Nick & Nora's

2007-11-29T12:10:00.000-05:00

"The Golden Compass" Will (probably) Bomb.

Here's why.

Particularly if the early talk is anything to go on. The primary buzz around the film at the moment is the predictable boycotting from religious groups, sadly fanning the flames of infamy by contributing incendiary myths of dangerous heresy to an average series of books, wholly not good or widely read enough to be 'dangerous to the public morals' or to 'raise up a new generation of atheists'. Indeed from my experience, the book's primary acolytes appear to be already well-entrenched youngish adult atheists, happy to see their own views find a high-minded advocate with children.

Rumor has it New Line is waiting on the results of Compass to see if The Subtle Knife is worth pressing ahead with; a single wise choice among a series of bad ones. There are simple reasons this film is most likely to be an underperformer.

Budget. At over 200mil sans marketing, this is, tragically, struggling New Line's seasonal tentpole project. They've invested an arm and a leg in it, and are expecting, indeed needing it to perform like a top-tier fantasy film in the holy triumvirate of Frodo, Harry, and Aslan. Necessary domestic returns are expected to be in the 290 - high 300's to keep it afloat. Let's have a quick look at the BO history of fantasy films. (courtesy of boxofficemojo.com)

The numbers say if you're not one of the big three, your chances are dismal. The dropoff levels between the unstoppable trinity and even the closest competitors is a veritable chasm, for a few simple reasons. Fantasy films are a hard emotional sell. Auds need to feel reasonably familiar with a premise before they'll invest their money, and an evening out in it. Narnia and Rings have decades of accumulated cultural capital, and a global fanbase in the hundreds of millions. Potter is a recent phenomenon, but a mega-phenomenon nonetheless. It's a household name that no matter how Pullman's advocates (or those who pitched the film) try to spin it, the Materials trilogy simply can't touch for name-awareness.

It's a critical darling, it's a favorite in literary circles, but it's not a household name. And unless you're a conscientious reader of young adult fiction, you probably don't know much about it. Yet it's being given a bigger budget than Narnia. 50 million bigger, in fact. What about this isn't adding up?

Dissonance of Medium. Aka, "Sure, it worked as a book..."
Success in the literary market is obviously no guarantee of success in the film world, especially for a type of film known as a blockbuster. A successful blockbuster is a synthesis. The first ingredient is "Can't miss this" content that tugs at your soul in a primal way. The trailer gives you goosebumps. The stakes are high; danger is everywhere, and the conflict and villains are clearly defined and intense. You want to see it. You need to see it. It appeals to something ancient and universal.

Compass lacks this absolutely critical clarity and punch in its moral dilemmas, its villains, its story, and its characters. Response to the trailer among neophytes has been a mixture of confusion and disdain. People think the film either has no clear focus, or simply looks bad. (actually, both are true.) Likewise, we see movies to be built up; not to have our worlds torn down. We long for positivity and affirmation; not pale-eyed cynicism and muttered contempt for this institution or that. (as recently evidenced by the Blockbuster status of Enchanted, though that's worth an essay in itself) HDM tugs at portions of the mind; affirming cynicism of institutions and society, and devotes it's positiveness toward an abstract sense of human 'self' above all that may resonate with certain intellectuals as a sort of Ayn Rand for kids, but nobody else. Subtextual hatred of God and religion may be red meat to small groups of ideological fanatics; but even among everyday nonreligious agnostics, it's not an idea that's likely to ignite the sort of fire in the belly required to fill seats.

The themes gratify portions of our intellect, but it doesn't, can't, tug at our collective souls. This kind of material in concert with some nice language and brisk storytelling can succeed in the literary market. But it does not historically sell 300-400 million domestic dollars in movie tickets.

There are a host of other reasons as well. Rumor is the anti-religious tenor was toned down for the film, which risks turning the central villains and conflicts into mush; something you absolutely cannot do and expect to survive. You don't bring compromised, emotionally castrated, half-product to market with this much invested in it. With so much apparently going wrong here, I can't help feeling this entire venture amounts to spending two hundred million dressing up a donkey as a stallion, and pushing it onto the track at the kentucky derby with a ticket in your hand and a hopeful expression.

Though this may be understandable in light of the fact that Compass is being executive produced by Robert Shaye; leftie New Line bigwig who directed another misguided act of pseudo-leftist cinematic hubris known as 'The Last Mimzy' earlier this year, which also went on to catastrophic boxoffice returns. In fact, his producing credits yield all of two significant hits in twenty years; one was Hairspray, the other, a certain trilogy about Hobbits. For the unitiated; two comparable films from recent years are Superman Returns, and Jackson's King Kong. Both cost upward of 200mil, both returned almost exactly 200mil, and were roundly considered bombs. It was an uphill climb to 200, and these films already had a wealth of cultural capital behind them; far, far more than Materials currently does. And they had the added benefit of actually being pretty good films, too. Viewed in light of these facts, Compass's prospects seem almost catastrophically dire.

Word is if this thing tanks, heads will roll at New Line. If my analysis is correct, I'll be waiting at the end of the red carpet with my trusty mitt. My current estimate if all goes well? Between 140-180m domestic.

Note: Just as an official qualifier, these are all estimations. Boxoffice is notoriously difficult to predict, and dark horses break out and become surprise hits all the time. Compass may be fantastic. It may be a 400mil hit. I'm fully open to the idea that this may happen here. But I'm not counting on it.

Nick

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2007-05-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

Some Thoughts on Church: Introduction

By Nora

I used to be an avid reader of the Internet Monk (www.internetmonk.com). I still frequent his site and think it's one of the best places on the net to get an honest, interesting, often humorous look at the Church today. I totally recommend it. Have a look at the site and enjoy yourself. However in recent months I've done little more then pop by. He spends a lot of (worthy) time addressing what going on in Christian culture. "The Emerging Church." "The Missional Church." "Post-Evangelicalism." etc. I've been pulling away from that in an attempt to enjoy something of my recent move into exploring more traditional, orthodox Christianity without feeling a need to label myself and align with a particular segment of Christianity. I think its important here to note that this is a process I'm going through, not an end and I'm very aware of that. I think I'm in what C.S. Lewis would call "the hallway." "It is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in."

That being said, you can't go to any church long without picking up the buzz of whats going on on a larger scale within Christian culture in the West. So I'd like to make some comments about what I've been seeing and experiencing within the Church recently via a series of posts. But first, some preliminary information to give you perspective.

Here is the shorthand version of my church-life (not my Christian life, again, another story.) I was raised in a very non-traditional church. And by that I do not mean that we used a slide projector instead of hymnals. Non-traditional means things like a) Not celebrating Christmas/Easter/birthdays b) No interest in the last 2000 years of Christian teaching c) No belief in the Trinity (ok, everybody gasp.) among a lot of other things (no, not Jehovah's Witness.) I eventually left this Church as it began to fall into disarray. After coming to a better theological understanding I began exploring churches of the Evangelical tradition in my teen years and was not at all impressed (for reasons I'll get to). I went through a couple years of feeling bitter and disappointed and did not attend Church. Eventually, I felt I wanted to try again. I thought what I was looking for was a place that was as far removed from Traditional Christianity in appearance as possible. People who wanted to meet together and love the Lord and not bother about anything else. People who wanted to get back to what the early, "unspoiled" Church was like. This led to a short time of half-hearted attendance in a very modern Evangelical sort of church (where no one dresses up, the preacher walks around a lot and everyone is very cool and with-it.) This was an unsatisfying experience. Almost by accident, I ran across the Orthodox Church which captured my attention. My research and reading challenged a lot of what I thought Traditional Christianity was all about. Still, there were many doctrines of Orthodox church that I felt I couldn't swallow, such as praying to saints, Mary being a perpetual virgin, etc. I began looking for a Church that would not compromise what I have come to understand as sound doctrine, yet could somehow embrace the wisdom and tradition of the past 2000 years of Christian experience.

At this point, I became friends with an Anglican who greatly challenged my understanding of that communion. I had always conceived of the Anglicans as Catholics without the Pope who go about marrying gay couples, sprinkling unsuspecting babies, and wearing funny costumes. I was very much set straight on this and a year ago I began attending a fairly traditional Anglican church. I am enjoying myself immensely. After a year, I want to take some time to reflect on my experience. Be warned, however, I do not have everything figured out yet. The following posts will be, in part, a way for me to sort out a lot of my experience and thoughts by sharing them with others....

2007-04-14T18:05:00.001-04:00

GRINDHOUSE Ground underfoot at BO. The Not-So-Simple 'Why'.

Harvey Weinstein's head from space, hours after Grindhouse hits theaters.

The online world's community of film critics, net geeks, and cinephiles is burning with righteous anger over the failure of one of the year's most hyped and unusual films. Grindhouse is an ultraviolent, ultra-profane, pornographically nasty celebration of a bygone era of cinematic trash that came into its element in the mid 70's and early 80's.

And frankly, it looked pretty cool. Not that I'm an advocate of such cinematic vices for their own sake, but I've always been of the opinion that the writing in a single episode of 'Friends' does more to unravel the essential moral fabric of society than all the 'Sin City's' and 'Kill Bill's in the world ever could. Even deliberate violence and sleaze of this sort has at it's dark heart an unshakable moral assertion that confesses a profound wrongness of the world that needs correcting; even if it uses antiheroes and exploitive violence to go there.

While that's hardly enough reason to raise exploitation pictures and general trash on a pedestal, it's far less destructive than your average sitcom, in which every character without fail lives in a world miraculously insulated from moral dilemmas or consequences. Promiscuity, unfaithfulness, selfishness are glazed over with laugh tracks, creating a cozy, indistinct world where nothing matters, and all our worst impulses and behaviours are reduced to a "Waddyagonnado?!" shrug. Meanwhile, canned laughter whisks away any niggling moral dilemmas with the surgical efficiency of sunglasses-clad presidential bodyguards removing a heckler from a rally.

With this in mind, I was anticipating Grindhouse. As the late Pauline Kael said, "Film are so rarely great art, that if can't appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them." I love good cinematic trash. My dvd collection sports such gems as Plan 9 From Outer Space, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, Super-InfraMan; a chinese grindhouse/chop-socky bit of lunacy, the legendarily ghastly 'Robot Monster', and so on.

I even have an appreciation for Tarantino and Rodriguez. I enjoyed Sin City very much, and likewise Kill Bill 2. (Vol1 is a different story) And while for other reasons I ended up choosing not to see it, the online community in question is aghast at it's failure.

Some critics have devolved their discussion of it's BO into a venomous 'red-state blue-state' tirade; spewing the expected liberal contempt that suburban rubes just didn't know what was good for them, ala a commentary by critic Jeffry Wells:

"We're really and truly living in the United States of Hong Kong -- a sprinkling of sophisticated urban havens surrounded on all sides by a massive Gorilla Nation. Two different planets, two different worlds...the high and the low...hip urbanity vs. the mentality of the mall."

Some postulated that the length scared people away. Others, the violence. Yet there are definite boxoffice exceptions to all these assertions. Violent films, even ones freakishly so, are profitable all the time. So are long ones, and on and on. They're arguing over demographics. Length. Style. Marketing. Season. (Is easter a good time to release such a thing) Absolutely everything except the thing that matters.

Story.

While I'm not going to go on a typical liberal tirade about the awfulness of Joe Sixpack's taste in movies, (and everything else) let's get a few things clear. Not everyone is a cinephile. Not everyone is a film geek, and not everyone has a historical grounding in film sufficient to whet the appetite for good schlock.

They made a critical mistake in marketing it (and possibly making it) as a kitschy 'schlock' masterpiece. I shall reiterate, this is not to say that people don't like trash, or even shocking, violent trash. Saw, Hills Have Eyes remakes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes, etc, all found an audience.

However, the people seeing these films simply believe they are seeing 'good cinema', and would bristle at the suggestion that they are enjoying sensational, manipulative garbage for its own sake. Non-cinephiles who enjoy really bad films are largely immune to the fact that what they're seeing is a bad film. How many teenage girls (and indeed, grown people) have you met who insist Armageddon is their favorite film because it's so emotional? Armageddon is indeed a dreadful film; but wait a minute; that teenage girl is still correct. It contains heroes. It contains sacrifice. It is 'emotional'.

In part, the success of Grindhouse would have required mainstream moviegoers to possess greater self-awareness about what they watch and why. Hollywood pictures actively work to smother that self awareness. This is done by infamous last-minute justifications of trash; like the tacking on of morals or sentiment, the halfhearted attempts at relevance or a message, usually in the closing minutes of the third act when in the midst of all the blood and carnage and fun stuff, the characters stop to think about the significance of it all. These are invariably the worst and most contrived-feeling scenes in any hollywood feature or tv show.

