Sunday!
Magical realism is one of those things that needs to be handled with a fairly light touch. It’s far too easy to veer off into something silly (see, for example, Lost). When you use a light touch, however, you can end up with something a little better. Birdman is an interesting case of what happens when you combine magical realism with an unreliable narrator.
If you haven’t already seen it (it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography after all), it’s the story of a former Superhero Movie Star whose best days appear to be behind him who is putting on a Broadway play in an attempt to tell a *REAL* story. We see that he’s somewhat haunted by the superhero he used to play who tells him things he could easily mistake for truth (or, heck, maybe it is the truth… you can never tell with those guys) and, along the way, we touch on topics like online identity, celebrity gossip websites, the trials and travails of putting on a play, a mercurial (and intermittently priapic) Edward Norton, family, film and play criticism, and how much superhero movies ruin everything.
I’ll get to the punchline: I was amazed at the performances here. Michael Keaton was amazing, Edward Norton was, if anything, even better, Emma Stone was really, really good, and the cinematography was downright awesome. There are some seriously long takes in this movie with some seriously long stretches of long and complex dialog. I was struck by how very, very good everybody was at their craft here. The director trusted the actors, the actors trusted the director, and their accumulated skills created something where you couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
The problem, as I see it, was that these services were put towards a story that wasn’t really worth telling. It’s more that they were put towards a story that had a handful of people wanting to jab a bunch of stuff that really ticked them off. “Don’t you hate reviewers?”, you can see them saying. Actors put *EVERYTHING* on the line and reviewers show up, make a few bon mots, then leave without having risked a dang thing. “Don’t you hate TMZ?”, you can see them saying. We’re trying to create art and they’re talking about how we wore the wrong thing when walking our dog! “Don’t you hate an audience that prefers superheroes to REAL ART?”, you can see them saying… and, at the end, I felt like the movie was doing the same thing that it was criticizing. Under the guise of putting it all on the line, it took that opportunity to make a few bon mots.
Now, don’t get me wrong: the mots were really bon. If you’ve ever put on a play, you’ll have a bunch of little flashbacks. If you’ve ever hung out with an actor that took him or herself a little too seriously, you’ll have a bunch of little flashbacks. If you’ve ever thought “Man, superhero movies are ruining everything”, you’ll have a couple of belly laughs. (And there’s a wonderful scene involving a leap made by Michael Keaton that, right around the time you’ll wonder “how did they do that? I mean, like, in the story…”, they’ll explain it to you, and you’ll laugh again.) There are a lot of really wonderful experiences in this film.
It’s just at, at the end of the movie, I was struck by how the story they told oh-so-expertly wasn’t really that much of a story worth telling.
But if you can get over little things like the story, you’ll delight in quality of the tools they used to tell it.
Just like a blockbuster superhero flick.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)
The movie also gave us this:
It’s easy to forgive things that result in stuff like this.Report
He nearly cracks up at one point, only barely suppressing a grin and gales of laughter. That alone makes it worth it.Report
Sesame Street often succeeds in invoking feelings in me similar to those invoked by service dogs- flashes of pure sweetness and light.Report
Well Jaybird, that was the best Birdman review yet! (Haven’t seen the movie yet, just love good criticism.)
The wife and I are down to the last 1-2 episodes of Hannibal season 2. Much better than the first season, darker and with out the “Serial Killer of the week” feeling of season 1. I do find it fascinating that this was on NBC, as it is much darker and gorier than pretty much all other TV shows (network and cable.)
I just started reading The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk. A story of a Italian slave in renaissance Ottoman Empire. So far very good, but tends to tell rather than show. Also reading a few books on backyard boat building, as I am in the healing stage post surgery, and need something for my mind to wander around.Report
So if you are nearly at the end of S2, you either have seen or are about to see possibly the single most disturbing scene I have ever seen, in any medium.
And it was on network TV!Report
Network! I know!
When we finish, I will put something up for you, as I am now curious.Report
I read an interesting article about how much arguing there was within the production company about whether characters could smoke. Blood, guts, and gore, but smoking was where some people involved drew the line.
I can’t find said article.Report
I read an interview with Fuller, and Standards and Practices told him he can do pretty much anything, as long as it’s in shadow/darkness…which is of course perfect for horror, since your brain will fill in the gory details better than they ever could.
There was also a scene where a corpse’s buttcrack was visible, and so to obscure that and make it “decent”, they had to cover it with blood.
Whew, that was a close call, we almost saw something obscene there.Report
Oh my Gosh! I was doing the exact same thing that I was complaining about!Report
“It’s just at, at the end of the movie, I was struck by how the story they told oh-so-expertly wasn’t really that much of a story worth telling.”
