Scary Things

Somehow, I've gotten terribly behind with the blog, so I have to double up a bit in this post. I want to briefly discuss two new releases and one that's available outside of theaters. What all three films have in common is a certain "scare" factor.

 First, Ridley Scott's The Martian, which focuses on the triple fears of isolation, abandonment, and impending doom. Based on Andy Weir's captivating 2011 novel of the same name, Scott assembles a star-studded cast (Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Michael Pena, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, among others) to tell the story of Mark Watney, an American astronaut who gets left behind when a Mars mission goes terribly wrong. I think Matt Damon captures Watney's wry wit - there's a bit about Watney being a "space pirate" that's laugh-out-loud funny, for example. However, the film cuts out a good deal of the problem-solving that made the novel so compelling and, in a few places, just gets things flat-out wrong. (No, you can't use a teensy hole in your spacesuit to guide you toward your rescue ship, mostly because you'd have a bad case of the deads.) Weir likes science - in fact, he claims science makes a wonderful plot device - and it's a bit of a shame to see that serious thinking watered-down to a basic thrills-and-adventure plot. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the film and would love to see it spark interest in manned space missions again. Seriously, why don't we have a moon base yet?

Second, Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, which deals with the fear of trickery, war, and back-door deals. Okay, look - you pretty much can't go wrong with the combination of Tom Hanks, Spielberg, and American can-do attitude. In addition to working with Hanks on a number of other projects as producer, Spielberg has directed Hanks in Saving Private Ryan (where we also had to rescue Matt Damon - between that and Interstellar, Damon ought to just stay home by the fire), Catch Me If You Can, and The Terminal. Here, Hanks is in full Jimmy Stewart mode and by that, I mean he's playing a solid, honest, decent man (James Donovan) who is convinced that the rule of law will lead to the light. When called upon to defend a Soviet national accused of espionage at the height of the Cold War, he takes the unwelcome assignment (he's an insurance attorney, not a high-powered government lawyer, which is an interesting story in itself) because he truly believes that the Constitution's guarantee of a competent defense is a cornerstone of our legal system. (He's right, by the way.) His client is guilty as original sin, but Donovan's arguments spare his client the death penalty. A few years later, the pilot of one of our super-duper-top-secret U2 spy planes is shot down and Donovan is called into service to arrange for a prisoner exchange. Bridge of Spies is a compelling movie and it's at its absolute best detailing Donovan's tense days in Berlin arranging the spy swap at the very time the Berlin Wall is going up. Sure, the film takes a few liberties with the story (and there's far too little smoking for the time period!), but an amazing film and one well worth seeing in these cynical times.

Lastly, the 2014 Australian horror-thriller The Babadook. I can't say much about this without worrying about giving something important away, so I'll be brief. This film, the first major release by Jennifer Kent, scared the bejeezus out of me. There's a bit of gore, but it's mostly "head scare" and reality gets very, very warped in the hour and a half run time. One thing this film does masterfully is set you off-kilter. My allegiances changed as I started the film sympathizing with one character and found myself moving to viewing that character as the Evil of the film. What's real? What's the mind capable of believing? And how much can untreated traumas manifest in our world? The Babadook is a film that made me cringe, jump, and actually think - and many others agree with me. Don't miss this one.

A Better Tomorrow

OK, I'm beginning to notice an actual trend and it's a shocking one - girls are saving the world! As a delicious counterpoint to the undeniable game-changer that is Mad Max: Fury Road (click here for my post about that film, although there's muchmuchmuch more to write about it!), I recommend Tomorrowland. Reception for this film has been rather meh, which is a shame, so go see it.

Without giving too much away (and the film isn't perfect), Tomorrowland is the bookend to Mad Max in just about every way. It's also crammed full of Easter eggs, since it's a Disney film and Disney owns both Marvel and Star Wars. Look around the "Blast from the Past" store and you'll catch a lot, including toys from director Brad Bird's magnificent Iron Giant film and John Williams' unmistakable triumphant score from Star Wars. George Clooney is disillusioned, Hugh Laurie is chewing the scenery, and newcomers Britt Robertson and Raffey Cassidy shine. Plus - jet packs!

Tomorrowland is all about hope in the here and now, not in some desolate dystopian wasteland. That doesn't have to be our future; we can change it if we only have the will. Yes, it's a film with a moral and that moral is telegraphed and underlined. Yes, some sequences feel like they really should have been animated (ask and ye shall receive - Pixar created an animated sequence for the film, but Bird thought it hurt the pacing of the overall movie, so it was cut. But the Internet saves everything.) But for me, it works. I read some commentary on the film after I watched it, and one line in particular stood out - "When did it become cool to not care?" Tomorrowland asks us to dream bigger and to do better, and even if it's corny, I just don't think that's such a bad idea these days.

This blog is taking a brief vacation break, but I'll be back mid-June with news and thoughts about all sorts of summer movies at that point. And be sure to keep up with Meet Me at the Movies through the new streaming service! Click here for the latest! And if that link doesn't work for you, go to the Cleveland Community College website at clevelandcc.edu and click on the C19TV link at the top, then pick Meet Me at the Movies from the available options!