But for all our disdain, they're always included because they provide the undeniable critical element: At the very least, the facade of a story and moral significance to justify the carnage. 300 has it. The Saw films have it. Virtually any successful film has had it. It's a storytelling 101 non-negotiable rule to success. That is the one thing I believe Grindhouse lacked utterly, and why it tanked. And why it still has a shot at BO redemption if the two films are released seperately, and the marketing shifts gears to make them look like more legitimate stories rather than a kitsch time-capsule existing for its own sake.

The absolute basics of storytelling (and yes, screenwriting) tell us unequivocally that human beings are profoundly moral creatures. We seek it, we respond to it, we fight against it, but we can't escape it. For all the alleged cultural success of our post-Christian, morally relativistic, politically-correct social neutering, our appetites for irony, nihilism, relativism and artistic self-mockery remain positively anemic. Our appetite for good stories with brightly burning moral centers that believe in themselves is limitless; even when those good stories are told badly.

If you're not gonna be about something, you at least have to fake it. Hollywood is good at faking it. (or not, depending on your point of view) Grindhouse didn't even try to fake it. For cynical cinephiles who believe Hollywood is at it's stupidest when it tries to act smart, this is a breath of fresh air. Everyone else will stay far, far away.

300 to use an example, is an extremely problematic, and certainly not-great film. It contains many of the factors being discussed in Grindhouse's failure. No stars, too stylized, too violent, wrong time of year. But it also has a clear moral center, (Fight! For Freedom!) and simple, larger-than-life heroes burning brightly. Historically accurate? Who cares? Bad guys get their comeuppance in monsoons of beautifully realized digital gore, a hero's a hero, a man's a man, and that's that. And a little 60 million dollar film will be one of 2007's top earners. Now that the Weinsteins are in Grindhouse hock up to their eyeballs, it might be a good time to rediscover that.

-Nick

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2007-03-31T20:27:00.000-04:00

Review: Meet the Robinsons, and The Catharsis of The New Disney.

Lamentably, in all of Toronto, MTR is only playing in 3D in the wastelands of suburbia. Figure that one out. Nevertheless, I braved the crowds and checked it out in plain ol' 2D, and I'm happy to report I enjoyed the heck out of it.

For starters, 'Robinsons' doesn't come across nearly so desperate or forced in its humor as Chicken Little or Open Season, and never approaches the overall dullness of every WDFA feature since The Lion King (though I myself am not a fan) The time-travel story contains some genuine surprises (even though they're likely to go over the heads of kids) and Lewis is easily the most deeply-felt Disney protag since Lilo.

Even better, the film is marvellously flatulence-free, light on pop-culture nonsense, (seriously, who's still watching the original Shrek? Even the trailers for Shrek the Third feel tired before the film's even been released) and never sinks into peurility or crassness for the sake of squeezing a cheap laugh out of the kiddies while their parents frown and lament the state of family fare. The family-discovery-time-travel plot crackles under the machinations of a villain named Bowler Hat Guy. A classic developmentally-arrested baddie with bad teeth and a penchant for hilariously vaudevillian moustache-twirling.

There was so much good stuff I just wished it would slow down. I wanted to spend more time in this world and get to know the characters a little better. Another 5-7 minutes, perhaps added to the perfunctory character introductions could have made it perfect. But perhaps such a degree of cohesiveness is too much to ask from a film with seven credited writers, not including the gargantuan re-writes 'recommended' by WDFA's new Chief Creative Officer, Pixar helmsman John Lasseter.

Despite these quibbles, Robinsons is still a wonderful cinematic achievement. But more importantly, it does an admirable job as a symbol for the change in the Disney culture that the film is obviously intended to represent. Shaking off years of mediocre films with equally disappointing boxoffice and critical reaction, plus the recent talk of canning their justifiably-maligned direct-to-video division, the Disney brass is obviously hoping Robinsons is going to represent a turnaround in their theatrical image after over a decade of trouncing by Pixar and Dreamworks.

Indeed, the entire production seems infused with a spirit of cathartic healing. From the newly designed/presented WDFA logo intended to cement Walt Disney Feature Animation's own unique and distinct identity with a clear link to its roots, to the classic Mickey Mouse short that precedes the film (a rare and magical theatrical experience all by itself, particularly for fans of vintage animation) to the epilogue quote by Walt at the end, the entire production screams "Things will be different from now on. We promise."

Here's hoping. If the Robinsons are any indication, they're off to a solid start at a promising rebirth. Just don't be afraid to slow down a bit now, guys. Please?

-Nick

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2007-03-14T17:06:00.000-04:00

Animation Update: Rapunzel Unbraided and Ratatouille

Howdy hey, folks. Forgive the lack of updates recently! In the last seven weeks or so I've come down with two wicked colds, broken a molar, been promoted to Animation Supervisor at my studio, and taken a much-belated honeymoon to Disney World for five days.

Looks like N&N was proven right with our tidbit a few weeks back about "Rapunzel Unbraided" being in some major story trouble. Jim Hill Media reports:

Don't get me wrong, folks. Glen Keane's directorial debut still looks as though it will be " ... a film of astonishing beauty" loaded with lush visuals. It's just the proposed storyline of this still-in-development animated feature that now appears to be on the slim side.

Mind you, back in the late summer of 2006, Keane reportedly showed Lasseter the first 20 minutes of the most recent version of "Rapunzel." And John was allegedly very lavish in his praise, saying that it was the strongest opening of a Disney fairy tale film that he'd ever seen. The only problem is ... Glen & his team are still struggling to come up with a satisfying second & third act for their animated version of "Rapunzel."

I personally hope this project can be salvaged. However, there's going to be lots of politics and ego-bruising going on between two heavyweights like Lasseter and Keane; two 800 pound gorillas from different eras and cultures thrashing it out so lets hope it gets done at all.

In Ratatouille news, Brad Bird's adopted picture will apparently not be 100% CG animation. My super-secret sources inform me that the first ten minutes of Ratatouille will in fact, be 2D. Yes, traditional, hand-drawn animation, allegedly in the style of the classic Disney short 'Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom', currently available in the excellent 'Disney Rarities' set. Even more surprising is that apparently, the 2D work will be completed in-house! Quite likely from some of Pixar's abundant 2D-turned-3D talent who were no doubt happy to replace the mouse for a pencil, even if just for a short while.

-Nick

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2007-02-09T10:16:00.000-05:00

Anna Nicole: She Sure Got Nude.

The news and entertainment media was shocked and horrified yesterday to find that one of their purest offspring, a braindead pill-popping porno-chick was found dead in a pool of her own vomit, surrounded by pills and narcotics. Her life was a constant embarassing and tragic shambles which the media documented with unending prurient glee. Staggering from one disastrous embarassment to another, culminating in the release of her reality TV show on which she was always appeared drunk, pilled-up, or both. It was one of those shows that makes you look to the skies longingly for signs of an incoming death-ray from benevolent Moon Men.

Now that she's dead of course, everything's different. MSNBC among others, is leading the charge to give her a legacy, attempting to legitimize and bronze an essentially worthless life that they otherwise exploited every minute of. Must be a slow news month.

But hey, this is important. She's one of their own. Smith was the ultimate student of media values, and nary a finger will be layed on her now. Her life is being described as "Short and tragic", rather than the more apt "Idiotic and immoral" or "Exploitive, pornographic, shameful and bereft of significance." or "What the hell was she thinking all those years?" or even "Well no kidding. This was pretty much inevitable, wasn't it?"

I do not wish to trivialize her death. It is indeed, tragic. And it was also entirely avoidable. Anna was simply a student of the times. She went down in the flames of the avoidable immoral idiocy that the media and academia champion so fervently, and will therefore be given a Monroe-esque legacy as someone who lived fast and hard, died young, and left a puke-covered silicony corpse. But not before leaving the world her greatest gift; the sight of her airbrushed surgery-jobs splayed all over Playboy for teenage boys to dehumanize. She did everything right shy of nailing a Kennedy. (as far as we know.)

The media will make her a hero. With a resume like that, how could they not? Consistency is important.

-Nick.

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2007-02-02T17:52:00.000-05:00

An Inconvenient Academy:

Al Gore and the Oscars. Like Sleeping With Your Cousin.

My contempt for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (or AMPAS) is well documented. The Academy is not some group of respectable creative types. The Academy is not some counsel of elders any smarter than you or me. 'The Academy' is just Hollywood. The Oscars are Hollywood congratulating itself in a multimillion dollar promotional presentation for producing half a dozen films out of several hundred that don't resemble the same dog-hair encrusted fecal matter that the rest of their films do.

Good work guys. Get back to me when your track record is any better than 1/400.

Earl Torgeson, genuine AMPAS voter.

See, most of the time, Hollywood's content to produce films that are merely astonishingly stupid, putting their audience on the level approximately of a trained ape chewing on a milk carton. When Oscar season rolls around, they dust off their idea caps and produce films that are not merely stupid, but also philosophically sloppy, profoundly immoral, or usually both. These are often the ones that go on to win major awards. So what could be a more perfect marriage of cultural-political stupidity than for Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' to be nominated? Folks, this one exploded my irony meter and nobody even seems to realize it's funny.

I work in the television business. Let me be clear here. The entertainment biz is full of morons. Not sprinkled here and there, but a full-blown infestation, in high and low places alike. Talent and intellect are not king. People survive not just through talent (though it happens) but through manipulation, through backstabbing, and through the sheer force of their personalities. Right or wrong.

Most of hollywood is stupid.

Most of hollywood is also incredibly naive.

Virtually all of Hollywood is incredibly leftist.

Of course, Hollywood is the perfect breeding ground for liberals. Where else does one find such a perfect storm of shrill, insecure self-absorbed neurotics, the deification of emotion, religious dedication to the unreal, and unvarnished contempt for the intelligence of the common man? The conditions are flawless. Hollywood is the ideal ideo-social petri dish of liberalism.

And they're basically all children as this nomination shows. Alas, in a more sophisticated and skeptical age, we might have viewed films made by government officials with a modicum of skepticism. We're wary to trust them on the news, but we prostrate ourselves before them when they're given unchecked access to a budget of millions and a professional editor, and are professing to explain things that the general public has absolutely no means of understanding, verifying, or criticising.

So let's give him the most prestigious award in the industry.

In a more enlightened age, we'd unhesitatingly call such a production 'propaganda', whether it was correct in its assertions or not. Our children will look back on this era the way we look back on June and Ward Cleaver. With a head-shake and laugh, and hopefully a feeling of vastly greater sophistication over that bafflingly naive blip in the history of the west.

"Pop, were people really that gullible back then?"

"Yes, Junior, they were."

"But those were politicians saying the world was gonna end unless you gave em all that money and power to control stuff! Like that crazy guy on TV on sunday mornings that begs for money!"
"Right."

"Golly, folks were dumb back then!"

"Yep."

Then we'll be forced to explain that these were the same people that needed widescreen, multimillion dollar documentary presentations to educate them in such matters of subtlety like 'fox news is conservative' and 'fast food is bad for you'. Forget June and Ward and the postwar 'Aw, shucks Mister!' generation. This is the golden age of naive.

-Nick

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2007-01-31T16:27:00.000-05:00

Obama, Clean: Biden

Yes, according to Biden, Obama is that rarest of rare jewels; a clean black guy. In fact, not since the golden era of Bill Cosby's (Doctor Huxtable to you and me) immaculate and stylish sweaters and his enormous Doctor-money house with twenty-foot ceilings has America seen such a squeaky-clean black guy. He's cleaner than Flavor-Flav. He's cleaner than Huggy Bear. And he's certainly cleaner than Theo when he got his ear pierced by his buddy 'Cockroach' in less than sanitary conditions. The prime-time infection that followed captivated and delighted America, but also led some to the mental fringes of an ugly and marginalized question: Are black people just... dirty?

Democrat Senator Joe Biden thinks so. Thankfully, he's found one who never fails to scrub behind his ears, washes his hands before every watermelon, and only wears the filthy one-strap overalls with nothing underneath on special occasions, like during the manual acquisition of cotton from a vast field.

Let the word ring forth: Obama = Clean.

Thanks Joe!

-Nick

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2007-01-25T12:32:00.000-05:00

Salacious Skydiver Sabotage:
The Coleman Francis Murders?

The recent tabloid murder of a Belgian skydiver, apparently motivated by a romantic rivalry has captured interest around the world. However, it's especially sure to raise eyebrows among one particularly small and dedicated group; cinephiles with a taste for old-school schlock and an affection for the dark bottom of the cinematic barrel. Enter 50-60's-era schlockmeister Coleman Francis and his seminal work, "Skydivers".

