaOften regarded as Luis Bunuel's masterpiece, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is a manically random, though consistently sleek, surrealistic satire of the upper class. And though the film's message, that rich people are unfulfilled (always being disrupted before they can begin the meal that is central to each loosely connected scene in the film) hypocrites (who dirty their hands in murder, corruption, drugs, affairs and drunkenness while attesting to their own purity) gets tiresome after it's stated time after time by the writer-director, the film's style is as fresh and wonderfully madcap as ever.Dreams and dreams within dreams invade the narrative, minor characters halt everything (including the cavalry!) to recount their dreams, ghosts and terrorist assassins and dead police officers mix fantasy with reality, and punctuating it all are shots of the main characters walking purposelessly through the middle of nowhere. Individual scenes sometimes have regular conflicts (a young boy murders the man pretending to be his father after being told by the ghost of his dead mother that it is her last wish) or discernible meanings (one dream sequence, for example, sees the main troupe of characters invited to a dinner party only to discover themselves on a theatre stage instead of in a house), but what the hell does it mean as a whole?I haven't the slightest clue, and that's probably how Bunuel meant it. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is therefore fun but slight and an overrated work by the director whose other films (such as Belle de Jour) are just as inventive and carry significantly more meaning and weight.Rating: 3.0 / 4.0 Video29765@blogcritics.org Thu, 19 May 2005 16:15:20 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/16/163202.php AkromatikaWoody Allen's slump continues with Melinda and Melinda, an amateurish novelty film that tries to prove the close relationship between tragedy and comedy. Made up of a frame and two narratives (one comic and one tragic) joined by a main character you want to bitch slap, it makes one wonder what happened to the filmmaker behind Crimes and Misdemeanours and Hannah and Her Sisters and if he's ever going to come back. Beginning with the first scene, the film disrupts any potential rhythm through terrible editing that culminates in a dissolve to a restaurant conversation that sounds like an aging Allen talking to himself. The artificial tone remains and the cast is never natural or convincing while exchanging titbits about classical music, theatre and small, candlelit restaurants. Annie Hall and Mickey Sachs would avoid these characters and Michael Caine and Diane Keaton could act circles around the actors playing them. In the end, neither the comedy is comic enough (with the notable exception of Will Ferrell's antics) nor tragedy tragic enough (with affairs, murders, and mental asylums kept unexplainably off screen) to equate the two as anything other than mundane. It doesn't help that everything in the film is a rehash of other, better Allen films. The only notion Melinda and Melinda truly proves is that comedy and tragedy can both suck.Rating: 1.0 / 4.0 Video29571@blogcritics.org Mon, 16 May 2005 16:32:02 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/13/130039.php AkromatikaThe simply titled documentary Gaza Strip premiered in the United States in August of 2002, about a year and a half before the sudden surge in popularity of documentary films, and especially of politically themed documentary films, brought on by the War on Terror, War on Iraq, and American presidential election. The work of filmmaker James Longley, who financed, directed, edited, and co-shot the film, it is a raw glimpse into the lives of the 1,300,000 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip that is as topical now, with Israeli vows of withdrawal from the area, as it was upon its release. Recommended to fans of documentary cinema for its style and to those interested in its subject for its value as a document.After watching the film, I contacted James Longley and sent him a list of various questions and observations I had about his film. Graciously and promptly, he replied. The following is our exchange, compiled from several emails: (I am italicized and Mr. Longley is bolded) Unlike many of the "documentaries" made since the recent popularity of Michael Moore's activist film, your film actually documents.My film was made before the Michael Moore film you are probably talking about. "Gaza Strip" was finished in spring 2002 and shot in 2001.Unlike Moore, you neither appear in your own film nor project your own opinions onto it.Well -- except that I chose to make a film about that particular subject, which is the most significant way to project your opinion about anything. Just by making a documentary about the Gaza Strip you are already taking a big political step, particularly if you also choose to document only the Palestinians and leave out the supposedly obligatory Israeli viewpoint. (This is weird, don't you think, that films about Palestinians are