Half Past Noon

I can’t say I’m terribly excited about the movie, but this poster is amazing:

Whether you love him or hate his ever-spastic gut, you should read this profile of Jim Carrey’s existential-cinematic roles, by James Parker of The Atlantic.

In the year 2038, when we’re all living out of corroded Kia Sportages, beneath an ozone layer so threadbare you can toast a slice of bread simply by hanging it out the window, scavengers will make a discovery. In the basement of a ruined midwestern mall they will find, miraculously preserved, a fresco depicting the totemic movie scenes of Jim Carrey: Carrey as Truman Burbank in The Truman Show, standing in a private elevator shaft of rainfall on an otherwise dry beach; as Fletcher Reede in Liar Liar, being attacked by the pen in his own hand; as Charlie Baileygates, the schizophrenic highway patrolman of Me, Myself & Irene, strangling an enormous cow; as Bruce Almighty’s Bruce Nolan, with the power of God in his index finger, causing fire hydrants to pop and the skirts of desirable women to billow up around their waists; and as Ace Ventura, bent over, hands on rump, ventriloquizing through parted butt cheeks. After rubbing at the wall with ragged sleeves, the discoverers will fall back in awe. And the voice of the tribal priest will be heard, apostrophizing this huge graffito. “Oh, modern man,” he will say, in a voice rich with pity. “How lonely you were, and how divided. And how you loved to talk out of your ass.”

Read the rest of “The Existential Clown.”

Baz Luhrmann is the Romantic counterpart to Quentin Tarantino. Both are cinematic kleptomaniacs. They create art via homage, arranging their favorite bits of pop culture and Hollywood history into something resembling a post-modern narrative. And I often love them for this. Artists whose sole purpose is to create something ex nihilo can be tedious. Tarantino and Luhrmann are anything but.

I enjoyed Luhmann’s Australia, which I saw with my wife on her birthday last week. I did, however, notice one other similarity to Tarantino: both men have recently given up on ironical pastiche and turned to straight homage — Tarantino for his childhood grindhouse cinema, Luhrmann for his native country.

For Luhrmann, I think this presents a few problems. First, his strength has always been more in the spectacular, spectacular than in sheer beauty. Australia works best when Luhrmann’s camera has a mind of its own (and, I might add, when it is not dependent on surprisingly-obvious CGI). The best sequences of Luhrmann’s previous work were jarring, quirky, unpredictable, and comic (think: the bohemian Sound of Music bit in Moulin Rouge and the cross-dressing Mercutio scene in Romeo + Juliet). But Australia the continent is wide open, impressive, forbidding, almost purgatorial. And, honestly, Luhrmann can’t shoot grandeur. I can think of only one scene during the cattle drive in which the camera sits still long enough to capture the amazing red-rocked beauty of the place. I’m not asking Luhrmann to be David Lean, nor do I need him to be as thoughtful about Australian topography as is Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. But if, as he has said, Luhrmann was trying to make Gone With the Wind: Down-Under, he needed some more patience. Australia was paced like an action movie (never dull, but never thoughtful).

Second, I don’t think Luhrmann understands character arc. Romeo + Juliet, of course, didn’t require much original narrative input. And as much as I love Moulin Rouge, the characters are fairly two dimensional. Christian is a naive Romantic at the beginning, and a world-weary Romantic at the end. Satine is the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold. The villains are less than human. And, really, that’s all fine. You don’t need sophisticated character arcs when you have The Elephant Love Song Medley. Luhrmann is a magician: he moves things around so quick you fail to notice how simple the trick actually is. And you love him for it. Australia doesn’t provide the same cover. It’s long. Its plot is laid out with painstaking clarity, despite the syntactical-obscurity of its young narrator. The narrative arc actually repeats itself three times:

There just isn’t any creativity to the narrative. Luhrmann has too much that he wants to say — about racism, about the war, about the Australian spirit, about cattle-ranch politics. And he can’t make it fit, so he plots three different stories sequentially so he can.

So in summary, I’m going to hazard this claim: epics are the royalty of cinema, and therefore shouldn’t be derivative; they should be the makers of fashion. This of course spells trouble for Mr. Luhrmann. His every plot element is (consciously, I assume) stolen from previous epics. This tactic works great when you’re making a movie like Moulin Rouge, but fails when you’re making a new Gone With the Wind. Drover is Rhett Butler crossed with John Wayne. Lady Ashley is, well, an amalgamation of every one of John Ford’s female protagonists. Nullah is Spike Lee’s famous super-duper magic negro. Even the soundtrack steals copiously — from Bach and Elgar and Harold Arlen (David Denby notes the irony of using Elgar’s Nimrod for the closing scene). To create an epic, you need to create a new mold.

