Walter White Wednesday 39

. . . which is the one that doesn't get written.

Sorry, folks - and I truly am, for I enjoy writing these posts every Wednesday - but last night was Election Night here in North Carolina and the U.S. of A. and I stayed up late.  Very late.  Too late for someone who has a day job and a 12-hour stint at it this too-early morning.  But I believe that some things are worth seeing live and this was one of them.  (Also - I think we can put aside our differences about the candidates and just admit that the Democrats have a much better soundtrack.  Also - rest of the world, please ignore Donald Trump.  Paying him attention only encourages him to continue acting the fool.)

At first, I thought about crafting a post about who would make the better First Lady, Marie (who'd probably steal the linen from the Lincoln Bedroom) or Skyler (who'd probably squirrel pallets of campaign donations away in the walls).  I also considered cobbling together my thoughts on who would prevail in a Hank vs. Walt tossup, but I got stuck on who would be Hank's running mate (although I have to admit, siccing Jesse on certain world leaders DOES make me smile on this under-caffeinated morn).  Instead, I'm going to simply admit that there's no post this week.

I'll be back next week with thoughts on Breaking Bad, but today, I need more coffee.

"I'm Gonna Wreck It!"

After 30 years, a guy wants a change.

Disney bought Pixar and boy - does Wreck-It Ralph make that abundantly clear.  Ralph features magnificent vocal talent, including John C. Reilly as the title character, a bad guy who wants - just once! - to be the good guy. He "game jumps" to achieve his goal of earning a medal to show he's really a good guy, which gives the moviemakers a chance to show off a vast variety of game environments, from early 80s herky-jerky movement to today's smooth HD silkiness.  The contrasts are great fun - Ralph is appalled by the violence and scare factor of Hero's Duty and I could feel my teeth ache at the sheer sweetness overload of Sugar Rush.

In part, Ralph has a very conservative message - we all have roles to play and trying to deviate from those roles leads to destruction and chaos.  Ralph is a bad guy - he shouldn't try to be anything else, for people have to Know Their Place for society to function.

At least, that's one way to look at it.  You can also see it as a message about blooming where you're planted and realizing that pastures are perfectly green on this side of the fence.  In this reading, Ralph needs to come to terms with what he is and yes, others should respect him for his "badness."  After all, without Ralph's mindless destruction, there's nothing for the hero, Felix (voiced with pixie perfection by Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock) to repair and therefore, no need for the game to even exist.

A third way of looking at Ralph occurred to me only after I'd left the theater.  Ralph is, strangely enough, a feminist movie.  It has two central female characters who are cast in traditionally male games - Sgt. Calhoun is a tough-as-nails soldier (and Jane Lynch does an awesome job with some deliberately obtuse dialogue here), who was programmed with "the most tragic backstory ever." She leads a platoon of tough-guy soldiers on a never-ending mission to obliterate the deadly "cybugs" in a ultra-violent shooter game.  The other, Vanellope (voiced by Sarah Silverman), is a wanna-be racer in a candy-colored game involving a go-kart bakery, candy forests, and a volatile diet soda swamp.  (There are also about a dozen other racer characters, who are all uniformly horrid little girls, giving rise to one of the great lines of the film where they are referred to as "children of the candy corn")  While the Sugar Rush game is over-the-top girly girl, the ultimate goal is to win a road race - a traditionally male-oriented game.  In the cases of both Calhoun and Vanellope, the gender of the avatar is never seen as worth remarking upon - Calhoun isn't a "female" soldier and Vanellope isn't a "girl" racer - and oddly enough, that's progress.

There's a lot here for viewers of a certain age who will, presumably, be taking the small fry to the picture.  I know that I spent plenty of time in video arcades during my early teens, carefully lining up my row of quarters to mark my pixellated territory before turning my attention to Asteroids, Frogger, Galaga, or (my favorite) Phoenix. For me, part of the joy of Ralph was in locating as many of the avatars of my youth as I could - the oft-overlooked Q*Bert makes several appearances and yes, that actually is Pong in the lobby of Game Central Station.  Plus, I'm in favor of just about any movie that gives Alan Tudyk work - and this role is a doozy!

Visually, Ralph is a treat. I saw it in 2D - I suspect the 3D version of the race sequences would have made me woozy, but it may be to your liking.

By the way, Wreck-It Ralph begins with a short that is definitely for the grown-ups in the audience.  "Paperman" is a delicate and charming story of magic realism that will delight you, even though it doesn't really fit the tone of the movie it precedes.  It's a lovely mix of classic 2D hand-drawn artistry and computer generated techniques.  Ah, animation - how much you can do for us!

Walter White Wednesday 38

This is the post where I step away from my usual analysis/update format to channel my inner Jesse Pinkman.  Yeah, that's right -- "Trick or treat, bitch!"

Haven't made up your mind about a Halloween costume?  Well, Breaking Bad is here to help you out!  The cast has a tradition of dressing up as each other for Halloween - great pics are here!

Here are some more photos from non-cast members to give you some (disturbing) ideas.

Here's even a "how to" site to make putting it all together that much easier!

And these guys will carefully walk you through the complete process of putting your Breaking Bad persona together because, after all, what's Halloween if not a celebration of change?  And no show does that better than Breaking Bad.

Now make with the candy corn, or something might happen to your pretty yard.  You get my meaning, bitches?

