Posts Tagged ‘Film’

  
Friday, September 18th, 2009

The Bigger Picture: Lay Down Your Arms

by Arend Anton

c-water[1]“Filler” is a term often used by music fans to describe songs that sound like they were quickly put together to take up space on an album in order to “fill out” the running time. Though  filler can often be quite good, snobbier music fans sometimes use it as an excuse to turn their noses up at others. Ironically, this attitude can be just as annoying as the people the snobs want to put down.

I make my living as a Photoshop retoucher. Much of the work I do is celebrity related, and often involves those showy magazine spreads where a B-list celebrity shows off his or her home. It’s MTV Cribs for older generations (in other words, those who still read). What I often find in the photos are startling similarities in artistic taste.

Seemingly every one of these celebrities has the same coffee-table book collection, including books on Picasso, jazz, and Man Ray. It’s as if the photographer carries a satchel of the same books to each celebrity’s house simply for the automatic class boost they provide.

It seems impossible to me that so many people actually have those books because they enjoy the artists’ work. A friend of mine brought up the cynical idea that this is what you get when you allow the masses access to art — great works often become, in effect, filler. The coffee-table book industry is, in many ways, a seller of white noise, used by individuals who hope to give their home an aesthetic boost.

(more…)

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Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Dw. Dunphy On… (Outlive)

by Dw. Dunphy

One of the nicest things about writing for Popdose is that I’m surrounded by people that do stuff. Among our ranks are actual musicians, actors, dancers, screenwriters, and filmmakers, as well as accomplished writers. It’s not like some sites (that taste precludes me from mentioning) where the staff is filled by people whose dreams and talents crashed and burned, so they spend their digital days ragging on those who have succeeded.

Shortly after our very own Arend Anton previewed a trailer he made for a project he was working on, Red Gold, I sent him some audio files. I started in earnest on a new instrumental recording, going a little more ambient and a lot more ‘filmic’ and thought, just maybe, Arend could create a video for these two tracks. I wasn’t going to hold my breath, though. After all, creative types are known for a perpetual lack of fundage, he might be needing a few bucks for his efforts and, not coincidentally, I had none to offer. (more…)

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Friday, April 24th, 2009

No Concessions: “Anvil!” Smashes Through Spring Movie Doldrums

by Bob Cashill

April showers bring May flowers, or, in movie flora, Wolverine and Star Trek. Maybe it’s the rainy weather, but I haven’t been overly motivated to write about anything I’ve been seeing. It happens every time this year: Our screens get choked with films that aren’t quite big enough for the summer, but are too small to attract much awards season fuss at the end of the year. That’s not to say that there aren’t good pictures around. I’ve heard the positive word-of-mouth on Adventureland, the kind of “in-betweener” that critics and audiences motivated to find it embrace, and State of Play is the sort of starry studio movie I’m usually game to spend a couple of hours with. But I haven’t made it to either one, and with each passing week they inch closer and closer to the vast and all-devouring maw that is my Netflix queue.

Mindful of my duty during this dull patch, I have seen a few movies, mostly, I admit, at the art house across the avenue from me. (Even that takes effort.) There was the artful Bobby Sands bio-drama Hunger, an account of the IRA hunger strikers in Britain in the early 80s that you really need to see during Lent; it’s a co-production from Mel Gibson’s company, and the scourging and misery in his Passion of the Christ has nothing on it. I almost generated a few column inches, but couldn’t do it; the bloody toilets and the maggots and the shit on the prison walls and the ascetic aesthetic of the rigorous filmmaking just sort of defeated me as the deadline drew near. You don’t leave a movie like Hunger; you escape from it, better for the experience, maybe, but drained and crumpled.

