Screen Dreams

Martin Scorsese making silents

As a movie fan, I'm sometimes surprised at how tricky it can be to make a movie about, well - movies.  Maybe it's the fear of too many "in jokes" that the crowd won't get, or maybe it's the fact that Hollywood often seems to have the attention span of a hyperactive gnat, but this is a genre of movies that seems to be pretty thin.  Mind you, often movies in this category are transcendent.  Altman's The Player is worth renting just for the opening shot (listen for the reference to Welles' Touch of Evil then go rent that) and I'll watch Singin' in the Rain just for O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" sequence.

So why'd it take me the better part of a year to see Scorsese's Hugo? I have no answer, aside from the fact that the film was only at my local theater for a week, if that, when it was in big-screen release.  Ah, Hugo.  This was simply a lovely film. It helps if you have an appreciation for what it might have been like for the early pioneers of film, but even if you think silents are dull and boring (I disagree with you there, by the way), Hugo is a film to love.  Parts of the story are based on true events - which in and of itself is a sad thing.  We so often demand simple stories that immerse us in spectacle, but keep actual emotional content safely at arm's length.  Imagine, just for a moment, that you have never, ever seen a movie.  You've never seen images flicker and move on a screen in a darkened theater.  Then this technology comes along and suddenly, people are making stories that move.  For the price of a ticket, you can go to the bottom of the sea or to the moon (remember, it would be another seventy years before we actually knew what the moon looked like from human experience).

I fear we live in a cynical age which is often marked by being too cool to care - we've seen it all and done most of it and really, who cares?  Hugo makes you consider what it's like to care. Imagine going broke to the point of selling your life's work which is then melted down for scrap.  Imagine being an abandoned child trying desperately to stay hidden.  Then imagine finding refuge in a dim movie house.  Imagine being able to show that to your first friend.

The secret is the human ability to connect.  Movies have the power to do many things - and help us form many connections - and Scorsese knows this.  With Hugo, he created a beautifully crafted Valentine to the power of movies and to those who know the secret of this power, whether they are makers of movies or watchers of them.

Terry Pratchett captured this same sense of marvel in his Discworld novel Moving Pictures.  You know those primitive tribes who refuse to be photographed because of their fear that doing so might capture their soul?  Well, what if there's some sort of magic in making movies - and that magic wants to come into our world?  I've been a Pratchett fan since I was urged to read The Truth about seven years ago.  Pratchett writes great, complex fantasy novels that take place in a world that isn't nearly as nasty as Martin's Game of Thrones world (don't yell at me; I've read four of them, but I'm taking a break.  The random violence and misogyny got to me, even though I'm pretty sure it's there to make a point).  The Discworld is for people who enjoy sharp satire and clever writing - if that's you, go check out his work.  He has a new novel that's just come out - Dickens-based, from the title.  Not Discworld, but Pratchett's always worth a read.

Just as Georges Melies' silent films are worth a look.  From 1904 - The Mermaid

Walter White Wednesday 30

Well, well, well - for the first time since high summer, I don't have a new Breaking Bad episode to recap and speculate upon. I can deal with that - "Gliding Over All" left me with plenty to chew on - but I will admit to wishing that it wasn't going to be the better part of an ENTIRE YEAR before I learn how Walt goes from serenely watching his children play around the backyard pool to buying a heavy machine gun in the men's room of a Denny's on his birthday.

Damn you, Gilligan! (An oath I'm sure Skipper wanted to scream to the skies from time to time on that island, by the way.)

So what's going on in the meantime? Wanna Cook? The Unofficial Companion Guide to Breaking Bad continues to take shape. The first three seasons are drafted and my co-author and I are taking a short break to prepare papers for presentation at the annual Popular/American Culture Association in the South conference, which is due to be held in Nashville, TN at the end of September.  Ensley F. Guffey will be presenting on how Breaking Bad uses space and place (think of the transformations the house we first see Jesse living in goes through to become Jesse's house as Jesse himself transforms) and I'll be presenting on how the show uses nonverbal communication (think dingdingdingding along with creepy-crawly  Cousins, among other examples). It'll take us until the conference to put these ideas down on paper and prepare our clips, so Season Four won't really get rolling into draft form until early October.

I have to say, I think you're going to be pleased with the final book. Wanna Cook? was always planned to be far more than a recap or episode summary guide. The book is full of notes about ongoing themes in Breaking Bad, camera shots, episode titles, and lots of extras about everything from Pablo Escobar and money laundering to Ted's heated floor and Walt Whitman.

