Wednesday, July 28, 2010

All-time favorites, part 3: The Royal Tenenbaums


When I was dating Rachel, Tenenbaums had its TV premiere on Comedy Central. Already an all-time favorite, I watched it with her and her mom. After, her mom said something along the lines of “Why would anyone like that movie, it’s depressing.”
True, there is an undeniable sadness at its core. The most striking image in the movie, after all, is Richie in front of a mirror, shaving his beard and slashing his wrists to the tune of Elliott Smith’s Needle in the Hay. And Tenenbaums is a play on the idea that you can never go home again. (Which is true. You can never go home again. Things change. People change. People die.)
The Royal Tenenbaums is willing to signify that life isn’t always happy, but that isn’t what it’s about.
Tenenbaums is about catharsis and recklessness. About love and trying to make connection with your old friends and your old family because you finally realize that you want to. Or that you have to.

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Monday, July 26, 2010

Anti-Œdipus, or Christopher Nolan and his Critics

"Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness — the risk of real confusion, of delirium, of ineffable ambiguity — that this subject requires. The unconscious, as Freud (and Hitchcock, and a lot of other great filmmakers) knew, is a supremely unruly place, a maze of inadmissible desires, scrambled secrets, jokes and fears." -- A.O. Scott, The New York Times.
In my humble opinion, Christopher Nolan has yet to make a bad film and I am certainly not alone in this sentiment. If you scan the IMDB film rankings, which is certainly not the greatest arbiter of taste but should gives us a pulse of internet film geeks, Nolan's films currently rank at #3 (Inception -- only losing to the top two based on overall votes), #12 (The Dark Knight), #29 (Memento), #72 (The Prestige), and #108 (Batman Begins). Only Following and Insomnia fall out of the top 250, but both have a respectable average rating in the 7s.

Although I didn't love Inception quite as much as the rest of my nerdy cohort - I still think either Memento or The Dark Knight is Nolan's best work - the line of criticism exemplified by the A.O. Scott quote that Inception's dreams weren't "dreamy" enough has bothered me. You can read a reiteration of that line in practically every critical review of the movie: from David Edelstein lambasting Nolan for being "too literal-minded, too caught up in ticktock logistics, to make a great, untethered dream movie" to Andrew O'hehir bemoaning that "there are no surreal images or nonsense dialogue, no illogical shifts of scene from the first-grade classroom to Mom's kitchen to a whorehouse."

It is okay to disagree about movies. This isn't a broadside against the incompetence of particular movie critics. And certainly a lot of fair criticism can be lobbed at Nolan: for one, he apparently has little interest in female characters (and a third Batman film is unlikely to change that). But to criticize Inception for not being Last Year in Marienbad or Un Chien Andalou is to fundamentally misunderstand the movie as well as Nolan's intensions. Worst still: it is simply bad criticism.

As paradoxical as it might sound, although Inception revolves around dreams, it is about dreaming only insofar as dreaming is one of our oldest ontological metaphors: how can I be certain what is real and what is not? Nolan is entirely uninterested in Freudian dream interpretation (for one, Freud would have a conniption over the word "subconscious" or the use of a spatial metaphor to represent the unconscious) or a cinematic representation of surrealist dreamscapes. There is no need for bizarre juxtapositions to help unravel ineffable secrets because the characters already know precisely what they need to for the purposes of the story (Cobb has not repressed anything: he knows what fuels his guilt). Furthermore, the dreams in Inception are specifically crafted to not feel like dreams -- nobody criticized the Matrix within the movie The Matrix for being too logical.

When critics excoriate Inception's representation of dreams, I think they are really chastising Nolan for his tightly wound screenplays. All of his movies are densely plotted with unfailingly high degrees of narrative complexity. Early on in each film, Nolan clearly establishes the rules of the game and then systematically explores the story from within that framework. To reframe A.O. Scott's criticism, Nolan's screenplays could be said to be "too literal, too logical, too rule-bound" to accurately portray a reality that is "a supremely unruly place, a maze of inadmissible desires, scrambled secrets, jokes and fears." Jokes, in particular, play a woefully under used role in Nolan's universe. The quips in the Batman franchise always seem forced in by some nervous producer thinking of the loss of revenue among teens. In particular, I am reminded of the scene in Memento in which Leonard accidentally kicks the door in on the wrong hotel room because he held the piece of paper with the room number on it upside-down. It is a scene unlike anything else I can think of in Nolan's work because it is random, entirely unnecessary -- and yes, oddly funny.

I also think Nolan's films can underwhelm critics because for all of their complexity, they are not exactly profound. As A.O. Scott writes, Inception "trades in crafty puzzles rather than profound mysteries, and gestures in the direction of mighty philosophical questions that Mr. Nolan is finally too tactful, too timid or perhaps just too busy to engage." One might think of the way Nolan dealt with the issue of surveillance in The Dark Knight: he introduces and resolves it within the context of the story, but never bothers to tease out or moralize the real world implications.