Sin Nombre, that rare film cooked up at the Sundance Institute that doesn’t feel completely empty of spontaneity and love of craft, is more the thing, and as immigration thrillers go it has to be more involving that the ill-fated Harrison Ford movie Crossing Over, which crossed over into oblivion. The train-set sequences, as a family of migrants and their unlikely protector, a gangland enforcer escaping from his comrades, run the gauntlet from Honduras to Mexico and the U.S. border, are excitingly shot and have a genuine you-are-there immediacy. It’s the kind of debut feature that audiences will seek out as the filmmakers make a nombre for themselves with bigger-budgeted fare. I ran out the clock on this one; by the time I was ready to say a few words, it was already gone, but it may still be out there on the indie circuit. (more…)

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Friday, April 17th, 2009

The Bigger Picture: Gettin’ Hitched

by Arend Anton

darkhitchcockbaja1I’ve been watching a lot of Alfred Hitchcock’s work lately. When searching for a new project, I tend to immerse myself in that which I wish to imitate. I have quite a task ahead of me, considering Hitchcock directed over fifty feature films in his long career.

In many ways, Hitchcock was the Spielberg of his time, though much more uniform in his style. It amazes me that one could be so prolific. It also becomes apparent that it is likely impossible for anyone in today’s cinema to attain the sort of success he achieved.

To begin with, Hitchcock’s earlier movies are not nearly the triumphs that he is known for. Take, for example, The Lady Vanishes. This is, in many ways, a groundbreaking film that can’t seem to get out of its own way. While watching, I was amazed at how much there is for a director to work with in the confined spaces of a train. The movie contains one of the most advanced effects shot I have seen from the era, in which Michael Redgrave climbs out of the window of the moving train and is nearly sideswiped by a passing locomotive. For all its clever ideas, The Lady Vanishes tends to get a little muddled in its plot, and contains some unintentionally comical editing.

Nevertheless, The Lady Vanishes was a major hit for its time. It is also a massively influential film. Hell, it made my mind go crazy with potential ideas. However, some classic films have a difficult time living up to their own legend.

What seems apparent to me, as I watch more and more of Hitchcock’s films, is that he is almost always better when holding back. Nearly everything I’ve seen by him has interested me in some way, but his absolute masterpieces are almost always the smaller films. (more…)

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Friday, April 3rd, 2009

The Bigger Picture: The Big Three, Part Two

by Arend Anton

barrelofagunLast week I began a three-part series about the three biggest movie taboos, at least in American cinema — the things we seem to often have both a disdain for and a sick fetishistic fascination with. This week, I’ll be discussing the use of violence in cinema.

We’ve all heard the argument about art imitating life and vice versa. This tends to be similar to the evolution vs. creationism debate. Both sides are so stuck in their ways that they cannot see any wisdom or validity in the opposing argument; however, in both cases, we have two sides that are wasting their time in a pointless argument. Neither side really has a real conflict with the other; it is, in fact, a fabricated quarrel created by those who have a lesser understanding of the situation.

To say that a movie containing scenes of violence will spawn copycat cases in real life is a fairly ridiculous argument. To start with, that would be a very definite statement, similar to saying that everyone who eats at McDonald’s will become morbidly obese. Yes, we do have isolated incidents in which we actually know  someone has attempted to reenact a scene from a movie or video game. Neither side can really ever win the argument, not only because both sides have evidence supporting their claims, but also because they both happen to be correct.

These particular instances of violence, however, can be triggered by anything. I was a high school student when the Columbine massacre happened. The very next day there were rumors and whispers about a troubled student at my own school. We could all envision him doing something like that, because he had an irrational and volatile personality. Even if these individuals never see a violent movie, surely they will gain inspiration from a historical act or merely from the chaos of life.

My intent is not to apologize for some of the more irresponsible uses of violence in film. The problem is that finding the very definition of “irresponsible” is so subjective. I’ll give a few examples of how the argument can swing.

