This past summer DC Universe Online went on sale so I couldn't resist giving it a try. The first surprise (and a disappointment) is that it's largely a fighting game even down to using combos. Maybe this works better on a console but I have trouble doing quick-right, two quick-lefts then hold right down even out of combat so mostly I gave up doing anything but the most rudimentary combos. DCUO also lacks much of the non-combat stuff that fill most MMOs and while some might see that as a plus it eventually means the game becomes more grinding than it really should. Admittedly it's hard to see how a superhero game could support much in the way of crafting, gathering, exploring, collecting, etc though there are token efforts made in all those areas. City of Heroes had the same problem and seems to have resolved it partly due to allowing user-created content that fills the game with so much other stuff that you don't miss the crafting etc (though I played the free CoH for only a couple of weeks and don't really know if that worked).
DCUO also has problems with balance and PVP/instances. The latter might be the easiest to fix since the issue is really just one of delays - it's not uncommon to wait 30 minutes to an hour just for a routine instance. I never got to do enough of them for a good feel but the instances worked ok if a bit too complicated while the PVP never seemed as structured as say a WoW battleground. The balance problem, though, is really something I'd think would have come up in the beta. Most of the quests are chains that eventually lead to a boss instance. The chains are often fairly easy (though at least twice I got trapped in some that were almost impossible to do at my level but there was no other way to level up) but the real catch comes in the instances where bosses can be ridiculously hard even when they're supposedly below your level. I'm not sure if we're supposed to group for these and silly me is soloing them but there's no warning in the quest info. I typically do the chain until the end then go level a few times before coming back to finish, almost certainly not how it should be done. Then again maybe if I could learn those combos.....
Still the appeal of DCUO is pretty clear: you're in the freakin' DC Universe! Zipping around an abandoned Gotham fairground taking out Joker thugs or flying through Metropolis hunting renegade Atlanteans is pretty cool. The real big guns like Batman or Superman appear mostly on radio but it's nice to see all sorts of second and third tier characters like Zatanna, Booster Gold, Swamp Thing, a swarm of Green Lanterns and so forth. And of course it's now free. There were glitches when it went live but mostly those have been resolved and the limits it places on free accounts are much less severe than other games.
For instance Everquest II. Free players only have access to four races (out of twenty) and eight classes (out of twenty-five). You can't sell on the auction house, have limited bag space and so forth. The reasoning is most likely to tempt players to shell out cash for the full experience but I wonder if that works to any significant degree. People like me who just want something entertaining that's also free may wish for some of the off-limits combinations but don't care enough to spend real money for them. The auction restriction is just annoying but then there's a cap on how much money you can have so maybe it's just as well.
Overall EQ2 works pretty well though it definitely suffers compared to WoW. Crafting for instance is basically a mini-game and one that's so involved that I just gave up on doing any of it. The graphics are overly detailed so that it's not at all uncommon to have trouble figuring out what you're looking at - the maps in particular are difficult to use. Quests too often send you back and forth from the same location (admittedly also a problem with early WoW but one mostly gone now). There are some control issues such as trying to retreat from a fight but the game keeps turning you back around to face the mob. The lack of aggro is almost laughable - several times I attacked a mob who's right next to another without aggroing the second.
Still if I played it more some of this would probably work itself out and hey free is free. EQ2 is mostly pretty effective and for some reason the backstory sank in with me more than WoW (where I still know almost none of the "lore"). But it rarely has that "just five more minutes" catch of WoW - to the extent that I'm not sure if I'll ever play it again especially with free time on WoW that a friend just gave me (haven't played in eight months) and Guild Wars 2 coming up and a free trial of EVE Online and.....
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Interpretation x 3
It's hardly news that the various technical and genre requirements mainly serve to make interpretation easier or at least focused. And "interpretation" to some degree means "communication" but it's better to avoid the latter term with art because art rarely communicates anything in the sense that word is generally used. But there are some works that for whatever reason confound standard interpretation - it could be anything from a misjudged line that breaks the illusion to a full-out rethinking of aesthetic convention. Here are three:
Four Lions (Christopher Morris 2010) - This might be the easiest example to consider since it's simply a shift of tone but it's such a major shift that it makes the film feel unstable in some sense. The first part could almost be considered It's Always Sunny in London as it details the comic exploits of four wannabe terrorists as they attempt to train and plan despite clearly being nowhere near as smart or focused as they think. Dark comedy certainly but it's quite effective with a perfectly timed sight gag at a training site and a sitcom-ish character determined to bomb his own mosque based on stark logic that could have come from a bitter Python sketch. Towards the ending the comedy starts to dissolve until the film is pretty much a tragedy by its end (and oddly a tragedy in very nearly a classical sense). One scene where the most aware character visits his wife at her job to say goodbye but can't because two cops are standing right there is a tipping point. When the film moves this decisively from comic to tragic I can't help but wonder when this was planned. Did the filmmakers feel the plotters needed to suffer for their plans (though they hadn't actually hurt anybody)? Did they need a decisive ending? Did they work backwards and feel that comedy would simply make a more marketable film? I don't know of course and mostly don't particularly care though I think that Four Lions is a stronger film for this genre mix.
