Carnivorous Vulgaris

Let me set the scene: Wile E. Coyote has finally outsmarted the Road Runner with one his of fiendishly thought out blue-printed plans. This time around, he has acquired a perfect size ACME helicopter fast enough to chase down his meal. He puts an anvil in the bottom of the helicopter to balance the weight, to stay low to the road. Soon he is in a high-speed chase down the road with Roadrunner. He opens the glass hatch, with his fork in hand, when suddenly he hits the brick wall of a tunnel. After crashing to the ground, the anvil, once in the helicopter, inexplicably falls on the head of the discombobulated Coyote. Merely seconds later he is run over by a truck, driven by none other than the Roadrunner.

Their chase is a classic philosophical one, a cat and mouse chase. With the Road Runner always stymieing the success of the Coyote's complex, Rube Goldberg type attempts to defeat his opponent through technology. They are essential viewing these cartoons as they exemplify ideas of morals, philosophy, of the role of science and nature, plus there's hilarious violence of the acceptable comedic violence that negates the accepted social convention when it comes to what children can watch on television.

The Coyote is ruled by his desire, to catch the Road Runner. But what happens when he does? The Road Runner is living the good life, the coyote is enslaved to his urges, his Eros according to Plato. He can be seen as a philosophical benchmark for children. Despite all his failures he never gives up on trying to achieve his goal, trying to catch that damn bird, keep trying new ideas and new methods. And some may see is overall goal as dark and nefarious, after all he is trying to kill what in the cartoon is essentially another sentient being, but it does illustrate (no pun intended) basic concepts of the natural world, this food chain hierarchy of predator and prey. 

Another example of this idea of relentless desire to achieve a goal in animated form would be Pinky and the Brain, and this is reflected upon in every cartoon:

 

Murder and world domination are hardly things we want children to be learning about, which is obviously why they never succeed. After all what would you rather be telling your kids, world domination is possible? In reality I think what these cartoons display is the idea to quit whilst your ahead, that perseverance is admirable but that you can't take it too far.

But then again they are still full of violence, but of an acceptable kind. If we showed kids a real life person dropping an anvil on another person we'd be thrown in jail: a) For setting up and filming one guy killing another guy and b) because their are laws preventing young children from seeing that sort of violence, even if they inevitably find ways of seeing it anyway. I remember seeing The Running Man as a kid and being reminded of the Looney Tunes.

The violence is in cartoons is so absurd, but I think it's only because that the road runner always survives and that the coyote always comes back, despite being run over by trucks, cars, trains again and again, being squashed, slammed, smacked into walls, cliffs and the ground that we ignore what in real life would be very serious incidents.

 

The Coyote finally gets the Road Runner, but realises without him, he lacks purpose- Yet another example of binary opposition?

Wishing Everybody A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!

Technological Determinism And The Circle Of Life!!!!

Yet another lecture on animation last week, which I missed part of but here we go anyway, final post and all...

Aside from the looking at the differences between Japanese animé style animation in films such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle and the western styles of Disney and Warner Brothers. What struck me about this lecture was the ideas of technological determinism.

Should we use the latest technology just because it's available? Or should we make a clearer judgement on what is right for the job rather what's the latest thing. A good example of this I think is Avatar. Yes the film looked fantastic, but did it really have to be shot entirely using motion capture suits and then created in the computer? Did this really make for a better film? After all the idea of digital characters isn't really all that new, the first major one being the terrible mistake of Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. And it was done much better in the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy with Smeagol/Gollom.

Here we see Gollom as he was in the first film. This character shows the importance that no matter how good the technology you have to create a character is, the most important thing is the actor and performance behind it.

Let's focus on Jar Jar for a minute. If you watch the making of on the DVD of the Phantom Menace, you'll see that originally, Jar Jar was going to be mostly an actor in the suit with the head being computer animated. Now according to Lucas they went with a full computer generated character because it was cheaper than trying to match some one body movements to the animated head. But Lucas also says that what would be "...really cool if the whole thing was animated...". You can tell a large part of the decision to make this a full CGI character was the idea of making it a statement piece, sort of saying look we can create an entire player in the production out of nothing! Technology was therefore a major factor in the method choice.

Computer Generated Image vs. Live Action Suit

But the road doesn't go one-way....


Technology can not just be a defining factor for the way we produce fictional media, fictional media can also be a determining factor for the direction of technology. Look at PIXAR, originally the PIXAR image computer was created as a tool for high end graphical visualisation for medical and other applications. It was the latest graphical technology of it's time. It lead to the creation of such shorts as The Adventures Of Andre & Wally B, Luxo Jnr. and Red's Dream. And yes you could use the company of only starting to use computer because at the time computers were the new thing, the latest tech. In reality I think for Lasseter it wasn't about using the latest thing just for the hell of it, it was about pushing animation forward, adding motion blur, more detailed environments and essentially getting closer to reality.

With the invention of Photography, art was given freedom to become far more open, expressive and less realistic than it had been before. It was no longer about recreating reality it became focused on philosophy and meaning and something greater than reality. Now with animation and the development of computer generated images, we already have photography as well as moving images, so reality is covered. And animation has always had a certain kind of abstract approach to realism from the way Bambi recreated landscapes through the parallax view, layers of animation with simply blanks in-between. So where does that leave animation? It seem now it focused on attaining the same kind of realism we get from film and the photograph.

It's come full circle.

Prequels, Sequels and Prayers

Thinking about the release of Tron Legacy makes me realise what a huge responsibilty  films like Indiana Jones, Scream and Tron have in releasing new sequels a long time after the originals and in the case of Scream and Indiana Jones , the original trilogies came out. I could also mention Star Wars within this set, but I prefer not to think of the prequel trilogy in relation to the original, one was pure genius the other was a glorified toy advert you work out which is which.

The original and the best!