And to be Romantic, for better or worse, you must have a certain sobriety and patience. To feel deeply is not enough. A teenager can feel deeply, can feel romantic. But most teenagers lack the perspective to be Romantic. So, in the end, I’d like to correct my very first sentence: Baz is romantic, but can’t sit still long enough to be Romantic.

For your holiday viewing: Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage, starring Peter O’Toole (who apparently is a little short on cash) and Marcia Gay Harden. Kinkade reveals his secrets of movie-making success:

6) Hidden details whenever possible, References to my children (from youngest to oldest as follows): Evie, Winsor, Chandler and Merritt. References to my anniversary date, the number 52, the number 82, and the number 5282 (for fun, notice how many times this appears in my major published works). Hidden N’s throughout — preferably thirty N’s, commemorating one N for each year since the events happened.

15) Nostalgia. My paintings routinely blend timeframes. This is not only okay, but tends to create a more timeless look. Vintage cars (30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s etc) can be featured along with 70’s era cars. Older buildings are favorable. Avoid anything that looks contemporary — shopping centers, contemporary storefronts, etc. Also, I prefer to avoid anything that is shiny. Our vintage vehicles, though often times are cherished by their owners and kept spic-n-span should be “dirtied up” a bit for the shoot. Placerville was and is a somewhat shabby place, and most vehicles, people, etc bear traces of dust, sawdust, and the remnants of country living. There are many dirt roads, muddy lanes, etc., and in general the place has a tumbled down, well-worn look.

16) Most important concept of all — THE CONCEPT OF LOVE. Perhaps we could make large posters that simply say “Love this movie” and post them about. I pour a lot of love into each painting, and sense that our crew has a genuine affection for this project. This starts with Michael Campus as a Director who feels great love towards this project, and should filter down through the ranks. Remember: “Every scene is the best scene.”

Responding to Frank’s critique of Happy-Go-Lucky.

First, all quotes from Mr. Jones (and yes, I know how reprehensible it is that I’m using Mr. Jones as a club):

People, People, People: For Christians, for Trinitarians, the core of our big story is personality, persons in communion, Father-Son-Holy Spirit. There is nothing more profound than Triune life, and Triune life is all about Persons in relation, Persons in loyalty and love and tension, striving and sacrificing for goals… In a Trinitarian universe people should arrest our attention far more than anything else.

Stuck in Pleasure: Art that just gives pleasure lies about a Trinitarian universe… Pleasure doesn’t teach as well as sorrow. To put it differently, entering a good story is primarily about learning to love some ugly person… Well-made character films offer us this angle. The story starts with someone with a huge flaw, some crazy obsession, some debilitating sin. We don’t like them. We wouldn’t want them as a friend. If we knew them in our day-to-day lives, we’d probably not go near them. A good film shows us how to love the unlovely, how to want to side with the ungodly. In short, insightful character films can try to show us people the way God might see them.

Triune Personality and Style: Christians are sometimes satisfied just to find some hint of sacrifice and redemption in a story… that’s nice but very superficial. Does the film show us interesting people? Does it reveal them in a Trinitarian universe overcoming ugliness and flaws, rising and transforming through the vanity of life?

Triune vs. Mardukian Style: In a Trinitarian world, violence doesn’t truly resolve things… To really enjoy the best films/plays, you have to be fascinated with people, fascinated with human life, how communities of persons work and fail, how we conflict and reconcile, how we’re unique and the same, how we change, mature, and grow.

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1. I don’t know how to argue that Poppy has depth. That she’s flawed is self-evident in the film. Ahh, I know: imagine how Hollywood would have treated such a character. (consider the big Hollywood ‘feel-good’ movie) A horrible tragedy would visit itself upon her that she has to overcome after questioning her cheerful outlook. She’d be a fool or a joke. But we don’t see either of those things. She doesn’t turn a blind eye to the bad in life; she confronts it directly.

2. Which scenes are gratuitous? Some scenes were pivotal: the dance instructor, the homeless man, and the family scene. But each scene contributes something new, right up until the end. You could easily construct a list of what each scene adds to her character.

3. And I still don’t know what to say to your third response… how many movies have you watched in the past few years that satisfy that criteria?

I’ve been pretty disappointed by this TV season (looking at you, Fringe and Pushing Daisies!), which has me rooting all the more for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. There’s a new trailer and it looks pretty good, as TV trailers go.