Having not yet seen the movie, I’m curious about this. What about the story wasn’t worth telling?
(I should disclose that I subscribe to the “nothing new under the sun” theory, that stories come to us in a finite number of iterations –man against nature, man against man, man against himself, etc– and that the most expertly constructed stories dress up the familiar -familiar plots, familiar characters, familiar ideas- in unexpected ways while offering very little that’s actually new. )Report
For me, it was rather a lot of “we actors think we have really difficult, stressful, emotionally-tortured lives.” And while I don’t doubt that there is stress for the professional actor, I have a hard time sympathizing.
I agree with @jaybird that the acting was really great. Convincing, intense, effectively conveying the inner emotional lives of the characters.
The soundtrack was distracting. And the long, long edits — digitally spliced together to seem like nearly the entire movie was shot in a single take — was visually and mentally exhausting.
Also, WTF was up with that ending? After the big onstage moment, the denouement was just a slap in the face to the audience. “THAT WAS APOTHESIS! DAMNIT! DON’T YOU GET IT? A-POTH-E-SIS!” I didn’t really need to be narratively bludgeoned that way.Report
Okay, now I’m going to climb down. It’s more like all of this craft, skill, art, and expertise was put forward to tell a story that probably didn’t deserve half that much craft, skill, art, and expertise.
Man, I would have loved to see this team tell a different story.
(Compare to, say, Paper Man that also played with magical realism, had Emma Stone, and centered around a tortured artist haunted by one of his creations. Personally, I thought that Paper Man was a better story put together by less talented (Don’t get me wrong! Still talented!) people.)Report
“All of this craft, skill, art, and expertise was put forward to tell a story that probably didn’t deserve half that much craft, skill, art, and expertise..”
That’s how I feel about Apocalypse Now (which I still enjoy). I’ll probably watch it later this week when I check it out from the “Dude At Work Who Buys a Lot of Movies” library.Report
Did you see Boyhood?
The parallel with the filmmaking-genius : story-meaningfulness ratio is interesting. I thought Boyhood’s was a story worth telling, though I can see a different view. I also thought the 12-year gimmick wasn’t much of a gimmick really and just blended into the story pretty well – but I can also see a different view on that too. I like the film, though wasn’t blown away.
I haven’t seen Birdman yet, though, so can’t compare.Report
Not yet. Would it make a good date night?Report
That depends a lot on you guys. Maggie didn’t much like it. There are a lot of adult males behaving badly regarding children they’re responsible for.Report
Part of me strongly wants to avoid movies about movies.Report
Then you’d never watch anything made by the Coen brothers. To me, that would be a big loss.Report
If I take that literally, the only one I’m thinking would be possibly excluded is Barton Fink, which I haven’t seen. The Big Lebowski is not about movies in any way that couldn’t be removed without destroying the plot.
Unless you’re saying the Coen Brother’s movies are about movies in the sense that they’re often times self-aware, in which case we can clearly impose a literalist reading to my comment above and also gleefully admit Woody Allen movies.Report
The Big Lebowski is a deconstruction of The Big Sleep. (It’s other stuff too, of course.) Miller’s Crossing is much more about gangster movies than about gangsters. Blood Simple starts off as The Postman Always Rings Twice, and even after the plot diverges, stays within the conventions of noir. Etc. I love the Coens, but they make films about other films rather than films about life.Report
Movies about movies:
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Get Shorty
Berberian Sound Studio
Cabin in the Woods
Shadow of the Vampire
The Stunt Man
Barton Fink
Purple Rose of Cairo
Cinema Paradiso
I’ve seen all those except for the last, and none of them are less than interesting, and some are great.Report
Also
Day for NightReport
I love Shadow of the Vampire, it is just so much fun!Report
Singing in the RainReport
Scream.Report
The Player is very good. The other one that comes to mind in Mulholland Dr, which, though it’s plot is an afterthought, distills the entire art of acting into one scene where Naomi Watts does the read through audition with Chad Everett.Report
Oh yeah, how could I forget The Player?Report
@glyph
You strike me as too nice a guy to ever be a player….Report
Did Shakespeare start the show within a show thing, or is it older than that?Report
I will guess based on no evidence whatsoever that it goes back further than we can possibly trace. Rufus, what do you think?Report
Aristophanes wrote “The Frogs” in 405 BC. In the play, Dionysus goes into the underworld to bring the recently deceased Euripides back from the dead, but ends up judging a “which playwright is best” contest between Euripides and Aeschylus. I don’t recall if there was literally a play within the play, but Theater about Theater dates back to the ancient Greeks at least.Report
Would “1001 Arabian Nights” qualify?Report
wikipedia says it does. (so does The Odyssey)Report
Let’s be clear: story within a story and story about a story are two different things.Report
@alan-scott
I think it was just more of a debate than anything else. No sampling of the plays.Report
Awesome, Kolohe. If we can trust the Wikipedia (narrows gaze), it seems that the first play-within-a-play (done as a play) was the guy that Shakespeare (OR FRANCIS BACON!) stole Hamlet from. From whom he stole Hamlet.