In the case of Indiana Jones, you had a well established character with some great films behind it. In terms of the original trilogy of Indy movies we already had a smaller version of the delayed sequel in the Last Crusade being released 5 years (check dates) after Indiana's darkest chapter, the Temple of Doom. Lucas and Spielberg took it to new levels in 2007 with the relaese of the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, obviously after the relative success of the Star Wars prequel trilogy they figured another Indy film would be a sure thing. They even seemed keen to extend the idea into a new trilogy of films with the significant introduction of Shia Le Beouf as Indy's son Mutt, carrying on the family tradition of being named after the dog.....but further sequels have not since surfaced.

Is the Scream series a victim of it's own paraody and intropection of the genre?

Much like Indy, Scream seems to be gearing up to start a new trilogy with new faces as well as a few familiar ones. Once again we return to woodsboro where early twitter indications are that ghost face is on the loose again, this time in alternate masks in play such as zombie ghost face. We still have the 3 main players in the picture, Sydney, Dewy and Dewy's now wife Gale. Aswell as an all new cast of young would be victims and suspects in the guise of hayden pantierre, Alison Brie, Rory Culkin (taking the Randyesque role of Charlie? As he apparently lays out the new rules of the game). Is this gonna be a success? In all likely hood, yes. In box office terms it's set to be a precursor to the bigger summer blockbusters of 2011, being released in April. But as a cinematic missing piece to a jigsaw that it's already complete? Unlikely. I think to be a real winner in it needs to break some new ground previously untouched in the trilogy, something Indiana Jones didn't. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull didn't feel like an indy movie what with cgi monkeys, relatively tame Russians replacing the nasty Nazis and an OAP Ford looking like he needed a walking stick as much as a whip. It didn't feel new it felt like a film trying to capture it's previous glories, an admirable goal but one that is seldom achieved in cinema.

So as for Tron. The original was a sleeper hit, a cult classic that intially no-one understood but became loved by many. It had amazing new technology in it's production, a brilliant cast and a fantastic story and writting. How can the sequel compare to this almost 30 years on? The technology used in the original is now something we take for granted, so much so that it now doesn't seem that remarkable after characters like Smeagol/Gollum and benjamin button that we can take a person and fundamentally alter the way we view their performance by de-ageing them and transforming them into other beings. And judging by the preview pics found over the web and in monthly film literature the grid itself has changed as well. It no longer looks like the lo res pong type games, which seemed iconic but archaic the first time I watched the film, as at the time the Playstation had just come out! It seems now to have a gothic reality much like the matrix becomes in revolutions after agent smith has take over. Real looking but unreal. I am glad to see however from looking through chewie's the art of book, that they haven't completely discarded the design style of the original film in the costumes, light cycles etc. Like the grid these just seem to have evolved into high definiton versions of the lo-res pixels, from analogue tv with intermitent signal to full 1080p HD 3 dimensinal surround sound!

Could it be good? Yes. Could It be bad? Yes Is this gonna stop me from seeing it? NO.

So here's to the 17th December, a day that could live in infamy or a day that could kill my appreciation of both a cult classic film and faith in sequels as much as Indy and Star Wars has.

The Scarlet Pimpernel to Superman, Batman to Bateman: Secret Identity

What links the following: a flying mammal in the Chiroptera order, an arthropod of the order Araneae, a portable lighting device , Nietzsche's philosophical concept of the Übermensch and an English wayside flower?

Answer: The Dual Identity.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is seemingly the first use of a dual identity for just and nobles purposes. Created by Baroness Orczy, he's a precursor to characters like Zorro and inevitably Superman.

The Pimpernel however has more in common with Superman than he does say Batman or Green Lantern. Whilst with these characters, their superhero personalities can be seen to some extent as the disguise, with the Pimpernel and Superman, the disguise isn't the the identity known to the world but the one used to hide their truth from the world. Superman is Superman, Clark Kent is the façade as beautifully demonstrated by Christopher Reeve in the original 1978 film. And likewise with the Pimpernel, Sir Blackney, the foppish English aristo who seemingly cares more about cravats and cricket than he does crusades and courageous acts of mercy in rescuing those damn Frenchies!

They seek him here, they seek him there...!

These characters are binary opposites within their dual identities. You look at Blakeney and you see a vein character more concerned with the quality of his cravat than the lives of those around him or those in need in another countries. But Blakeney true side is the Pimpernel side, this is especially apparent in the BBC series starring Richard E. Grant.

Clark Kent lacks the confidence and posture of Superman. You look at the way Reeve portrayed him and you can see a lot of effort was put into differentiating the to halves of the character. Kent's voice was higher pitched and to a point kind of whiny, whereas Superman was deeper, firmer and did not waver. These traits don't fall under the typical categories that come to mind when thinking about binary opposition, but they are binary opposites. The meek and the bold, the preening and the modest lesser thought of than right and wrong, good and bad.

Kent, Superman, Kent, Superman- Which is the real identity?

And whilst this idea that Superman is the true identity and Clark Kent is the pretence, in some cases this idea has been modified, specifically in the TV series  Lois and Clark it's reversed. Clark Kent becomes his true self and Superman the façade he uses to do the good he knows he can, with a third guise added in the form of turning Clark Kent into a bespectacled journalist.

In the Tim Burton's original Batman film, Bruce Wayne was the true Identity with Batman being a identity that is a means to an end. Where as in Nolan's films he seems to have the idea that the real identity is Batman, all the character has left is justice, and Bruce Wayne much like the Scarlet Pimpernel is the foppish playboy persona he distracts all with! Note the hotel purchase scene in Batman Begins where he talks about this not being him, the idea of Bruce Wayne is gone only Batman is left.

A further film that I think also takes the idea of the dual identity but takes it in a different direction entirely is American Psycho. Here it is not an alien brought down to Earth who assumes an identity to save the world, or a millionaire playboy who's determined to avenge the death of his parents and so dons an array of weapons and gadgets to achieve his goals. In this film the secret identity, the hidden person is the real Patrick Bateman. The one that wants to take an axe to your face and leave your body dissolving in a bathtub in Hell's Kitchen, that wants to stab you to death and play around with your blood. As Bateman says, "There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there."

I JUST WANT TO FIT IN!