It's a Girl's World!

Funny, but the last three movies I've seen have all prominently featured women and not a single one of the films has been a romantic comedy. The times, they truly are a-changin', my friends. Not everyone is happy about this (particularly a small, extremely vocal group of menfolk who find a female lead character in an action movie some sort of estrogen encroachment), but you just can't get through this world without offending some numbskull or another.

 So - the first (and admittedly weakest) of the three was the "buddy road movie" Hot Pursuit. Starring Reese Witherspoon as a by-the-book cop and the cantilevered Sofia Vergara as a mob moll on the run, this film is just fine. It's a silly, light popcorn movie that's heavy on jokes about the differences between the two women - both in appearance and in temperament. No great shakes, but worth a rental when the time rolls around.

Then there was the science fiction thriller Ex Machina. 2015 seems poised to be the year of the AI movie and Ex Machina is a fine addition to the genre. The title itself is a little bit of a play on words (I'll just leave it at that - go look it up and then ponder a moment) and the movie toys with your perceptions and your allegiances. At what point does a machine become intelligent? At that point, does the machine stop being an "it" and have rights and agency or is it just a fancy word processor? And who's being played? Ex Machina has a great deal of brilliance going on, but it's a quiet, thoughtful film which may cause it to be overlooked in the summer blockbuster season. That would be a shame as Ex Machina is the best artificial intelligence-themed film I've seen in ages.

On the entirely other end of the spectrum is the loud, in-your-face noisefest Mad Max: Fury Road. Directed by George Miller, who directed the first three Mad Max films, thereby giving the world both Mel Gibson and the Thunderdome, this film is a celebration of all things that go *boom*. The violence level means it's not for the kiddies, but if you like your entertainment apocalyptic and over-the-top nuts, this film's for you. Much of the fuss is directed at the role of women in the film, who (shockingly enough) are not portrayed as victims and/or sex kittens. Instead we get young, hard women willing to do hard things to survive, along with biker grandmas who just might save the world. Miller doesn't have to show us sexual violence to have it be an undercurrent of the film and we understand why these women are willing to chuck the security of their bank vault to live on something more like their own terms. Light on dialogue, but hey - you get a blind guitarist strapped to a bank of amps with a bungee cord and that's not CGI! Go and enjoy and seriously - it's a surprisingly balanced film in terms of gender roles.

And be sure to keep up with Meet Me at the Movies through the new streaming service! Click here for the latest! And if that link doesn't work for you, go to the Cleveland Community College website at clevelandcc.edu and click on the C19TV link at the top, then pick Meet Me at the Movies from the available options!

Lucy

I try mightily to stay review-free before seeing a movie (the better to make up my own mind), so I must admit to being puzzled at the mixed reviews for Luc Besson's new release Lucy. Over the last twenty-plus years, Besson has helmed some amazing films that prominently feature strong female characters, including La Femme Nikita (1990), Leon: The Professional (1994), and The Fifth Element (1997) and Lucy fits nicely into that category. Yet some of the reviews have been downright savage (Christopher Orr from The Atlantic really, really, REALLY hates it, for example). Most of the disgust hinges on two items that, quite frankly, didn't bug me at all, so let me get those out of the way and then try to convince you to give this smart, creative film a whirl.

1. Lucy takes as a core premise the idea that "humans only use 10% of their brains." OK, this just isn't true and we know it's not true. It's one of those urban legends that gets repeated over and over until most people believe it, which then irritates beyond belief anyone who knows anything about neuroscience and they've all come out to sputter and pontificate about what they know and what the movie gets wrong. This is where I patiently try to explain the difference between a "movie" and a "documentary." Never get your science from the movies and never get your law from TV. With that in mind, go have fun.
2. Then Lucy uses a plot device to propel the story - in this case, a synthetic form of PCH4, which is supposedly produced by pregnant women and permits the unborn child to rapidly grow a skeleton during normal gestation. Taken by a full-growed human, a tiny bit of PCH4 in Lucy makes you high, lotsandlots of it apparently catapults you to the next stage of consciousness.  (Note: the drug here is not a "MacGuffin" [as is the Maltese Falcon in that film and the "letters of transit" in Casablanca] since in Lucy the drug not only actually does something; it's the engine for the entire film). Guess what? PCH4 is not a thing. For some reason, critics are incensed that PCH4 is made-up, yet I don't see the same level of sniffing condescension at gamma rays being misappropriated in the Hulk movies or the Curie Radiation Association getting all bent out of shape over Spider-Man's improbable origin story. (Psst - there's no "Curie Radiation Association." Don't tell the critics!)

Other criticisms involve Lucy's use of stock footage and an ongoing "percentage count" screen. I'm not even going there. Some things are a matter of taste and reasonable people can disagree about any piece of art (although someone who doesn't think Blazing Saddles is funny is a person best avoided. I'm just saying and the advice is free).