criticized for leaving out the Israelis, while films about Israelis are never criticized for leaving out the Palestinians ...)Personally, I don't think that the documentary form is any less subjective than fiction film -- only in documentary you are filming things that are actually happening without your having to write a script or pay actors. But in the end, if the film is going to be at all comprehensible to audiences, you are collecting images and words to tell a story. It's just one story out of millions, and the way you tell it is up to you -- so documentary is a totally subjective form, really. However, I also don't think that fact prevents documentaries from providing a real sense of the world, of objective reality, of truth and all that. It's just that none of those things can be expressed in a truly objective way by people.Although you choose what is seen and in what order, the people you interview say what they think and you do not manipulate the viewer's opinion of them through music or mise-en-scene. I actually am manipulating the viewer, like any filmmaker. It can't be helped. I did make music and put it in the film -- it's everywhere. I took fragments of Bach and Shostakovitch and the sound of people talking, etc -- and warped them into ambient sound beds that are strewn everywhere in the film. When an Israeli IDF jeep appears in one scene, for example, we hear a tortured version of a Bach aria that sounds like a cross between Humphrey Bogart barfing black tar and several monkeys being killed at once. But it's all done in such a way that few people actually notice.The viewer is free to see what you show and come away with their own thoughts.That's true enough.Would the inclusion of an Israeli-Jewish point of view (as many critics suggest) actually make your film more propagandist, as it would offer an inaccurate portrayal of the Gaza Strip?Maybe. But I guess my point in leaving out the Israelis was that the Palestinians are a valid subject for documentary film by themselves, without an opposing Israeli narrative thrown in to contradict them. As long as you accept that all films are basically subjective constructions, then you are also forced to admit that filmmakers who insist on having "both sides" of an argument are just as subjective in their construction of the argument that they are pretending to document objectively. So why bother? I wanted to make a film about the Palestinians because I knew less about them -- so that's what I did. I don't believe any of this nonsense about objectivity in media.Throughout the film, your camera lingers on faces. However, I noticed that as the film progressed you included fewer shots of smiling faces and more shots of serious, or frightened ones. Was this intentional?Not really -- the film is mostly chronological, and it so happened that the situation grew worse as I was documenting it, so the people became more serious. I enjoyed your film when it remained true to a naturalistic, unobtrusive style. For example, when you added effects and toyed with editing to mimic a feeling of fear and panic, I felt it caused the film to feel more artificial. I probably agree with you in retrospect -- but at the time I wanted to experiment with the medium -- and I just left it in. I think there isn't enough experimentation with the documentary form, though I like a well-made classical style verite film as much as the next guy. On the topic of artificiality, during many of your interviews with Palestinian children, and in specific with one boy during the scene on the beach, it seemed apparent that they were saying lines and expressing ideas that had they had been taught by their parents or elders. That boy, after finishing his speech, ran off, laughing, to resume playing as if oblivious to what he had just said.I disagree with you here. The beach was full of people -- and there was a guy standing behind the camera as I finished that interview who said something to the kid that made him laugh. I don't think he was repeating anything his parents told him -- although who knows? I think he said what he thought -- but he was also kind of excited to be filmed by someone in public. If you spend much time in the Gaza Strip you realize that most of the kids there are pretty much like that one -- they're surrounded by an impossible situation -- but they're still just kids and usually they act like it. I also noticed that many of the younger Palestinians appeared more knowledgeable and better educated than those who were older. For example, the young woman whom you interviewed in a tent and Mohammed Hejazi seemed to have a better, and more logical, grasp on their situation than the woman who told the story about the bulldozers. I saw this as a sign of hope for the future.This was not something intentional -- it's just a matter of chance who you get to interview and how well they can talk in front of a camera. There are plenty of sharp old people in the Gaza Strip, but I just happen to think that young people are more interesting to follow -- since they have more energy, move around more, and care less that