YellowBrickRoad (Jesse Holland & Andy Mitton 2010) - I'm as firm an advocate of the intentional fallacy as anybody but at some point applying it constantly just turns it into dogma, in short into a technique to avoid thinking. With YellowBrickRoad some of its strongest moments are things that I'm not sure anybody intended but it's also accomplished enough that it's hard to be sure. Basically the film is on the pattern of The Blair Witch Project. In 1940 the population of an entire New Hampshire town walked up a nearby mountain and were mostly never seen again. Almost seventy years later a group of people head off to find out what happened. They get lost, wander around the woods, experience weird things and then we have an inconclusive ending - y'know Blair Witch stuff though at least this isn't a found-footage film. This is one film that I'm glad to have not seen in a theatre because there's a sequence in the middle that I think would have made me physically quite queasy - not what's shown on screen but a technical full assault on the senses that may be more disorienting than anything I've ever seen. Now this was clearly intentional and is in fact part of the story but I'm not sure about other elements. Some of the characters, for instance, suddenly act in unexpected ways and I've seen reviews that criticized this inappropriate build-up. But isn't the whole movie about sudden and irrational changes? I'm not really sure this is a defect as it might be another strategy of the filmmakers. I also don't get the feeling that there is an "answer" to the film's premise but rather just a lot of weirdness. Viewers know for sure that there is something/somebody in the woods because a body is moved and mutilated and because towards the end we see a walking foot (the rest of the body is offscreen) that can't belong to any of the characters. And the ending is just a real headscratcher that I'm not even sure was meant to be taken seriously (even viewing it as a character's hallucination doesn't seem to take you anywhere). The most violent scene involves a guy pulling somebody's leg off with his bare hands and again I wonder whether the filmmakers knew this is impossible and meant it to illustrate what's happening out in the woods or if they simply made a mistake. Or the psychologist who asks strange questions that for all I know are genuine real-life ones but in the film I can't tell if they're slips or intended to also indicate something odd about him. Yes, to some degree none of this matters but in this case that degree is a bit smaller than I'd like. Even if YellowBrickRoad is the work of fully conscious artists who intended absolutely everything on screen (and in this case also definitely on the soundtrack) it still doesn't completely hang together. Then again I possibly admire them even more if they weren't able to accomplish everything they set out to do because they still managed a more memorable film than many.
Noroît (Jacques Rivette 1976) - If nothing else I think it's safe to say that this film was completely intentional though it's one of the most cryptic I've ever seen. Ostensibly it's an adaptation of The Revenger's Tragedy but apart from the basic premise, a few bits of scenes and some English-language dialogue there's almost nothing I can match to the supposed original. The film is periodically interrupted by a black screen with numbers like "II.iv" that appear to be act and scene designations so I do wonder if it's closer to the play than it appears but have a feeling not. There's certainly no soliloquy to a skull at the opening of the film. Very little in the film really connects. It's about a group of female pirates but they're dressed like fashion-conscious society women. The time appears to be roughly 18th century but they attack a diesel-driven boat. One character is seeking revenge for the death of her brother but then he appears alive for no reason at all later in the film (and in fact during the opening death scene is so visibly breathing that this had to have been intentionally left in). We hear an underscore only to see in a pan that it's an on-screen ensemble which the first time reminded me of nothing so much as the Basie band appearing in Blazing Saddles. Out of nowhere we see a dance, there's a practice sword duel that becomes serious or does it, camera movements at times seem arbitrary and I'm not even sure that the characters are even meant to be separate since the dialogue sometimes feels like it could have been spoken by anyone. In short, nothing quite fits. And so far this could almost be describing some Ed Wood-esque b-atrocity but the thing is that Noroît doesn't feel that way. Perhaps it's best to call it an abstract narrative so that just as a painting isn't required to resolve into recognizable images then this film has story and story-like elements that don't resolve into a patterned narrative. It's often quite stunning to see (cinematographer William Lubtchansky worked on numerous other Rivette and Godard features) and makes the most of its ruined-castle setting. In fact I half want to see this again even though I know it won't make any more sense than before. Jonathan Rosenbaum pretty much nailed it when he wrote it "contains the most beautiful images and sounds of any Rivette film, and the fewest indications of what a spectator is meant to do with them, apart from look and listen."
Four Lions (Christopher Morris 2010) - This might be the easiest example to consider since it's simply a shift of tone but it's such a major shift that it makes the film feel unstable in some sense. The first part could almost be considered It's Always Sunny in London as it details the comic exploits of four wannabe terrorists as they attempt to train and plan despite clearly being nowhere near as smart or focused as they think. Dark comedy certainly but it's quite effective with a perfectly timed sight gag at a training site and a sitcom-ish character determined to bomb his own mosque based on stark logic that could have come from a bitter Python sketch. Towards the ending the comedy starts to dissolve until the film is pretty much a tragedy by its end (and oddly a tragedy in very nearly a classical sense). One scene where the most aware character visits his wife at her job to say goodbye but can't because two cops are standing right there is a tipping point. When the film moves this decisively from comic to tragic I can't help but wonder when this was planned. Did the filmmakers feel the plotters needed to suffer for their plans (though they hadn't actually hurt anybody)? Did they need a decisive ending? Did they work backwards and feel that comedy would simply make a more marketable film? I don't know of course and mostly don't particularly care though I think that Four Lions is a stronger film for this genre mix.