You got me. Maybe Lucy asks a little too much of a summer audience, but I don't think so. Very occasionally, I think other critics saw a different movie than the one I saw, or maybe they just had a fight with their boss before they went to the movie. At any rate, I thought Lucy was smart, fast-paced (it weighs in just under 90 minutes, which means I could almost watch it twice in the time it took me to suffer through The Movie Which Shall Not Be Named. And I'd cheerfully watch Lucy twice) and features some wonderful performances, especially Scarlett Johansson in the title role. Besson is not American and you can tell that - he's willing to slow things down, ask big questions, and use non-American actors. Some of that is to take advantage of growing Asian markets (several actors will be familiar to audiences of South Korean films), but it's also because Besson has a wider worldview than many American directors do.

I've often said that good science fiction is far more willing than "realistic" films to ask the Big Questions, including "What does it mean to be human?" and "What's beyond what we already know?" Lucy asks those questions and comes up with some very interesting answers, although (like many films) Lucy has a few plot holes. (How PCH4 actually works is one of them. If it helps a fetus grow a skeleton, what the heck does that have to do with consciousness? But by the time I thought of that, I was having too much fun to care.) Go see this one - it's good on the big screen, but it could wait until it's a rental. But when you see it, remember (although the film will remind you as well), Johanssen's Lucy is not the first one to serve as a bridge between two kinds of humans. What might humans become? It's an intriguing question and one Besson explores with humor and warning.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Back in 2000, a bouncer-turned-actor starred in a Little Movie That Could called Pitch Black.  Introducing a character known as Riddick and playing with classic themes such as our fear of the dark and fear of the unknown, Pitch Black succeeded well enough at the box office to spawn a sequel a few years later called The Chronicles of Riddick.  The larger budget (and Judi Dench!) didn't translate into a bigger and better story and the franchise seemed to be relegated to cult status.  Then came the Fast & Furious franchise and Vin Diesel had enough clout to start the ball rolling for a third Riddick film.  (It took some doing, too.  Diesel reportedly considered mortgaging his own house to raise the cash.)

Was Riddick worth it?

Probably.  It's a grim, anti-heroic tale and we seem to like our heroes conflicted and deep, deep into the gray areas of life these days.  There are some cliches that I wish had been avoided, but overall, it's a good science fiction thriller set on an incredibly inhospitable world that would never, ever reward softness or hesitation.  Riddick is set up as a basically good guy who does bad things only in order to survive.  (Hey, he even has a puppy!) There are solid performances throughout, especially by Diesel and Katee Sackhoff (late of Battlestar Galactica fame).  But here is also one of the big flaws.

The language throughout the movie is coarse and repetitive - to the point where I was marveling at the strain the script put on the "f-word" to serve as noun, verb, adjective, adverb and (just maybe) gerund.  Sackhoff's character is the only female and she is clearly established as tough-as-nails, capable, and not interested in men, despite her given name of "Dahl."  At one point, Diesel makes it clear that he's going to have sex with her, but only because she's asked him to, "sweet-like."  My radar went up immediately - surely they weren't going to go down the "all a lesbian needs is the right man" path, right?  To be fair, the later scene is just ambiguous enough that you could read it as "no sex, they just were bantering" but I don't think so.  I just hate that sort of thing - why is Dahl's sexuality an issue in the first place?  It's not a topic that comes up with any of the men-folk.  And Sackhoff is the only named character we see naked (or showering, for that matter.  Hygiene is apparently only an issue for female bounty hunters).  It's lazy and Riddick doesn't benefit from it.

In short, Riddick is not a bad film.  It's not great, but it's better than average.  The "R" rating is well deserved - lots of graphic violence and language that could blister the paint off a wall.  If you enjoy seeing rough justice and the ultimate survivor taking on an entire world bent on killing him, Riddick is for you.  Just don't take the kids.

By the way - I'm becoming a bit of a Diesel fan.  He comes across as a thoughtful actor in his approach to his craft - not what I was expecting, and shame on me.  Check out Find Me Guilty for an idea of the depth he can bring to a character.  But I still have major problems with the Dahl/Riddick dynamic here.

Smoke, Not Fire

This is the problem with pre-screening hype - it gets expectations up.  Instead of just having a nice little movie, it has to be the BIGGEST THING EVER!!  Instead of showcasing stylish framing and camerawork, it has to SHOCK YOUR SENSES!!  And instead of adding a puzzle piece or two to an existing storyline, it has to ANSWER ALL THE BIG QUESTIONS!!

Prometheus does none of those things, although much is promised.  It's not a bad film; in fact, director Ridley Scott shows once again that he knows how to both capture breath-taking beauty through a camera lens and how to create memorable environments for his characters to cavort within.  But ultimately, Prometheus is a movie that didn't need to be made, much less hyped to within an inch of its life.

The chief problem here is Alien, which shot Scott to A list stardom some thirty years ago.  (His position there was cemented with Blade Runner a few years later, a two-fer that made him a science fiction darling, if not a downright wunderkind.)  Alien is so good and stands up so well after all these years that . . . well, let's put it this way.  Alien is the horror equivalent of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Lee didn't write a sequel, prequel, or much of anything afterward.  It's not that Prometheus is bad; it's that it's not Alien, yet it tries to answer the questions Alien left unanswered.  Here's a tip, Hotshot.  There's no reason to answer them and trying to just feels forced.  There's a heavy patina of philosophy and theology coating Prometheus and it doesn't fit well.  It certainly can fit well in science fiction; in fact, I've said repeatedly that science fiction is a genre that is ideally suited to asking the Big Questions such as "What makes us human?" and "What really matters?"  But just because a film asks those questions doesn't make it a Good Film.