you are filming them. Mohammed Hejazi had a great way of speaking that I think really makes the film -- but I recorded a lot more material of him than actually made the final version. I cut out all kinds of digressions and boring stories, recitations of film plots and the like. Of course, I also cut out a lot of material I wish I could have kept. Many of the people who watch your film, including me, don't have any idea where the places you mention in your film are. There is a map of filming locations on the film's website, but did you consider putting a map in the film?Yes -- I realize that -- but on the DVD version there's a map, also, for reference -- and I just hate to insert things like maps into a verite film. I mean, what does it matter, really, whether a particular scene is taking place in Khan Yunis or Rafah? It's all the Gaza Strip, in the end, and it doesn'talter the point of the material in any way. One of the things that struck me the most about your film is the calm way in which people, and most of all children, react to gunfire. I recall several shots of children running for cover and laughing.Yes -- they are used to being shot at. It's something normal if you live in the Gaza Strip, so they get used to it and learn how to deal with it -- otherwise they'd go crazy. Whenever the Palestinian rock throwers appeared in your film I was reminded of the platitude, "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Did you have this saying in mind when you were editing the film? Do you think it applies?No -- not exactly. The Gaza Strip isn't a glass house. It's a big open-air prison camp. It makes very little difference whether the Palestinian kids throw stones or not -- so why not? They are not behaving as people in a glass house; they are behaving as people who have nothing left to lose. I had the "glass house" idea after the scene in which the Palestinian woman recalls her experience with the Israeli bulldozers, not after the rock thrower scene. Since the woman was angry at the destruction of her home and the threat to her own life, I assumed that she did have something to lose. Because the rock thrower scene is before the bulldozer scene, I probably made the connection that one led to the other. Bulldozers being bigger rocks.I suppose -- but in fact one has nothing to do with the other except in symbolic terms. The fact is that the Israelis bulldoze Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip in order to expand "security areas" around checkpoints and settlements, and the Rafah border zone, etc. -- The bulldozings are very much pre-planned events designed to conform to expanding Israeli settlements and road construction, and not the result of rock-throwing at all. Now that the Israelis plan to evacuate all the Gaza settlements, of course, it would seem that the bulldozing of all those homes serves no ultimate purpose anyway, even from the Israeli point of view. Except, perhaps, that it puts pressure on the Palestinian population and weakens their resolve -- or so an Israeli Army spokesperson once explained it to me in Tel Aviv. But so it goes. Gaza Strip is available on DVD, and James Longley is currently working on a new documentary film about Iraq. Video29461@blogcritics.org Fri, 13 May 2005 13:00:39 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/09/160048.php AkromatikaIt's easy to watch Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov's Father and Son and discard it as nauseatingly artsy Eurotrash. There isn't a dominant story, and a subplot about an army man who may or may not have killed someone and may or may not be dead is as cryptic as it sounds. The two main characters (the Father and the Son) have no names and we're not quite sure if we're supposed to watch them or watch with them. Is their relationship creepy or loving? Add that long stretches of the already short film are of nothing happening and some viewers will conclude that Father and Son is monotony on film, disguised as art.That's an easy interpretation of the film, but one that's nearsighted. However, it's still somewhat unintentionally accurate, and decidedly helpful in deciphering just what is going on. Father and Son is monotony on film, but it's not a monotonous film. Going against what viewers are used to, and conditioned to concentrate on, Sokurov's film is about not what's happening or why it's happening as much as it's about how the happenings are shown. For example, an early conversation between the Son and the Girl, if taken as a typical movie fare, is a throwaway exchange that neither advances plot or builds character. Hollywood would cut it. And that's exactly Sokurov's point. The conversation is meaningless, but the way in which it's filmed gives it meaning. The form creates the content; the content doesn't dictate the form. Sokurov is telling us to focus not on the dialogue, but on the mise-en-scene. It's vital that the scene is shot with the two characters on opposite sides of a window, because it makes visual the invisible barrier that separates the Son from the Girl (in this case the Son's reluctance to leave