We both plan on continuing our weekly posts about Breaking Bad - you can find "Meth Monday" over at Ensley's site and I hope you'll keep coming back here for "Walter White Wednesday." There's plenty for us to talk about!

Throughout the run of Breaking Bad, fans of the show have put together some amazing fan-work centered around the show - here's a link to a re-imagining of the opening credits that I think is well worth a look! Maybe this will help tide you over until we get our answers about Walt, Hank, Jesse, and the rest!

Lost Luggage & Found Ideas

Many an engineer or physicist has dreamed of stumbling across a perfect re-creation of the the contents of Nikola Tesla's lab as it appeared before the fire that destroyed half a lifetime's work. For religion students, it's the idea of finding the mysterious "Q Document." For lit students, the dream involves taking the top off a dusty box in some dim library to find a copy of Shakespeare's Love's Labours Won.

Maybe not quite in that league, but certainly close by, would be running across the contents of a suitcase carried by Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, in 1922. Going to visit her husband in Switzerland for the holidays, Hadley thoughtfully packed every single thing he had written up to that point, including the carbon copies. She left the train to get a bottle of water and when she returned, the suitcase was gone.  Gone.  Every word he had written about his World War 1 experiences, his first novel, well over a dozen short stories - all gone, never to surface again.* Hemingway sometimes shrugged off the loss, claiming that the work was juvenile and not at all good, but sometimes he also claimed this was the main reason he divorced Hadley. (Actually, the truth is that he divorced Hadley because he was Hemingway, but no matter.)

The Words runs with this idea.  In fact, Hemingway's landmark novel of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s, The Sun Also Rises is featured prominently in several shots, no doubt as a nod to the suitcase story. In The Words, a hack writer comes across a manuscript tucked into an old attache case his wife buys him in Paris on their honeymoon. He claims the novel as his own work and fame and glory come his way. As does the actual author of the work in question.

Only that's not really the story. The actual story is told by the now Old Man (no sea was apparent, but I suspect another Hemingway nod there) about his experiences in Paris at the end of World War 2 and the family he tried to build there and the wife who lost - you guessed it - the manuscript he'd been working on. Lost on a train.

Only that's not really the story. The actual story is told by the author of a book about the Old Man and his life and the manuscript that was lost and recovered by the young writer's wife, who then lies to everyone and publishes it.

Only that's not really the story. The actual story is told in between all of these paths and hinges on what we what, Life or Fiction, and how one word changes everything.

Actually, that might not really be the story, either, but by then I couldn't tell.  The Words is a film that desperately wants to be Serious Cinema, and it's not bad cinema, but it topples under its own weight and cleverness at some point.  You have strong actors here (I found Jeremy Irons to be especially captivating as the Old Man), but the plot is twisted to the point that you expect to meet yourself coming the other way.  In and of itself, that's not a bad thing, but I'm not convinced it was truly worth the journey.  The Words says some important things about theft of ideas, why that's a bad, yet tempting, thing, and the cost of honesty in righting a wrong action, but as it works through its layers to the center truth it wants to convey, it's easy to lose interest.



* OK, it's a slight exaggeration.  One story was out with an editor and another was buried in a drawer.

Walter White Wednesday 29

Voyage of the Soul

. . . in which we learn of the dangers of poetry.  NOTE: This post refers to the events in the Season 5 "mini-finale" ("Gliding Over All") so  if you haven't seen that, please stop here! Proceed, but you've been warned and I'll tolerate no whining about spoilage.

Walt Whitman spent forty-plus years of his life writing, revising, and re-writing his magnum opus, Leaves of Grass, which first appeared in Breaking Bad with Gale Boetticher's quoting of "I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" back in Season 3. Gale gave a copy of the book to Walt with a lovely inscription, remember?

Walt should be more careful with his books.

"Gliding Over All," the title of this week's episode, comes from a poem contained within the book.  It's short, so I'll quote it here.

Gliding o'er all, through all,

Through Nature, Time, and Space,

As a ship on the waters advancing.

The voyage of the soul -- not life alone,

Death, many deaths I'll sing.

I've often marveled at Gilligan & Company's ability to pull what looked like random threads together, but wow.  Seriously, WOW! That painting of a man rowing away from his family on the shore that we first saw in Walt's shrink's office back in Season 2 shows back up here in a cheap motel room, battered and stained much the way I imagine Walt's soul to be. Also in this meeting with Todd's tattooed and apparently Aryan Brotherhood-connected uncle, death -- many deaths -- are planned and later executed with astonishing precision. Walt's empire expands into Europe, Skyler shows him just how much money he's made (still not more than Gray Matter generates, but apparently, it'll do) and Walt has a change of heart. The family is reunited and a cozy poolside cookout commences - Walt glides serenely over all.