IMDB summary:
"In this cinematic ode to freefalling and java we meet Harry and Beth. They run a ridiculously unsafe skydiving school and consume the Gross National Product in espresso roast, just to get through their terribly troubled marriage. Harry cheats with a local town tramp, while Beth runs around, nonplused, making sure their clients don't plummet to their death . . . often. Eventually the spurned skank decides to teach Harry a lesson and pours acid in his parachutes, proving that unlike Maxwell House, not everything about the couple's business sense is good to the last drop."

And as Bill Gibron at Popmatters.Com explains him...

"So go ahead and praise those international auteurs who exposed the seedy, slimy underbelly of their beloved homelands. Champion those creative cinematographers that found beauty in the ordinary and grace in the routine. They can't hold a month old can of Spam to the life as lumbering mediocrity created by Coleman Francis. Instead of celebrating The Bicycle Thief or worshipping La Terra Trema we should point to The Skydivers, or Night Train to Mundo Fine as films that truly express the verisimilitude of the spiritless, colorless indifference that is reality. As much as we hate to admit it, Coleman Francis was in tune with the tedium of our life and times. He remains the true neo neo-realist." - Bill Gibron, PopMatters.Com

Coleman Francis is sure to be an unknown to most, except for morbidly curious seekers of grade-Z atomic-era cinema, or fans of the legendary Mystery Science Theater 3000 or MST3K, (I fall in both categories) which featured (and made fun of) most of Francis' films. His obscurity is admittedly deserved. A slovenly drunkard whose cinematic trademarks were a langorous pace, wretched lighting and framing, massively unphotogenic actors, and editing conducted with minimal regard to coherence of time, place, or the blocking of his actors. His films transcend the incompetence of the enthused and talentless rookie like his contemporary Ed Wood, and achieve an aesthetic badness so aggressive and complete, it can only be called a style.

Though even as B-movie fame goes, he never reached Ed Wood's iconic status. (even non-cinephiles have some awareness of Wood's infamy) His films were neither as lovably incompetent, or as comedy-of-errors funny as Wood. These were angry, mean, unlovable little things. Incompetent not by goofy missteps or inexperience, but with what looks like bitter, deliberate focus. Coleman's camera doesn't misstep or humorously slip out of focus, it hates the audience. Kicking the viewer with half-framed closeup shots of pockmarked faces and scenes of splayed men in filthy rooms that look as if lit with a penlight. Want coherent timelines? The camera skips forward through scenes and jumps around simple dialogue sequences like it's falling down stairs; anticipating by several years Seijun Suzuki's jumpy narrative style in the bright and charming 'Tokyo Drifter', though I admit I don't know if Suzuki was a fan. Characters conversing five feet away will look as if shot miles apart. His characters don't 'read' the lines, as much as they mumble, grumble, sputter, grunt, and chew their way through them (Francis included, starring in his own 'Red Zone Cuba') Francis is like Wood, minus the boundless, empty-headed optimism that made his efforts so clumsily endearing. Francis however, was apparently the greater realist.

Maybe life does imitate art? Or maybe Francis' bleak directing style and disjointed narratives of barely-in-frame ugly people cheating, murdering, and backstabbing one another truly had tapped into some primal truth of the human condition. Maybe he truly had cultivated a style with its own ugly integrity; what one critic speculated as 'neo neo-realism'. Now with such an uncanny intersection of Francis' vision into cold reality, one can't help but wonder if time will indeed vindicate his cinematic vision and render his small but hardy filmography increasingly relevant. Are we on the verge of a Coleman Francis renaissance? Are Francis' bizarre films seeing some sort of macabre cultural vindication? Almost certainly not. But at least it's fast-food for thought for fans of one of filmdom's great unknown anti-heroes.

-Nick

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2007-01-18T10:10:00.000-05:00

DISNEY Rumor Mill: Rapunzel Unbraided in Trouble?

EDIT: I notice in my stats that this article is getting some email-linked visitation from none other than our Disney Worldwide Services Inc. friends at Burbank. I don't know if they're sharing a laugh at the hysterical inaccuracy of it, if it's just an idle visit, or if I've somehow inadvertently released the coordinates to Walt's cryotube and now I need to be eliminated. In either case, I'd like to remind our readers that this is purely unsubstantiated rumor. I cannot verify it myself, and am not presenting it as fact. We clear? Nobody planning to sue? I will gladly remove it if requested/coerced. Ok then, read on.

Since John Lasseter's promotion to Chief Creative Officer at WDFA, word has it he's been shaking things up quite a bit. Which is only good news to those of us who have found Disney's animated output over the last decade less than inspiring. Many animators murmur that there'a a culture of creative stagnation at Disney, and are of the opinion that things need to be shaken up; the pond needs to be drained. New energy is needed.

As you know, lengendary animator Glen Keane is helming WDFA's Rapunzel Unbraided. Yet another bit of digital fantasy that promises if nothing else, opulent visuals. But the story?

Rumor has it Lasseter wasn't happy. In fact the grapevine murmurs that he was so unhappy with the results, that an exchange something like this took place: "Glen, you've done a lot of good for the studio, but the film isn't working. And if you can't get it working, I will have to pull it from you."

Yikes. If my sources are correct, Rapunzel could be in for some major retooling. I dunno what wasn't working, only that John wasn't happy. And what John wants, John gets. Hopefully this'll bode well for WDFA's future.

-Nick

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2007-01-17T10:52:00.000-05:00

PIXAR Rumor Mill: W.A.L-E to be directed by...

Heard through the grapevine that it's Andrew Stanton, writer/director of Nemo. I was thrilled to bits when I heard this, as I regard Nemo as Pixar's only flawlessly written and directed film (with the possible inclusion of Toy Story) as well as their most beautiful and atmospheric.

Been hearing awesome stuff about this. Early word is that it's an ultra-widescreen, unusually dialogue-free, very visually-driven love story. The buzz is that Pixar is essentially pushing art-film territory. For someone who can't wait to see animation tackling some more challenging subject matter than teaching small animals the value of family, this is exciting stuff indeed. Risky? Maybe. But if any studio was ever in a position to take such a risk, economically and with the customer goodwill their name carries, it's Pixar and the timing is perfect. Enough with Disney's decade of animated trainwrecks and mediocrities, time to move forward. For all the talk of the abundance of CG films stagnating the animation industry, quite the opposite is occurring. The animation market is now evolving at a faster clip than it ever has, perhaps even more than in Walt's heyday. We're becoming more quickly burned out on the same old stories. And this can only bode well for the future.

We've gone from maybe seeing one animated film per year, to nearly 20 in the space of less than a decade. How much farther can this go?

Cannot wait to see some stills. Perhaps a teaser with Ratatouille?

-Nick

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2007-01-16T18:50:00.000-05:00

Awards Season Review: The Departed

The Departed is a film Chock full of technical virtuosity, smartmouth writing, savage violence, and so much raw plot, story, and character material that it seems enough for several films. All the essential boxes were ticked off, yet all I could think when the lights rose was that maybe my impression of it it would improve after a few viewings. At which point I realized I hadn't enjoyed it enough to want to revisit it. All I had was the clammy awkwardness of high expectations dashed, of an undeniably lukewarm reaction to a film and director I wanted to love so badly.

The Departed is a film to be technically appreciated far more than it is to be enjoyed. However, there are very simple reasons why it doesn't work as well as his other films. My chief problem with the flick was that it's just crammed. Scorsese wants to tell a full-fledged cat-and-mouse crime story, as well as a fully realized character study. The end result is a crime story largely lacking a broad sense of tension and narrative momentum, and an undermotivated protagonist whose past is dealt with so cursorily in a brief expletive-laden dialogue, that it failed to provide a deeply-felt character launchpad to sustain Leo's arc over two and a half hours. There's lots of good stuff here; the dialogue crackles as expected, the direction is energetic and rife with Marty's usual audience-abusing bag of jarring grotesqueries, but for all the analysis that can be poured into it, it simply lacks fundamental emotional kick. Maybe because it's trying to do too much; maybe it's because all the compelling and cinematically important backstory was poured into a one-note character who changes the least. But most likely, it was because huge stories are not what Scorsese excels at. The Departed is too long, too much, and lacking the ferocious singularity of focus that made masterpieces of his earlier work. It's big. It's huge. It's complex. Unfortunately, simply understanding the myriad plot machinations does not make the film more emotionally interesting.

Maybe it's Leo's cursory backstory treatment that makes it tough to care about his present situation beyond a superficial scene-by-scene tension. Maybe it's the crammed, uneasy balance of cat-and-mouse plot and character-study that made the late revelation about Costello a relatively unexciting development, when it should have been a bombshell. Maybe this just isn't the sort of film Marty's comfortable making.

Elsewhere, in a discussion on Leo's Oscar chances, I summed up my feelings thusly:

I dunno about Leo, but Departed has a real shot at best pic. It's a Big Important Film pretending to be about Big Important Things with an all-star cast and an important director, and it has the added benefit of being deceptively hollow, unpleasant, and most important of all, quickly forgettable. And it's a critical and commercial darling. Frankly, it's a shoo-in.

Put another way, The Departed is a film that demands the utmost faculties of the viewer to learn things you don't want to know about characters you don't like. One of Marty's least interesting films.

Which, sadly, means it stands an excellent chance at Oscar gold.

-Nick

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2007-01-15T18:52:00.000-05:00

Saddam's Execution: The Pwnage Catchphrases

Everyone knows a particularly nasty character can't get pwned in the third act without the accompaniment of a wry and or chintzy catchphrase that's appropriate to the situation. I put the question to the film geeks at rottentomatoes, and here's what I and the fine folks came up with.

In no particular order...

"HAHNG AHROUND, SADDAM!"

"Noose to see you"

Saddam: Hung like a camel?

Saddam: Gallowed be his name

"Hey Saddam....Chin up!"

Saddam: Swinging Nutters

"HEY SADDAM! I Never knew you swung that way!"

"...Kabul went and got itself in a big damn hurry ... sometimes after work I go to the park and feed the birds,I keep thinkin' Uday might just show up and say 'Hello'. But he never does. I hope wherever he is, he's doin' ok and makin' new friends."

There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend: those with regimes and those who hang. You hang.

"You in some deep shi'ite now, boy"

WTF. *Looks at phone* Saddam hung up on me!!

Hang around. We'll order out.

Saddam - "Look what I've been roped into!"

You know what happens when a dictator gets hung by a rope? Same as everything else.

Look at the bright side Saddam, at least you have a timetable for exiting Iraq.

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2007-01-15T18:33:00.000-05:00

Perilous Adventure-Stories of Life in the West: Teenage Angst

~or~

"Shut Up and Stop Whining: Your ancestral betters didn't struggle through thousands of years of political and economic tyranny to produce the unspeakable comfort you enjoy so that you could scream at your parents about getting your nose pierced and then decide you're bi because you had a dream about breasts. Grow up already, you !@#$% brats. "

Life in the western world is really quite amazing. For the first time ever in human history, whole nations are affordably fed, save for where corruption reigns or in economically retarded socialist gulags. Even the poorest among us can readily meet all our material needs (if not our wants). And if we can't afford something, countless charitable institutions exist to provide us with what we need. And government institutions as well, which skim us on top of our regular giving. And even still we're materially comfortable beyond the wildest dreams of most human beings and societies that have ever existed. Yet we're not happy. We're pissed. We're ungrateful. We're petulant and selfish, entitled, egotistical, obnoxious and vain.

Frankly, we suck. Hard.

The unparalleled wealth and technological advancement generated by the rise of the west has sadly, given us a new golden age of imagined maladies, self-absorbed neuroticisms, and infantile emotion-worship. This is gonna get worse before it gets better, folks. In that spirit, I give you today's installment, one of the first of the new breeds of human this glorious new West has produced:

New! Improved! Pseudo-Manic-Depressive Teenage Girlfriend! Every PMDTG comes complete with your choice of unemployed loser-dad, or upper-middle-class mom & pop! Comes with four different hair-dye colors and eight different body piercings! Petulant sense of entitlement, perma-sulk whiny face, and your choice of trendy or ironic tattoos included! THRILL as her bellybutton piercing gets infected for the forty-fourth time! SIGH as she breaks down sobbing in your arms after her latest tears-and-smashing tirade! ROLL your eyes as she gives herself superficial injuries 'Just to know she can still feel'! CHOKE as she reads you her spiral-bound poetry collection 'loosely' inspired by Trent Reznor's chili-dog bowel movements! LOOK attentive as she tearfully confesses her emotionally murky bisexual desires! She sobs! She cries! She hates life, her parents and you, but she'll need you so bad she can't even say! It's a toxic spiral of juvenile codependency the whole family will love!