the Father). Furthermore, their faces, as filmed, are often separated by the horizontal and vertical bars that run across the glass, separating the screen into several frames, suggesting fractured states of mind. Other good examples are the multiple scenes in which the Father and Son are on the roof of their apartment building together. Sometimes they lift weights there, play soccer, or perform acrobatics. It doesn't matter. What matters is the openness that Sokurov's compositions and setting suggest. The dialogue between the characters doesn't reveal as much about their relationship as the image of their figures against the sky and the shared feeling of being above the bustle of the street cars and people below.It's a shame that so many critics responded to the first shots of Father and Son, of the entangled, naked bodies of the Father and Son, by interpreting them as homoerotic and choosing to explore only that aspect of the film. And it's fittingly funny that the reason the scene can be viewed as homoerotic is not because of what is happening (the Father waking the Son from a nightmare), but because of how Sokurov films and edits it. In a way, that scene is a misunderstood statement of intent, or thesis, to the rest of the film. In it, Sokurov flags up that how we see things has a huge impact on how we perceive them. Father and Son is not absorbing narrative entertainment. It's a defence of art cinema and of the director as artist. Remember the outdated argument about the auteur versus the metteur-en-scene? It's just been updated.Rating: 3.0 / 4.0 Video29228@blogcritics.org Mon, 9 May 2005 16:00:48 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/28/040142.php AkromatikaI passed up the chance to see Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come when it came out in theatres because, at the time, I disliked Robin Williams and thought the trailer looked like the stuff of weepy, overwrought melodrama. However, my views on Williams have since changed, and after seeing Ward's earlier effort Map of the Human Heart listed alongside Jacques Tati's Playtime on the programme of Roger Ebert's latest Overlooked Film Festival, I decided to give the film a chance. My enthusiasm was further bolstered by an article on Ebert's spiffy new website in which the renowned (though ever more lenient) critic calls Vincent Ward "a true visionary" and What Dreams May Come "a grievously overlooked" film. For a film geek, I was pretty pumped.The story of What Dreams May Come, once it actually kicks in about halfway through the film, is set mostly in Heaven and follows the adventures of Chris Nielsen (as played by Williams in one of those roles that reached its peak shortly after this film, in the dreadful Patch Adams and Jakob the Liar) as he tries to find his wife (Annabella Sciorra), who has ended up somewhere in Hell. All the smart dead people tell Chris that it's too dangerous to go traipsing around in the Devil's half of the afterlife, thus raising the stakes and making it "so" much more heroic when he eventually does anyway. Conveniently, the rest of Nielsen's family (a son, a daughter who I thought was a son, and a dog) is dead too, so they're around periodically, giving advice and waxing on about spiritual and philosophical issues. It all creates a fabulous atmosphere of laughable gloom, doom and hope that Williams captures well by making his eyes wide and watery and spouting lines such as "Boy, I screwed up. I'm in dog Heaven," after finding his dog, and "I found you in hell. Don't you think I could find you in Jersey!" after finding his wife. Thankfully, some of the serious themes addressed by screenwriter Ron Bass are expressed so damn badly ("Sometimes, when you lose, you win.") that they make the forced, corny lines sound a whole lot better.In the film's defence, the special effects are pretty and evocative of many famous works of art. Hieronymous Bosch is an obvious inspiration, for example. And there are many more that anyone interested in painting will have fun picking out. Some of the images are quite beautiful (until Ward violently cuts away from them to one of countless close ups of Robin Williams' face) and imaginative film copies of classic works. In this respect, What Dreams May Come is to art historians and art history students what Sin City is to comic books nerds.Perhaps needless to say, I was disappointed with What Dreams May Come. I was keen on liking it, but quickly realized that it was not only far from being the overlooked gem Ebert deemed, but also close to being what my gut reaction had told me to expect, all those years ago. The ending of this film is as manipulative a doozy as you're likely to find on any given shelf of a video store (and I do mean even if it shares a wall with a Shyamalan flick). And the whole thing tastes strongly of soap. On the whole, the weird tension between Bass' Hollywood-esque script and Ward's quasi-arthouse manifestation of it make sure the film fits in neither category (your choice as to which is Heaven and which is Hell) and instead push it into some place in Purgatory where