Alien is all about cramped spaces, shadowy things-that-want-to-kill-us, and figuring out how to survive as the crew are picked off, one by one.  (And a cat.)  Prometheus can't do that, because we already know what was a mystery in the first film.  We already know what the aliens are and how awful they are.  We already know the shape of the ship and the look of the bridge.  Wisely, Prometheus doesn't try to flat-out copy that.  We get a large cast of scientists who have followed cave paintings to a faraway moon in hopes of "meeting our maker."

The problems begin early.  The first scene, which is lovely and terrifying in turns, is not needed and removes any trace of mystery from the rest of the film.  The film further suffers from too large a cast - it never gels as an ensemble and there's not enough screen time to develop each character, so a few become throwaways.  The scientists aren't particularly curious about the alien civilization they've discovered, they are overly mercenary, and they make some deeply stupid decisions.  While Alien gave us Ellen Ripley,  Prometheus thinks simply passing the Bechdel Test automatically makes it a Worthy Film.  Charlize Theron's Vickers has daddy issues and Noomi Rapace's Shaw has way too much symbolism tied up in jewelry.  Alien gave us a treacherous android and a shadowy corporate agenda.  While Prometheus retains both, those elements have lost the power to shock us.  Oh, and sex is bad and pregnancy is a horror.


Prometheus is not without its moments, however.  Michael Fassbender as the android David is especially noteworthy and Idris Elba as the captain could be - I suspect there's a scene or two on the cutting room floor that should have been left in there on that score.  The scope and sweep of the cinematography is jaw-dropping and deliberately invokes David Lean (maybe a key to the android's name, now that I think about it), especially Lean's masterwork Lawrence of Arabia.

In short, Prometheus wants to be an Important Film and it tries mightily to be that.  Unfortunately, along the way, Scott substituted bombast for joy.

The Silver Screen

The term "silver screen" is used now to give a glamorous air to movies.  You've heard it in gossip magazine write-ups:  "Starlet X, a fixture of the silver screen . . ."  The term actually has a practical origin stemming from film's beginnings.  For decades, films were in black and white and greatly benefited from being shown against a highly reflective surface to sharpen contrast in the grays.  Theaters coated screens with silver compounds to increase this reflective quality, hence the term "silver screen."

I mention this because (a) it's interesting and (b) black and white movies deserve some love.  A few days ago, I went to see a big screen presentation of Casablanca, a film I've adored since I first saw it as a teenager.  I'd never seen it on the big screen and let me tell you - it really is a different experience.  Casablanca is 70 years old this year and the screening was part of TCM's "birthday party" for the film. Look - there's nothing to not like about this film.  It's got romance, it's got the buddy angle, heck - it's got Nazis, and you just can't go wrong having Nazis as the bad guys in a movie!  (Keeping in mind that the film was released during World War 2, you've also got the "film as propaganda" angle to discuss.)  The writing is sharp, the stars are gorgeous (really - Ingrid Bergman on the big screen is nearly celestial in her beauty and Bogart is a man's man in a sharply-cut dinner jacket) and the costuming makes me wonder just how many trunks these war refugees are traveling with.  It's a wonderful yarn and seeing it with 170 other fans (one of whom dressed in a white dinner jacket, probably with letters of transit in the inner pocket) was an experience I'm glad I had.  TCM has a great series of articles, video clips, and links - check that out here.  And remember, when you're next thinking about what movie to watch - just because it's been around for a while without a remake doesn't mean it's not worth your time.  (Ack!  A remake of Casablanca?  How?  Why?  A parody - that I could support.)

Oh, and those "letters of transit" on which so much of the plot hangs?  An excellent example of a MacGuffin.

The film class is wrapping things up.  I have their comparisons of Cowboy Bebop and Serenity to finish evaluating (space opera or space Western?  Hmmmm.) and District 9 was the final class film this past week.  The students' creativity in their individual projects left me feeling pleased with the class overall - they mastered the technical aspect of submitting an original project online (or at least wrestled the tech to the ground and pinned it) and demonstrated an understanding of their assigned concepts.  Not bad.  Not bad at all!

Undoing Expectations

Part of the fun - as well as the work - of teaching a film class which centers on the genre of science fiction is undoing expectations.  (By the way, I suspect this is also true of teaching more traditional literature.  I know I get a kick out of showing students that, far from being boring, Shakespeare was one randy, clever, violent son of a glovemaker.  But I digress.)  I throw them into the deep end at the beginning with Fritz Lang's Metropolis and I try to maintain that level of "oh, you think you know but you don't" throughout the class.  I steer clear of rubber-suited monsters and rayguns and try to help the students see the Big Questions that are being asked.  Questions like "What's it mean to be human?" and "How do the choices I make define who I am?" and "Who is my family - and what's that mean anyway?"  By slipping free of the confines of pure realism, science fiction (at least, GOOD science fiction) can ask and answer these questions more readily than can many a feature film.