He's an examination of the Yuppie culture that grew up in Manhattan in the 80's, a fusion of these wall street waanabes into a serial killing maniac. He has two identities, but these identities unlike Superman and the Scarlet pimpernel are in opposition in morals and ethics. On the surface and to the world, patrick Bateman is just like any other Yuppie around, to the point where Bateman prides himself on being the most yupie he can be, with the blandest business card and the best apartment. On the inside, he's Patrick bateman, murdering pschopath with no care whatsoever for moral and ethical boundries, who is driven to kil....

2 into 1 and 1 into 2!

The prestige is about opposites.

It's one man with 2 lives and 2 men with one life! Tesla originally created the machine for Borden who ONLY USED IT ONCE! Where as when Dantone used it he repeated the use of it with a fatal end for the twin, repeatedly killing himself.

The film is also a classic example of Nolan's style. Of his depth as much a blockbuster spectacle. Compare this to The Illusionist that came out around the same time and you can clearly see the differences and why Nolan is such an extraordinary film-maker.

Also note the corollary with the bird trick that features in several scenes of the film, from start to finish.

What I love about the film is that it features magic at a time when it was performed by gentlemen in a very gentlemanly way. There was none of the crazy stunts and spoon-bending that gets past off now as magic. It was more akin to the special effects.

Plus I love the fact that they use genuine magicians in supporting roles such as actor Ricky Jay appearing as the Magician Milton in the film.

I love this film and think in terms of Nolan's back catalogue it's hugely under-valued. If you haven't seen it, watch it. If you have watch it again and again and again!

Nuns On The Run!

Here I was thinking that writing Good Will Hunting (1997) as well as starring in it was a fluke, a one off. That you couldn't be an attractive leading actor and take on other responsibilities within a production. The list is a short one from Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and George Clooney to Sean Penn, Robert Redford and Zach Braff (Hey I thought Garden State was great even if you don't!).


Whilst it does take the genre of the heist thriller down the path oft wandered, it does it with quality and something to make this more than your typical heist movie. This is not simply a gang robbing film all about the action. It's a rarity that has as well thought out characters as it does stings. You fly from careering, chaotic chase scenes to slight moments of tenderness with ease never feeling the speed bump in pace and you drive across it.

The older Affleck takes the lead this time round, as experienced but disillusioned thief Doug Mccray. He like many others in his genre, just want to get out of the game a start a fresh, with a nice big bag of cash in hand of course! And the film opens straight into his life of crime as we see the influences the greats of the genre have clearly had on Affleck. The first scene nods towards the opening of Heat, with the group of Catholicly camouflaged crooks robbing a Charlestown Bank, ending with them taking a female bank manager, Rebecca Hall, hostage.

It isn't as immediately as engaging as Gone, Baby, Gone but that's a problem really we can set aside to the genre itself.  And whilst the film's central romance between Affleck and his hostage Hall could have been more developed, much like De Niro's enamoured entanglement in Heat, there are so many moving parts to this film that to have all mesh together in one smooth, synchronous action would be a little optimistic. But the film is by no means lacking because of this. 

The Town is a strong thriller that lets you engross in the action but in between these set pieces it doesn't sacrifice the narrative. Comparisons with Michael Mann for this sub-type of film are obvious but in this case justified. Although Affleck is not quite there yet, he's certainly on his way!

No. 8 Fencing Wire....

You can't deny how good the effects are in some films no matter what your viewpoint. Avatar has achieved incredible heights in the visual effects world albeit, in my opinion, to the detriment of the story. The visual flair is phenomenal as you tread a well told story of man versus nature, or as I like to think of the narrative, Fern Gully 2: This time We're Blue!

Most people nowadays seem to instinctually think the latest technology must therefore be the best. And this is true in a sense, but after all those that do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, right? John Lasseter probably knows this best, for whilst his company PIXAR, are best known for some of the world's greatest computer generation animated films, such as The Toy Story series, Wall-e, Up, Monsters Inc and The Incredibles, his whole approach to animation not just the computer stuff is based around what he learned from the old men of the Disney Studios. The technology of producing animated films has changed but he saw a need to preserve what was important about Disney animation to begin with. He didn't simply dismiss all the animation work done before because the methods and moved forward and radically changed.

And I think this is a lesson that the rest of the film-making world still needs to learn, including James Cameron. You don't need to shoot in 3D, in motion- capturing suits and have actors inhabit entirely computer-generated worlds to have a film worth of being called a ground-breaking work of effects.

Films like Blade Runner, Gattaca, Moon and District 9 prove this.

Firstly Blade Runner was an entirely in-camera special effects production all achieved with live action sets, model work, lighting, matte painting etc. It was as they say the last truly analogue film. And yet this analogue approach brought forth a film of epic proportions, was considered incredible (eventually) and still remains infallible even today, when we are over-whelmed by megabytes and microchips.

All the effects in Blade Runner were created in camera, like this scene of a future Los Angeles.

Gattaca, a personal favourite of mine, showed that you don't have to have big set pieces of action for a film to fit into the science fiction genre. Yes is wasn't that greater success on it's release, but then again neither was Blade Runner. The film focuses on character and emotional development over scintillating plots of explosions and big pull backs of intergalactic ships. Indeed the emotional development of the film's main character Jerome is more important than the murder plot that draws us into Jerome's story at the start. The effects here are subtle. Set in a future where space travel beyond the boundary of our own Moon is possible. People drive in Prius like cars that have almost no sound as they go by. The world is a much cleaner, slciker place and about the biggest traditional effects shots you'll get are the fleeting glanes of the space vehicles that are the tip of Jerome's drive to succeed in a world where genetic manipulation of the Human race has gone so far that discrimination has become as science.

Effects in Gattaca however, were inconspicuous. From miniature effects of spacecraft taking off in the distance to the use f existing architecture to suggest a future Earth, they weren't the focus of the film but were important to it nonetheless.

Finally there's District 9 and Moon. Two successful science fiction films of the past couple of years that achieve great success with very limited effects budgets. What they lacked in Cameron finances they gained in originality. Moon has a lot of model work to create the activity and action surrounding the character Sam Bell played by Sam Rockwell. But there is also computer stuff there too. Dust falling off the back of vehicles as the traverse the lunar landscape and other small effects combine with all the other effects elements of the film to create a very satisfying film as a whole.