(it'd probably be funnier if I hadn't dated her myself, once upon a time.)

-Nick

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2007-01-14T22:15:00.000-05:00

Whatever You Got, I Hate
A look at Liberal Incoherence.

Your average leftist (is there any other kind?) never seems to know what he wants from the culture he lives in. The only he's ever able to dedicate himself to is that whatever culture, creatively or commercially is generated freely by the market is bad. There never seems to be any shortage of things to complain about.

The most common lament is that when commercial goods are expensive, the market isn't providing for the poor. On the face of it, this could theoretically be an admirable sentiment. Who's against helping the poor? No economic system is capable of completely eliminating poverty, and there will always be the needy among us who whether through misfortune or foolishness, or even addiction or disability, need the help of their fellow man.
Unfortunately, it doesn't end there.

When businesses like Wal-Mart use aggressive business policies to actually provide for the poor, they complain that the intangible 'social price' of helping the poor is unacceptable.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473107/

The Adbusters and Chomskyite crowd then complain that markets and mass media result in a 'tragic' homogenization of culture.. (a homogenization that nevertheless generates sizable readership and budget for expensively printed, high-gloss faux-design-mag drivel like Adbusters)

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1535254

...And then they complain when the culture provides too much choice. Tip: 'too much' choice is any choice not provided by them. CBC, I'm looking in your direction.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/11/news/economy/pluggedin_gunther.fortune/index.htm

Whatever happened to minding your own freaking business and consuming whatever aspects of arts and culture you found interesting, while shrugging off the fact that any free society will produce plenty of trash and that you don't have to have anything to do with it? Most of us call this little intellectual development of our lives "Adulthood". Apparently if you're merely doing that, your 'social conscience' is not actively engaged. Why is it that what we now call being politically 'conservative' used to be known as 'post-pubescence'?

They complain when the market makes huge successes, they complain when the market yields epic failures. (Air America and Radiopower.org, I'm looking in your direction.) They complain that there's too little, and that there's too much. That there's not enough, and what's provided is provided in the wrong way.

What's obvious by now is that the point is not what's provided. The point is that it's not them providing it.

The fragile ego of the liberal is constantly under assault whenever anyone gets what they want, as long as it isn't provided by them. Like the obnoxious, insecure, unpopular kid constantly barging into games and blurting "Can I play too?" even as he insults the intelligence of other players. The one who can never participate in any conversation without steering it to themselves and playing games of one-upmanship, (because you're just not that interesting, really) The one who says "No no, you're doing it wrong, let me." and proceeds to break everything he touches.

Maybe it's time someone told that kid that we grownups are doing just fine on our own, thanks.

-Nick

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2007-01-14T16:13:00.000-05:00

On Golden Compasses and Wooden Wardrobes: A critical look at the fantasy fiction of ultra-humanist Philip Pullman, and CS Lewis.

I'm posting the original article here in it's entirety to better serve the readership and interest it generated. I'll probably avoid splitting these up from now on. Enjoy! -Nick

Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" has been getting a lot of press lately, as Hollywood continues to mine the fantasy genre and capitalize on the success of Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and other literary works by their creative betters that have made profitable leaps to screen. Pullman's first novel in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy is no exception, and the buzz around it will doubtless grow defeaning as it's 2007 release date nears. Particularly with a cast that includes recently-confirmed movie star Daniel Craig, and awards-ceremony furniture like Nicole Kidman.

However, much like the success of The DaVinci Code; one of the most appallingly-written pieces of pop-lit by the king of language-mangling airport-fiction Dan Brown, the source of the clamour surrounding the His Dark Materials trilogy eludes me.

Ok, so it doesn't. It just confuses me somewhat, though not as much as the success of Brown, whose chief vocation should undoubtedly include a mop and shifts that last between midnight and 8 am. But whereas nobody (I hope) is going to mistake Dan Brown's oeuvre for high-art or anything less than lining for one's bird cage, HDM has actually garnered the acclaim of the literary world. It, we are told, is something approaching 'art'.

The chief comparison Pullman draws, is to CS Lewis. And His Dark Materials, to the Narnia series. Primarily for the fact that they're both fantasy fiction with a wide scope and fairly explicit allegorical underpinnings. 'Narnia' in it's many allusions to the Christian ethic and doctrines like sacrificial atonement, and 'Materials' in it's blustering, overtly anti-religious zeal, complete with haphazard modern-social-commentary characters like a pair of gay angels so eye-rollingly topical, they could be doing the rounds on daytime talk shows.

Have I revealed my point prematurely? No matter. The comparison in frankness, is wholly unjustified. When the literary establishment in doe-eyed worship compares Pullman to Lewis, they are comparing student and master.

Don't expect anyone to tell Pullman this, though. His disgust for Lewis is widely documented, as is his appraisal of the Narnia series as a vulgar and hateful little thing, symptomatic of everything wrong with those 'religious types' so easily reduced to a string of adjectives from the 'Outraged Humanist's World Wheel.' "Patriarchal" "Racist" "Mysoginistic", etc.. And finally, he declares the series outright, "Nauseating drivel." Sadly, to read his interviews one can barely help but conclude that this is the place from which he and his work draw their chief significance and identity. He is not Philip Pullman, he is the anti-Lewis. His Dark Materials, is the Anti-Narnia.

Let me be momentarily gracious. Pullman is not a bad writer. He's just not a particularly great one. Though aesthetically competent, he is cursed with a heavy, thudding touch. His philosophizing is graceless and hamfisted. And perhaps most to his detriment, he writes children like someone who's studied them in textbooks, but could never be bothered to speak to one and find out what they're like.

His heroine Lyra is a rigidly contained and unconvincing creation; created not to learn or discover or act freely, but solely to function in service of an omnipotent theme. As starkly serviceable and inorganic as anyone out of an Ayn Rand novel. This isn't a child; it's how Pullman imagines children ought to be. Or perhaps more likely, how he imagines himself as one.The story impresses with sweeping arctic locales and visceral action. But reading them, one can't escape the notion that he's far more interested in ideological pamphleteering than natural storytelling or genuine characters. His characters are written with a marked lack of trust in them to reveal thematic truths through their own actions. Like everything else in his world, they're simply 'forced'. The seams show, and the writer appears, gnashing through the pages. Pullman reads like a man so rabidly chomping at the bit to air his grievances with society, religion, men of the cloth, etc... that he's all too willing to hang his material on unsatisfactory, and even lazy or contrived characterizations and plot turns, and attempt to compensate with exotic locales and big ideas. Sort of a 'we'll fix it in post' mentality.

Ironically enough, Lewis' application of christian themes in his writing was both far more explicit, and far more organic and disciplined. First and foremost, he set out to tell exciting and magical stories, and he did. The themes and morals were incidental, springing naturally from the work. Lewis goes into the process at depth in his essays on the matter, asserting emphatically that beginning with allegorical function in mind when starting a story, is a recipe for disaster. Rather, that the inspiration from Narnia came from his expanding on a single captivating image; a faun holding an umbrella.

Pullman lacks the discipline or perhaps ability, and the necessary trust in his audience to work that way. And in so doing, succumbs to the quintessential trappings of the desperate preacher and second-rate storyteller. Thus, though he fancies himself on equal footing, thinking he has succesfully emulated Lewis's 'formula' for a sort of 'fantasy evangelism', the fact is, he has the process completely backwards. Pullman is not interested in stories, he's interested in preaching. He's interested in essays and speechifying. He's a man with a mission, writing with a staunch 'theme first, story second' method.

Lewis simply enjoyed himself, writing exciting stories that read with the breezy, unstrained quality of a confident, sure-handed wordsmith. Confident in his skill, his faith, his scholarship, and with no so juvenile intent as to need to prove anything to anyone. Pullman's work gnashes and broods like a sulking teenager; seeking not it's own identity or purpose, but to define itself with an anti-identity and the histrionics of rebellion for it's own sake. In the end, it offers little to the reader's soul but an enfeebled, and pointless cry of 'Oh yeah?' Which is why fifty years from now, His Dark Materials will be relegated to dusty library shelves, replaced by the latest fashionable softcover iteration of pop-humanism for kids, and our children will still be eagerly sprinting through the wardrobe. And it is chiefly why Lewis is a first-rate writer, and Pullman is not.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T20:17:00.000-05:00

The Political Necessity of Dead Babies

Like many, I was heartened to hear the recent development that stem cells once thought only retrievable from embryonic sources could now be safely harvested from amniotic fluid, supposedly eliminating the need for ethically 'dubious' harvesting of human embyros. Granted this is of limited benefit, since any manner of embryonic stem cells have yet to yield any tangible medical potential or benefit. But at least they'd have an ethically sound, politically safe way to harvest said stem cells now. Right? Surely the political class would be clamoring take advantage of it, right?

Well, no.

In a press conference today Senator Tom Harkin was quick to dispell any hope that we would no longer be destroying human embryos, since stem cells taken from amniotic fluid were 'not a replacement' and that 'research must continue'.

Well of course it must, as it must no matter what we learn. Because as always, 'research' was never the point. The point of course, is ideological. This is not about medical hope; but a vastly more pressing goal: Keeping alive, however reluctantly and by whatever avenues, cultural acceptance of the abortion ethic. If Tom Harkin were suddenly to burst out in praise of this new procedure, it would be disastrous. A plain admission of the moral tenuousness of this sort of research, and of the right to mutilate, dispose of and experiment on unborn human beings.

This is an admission that must not, will not, ever be made by any leftist. Don't wait for it, it ain't coming. Why?

Abortion is the ultimate expression of the leftist philosophy, and so must be maintained at all costs. It is a flawlessly faithful physical expression of the ideology of the leftist: That one person may be arbitrarily sacrificed in their wealth, property, rights or life for the comfort, well-being and expedience of a more powerful individual, leader, group or lobby. All hidden behind the pathetic rhetoric of rationalization, given voice by the state to the masses of the offended, inconvenienced, underpaid, unmarried, and endless arrays of the immature.

"Yeah well, you're making enough money."

"Yeah well, businesses are just greedy anyway."

"Yeah well, so I countinue to be financially irresponsible and had two kids out of wedlock. Why should my bad decisions have inconvenient long-term consequences while some guy who works his ass off and and doesn't have premarital sex hits the jackpot?"

"Yeah well, you're not technically human for another 40 seconds, so stab, puncture, and suction away. Hurry, the clock is ticking. Do it quick, before it turns into murder."

Whether you are insisting on the right to skim 40% of a paycheck, to confiscate a business, or to crush the skull of an unborn infant who would have all the legal protections you enjoy were it not still seconds from being born, all stem from the same root that insists on the moral rightness of raw force, provided it's administered in the name of an abstract, unachievable, social/economic equalization.

All the scientific, industrial, medical and economic development in the world won't erase the rationalization cries behind abortion. Above all things to the leftist, the ethic of sacrifice must be maintained.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T20:12:00.000-05:00

Saddam Execution Video Draws Crits

The departure from this earth of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein was not as universally well-recieved as some had hoped.

"While the closure is more definitive than in, say, The Black Dahlia, the cinematography is pedestrian and the narrative somewhat transparent. "I knew where the story was going in the first few seconds" said shopkeeper Najib Mquakbar "and those masks certainly limited secondary character development!" Additionally, the lead performance, while certainly career ending, has received mixed reviews from "dictatorial" to "brutally dishonest" and even "limp" from one unsympathetic viewer.

Meanwhile, after an explosive start and a heavily disputed pre-production period, the US-produced sequel has its work cut out for it, amidst waning audience interest."

..."I hated the by-the-numbers, hackneyed contrivances. I mean, for crying out loud, a noose? A trap door? Why not just have him slip on a banana peel and fall into quicksand?

I was hoping for a twist ending, but no deviation from the formula here."

-rottentomatoes

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2007-01-13T20:06:00.000-05:00

Apocalypto: A Second Look at the Year's Best Film

Yes, I revisited Mel Gibson's Apocalypto for a second time, fighting off exhaustion and a Toronto downpour to see if it would hold up to a second viewing, or succumb to a round-two deficiency of most films; being intensely boring in between highlights. I'm happy to report Mel's glorious vision survives intact, and is enriched by a second viewing. Only the second film I saw theatrically twice (I won't say what the other was, but suffice to say it didn't need my help) Apocalypto is one of those rare films well worth a second look.