YellowBrickRoad (Jesse Holland & Andy Mitton 2010) - I'm as firm an advocate of the intentional fallacy as anybody but at some point applying it constantly just turns it into dogma, in short into a technique to avoid thinking. With YellowBrickRoad some of its strongest moments are things that I'm not sure anybody intended but it's also accomplished enough that it's hard to be sure. Basically the film is on the pattern of The Blair Witch Project. In 1940 the population of an entire New Hampshire town walked up a nearby mountain and were mostly never seen again. Almost seventy years later a group of people head off to find out what happened. They get lost, wander around the woods, experience weird things and then we have an inconclusive ending - y'know Blair Witch stuff though at least this isn't a found-footage film. This is one film that I'm glad to have not seen in a theatre because there's a sequence in the middle that I think would have made me physically quite queasy - not what's shown on screen but a technical full assault on the senses that may be more disorienting than anything I've ever seen. Now this was clearly intentional and is in fact part of the story but I'm not sure about other elements. Some of the characters, for instance, suddenly act in unexpected ways and I've seen reviews that criticized this inappropriate build-up. But isn't the whole movie about sudden and irrational changes? I'm not really sure this is a defect as it might be another strategy of the filmmakers. I also don't get the feeling that there is an "answer" to the film's premise but rather just a lot of weirdness. Viewers know for sure that there is something/somebody in the woods because a body is moved and mutilated and because towards the end we see a walking foot (the rest of the body is offscreen) that can't belong to any of the characters. And the ending is just a real headscratcher that I'm not even sure was meant to be taken seriously (even viewing it as a character's hallucination doesn't seem to take you anywhere). The most violent scene involves a guy pulling somebody's leg off with his bare hands and again I wonder whether the filmmakers knew this is impossible and meant it to illustrate what's happening out in the woods or if they simply made a mistake. Or the psychologist who asks strange questions that for all I know are genuine real-life ones but in the film I can't tell if they're slips or intended to also indicate something odd about him. Yes, to some degree none of this matters but in this case that degree is a bit smaller than I'd like. Even if YellowBrickRoad is the work of fully conscious artists who intended absolutely everything on screen (and in this case also definitely on the soundtrack) it still doesn't completely hang together. Then again I possibly admire them even more if they weren't able to accomplish everything they set out to do because they still managed a more memorable film than many.
Noroît (Jacques Rivette 1976) - If nothing else I think it's safe to say that this film was completely intentional though it's one of the most cryptic I've ever seen. Ostensibly it's an adaptation of The Revenger's Tragedy but apart from the basic premise, a few bits of scenes and some English-language dialogue there's almost nothing I can match to the supposed original. The film is periodically interrupted by a black screen with numbers like "II.iv" that appear to be act and scene designations so I do wonder if it's closer to the play than it appears but have a feeling not. There's certainly no soliloquy to a skull at the opening of the film. Very little in the film really connects. It's about a group of female pirates but they're dressed like fashion-conscious society women. The time appears to be roughly 18th century but they attack a diesel-driven boat. One character is seeking revenge for the death of her brother but then he appears alive for no reason at all later in the film (and in fact during the opening death scene is so visibly breathing that this had to have been intentionally left in). We hear an underscore only to see in a pan that it's an on-screen ensemble which the first time reminded me of nothing so much as the Basie band appearing in Blazing Saddles. Out of nowhere we see a dance, there's a practice sword duel that becomes serious or does it, camera movements at times seem arbitrary and I'm not even sure that the characters are even meant to be separate since the dialogue sometimes feels like it could have been spoken by anyone. In short, nothing quite fits. And so far this could almost be describing some Ed Wood-esque b-atrocity but the thing is that Noroît doesn't feel that way. Perhaps it's best to call it an abstract narrative so that just as a painting isn't required to resolve into recognizable images then this film has story and story-like elements that don't resolve into a patterned narrative. It's often quite stunning to see (cinematographer William Lubtchansky worked on numerous other Rivette and Godard features) and makes the most of its ruined-castle setting. In fact I half want to see this again even though I know it won't make any more sense than before. Jonathan Rosenbaum pretty much nailed it when he wrote it "contains the most beautiful images and sounds of any Rivette film, and the fewest indications of what a spectator is meant to do with them, apart from look and listen."
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Films 2011
As usual films seen for the first time from January 1 to December 31, 2011.
Best:
Alphabetical this year - normally I figure if I'm silly enough to do this at all might as well go all the way but maybe it's time to be only 90% silly.
Attack the Block (Joe Cornish 2011) - Don't know what it says about me that there are two monster-attack films on this list but as pure entertainment nothing I saw was this clever, imaginative or tightly controlled and as social observation it was nearly as strong.
Dillinger e Morto (Marco Ferrri 1969) - I'd never heard of this until Criterion's release but what a stupefying experience. Sometimes starkly controlled and other times almost over-determined but cryptic, elliptical and not quite like anything else.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates 1973) - Yep, I'm a sucker for naturalistic, low-level crime stories and they're actually fairly uncommon in films - this one is even an adaptation from a fantastic novel. This look at a bottom-rung fixer/go-between who slowly gets ground in the gears could easily have been too heavy-handed or, oddly, too dark but there's more going on here than in the handful of episodes of The Wire that I saw.
Greenberg (Noah Baumbach 2010) - Another almost slice-of-life story about a nobody, only this time no crime just a confused, badly adjusted guy trying to make something happen - but the film manages to capture life's confusion and unexpected changes.