And this past week, the class got to see that by viewing the Japanese anime film Cowboy Bebop.  It's no secret that I think Watanabe's Bebop is a very well done example of the genre and, since we're focusing on sound this week and Bebop gives us an "in" to examine dubbing v. subtitling as well as the use of music to set mood (often by off setting the screen action), Bebop was a definite for the syllabus.  Bebop gives us a large ensemble cast with each cast member being fully-rounded (including the corgi), an amazing soundtrack, and characters we actually care about who are wrestling with questions of meaning, morality, and existence.  The fact I get to pair up Bebop with another small-screen to big-screen film, Joss Whedon's Serenity, just makes me shiver with happiness.  Serenity is up this week as we discuss writing.

Remember what I said about good science fiction asking the Big Questions?  So can horror, although not usually.  This weekend, Joss Whedon fans throughout the country got their long-awaited chance to pump their fists in the air when they saw "A Mutant Enemy Production" appear on the big screen with the release of The Cabin in the Woods.  I'll say nothing more aside from this - I despise slasher movies, finding them uncreative and most unkind toward women, but I'll go see this one again.  It's clever, most of the gore is hidden in deep shadow, the casting is spot-on and it'll make you think.

You know, my entire journey toward the academic study of television and movies could be said to have begun with a course during my senior year of undergraduate school.  I wanted to take a course with this particular professor and the subject matter was the American horror film.  I tend toward the squeamish and wasn't at all sure about this, but I wanted the course.  The prof is still there and I'm sure he'll be adding Cabin to the syllabus.  It takes tropes and archetypes and moves them around like figures on a feltboard.  The poster really tells you all you need to know, so please - go see it unspoiled and just enjoy what two writers who clearly love the genre can do with subverting the idiocy that is often the modern slasher.  The film was completed three years back and stalled in the morass of MGM's financial mess, but Cabin has now seen the light of day and this is one a labor of Lovecraft that's well worth the ticket price.

Color, Sound, & Humor

After several weeks of deeply serious science fiction, we took a break this past week with Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, a cotton-candy light romp.  The idea here was to take a look at the use of color in film.  Ever since the magical year of 1939 (which gave us both Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz), color has been a significant element in film - to the point that we don't usually think all that much about it.  A film like Fifth Element can remind us of the power of color.  Plus, having Jean-Paul Gaultier design the costumes is a guarantee that there will be something to talk about.

Sound is also an important element in Fifth Element - there's the Divine Language and that wonderful sequence of the Diva's aria from Lucia di Lammermoor intercut with Leeloo's balletic battle.  Sound is where the class is headed this week, although color will continue to be an important element as well.  That's right - it's Cowboy Bebop week.

I'm using Bebop to provide examples of the "dubbing v. subtitle" debate, to showcase the use of music as more than mere background filler and to introduce (however briefly) the genre of Japanese anime.  Spike Spiegel and Co. also bring the discussion back around to free will, genetic manipulation, and determining what's actually the real world.


Bebop is an interesting film to show - it starts with a slower pace than some films we've seen (typical of Asian films in general - certainly Kurosawa was never in a hurry to get where he was going), and it's an adult-themed cartoon, albeit one with a lush mise en scene and a soundtrack I've been known to play for the heck of it.  It has an ensemble cast rather than one or two "star" characters, so there was the added challenge of making each character memorable.  It's a challenge I believe Shinichiro Watanabe rose to meet.  Moreover, it provides a terrific starting place for the debate of "space opera" or "space Western."

We'll see what the class has to say about it!

Of Sleep, Memory, and a Really Dark City

I'm not sure if there's a bigger contrast in the film class than this one.  This past week, the focus was on neo noir with the watching of Proyas' Dark City.  The first time I saw this film, I was both blown away and thoroughly confused.  That'll happen when one of the themes of the film you're watching is forced amnesia.  I watched it again to sort through the twists and turns and with every viewing since, I find I like this film more and more.  It's intricately plotted, but it never takes the easy way out and it remains true to the rules of the world it sets up.  (I despise stories that find they've plotted themselves into a corner and then cop out with a "it was all a dream and none of it was ever real!" sort of thing.)  It's also good to see a film that makes you think instead of doing it all for you.

I asked the class to especially be on the lookout for references to clocks and time and then to compare how Dark City handles those elements with the ways in which we see the same elements back in Metropolis.  I can't wait to read the results!

The class is coming off of a couple of heavy "is it you?" films that center on humanity, memory, and manipulation.  So this week, we take a well-earned breather with Luc Besson's feast of color, humor, and the Multipass and watch The Fifth Element.  In many ways, this is a silly, lighthearted romp - and I think there's a valuable lesson to be learned from silly, lighthearted romps.  It's a great movie to use to discuss color and symbolism, in part because it's such a big part of the film that you don't have to look overly hard.  (It's also a cautionary tale about the fleeting nature of stardom - what was Luke Perry's last movie?)  Humor is one of the things that keeps us sane in the dark times, so it's good to leave the shadows behind and come into the bright light of Gaultier's costumes and the Diva's song.

