The Holiday

The only thing worse than a romantic comedy, is a meta-romantic comedy. The Holiday fully acknowledges its status as a romantic comedy by inserting a character who is an expert on such matters, a former Hollywood screenwriter; thus it thinks that it deserves kudos for being so brash and fun with the concept. The problem being that even a meta-romantic comedy is still a romantic comedy, so it has rules and guidelines that it must follow, no matter how “original” or “daring” it is with the concept.

The only movie I’ve ever seen that actually made the romantic comedy concept work on a level slightly higher than appealing to the viewer’s base sensibilities was Love Actually. Love Actually was comprised of a handful of stories, each one barely related to the other, kind of like You’ve Got Mail by way of Pulp Fiction. It worked because each story was short and concise and everything we needed to know about the characters was shown to us and anything else was inferred. Normally, each one of these little vignettes could have comprised an entire films worth of pandering nonsense, irrevocably ruining their concepts by adding filler like singing to a popular song of the era in which the film is made (and in turn dating the movie considerably) or perhaps dancing around candles or something. Love Actually was like a bunch of expanded trailers for a bunch of romantic comedies. Nothing was inherently different or good about the film other than its relieving concept to break up all the action between a bunch of people rather just focusing on Hugh Grant or Alan Rickman or Liam Neeson.

The real problem with The Holiday is that though it winks at the audience every once in a while, it still feels the need to jerk the audience off by including such romantic comedy mainstays like: meet-cutes, lip-synching to a popular song, dancing around a candle and/or piece of furniture, the jerk ex-boyfriend, the put upon female lead, the “breath of fresh air” male lead, montages, more meet-cutes, yet another put-upon female lead, the male lead with a secret that could prohibit him getting close with the female lead, last minute decisions that no one in their right mind would make (not giving a shit about spending tons of money on a plane ticket, then and the last second deciding you don’t want to go), oh yeah and a couple more meet-cutes for good measure.

I know, there’s a thing called suspension of disbelief. I’m supposed to go into every movie trusting that the director and/or writer of the film is God and the world they are showing us is world that exists outside of our reality. Eli Wallach plays an aging screenwriter long past his prime and he points out to a slumming-it Kate Winslet all the little things going on in her life that are just like the movies and how she could fix them, just like the movies. Cameron Diaz basically plays herself as a movie trailer editor whose life is interrupted occasionally by narration in the movie trailer guy voice. These bits are handled so poorly, it makes me think that I didn’t actually see them, and that I made them up, but they were so bad I don’t dare go back and check if they actually existed. I’m completely content with thinking they weren’t real, because that would make the movie a iota better in my mind. Like the universe that this movie is set in is one remarkably like ours except that it contains these brief quantum lapses where the collective subconscious of society simultaneously experiences these ethereal dream states and meta-interactions with our God/Creator. Hmm, maybe this movie was a little better than I thought. But no, the films director, Nancy Meyers, tries so hard to convince us that this movie is set in our world by including constant references to films we're familiar with, but its still run by the same conventions of the romantic comedy world.

A lot of people complain that movies like The Matrix and Natural Born Killers inspire kids to kill people (which they don’t, I assure you) but no one ever says anything about how movies like The Holiday and it’s bastard cousins convince people how to relate romantically to each other. Ask anyone what they’re idea of romance is and I can guarantee it’ll sound exactly like a scene from a shitty movie with Sandra Bullock and/or Hugh Grant in it. When you have this image in your mind of a Prince or Princess Charming and you convince yourself that you are going to find that one perfect person you will perpetually be disappointed because no one who fits your ideal actually exists. Love is about compromise, not compromise in the bad sense, but it is about realizing that not everyone is perfect, including yourself, and loving them for those imperfections. Imperfections are what make us unique, not all of us can be the great dad that Jude Law is, or the wonderfully random film composer that Jack Black is. We’re all who we are and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll find someone you can love.