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus (Terry Gilliam 2009) - Childish fantasy films like the Lord of the Rings series get the attention but this is the real thing.
Lola (Jacques Demy 1961) - Like its New Wave contemporaries a sharp, not entirely cheerful character study of two people drifting through life - one competely aware of it, the other not.
Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino 2010) - Forget all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo surrounding this film and go for the minimal, nearly blank look at rural life that's either one of the most peculiar documentaries ever made or one of the least story-filled stories. And it boasts probably the most audacious shot I saw this year - a lengthy, single-take gag that I swear is a Tati tribute.
Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu 2009) - Odd that a film this visual and where so little happens is actually about language though instead of a dissertation this is more allusive and open - poetic in the deepest sense.
Pontypool (Bruce MacDonald 2008) - And hey another film that's "about language" and in this case it had me laughing out loud even though this isn't a comedy (and the humor was intentional or at least not unintended). Just imagine a Beckett zombie film only this is by Canadians so they're smarter and more human than Beckett ever was.
Road to Nowhere (Monte Hellman 2010) - If you don't like it that title is all too descriptive but I'd claim it's a Rivettean hall-of-mirrors and in a way more audacious than Tree of Life. Hellman is one of America's great directors and it's a shame it takes so many years for his films to get made.
The Social Network (David Fincher 2010) - Citizen Kane reimagined for the consumer generation.
The 3 Rs (David Lynch 2011) - A "trailer" for the Vienna Film Festival that borders on self-parody but is just as confusing (and disturbing) as his best work.
Honorable:
American Revolution 2 (Howard Alk & Mike Gray 1969)
Bridesmaids (Paul Feig 2011)
Bug (William Friedkin 2006)
Careful! (Guy Maddin 1992)
Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (Roy Boulting 1959)
Death Rides a Horse (Giulio Petroni 1967)
Deep Red (Dario Argento 1975)
Don't Look Back (Marina de Van 2009)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy 2010)
Extract (Mike Judge 2009)
Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith 1963)
La Jetee (Chris Marker 1962)
The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom 2010)
Monsters (Gareth Edwards 2010)
A Prophet (Jacques Audiard 2009)
Red State (Kevin Smith 2011)
Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas 2008)
The Sun's Burial (Nagisa Oshima 1960)
The Tempest (Derek Jarman 1979)
Trollhunter (André Øvredal 2010)
24 City (Jia Zhang-ke 2008)
Va Savoir (Jacques Rivette 2001)
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke 2009)
Winter's Bone (Debra Granik 2010)
Crimes:
Jonah Hex (Jimmy Hayward 2010)
Knight and Day (James Mangold 2010)
Don't Touch the White Woman (Marco Ferreri 1974)
The Room (Tommy Wiseau 2003)
Antichrist (Lars von Trier 2009)
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul 2006)
The Green Hornet (Michel Gondry 2011)
Rubber (Quentin Dupieux 2010)
The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone 2010)
Battle Los Angeles (Jonathan Liebesman 2011)
Seven Mummies (Nick Quested 2006)
Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé 2009)
Top films I didn't see:
Borrowing an idea from another critic who decided to show some of the arbitrariness of this whole process by listing the top films he hadn't seen. I'm only including ones that I would be likely to, well, like - things along the lines of the highly praised Uncle Boonmee or Midnight in Paris seem long shots to me.
A Separation
The Turin Horse
This Is Not a Film
The Artist
A Dangerous Method
Kill List
Drive
Carlos
Another Year
Mysteries of Lisbon
Film Socialisme
Young Adult
Hugo
Mildred Pierce
Life Without Principle
Margaret
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
and I can't imagine where I'd ever get to see Christian Marclay's The Clock (saw his Guitar Drag at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago) but it sounds incredible.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen 2011)
Woody Allen periodically gets "he's back" praise though really he hasn't been back in twenty or so years. Midnight in Paris is the latest trigger for such claims and it's as hard to see why as it has been with any of the previous ones. The film is really nothing more than a Twilight Zone episode complete with a stated moral, only at more than four times the length. Allen goes to little trouble expanding this and instead simply pads - his usual artist-wannabe protagonist, an annoying pedant, a repressive (but not repressed) woman and so forth. He even resorts to almost four minutes of nothing but pure postcard-pictoral views of the city - really he should have been paying more attention to Atget.
The 20s Paris we get in the film is up front about being a fantasy and it would be easy to write off the whole thing as the protagonist's dream except for a brief scene of another character also being pulled into the past (quite inexplicably into what appears to be Louis XIV's period). The problem isn't that it's a fantasy but that it's one aimed at a modern American audience. That's why none of the historical figures are French except for a passing mention of Cocteau - the rest are all American or Spanish. Where's oh let's go with Proust, Artaud, Giradoux, Perse, Colette, Gide, Mauriac, Bernanos or even squeezing in Simenon and Celine just among the writers. And as a filmmaker shouldn't Allen have found just some room for Renoir, Gance, L'Herbier, Clair, Epstein, Dulac, Carne, Feyder, etc? I have no idea which of these were in Paris at this time but it's plausible for most of them and anyway the chronology of the people actually in the film doesn't match either. (And yes I know Simenon and Feyder were Belgian but they lived in France so I'm leaving it.)