bad films with noble intentions and interesting ideas (like the overall premise of this film) go away until people like Roger Ebert bring them up and naive filmgoers like me get suckered into watching them.Rating: 1.5 / 4.0 Video28758@blogcritics.org Thu, 28 Apr 2005 04:01:42 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/06/225737.php AkromatikaAsian cinema is prospering. It's producing some of the finest motion pictures in the world. And few are better than South Korean director Chan-wook Park's Oldboy. The film is about Oh Dae-su, a family man and occasional drunk who, while making a call from a telephone booth, is mysteriously abducted. Upon regaining consciousness, he finds himself imprisoned in a hotel room. Confusion is too mild a word for what he's feeling. Then, his wife is found murdered. His blood is at the scene. To his whole world, he appears to have vanished to evade capture. His life is gone. But he's still alive. Somewhere. In a room. He's fed and clothed. And taken care of. And--Fifteen years pass.And, just as abruptly as he was abducted, he's released. Free, Oh Dae-su vows to take revenge on those responsible, and more importantly to find out the reason, for his imprisonment.But Oldboy isn't a typical revenge story. It's much deeper than that. In fact, we learn that Oh Dae-su is driven far more by the second part of his vow than by the first. He has the chance to take revenge several times but doesn't, because it would mean never knowing the Reason. And that's what he's really after. Like a child persistently asking its parents, "why does it rain?", "what happens to the sun at night?" or "why do people die?" Oh Dae-su wants to know: "Why was my life stolen?"To transpose this to a different culture, Oldboy is like the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden. Oh Dae-su thirsts for a bite of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. But is some knowledge better left unknown? Is some knowledge too crushing a burden to bear?That's the first viewing of Oldboy. It's a quest for Knowledge, for the Truth, and for a Reason. Like in a mystery, the plot unfolds one step at a time until, at the end, everything is revealed. And it's devastating. So much so, that it's hard to even imagine watching some of the film's scenes placed into the context that the ending provides.Yet that's exactly what happens upon a repeat viewing. It's a different film. The revenge and search for reason, so prominent before, become overpowered by tragedy. It's almost painful to watch, knowing the outcome, as Oh Dae-su hurls himself toward the inevitable. Suddenly, opportunities for salvation become visible. But Oh Dae-su is blind to them all. His purpose propels him forward. Dae-su, like Oedipus, to use another Western example, is a victim of his Fate.Lauded at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, Oldboy begs to be seen.Rating: 4.0 / 4.0 Video27846@blogcritics.org Wed, 6 Apr 2005 22:57:37 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/06/000904.php AkromatikaRobert Rodriguez's adaptation of Frank Miller's series of Sin City graphic novels is the latest link in an already hefty chain of films that try to overcome a lack of substance with an abundance of style. Although substantially better than Kerry Conran's awful Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (USA), and international empty but pretty pictures Casshern (Japan) and Immortel (France), Sin City still suffers from fundamental structural problems that no amount of technical excellence or special effects can overcome. It lacks a clear plot, is inhabited by too many characters (for someone other than Robert Altman to contend with), and relies on an irritating amount of narration. Furthermore, the acting varies from excellent (Benicio Del Toro as "Jackie Boy") through mediocre (Bruce Willis as the stone faced "Hartigan") to embarrassingly bad (Jessica Alba as "Nancy"), and the directing, though adequate, is too concerned with recreating comic book frames than adding to them.Filmmakers should know that what works in one medium rarely works in another. It's the reason that many film adaptations of Shakespeare fail to work convincingly on the silver screen, or that many faithful adaptations of popular novels don't have nearly the same power as the original works. Judging from his El Mariachi days, Robert Rodriguez should know, for example, that films are best when they rely on action and visual exposition over narration and dialogue. In his excellent book "The Technique of Screenplay Writing", Eugene Vale makes the distinction that film, a medium physically based on motion and progression, should exploit exactly these qualities. He compares the same scene, of a warrior in battle dress, as done in a painting and literature, and points out that a painting shows all of its information at once while a story is better suited to reveal information progressively. According to Vale, a film, like literature, should show its warrior actually fasten the leather straps of his boots, throw his heavy shield over his shoulder and clutch his spear