1587. Surely the device is older than that.
Surely one of the Greeks made a play about making a play. Perhaps he got hung for it and they burned the manuscripts. Yes. That’s what I will choose to believe.Report
It is a debate, and a hilarious one. Aeschylus says he can defeat Euripides’ prologues with a bottle of oil. He has Euripides recite from his prologues, and keeps finishing his sentences with “lost his little bottle.”
EURIPIDES: Bacchus, who, clad in fawnskins, leaps and bounds torch and thyrsus in the choral dance along Parnassus…
AESCHYLUS: Lost his bottle of oil.
Change the names, and it could be Abbott and Costello.Report
I finished the Blood Gulch Chronicles Red vs Blue, and enjoyed it greatly, even though they moved away from the thing I liked about it most (Two armies, half-heartedly fighting a pointless war against one another in the middle of nowhere.) I will pick it up again later.
I am about half-way through the half-season of Gotham. I’m enjoying it, though as others have mentioned I’m not sure I would enjoy it as much if not for the Batman connection. I was going to say “I wonder what it would be like if they actually did a Batman show” and then remembered that the answer would likely be Arrow.
Audiobookwise, I’m listening to Mind Prey, from the John Sandford Prey series. After this, I’m thinking of listening to the TV show Rubicon, which a few years ago I made it about ten episodes through. It was kind of slow to watch, but is dialogue-heavy from what I recall and may be good listening material.Report
The final chapter of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality was posted yesterday, and I felt it was a satisfying conclusion to the story.Report
I am reading In These Times: Life in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars by Jenny Unglow. I am also reading the Buried Giant by Ishiguro and bought two Stefan Zweig novels yesterday.
I don’t think Birdman was a perfect movie but I am glad it was made. Then again, I am one of those people who is against the over-proliferation of what I call “bang wow” movies where it seems to be a never ending arms race for the most CGI, the newest Superhero franchise/reboot, and the only appropriate way to talk about a movie is by describing said explosions and action scenes using a vocabulary that is limited to words like kick-ass and hardcore.
What happened in the past ten to fifteen years where franchises and reboots seem to dominate all? Why is it a never ending arms race for the most CGI and the biggest budget? The Superhero craze never seems to end and Marvel and D.C. seem to have movies planned until the end of time with a trillion different crossovers and mini-issues becoming CGI extravaganzzas!
/end rantReport
When I was a kid, it was at the tail end of “make a movie for a few million, it’ll pull in 10 million.” (Adjust for inflation as necessary.)
That paradigm had stuff like “Holy cow! Everybody is seeing this movie! It pulled in 25 million!” which also allowed for “I’m going to make an experimental movie for 1 million” and some of them recouped their money and some of them didn’t but, hey, that’s okay because most movies were able to pull in the 10 million and everybody was happy.
Sure, you’d have the occasional “Dream Team” movie like “The Godfather” that cost a whopping 6 million to make, but those were special events.
AND THEN STAR WARS HAPPENED.
They realized that it was possible to make 100 million. And to make 100 million, you had to get rid of the whole “make a small movie, make a small profit” paradigm but moved to “MAKE A BIG MOVIE AND MAKE A BIG PROFIT!”
We recently saw the email discussing how putting Denzel in a movie meant that you’d merely hit a solid double… and the implication was that they would be leaving money on the table because it’d be possible to hit a home run (or a grand slam) with someone else in the same role. (Due to considerations of international markets and whatnot.)
If you want to hit a grand slam, you need to not only sell tickets in the US, but in China, India, Germany (heck, Europe!), Japan, Brazil, and, on top of that, sell tickets not just in the big cities in those places but also in the sticks.
And there are only a handful of movie genres that they’ve found can make that happen.
The people who leave money on the table tend to be replaced by those who do not.
But now we’re veering a little too close to politics.Report
I’d argue that a few factors recently have contributed to Hollywood moving in the direction that it has:
(1) The theater-experience as a selling point is at a premium, due to (a) the proliferation of alternative entertainment, (b) less money being made after a theater release due to a, streaming, and piracy.
(2) An increased reliance on international audiences, which means that cultural intricacies become limiting while everybody understands explosions.
(3) Related to 1a, but as independent movies have become more feasible, big time producers need to set themselves apart by making something that Early Kevin Smith can’t, which involves bigger budgets and movies that justify them.