But the critical point comes up with the Surrealists, bunches of whom were definitely in Paris and definitely high profile. In Allen's Paris we get Dali who just spouts silliness and then Ray and Bunuel who have very little dialogue at all. (Though Bunuel is given the idea for The Exterminating Angel in a bit reminiscent of Marty giving Chuck Berry rock 'n' roll in Back to the Future.) In other words the Surrealists are just dismissed as window-dressing where we're shown none of their anti-clericism, on-again off-again relations with the Communists, epater-le-bourgeouise tactics, blatant if pecuilar eroticism, etc. But then Allen goes out of his way to avoid politics to the point that Hemingway's "war" sounds almost abstract. This Paris has no crippled veterans, no Action Francaise, no socialists or anarchists.
But so what? Isn't Midnight in Paris just a charming fantasy film? Maybe but Allen doesn't have the light touch needed for this. He did at one point (just think Zelig or Stardust Memories or Purple Rose of Cairo) but that's long gone. It's fine that he never explains the mechanics of Midnight's situation - why for instance does Gil return every night but his past-girlfriend get to choose to stay? Why does somebody drive out every night to pick up our protagonist? What do they think they're doing? Doesn't much matter. But one stumble is the book Gil finds that's his past-girlfriend's diary - apparently this is the actual handwritten diary though that's never made clear and I just thought it was a printed book until that started to seem implausible. It's way too arbitrary that Gil will stumble across this and then be able to recognize it even though he doesn't know French. And of course that the tour guide will translate just the right section seemingly at random. Maybe this is the problem at being four times the length of a Twilight Zone episode - it's hard to stay light or clever when you're trying to keep up the running time.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
American Horror Story
When I first heard that An American Horror Story was about a haunted house the obvious question was how? How could you fill a season let alone an entire series about a haunted house? Such stories have clear limitations and certainly the creators of Glee don’t have the imagination or abilities to by pass such limitations. As it happens the question of the series was resolved in a press conference where the announcement was made that each season will focus on a different house (and presumably a different cast though wouldn’t it be interesting if they kept the same actors every season but had them play different characters).
Filling the first season was done two ways. The first was to provide a parallel story so as a result we start the show with a family In crisis due to the husband’s infidelity and, it’s hinted, the wife’s dissatisfaction with having given up an artistic career (as a cellist of all things). I’m not sure this was deliberately done to fill the season so much as this is just how TV/film writers work now – characters are given one or two clearly delineated problems. TV writers in particular seem unable to write except in terms of The Family. (Reinforcing this is the flood of screenwriting books and classes, none designed to teach how to write a good script no matter what they claim but only a saleable one.) That this is the case can be shown by the thinness of the characters despite having twelve long episodes to fill – just think of how much more effective even routine films of the 30s or 40s were at creating characters in a mere fragment of this running time.
The issue with starting a horror film with an already damaged family is that it sidetracks the point of the genre which starts from normality then undergoes a disruption before returning to the status quo or something resembling it (the basic arc as well of mysteries and to a different degree romance/melodrama and comedies). In and of itself the show’s change isn’t important but what it means is that there’s already a story there (the broken family) that really doesn’t need the haunted house element and even more to the point it downplays the horror element. It’s one thing to see good people trying to overcome adversity but quite another to watch self-centered unpleasant ones. Where’s the problem? After all as American Horror Story gives us there’s not much tension – a depressed teenaged goth girl with family troubles and uprooted 3000 miles from her home and friends is certainly low-hanging fruit for any evil spirits.
But maybe this is why the creators relied even more on the second method of filling up the season – excess. Rather than a story with a couple of subplots American Horror Story seems determined to throw in everything possible. So we get the usual haunted house creeps and vengeful spirits but a nonstop parade of mass murderers, the victims, arsonists, illegal abortionists, rapist dentists, nosy neighbors, rowdy teenagers, Frankenstein-monster body constructions, deformed children in the attic, even more cheating husbands, malicious twins, a Downs Syndrome woman, a ghost who doesn’t know she’s a ghost. Oh and it goes on – the Black Dahlia, the lost colony of Roanoke, a Southern Gothic mother, a rehash of Beetlejuice (yes really), some elements lifted from Kill Baby Kill (the rolling ball and the house that can’t be escaped), a full-body fetish rubber suit and eventually the, yes, Antichrist. Nearly every episode starts with a flashback scene as well. And though this description almost makes it sound like a black comedy that’s clearly not the point even though it has one of the funniest scenes I saw this year (the ultrasound technician fainting) that seems to have been meant seriously.
At least AHS isn’t boring even though it’s not particularly clever or interesting or even good (in whatever way you want to interpret “good”). The whole thing runs along with stuff happening, stuff not mattering much and lots of people dying. It’s clear that the creators never really thought this through. A major plot point is that ghosts can’t leave the house though we actually see a couple who do. Why? What happens with the so-called Antichrist baby? Why are there so many spirits in this house and why do some hide and some not? Why does the family get a happy ending just because they died? This feels purely created by a perceived need to wrap up the season on a high note rather than anything in the story – after all nothing similar happens to the other spirits and why should the family conflicts be erased just by death? What’s the deal with Jessica Lange’s character living next door? And why would anybody move into a house that’s had so many public murders?