Romantic Comedies don’t allow room for the truth, they are built upon lie after lie after lie. I’m not talking about the Hollywood “Truth” either, where in you discuss taboo topics or sweat a lot, I’m talking about the honest to goodness for real truth. There are all kinds of things wrong with The Holiday, I could devote a book to deconstructing its fallacies and ill-performed inaccuracies. If you’re going to be meta, commit to it, don’t fall into the same traps that you’re attempting to destroy.

300

I remember going to White Horse comics in Villa Park about 9 or 10 years ago and picking up this massive book called "300". I looked through the pages and was floored by the intense artwork it contained. Contrasted and dynamic flows of brutality that read more like the fever dreams of psychotic Greek history enthusiast than a “comic book”. But alas, it cost more money that I tended to spend those days and as I left that comic book store, so faded my memory of "300".

Fast-forward to April 2005, Sin City, an adaptation of another brilliant Frank Miller book, is released in theaters. Seeing Frank Millers style translated flawlessly to the screen was one of those benchmark moments in my life, something that I’ll never forget, and something that I’ll point to the next time someone asks me why I love movies so much. That same contrasted and dynamic style painted itself across the screen in a blaze of neo-noir glory, like a Dashiell Hammett acid flashback. In the wake of Sin City’s success a movie got greenlit based on a story I hadn’t thought about in ages, and when the first trailer was released for 300, my mind immediately flew back to the one feeling I can still remember from that day in the comic book shop so many years ago: sheer awe.

When I sat down in my seat at our local IMAX, my knees were practically shaking at the excitement. I was nervous, as most of my kind (nerds, geeks, dorks, etc. etc.) can get sometimes. We devote loads of our conscious thoughts to movies, and generally we’ll devote them to one movie in particular. Most of my waking moments prior to March 9th, 2007 had been spent thinking about that night and the opportunity I would be granted in the form of a motion picture. Were there ever a movie made that earned the title “motion picture”, 300 would certainly be it.

The first images that flashed on the screen forced back my nervousness and flew me into a state of geek nirvana. A wide-eyed smile painted itself on my face as a spear punched through the head of a wolf was painted onto the screen. I was at my church.

I mentioned 300 as being a motion picture, and I say that in its most literal context. Motion suggests movement, while a picture suggests the lack of movement, something static. Movies at their base form are a series of pictures flashed in front of your eyes, creating the illusion of movement. With 300, the audience is afforded the opportunity of absorbing every detail of the scene with the films masterful use of slow motion. Just as with a picture, photograph or painting, with 300 you are given tremendous amounts of time to scan the frame and analyze its composition.

Imagine a golden grassy field with a sun on the horizon, a rumble gets louder and over a hilltop a cadre of men on horseback slowly march towards you. A typical movie could illustrate this event in a matter of seconds. 300 makes you feel it, it makes you feel it in your bones. What do these men bring? Are they to be feared? Loved? Are they the harbingers of death and tyranny that a sovereign city-state such as Sparta was built to defend against? Anyway you slice it, when they finally arrive at the city gates, your skepticism of these strange visitors is not only heightened, but it is also felt deeper as the camera slowly pans across the denizens of Sparta.

I don’t think the point of the using of slow motion was just to make it look cool (though it certainly helps). Nor do I think it was used to bring it closer to Frank Miller’s interpretation of the story. It was used to give the audience a sense of importance, that the events happening on the screen mean something. Think about this in the context of King Leonidas, the decision he made to bring 300 of his best soldiers to defend his city against the invading Persian hordes was not as easy one. It was a decision, in fact, that based on the laws of Sparta, was entirely illegal. But based on his ideals and his personal way of life, it wasn’t that much of a decision at all. It was more of a reaction or reflex. What would you do if someone had threatened your freedom in the way the Persian messenger threatened Leonidas’? You’d fight. You’d fight for your life. So the slow motion is used to highlight scenes of great importance. The approaching Persian messenger, the bloody battles, and the finale’s spear toss. The slow motion is telling you: “Pay attention.”