Both Moon and District 9 combine both the computer generated and the practical effect tin seamless slight of hand.

It's not a CGI movie, it's not a model work film entirely, like Sharlto Copley's Wikus in District 9, it's having elements of both that can solve problems the best. Or as Peter Jackson might put it, number 8 fencing wire- whatever works best!

A Knight's Rising Foe

The new Batman villain is probably going to be Doc Strange eh?

Proves two things, most directors get trapped into the habit of using actors they've worked with before. And whilst this can be a good thing, meaning the actor and director no each other's methods of working and hence potentially saving time and money in the process. It also means the director is equally time saving in that theres not that awkward period when you first start working with someone and don't really no what to expect, like when you start at a new educational institute and know no-one there or in the simillar but more meek setting of starting of a new daily job.

But doesn't this also means that you're potentially preventing new talent from having their chance on the main stage. I understand equally that studio will have their hands in the casting pitch and will almost always go against unknowns because of the high risk for them, fame usually guarentees some monicome of success. Take Kevin Smith's last film Cop Out. By no means his greatest achievement (I preffered Jeresey Girl to this schlop) but the fact is although it didn't do aswell as say Inception or Avatar, it didn't drift under the radar, dying a horrible death having failed to make even it's own budget. It made a profit and this is because of one thing, BRUCE WILLIS!

Hanks' only co-star for most of Castaway (2000), Wilson the Wilson Volley Ball.

Another good example of this is Castaway, starring Tom Hanks. A film about one man being trapped alone on an island with anyone else would have bombed. But with Hanks it grosses over $400 million world-wide. Is this success justified? In Tom Hanks' case like many others in Hollywood, yes this is justified but some recently don't seem to warrant the fuss and attention and focus. And what's the point in investing in the stars anyway when 3 of what I would consider to be some of the biggest films of all time all had relative unknowns at their centre, Star Wars, E.T. and Titanic. And even Avatar had what I would consider an unknown as it's lead, Sam Worthington, yes at the time Avatar was released Worthington had been in Terminator Salvation as well as some small, independent stuff. However, as all the press surrounding Avatar informed us, it took years to film Avatar and at the time of his casting, Worthington would've been a risky underdog.

Are stars a bad thing.  No. Is it a bad thing to rely entirely on them to drive the success of a film overlooking production value and quality on the way? YES.

So please Hollywood,  no more Valentine's Day's, The Proposal's, 2012's and Knight and Day's. Lets continue focusing on the quality in Hollywood as Mr. Nolan does .

What's good for bad? PRESENTATION!

Being a huge fan of a certain hero from a doomed far away planet, upon seeing the trailer for Megamind I was greatly intrigued. Here was a film that presented an interesting scenario. A kind of what if Lex Luthor killed Superman, be careful what you wish story. In this case the two central characters aren't such the polar or binary opposites that Lex and Supes are.

Both Megamind and his nemesis Metroman are orphans and sole survivors of their respective worlds. Both were sent out into the universe by the parents and both crash landed on earth. And here is where the similarities fade and the binary opposition arises both with themselves and the man of steel.

One grows up cared for by rich opulent foster parents a far cry from Ma and Pa Kent. More like a what if Kal-el landed in Wayne Manor as a kid. The other, Megamind, pre-empts the justice system a few years and lands in a high security prison. They become mortal enemies a la General Zod and Superman, due to their alien nature although there are as many ties with Lex Luthor in Megamind, but eventually he seemingly destroys Metroman in a fateful final battle. After defeating his mortal foe the sapphire settler finds himself trapped within a monkey's paw. He wished it would happen, it did happen and now he knows not what to do!

The film works fantastically on many levels. It is an excellent animated feature with high production quality and it's carried out with great style. Much like some of Pixar's best features it doesn't limit it's audience to the young, every generation can find something to relate to here from the Marlon Brando impressions that left the kids in our Hatfield audiences bemused whilst their fathers were in tears.

It also works greatly as an examination of Superman & the superhero genre in general. The two characters arrived on earth as equals and it appears to b their upbringing that defines defines the position on a Taoist scale. Good bad right wrong. It's an examination of the ideas and concepts of nature versus nurture.

Yes it furiously mines superhero clichés specifically the man of steel but I think the biggest let downs of the film are the Jimmy Olsen-esque character of Hal, Roxy's cameraman , Minion and Roxy herself. Jonah hill was a mistake for the role of Hal and that combined with his character being horribly written has resulted in a highly insulting stereotype of humanity as a whole.

Roxy's impact as a character should have been a significant one in the film. Equivalent to that of Buzz's impact on Woody in Toy Story.He had his bravado and alternate take on life to contend with similar in some ways to Woody's train of thought. Neither are bad they just take life in their own stride but it's that different perspective that drives the character arcs into new territory. We should have seen this more in Roxy in her attitude towards the Metroman seemingly only she saw. Megamind puts Metroman up on a pedestal himself as this idea of good, or to quote from Superman , of truth and justice and the American way. Whereas the reality Roxy saw was a "man" who was very vein and rather selfish despite all his so called good doings. This is what Megamind as a film really should of focused on rather than merely touching. The ideas of binary opposition and the blurs between good and evil. In the comic world and culture in general, Superman is seen as distinctly good and Lex Luthor is distinctly bad. In reality we don't have these absolutes and that's what this film should focus on more with the characters.

Like Dreamworks' other animated efforts such as Shrek, the film is equally packed with wider cultural references as it is with digs into the superhero genre. Donkey Kong, Brando's Jor-El and a very old school rock soundtrack full of AC/DC, Guns 'N' Roses and Michael Jackson serve to make Megamind's entrances all the more spectacular, after all as the epic egghead himself says being as super-villain is all about presentation. And he never fails in this respect!

The film is fun for all and whilst the story may initially seem a little contrived and almost implodes like the colossal cranium's home-world with the focus shifting to Hal's new persona, Tighten.

