Voting With Your Feet

The 2015 movie year is off to a glorious start with the wide release of Selma. What? You don't want to see a history movie? That stuff is old and boring? Besides, things have changed and we don't need to be dwelling on the past, right?

Pfffft. I'm with Faulkner on this one. The past truly isn't dead.

Selma's taking a few hits, primarily for its portrayal of LBJ. Having seen the film, I don't get that. Pres. Johnson in no way comes across as the villain of the piece; rather, he is shown to be a politician with ambitious goals. He cautions Dr. King to slow down, the time is not yet ripe for these large-scale changes in the Deep South - and Johnson fears he can't deliver the votes he needs to pass legislation that will essentially take a sledgehammer to Jim Crow. (You know, it's odd how a man's legacy gets undone. Johnson delivered on what Kennedy only had to promise - this single man muscled through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and strengthened both the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts, but he also escalated Vietnam, which became his defining legacy. Likewise, Alabama governor George Wallace was a champion for the poor, but his dogged insistence on maintaining the Jim Crow status quo [hmm - the "status Crow"?] is all that people remember.)

We forget. That's one reason Selma matters. We forget the sheer, raw courage it took to walk into a low-level county office and demand the petty official accept a government form. We forget the everyday indignities that were visited on our own citizens who insisted, often with an astonishing amount of grace, on being treated as full human beings. We forget how much was at stake when citizens just wanted to walk across a bridge.

People are awful. But we can change - even if it takes TV cameras to get us to do it.

Selma is going to be a heavy-hitter during awards season. And it should. No, it's not a documentary - King's speeches are approximations, since apparently the King family would not permit the actual words to be used, having licensed them to another studio for another project. Selma is not a love-fest - people are flawed, a fact Selma does not shy away from and which I completely appreciate. I want real people, not stained-glass saints. Look, these people - the everyday people (including Viola Liuzzo, whose name you should know), not just the leadership of this movement - are American heroes who stood up for the principles this country was founded on and made such a dignified, consistent nuisance of themselves that our politicians had no choice BUT to act.

Go see this movie. Now. Today. Take your kids. Stay for the credits and the the John Legend/Common song "Glory" which reminds us all, in these dark days of #JeSuisCharlie,  "The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful."And if you don't cry in at least a few places, do me a favor and don't tell me.



Before I conclude, the end of the year brought two movies that I saw but didn't post about due to an increased amount of craziness, so let me briefly touch on those.  Exodus is Ridley Scott's attempt to create a modern version of the big-screen Bible epic. He's got a great story here - Conflict! Plagues! Gigantic crowd scenes! The desire for freeeee-dom! - yet the whole movie just never lifts off. There have been loud and frequent complaints about the casting in the film, but trust me - not the only problem here. Also, the final installment of Peter Jackson's take on Tolkien's The Hobbit was just - not very good. I'll freely admit that part of my problem is the add-ons to pad this into a trilogy (look - they're walking in New Zealand! Now there's more walking in New Zealand! Oh, look - they're riding horses in New Zealand!) and in this final installment in what really could have been one stellar film rather than three lackluster ones, things reached a head. Let me just point out two items - first, never, ever, ever use your young son as your steadying point with a gigantic arrow. I'm pretty sure the fletching would rip his shoulder to shreds. Second - while I can appreciate the over-the-topness of Billy Connelly riding a boar into battle, the same cannot be said for the elf-leader's war moose. Ugh.

Also, there were so many films at the end of the year that didn't come around here - and I try to keep this a "local" blog. Still, I intend to seek out The Imitation Game, Big Eyes, The Theory of Everything, and Boyhood to name but a few.

The Hobbit, Part 2

. . . . you know, the one with the dragon.

Peter Jackson's decision to turn J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit into three movies has been (justifiably) criticized.  The book focuses on Bilbo Baggins, the meek hobbit who has any number of adventures, including obtaining the infamous One Ring, which he later gives to his cousin Frodo, an act that would launch the Lord of the Rings ("LotR") adventures.  It's worth noting that the novel, which was originally written for a younger readership than LotR, is roughly the same length as any one of the three LotR novels, all of which were a single film each.  (Side note - and they were masterful!)

Herein lies a problem.  In order to stretch the story - which is a straightforward "hero's journey" tale; I've referred to it as "Campbell for beginners," and I mean no disrespect by that - Jackson has to pad the story.  In the first film (reviewed here), that was done primarily by having lots and lots of scenes that were quite possibly described in the script as "They walk through New Zealand.  A long way.  And they keep walking."  Jackson expanded the source material to include Tollkien's numerous appendices and The Silmarillion - the man created an entire world for these tales and he was nothing if not thorough about it.  Even so, this film felt long in places.  I enjoyed The Desolation of Smaug a bit more than the first film; probably because I was ready for the padding.