In my recollection of violent films, few stand out above The Passion of the Christ. Here we have a movie so exceedingly violent that it makes the Saw movies look tame by comparison. Imagine if the main character were not the Christ, but some buxom young teenage girl. There would be an outcry over the movie, and the very same Christian organizations that praised Mel Gibson would instead decry the film as torture porn. Bear in mind that I am not a Catholic now, nor have I ever been. Perhaps this explains why I view the violence in Gibson’s film to be irresponsible. To me, it’s like making a movie about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that is only five minutes long and only shows the bullet entering his cheek from multiple angles and different camera speeds, all the while expecting people to empathize with his message. (more…)

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Friday, February 27th, 2009

The Bigger Picture: In Glorious 3D!

by Arend Anton

200407955-001It is a time of economic turmoil. The markets are going berserk; reacting like the headless chickens we already knew them to be. Our nation faces numerous crises both domestically and overseas. And all the while, Hollywood is experimenting with a “new” trend to attract viewers, involving a pair of goggles that were only futuristic looking when Leave It To Beaver was considered edgy.

Remarkably, I took in my first 3D movie last weekend when I went to a late-morning showing of Coraline. 3D has been around my whole life in various other instances, but those glasses really haven’t changed much at all. Hey, it’s cool to be retro.

I recall getting those glasses with coloring books when I was very young. Even then I remember being very unimpressed. I always wondered if I was doing something wrong, sort of like those posters you have to squint at to see the poorly defined sailboat.

Flash forward to the beginning of February. 3D glasses we being given away in grocery stores for Dreamworks’ Super Bowl promotion of Monsters Vs. Aliens. I got my pair and headed down to a party thrown by a bunch of geeks who work for Dreamworks Animation. What better group of guys to be with to experience such a gimmick?

The second half ended and we all donned our dorky glasses and gazed into the screen. Ooh!  They started off with a paddleball flying into your eyeballs. The whole room reacted. Not a bad start. After this initial excitement, the air slowly seemed to be sucked from the room. The promo ended and the comments began. The general consensus was that it was unimpressive, and these were the guys who were actively involved in it. They all told me that the trailer didn’t use the technology as well as the feature will and that part of this was due to the cheap quality of the glasses. Then we heard another “Ooh!” as the TiVo in the other room finally caught up to the paddleball shot.

A few weeks later, I was sitting in the theater waiting for Coraline to start. The glasses were much fancier than the ones I had gotten from the grocery store, but these ones had the fingerprints of the previous viewers on them. I wondered if the experience would be any better than DreamWorks’ Super Bowl experiment. I looked around me to see the theater filling up with children and my hopes for a better experience were dashed. I like kids, but theaters filled with them never are enjoyable.

My other main concern for this new 3D push is that filmmakers will rely too much on the technology. This is a common problem any time new technologies are pushed. Remember how overused the rotating slow-mo camera of The Matrix became? The problem is that many films will likely use the 3D technology simply as a distraction. The paddleball flying out of the screen is cool and all, but somewhat shallow if it’s only done to impress the audience. (more…)

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Friday, February 27th, 2009

DVD Review: “The Enforcer” and “Protégé”

by Bob Cashill

Dragon Dynasty, which put out an action-packed package of Jackie Chan’s Supercop in January, serves up a double helping of Hong Kong genre cinema this month. The Enforcer, from 1995, kicks it old school, in the crazy-quilt fashion that endeared fans to the territory’s anything-goes style filmmaking before the China handover two years later. The award-winning Protégé, from 2007, represents a break from what Dragon Dynasty commentator extraordinaire Bey Logan calls its “kung furious” line of titles, being the more sober, hard-hitting crime drama in favor nowadays.

The Enforcer was one of star Jet Li’s first attempts to break from the period martial arts persona he had established so well in the excellent Once Upon a Time in China series. The Beijing-born Li plays a mainland cop, on the hunt for antiquities smugglers, whose cover is blown by Hong Kong policewoman Anita Mui—which puts his dying wife and son (Tse Miu, the Macaulay Culkin of HK ass-kickers) at risk, and obliges Mui to step in and help as a babysitter as he sidles up to the principal villain. Not that the resourceful Miu needs minding: by the end of the picture, the son, who had been told that his dad was a baddie, is happily tied to a rope by Li and flung at the mobsters as a flying projectile, a unique bonding experience.