Megamind on the whole looks amazing, the 3D works well without trying to hard to impress. By throwing every object that isn't nailed down at you, which with a bunch of superhero characters is a possibility. It isn't as well rounded an examination of the genre as The Incredibles but it succeeds in being funny, entertaining and appealing to all ages.

Hopefully Megamind will return with same presentation and pathos as he's shown in his first outing without succumbing to fourquels entitled Megamind: IV The Quest For Peace upon which he's left in hiatus hell for two decades only to return finally to be ruined again due to repeating plot ideas and strange parental developments....

An Ode to the End of the Current Season of Dexter...

Two Serial Killers, 

Both alike in dignity.

In fair Miami, 

Where we we lay our scene. 

Where unethical blood makes moral hands unclean. 

From forth the blood soaked shipping container, 

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take lives.  

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! 

O that I her glove upon that hand, 

That I might touch that knife...  

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? 

It is the East, and Lumin is the sun! 

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious Jordan, 

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou his victim art far more murderous than he.  

That I might help give her Jordan, and, when he shall die, 

We shall Take him and cut him out in our kill room,

And he will make her face illuminate so fine. 

That all the world will be in love with our night 

And pay no worship to the garish sun. 

These violent delights have violent ends. 

And in their triumph die, 

Like fire and powder, 

Which as they kiss, consume.  

A glooming peace next Monday morning with it brings; 

The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: 

For the current season of Dexter shall be dead. 

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; 

For there never was a tale with more doom in, 

Than that of Dexter and his Lumin.

Soak up and Slash out!

Nobody expected 9/11 despite all the precedents set in the media

Isn't it a little demeaning to tell us as a race that we are categorically subliminally influenced by the violence we perceive in the media?

Yes there are thousands of thousands of films out there that are as some may say "no holds barred, adrenaline fuelled thrilled rides that only exist to express a conceit of violence. Kill Bill, the evil dead, jack ass, anything by Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude, Steven Segal etc. and generally anything that is typically shown on five US. Films that just show us how cool it is to round house a guy unconscious.

Is there any point to it? Let's face it we are violent beings, it's an evolutionary imperative. Fight or flight. Live or die. So is all the violence we see in the media really turning us into mindless zombies . Yes sure if we only focus on the death and destruction side of things. We are violent there's no denying it but letting that single trait define us and let it be how others define us really does turn us into mindless zombies.

There's no doubt that high violence video games like DOOM certainly had an effect on the kids at Columbine, but did it really define there actions? Should we forget about all the wars and massacres and all the terrible things humanity has shown itself capable of simply because of the possibility of it happening again. After lest we forget what has come before we can't prepare for is still to come?

NO-ONE predicted 9/11 despite all the aircraft high-jacking precidents set in the media and popular film, but that had a flip-side to in that no-one could have predicted what happened after that tragic day. I remember exactly where I was that day in 2001, stood in the teachers lounge at my secondary school staring in disbelief at the atrocity on screen. No doubt it was a heinous act but I never understood the response...the invasion and sacking of countries before then I had never heard never mind understood why it was so important to invade these countries to maintain peace...how oxymoronic. Eye for an eye and the world would be blind but no doubt we would still find a way to fight.

It's interesting how people tried to explain the actions of those involved in Columbine by passing it off as being the media's fault and them being exposed to too much aggression and violence through gaming. Nobody, tried to explain away 9/11 with such pretences. Nobody said " those guys were watching too much Executive Decision and Air Force One before deciding to do this " Religion is usually justification for a lot of the terrible things in the world, but only when that side comes out on top, obviously.

The notion that screen violence can lead to copycat behaviour is now so familiar that it has been the subject of various television fictions, from episodes of The Simpsons to Law and Order, subject to it's own mockery and exposition. You either believe that from violence begets violence, or that viewing violence can in no way automatically cause a person to be violent, a mindless zombie only subject to a cause and an effect. There's no hedging your bets in this debate, despite the fact that we know more about the dark side of the moon than we do about the human brain and the formation of consciousness, society and the media in particular wants you to take a side on the debate. In science if you come to a conclusion without basing it on solid results we see it as speculation but yet we are expected to take a side on screen violence with no such guarantees.

Bring Me The Head Of Bill The Body!

I see why Ivan encourages us to do a post every week and not just several at the end of term all at once... the ideas in the lectures seem to ebb away and become less focused with time, like dreams when you first open your eyes in the morning, or tears in the rain....but anyway, here I am 3 weeks later still trying to get my head around our new lecturer! A not to uncommon problem!

Week one of Bill's lectures introduced him as a ball of game obsessed spontaneity! Less structured than Ivan's lecturers but more challenging because of this.

New Media & Temporal Montage

I don't mean the difference between the old Doctor Who show and the new one as viewed in a Youtube mash-up of clips! Taking aside the discussions of games and gaming, and how if you play if you're on-line with a certain newly released game, how Bill will come up from behind and kill you in a most undignified and unrelenting way. The important thing about this lecture for me were the ideas of the different ways to approach media and their development.

Specifically in film where we focused on ideas of perspective and the passage of time within the medium of film. The focus of this discussion initially was on "The Life of An American Fireman" made in 1903 by Edwin Porter and the ontogeny of the cinematic organism of narrative structure.

                    

In the film the way in which the story is told is defined by the limitations of the technology of the time. The camera is fixed in one place, with a fixed focal length. The film suffers from the same limitations as theatre, confined and constricted with action always directed away from the camera and chronological progression destroyed by this single point of view methodology. It lacks what we now take to be a universal idea in film....the cross cut. A method of editing that allows us to see multiple points of view from within the film and so helping us understand the situation better. It's not only a tool that develops our understanding of one scene but also has a greater effect on the story as a whole. You couldn't have films like Inception, The Matrix or Memento without being able to rapidly change from one perspective to another within the film.

As with the introduction of perspective to painting by artists of the Renaissance, the idea of time being unsecured in film through the use of cross cutting enables us to go beyond the constraints of the traditional narrative progression, start to finish. So whilst the camera and film may have liberated art from the rigid definitions of reality allowing artists like Picasso and Rene Magritte to take skewed perspective on reality. I think that cross-cutting has both allowed us to create a real time evolution of events in a linear manner, it has also allowed for the possibility of ignoring time all together! The Back to the Future film series couldn't exist without being able to simultaneously cut from one perspective to the other!