My co-author has already cleverly commented on the images and motifs that have previously appeared in Breaking Bad that reappear in this episode, so I'll simply direct you over to his post about that. Do those images indicate that the past - in the form of Walt's cancer - has returned? Believe it or not, I think the answer is not that important - Walt doesn't get a free pass on this one. He's done terrible things and done them willingly and that price must be paid. His doom approaches as a ship on the water - then again, maybe he's obliviously rowing out to meet it.

Hank knows. Now he's just got to prove it.

For me, this episode ties things together and puts Walt, who's become increasingly desperate, despicable, and damned, squarely in the gunsights of the one man who will patiently put it all together - Hank Schrader. This happened because, for all Walt crows about being smart, about being The Man Whose Name Must Be Said, he's sloppy.  He keeps trophies and loses his temper. Hank can follow the money or the bodies, but either way, there's a trail.

I think with the final shot of "Gliding Over All," we went from "Will Walt get caught?" to "Who's the weakest link?" So who will be Hank's guide on the trail? If Skyler's put in a box, will she turn Walt in to save the family? That woman has every intention of keeping her children. Heaven knows that Lydia's not wound all that tightly and she'll do about anything to stay with her daughter. (See the theme?) Then again, has Jesse been bought off by two duffles stuffed full of cash? After all, he was careful to check to see who was at the door, then he made a detour to the coffee table to make sure he went to the door with a gun stashed at the small of his back. And if he ever finds out about Jane . . . 

So that's our mid-finale, with no new episodes for nearly a year.  (I know - a YEAR!) But both I and the tall and talented Ensley F. Guffey will continue to be here for you, updating you on the progress of Wanna Cook? as well as including other tidbits on the dark world of Walter White.

Don't Brake for Yard Sales

Let's dress up like demon hunters!

The Possession follows a family whose lives are torn apart by a yard sale item. No, it's not a documentary.  It's a nice set up - while helping their newly-divorced dad shop for household goods for his still-smells-like-fresh-paint house, the youngest daughter's eye is caught by a box about the size of a silver chest, with strange carvings on the top and no discernible way to open it. Sure, kiddo, you can have it.  Lesson the First: don't buy anything you can't read.  Buy the kid the hat and what the heck, throw in the gloves.  But not the box.

The Possession is trying hard to be a scary movie with a religious twist, a la The Exorcist.  Now, I must confess that I'm not a horror fan, not really, but this one's okay by me.  The Possession is one of those movies that would rather make you jump than gross you out. It takes the approach that little girls acting weird are scarier than boogeymen and in this, I think the filmmakers are right.  Outside forces - the maniacal axe-murderer breaking down your door, for example - are certainly scary, but we know what to do about those.  4Ss and a B - shoot, stab, slash, shove, or burn.  One of those will probably do the trick. But when the terror is inside, when it's the familiar, especially the innocent, who's the Big Bad, well, a different system must be found to deal with the threat/problem.  After all, that's not J. Random Killer, that's Missy.

Nothing to see here, everything's fine.

There's a lot here to like - solid performances throughout (although by casting Jeffrey Dean Morgan, I kept wanting the Winchester boys from Supernatrual to show up with rock salt) and a few genuine jumps, at least for me.  Mind you, The Possession doesn't do all that much that's new - you've seen most of this before.  Two kids dealing with parents' still-raw divorce?  Check.  Dad who overindulges kids to be Fun Parent while Mom has to be the disciplinarian?  Check.  Ambitious, hard-working dad who misses important things in girls' lives?  Check.  Nice kid who becomes highly creepy after coming into contact with cursed object?  Check.  New boyfriend who cuts and runs when things get weird, proving that Mom and Dad ought to work this out for the kids?  Check.  Scary shadowy things in the corners of rooms and down people's throats?  Check.  People who are just too stupid to put their back against a wall so creepy things can't sneak up on them?  Check.  And so on.

That said, the film works a different vein of terror in that it's not a Catholic exorcism but a Jewish one.  The box was made to contain a dybbuk, a frightening supernatural creature out of Jewish folklore.  But the exorcism itself you've seen before - demons don't want to give up hosts very easily and they get extremely irked at anyone who tries to evict them.

By the way, the film is based on a story that ran in the Los Angeles Times back in 2004 called "A Jinx in a Box."  Read the story and you'll understand that when films use language like "based on actual events," they don't necessarily mean "based MUCH" on actual events.