In the film communities I frequent online, I see a few people 'getting it', and many more who aren't. The film is frequently derided as simplistic; a braindead chase picture, a ludicrous actioner and so on. This is a testament to the radicality of Gibson's success. That it rewards the attentive viewer without boring or talking down to him, because Apocalypto is a rare sort of beast; a film that has trust in its audience. Gibson does not wield his themes like a cudgel. At no point do the characters sit down in the midst of the mayhem and discuss what they've just learned for the audience's benefit. There is no insipid overstatement of morals to ensure that every last member in the theater has got it. The film simply moves. It hums along on its own terms, never stopping to explain itself. But the attentive viewer will be in awe of the enormous and complex themes Gibson manages to weave, without any down-talking 'dummy scenes' in which things are rigorously explained, and the protag invariably responds with something like

"Uh, so what you're saying, is..."

As one who firmly believes hollywood is usually at it's stupidest when it's trying to act it's smartest, Apocalypto was a revelatory experience.

Though it may look like a deceptively simple surival/chase picture, (and a thrilling one at that) Apocalypto is at bottom about the shared values of individuals, families, and communities coming into conflict with the demands and values of nations. By their nature, devoted to the abstractions of leaders and to the service of a carefully mysticized and deified national identity. Abstractions that place little value on individual children, husbands and wives, friends, and communities, the sanctity of land, environment and property, and the right of families and offspring to pass on their property, culture and heritage.

This is without even touching on the filmmaking itself. Roger Ebert had this to say of Star Wars' aesthetic; and it's flawlessly applicable here. Gibson's cinematic technique in this film is well worth examining.

"Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them."Star Wars" works like that. My list of other out-of-the-body films is a short and odd one, ranging from the artistry of "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Cries and Whispers" to the slick commercialism of "Jaws" and the brutal strength of "Taxi Driver." On whatever level (sometimes I'm not at all sure) they engage me so immediately and powerfully that I lose my detachment, my analytical reserve. The movie's happening, and it's happening to me. "

This is the purest sort of visual cinema I've seen in recent memory. Dialogue is magnificently sparse. Not a word is wasted in redundantly explaining that which the camera, expressions, or body language of the actors has told us. Such as in a challenge of rank dominance in which an official simply says "Shall we now then do what You want?" The resulting challenge, conflict and submission that follow are carried on in near-total silence. Likewise in the event that launches the entire third act. Same official's son is killed. Wordlessly, without any bravado or focus-group tested mission statement, they're off. Not a word has been uttered, but you get it. More than get it, it reverberates in your very bones with tension that dialogue would have immediately sapped. Sucking you back down to earth and reminding you you were in another braindead hollywood flick where no ambiguity may be risked, and timid producers insist everything be explained multiple times.

Such cases are not the exception, they're the way this film is told. It's a magnificently pure cinema that hollywood's cowardice has all but rendered extinct. And it is glorious.

Second-viewing verdict? Still, easily, the year's best. See it on the big screen while you still can, preferably more than once.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T19:58:00.000-05:00

Conservatism Doesn't Fit on a Bumper Sticker

aka, Why We Lose the Emotional Argument

A thought of the day:

In the US and Canada, the minimum wage arguments along with various other interventionisms have essentially achieved a level of zero resistance. A legally mandated minimum wage and the economic philosophy informing it, is as culturally ubiquitous and unchallenged as the alleged need for the government to maintain monopolistic control and possession of its criminally incompetent education system.

Why? Because emotion won and will continue to win. Hayek described the situation as living in an age where the emotional faculties in most men are more developed than the intellectual; ironically enough, particularly in those we vaunt as intellectuals.

A key challenge confronting the conservative philosophy's relevance in an increasingly emotional and hypersensitive age is it's lack of emotionally compelling images. Working in entertainment and as a writer, this is a concept that must be grappled with constantly. One criteria for whether you've got a widely sellable concept for a film, tv show, novel, or political party is "Does it fit on a movie poster?" Which is to say, can you explain it, and generate interest in one compelling image? A title? A tagline?

And that's where the leftists have us licked.

Let us be brutally frank as to some of the reasons behind conservatism's shortcomings in popularity. Explaining the way markets work in tandem with political freedom doesn't make for tidy mental images of blue-skied utopias, glittering towers, miraculous clean-burning energy sources, intergalactic exploration or flying cars. Yet this is the sort of vision even the very young can and regularly do conjure in association with a glorious, perfect statism; all our resources finally pooled toward wonderful, rational, beneficial ends by some benevolent authority with the best interest of humanity at heart. It'll basically be Star Trek, but the aliens will be nice.

Mercifully, most of us in the west have never had to live through the horror of such a vision's stabs at reality.

The sad fact is, "Economic freedom is an essential prerequisite to political freedom, in addition to being the greatest creator of real wealth for the greatest number of people." doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, or in the soundbite-ruled news and entertainment environment of our culture the same way "END POVERTY NOW!" does.

In our present age, being merely correct in theory and practice has proven to be entirely insufficient to maintain ground. Just as the greatest human atrocities and wealth destructions of the twentieth century have proven impotent as a long-term reminder to people that maybe expanding the state in every direction with no end in sight isn't in our best interest.

The western mind has no fresh memories of statist tyranny to keep the longing for freedom vital. The horrors of communism and socialism will in time seem like distant irrelevant dreams, impossible to repeat. (that is to say, moreso than now.) Crying 'lower taxes!' is no longer enough. We need fresh ideas, fresh images for the current framework. Until we realize this, ground will continue to be lost.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T19:49:00.000-05:00

Nick's Fave Films of '06: For Your Consideration

Directed by Christopher Guest,
Written by Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy

Chris Guest's "For Your Consideration" is a witheringly, unceasingly hilarious film, and criminally underrated even by the meager standards of film-critic consensus. FYC is a look at several participants in a pretentious, overacted, producer-meddling, oscarbait production and the perfectly self-contained ecosystem of Hollywood. From production, to marketing, to the hype, and even the awards themselves.

The film follows the reactions and interplay of several actors and production staff who find their film, 'Home for Purim' the subject of internet-based Oscar-buzz. Suddenly, relationships are tense. Cosmetic surgery is being ordered. Appearances are being made on preposterous entertainment shows by middle-aged actors trying desperately to play to an audience less than half their age. Suddenly, relationships, dignity, and common sense are tossed to the winds. All that matters, more than the statue itself, is playing the part, socially and professionally, of someone worthy of it.

Many have said this is Guest's most dour and least optimistic film and that's probably true. However, it could not have been different. FYC isn't about finding hope or glimmers of joy, since those aren't things that can be found in the universe these characters have decided to inhabit. Not that they merely inhabit it, but live and breathe it, live and die by it. It's a look at the personal effects of investing oneself in an insular world, severed from any reality where the values that give individuals meaning still exist. Depending on it for your emotional well-being, to dictate your relationships, to give you meaning. Both a critique of the creative world of Hollywood, and a look at the perfect havoc wreaked by the single-minded pursuit of displaced values. In the end, the characters have nothing because the world they have sought has nothing to give them. Incredibly funny, and quietly heartbreaking. I loved it.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T19:43:00.000-05:00

Nick's Fave Films of '06: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Another glorious year of the cinema cycle has come and gone. And while I don't spend a huge amount of time at the multiplex, I did manage to catch a few pictures that piqued my interest. Since I avoid most of the summer films and obvious oscarbaiters, the list is short and perhaps odd. Nevertheless, I thought the follow flicks were standouts on a number of levels, and the first installment on this list has already found its way into the distinguished annals of my dvd collection, and shaken the floorboards of my little apartment with its five discrete channels of Dolby Digital surround-sound:

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
Directed by Gore Verbinski,
Written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio

A film of better-than-average but decidedly mixed critical reaction, Dead Man's Chest is a glorious resurrection of the fun-for-fun's-sake B-film that hollywood has, tragically, all but stopped making.

Nowadays, the monster movie, the jungle epic, and a journey under-the-sea or to the center of the earth are all but impossible to find, unsullied some agonizing bit of hollywood moralizing or hamfisted political subtext hitched onto the back like a Ferarri forced to tow a tornado-alley trailer stocked with a family of twelve. The subsequent void of genuinely fun stories has been filled only sporadically and with limited success by the likes of Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, but has also given rise to all manner of counterfeits. Not the smallest offender of which are the new Star Wars films. An 'action-adventure' trilogy so crammed with pop-myth psychobabble so philosophically half-baked, that the attention they recieve as works of modern myth is frankly disconcerting. (ie, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Now, I absolutely must kill you, because you are absolutely evil.") Oi...

Dead Man's Chest is not only miles ahead of most of its action-adventure contemporaries, but also leagues better than the first installment, which I couldn't bring myself to enjoy no matter how many chances I gave it. 'Chest' mercifully lacks the tedium and tag-team written tonal schizophrenia of "Curse of the Black Pearl" To wit, "I'm whimsical 70's era disney. Now I'm horror. Now I'm action. Now I'm a dull period romance. How bout a long, pointless, tensionless fight scene with invincible monsters?" In one scene the film is breezy and comical. In the next, pirates are murdering innocents who are boarding themselves up in houses, and we're unambiguously in horror territory. So which is it? Who knows? I do. It's a dissonant mess.

Dead Man's Chest benefits tremendously from a tighter narrative and tonal focus, thanks to the fact that Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio alone wrote the script this time around. Keeping what was good with the original, and excising the stuff that wasn't. Which is to say, everything that was already written by a different screenwriter before they came on board. DMC Scratches the sort of itch that ordinarily makes me waltz to my dvd collection and pull out 'Robot Monster' or 'Monster that Challenged the World' or some variant thereof. Every baroque-detail gilded frame of scabby monsters and tropical islands is a feast for the eyes and imagination. Davy Jones as played by Bill Nighy is an unparalleled synthesis of performance, direction, and astonishing digital fx work, and one of the most interesting villains to grace the screen in years. Depp reprises his role as Jack Sparrow in a role that alternates between conniving and pure physical comedy, and even Keira Knightley manages to burn holes in the screen, playing as sultry a role as I never knew she had in her.

In short, Dead Man's Chest is a rare beast. Pure giant-octopus-and-voodoo laden schlock with no lofty pretentions or obligatory hollywood moralizing shoehorned in about the environment, dangers of technology, or any dream sequence in which anyone learns the value of family over a wall street career. At no point was there a meeting in this film's production in which anyone said "So what are we gonna do for the third act scene where everyone has to stop in the middle of the action and talk about what they've learned?" And if they said so, they were soundly and deservedly flogged. Hollywood is usually at it's most embarassingly incompetent when its films step behind the pulpit and clear their throats. Let the funmakers deliver the fun, which is exactly what Verbinski and company did here in spades. That's not to say the film is narratively unsubstantial; there's still a lot going on here for the attentive viewer. But unlike most of it's peers, DMC's themes never get in the way of the storytelling.

I will grant that everyone's standards of a 'fun for funs sake' movie will vary, and I've learned it's a matter of the thorniest contention, (I once even refused starting a relationship with a girl who, while in discussion of such things, launched into a spirited defense of 'Armageddon'...) but this one fit my bill perfectly. Best seen in the theater or on a big ol' widescreen tv. (those of you with them have my envy. ;)

Get the popcorn, crank the surround, dim the lights, and enjoy. At least until 'World's End' comes along this summer.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T19:39:00.000-05:00

N&N Review: Apocalypto

So I finally got around to seeing Gibson's latest display of viscera-obsession, Apocalypto. Allow me a less-than-controversial assertion: Mel is quite mad. And if not 'mad', certainly something approaching it. A profoundly religious Catholic obsessed with nightmarish displays of gore and human horror that seem lifted from the imagination of Bosch. A frequent drunkard, a profane slanderer, and a family man with seven children. He seems destined to be the posthumous subject of many an inquisitive and unflattering biography.

And if Hollywood had so many as ten other filmmakers as passionate, skilled and fearless, the entertainment industry might be very different indeed.

Apocalypto starts on an immediately disquieting note with the visual tenor Gibson establishes. The film is shot with digital cameras, which despite it's meticulously choreographed visual beauty, gives the film the raw immediacy of a nature special or documentary. In his push for realism, Gibson eschews the dreamy, distanced, 24-frames per second look of cellulite, adding an unwelcomed dimension of reality to what's on screen. The effect is unsettling, but doesn't distract for long.

Apocalypto's pace is brisk. Opening with a tribal hunt of a tapir, during which some good-natured male bonding occurs over the divvying-up of choice cuts. More than displays of simple machismo, Mel uses the opening scenes to establish the fraternal bond of the tribe's men. They hunt together, tease one another like locker-room pals and give occasionally misleading advice on coping with infertility and nagging in-laws.

The tribal serenity, such as it is, is shattered however by a marauding group of warriors dispatched from a nearby city. Capturing the stronger men, raping the women, slashing and burning the land. The protag, a village inhabitant named Jaguar Paw, is captured after witnessing the murder of his father who implores him with his last words, to fear nothing. And in an earlier scene, instills him with respect for the value of community, family, inherited knowledge, and heritage in a sparsely written, and memorable scene that also contains the film's only repeated dialogue.