Most Intertextual Song I Have Heard recently.....

The Good, the Bad and the Grey

According to Fiske, "Structuralism's enterprise is to discover how people make sense of the world, not what the world is." Which to me say that structuralism is how human's rationalise the world as we know, which is open to interpretation.

We love to categorise everything good and evil, life and death, young and old, light and dark, male and female, land and sea, right and wrong.

This simplifies everything in to manageable chunks allowing us to function. After all with no clear cut understanding of the difference between good and evil right and wrong a police service couldn't exist. The difference between land and sea/sky helps us understand and evaluate our surroundings.

But then things get complicated. You consider these definitions on their own and they make perfect sense but there's always overlap. The death penalty could be one example of this. Is the death of one man justification enough for his execution? What he did by our society's laws is clearly wrong but if we hold his crime of murder to be wrong isn't killing him in turn for it wrong as well?

Structuralism draws rigid lines of binary opposition for which their can be no crossing. According to Ivan and Derrida this creates a grey area, an anomalous zone where the politics of the ideal binary division can be challenged

Ghosts, zombies, minotaurs, centaurs, Frankenstein's monster, pantomime dames and drag acts all exist in this bleak expanse of human philosophy. Physically zombies suffer from necrosis; the cells in their body are dead and cannot function. However they zombies themselves still exhibit some signs of life, the move and walk, they eat (albeit cannibalistically) and to some extent they talk albeit in a very Neanderthal way. We can recognise some of the signs of life in them yet we know they are not alive. Semiotically they almost like babies, moving and eating but not yet distinctly human until they begin talking and forming some semblance of identity and personal thought. Zombies lack any real personality which further puts them into the grey area of indeterminacy. They can't think creatively for themselves, their only thought is to eat, a baser survival instinct present in all forms of life that still doesn't which furthers the idea of them not being human yet also enhances the thought that they are not entirely dead either.

The idea of binary opposition is relative because the idea is based on a political positional viewpoint. Your own ideologies reflect your comprehension of right and wrong which might clash with someone else's viewpoint. This also raises questions about morality and ethics. A person's morality can be un-changing but the way in which they use those morals, the ethics, can be dependent on other sources.

I think the TV show Fringe shows a great example of this grey area crossover (spoiler alert for those who haven't seen season 3). In the series, the barrier between our reality and another reality has been breached by Dr Walter Bishop, in order for him to save the life of the other reality's version of his son peter from an unacknowledged disease. In doing so he begins a war between our reality and the other side. Neither side exhibits typical indicators of a distinctly evil nature like in the Original Star Trek's alternate reality. Here we see the main characters of Spock, Bones, Kirk etc. go from being essentially good characters to being dark abstracts of themselves.

In fringe we see both sides of the story in season three. We get episodes entirely focused on Walternate and the other unreal characters. Here we see they are much like their counterparts, having much the same ideological views of right and wrong. It's political distinction that sets them at odds with each other. Each side sees the other as being the villain and themselves as the hero. As Einstein might say their perception of morality is entirely relative. They are a paradox. Both realities are right, and both are wrong at the same time, a contradiction paradox.

This statement is false. Is it?

The Statement below is false
The Statement above is true.

The Black Freighter and other Tales From Under the Hood

In adapting any existing story/idea for the big screen, there's always stuff that's going to be left out, rewritten or re-imagined.

Watchmen is a great example of this. The novel had a lot of keen fans and following the announcement of a film adaptation, it's understandable that there would be high expectations. Suffice it to say, without going into a lot of detail, there is far more depth to the pallet of watchmen's story featured in the graphic novel than could be squeezed into a commercially viable film. Studios just don't believe that everyone wants to watch an exact 5 hour recreation of the source material. For the most part Snyder tried to fit as much as he could without encountering Lord of the Rings style length and division of story.

What he could fit in was great but in a very coi move he managed to squeeze some of the remainder into two relatively short films, "Tales from the Black Freighter" and "Under the Hood". Having never read the book, I found these to be intriguing and assumed to some degree they would add significantly to the story arc.

"tales from the Black Freighter" is an animation piece and makes me think of the anime short films that were a part of the Matrix/Matrix Revisited DVD release. It's story further focuses on some of the issues that the film arises, Do the ends justify the means? Does killing 1,000,000 to save 10,000,000,000,000 right?? However it doesn't really add any detail to the narrative of the film. You don't need to see the black freighter in order to understand Watchmen.

But "under the Hood" is different, for one it's live action. It's a biographical documentry about the first Nite-Owl, Hollis Mason, and the after effects of the publication of his autobiography from which we get the title of the film, "Under the Hood". Again whilst it doesn't reallly add anything extra to the overall story of the film version, it does deepen some of the minor character's, such as Carla Gugino's original silk Spectre, but unless you've read the books and crave more than what the film gives you, it's a little unnessecary.

It's very much like the intertextual links found in Spaced. Unless you understand that the scene in which Tim burns his Star Wars memorabilia is a recreation of one of the final scenes in Return of the Jedi where Luke finally lays his father to rest, then the scene doesn't really mean anything.

You can see these two short films in different ways depending on your experience. Either they're an attempt at reconciling the novel with the film adding extra layers to ideas and narratives or they're a passable novelty that's really not meant for your benefit. Both are well made and interesting to watch but there true worth is in the eye of the beholder.

The Genius of Stan Winston's Studio

Intertextuality Is The Highest Form Of Flattery

Even the cover of the Collector's Edition DVD box set has intertextual links, is designed in the style of Drew Struzan's Star wars Posters.

Intertextuality isn't something new to Film and Television. I think it's just played out a lot more honestly and in some respects obviously nowadays, specifically in Edgar Wright's stuff like Spaced, Shaun of The Dead and Hot Fuzz.