The movie is all about King Leonidas and the Spartans perspective. So in that sense, the slow motion is a perfect way to show you that perspective. Now a days, we all know that Xerxes wasn’t 10 feet tall, that Rhinoceros’ and Elephants weren’t that big and that there weren’t gigantic monster men fighting for Persia, but from the perspective of the Spartans, that’s what it looked like. There was the invading mass of people that were completely and utterly foreign to them. I doubt they’d ever even seen a brown-skinned person let alone an exotic animal. In the hands of a less skilled director, this concept could have been overblown and worthy of the hysteria that it caused in Iran. If this were a Michael Bay picture, the Persians would practically be aliens driving spaceships, thankfully Zach Snyder didn’t take it quite that far. It was exotic enough with out being entirely ridiculous.

I suppose that were the audience full of a bunch of goons and lummoxes, they might take Snyder’s and Miller’s interpretation of “crazy foreigners” all too literally. But then again, I think the people who would take that seriously are also the people who think that their Judas Priest record told them to kill somebody or that video games caused Columbine. There’s a point where Hollywood should be relieved of responsibility and the actions and thought processes of individuals should be further examined, but I digress. That isn’t the point of this movie or what I’m trying to say about it. Beyond all the grandiose images and storytelling I think that there is fairly clear message to 300, one that is entirely relevant today.

Since 300 was released I’ve heard a lot of comparisons to Bush and Iraq and blah blah blah. Is Bush Sparta and Iraq the Persians or vice versa? One could argue both sides. Bush equals Sparta as a triumphant display of power or Bush equals Persia as a ruthless invading horde lead by a narcissistic dictator. By making those comparison’s, I think the point is missed entirely. Whether or not the Spartans were truly “free” or even democratic, and despite the fact that Xerxes armies were generally paid, the movie didn’t portray them that way. If you’re pissed about that, then you take things too seriously. It’s a movie and a story, one that never claimed to be real or accurate.

Anyways, the movie is about freedom, and deciding what you are going to do when your freedom is threatened. Will you listen to those whose influence over you is more inspired by politics than personal choice? Or will you listen to what you know is right? In today’s world, we are being constantly told what is right and what is wrong, even if what we are being told goes against every concept of those terms that we’ve ever heard. Politicians over-speak it and the media over-reports it. As a people and society we’re full of a lot of confusion and conflicting thoughts. But each of us knows inside what is right and what is wrong. Whether it was learned from your religion, your parents or whoever else inspired you, morality is a concept that each and every one of us has a grasp of. 300 isn’t just about fighting for what you believe, it’s about making that choice. It’s about standing and watching as your freedoms and concept of what’s right being eroded away, and ultimately deciding to do something about it.

I walked away from 300 having my concept of what cinema can be blown out of the water by the thunderstorm that was that film. Not only that, but my concept of the philosophical aspect of what a film can achieve was altered as well. At its base 300 is a perfectly passable, if not immensely elegant interpretation of the action-movie historical fantasy genre. But beneath it’s sheening gloss of blood and brutality, swords and stones, I felt something slightly deeper. I’m an American through and through, I haven’t got enough of any one European ethnicity in me to claim allegiance to any other country or ethnicity. I’m what America is supposed to be, everyone and everything. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that made feel proud of being American, and in today’s political and cultural hailstorm of attacks on America’s politicians and it’s people, can you really blame me? 300 didn’t make me feel any more “American” than I had before I walked into the theater, but it did stir the pot of my appreciation of freedom and what it means to me. I appreciate the fact that I can go to the theater and watch a good film and interpret it how I choose. I appreciate that fact that my morals are my own. I know what is right and what is wrong. At the risk of sounding all “Rah-Rah! Go America!” about it, knowing that difference is what America represents to me.

Son of a Bitch

You know what? The only reason I went to see the first Fantastic Four was because I had a free ticket. It was an okay movie, but I said to myself "It's gonna take alot for me to go see a sequel, especially if I have to pay for it." I was really looking forward to not giving Tim Story or any other goofball involved in the first one any of my money. Then I saw the trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer. Let's just say that Fox already has my 9 dollars.

Check it out in Quicktime here.