Guess we may never know but then do we much care. (Except maybe for the Entertainment Weekly writer who raved enough in a cover story to claim this might be the strangest TV show ever – clearly someone who hasn’t seen much TV.) I half hope the next season will focus on a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with maybe just a couple of characters – imagine Beckett rewriting The House on the Borderland. But we’ll just get a rehash of the first season which is its own horror story. (See how cleverly I did that? Hollywood call me….)
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Rosenbaum's spoilers
I read Jonathan Rosenbaum's "In Defence of Spoilers" back when it first appeared and back when it looked like just more of Rosenbaum's developing flakiness. But he felt strongly enough about it to include the piece in his recent book Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia - wonder if the editor asked him to rethink that decision.
Because it's an odd piece, not a defence so much as an attack on people who want to avoid spoilers. Rosenbaum basically calls them infants and compares their desire to avoid spoilers to wanting to be taken care of by parents - not exactly a mature approach in itself. Especially when you consider that much of his piece is so self-centered, claiming that it keeps him from doing his job or that not everybody thinks that way. As for doing his job of course as a critic spoilers (or more accurately full descriptive access to the film) shouldn't be avoided but much of the time his job isn't as a critic but a reviewer which is a different situation. As a reviewer most of his job is consumer advice and that involves not actually, y'know, damaging the reader's experience any more than necessary. As a reviewer avoiding spoilers is a key part of the job and if Rosenbaum disagrees then he really shouldn't have been writing reviews.
It's also strange that he apparently doesn't realize that the historical examples are irrelevant or perhaps even contradict his point. Yes, many early novels had (often lengthy) chapter titles that revealed what would happen and sure some works even mention a key plot point or even ending in the title. (And how did he miss the Trollope novels that tell you outright in the first chapter what's going to happen at the end and recommend that if this isn't acceptable then to stop reading?) But these examples all are the artist's decision, whether they might have been a convention of the time doesn't matter. When an artist doesn't include such revelations then isn't it a bit arrogant to claim that a reviewer has the right to do so?
Other parts of the piece aren't even worth discussing. To claim that avoiding spoilers would also mean he should avoid mentioning epigraphs is quite silly if not just a bizarre I'm-gonna-take-my-ball-and-go-home hissy fit. Admittedly the piece shows Rosenbaum at his worst but unfortunately it's not completely atypical of his late writing (which I'll get into more if I ever cover Goodbye Cinema).
Because it's an odd piece, not a defence so much as an attack on people who want to avoid spoilers. Rosenbaum basically calls them infants and compares their desire to avoid spoilers to wanting to be taken care of by parents - not exactly a mature approach in itself. Especially when you consider that much of his piece is so self-centered, claiming that it keeps him from doing his job or that not everybody thinks that way. As for doing his job of course as a critic spoilers (or more accurately full descriptive access to the film) shouldn't be avoided but much of the time his job isn't as a critic but a reviewer which is a different situation. As a reviewer most of his job is consumer advice and that involves not actually, y'know, damaging the reader's experience any more than necessary. As a reviewer avoiding spoilers is a key part of the job and if Rosenbaum disagrees then he really shouldn't have been writing reviews.
It's also strange that he apparently doesn't realize that the historical examples are irrelevant or perhaps even contradict his point. Yes, many early novels had (often lengthy) chapter titles that revealed what would happen and sure some works even mention a key plot point or even ending in the title. (And how did he miss the Trollope novels that tell you outright in the first chapter what's going to happen at the end and recommend that if this isn't acceptable then to stop reading?) But these examples all are the artist's decision, whether they might have been a convention of the time doesn't matter. When an artist doesn't include such revelations then isn't it a bit arrogant to claim that a reviewer has the right to do so?
Other parts of the piece aren't even worth discussing. To claim that avoiding spoilers would also mean he should avoid mentioning epigraphs is quite silly if not just a bizarre I'm-gonna-take-my-ball-and-go-home hissy fit. Admittedly the piece shows Rosenbaum at his worst but unfortunately it's not completely atypical of his late writing (which I'll get into more if I ever cover Goodbye Cinema).
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Halloween Movies Part 2
Well, late with this one as well. As expected I never got to 31 horror movies in October – the count was 18 though if I hadn’t spent time watching other movies and TV probably could have made it. (And as it turned out Red State is marketed as a horror film but it isn’t, not really.) So onward:
The Horde (Yannick Dahan & Benjamin Rocher 2009) - So many zombie movies look pretty much the same and while this one is from the same template (group trapped in an enclosed space) it does most things right. For one thing it’s quite grim, almost excessively so, without the joking or in-references that fill (and dilute) other z-films. The set-up of a group of quasi-rogue cops forced to band with Nigerian & Eastern European gangsters is an unusual set-up and the film follows the logic of the story to the bleak (though expected) end.
Pontypool (Bruce McDonald 2008) - Another zombie movie but about as far from The Horde as possible. Pontypool could almost be a play since with one minor exception all the action takes place in one location and there are only a few characters. (Maybe horror films are one of the last bastions for the dramatic unities.) While The Horde is almost an action film at heart, Pontypool is an intellectual puzzle leaning towards artfilm. In fact the source of the zombie outbreak is utterly unique and so unpredictable and so completely appropriate to the nature of Pontypool as a film (and maybe even cinema itself) that it had me laughing out loud. But the whole thing is anchored by two burrowing performances by Stephen McHattie as an arrogant radio host trapped in a small town trying to make sense of the senseless and Lisa Houle as the exasperated producer wanting to keep the whole show going.