For film fanatics it's easy to spot the references back to culturally significant films, from the scene with Daisy's return at the start of the second season episode "Back", where she comes back to an empty flat to find a machine pistol in the kitchen as Mike comes out of the toilet is a pretty close recreation of the scene from Pulp Fiction, Daisy in Bruce Willis' place and Mike in Travolta's. The makers of the series even acknowledge this in the special edition DVD where you have a setting that will pop up with the intertextual/cultural references in the series as they happen, as we saw in our seminar this week.

Quentin Tarantino does much the same but with more obscure references to spaghetti westerns and old kung-fu movies. He is clearly influenced by these and he doesn't spoof them but rather re-imagines them for a modern era.

Another good example of this of re-imaging a genre for the 21st century, I think, would be Brick (2005) by Rian Johnson and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Here we have a film set in the 21st century about high school aged kids but with a distinctly detective noir leaning. It centres around Levitt's character Brenden Frye investigating the death of his girlfriend. You get a very noir feel with the whole set-up of the film from the cinematography to the writing and characterization. Levitt's character feels like a teenage Sam Spade or Holly Martins. His character fits the private eye conventions but with the limitations of being a high school student. Instead of the police detective that obscures the P.I.'s investigation you have the Vice-Principal of the school whose job description apparently now includes law-enforcement?!? It's great to watch having seen a lot of old noir films like the Maltese Falcon and Third Man, but it's a film that has clearly been limited by the high school setting.

Going back further however we can see intertextual links in Kubrick's The Shining. Like Edgar Wright, Kubrick is said to have had a geek-like knowledge of many varied fields. In The Shining he references a Photograph by Diane Arbus.

Today it seems that you can find intertextual links in anything created from film and television to art and writing. Which leads me to one question: Is any idea truly original? As much as there are an infinite combinations of words, numbers and elements that can merge together to form an idea, it seems there will always be some hint of intertextuality to the constructs. What we like and enjoy drives what we create.

For Tarantino it's old spaghetti westerns and kung-fu movies and other niche genre films. For Edgar Wright it's the films he loved growing up, most notably the original Star Wars Trilogy.

Personally I love this. I love watching spaced again and again noting the references. I love watching the fence scene in Hot Fuzz whilst thinking about the scene in Point Break which it is parodying.

The Social Network: Or How Fincher Learned to Stop Worrying About Accuracy And Love The Over-Embellishment Of The Truth

Just watched the Facebook film, The Social Network directed by David Fincher and for a film about the creation of one of the world's foremost social networking sites, it portrays Facebook's major creator as one hell of a manipulative unsociable ass hole!

I mean based on the film, Mark Zuckerberg's character gives some credibility to the idea that, rather than drawing people closer together social networking sites and the internet in general, are further detaching us from reality.

I for example have friended several people on Facebook that I may only have met once or twice and fleetingly at that. And yes some I have had great discussions with on-line via Facebook's chat function and we talk about this we're both equally interested in, things that a lot of my family member like my Mum, Dad and sisters don't get. Like how great Firefly was as a TV series, how scary and intriguing it is that Brad Bird of all people is directing the new Mission Impossible instalment. Or exchanging views on artists we like, as I am right now with a girl called Amy. I telling how I discovered this guy James Chance who does awesome quirky, very inter-textual prints (Note reference to future intertextuality lecture.) crossing star wars characters with the main protagonists of Beatrix Potter's Winnie the Pooh stories, and how she should check them out and give me her opinion of them.

Despite all this interaction the person on the other end of the chat is still no closer to me than say my lecturers. I think it needs to be made clear that there is a real difference between a friendship and a relationship. A relationship only implies a connection, an association however minor that may be: lecturer to student, friend of a friend or familial links like cousins. A friendship is something else entirely, it's more than an association, it's an attachment to someone by feelings, by personal regard. I think this is something that gets lost in Facebook. As demonstrated in the film, there's a huge difference between knowing someone and being there friend.

The characters in the film despite being based on real people seem like caricatures. Exaggerated for the sake of making a script more interesting and engaging than the reality of the people involved in the creation of Facebook. Out of all the characters the only person that was actually involved with the book, the script and the creation of the film was Eduardo Saverin, which I find interesting as the film is far more focussed on the "genius" of Mark Zuckerberg in the creation of the website. And the film is heavily weighted towards this character's view of the story.

It is scripted to over-dramatise the events and after effects surrounding the creation of Facebook, merely to avoid creating a film about a bunch of uni students sat on their computers typing in code and eating pizza which, according to Zuckerberg and Saverin, is basically how it happened. It reminds me in some ways of a few other films about computer geeks such as 1995's Hackers or 2001's Swordfish, in that the film tries to find ways to glam up what should be a very boring task to see on screen.

It's interesting as this is the second film Fincher has directed based on real events, the first being 2007's Zodiac which was about the serial killings in Northern California in the late 1960's perpetrated by a figure identified to the press as the Zodiac Killer or simply Zodiac. Like The Social Network, there is a lot of myth surrounding the events of the Zodiac serial killings a lot of which can be dispelled by the limited amount of first-hand information today you can gather about the events. Unlike the events in the Social Network which are very recent, but due to the nature of the relationships obscured by prejudice and personal opinion. In making Zodiac Fincher obviously felt close to given that he grew up in San Anselmo, Marin County during the first Zodiac murders. This is reflected in it's indirect portrayal of the murders. Sometimes you see them first-hand through following the victims but a lot of the time they are merely discussed.

Much like The Social Network with Zodiac, Fincher apparently wasn't after a factual truth but rather an emotional one. According to his producer Bradley J. Fischer "David is beyond Zodiac being a reconstruction. He is interested in the progression of events that he can capture on film." This is what he did in Zodiac and in The Social Network, he didn't recreate the events in their exactitude because he isn't making a documentary reconstruction. He had to confine the truth of the story with the reality of constructing a film narrative that would make sense to the audience. And whilst there is truth to some of the conflicts used in the narrative of the Social Network, arguments over who gets profits for what etc. Fincher seems to add some honour and binary definition to what is essentially two parties, both of whom are all-ready rich, squabbling over money.

The Most Iconic Superhero Will Be Back!