Dim spots - some woods elf scenes that feel just wrong.  I tried to just let go and enjoy without my Inner Grump saying, "But that's not in the book!"  I had a hard time.  Also, some of the action scenes are long and unnecessarily complicated - too much whirling and slashing without any accompanying thrills for the characters.  I want to at least think the characters are in danger and here, I just knew that everybody was going to be A-OK and the orcs were nothing but practice-meat.  That said, be warned against taking the very young.  I think you could read the book at an earlier age that you could see the movie.  Also, Jackson's cameo as "Carrot-Eating Threatening Guy" is a bit too telegraphed for my taste, but that's a minor nitpick.  The bigger problem is that this isn't really Bilbo's story - there are too many competing storylines happening here.  Bilbo needs to be the focus of The Hobbit and he's just one part of the story - to the point that I was thinking several times during scene shifts, "Meanwhile, in another movie . . . "  Martin Freeman does a yeoman's job here, but he needs more material.

Bright spots - Smaug.  Jackson has done a wonderful job here.  Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock to Freeman's Watson on the BBC, remember) is cast exactly right as the dastardly dragon (Necromancer, meh) and the way the audience is introduced to the sheer size of this beast is a spot so bright that it throws me over to the "go see it on the big screen" camp.

In short, an improvement over the first, but still - three movies is too much for this one book.

Of Furry Feet & Long Journeys

I went into Peter Jackson's The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey with high expectations.  Jackson will forever be known as the man who brought Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy to the screen (and also threw Andy Serkis into the stratosphere) and fans everywhere eagerly awaited his take on Hobbit.

I may be in the minority on this one - and that's okay - but I found Hobbit to be middle of the road.  (See how I avoided the cheap pun there by not saying "middle (Earth) of the road"?  It was hard to resist, let me tell you!)  Hobbit is being split into three - count 'em, three - movies, which I find astounding.  Jackson is managing to do this by straying far from the actual text of Hobbit to bring in material covered in appendices (and, quite possibly, more than a touch of The Silmarillion).  This film, the first of the three parts, clocks in at a hefty two hours and forty-six minutes and in parts, I felt every second on it.  New Zealand looks gorgeous, but let's just say there's a lot of walking through it in this film.

I can't fault the actors - Martin Freeman is up to the task of playing Bilbo Baggins (the stay-at-home hobbit who discovers a bit of his wilder Took side), Ian McKellan and the aforementioned Andy Serkis resume their roles as Gandalf and Gollum in splendid fashion.  Other old friends appear as well and, while some purists will howl at the departures from the Tolkien book, I was willing to run with it.  Let's face it - book adaptations are always tricky - (what to keep, what to discard, what to condense are major questions to answer in crafting the script and you know that, no matter what path you take, you're going to make someone angry), and that's even more true for a work that includes "Tolkien scholar" among the credits.  Still, some of the humor falls flat for me and feels forced rather than springing from the scene itself.  On the plus side, I loved seeing Bilbo's "hobbit hole" invaded by a host of unexpected (and ravenous) guests.

Two items to mention:  the "riddle scene" between Bilbo and Gollum and the appearance of Thorin Oakenshield.  The Bilbo/Gollum scene is a the heart of all of the LoTR books, for without it, nothing else really matters.  We've got to get that ring to Bilbo so it can go to Frodo so that, so that, so that.  It was apparently the first scene Freeman filmed and it's marvelous.  Andy Serkis has had years to master Gollum and the technology of motion-capture continues to develop.  Utterly compelling.  On the other hand, let's discuss Richard Armitage (who played the villainous Sir Guy in the recent BBC production of Robin Hood) who plays the leader of the dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield.  I enjoyed his performance quite a bit, but I disliked how he stood out from the other dwarves.  Sure, it's a yeoman's task to distinguish 13 dwarves, but while other dwarves appear to be - well, dwarvish - Armitage has matinee-idol good looks, flowing dark locks, and overall appears to simply be a somewhat short human, rather than a member of another Middle Earth race.  I dislike this - it seems that Jackson didn't trust that the audience could accept a hero who didn't look like us.

In short (ha! Well, one pun's okay, I expect), Hobbit looks great and does a credible job of storytelling, although it also drags in places.  Big screen?  Maybe, but don't pay full price.