rather than simply the resulting image. In other words, good films make visual the process. In Sin City, Rodriguez resorts too often to narration by his three main characters (Hartigan, Marv and Dwight) in order to give their histories, tell their thoughts, or soften and explain the jump cuts that he uses repeatedly. Although this is done to simulate the reading of a comic, which is made of several hundred frames and cannot convey everything through images, it is not suitable for a film like Sin City, which contains roughly 180,000 frames. The argument could be made that Rodriguez simply doesn't have enough space, or time, to show everything, but that itself shows flaws in the film's structure. And, furthermore, there are copious action and driving scenes that drag on for far too long and that cannot be justified only because they were in the original material.In the early days of cinema, a filmed theatre play, or "canned theatre", was a popular and quick way to bring theatre to a wider audience and one outside of large urban centers. In these productions, the camera would simulate the eyes of a spectator sitting in an expensive seat in the front row of an actual theatre. The result was not cinema as much as a poor, flat replica of a stage production minus the plasticity, unpredictability and immediacy of the actual play. Although Rodriguez's film is much more than a camera recording of an invisible hand flipping the pages of one of the Frank Miller's graphic novels, it is perhaps not too much of an overstatement to call it "canned comics". Like "canned theatre", Sin City takes many of the elements that work in the form of a comic, and mimics them on celluloid. The Sin City website even has a section that compares frames from the comic with those from the film, as if a perfect similarity was somehow equal to a perfect film. If that was true, a perfect film adaptation of Picasso's 'Guernica' could be created with a two-hour still frame that uncannily resembled the massive painting.Another problem that Rodriguez created for himself upon conceiving the idea of a Sin City film was the notion that he could cram a handful of graphic novels, each with its own plot and characters, into a motion picture running slightly more than two hours. For an entirely unfair comparison, imagine some ambitious writer and director taking upon himself the monumental task of creating a film adapted from several Dickens novels, simply because they take place in the same city and period. Is it madness, or is it possible? On the basis of Sin City, it's the former. History, Eugene Vale and Aristotle suggest that one dramatic work should have one main plot, from which everything else stems and which propels the story. On the other hand, experience shows that this is not always the case, and films have been made that fly in the face of conventional ideas about structure. Regardless, the problem with Sin City is that it doesn't work and it doesn't work because it has a weak plot structure and weak characters. Constructed like four consecutive episodes of a television show (though David Lynch managed to make a whole out of some spare TV parts with Mulholland Drive), none of the characters are truly developed and no one plotline strong enough to carry the film. Characters and plots disappear, appear, but never connect in any meaningful way. Attempts are made at thematic unity through motifs (Men defending women, betrayal, corruption, etc.) and the repetition of certain lines of dialogue, but it's superficial and forced. The main unifying factor, as can be deemed from the title, is The City, but that, like the film, has a style but no heart or soul. Near the end, Rodriguez even resorts to showing various characters from the three main stories together in a bar in a feeble attempt at tying things together. But string don't hold elephants. Not surprisingly, the film has an incredibly weak ending.Overall, Sin City is still an enjoyable film. Its ability to recognize and employ the sarcasm that pervades classic Noir and to recreate its mood while balanced between pastiche and homage are high points, for example. As are the technical aspects, and the fact that the film was made outside of the regular Hollywood loop, on video and without actual sets. But it's impossible to overlook the shortcomings of the narrative. Perhaps if Miller and Rodriguez had hired a screenwriter to write the film, or focused on just one of Miller's graphic novels, Sin City would have been a better motion picture. And maybe if Rodriguez wasn't so intent on being faithful to the source material, he would have made a better film. As it stands, whatever Sin City is to fans of Miller and comic books in general, it is not revolutionary cinema, as some have made it out to be. If anything, the film's "canned comic" brand of adaptation is a step backward. In order to make great films, one must understand the film medium and its strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities. Knowledge of comic books not required. Rating: 2.5 / 4.0 Video27808@blogcritics.org Wed, 6 Apr 2005 00:09:04 EDT