Both Reeve's (left) and Routh's (right) Supermen were iconic entirely in keeping with the perceived notion of what Superman should be.

Tim Burton's Superman was entirely arbitrary, something new that would have to be learned by the audience and accepted.

Who is Superman?

Brandon Routh was great Superman, you could clearly see the inter-textual links between his performance and Christopher Reeve's. He was an unknown, just like Reeve was at the time. He was just stuck with a bad script about an emo Superman who likes hanging around voyeuristically spying on Lois. Is he gonna be Zack Snyder's Superman? I don't know probably not.

I mean originally actor's like Robert Redford and other big stars were considered for the role. But superman is so iconic you cant really have someone who's already known playing him because you'll perceive the actor as much as you'll perceive the character of superman, which is why I think an unknown was a great way to go and it's the route Snyder should take.

After all we were saved from Tim Burton's idea of superman which terrified me not only because he wanted to redesign the superman outfit as this sort of black pvc bondage suit, where the "S" is made up of a set of knives which he uses as weapons, but also because he wanted Nic Cage to play Superman!?!?!?!?!? Nic Cage is a good actor but the thought of him as the Man of Steel is frankly terrifying. It would be like casting Graham Norton as Batman and giving him a burnt sienna batsuit to wear, just wrong! You can't have an icon playing an icon. They cancel each other out. We already have this idea of who Nic Cage is, so all we see is Nic Cage. When it comes to superman all you should see is the character. Christopher Reeve achieved this. When he was playing superman, he was superman. The same goes for his portrayal of Clark Kent. This was true even after he became famous. An known actor playing superman becomes arbitrary, the relationship has to be learnt because both the actor and the role are so iconic they cancel each other out.

Brandon Routh could be great a great Superman if he's given the chance but i think its going to be Timothy Dalton/Bond all over again. I.e. by the time the studios have gotten their act together and started doing a new Superman film they'll want someone new in the role which is a real shame! He fitted the idea of casting an unknown perfectly, before this his biggest role was a small part of the sitcom Will & Grace. Therefore the audience in general knew him only as Superman/Clark Kent.

Equally however this iconic status has it's cons. The Superman curse. Actor's associated with the role have become so much a part of the idea of Superman it becomes hard for them to be associated with anything but the Man of Steel. George Reeves is the most prominent victim of the iconic status. However others have accepted the idea and even capitalised on it. Christopher Reeve wholly embraced his status as the last son of Krypton, even after his crippling accident.

What about Lex Luthor?

I never really liked Gene Hackman as Luthor. According to the producers of the original he was chosen because the studios decided you could only have an unknown as Superman if you had someone well known to star against him. Hence gene Hackman's casting. But is Lex Luthor going to be the villain in the new film or are we goign to see a wider scope of the villainry? Say Doomsday or Brainiac?

This looks like a job for...CGI?

CGI versus live action/in camera effects. 

Following the discussion in the seminar on the Superman '78 Donner film's practical effects versus Superman Returns' CGI craft it made me think of this, is CGI better outright than practical special effects?

Does all the cgi add something extra to the film? Can it go to far?

As a kid a wholely believed a man could fly based on effects that now seem antiquated.  Yes superman Returns effects look much better, smoother and more accurate based on the reality we live in. BUT this is a comic movie....we're already taking the leap into believing in a world where a super human man exists who stands for truth justice and the american way. Whos morals are absolute and will protect the world no matter what. An incorruptable man in a corrupt world. So does it really matter if when he catches a helicopter with his bare hands, mid flight, if he's holding onto the chopper it the right place so it won't simply disassemble under the stress of his grip. 

I'm mean let's face if we're going to go into the physics and reality of supermans abilities as considered in Superman Returns, why limit it to the reaction of the plane catch. What about catching lois as she falls. So let's accept he can fly. As the great Sheldon Cooper points out, "Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32 feet per second per second... Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel... Miss Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles an hour, hits them and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces. " Where's the reality in that? Or flying around the world at heights that of airliners, where the air is very thin and the combination of high winds and the speed at which they're travelling would make it, I imagine almost impossible to talk let alone be heard. And yet that happens in both the Donner's and Singer's films. 

I love the original. I never questioned whether or not something was real or rigged. Even then I knew a man can't fly but that didn't stop me believing that he could. As much as CGI and special effects help to create this mass dillusion of the overcoming of newtonian physics, what really makes me believe a man can fly was and is Christopher Reeve. And I think to some extent Brandon Routh did the same thing for me in Superman Returns. It's both of these actor's performances that really sell the whole thing. Yes I can always tell in Returns when it's not an actual person flying around as Supes but a cgi rendering of Brandon Routh in the Red, yellow and blue. And in the original films I know when Reeve is simply being hoisted into the via wires or merely lying on a gimble with a projection of the world behind him. But I believe because they believe.  

I think if you don't have this kind of performance from an actor no matter how you try to make a man fly, from using wires rigs practically on set to recreating him virtually, it will never feel real. And after all that is the aim.

As an audience you take a leap of faith, but if all the cogs in the machine don't mesh perfectly, cgi, live action, actor etc. etc. you're belief will drop faster than Lois Lane from a helicopter.

Rosebud...

It started - for me, it started - this Thursday, or last Thursday depending on when you read this. Here I am at a new university, on a new course, with a new lecturer, being asked to keep a blog as a part of my final grade. An entirely new experience for me.


So here I am trying to make up my rassodocks what to write this evening in this novel blog about my thoughts on the course and specifically the media and cultural studies module.  What am I writing? Uh, I'm certainly not writing anything that'll change the world as we know it. 


I am Richard May, a mature student, studying a BA in Special Effects at the University of Hertfordshire, England. And what am I thinking about? Right now I'm thinking about how Lucky I feel to be studying a course I have a genuine passion for and that those around me both students and teachers are as passionate, opinionated, geeky and well informed about film as I am and that is GREAT.


So this is it hopefully the beginning of something greater. Hopefully my heart will mediate between my and head and my hands and prevent this from becoming another overly drawn out internet rant. Instead I hope it will be valid place to note down my thoughts on all my lectures and my love of film in general, the start of a beautiful friendship!