Hope the class enjoys it!

Memory & Manipulation

Up to this point in the film class, our “aliens in science fiction” movies have dealt with aliens who are big, ravenous and very, very scary.  This week, we go back to one of the ideas from Invasion – the alien threat looks just like us.  In the overlooked gem Impostor, Earth has been at war with the Centauris for years and we’re not doing so well.  The Centauris have discovered a way to infiltrate our society from within and you can never be sure who’s who.  Very sophisticated robots (who have definitely NOT been programmed in accordance with Asimov’s Laws of Robotic) have been placed in human society to bring us to our knees. 

At its core, Impostor asks one of the most central of questions - Just what does it mean to be human?  How can you tell?  Impostor is based on a Philip K. Dick story, a writer whose work has been the basis on many science fiction films, including Blade Runner and Total Recall.  As a writer, Dick returned obsessively to the role memory plays in making us, well – us.  If your memories are what set you apart and make you absolutely unique in the world, what happens when those are manipulated, folded, spindled, and mutilated?  Are you still you?  Were you ever?  Can you ever be again? 

Meanwhile, I did something I haven’t done in many a year this week and went to a midnight showing.  TheHunger Games was primarily filmed in western North Carolina where I live and my small town was prominently featured in the District 12 Reaping scene.   (Yeah, we apparently look like a depressed mining community.  Sad, really.  However, let me point out that the mining shacks in District 12 are NOT in my town!  They used an abandoned mill village for those shots.  Probably didn’t have to do much set dressing, more’s the pity.)  Anyway, the film (which I quite enjoyed) can be read as a cautionary tale about media manipulation.  Dick focused on screwing around with what’s already in someone’s head – Hunger Games messes around with history.  It’s been said that if you repeat a lie often enough, it takes on the shine of truth and Hunger Games makes that a major theme.  The Capitol uses the annual Games as a tool of oppression for the outlying, once-rebellious Districts and also uses them as a shiny distraction for the citizens of the Capitol.  After all, if you’re constantly being told to worry over superficial things such as fashion and hairstyles, you don’t have time left over to think and notice and demand change.  Reality in Hunger Games is definitely manufactured and it’s downright creepy to realize that, as part of the audience watching the film cheering for Katniss to survive, you’re also part of the Capitol watching and rooting for Katniss to win.  And if she doesn’t, well – there will be new Tributes next year.

People as things.  It’s a common theme in science fiction, dating at least back to Metropolis in which the underclass are used to maintain the Great Machines that supply the energy keep the ruling class contented and oblivious.  In Impostor, people are used as templates for the Other to create perfect weapons.  In Hunger Games, teenagers are chosen at random to fight to the death for the entertainment of the well-off few.  They are polished, trotted out for potential sponsors to look over, and put in front of countless TV cameras.  In Bride, the mad scientist had the decency to hide his monstrous manipulations from the public.  In Hunger Games, we’re funding the lab equipment.

It’s probably the scariest theme we’ve explored all semester.

They're Here!

This week, the film class took on the last of the "classics" on the syllabus.  (Also the last of the B&W films!)  A film that can be read as an indictment of the Red Scare and/or the dark shadow of the American dream, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a fascinating film to watch with a little background of the 1950s.  Often, when people think of the America of the 1950s, they think of an idyllic time captured in Leave It to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show, conveniently forgetting that those television shows were not documentaries.  Life in the 1950s was as messy and complicated as any other time and America was wrestling with itself.  Conformity was prized and people chafed against that.  Racism was rampant, tranquilizers were prescribed at an alarming rate, states tried to regulate the content of comic books, and the consumer culture was booming.  At the same time, we were engaged in a messy not-quite-war in Korea and there was a growing fear that Communists were trying to take us over from within.  Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers tapped into the common fear that our society was being undermined by secret agents who looked just like us, but didn't feel emotions like us.

Set in the fictional California town of “Santa Mira” (which has been used in several other film projects), Invasion holds up well all these years later.  (It should – it’s been remade at least three times in the decades since it was first released.)  Who can you trust?  How do you know?  In a world in which even sleep is deadly, these questions become crucial to answer.  Invasion isn’t gory-scary, but it still packs a psychological punch that may leave viewers as restless as many Americans felt in the 1950s.

COMING SOON:  We leave our study of classics behind and dive into a brave new world of genre mixing with Ridley Scott’s Alien.  While more violent and gory than anything we’ve seen up to now, Alien is justly renowned for its mastery of what you THINK you saw.  Cramped spaces, an entirely new sort of female character and a horror that is truly horrible – Alien has it all!

Knowledge Is Power - But Are We Ready For It?