Also, I can't decide what the coolest thing about this trailer is:
-Brian Poseh playing a priest
-The SILVER FUCKING SURFER

The Fountain

Requiem For A Dream, to me, was a deeply personal movie experience. I saw it at a time when many people in my family were still reeling from my cousin’s drug-related death. After seeing it I went out and bought it and I made my parents watch it (one could not have more awesome parents than I as they equally loved the movie) I knew of my fathers past, which at times was pretty scary, and how my mother factored greatly in his personal redemption. Knowing this made me self-aware when it came to participating in situations that involved illicit drug use among friends and “friends.” I tell myself that I never let it get out of hand, and in retrospect I don’t think I ever did, but Requiem For A Dream served as a visceral reminder of what not to do. Though my father ended up being one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, his road to get there was tough and Requiem For A Dream was my first literal experience of his tales, albeit kicked up a proverbial notch.

Having been so affected by Requiem For A Dream, I’ve been looking forward to The Fountain for what seems like a millennium. I couldn’t wait to see what Darren Aronofsky had to show me. I felt a deep connection to his style and narrative that has only been cemented further after having finally seen the film. I’d be lying if I didn’t think, on some cosmic level, that The Fountain was written directly for me.

This isn’t a notion that I think is entirely without merit, as I had stated above Requiem For A Dream helped my family and I through a trying, difficult time in our lives by revealing new perspectives on situations that it was hard to see a different side of. What Requiem did for drugs, The Fountain does for death. I experienced a life event last year that unfortunately everyone will have to go through at some point, the death of my mother. Yes it was over a year ago now but as I recently discovered, I’m not the only person in my family who is still trying to deal with it. They say time heals all wounds, but according to The Fountain, there are just some wounds that time can never fully heal.

We begin with a conquistador named Tomas that is set about on a quest to find the biblical "Tree of Life" by Queen Isabel of Spain. His tale is interwoven with that of a modern day brain surgeon looking for a cure for his wife, who is dying from an untreatable brain tumor; and that of an unnamed space traveler on his way to a dying star with a nearly dead tree. It’s hard to see how these stories connect just from the literal description or synopsis, but as with most science-fiction films, its never really about what its about.

The yarns that Aronsofsky spins in The Fountain are all linked by one theme: everlasting life and the desire to find it (or end it, depending on your perspective). Our conquistador views it as a literal quest, much like that of any conqueror or explorer searching for anything. Our brain surgeon views it as an obsession, a means to escape the pain of his wife’s impending fate. Our space traveler, who seems to be the most tragic of the three, views it as a curse. He tattoo’s his arms (with ash and a rusty old calligraphy pen) with rings like a tree, (assumedly) one for every year he’s been alive. I didn’t count each one, but he’s filled one arm entirely, and the other is almost out. As we’ll learn later, this isn’t to merely count the time, but as a means of torturing himself for what he’s done.

Death is immensely haunting, it’s a beast that stalks us every day. I assumed The Fountain would be profoundly sad, as with almost every tale of death and its ramifications. I figured I would cry; many scenes took place in a hospital and I still have trouble even thinking about a hospital room because of all the time I spent in them during my mother’s illness. Loss is sad, death is loss, so obviously death is sad. But, to me, The Fountain wasn’t sad at all. Sure there were sad scenes, almost every good story with a point is going to have some, but as a whole the movie was overwhelmingly positive. It’s hard sometimes to see the good side of death, beyond the usual “They’re better off” speech.

We’re often so hung-up on the here and now reality of death that we forget what death means not only in the long run, but it’s spiritual implications as well. I used to be an atheist, and I’ve heard some good arguments for atheism, but I’ve always been of the “why not?” school as far as the existence of God is concerned. It’s never been something I’ve committed myself to, but it is a concept that I’ve thought a lot about. I believe spirituality is a personal matter, meant for discussion with those you love and care about, so I’ll keep this brief. I’m of the notion that we’re all connected, every living thing on this planet is connected on some level: every human, animal, insect, plant etc. What is that connection? I don’t know. Will I ever know? Probably not, but I’ve got a few ideas.