Jaguar Paw and his comrades are consequently marched to the Mayan city. Where plagued by drought and disease and teetering on collapse, the ruling political class is engaged in its most ancient habitual rites: engaging in florid rhetoric on national destiny while sacrificing citizens. When the sacrifice ends, the survivors are simply hunted for sport. Jaguar Paw fortuitously escapes, killing the son of a military official in the process which launches the third act, a chase that lasts all the way back to his home village with a cadre of warriors in hot pursuit. Throughout the chase, Jaguar Paw embraces the role of defender of his family, land, and heritage in a series of breathless set peices. Donning a thick camouflage of mud, and applying his inventiveness in taking the hunt to his pursuers with a variety of organic weapons.

Though it may look like a deceptively simple surival/chase picture, (and a thrilling one at that) Apocalypto is at bottom about the shared values of individuals, families, and communities coming into conflict with the demands, interests and values of nations. Which by their nature, must be more devoted to the abstractions of leaders and to the service of a carefully mysticized national identity. Abstractions that place little value on individual children, husbands and wives, friends, and communities, the sanctity of land and property, and the right of families and offspring to pass on their property, culture, and heritage.

Apocalypto is a gorgeous, horrifying, and wildly passionate experience. Perhaps it has proved too alienating for mainstream auds, but absolutely requires viewing on the big screen. One of the year's best.

5/5

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2007-01-13T19:35:00.000-05:00

First Air America's financial woes, and now Radiopower.Org is going under?

I gotta say I'm a little disappointed. In my long work days, nothing lifts me out of a mental stupor or bout of boredom like firing up iTunes, and tuning into the internet radio dial for a little of AA's or Radiopower.Org's patented mix of unadulterated lunacy and trembling, clench-fisted, red-faced class-rivalry rhetoric.

Since I don't have cable tv or subscribe to any newspapers, I depend on such outlets to provide my weekly-or-so dose of hysterical sputtering rage, and all the reasons why I should live in a constant state of embittered envy toward my fellow man. Also, why the money other people have should be made my business.

Alas, the fuzzy, through-the-air tv reception I get of CBC shall have to suffice:

Radiopower.Org signing off

The eerily androgynous Shelby LaPre's farewell statement blames the station's demise on, predictably enough, oppressive big business interests (possibly sabotaging the station's efforts with atomo-rays beamed from MoonBase Xerxes), the free market, constructs like the 'homogenization of culture', and hell, maybe Pluto was in sagittarius for good measure. From the statement:

"It still troubles me that government and corporations are taking over the means
and methods that we use to communicate with each other, intellectuals, artists,
and every day human beings. I have done all I can for five years to present for
your consideration another method for us to get together and share this music
and have a meaningful conversation or debate. But alas, the grip of corporate
and government control is descending upon us, and on the entire internet, as
the thieves in glass towers make sure that no one can make ends meet if they
attempt to make it outside the corporate mold. What is the difference between
the struggle to keep radiopower going, and your local merchant's struggle to
survive the all devouring beast; Heil-Mart?...

...There is something very wrong here and it is devouring our entire culture. Nothing
is allowed except the corporate approved message, the corporate approved
culture and a government enforced society."

Which is of course, code for "Sorry the show sucked so dismally hard that we couldn't even secure enough listeners or sponsors to keep a freaking internet radio station alive and broadcasting at the slightly-better-than-tin-cans-with-string quality of 16kbps." I mean, seriously folks. If you don't have sufficient business savvy to keep an internet radio station on the air, Wal-Mart might not be your problem.

Another one bites the dust, January 5th, 2007. Dust off your black armband.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T19:30:00.000-05:00

How "Oscar Season" Harms the Film Industry

By Nick

It's true. The year's wrapping up, and that means the awards-season buzz machine is swinging into full gear. That magical time of year hollywood gets ready to shower months of glowing accolades on itself for the 1% of its creative output that actually couldn't be beamed into outer space as an invitation to superior aliens to wipe us out with pain-fueled bio-lasers. A peer-reviewed celebration of creative and technical excellence? Likely story. If that were the case, I'd say bring on the aliens. Far from rewarding cinematic excellence, let's take a break and have a quick look at the average cinematic year, and how engineered around awards season film industry output is. There are exceptions to all these rules of course, but they're reasonably dependable guidelines.

CURSE YOU LITTLE MAN!

As we know, from January-March are basically the dregs. This is the slot where films go to die. They've been deemed not good enough for the holiday season, and having no chance in the crowded summer market. And even if a film is genuinely good, it won't be remembered by the academy (hence, not released) so get cozy with your dvd player.

Spring-Summer of course, is the dumping ground of expensive noise with incredible budgets, and the latest technical demos from ILM, showing us new and exciting angles to explosions, car crashes, and superhero brawls. The chief joys to be had here are placing bets on the winners and losers; the jack sparrows and the effeminate supermen, and trash-talking the 'Stealth'-level bombs. As well as the internet flamewars built around "I know ___ got totally panned, but screw it, I had a blast."

Around early autumn it winds down and leads into a period of indistinct mush, in which you're likely to see Meryl Streep or a turtleneck-clad Friends alumnist star in a wheepy romcom. It's essentially Oscar-lite season. The period for inconsequential feelgood dramas meant to go hand in hand with fall. A nip in the air, a warm sweater, and nice smells radiating from the oven; after which it's off to the multiplex to see Richard Gere or Julia Roberts have pleasingly trite romantic misunderstandings.

Then.. Ba-boom. Awards season. The one time of year we all gather for the "Real" cinema hollywood's been holding back all year. Preachy, longwinded, gorgeously photographed, and usually eye-wateringly dull and self-important! Strap yourself in for penetrating looks at the foul suburban underbelly, repressed housewives living in their husbands shadow, repressed closeted kids coming out to their parents, the hidden racist/bigot/homophobe in all of us, 'the cost of war' flicks, long hard looks at sinister corporations/government agencies, the retarded or minority protag overcoming adversity, the occasional joyless historical epic, the odd holocaust flick, and a whole lot of Nicole Kidman's bottomlessly classy cleavage.

In other words, it would appear we're in a rut. In large part, thanks to the awards-system structure. But how do we fix this crustily clockwork-dependable state of affairs?

I'm not sure either. The Oscars, Globes, etc.. are at bottom, marketing for seasonal prestige pics. They're part and parcel of the economic machinery of the business. I have no problem with 'commercial' films; but this combination of factors has a uniquely toxic effect; essentially creating the genre of the 'oscar-bait' flick: Expensive, mainstream prestige pictures that need to 'look' appropriately important and 'about something significant' while still on a short leash of mass audience appeal. Hence, they risk doing everything wrong, and winding up as crushing, pretentious bores. Neither entertaining, or artistically interesting. Paying lip-service to artistic credibility, while doing their level best to not go over the heads of the lowest common denominator Hence, Ron Howard.

Like most awards-seasons, I'll be sitting most of the oscar nominees out. The critically-mixed "For Your Consideration" is still my #1 of the year, and I'll be spending plenty of time getting cozy with the second Pirates of the Caribbean outing; marvelously fun, and apolitical escapism and one of my yearly faves too. Other than that, only Letters from Iwo Jima has piqued my interest in the slightest.

Sorry AMPAS and the producers that cater to you, but there's only so much dour drama and suburban angst I can stomach in one cycle.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T19:23:00.000-05:00

Golden Compasses and Wooden Wardrobes: A critical look at the fantasy fiction of ultra-humanist Philip Pullman, and CS
Lewis.

(part 2)

Click here for part one, or scroll down to the previous post. (cont.)

Let me be momentarily gracious. Philip Pullman is not a bad writer. Among other things, he has a marvelously tactile touch with places and things, rendering his worlds in strong, evocative strokes of beauty and texture. He's just not a particularly great writer. Though aesthetically capable, he is cursed with a heavy, thudding touch. His philosophizing is graceless and hamfisted. And perhaps most to his detriment, he writes children like someone who's studied them in textbooks, but could never be bothered to speak to one and find out what they're like.

His heroine Lyra is a rigidly contained and unconvincing creation; created not to learn or discover or act freely, but solely to function in service of an omnipotent theme. As starkly serviceable and inorganic as anyone out of an Ayn Rand novel. This isn't a child; it's how Pullman imagines children ought to be. Or perhaps more likely, how he imagines himself as one.

The story impresses with sweeping arctic locales and visceral action. But reading them, one can't escape the notion that he's far more interested in ideological pamphleteering than natural storytelling or genuine characters. His characters are written with a marked lack of trust in them to reveal thematic truths through their own actions. Like everything else in his world, they're simply 'forced'. The seams show, and the writer appears, gnashing through the pages. Pullman reads like a man so rabidly chomping at the bit to air his grievances with society, religion, men of the cloth, etc... that he's all too willing to hang his material on unsatisfactory, and even lazy or contrived characterizations and plot turns, and attempt to compensate with exotic locales and big ideas. Sort of a 'we'll fix it in post' mentality.

Ironically enough, Lewis' application of christian themes in his writing was both far more explicit, and far more organic and disciplined. First and foremost, he set out to tell exciting and magical stories, and he did. The themes and morals were incidental, springing naturally from the work. Lewis goes into the process at depth in his essays on the matter, asserting emphatically that beginning with allegorical function in mind when starting a story, is a recipe for disaster. Rather, that the inspiration from Narnia came from his expanding on a single captivating image; a faun holding an umbrella.

Pullman lacks the discipline or perhaps ability, and the necessary trust in his audience to work that way. And in so doing, succumbs to the quintessential trappings of the desperate preacher and second-rate storyteller. Thus, though he fancies himself on equal footing, thinking he has succesfully emulated Lewis's 'formula' for a sort of 'fantasy evangelism', the fact is, he has the process completely backwards. Pullman is not interested in stories, he's interested in preaching. He's interested in essays and speechifying. He's a man with a mission, writing with a staunch 'theme first, story second' method.

Lewis simply enjoyed himself, writing exciting stories that read with the breezy, unstrained quality of a confident, sure-handed wordsmith. Confident in his skill, his faith, his scholarship, and with no so juvenile intent as to need to prove anything to anyone. Pullman's work gnashes and broods like a sulking teenager; seeking not it's own identity or purpose, but to define itself with an anti-identity and the histrionics of rebellion for it's own sake. In the end, it offers little to the reader's soul but an enfeebled, and pointless cry of 'Oh yeah?' Which is why fifty years from now, His Dark Materials will be relegated to dusty library shelves, replaced by the latest fashionable softcover iteration of pop-humanism for kids, and our children will still be eagerly sprinting through the wardrobe. And it is chiefly why Lewis is a first-rate writer, and Pullman is not.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T19:21:00.000-05:00

Golden Compasses and Wooden Wardrobes: A critical look at the fantasy fiction of ultra-humanist Philip Pullman, and CS
Lewis.

As this one is on the long side, it'll be broken into two parts. Part two will follow in a day or so. Enjoy!

Part one.

Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" has been getting a lot of press lately, as Hollywood continues to mine the fantasy genre and capitalize on the success of Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and other literary works by their creative betters that have made profitable leaps to screen. Pullman's first novel in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy is no exception, and the buzz around it will doubtless grow defeaning as it's 2007 release date nears. Particularly with a cast that includes recently-confirmed movie star Daniel Craig, and awards-ceremony furniture like Nicole Kidman.

However, much like the success of The DaVinci Code; one of the most appallingly-written pieces of pop-lit by the king of language-mangling airport-fiction Dan Brown, the source of the clamour surrounding the His Dark Materials trilogy eludes me.

Ok, so it doesn't. It just confuses me somewhat, though not as much as the success of Brown, whose chief vocation should undoubtedly include a mop and shifts that last between midnight and 8 am. But whereas nobody (I hope) is going to mistake Dan Brown's oeuvre for high-art or anything less than lining for one's bird cage, HDM has actually garnered the acclaim of the literary world. It, we are told, is something approaching 'art'.

The chief comparison Pullman draws, is to CS Lewis. And His Dark Materials, to the Narnia series. Primarily for the fact that they're both fantasy fiction with a wide scope and fairly explicit allegorical underpinnings. 'Narnia' in it's many allusions to the Christian ethic and doctrines like sacrificial atonement, and 'Materials' in it's blustering, overtly anti-religious zeal, complete with haphazard modern-social-commentary characters like a pair of gay angels so eye-rollingly topical, they could be doing the rounds on daytime talk shows.