This week, the film class got to see Forbidden Planet.  It's a fun one - and their first one in color.  (I trick them by moving back to B&W next week, but shhhhhh!)  I like so much in this movie - we're finally out among the stars instead of staying at home on Earth (and that's us in the flying saucer.  Maybe we got the design from the Roswell crash site).  We meet one of the most recognizable characters in science fiction - Robby the Robot - and we see Asimov's Laws of Robotics in action.  There are similarities to point out between this tale and Shakespeare's The Tempest, with Planet using Clarke's Law and advanced scientific knowledge substituting for Prospero's magics.  (Sites selling research papers love this one - I guess it seems hip.  See here.  And here.  Write your own stuff!)  And - oh, yes - "monsters from the Id!"  That never fails to get some good discussion going as we talk about what our own monsters from the Id might look and act like.

(Personally, I like this one best - a monster who knows what he wants and when he wants it.  NOW!!)

Key to Planet is the conflict posed by the existence of advanced knowledge.  Are we ready to handle the consequences of using that knowledge?  Who is charged with making that determination?  What gives them to right to decide for the rest of us?  And just how stable are those making these decision-makers to begin with?  Who, as Juvenal wondered, watches the Watchmen?

All good questions, especially in the post-WW2 world that had seen the destructive force of the atomic bomb and the sheer inhumanity of Nazi death camps and of experimentation sites such as Unit 731.  Genies are very difficult to put back into bottles, after all.  And maybe some knowledge needs to stay on a very high shelf from grasping hands.

COMING SOON:  Next week, the film class goes back one year from Planet to see what was going on at home while the United Planets Cruiser C-57D was far, far away.  Things were tense.  America was in the deep freeze of a Cold War with the Soviets and neighbors spied on neighbors for any hint of un-American behavior.  Can't let those Reds get a toehold or soon everything that we know and hold dear will be stripped away!  One key to safety was to conform.  Twilight Zone would do some very interesting things with this theme in 1960's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" (which uses a few props from Planet), but first the aliens came to the small California town of Santa Mira.  Get ready for Invasion of the Body Snatchers!

Ambition Versus Good Sense

This week, the online film class is watching Bride of Frankenstein and exploring the trope of the "mad scientist playing God."  I just flat out love this movie.  Directed by James Whale, the film has much to adore and it's a wonderful film to explore questions of narrative structure.  After all, you'd expect a movie with the word "bride" in the title to be all about the girl.  But no, the incomparable hissing-like-a-swan Elsa Lanchester is actually only visible onscreen for a few minutes, which raises the question of whose movie is this?  Whose story is being told?  (After all, there's another "bride" in the movie!)  As I've said before, these are important questions to ask - and how you answer these questions will radically change your analysis of what's important in the film.  It's a short one, so watch it more than once.  (Spoiler tip - the Bride also plays Mary Shelley at the beginning of the film.  What's the significance of that?  What similarities are there in how Bryon and Shelley treat Mary and how Victor and Pretorius treat the Bride?  These are things that make you go "hmmmm.")  The film also examines a question that often comes up with scientific advances - just because we CAN do something, SHOULD we do it?  Does ambition trump good sense?  Technology crashes into morality, both in Bride and in Breaking Bad.  The Manhattan Project, genetic manipulation, extending life through artificial means - all of these scientific advances also have a moral element.  We can learn much from the approaches taken in Bride to these issues.

We continue with our exploration of classics next week, when Forbidden Planet is served up for your viewing enjoyment.  Color!  Flying saucers!  Robots!  A lost civilization!  And a lot of Freud with more than a dash of Shakespeare.  All with Leslie Nielsen at the center - long, long before he became famous as a comic actor, thanks to Airplane! and the Naked Gun franchise.

Breaking Bad fans and followers -please check back here this Wednesday for the first installment of "Walter White Wednesday" as I begin laying out some of the big themes and little gems from Breaking Bad.  I thought it was especially nice to start that segment on 2/22 and the fact that it's Ash Wednesday when the season of penance begins just tickles me.  This week, I'll take a look at what it means to "break bad" and why Walter White is susceptible to going off into the deep end of the moral pool.

A Swing and a Miss!

I like to start my film classes with a not-quiz called "20 Terms to Get You Started."  This list includes technical terms such as "fade" and "jump cut," but also includes the wonderful phrase "Sturgeon's Law."  Theodore Sturgeon is credited with promulgating the idea that "90% of everything is trash."*  As I explain to my class, this is the reason we only study the remaining 10%.  This being said, you sometimes can't steer clear of the shoals presented by the 90%.

This weekend, for example, my Wanna Cook? co-author and I excitedly attended an area production of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.  This is a show that came to life on the Internet as a direct result of the writer's strike of 2007 - 2008.  It's a hilarious, oddly touching science fiction/superhero musical - and that's a completely inadequate description.  We were thrilled to be able to see it translated into a live performance.  Sadly, we wound up doing something we never do - we left at the intermission.

Seriously - this was a blue plate special of awful, which I why I won't include the name of the production company or location in this post, as I'm sure they're all nice people.  We got an inkling that things were not as they should be when the venue kept us outside in the cold because the sound check wasn't complete.  Then the director (who was walking around with a welded wire horse's head strapped to his cranium making me think that some unholy melding of Bad Horse and Equus had taken place) announced that four (count 'em - FOUR)  roles were being played by understudies.  Then the projection tech didn't work, which had Spinal Tap moments of unintended comedy.  And the final strike - the performers had been so badly miked that I suspected sabotage from the Fox network.  Listen, I'm a kind critic.  I know how much work goes into putting on a show, but I was in total agreement with my co-author when he said, "The way I look at it, I paid $10 to get in and $10 to get out.  I don't begrudge a cent of it."