The Fountain is ultimately about that connectedness and how death is merely a shifting of those connections from the physical to the metaphysical. My mother is dead in the physical sense, but her “spirit” or “aura” has the ability to live forever (depending on the person, "spirit" or "aura" can mean a dozen different things. In the case of The Fountain, the physical represents the human form, while the metaphysical is represented by the more tacit conceit of a tree or nature. Is The Fountain saying that our soul becomes a tree when we die? No not really, but it can be interpreted as that. It’s merely stating that no matter what happens to us, no matter where our physical body ends up, we will always end up back in nature. The “we” that ends up back in nature is more for the individual to decide, do our bodies decompose and hence fertilize the earth or do our souls “become trees”?

Death is the ultimate unavoidable truth of our existence. No matter what happens to you when you live, you are always going to die, there’s simply no way around it. The Fountain doesn’t claim to know everything, and it doesn’t claim to offer any kinds of answers, just suggestions. Because of the powerful nature of the movies message, I can’t really interpret much of what those suggestions are for you. You just have to see it and interpret it for yourself, because of that I’m sure plenty of people will be turned away by this film, even the people that it was made for; either by the concept flying over their heads or by not noticing or caring for it’s inherent subtleties. The Fountain is not an obvious movie.

As with most things in life, people are always looking for the quick answers and they aren’t used to having to find the meaning for themselves. Even with death, we try and just forget about it and if we forget about it, then we forget about the pain it caused. I’m not saying you should remember it every second of the day or think about it whenever you can, just recognize that you will think about it and that it will make you sad sometimes. Much like The Fountain, life isn’t about what life is about, life is about the journey and the acceptance of its unavoidable end.

Thank You For Smoking

I didn’t really like Thank You For Smoking as much as I thought I would. I thought it would be a dry indictment of the tobacco industry and their overzealous crusade to drain the American legal system of justice and morality. I was thinking it would be kind of like The Insider from Big Tobacco’s perspective, but with laughs. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a good movie, because it was, it just wasn’t what I thought it would be, and what it turned out to actually be kind of pissed me off.

To me, there are only 3 reasons to give 20^th Century Fox my attention: “Prison Break”, “House” and re-runs of “The Simpsons”. Other than those three things I usually avoid most of Fox’s output like the plague. Sure I watch Star Wars a lot (Fox fundamentally just distributes that) and they’ve also made some of my favorite movies of all time, but as a general rule of thumb, if it says “Fox” on the movie poster or television advertisement I’ll give it negative 10 points to start with.

Why do I dislike Fox so much? Well, if you don’t know the answer to that question, then you probably like Fox a lot. You probably enjoy the new episodes of “Family Guy” (which they’ve been patting themselves on the back for bringing back, which is kind of like flushing a turd then diving into the toilet after it). I’ll bet you even like “The War At Home” (only Fox could co-opt a phrase like that and make a shitty sitcom out of it).

I’ll bet you’re getting all wet just waiting for the next season of American Idol (which should be renamed “What’s Really Wrong With America and How We’re Too Fucking Dumb To Fix It.”)

American Idol is basically the worst television show to have ever existed. The first few episodes focus solely on degrading and poking fun of those of us who still dare to grasp onto that American Dream we were all told about when we were little: making millions of dollars for being famous; even people who were never actually on the show become famous (William Hung anyone?). The rest of the season is just a validation for millions of Americans of that very same dream: If they can do it why I can’t I? That’s why so many more people are tuning into it now than ever before, they all want to suckle on the golden teat of opportunity in the form of a TV show that further glorifies the mediocrity of Middle-America.

Not to mention the Fox New Channel, which is basically a punch line in and of itself (kind of like saying “Michael Jackson” or “Brokeback Mountain”), you already know what the joke is. But the thing about Fox News is that it’s not funny. It’s just kind of pathetic, sad and hateful.