The perfunctory U.S. title, used previously for a Humphrey Bogart picture and the third Dirty Harry installment, gives the wrong idea about the movie. It was shot as Letter to Daddy, a poignant but equally misleading moniker, and released overseas as My Father is a Hero, overlapping with the French-made Gerard Depardieu comedy My Father the Hero and its Hollywood remake, which also starred Depardieu. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s a family movie that satisfies two demographics that in this country are usually separated by the PG-13 rating, but apparently Miu being punched, nearly drowned, and emotionally abused even before the outrageous, circus-like finale was too much for the Motion Picture Association of America, which slapped it with an R for violence. Hong Kong audiences are completely unfazed by these shifts in tone, and The Enforcer whipsaws between big, tongue-somewhat-in-cheek action sequences and father-son melodrama, particularly after mom checks out and Mui (the multi-talented “Chinese Madonna,” who died too young at age 40 in 2003) plays surrogate wife and mother for the guys.

Li’s frequent collaborator, Corey Yuen, directed. Its ringmaster, however, is its irrepressible producer, Wong Jing, who churned out movies like fried dumplings, nine alone in 1995. Typically careless, it’s no classic, a something-for-everyone picture that springs to life when Li is let loose (the garbage truck fight, which as Logan says is like something from The Terminator, is classic). I’m always looking for handover subtext in pictures from this era, and when the marauding gangsters completely demolished a fragile-looking, glass-housed Hong Kong restaurant, I’d found my metaphor. The Enforcer’s other attributes are otherwise right on the surface. (more…)

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Friday, February 20th, 2009

The Bigger Picture: You’ve Got That Look

by Arend Anton

mrnannyRecently, I went to a local Mexican food establishment to pick up dinner with a friend.  This restaurant has a TV mounted to the wall, which is usually tuned to the Mexican Futbol team’s latest heartbreaking defeat, despite being two-goal favorites.  This time, however, it was the classic movie-redub hour, and the classic movie was Mr. Nanny, starring Hulk Hogan.  Being the film geeks that we are, we decided to discuss the dated look of the film by today’s standards.  Meanwhile, one of the vatos next to us commented on how “this is a funny movie” to his friend, making us look like total goobers.

It might seem petty to discuss cinematic questions over the Univision Pelicula de Sabado, especially if said movie starred Hulk Hogan’s gleaming pectorals and bleached blonde mullet.  However, using Zen philosophies, one could justify this as discussing the movie based on what it is not.  Regardless, it did raise an interesting idea.  Watch any movie from your childhood and try to make the argument that it doesn’t look like it is from a certain era.

In fact, this is one of the most crucial arguments behind the philosophy of The Bigger Picture:  A film’s potential for greatness is often related to its ability to cast aside the constraints of its time.  This is not to say that a movie can embody the spirit of an era and not attain greatness in the long run.  One example of a film like this is The Graduate — that movie had an absolutely huge cultural impact, and may not have been such a hit in today’s climate.  However, films such as this one have a certain timeless quality to them that is difficult to define.

Yet, for all its strength to avoid aging, The Graduate still appears old from a purely visual standpoint.  Mr. Nanny looks old now, though for a lot of us the 1990s were a formative decade.  To start with, both of these movies were set in their own time period.  The costumes and sets are all decorated using the styles of the time in which they were made.  Hulk Hogan’s hairstyle is one that you would only have seen in a movie from 1993 (thank the Lord).  Cars are especially important set dressing.  You could have a modern building behind old cars and still fool audiences into believing the film is set in a non-contemporary time period. (more…)

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