(4) Also related to 1a, but television has grown and evolved in both quantity and quality, so movies increasingly offer things that television can’t.
(5) Also related to 1a and 4, which is an increasing reticence on the part of studios to take any chances.
(6) Related to 3 and 5, but budget-drift generally is occurring, and the more money you put in to something, the more you have to rely on established properties, and the more conservative you need to be generally. Superhero movies tend to be reliable.
(7) It’s worth pointing out that other movies are still getting made.
(“Conservative” here does not mean politically conservative. No politics.)Report
8. The teenage audience is becoming more and more important, partly because they will often see films they like more than once, which makes stuff that appeals to grownups less attractive.
9. People who are chronologically adult still get excited about superhero movies. This baffles me, but facts are facts.Report
@mike-schilling Not that it will make you understand #9, but it might help just a smidgeon:
Those of us who liked comics when we were younger had very, very few good superhero movies back in the day. Marvel movies weren’t being made or weren’t very good (Captain America ’94), and DC movies ran the gamut but even some of the good ones (like Burton’s Batman) were serious departures from the comics.
So then something happens, and they stop sucking.
So some of us – even people like me who have stopped reading comic books – are finally getting to see the movies we never got to see when we were younger. And so we can’t get enough (though I’m kind of reaching my fill and am becoming more selective).
Also, Jaybird , my apologies for duplicating what you said about international audiences.Report
I liked comics when I was younger (much more DC than Marvel, though I loved the Saturday morning version of Spiderman.) But I outgrew them long ago, just like I have the works of Asimov and Heinlein. Though I haven’t read The Hobbit or LOTR since I was much younger, and if anyone ever turns them into good films [1], I’m definitely there.
1. Like even half as good as HBO’s Game of Thrones.Report
@mike-schilling @will-truman @jaybird
1. IIRC from my film history class, teenagers (especially teenage boys) were always the dominant movie goers in the United States or among the most dominant movie-going audiences. This information is 15 years old though and was just a line or two in the textbook.
2. As Mike notes, it might be more appropriate to say “teenagers of all ages”. Now there was probably never an age when adults all liked foreign movies and avant-garde novels but there was a time when you did get cool points for experimenting a bit and at least trying to read a Boris Vian movie or going to see Truffaut or Goddard or Kurosawa or Bergman movies. These days have seemingly ended. There was also an age when Hollywood could make exciting movies with adult plots like The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde and Bullit.
2a. What I’ve seen a lot of people in the geek culture scene say is “Why should my tastes change just because I am an adult or why should adulthood be judged on tastes. I pay my bills. I go to work. Why can’t I keep on playing video games?”
3. Movie theatres losing out: I think there is something to this. I actually love going to movies in theatres (l like seeing things with audiences of people I don’t know) and going out and being social (as do a lot of other people) but there does seem to also be a growing anti-socialness where people say it is largely not worth it to go to movies. The fact that you can get a big screen TV for a relatively small amount of money helps the homebodies.*
I will add that I generally prefer going to theatres that try and keep it adult. You pay a bit of premium but the reward is not being bombarded with advertisements before the movie.
4. Everyone does understand explosions. I like them from time to time too. But I don’t like them in every movie. I will take good acting, writing, and plot over explosions any day. I just don’t get the idea of wanting every movie to be reduced to being “badass” or “kickass”
5. This might be veering too much into politics but I’ve noticed there is a popular facebook group called “I fucking love science”. Posts from this group always rubbed me the wrong way. I think what they do is that the tone turns me off because they are written in a way that demands that everything be done in a tone of an overly-sugared 8 year old. There is nothing wrong with this from time to time but American culture (even on the left) seems to think that intellectualism is now suspect. Describing yourself as an Intellectual instead of a geek or a nerd is off-putting and wrong. I’ve worked too hard to describe myself as a culture nerd or geek.
I am probably exaggerating for effect. I can and go to Superhero movies and enjoy them. But it is often very hard to get people to go see a Goddard or a Truffaut revival or something smaller.Report
Re: I Fucking Love Science
One thing that someone pointed out was the childlike wonder might be more beneficial in the sciences than it is in the arts and humanities.Report
I think @jaybird hits the nail on the head. Star Wars and subsequent franchises taught the money people that there are big bucks to be made in science fiction and action-adventure movies. When you combine this with growing globalization and the increased easiness in making bang wow movies because of CGI than you get an impetus to make bang wow movies. Most people can understand them and enjoy them. Drama can be pretty universal to but it is often wrapped up in local culture. Alzheimer’s might be experienced across the world but the frustration of an upper-middle class white woman in the United States in dealing with early onset Alzheimer’s might not register to somebody in Pakistan or even Russia. Comedy is definitely for local consumption for the most part. Simple stories of good vs. evil are understood by practically everybody.