Have I revealed my point prematurely? No matter. The comparison in frankness, is wholly unjustified. When the literary establishment in doe-eyed worship compares Pullman to Lewis, they are comparing student and master.

Don't expect anyone to tell Pullman this, though. His disgust for Lewis is widely documented, as is his appraisal of the Narnia series as a vulgar and hateful little thing, symptomatic of everything wrong with those 'religious types' so easily reduced to a string of adjectives from the 'Outraged Humanist's Word Wheel.' "Patriarchal" "Racist" "Mysoginistic", etc.. And finally, he declares the series outright, "Nauseating drivel." Sadly, to read his interviews one can barely help but conclude that this is the place from which he and his work draw their chief significance and identity. He is not Philip Pullman, he is the anti-Lewis. His Dark Materials, is the Anti-Narnia.

to be continued tomorrow. . .

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2007-01-13T19:08:00.000-05:00

No Purple Ribbon On Me.

The biggest sweep going through pop culture right now is awareness. Campaigns for awareness seem to be going on all the time. Aids awareness. Energy management awareness. Thrombosis awareness. Disaster prevention awareness. Hate In Your Community awareness and on and on.

One such awareness campaign that always gets me in a little trouble is the Child Abuse Prevention Campaign that comes around every October in Ontario. Thats when we all wear purple ribbons in order to raise awareness of child abuse. Where I get in trouble is that I don't wear the ribbon. Here's why:

When I'm deciding if I should do something I look at two things, is it good (or morally right) and is it useful. The useful part may throw people off a bit, but think about what life would be like if we didn't take into consideration the usefulness of our choices.

Here's an example; take this recent news-item about Edward Norton: "Actor Edward Norton is leading a celebrity charge to banish lavishing gift baskets on presenters at top awards shows. 'The Illusionist' star is appalled by the freebies celebrities pick up backstage at events like the Golden Globes and the Oscars, while many people watching the ceremonies at home are struggling to pay the rent and feed their kids. He says, 'A lot of us have talked to the Academy Awards producers about this and I think they're actually going to scuttle the gift baskets and that kind of stuff. I mean the gift baskets, worth amounts of money that a low income family could live on for a year, (are given to) people who have so much already. It gets depressing. You sit there, going, 'This is an embarrassment.'"

Is what he's doing "good." Well, perhaps yes. Its certainly not morally repulsive. But I would argue that there is nothing tangibly good that comes out of it.

But isn't sincerity enough? Why bother about usefulness as long as someone is sincere? Isn't it enough that Ed Norton is sincerely concerned for the poor and refuses lavish gifts as a symbol of his commitment? Well, maybe he is sincere, I like to think so, at least. But his refusal certainly isn't useful. Is anyone fed because he didn't get another Rolex? Well, move over, One-Size-Pie liberals. Nobody is better off because some celebrities didn't get their trinkets. It didn't leave just enough money out there in the economy for little Timmy to buy the cough syrup for his dying mother. No matter how it may make you feel, sincerity has never made saints.

And this is why I don't wear the purple ribbon. Its not useful. In fact, it may even be harmful. Those who have initiated this campaign are ignoring the deep seated reasons why abuse is perpetuated. These are forces and habits that take long and difficult bouts of therapy and often prayer and relapse and support and tears and struggle to break. Ever heard anyone say "This ribbon has done what years of psychotherapy could not. I'm a better man now, thanks to you Purple Ribbon!"?

Awareness is a cop-out. Its the lazy man's solution to avoiding guilt. It promises a clean conscience without having to DO anything. What we need are more campaigns that call us to real action. We KNOW kids are being abused. We KNOW people are living on the streets. We KNOW how people contract HIV. And I'm not going to waste a second of my life on a campaign that doesn't DO something about it.

It's interesting how we don't see a lot of campaigns which call people to abstinence to avoid STD's and AIDS. Abstinence is hard. Compared to it, wearing a ribbon for people you've never met who suffer from life-long diseases and infections is easy.

When I wear a ribbon for a campaign I haven't done diddly for in the way of real, practical, useful help (either buy giving my money or my time) that's when I feel guilty. Its like saying, "Oh yes, I'm aware. Damn aware. And you know what? I'm not going to do a thing about it."

I'll give my money, my time and my voice in the public square to a worthy cause. But I will not give my lapel to awareness.

-Nora

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2007-01-13T18:55:00.000-05:00

Scarlett Johansson: "Abstinence Sux, AIDS is awesome!"

Link

Ah, but for the wisdom of celebrities. If we couldn't trust the moral insight of fabulously good-looking juveniles in adult bodies, where would we be?

"AIDS! LOL!"

For you with non-film-geeks with children, private-sector careers, or an active social calendar, Scarlett Johansson is to 18-26 year old cinephiles what Natalie Portman is to Star Wars geeks. One of those curiously worshipped celebrities loosely hailed as 'really intelligent', for reasons nobody can quite articulate. It usually means they look really good in the sorts of tasteful, high-gloss glamour shots used in perfume ads, make the occasional helpful comment about the awfulness of war and/or urban poverty, and nicely fill out tasteful black cocktail dresses. Top that off with a starring role at least one staggeringly mediocre oscar-bait flick every three years, and you're a shoo-in as a 'really intelligent' celebrity.

For the record, our 'intelligent celebrities' offer us nuggets of insight like these:

SCARLETT JOHANSSON has slammed US PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH for his staunch conservative views on sex, criticising the Republican for being too unrealistic in his opinions on the topic. The LOST IN TRANSLATION movie star last month (10OCT06) boasted about being so "socially aware" she gets tested for HIV twice a year. A staunch Christian, Bush is vehemently anti-abortion and is seeking to have the operation made illegal in all US states. During his time as Governor of Texas, Bush overhauled the state's sex education system and high school students were taught abstinence was the only way to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Johansson says, "We are supposed to be liberated in America but if our President had his way, we wouldn't be educated about sex at all. "Every woman would have six children and we wouldn't be able to have abortions."

Link

...and with that, she utters one of the most unintentionally hilarious, yet mind-blowingly stupid things uttered by a celebrity in well over an hour. Let's see if we can't break the poor girl's brain-fart down.

First, sorry kiddo. Getting HIV-tested doesn't make you 'socially aware'. It makes you more like, 'acutely aware that you're on the functional level of an escaped lobotomy patient who's chewed his way through his wrist-ties and can't help randomly sprinting into freeway traffic'.

Yes, this is one of the 'smart ones'. It's progressive and 'socially aware' to constantly, willingly, engage in activities that force you to live in constant terror of horrific, life-threatening diseases that are virtually completely avoidable.

Got that?

In other words, Bush and anyone who practices abstinence, and who don't do things that put themselves at constant risk of killer infections, are in fact, the unenlightened cultural dinosaurs and threats to our civilization. This is so many degrees of idiotic I could write variations on it all day, but let's move on.

Her walleyed performances may make her a star among libidinous coffee-house denizens, but it appears poor Scarlett's irony-meter is fatally damaged. Perhaps during one of her 'socially-aware' falls down half a dozen flights of stairs.

Other Fun Activities that Highlight your Awesomely Liberal Sense of Social Awareness:

-Windex-chugging contest

-Used heroin-needle juggling (ask your parents first!)

-Bear-cub taunting

-Raw chicken taste-testing

-Nick

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2007-01-13T18:45:00.000-05:00

Things I Paid for at Gunpoint Today: (Vol 4) "What Makes Canadian Kids Fat?!"

You may not want it, but so help you you'll pay for it! A lively look at ludicrous state largesse, and where that saliva-dripping bite of your paycheck is going.

Health problems have plagued mankind ever since the first earthlings were deposited on this nebulous and chaotic rock by benevolent extraterrestrials well over five hundred years ago, according to L Ron Hubbard. And while medical science has undoubtedly advanced beyond our usage of stone hammers and trained weasels in the performance of lobotomies, some stubborn nonsense just refuses to let go.

For example, even after certain human behaviours are determined beyond any doubt to produce specific and predictable outcomes, a society reluctant to confront uncomfortable yet obvious truths will start to approach the problem circuitously, looking for the sorts of solutions that ensure nobody will feel bad, negligent, or just plain freaking lazy. Turns out you can also make a nice living doing just that. Hence, we have the Canadian Institute of Health Research's (http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/) generous contribution of 2.8 million of your dollars, devoted to solving the labrynthine enigma of just what makes kids fat?

"We need to learn more about childhood obesity in order to provide Canadian children with the opportunity to become healthier adults," said Alan Bernstein, the president of the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR)"

How, dammit?!

Rumor has it that Bernstein's official statement originally read as something closer to: "I won't lie to you, we need some serious, cold-cash funding here. Bucketloads of cash, and keep it coming, you Hutts. Let's be real. Everyone and their dog knows it's basic lifestyle issues making most kids fat, hence the lack of private research capital interested in medically solving this medically-unsolvable asinine non-problem. Martini!"

The fact that a panel of trained apes could give a fairly comprehensive review of the problem in less time than it takes your average overweight kid to log into an all-weekend World of Warcraft session while microwaving his Pizza Pops is apparently of no concern. For you see, the chief concern of government agencies of all stripes is to legitimize their existence for as long as possible by 'looking busy'. One way this is done is by launching highly lucrative investigations aimed at telling us the insultingly obvious. Much like recent PSA ads all over Toronto sternly reminding us grownups that water from the bathroom tap can get really, really hot. How I wish I were joking.

Hence, what came obviously to our ancestors dating back to the Mesopotamians, must apparently be re-learned, and re-told for the benefit of the public, in what can only be described as some vast experiment dedicated to weeding from the human species all common sense. Much like animals bred into domestic dependence until they lose all homing instinct, and cannot venture half a block off an owner's property without becoming hopelessly lost and run over by a Kennedy. I foresee a Wellsian future in which timid humanoids are burned preparing their baths, and immediately curse the Morlocks, or possibly Ujjal Dosanjh in panic and terror for not having provided in advance the necessary pamphlets explaining the fathomless mysteries of 'hot water'.

"Childhood obesity has tripled over the past two decades," Ujjal Dosanjh added. "Obesity is a serious and complex issue that requires a multi-faceted approach, which the Government of Canada is committed to supporting research that will help find solutions."

The end result of this 'multi-faceted' approach and three million dollars of research will in all likelihood be a couple hundred public-service billboards and glossy pamphlets dropped off at schools, adorned with a radical, scientifically-determined admonition to eat vegetables, cut down your Playstation time, don't drink Pepsi with breakfast, and get outside once in a while you stupid kid.

In short, everything that everyone, everywhere, has known forever.

IT ROCKS TO BE UJJAL!

Meanwhile, parents too busy/lazy to keep an eye on anything their youngster does will snicker with a hint of self-righteous adulation, thinking "Well everyone knows that! So many bad parents out there, no accounting for human stupidity I suppose! Who's up for a double-bacon melt with a cup of refreshing pork gravy?"

Said parents pat themselves on the back for being part of the elite minority, little Johnny gets his Playstation 3 and spends another hundred weekends becoming progressively gelatinous, a bevy of bureaucrats lean back and crack their knuckles with indecent grins, everyone's a little poorer, and the cycle of cellulite continues. And all because Ujjal Dosanjh can't hold a job at Taco Bell.

What I would've preferred to have for my money:

-"Reflections: The Complete Poetry of Tom Selleck"

-"More than Madrigals: Madonna Plays your Renaissance Favorites"

-Information needed by Jack Bauer

-Nick

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2007-01-13T18:37:00.000-05:00

Things I Paid for at Gunpoint Today (vol 3): A Whole Lotta Booze Advertising

Lining the Toronto subway system, street-level billboards, and every other visible inch of ad space, is a bold, widely-marketed assertion from our extremely necessary state-run Ministry of Booze, (more formally called the Liquor Control Board of Ontario or LCBO) that I am in fact, a member of 'The New Whisky Generation.' Or in their words, "You're In... The New Whisky Generation."

Curious.

I was not aware of my membership in any such association, but the many hundreds of thousands of jumbotron-sized ads placed in high-visibility hyper-expensive advertising spaces seem most persistent on the matter. And seeing as my complete awareness of this situation has been deemed substantially more important than my ability to buy groceries, I'm guessing my membership in this prestigious fraternity is of no small import! Though membership benefits are vague at present, I maintain confidence that their bounty will materialize shortly. (For the gift of being made freshly aware of whisky's existence is simply too wondrous to quantify in material terms)

I what? I am? Do I have to be? I'd rather be a Mason. Or in the 'Ten bucks richer because I'm not shelling out for the LCBO's 'jillion taxpayer dollars a year on booze awareness' generation.'