Anyways, what Thank You For Smoking was really about was spin; how people use and manipulate information to their advantage (FOX NEWS CHANNEL). The main protagonist is a lobbyist for Big Tobacco, played by Aaron Eckhart (who is probably the best actor working today that no one gives a shit about). He is joined on-screen by a crazy leftist senator played by William H. Macy, whose own personal crusade is to put and end to Big Tobacco’s stranglehold on the American Public. The best scenes involve these two actors (although Robert Duvall’s turn as the prodigal Grandpappy of the Tobacco industry is pretty brilliant as well.) They aren’t always on the screen together, in fact they never even meet face to face until the end, but they play the spin game off of each other like a video game they already beat. They are still playing it to discover all the hidden icons, and because they’re really fucking good at it.

The rest of the film is filled with pretty solid performances as well: Rob Lowe as a hot shot Hollywood agent, Maria Bello as a lobbyist for Alcohol, David Koechner as a lobbyist for the firearms industry (doing his schtick with master precision) and Sam Elliot (who else?) as the original Marlboro Man. These performances are all well and good in their own right but they almost don’t matter because they’re just there for Aaron Eckhart to play off of. Aaron Eckhart is Michael Jordan and the rest of the cast are the 90’s dynasty Chicago Bulls, they’re all good, but Michael Jordan is the star. Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Bill Paxton, B.J. Armstrong and the rest of them all existed to make sure that Michael Jordan got the ball and did his thing. I don’t mean to discount the rest of the Bulls or even the rest of the cast of Thank You For Smoking, but it’s true.

Performances aside, the reason the movie pissed me off is because of Fox. I’ve got to imagine that a huge, massive corporation like News Corp. has a cold, calculated reason for taking part in every one of their investments. So why would a company so notorious for laying the spin on thicker than cheap cologne willingly promote a film that, pun intended, smokes them out and reveals them to be the giant assholes that we already knew they were? (the film never directly references Fox or any of its affiliates, but give me a fucking break, when you think of “spin”, who do you think of?) So why would Fox release this movie? You’d think they’d buy it and never release it, the way Big Oil does with alternative fuel technologies.

This reminds of the case of Boondock Saints. It was originally released to an extremely limited number of screens. With the help of Blockbuster Inc., Troy Duffy, the films director, managed to get a few more screens and a slightly longer theatrical run with not much fanfare. Part of Duffy’s agreement with Blockbuster stated that Blockbuster would receive exclusive rental rights when the film was released on video. Not so shady on the surface right? Boondock Saints is about two brothers who grossly misinterpret the teachings of the bible, basically: you sin, you die. It’s like The Punisher with a religious tilt.

So what’s so wrong about Blockbuster getting exclusive rental rights to Boondock Saints? Blockbuster has always claimed to be a family friendly company. They don’t even stock pornography. In the early nineties the MPAA created the NC-17 rating, originally intended to be for movies with strong adult themes, thought not necessarily involving sex or pornography. Blockbuster decided not to carry any NC-17 films. Why? Because Blockbuster has an extremely close relationship to the American Family Association, an organization devoted to setting the moral standard for America based on Christian values.

So Blockbuster, a company with heavy ties to a notorious conservative Christian organization, gets exclusive rental rights for a movie about two Christians who believe that they are the right hand of God and that they decide who is right and who is wrong and who deserves to be punished (i.e. die). Does anyone think that’s a little, I don’t know, scary as shit?

So why did Fox decided to distribute Thank You For Smoking, a movie that pretty much calls them out for being terrible people? I’m reminded of a recent South Park episode in which it is discovered that all the conspiracy theories about the government being complicit in the events of 9/11 are actually propagated by the government itself. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like this:

“If we convince people to convince people that we were somehow involved in the attacks of 9/11, then it appears as if we have maintained control of the situation all along.”

So by backhandedly promoting the ideas of your enemies, you are giving a slight wink that you have control over what is going on. Fox, promoting a movie that tells you that spin is propagated by near worthless shysters, is telling you, “We know what you are thinking, and we own what you are thinking, and even a tiny little movie like Thank You For Smoking won’t stop us.”