There was a bit of a drag for a couple of decades after Star Wars because the international audience wasn’t that important for most of the 1980s and 1990s, special effects were still hard to pull off well, and alternative forms of entertainment less plentiful because cable and the Internet were in there infancy. Once all these obstacles disappeared than the drive towards bang wow movies increased.Report
Interesting discussion, guys, and I don’t disagree with any of it, but will just add my two cents.
The demise of the theater business will be due to the collapse of the distribution window over any other factor. Theaters used to be able to get you with the experience (the big screen, the wide frame, surround sound) but all of that can be had at home now. You might have noticed that the “big” thing in theaters these days is reclining seats and alcoholic beverages, which hey….I’ve been enjoying for years at home and now I have surround sound.
Once a big movie –bigger than the Interview, American Sniper big, new Avengers big– bypasses theaters, it’s going to be a death spiral for the theater biz. The movie biz will be just fine.Report
@james-pearce
Interestingly the movies that tend to stream early on tend to be smaller ones like The One I Love or maybe Snowpiercer. The Interview was a sort of special exception because of the whole plot and controversy.
I am not sure when we will see an Avengers big movie released simultaneously on screens and streaming.Report
Re: Home theatres:
I have a very small TV. Small enough that people actually comment “Why do you own such a small TV?” when they come to my apartment. The TV works fine and I haven’t felt the need to get a new one.
Again this probably goes to the fact that I don’t watch much TV.*
*I’ve been through this before but I wasn’t allowed to watch TV during weeknights in High School and then I went to college and did not watch much TV then either. Then I was abroad for a year and did not watch much TV. So 9 years of every little TV was just enough to keep me off the stuff. It just doesn’t occur to me to turn on the TV after coming home from work.Report
@saul-degraw
It seems inconceivable at the moment to consider the death spiral of the theater business, but consider this one fact: Movies are released in theaters first and exclusively because that’s how they make the most money. It’s a business strategy, a model designed for max profit.
Sooner or later, someone is going to figure out how to “make the most money” with a digital, on-demand release that bypasses the theatrical establishment entirely. (The company that does this may not be a traditional studio, but once the concept is tried and proven, the studios will inevitably follow suit.)
Not saying it will happen this year….Report
@saul-degraw
That’s mighty big talk for someone whose artistic tastes appear to have not changed since the 1960s. Look, I get that you don’t like geeky things, and that’s fine. But your consistent need to turn it into a value judgment is rude and ridiculous, especially given that your own notions of culture seem less like an organically developed appreciation for art forms and more like a list you copied out of an intro to film textbook.
Also, maybe look into getting a better TV, or just using the one you have a little bit more. The biggest reason that we live in the age of the blockbuster is that we live in the golden age of television. Today’s Godfathers and Bonnie and Clydes are on HBO, not at the cineplex.Report
Several quick (and vast) over-generalizations here:
There have always been “A” films and “B” films. It’s sometimes a bit odd for someone of my extreme senescence to get used to, but what Lucas/Speilberg/etc did was reverse them. What used to be “A” films (top-flight product with big stars made for adults) are now “B” films (indies that don’t garner much audience). And vice versa — action programmers that once had a lot of cowboys and horses in them are now mega-budget tentpoles.
Luckily for me I have always enjoyed both kinds of movies, but it does present a problem. The ad budgets and the theater spaces go to those big tentpoles and it has become harder to become informed about and seek out the smaller, more serious pieces. Cable television has stepped in admirably in many cases (HBO et al.), but the dynamic doesn’t work as well across the spectrum
@saul-degraw It helps to remember that “TV” is just a medium. I know that we all deride “TV” in a short-hand way to talk about sub-standard fare, but it’s important to remember the distinction. I watch my TV several hours a day, but I rarely “watch TV.” With a couple of exceptions, the network and basic cable offerings don’t do much for me, but DVDs and oddball flicks on Netflix, etc., keep my “idiot box” glowing long into the night.Report
IIRC from my film history class, teenagers (especially teenage boys) were always the dominant movie goers in the United States or among the most dominant movie-going audiences. This information is 15 years old though and was just a line or two in the textbook.
I would be shocked (and not “shocked, shocked”) to find that this had changed.Report
Thinking about it, I really, really, really want the HBO versions of The Hobbit and LOTR, where they respect the original material, make changes that mostly improve it, and don’t distort it by spending a gazillion dollars on spurious spectacle. (And if they really have to show Arwen and Galadriel expositing while skinny-dipping, I can accept that.) You know how so many cable series put the big climax in the penultimate episode, and show the aftermath in the last one? They could totally do the Scouring of the Shire that way!