The ingenious advertising campaign is comprised of semi-attractive yuppies pulled out of an upstart graphic design firm, bedecked in ski hats, scarves, and paisely shirts and captured in slick black and white photography while wearing carefully austere 'wise beyond our years' expressions. Conceivably for the purposes of appealing to the 24-30something crowd. Problem is, the 24-30somethings are off at a sports bar guzzling Canadian beer made of February sidewalk-slush runoff, and most certainly not discussing the smokey aftertaste of a twelve-year-old scotch in between Antonioni screenings and rounds of backgammon. I'm hence cursed with a most nagging sensation that such ostentatious marketing is not only a morally dubious use of the public coffer, but perhaps wasted on the intended audience of Adam Sandler fans.

Though I admit, my naivete may show as I wrestle to understand the wisdom of such an appropriation of public funds. After all, are there any priveleges the free citizen enjoys quite so vigorously, as that of having his income taken to make him aware of liquor? Surely he looks at mortgage payments, clothing for his children, and well-salted pork as the trifles they are when placed alongside such a boon to the public welfare! After all, he knows that wealth taken from the citizen is a sacred trust; taken only for the direst needs of the people. And with that in heart, the implications of the cultural crisis bearing down on us in the absence of whiskey awareness become so crystal clear and monstrous to behold, that only the most obtuse or heartless among his fellows would dare object.

We will no doubt alert you of said implications shortly.

What I would've preferred to have for my money:

-dining room chair upholstery
-blindfolded colonoscopy
-argument with Jake LaMotta

-Nick

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2007-01-13T18:26:00.000-05:00

Things I Paid for at Gunpoint Today (vol 2): A Festival of a Buncha French Movies

aka...

Diverciné: a World View of la Francophonie
(http://www.culturel.org/festival_francophonie/introduction.htm)

"It is a unique opportunity for Canadians to discover the works of filmmakers from various Francophone countries, which are rarely screened in Canada."

Diverciné is a film festival Heritage Canada (you) helped pay for, dedicated to raising awareness of international francophones, and explaining via character-driven explorations of deep-rooted international and cultural crises, exactly why we need french subtitles on every cereal box.

"But Nick!" you're no doubt asking. "I'm an ordinary Canadian! How does awareness of films I'll never see from various poor-as-dirt french speaking nations affect my life in the slightest, when what I really need is a new iPod battery, brake cables for my Saturn, and citrus from foreign lands to ease this damnable scurvy?"

I would say there are no easy answers, and I'm sorry for the scurvy. Then I would tell you that a sad, iron-clad reality of the art world is that if you gotta subsidize it, nobody wanted it to begin with. Unfortunately, the perception among many is that without state-sponsored art, high culture as we know it would promptly vanish into the airwaves, devoured by the insatiable cultural maws of Simon Cowell and Ben Mulroney, and the more equine cultural maw of Julia Roberts.

Besides, without state-sponsored art, we're all liable to forget what Canadian culture is or who we are. We may very well wake up one morning thinking ourselves somewhere in Kabul, and wondering where's that wretched one-eyed servant-boy cripple with the cured goat meat already? Then we'd select a good sturdy stick and prepare to give that urchin a sound thrashing, until the wise-yet-stern visage of Peter Mansbridge materialized on our televisions, and suddenly everything was clear again.

It's important to know who we are. It's even more important that we're told! And what we apparently are is Canadians with an insatiable interest in french-speaking pockets of the globe heavily peopled with theater majors.

Sleep well.

What I would've preferred to have for my money:

-Criterion Collection dvd's

-Stainless steel German kitchen appliances

-Stainless steel German french-maid

-Nick

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2007-01-13T18:18:00.000-05:00

Things I Paid for at Gunpoint Today: GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS. aka: CBC sucks. Let me count the ways.

Our tax dollars pay for a many wondrous things. None of them include evenings out with friends, well-paved roads, or Patrick Swayze commemorative plates. Much tax money however, goes to essentials like these. Why? Because it's Canadian, dammit! Remember: A higher standard of living is for suckers.

George Strompoulopolyouthdemographicopolous', and his majestically focus-grouped hair

Man, Strombo sucks.

Yes, it's the hip young face of state-run media! Fresh from the previous parapet of high culture known as Much Music, George got his career break serving as a host on MM, providing the audience with much-needed breathers between extended musical interludes of sweaty young women grunting and/or gyrating in front of a low-angle camera. Having become thoroughly acquainted with a bovine audience that spends the majority of it's television time engaged in various unseemly self-gratifications, George has made the logical career leap to a CBC News Host.

I'm gonna show the HELL out of my range

George's hosting of journalistic music-video 'The Hour' consists of smug rapidfire prattle, cutting edge celebrity worship, and George's hilarious voice-pitch fluctuations meant to express what marketing execs call 'tude'. ie, "OH yeah, THAT'S awesome. I'M getting a DANISH." Pierced, dyed, spiked, and exhibiting unlimited skill in shooting sultry looks to the camera, (see attached pictures) dear Strombo is the embodiment of all things focus-group-cool. In a Herculean display of restraint, The Hour's producers manage to resist putting him on stage with sunglasses and a surfboard.

The delicious part of George's existence however, is how effortlessly and irony-free he embodies everything purported to be wrong with vulgar, bottom-line-obsessed private news corporations. The issues that apologetics of the CBC will say are the very reason we need a state-run media, liberated from the sordid whims of the market and lowest-common-denominator garbage. Flashy 'entertainment tonight' style reporting, an emphasis on entertainment value and politics-pushing over journalistic substance, and transparent appeals to a micro-targeted audience that comes off about as dignified and 'non-commercial' as the guy on the corner dropping his pants for nickels and cigarette butts. 'Strombo' manages to be a world-class offender of everything wrong with mainstream news media, and manages to do it on the state dole. Yes, thanks to George, our beloved Welfare Media has never been so freaking hip.

Please kill me. Get it? GET IT? It's on his WIENER. The CBC, our indispensible defender of Canadian high culture swoops to the freaking rescue like a paraplegic Tarzan. This moron's ego needs to be deflated by at least 4000 psi.

So what is it about George that's so starkly unappealing? Is it his fresh-baked-from-the-ad-agency cool-guy persona? The fact that he's dressed every morning by a marketing and social-sciences analysis squadron in a bomb-proof CBC bunker? The cringe-inducing appeal to the hip young youth market that's akin to seeing grandma try to snowboard down Everest with a jetpack? Or is it that without the benefit of the CBC, George would simply cease to exist? Or perhaps dissipate into a fine mist, rolling along the countryside, bringing cool, refreshing relief to hikers and hoboes alike, and giving pause to those that encounter it so that they stop and say "Hey, that smell like George Whatsisface to you?" Whatever the reason, I sure wish I wasn't forced to pay to see his perforated mug on everything from billboards to coffee mugs to self-sterilization pamphlets for inner-city youth.

What I would've preferred to have with my money:

-Mutual fund
-Three legged coffee table
-'Golden Girls' Season one on DivX.

-Nick

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2007-01-13T18:09:00.000-05:00

The Kids These Days: An ode to "Tag"

Remember the days when hosing yourself down with ostentatious amounts of Aqua Velva was considered a giggle-inducing juvenile blunder? Something an awkward highschooler might do on his first date until his dad or big brother smelled him coming down the stairs, set him straight, hosed him off, gave him the keys to the wood-paneled wagon and told him to be back by eleven? "Body spray" is a marketing hook meant to appeal to that guy. The adolescent (of any age) who hasn't quite clued in to the fact that smelling from head-to-toe like a cosmetics aisle in an inner-city drugstore isn't quite as bottomlessly suave as they think, and will probably not result in them 'getting some' by avalanches of high-cheekboned, ninety-pound laxative addicts from the casting agency, eager to grind themselves against a guy that smells like dollar-store bathroom disinfectant.

Alas for the hygienically challenged, shower-scoffing target market of Tag, the resulting sensory effect of the product is not one of delicately perfumed cleanliness, but usually more akin to the mighty struggle of odors one percieves when entering a particularly foul service station bathroom, and is confronted by the smell of military-grade urinal cakes trying vainly to penetrate atmospheric conditions created not by mere human waste, but through untold eons of deliberate neglect.

"When a woman kisses you, she wants to smell TAG. When she's ripping off your Green Day shirt, she wants to smell TAG. And when she's so hopelessly overcome by lust that she's peeling your socks off with her teeth and chewing them like truck-stop jerky, she wants to smell TAG there, too. In short, there is no portion of your clothing or anatomy that should go un-TAGGED at any time." - Gillette

Fortunately, the mere concept of 'full-body spray' is so hilariously awful, so magnificently chintzy, that like pet rocks, rap-metal, or Jimmy Carter, it will necessarily be short-lived and swiftly looked back on with the appropriate embarassment.

-Nick

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Coal Black and de sebben dwarves

2007-01-12T09:47:00.000-05:00

Politically Incorrect Animation Archive, vol 2:

Longtime Warner Brothers animator Bob Clampett took a break from Bugs and Yosemite Sam to direct this wartime short. Staggeringly offensive and animated/directed with Clampett's usual virtuosity. Certainly not defensible by today's standards, but perhaps a reminder of just how hypersensitive we've become. This is the stuff our parents were watching, folks. A far cry from this...

...to the staggeringly politically-correct mush of Dragon Tales.

-Nick

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2007-01-05T14:35:00.000-05:00

Nick's Fave Films of '06: For Your Consideration

Directed by Christopher Guest,
Written by Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy

Chris Guest's "For Your Consideration" is a witheringly, unceasingly hilarious film, and criminally underrated even by the meager standards of film-critic consensus. FYC is a look at several participants in a pretentious, overacted, producer-meddling, oscarbait production and the perfectly self-contained ecosystem of Hollywood. From production, to marketing, to the hype, and even the awards themselves.

The film follows the reactions and interplay of several actors and production staff who find their film, 'Home for Purim' the subject of internet-based Oscar-buzz. Suddenly, relationships are tense. Cosmetic surgery is being ordered. Appearances are being made on preposterous entertainment shows by middle-aged actors trying desperately to play to an audience less than half their age. Suddenly, relationships, dignity, and common sense are tossed to the winds. All that matters, more than the statue itself, is playing the part, socially and professionally, of someone worthy of it.

Many have said this is Guest's most dour and least optimistic film and that's probably true. However, it could not have been different. FYC isn't about finding hope or glimmers of joy, since those aren't things that can be found in the universe these characters have decided to inhabit. Not that they merely inhabit it, but live and breathe it, live and die by it. It's a look at the personal effects of investing oneself in an insular world, severed from any reality where the values that give individuals meaning still exist. Depending on it for your emotional well-being, to dictate your relationships, to give you meaning. Both a critique of the creative world of Hollywood, and a look at the perfect havoc wreaked by the single-minded pursuit of displaced values. In the end, the characters have nothing because the world they have sought has nothing to give them. Incredibly funny, and quietly heartbreaking. I loved it.

-Nick

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2006-12-22T15:50:00.000-05:00

Politically Incorrect Animation Archive (vol.1) The Smokin' Flintstones

Before the days in which we had to protect children from Joe Camel, trans-fat and public Nativity scenes, animation and animated characters were used toward far more versatile ends. Granted The Flintstones wasn't regarded as a children's show at the time, but nowadays that thought of using any cartoon characters to endorse as much as fried chicken sends the average leftist into apoplectic fits, particularly since the ones I know (the perpetual-adolescent 'Adbusters' reading crowd) regards the mere existence of advertisement as an intolerable assault on their person; an indignity just a few degrees shy of being strapped down and probed with unceasing vigor by Venusian reptiloids that don't heat their instruments. Hence, the sight of Fred Flintstone lighting up does, I must admit, light a flicker of ever-so-gently subversive joy in this old heart.

"Winston is the one filter cigarette that delivers flavor twenty times a pack!"

Too true, Fred.

2006-12-20T13:25:00.000-05:00

We're back!

Yes folks, the laptop's gloriously fixed, we're gearing up toward a glorious Christmas holiday stretch, and N&N will start seeing regular udpates again.

It's been a busy few weeks for Nora and myself. I've been scramling to finish revision calls on a few recent screenplays in addition to full-time animation duties (Many kudos to Nora for sorting through the muck of editing notes and giving me a hand; "Yer invaluable sweetheart.") and Nora's been putting in overtime with some troubled youths under her charge, and doing some incredibly amazing work. It's been busy but worth it, even if it means we get home from work at 9, eat a preprepared meal, watch a few episodes of Corner Gas, then hammer out script revisions till midnight. It's a full life, and I wouldn't want it any other way. For now.

Hope you all enjoy the upcoming spate of updates; here's Charles Atlas to keep you warm in the meanwhile.

-Nick