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While looking at that trailer, I saw a preview for another mid-season Fox skein called Lie to Me. The show looks pretty bad, but has a song Frank and I have been listening to quite a bit the past few months. The title also reminds me of one of the most amazing and angsty Joss Whedon penned Buffy episodes. At the end of a harrowing day Buffy and Giles wait over the grave of their friend, who has been turned into a vampire. Buffy asks Giles if life ever gets easy. Her friend emerges from the grave and Buffy summarily kills him.

Giles: What do you want me to say?

Buffy: Lie to me.

Giles: It’s terribly simple. The good-guys are stalwart and true. The bad-guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats and we always defeat them and save the day. Nobody ever dies… and everybody lives happily ever after.

Buffy: Liar.

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Remembering Michael Crichton: The first Michael Crichton book I read was Sphere, and immediately after chewed through his entire bibliography. The conclusion was at the same time startling and satisfying, like no other novel with a ‘twist’ ending that I had read. I’m sure he had his duds (I’ve deliberately skipped a number of his movies, including the movie version of Sphere and Congo) but Michael Crichton clearly had a rare mastery of storytelling with books, movies, and television. My boss at the library told me that when she finished Andromeda Strain she couldn’t sleep for days afterwards. Everyone seems to have at least one story of a Michael Crichton story really affecting them.

Michael Crichton had his personal problems, and I noticed that his novels began to read more and more like movies in recent years. But perhaps I was just getting older, and the quality of his output remained the same? If so, thank goodness I discovered him early! His books stand with Robert Louis Stevenson and the best genre writers, and I certainly hope that after he has been dead for a sufficient period of time he will enter the literary canon. He was not a Christian, but like Dickens he was damned smart. It will be interesting to see if his common-sense objections to anthropocentric global warming will be vindicated by history.

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While looking for a decent Michael Crichton obituary (the search continues), I was surprised to see an obituary for Yma Sumac. More surprised to see that she had died so recently – her persona was so larger-than-life that I assumed her to be from another time. She was a sensation in the US in the 1950s, a novelty act perhaps comparable to Josh Groban in our time. She had a reported 5 octave range, the largest in the world. I’ve posted a song to the music player so that you can experience it.

Happy-Go-Lucky is one of the most extraordinary movies I’ve seen this year. I want to do a longer review but I fear I will not have time. I have often heard from writers that it is easier to write a compelling bad guy than a good character with real depth. This movie has the latter, and you won’t be able to get her out of your head. Do yourself a favor and watch it. If you do, come back here and help me answer the questions the movie poses after the jump:

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Last night I watched 88 Minutes with Al Pacino. It was a stinker, possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

The movie introduces so many suspects that the final reveal could have shown anyone, everyone (a la “Murder on the Orient Express”), our protagonist, or no one at all to be the killer – each would be equally implausible. Everyone is in full-on exposition mode at all times, dropping character names and backstory in a way that defies comprehension. The movie should have had multiple endings, which would have been a better gimmick than the tired “real-time” thriller (and yes, this means everyone talks on cell-phones constantly).

The movie has so many implausible twists, flashy cuts to inexcusably exploitative murders, space-age office buildings, and histrionics from the actors that viewers might be forgiven if they were too distracted to process what a complete dud this movie really is. Might be forgiven, that is, were it not for dialogue like this:

“It’s my job to be convincing” – Al Pacino as Dr. Gramm

“I remember you… you used to ask questions, challenge things – you had free will.” – Al Pacino to the killer

“Someone has penetrated my most secure area.” – Al Pacino

“Do you have any idea how absurd that sounds?” – Doubting Cop Character

The most tragic thing about the movie from my perspective was how close it came to attaining to “So bad, it’s good” status. But the movie wants to inhabit the same joyless world as movies like Se7en, a world where everyone you know could be a sadistic serial killer, and this completely prevents us from enjoying the hilarious incongruities the movie takes so damn seriously.

Anybody heard / read anything about the movie Choke? It is supposed to be a “satirical comedy,” which means we are probably supposed to get past the fact that the main character is a “sex addict,” and find something poignant amidst his exploits.

Here’s two quotations. One about the Church, prompted by recent discussions of Rome / Constantinople. The other is about the movies, which I love:

Human Kind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality

… of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.

– T.S. Eliot “Choruses from ‘The Rock,’” part VI

The Movies are Onto the Search, but they Screw it Up

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life…. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

–Walker Percy, The Moviegoer