It’ll never happen, I know, because they’re no way to pry the rights out of Peter Jackson’s hairy little paws. But he never got the rights to the Silmarillion …Report
@alan-scott
I probably do overstate my issues with geek culture too much or make it seem more dramatic than it really is and it probably can come across as a sneer. For that I apologize because it is wrong. I do resent your accusation that I sound like a textbook though.
@jaybird
I think teenage boys as the dominant movie market has been true since the 1930s.Report
Thinking about it, I really, really, really want the HBO versions of The Hobbit and LOTR, where they respect the original material…
I admit that what I’d really like is a rewrite told from Gandalf’s viewpoint. Where that scheming, manipulating old bastard puts all the pieces in place. Same thing for Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, too.Report
But he never got the rights to the Silmarillion …
Oh dear god. You might as well try to make a movie out of the Klingon dictionary.
Anyway, that ship has sailed and there’s no going back now, and the original LOTR film trilogy wasn’t that bad. What I really want is for that Joseph Gordon-Levitt Sandman film to crash and burn in pre-production and so make an HBO series adaptation possible.Report
My TV is smaller than saul’s (it’s actually a computer monitor. yup, pretty small). The color fidelity is out of this world though. Seriously, Lawrence of Arabia was an Absolute DREAM to watch.
I’d go out to movies a lot more if they bothered putting subtitles up.Report
The Sandman film! We’ve got the coke-encrusted exec in here to suggest a minor change.
“With the Constantine show crashing and burning, we’ve got a suggestion. Let’s get rid of the religious angle. No god or Satan or gods or anything like that. Too controversial. So pick between the North Koreans and White Supremacists and do a fast rewrite.”Report
the original LOTR film trilogy wasn’t that bad
I guess they weren’t bad action flicks, and they were occasionally vaguely reminiscent of the book.Report
Oh dear god. You might as well try to make a movie out of the Klingon dictionary.
You’re being misled by the hash Christopher Tolkien made of trying to turn the First Age material into a single book. There are some great stories there of the war between the elves and Morgoth. JRRT struggled his whole life to find the right way to tell them, and never succeeded, so his papers contain many, many, inconsistent, incomplete attempts, as you can read about in the History of Middle-Earth. A talented writer could use them as source material for some amazing television. A hack like Jackson could mostly ignore all of them but the battle scenes.Report
@saul-degraw, I think that you may have convinced yourself that there was some sort of golden age of intellectualism in this country when having your particular set of tastes served as a marker of refinement and signaled some high level of cultural appreciation. I don’t know that has ever been the case. America has never been France.Report
America has never been France.
I’m not sure that France has ever been France. Le Petomane makes Adam Sandler look like Godard.Report
The French really do have impeccable taste in entertainment. I’ve brought someone with me who can explain this far better than I. Let me call her over here.
Hey, laaaaaaaaaaaaaady!Report
If not France, perhaps Germany?Report
What happened in the past ten to fifteen years where franchises and reboots seem to dominate all?
This isn’t anything new. I think the 70s-90s were the aberration in this sense, rather than the norm. If you look back to the 60s and earlier, most of the top-grossing films were book, musical, and folktale adaptations.
And it’s not as though original films aren’t still being made. It’s just not what theatergoers are choosing to pay to see, so they don’t get the big budgets. As for why not, zeitgeist is as good a guess as any, I suppose.
Alternatively, it may have something to do with the rise of high-quality home-theater systems. The theater’s unique selling proposition is a huge screen and great sound system. If a film doesn’t exploit those, you might as well wait six months, save your money, and watch it at home. The timing hints at piracy playing a role, as well, although that may be purely coincidental.Report
Alternatively, it may have something to do with the rise of high-quality home-theater systems. The theater’s unique selling proposition is a huge screen and great sound system. If a film doesn’t exploit those, you might as well wait six months, save your money, and watch it at home.
This is an interesting observation that people don’t always grok about the symbiosis of the medium (or more specifically, the state of the tech art) and the message.
When I was in high school, installing ginormous woofers in your car was a thing. And what did you listen to with it? Miami bass – which to some people’s thinking wasn’t much “music” at all, just a series of low-end “explosions”.
But did people install the woofers because they wanted to listen to Miami bass, or did they listen to Miami bass because they had installed the woofers?
The answer is: yes.Report
“Magical realism is one of those things that needs to be handled with a fairly light touch. It’s far too easy to veer off into something silly (see, for example, Lost).”