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (Seth Hold 1971)- Another late Hammer film like Vampire Circus but unlike that one this is mostly plodding. If nothing else there’s no mummy in it – a preserved Egyptian priestess yes but she’s not mummified. The story moves along far too slowly and completely predictably with mostly in-it-for-the-paycheck actors (though Valerie Leon seems to have been hired for the impressive cleavage she displays).
I Married a Witch (Rene Clair 1942) – A light supernatural comedy from Clair’s American period most notable for Veronica Lake’s bubbly performance. Films like this and Topper haven’t received the attention of say the Universal horrors perhaps because they aren’t at heart horror films and quite likely because they’re also so spread out chronologically that it’s a tad tricky to make genre connections (though such clearly exist). And you can’t rule out that mostly male horror fans are likely to dismiss anything that’s to a large extent a romantic comedy. This one may be predictable but it’s fairly clever and the cast puts a lot into keeping the proceedings swift and the dialogue crisp. Sometimes that’s really all you need.
Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura 2008) - That title will tell you this isn’t any light supernatural comedy though I suppose it is more or less comic in approach. Which is probably just as well considering that it’s possibly the most violent or at least bloodiest film I’ve seen and at times one of the most imaginative. There’s some stuff here that is unique and if that’s a lot of effort for something of this nature well hey at least it keeps the filmmakers off the streets.
The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm 2010) - Yet another fake documentary, this time about an exorcist who’s realized it’s all a scam and decides to take one last job. As you could guess nothing turns out quite right though the way it doesn’t turn out quite right keeps the film from being dull with some plot twists and a few effective Blair Witch-styled spooky scenes. A couple of problems though. First is that nobody seems to have a cell phone which while I realize this was done to keep the story on track (can’t have them calling the police all the time can we?) it does seem odd. Especially when it would take only a very short bit of dialogue to explain that phones aren’t working, either because they’re so far out in the country or for more mysterious reasons. The other issue is the ending which I’m not going to reveal except to point out that since the film exorcist spends time at the start showing how he fakes demonic effects then at the end shouldn’t we also think there’s a strong possibility that what we’re seeing was also faked? The ending is presented so bluntly that I think we’re supposed to take it at face value but the film itself raised the question of falsifying appearances so it’s not unreasonable to take that approach. Still, if the description of The Last Exorcist sounds like your kinda movie then it almost certainly is.
Madhouse (Jim Clark 1974) - I’m not entirely sure how Vincent Price got to be such an icon. He always seems to be if not quite mocking his roles and the genre then at least to be unserious about it. This approach works to advantage in his Corman films and a few like Theatre of Blood but then you get things like Madhouse that isn’t comic but is certainly a bit too loose for its own good. Price playing a disgraced horror film icon (more or less like Dr Phibes) is self-reflexive and pairing him with Peter Cushing must have seemed like a great idea during pre-production. And certainly there are some unusual characters like the spider-loving wife or the greedy parents of a murder victim but overall the murder mystery aspect overwhelms any sense of suspense or even sometimes even plain old storytelling. Price fans will probably get more out of this than the rest of us.
Giant from the Unknown (Richard E. Cunha 1958) - I love these 50s b-movies that seem tossed together in a week. The location filming adds a bit of documentary feel (I suspect those old general stores and cabins were real and not sets) and the idea of a resurrected Spanish conquistador is unusual. B-Western vet Bob Steele appears as a suspicious sheriff.
Session 9 (Brad Anderson 2001) – David Caruso stars as an asbestos remover working on an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Just that one sentence tells you about everything you need to know. The attempt is towards spooky and psychological but really it just sort of wanders along with a bit of is-this-real and a tad of is-he-crazy. Ken Loach vet Peter Mullan does a good turn but there’s just not much to work with. Doesn’t help that this was shot in a form of digital that ends up blurring the image a bit too much (though I suppose if I liked the film this could be justified as adding to the ambiguity).
I Sell the Dead (Glenn McQuaid 2008) – An attempt at horror-comedy that doesn’t work either way. The basic idea of 18th century graverobbers who discover that reanimated corpses bring more money than plain ole nonanimated ones has some potential but there’s not a real story. Instead this is closer to a collection of short films, not smartly done enough to be called picaresque and not episodic enough to make me suspect it was a failed TV pilot. I’m not really sure about the story's date because the film is a bit unclear about that and about exactly where it happens (Scotland? England?) though there’s a good chance I was just snoozing when this was explained. I do wonder if the guillotine was ever used in the British isles – seems wrong.
Grace (Paul Solet 2009) – A pregnant woman whose husband died in a wreck must deal with medical complications, an intrusive mother-in-law and a baby that might be Something Other. There, I just saved you an hour and a half so use it wisely.
The Horde (Yannick Dahan & Benjamin Rocher 2009) - So many zombie movies look pretty much the same and while this one is from the same template (group trapped in an enclosed space) it does most things right. For one thing it’s quite grim, almost excessively so, without the joking or in-references that fill (and dilute) other z-films. The set-up of a group of quasi-rogue cops forced to band with Nigerian & Eastern European gangsters is an unusual set-up and the film follows the logic of the story to the bleak (though expected) end.