We then went to see The Descendants, a film which is getting heavy Oscar buzz.  After seeing it, I have no idea why.  It's not that it was an awful movie; it wasn't.  It just wasn't particularly good, either.  The film is getting extremely positive reviews, but I trust my taste.  Alexander Payne, who directed here, also was at the helm of Sideways, which deals with some similar character types, and I'll admit to liking it more, although it also isn't among my "must haves."  Maybe it was just an off night - happens.

COMING SOON:  The film class tackles the "mad scientist" trope in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein.  Also - coming in about two weeks (on 2/22), I start adding "Walter White Wednesdays" on this blog to comment on and question the goings-on in Breaking Bad.  Get your popcorn and join me!



*Actually, Sturgeon used a word that is a bit more colorful than "trash," but you get the idea.

Time to Start!

While the class has been going for nearly two weeks now, so far it's all been about orientation "stuff" that is essential to the student's success in the class, but isn't nearly as much fun as actually watching and dissecting the films!  But there's a lot to be said for a strong beginning, and I think it's a solid approach to give students time to get their online ducks in a row.

That's done now - or will be by Monday, when the first viewing assignment goes up.  We're starting with the classic German Expressionism film Metropolis, which is also really the beginning of big screen science fiction.  I've given them several links to supplement their viewing - I always think it's a good idea to have some background on the film, the filmmaker, and the time period in which the film was made.  After all, science fiction is often about a view of the future and it's interesting to note how that changes.  You didn't see atomic monster movies before WW2 showed us what the unleashed atom could do and looking at the tech on the old Star Trek seems quaint in the 21st century.  Their first paper is a simple response to the film - not totally undirected, of course.  I want the students to start looking critically at film, not just see it as background entertainment.

I'll post the material on Monday and we'll see how things go from there.  I have high hopes.  Metropolis may be an "old movie" (it was released in 1927, so it's not only black and white, it's a silent film - which for most of my students is a whole new ballgame), but many of my students in the past have discovered that the story is quite compelling.

In the meantime, my co-author in the Wanna Cook? project and I were talking about animals in space.  Who knows why - these things just sort of happen.  Did you know that cats have experienced zero gravity?  It must have driven them nigh-crazy to not be able to land on their feet.  Odd, to say the least.  But not nearly as strange as this:

Onward to Metropolis!

On Your Mark!

The online film class launches on Wednesday and I've been a busy li'l film bee getting ready for it.  One of the major challenges has been figuring out just HOW the class was going to see the films that are the central text of the class, since we don't do "group viewings" in an online class.  (There's also a textbook, but that's used more for vocabulary and extra examples.)  I'm still working the details and I'm pleased with what's coming together - I'm hopeful that all the films will be digitally available through a digital service my college is testing and/or through some additional streaming services of the school (not all the films I intend to use are available through the digital service - copyright and contract issues there).  Still, my advice to my students is to set up an outside account (I'm suggesting Netflix and not the video streaming service, as several of the films are not available in Netflix's streaming catalog, but all of them are available through their DVD service.  Not everything is available through Amazon's instant rental service; I don't know about iTunes.  And Netflix is free for the first month and you can cancel at any time).  I've set up a list of "what films when" on both an embedded Google calendar and a separate Word document so the students can go ahead and get their queues set up.  I'm hopeful that this will make things run smoothly, but in my experience, online classes can be great and they can go frustratingly wrong due to tech issues.  If students don't read carefully (or at all), it gets worse quickly.

To wit:  I've been struggling mightily to get some orientation material set up as short (10 - 15 minutes) videos that I then embed into the Blackboard platform used by my school.  It's a multi-step process - set up the Powerpoints, save.  Narrate over them, save.  Convert to wmv, save.  (This part literally takes hours.  I'm always amazed at how impatient I get at this stage.  The trick is to set it up to run overnight and just go to bed.)  Take the resulting wmv file, import into Camtasia and save as an swf file.  Now embed that into Blackboard and constantly remind your students that they have a free Shockwave download so yes, they can play it.  (Now pray that they have a fast Internet connection and aren't dealing with *yike* dial-up.)

To repeat - Yike.

Hours it takes.  HOURS - and that's if you know what you're doing!  (I'm slowing getting into that camp, but I'm still a little bit in the woods.  I have an appointment on Monday to find out if there's a reliable shortcut to all of this.  But it seems that when tech needs to talk to other tech, sometimes there are limitations and roadblocks.)  In a way, this is good.  I need to know how students feel and I know how I feel when the tech doesn't work as advertised.

Still - I'm determined to make a solid go of it.  But yeah, it'd be so much easier to just show the films in class and do a basic orientation lecture.  Don't be fooled - distance learning works (and it can work very well), but don't confuse that with an online class being less work than a traditional class.  It's not.  Not if you're doing it right.

Onward!