Not to get all annoyed at Lost, again, but if I’d realized from the beginning that magical realism was what they were going for (despite all the repeated feints and allusions that implied there would be a sci-fi “realistic” explanation of events, which, even if it was stupid and nonsensical, would possibly have been LESS stupid and nonsensical than what we got), the whole thing might have left less of a bad taste in my mouth.
But they wouldn’t have pulled in the kind of numbers they did, either.
Which on one level I get, but on another can’t help but feel bait and switched somehow.Report
Did they intend that from the beginning, do you think, or get trapped by having introduced so much random crap that no realistic ending was possible?
One of the things I admire about Vince Gilligan is that he is relentless about continuity. He didn’t have Breaking Bad planned out in advance — that wasn’t possible, not knowing how many seasons he’d have to tell the story, or which of the supporting actors would be available from year to year — but whenever he planned a season, it had to be consistent with what had happened before, and had to move towards the goal of Walt’s complete corruption.Report
In the wake of some intensive research for a Central American project, have fallen back on some fun lighter entertainment:
Finished the latest US “House of Cards” series. Not so good, but if you were a disappointed fan, I strongly recommend re-viewing the first couple of episodes of the first season. “Oh! That’s what they started off doing and completely tossed aside! Huh!” It’s a somewhat bitter-sweet experience — the combination of “look how cool that was” and “gee, how could they misunderstand their own product so much?”
And, after 30 years or so, have picked up Michael McDowell’s “Blackwater” epic for a re-read. Imagine a fetid Southern Gothic soap opera where, every once in a while a main character turns into the Creature From the Black Lagoon and bites somebody’s head off. Basically. (And nicely done at that.)Report
Oh, and for me, though the last two seconds didn’t seem quite right, the rest of “Birdman” made me wish i had more thumbs to point up.Report
I went down a weird rabbit hole this past week and I have been binge-watching HGTV’s Fixer Upper. It’s one of the better home improvement shows I have seen because they give each episode a full hour so it doesn’t feel so rushed. They also seem like they are a bit more honest about the budgets for each home. Plus the couple at the center of the show seem to adore each other and I love the way they act towards one another. It is a weird thing to become absorbed with but I think that is the cool thing about the way Americans watch TV these days. Binge-viewing really gives you permission to take these brief detours and not feel like you just committed yourself to 20 weeks of appointment TV.Report
I love rabbit holes like this. For me, right now it is boat building.Report
FTR, I disagree with pretty much everyone here (I think?) on Birdman, which I thought walking out was one of the best movies I had ever seen ever. (I usually wait for a year or two before I call a movie an ATF, to see if the passing of a bit of time takes some of the shine off, but at this point I am expecting it to sit alongside Amadeus, Fisher King & Raiders on my personal movie Rushmore.)
Part of the reason I found it more compelling than did Jaybird or Burt, I think, is that I didn’t see it as a movie about actors putting on a play, so much as I found it a movie about Other Things that used actors putting on a play to act as a metaphor for those other things. And even though I don’t think what I’m about to say would diminish anyone’s experience of watching the movie, I’ll follow MD house rules and rot13 it:
Gb zr, gur zbivr jnf ernyyl n fgbel nobhg obgu vqragvgl naq perngvba — gur ynggre engure fcrpvsvpnyyl guebhtu gur perngvba bs neg. Vg jnf yrff nobhg jurgure be abg gur npgbe/qverpgbe jnf tbvat gb or fhpprffshy fb zhpu nf vg jnf nfxvat, jung qbrf vg zrna gb tebj nf n crefba, naq jung vf gur cevpr bs perngvat fbzrguvat arj naq ornhgvshy.
Cneg bs gur pyvznk bs gur zbivr, nf vg hasbyq bire gur cnfg ovg bs gur svyz be fb, vf ubj va beqre gb orpbzr zber — va beqre gb perngr — gur yrnq punenpgre unf gb or jvyyvat gb qrfgebl jung unf pbzr orsber, obgu uvf jbex naq jub ur jnf. Vg’f ab nppvqrag, V jbhyq nethr, gung gur guerr zbzragf va gur pyvznk gung ercerfrag uvf obgu orpbzvat zber nf n crefba naq perngvat fbzrguvat gehyl pncvgny-T Terng (nf bccbfrq gb jung ur gubhtug pevgvpf jbhyq yvxr gb frr) ner nyy zbzragf jurer ur erfbegf gb na npg bs fhvpvqr: Ba gur ebbsgbc jura ur vf va qrfcnve, ba fgntr jura ur vf orvat bofreirq ol gubfr whqtvat uvz, naq svanyyl gur ubfcvgny jura uvf snzvyl naq ntrag unir yrsg uvz jvgu n pubvpr orgjrra eriry va uvf arj sbhaq fhpprff naq pryroevgl be rfpncr onpx vagb frpyhfvba, naq ur vafgrnq pubbfrf gb vafgrnq pbagvahr gb tebj naq perngr.