Pontypool (Bruce McDonald 2008) - Another zombie movie but about as far from The Horde as possible. Pontypool could almost be a play since with one minor exception all the action takes place in one location and there are only a few characters. (Maybe horror films are one of the last bastions for the dramatic unities.) While The Horde is almost an action film at heart, Pontypool is an intellectual puzzle leaning towards artfilm. In fact the source of the zombie outbreak is utterly unique and so unpredictable and so completely appropriate to the nature of Pontypool as a film (and maybe even cinema itself) that it had me laughing out loud. But the whole thing is anchored by two burrowing performances by Stephen McHattie as an arrogant radio host trapped in a small town trying to make sense of the senseless and Lisa Houle as the exasperated producer wanting to keep the whole show going.
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (Seth Hold 1971)- Another late Hammer film like Vampire Circus but unlike that one this is mostly plodding. If nothing else there’s no mummy in it – a preserved Egyptian priestess yes but she’s not mummified. The story moves along far too slowly and completely predictably with mostly in-it-for-the-paycheck actors (though Valerie Leon seems to have been hired for the impressive cleavage she displays).
I Married a Witch (Rene Clair 1942) – A light supernatural comedy from Clair’s American period most notable for Veronica Lake’s bubbly performance. Films like this and Topper haven’t received the attention of say the Universal horrors perhaps because they aren’t at heart horror films and quite likely because they’re also so spread out chronologically that it’s a tad tricky to make genre connections (though such clearly exist). And you can’t rule out that mostly male horror fans are likely to dismiss anything that’s to a large extent a romantic comedy. This one may be predictable but it’s fairly clever and the cast puts a lot into keeping the proceedings swift and the dialogue crisp. Sometimes that’s really all you need.
Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura 2008) - That title will tell you this isn’t any light supernatural comedy though I suppose it is more or less comic in approach. Which is probably just as well considering that it’s possibly the most violent or at least bloodiest film I’ve seen and at times one of the most imaginative. There’s some stuff here that is unique and if that’s a lot of effort for something of this nature well hey at least it keeps the filmmakers off the streets.
The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm 2010) - Yet another fake documentary, this time about an exorcist who’s realized it’s all a scam and decides to take one last job. As you could guess nothing turns out quite right though the way it doesn’t turn out quite right keeps the film from being dull with some plot twists and a few effective Blair Witch-styled spooky scenes. A couple of problems though. First is that nobody seems to have a cell phone which while I realize this was done to keep the story on track (can’t have them calling the police all the time can we?) it does seem odd. Especially when it would take only a very short bit of dialogue to explain that phones aren’t working, either because they’re so far out in the country or for more mysterious reasons. The other issue is the ending which I’m not going to reveal except to point out that since the film exorcist spends time at the start showing how he fakes demonic effects then at the end shouldn’t we also think there’s a strong possibility that what we’re seeing was also faked? The ending is presented so bluntly that I think we’re supposed to take it at face value but the film itself raised the question of falsifying appearances so it’s not unreasonable to take that approach. Still, if the description of The Last Exorcist sounds like your kinda movie then it almost certainly is.
Madhouse (Jim Clark 1974) - I’m not entirely sure how Vincent Price got to be such an icon. He always seems to be if not quite mocking his roles and the genre then at least to be unserious about it. This approach works to advantage in his Corman films and a few like Theatre of Blood but then you get things like Madhouse that isn’t comic but is certainly a bit too loose for its own good. Price playing a disgraced horror film icon (more or less like Dr Phibes) is self-reflexive and pairing him with Peter Cushing must have seemed like a great idea during pre-production. And certainly there are some unusual characters like the spider-loving wife or the greedy parents of a murder victim but overall the murder mystery aspect overwhelms any sense of suspense or even sometimes even plain old storytelling. Price fans will probably get more out of this than the rest of us.
Giant from the Unknown (Richard E. Cunha 1958) - I love these 50s b-movies that seem tossed together in a week. The location filming adds a bit of documentary feel (I suspect those old general stores and cabins were real and not sets) and the idea of a resurrected Spanish conquistador is unusual. B-Western vet Bob Steele appears as a suspicious sheriff.
Session 9 (Brad Anderson 2001) – David Caruso stars as an asbestos remover working on an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Just that one sentence tells you about everything you need to know. The attempt is towards spooky and psychological but really it just sort of wanders along with a bit of is-this-real and a tad of is-he-crazy. Ken Loach vet Peter Mullan does a good turn but there’s just not much to work with. Doesn’t help that this was shot in a form of digital that ends up blurring the image a bit too much (though I suppose if I liked the film this could be justified as adding to the ambiguity).
I Sell the Dead (Glenn McQuaid 2008) – An attempt at horror-comedy that doesn’t work either way. The basic idea of 18th century graverobbers who discover that reanimated corpses bring more money than plain ole nonanimated ones has some potential but there’s not a real story. Instead this is closer to a collection of short films, not smartly done enough to be called picaresque and not episodic enough to make me suspect it was a failed TV pilot. I’m not really sure about the story's date because the film is a bit unclear about that and about exactly where it happens (Scotland? England?) though there’s a good chance I was just snoozing when this was explained. I do wonder if the guillotine was ever used in the British isles – seems wrong.
Grace (Paul Solet 2009) – A pregnant woman whose husband died in a wreck must deal with medical complications, an intrusive mother-in-law and a baby that might be Something Other. There, I just saved you an hour and a half so use it wisely.
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