Cloud Atlas

It's a cumulus! Or a cirrostratus!

It's best to begin by a straight-up admission that I wasn't at all sure about this one. Cloud Atlas is long - like Gone with the Wind long and, for the most part, contemporary audiences get antsy around the one-hour-and-forty-five-minute mark. It involves actors playing multiple roles across multiple storylines, switching time periods, races, and genders. The film has come under fire for "yellowfacing" - having Caucasian actors play Asian characters rather than hiring Asian actors. There are three - THREE - directors, two of whom are the Wachowski siblings, who once were the Wachowski brothers and that's a whole other kettle of mackerel that I'm not getting into, aside from saying that I imagine that Lana Wachowski has a unique perspective on just how much a person can change. The Wachowski siblings have a track record that shows a definite bent for visually striking films that dabble in theology and Big Questions.

Not sure, not sure.  But this is my not-quite-job, so I bought my ticket, not at all sure if this was going to be the first Matrix movie or Speed Racer. (Hey, like your career hasn't had the occasional misstep?)

I have to say, I've never seen anything like this movie. Ever. I think it's absolutely brilliant and let me explain why.

All too often today, films lack ambition. Worse, they don't trust the audience to figure anything out, so the storytelling tends to be "tell," rather than "show." Cloud Atlas trusts you to be able to connect the dots (by the way, a "cloud atlas" is a real thing) and expects you to try. It's not about stunt casting, although some will seize on that, since you have Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, and the incomparable Hugo Weaving (among at least half a dozen others) playing multiple roles. The key concept in the movie is that things, events, people, and (most importantly) love, repeat throughout time. Who's playing the "good guy" and who's filling the archetype of the villain might change, but the roles are always there because we have a hard time learning our lessons.  There's certainly some Carl Jung in here - I caught myself mulling over the concept of archetypes and the collective unconscious after the credits ran. And Joseph Campbell would swoon over this film.  Swoon.

Some will balk at the length. Some will balk at the pidgin language used in one part. Some will balk at the mixing of time periods.

I think all of these people are missing the point. Cloud Atlas is huge and glorious and celebratory (there's a scene in a Scottish pub that had me punching the air in my seat) and tragic and funny and will both make you glad to be human and sorry to be associated with such a screwed-up species.

Go see it.  

Oh, and about the pidgin language part. I've read some criticism that griped that this part should come with subtitles. Really, buddy? Stop taking snarky notes on your popcorn bucket and try concentrating. (I know - that was snarky. Trust me, it was deserved.)

And about the time switches.  Just pay attention - the time period switches aren't random at all.  They occur when a significant plot point is reached in the Grand Story.  That's one of the key points - life is the same story told over and over.  It actually reminded me of John Gardner's line that "in all the world, there are only two stories.  You take a trip, or a stranger comes to town." (And Gardner showed in Grendel that he understands the power of telling a familiar tale through the lens of another character - he'd probably like Cloud Atlas just fine for that reason alone.)  Honestly, if you ever teach any sort of narrative structure class - playwrighting, screenwriting, or just plain ol' longhand fiction - Cloud Atlas could be a great film to use as a teaching tool, for it shows the same big events multiple times.

To sum up, Cloud Atlas is a movie for viewers who are willing to settle in for a long ride, who aren't afraid to think and who can still marvel at the way a movie can touch us emotionally. All that said, Cloud Atlas isn't for everyone - and it certainly doesn't make you a dunderhead if you decide it's not your cup of sweet tea.

But I'm oh-so-glad I saw it!

Walter White Wednesday 37

Two of the best parts of co-writing a book like this (aside from simply being able to co-write a book like this) is that (a) the workload is shared and (b) you get to see things from more than just your own angle.  My co-author, Ensley F. Guffey, is in the midst of writing a longer piece for Wanna Cook? that deals with the concept of place in Breaking Bad.*

"Place?" you say.  "It's in Albuquerque.  Got it."  No, not that kind of place.  (Although you're right.)  Think of it this way - you buy a house, but you make a home.  If you get that, you're well on your way to understanding the significant differences between "space" and "place."  And this is a concept with which Breaking Bad's cup just runneth over.

Think of the RV, where Jesse & Walt spend such significant amounts of time early in the show - and think of that scene in which the faithful, shot-up RV goes to its final reward, marking the end of an era.

Rolling meth lab in the peaceful desert.  Sort of.

Will Walt's fate be much different?

Or think of Jesse's house, which begins Season 1 as very much his late aunt's house, and the changes it goes through as Jesse makes it his own place.  The house can be viewed as a metaphor for Jesse's squirrel-cage of a mind as he spirals down (particularly the beginning of Season 4) and makes some decisions (remember how he pretty much literally wipes the slate clean?  That's place, baby.)  These are the sorts of things Ensley describes and explains - great work, too!

Somehow, lace curtains don't seem gangsta to me.

Same house, Season 4

*The book will have several of these longer pieces.  Each episode gets about 1,500 words, which includes a brief "what's going on" along with notes on recurring images and themes, notable camera angles and "extras" that apply to the episode, like pieces on Pablo Escobar and Walt Whitman.  But there are a few concepts that deserved a longer look, such as the application of a great theory on the steps Walt travels to become so violent and the use on nonverbal communication (Hector's bell, for example) in the show.  The "place piece" is one of these.