I thought it was astounding.Report
That’s exactly the problem with movies these days. Too few trying to be ATFs, too many just trying to be ATMs.Report
I’m certain that Michael Bay personally knows the leadership of the ATF.Report
Action, Tedium, and Fireworks? He’s the CEO for life.Report
They probably should have made Michael Keaton’s character less awful.
I’m now trying to think of a character from that movie that couldn’t have stood to be less awful. The Naomi Watts character? The wife character? (Oooh. Her line “you confuse admiration with love” was an *AWESOME* line. I winced.)Report
@tod-kelly
“…I am expecting it to sit alongside Amadeus, Fisher King & Raiders on my personal movie Rushmore.”
Please write this post.Report
SXSW all week. Just met Russell Simmons. Almost ran into him, then freaked out.Report
If you had done that, then you’d def. be in a jam.Report
He took pictures with R. and me, which I am now going to use to get into every hip hop show. “Hold on, let me call my friend… Russell Simmons.”Report
Dude! That’s awesome!Report
The exercise guy with the high-pitched voice?Report
I saw the movie a few weeks back. Meh. It had it’s moments, but it was just too odd. You find out who the voice is towards the end of the movie. Really?
The confrontation with the critic was good but my acting friend said that it rang false to her. Emma Stone’s eye were too big too. But hey, Naomi Watts kissing another woman again. Ahoy!Report
Thanks to the Big Bird video (which I had seen prior to the movie), I knew who the voice was from the first growly syllable.
I wonder how much that changed the movie for me.Report
I knew who the voice was from pretty much the first 5 minutes of the movie. Just, because, well, who else would it be?Report
So I’m nearly 1/2 through System of the World, and struggling; it’s not holding my attention as previous books did, despite the fact that Jack’s currently flying over London Tower, gold cape a-billowing. Please tell me it’s worth it to keep going, lest I get distracted.
And @tod-kelly your comment above puts Birdman on my must-watch list, though I’ll have to wait for it on netflix or Amazon prime.
Believe it or not, the nearest movie theater is two hours away now. Used to be one in walking distance; and several within a 30-minute drive. The couldn’t afford the cost to convert to digital.Report
I just got done watching the NCAA Selection Show on CBS.
As part of the show, CBS puts cameras at various schools, to broadcast the reactions of the teams as they get announced into the field. However, lately they have only been putting cameras at schools that have already qualified or at schools where it is a fait accompli.
They used to put the cameras at schools that were truly on the bubble, and then show the room when the team figured out that they were left out of the tournament. It made for GREAT television.Report
The whole “bottle of oil” bit, because the Greeks had bits:
*This is made funnier by the fact that it’s from a play in which Dionysus himself features heavily.Report
We are getting HBO for free right now, and I totally binged Togetherness last night. Reading comments on the AVClub recaps makes me realize this is a pretty divisive show, people either seem to “get” what it is doing (small-stakes-yet-not, real-life-type stuff), or they think it’s banal and trite.
Me, I loved it; very funny, well-observed details, great acting/editing/music selections. It really hit me where I live; each of the characters is flawed, but believable and sympathetic despite their flaws.Report
I thought I already posted! But I did not.
I largely agree with Jay about Birdman. Would rather agree with Tod (do agree somewhat about intentions) but just didn’t feel the story merited the efforts put into it.
Watching, otherwise: Lots of HIMYM (bedrest), a documentary about YouTube (passable), we finished Sleepy Hollow and started a series of Cadfael mysteries (yay, Derek Jacobi).
Reading: My mother-in-law’s self-published (awesome) historical novel, another Sarwat Chadda YA paranormal (sequel to the one I talked about last week, but only good, not awesome), and The Blythes Are Quoted, which is a revision of LM Montgomery’s posthumous The Road To Yesterday – the previously published version was about 200 or more pages shorted than this one, and not nearly as delectable to (at least this) rabid LMM fan…. now I am reading another book about fibromyalgia. Sigh.Report
I’m still disappointed that Birdman has nothing to do with Harvey.
This isn’t necessarily my favorite clip from the show, but since it features Colbert in two roles (be-eyepatched boss Phil Ken Sebben and diminution-fetishist/supervillain/opposing counsel Reducto, who also provides the impetus for a libertarian joke at the end) as well as prescient surveillance paranoia and Moving Pictures, it kind of seems tailor-made for this place:
Report
I’m still disappointed that Birdman has nothing to do with Harvey.
Are we talking Burt Lancaster or Jimmy Stewart?Report