Gods & Critters

So I recently took a bullet for the team and saw Gods of Egypt. "Meet Me at the Movies" is a show I enjoy doing and sure - I don't always like every film I see. But this - oh, the carnage! It was enough to make me wonder just what crimes I had committed in a prior life that caused me to suffer through this one. Perhaps I am a victim of the mummy's curse; I don't know. But this film is simply bad. As in MST3K or Rifftrax bad. The mythology is beyond muddled, the idea to have the gods be 1.5 times the height of humans is just off-putting, and the costumes are silly (especially those inflicted upon the women).

Gods of Egypt isn't even campy fun. (And with Geoffrey Rush as Ra, it could have been.) Chadwick Boseman as Thoth wants to have fun with it - and the man did play James Brown, so he can work a spangled costume - but the movie reins itself in when it should go full-on Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Perhaps if it didn't try to strike a balance of snark and grandeur or maybe if it reveled in the sheer ridiculousness of itself - but no. The best - the absolute best - thing I can say is that this film is what you could suppose the love child of Transformers, Part Whatever and Clash of the Titans might be. (But without a kraken, so really - there's no point. There almost is, when you see giant scarab beetles pulling a chariot, but -- no.)

"Release the Kraken!" (2010)

Honestly, this film is just a mess. Director Alex Proyas proved with The Crow and Dark City that he can wrangle large, improbable stories (and he uses Rufus Sewell from Dark City in this trainwreck, but hopefully, people will forget that), but this one just got away from him.

There's no reason to see this.

However, Zootopia restored my faith, and not just because it features the vocal talents of Alan Tudyk (as a real-life weasel) and allows Kristen Bell to actually play a sloth. Zootopia could've just been a cute little tale of unlikely partners, but instead, I found myself seeing a touch more deeply into this one.

At its core, Zootopia deals with predators and prey. Animals have progressed to a point where everybody gets along (there's a hilarious school skit that opens the film to explain this - it's right up there with Scout-as-a-ham in Mockingbird), only maybe not everyone likes that idea. Hatred and fear do a great job of dividing folks, as we're seeing in the current run-up to the elections in this country. And yes, we can learn a few things from an ambitious bunny and a misunderstood fox. Go see this one - take the kids, and have a talk afterwards.

Also - be on the lookout for the Breaking Bad joke tucked away in the underground lab scene.

Moving Like Clockwork

With my regular "Walter White Wednesday" feature winding down as the Next Big Project (Mark this space! Coming mid-September!) gets running, I decided to shift gears for this post and discuss my ongoing film class, which involves both challenges and triumphs.

This class - a basic Introduction to Film course - came about suddenly. Very suddenly. So many monkey wrenches were thrown into the mix that it started to resemble an elimination challenge from Top Chef, only with film instead of quinoa. Take the class off-campus to a local high school as part of a Broadcast Technology track. Compress the class into six weeks. Ditch any kind of textbook. Have wonky Internet connections. Not sure how many students there will be, but we'll keep it under thirty. And the kids will probably be set up to use the college's educational platform by the end of Week 2, which is one-third of the way through the class.

(gulp)

How in the name of D.W. Griffith was I going to pull this one off? I mean, this was crazy. Nuts. Insane. Bonkers.

Fortunately, cooler heads than mine prevailed. Breathe, and pull focus. Take another look, sharpen the view, and see what's there. So after some re-vamping of an existing syllabus (that felt a lot like slashing-and-burning), I had a Plan and part of the Plan was to build in some flexibility. High schools run differently than colleges and sometimes they forget to tell me stuff, so my class will be cut short some days, or I'll have extra time that I didn't know about, so I don't get to the school on time.

Flexibility and a sense of humor will get you far in this life, Grasshopper. I just wish I could remember that more.

At any rate, they've (turned out to be a tiny group of bright, eager students, so much yay! there) learned some basic terms by now and have seen their first film. For that, I selected Fritz Lang's Metropolis because I don't have time to fool around. I gave them a little background and let the film do the rest. Perhaps they're being polite (I doubt it), but they really seemed to enjoy the challenges of watching a full-length silent picture. Yes, they had a few issues with the exaggerated acting style and some of the jumpy scene cuts (I use a restored version, but it's still not completely complete, so there are a few jarring edits). And - far more importantly to me - they picked up on the themes with minimal prodding from me.

We'll see where this goes. Tomorrow, they start Proyas' Dark City, which I think will be an excellent counterpoint to Lang's elegant Expressionism. Ah, neo-noir, with your hard-boiled detectives, throaty torch singers, cars that go on forever, and languid cigarette smoke. You're a tough style to sell, but when you're beautiful, you're show-stopping.

And, in both, so many clocks! What could they mean?

Hmm.  I'll have to wait for my students to tell me.

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!