Nolan, as a filmmaker, strikes me as simply more invested in the intricacies of structure than he is with the mysteries of the universe. His movies lack depth because they are tautological metaphors: the form is the content and the content is the form. The Prestige is perhaps the most explicit example: Nolan overtly spells out the three acts involved in a magic trick and then precedes to follow the same setup with the structure of the movie. A movie about magic tricks is itself one.

The same can be said of Inception. The ambiguous last shot opens a few possible avenues for reading the movie: how certain are we as an audience of the reality of what we thought was the principal level of the narrative? But it is a false question: of course Cobb's reality isn't real. He is a character in a movie. The spinning top is a cheeky wink right before the closing credit music awakes the audience to once again return to reality. A movie about inception is itself such an act.

You might not find this to be entire satisfying or dismiss it as simply "a crafty puzzle." But to demand anything more is to unfairly ask the movie to be something it is not. And I, for one, can't wait to see what wily riddle Nolan comes up with next.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Cuz I've been thinking about it too much

July 15th power rankings:

1. Lakers - 'til Miami proves otherwise.
2. Miami - Could probably beat 11 teams in the east 3 on 5.
3. Orlando - Should only be better if Jameer is healthy.
4. Dallas - Most of the talent stayed and they'll have had some time to get accustomed to each other.
5. Utah - Optimistic? probably. But to me it looks like Jazz have turned the loss of Boozer, Matthews and Korver into a net positive.
6. Portland - Either Oden or Camby will be coming off the bench. that's scary for backup Cs in the west.
7. Boston - Yeah they almost beat the Lakers in the Finals, but they had the same record as the 8th seed in the West, and are now another year older.
8. Denver - This seems low for them. Could easily be 2 seed in the West.
9. Oklahoma City - This seems low for them. Could be 2 seed in West.
10. Houston - If Yao Ming is back at full strength the Rockets will be very dangerous.
11. Chicago - Young, talented core adds inside scorer of Boozer's caliber. Boozer immediately makes Rose and Deng better.
12. Phoenix - Losing Amare, adding Turkoglu? Sorry Suns, don't see it.
13. San Antonio - Out of the playoffs this year? Hard to imagine, but I think so.
14. Atlanta - This is how top-heavy the east is and how insane the west is. They drop farther if they send Williams to Cleveland for Shaq.
15. Milwaukee - Dirty Lip needs to heal up and stay healthy. Losing Ridnour might be a bigger deal than people realize.
16. Memphis - Playoff team in the east, stumbling block/Laker feeder in the west.
17. Cleveland - How awesome would it be if the Cavs upset Miami in round 1? Except then I'd have to see Dan Gilbert gloat. . . yuck.
18. Charlotte - This team should be in rebuilding mode, but MJ doesn't know what that means.
19 - 29. Who cares
30. Minnesota - Only Cleveland took a bigger step backward, but they had farther to fall. Replaced their best player with Darko Milicic. Added yet another mediocre PG, trust me, there was no need. They did get the intriguing but unmotivated Michael Beasley, who should score for them at least. The Timberwolves won 15 games last year (2 against the Jazz), they don't look better this year. But hey, thanks for Al Jefferson!

Observations:

The East is a three, maybe four team race and the West is a gauntlet. All 8 seeds in my scenario would be incredibly tough outs come playoff time.

The Northwest division is especially tough, there is absolutely no clear favorite the way there is in the Pacific and Southwest.

There will be a lot of interesting teams to follow once the season actually starts, I don't think I've ever been this intrigued by any offseason in sports before. And I didn't even watch "The Decision."

Words?

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Like Icarus,

Yesterday, Netflix recommend not just one, but TWO Cuba Gooding Jr. classics released in 2009.



I had to do a double take just to make sure they weren't the same movie.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

You can call me Paul the Octopus.

Friday, July 09, 2010

Comic Sans Gold

Yeah yeah, LeBron is going to Miami and will play with these two. Oh, and Wade and Bosh. (How the other 7 spots on the roster get filled will be interesting to say the least.) But the most shocking moment last night for me was reading this insane open letter to "Cleveland and Northeast Ohio."

Some highlights:
our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening

over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor NEVER will betray you.

You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.

This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown "chosen one" sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And "who" we would want them to grow-up to become.
I can't. . . I don't even know where to start. The strangest reaction I have is anger and frustration that our economic system allows this guy to have enough money to be majority owner of an NBA franchise. Mostly I just think it's funny. I'm also pretty excited to see Wade Bosh and James play together next year.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

All-time favorites, part 2: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

If were to turn a contronym (a word that means both a thing and its opposite) into a movie, you could only ever have Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Sunshine is a love story and an anti-love story, hopeful and cynical simultaneously.

In that, it’s the only relationship movie that I’ve ever seen that is, well, real. Which is ironic since it’s structurally and visually one of the unreal movies you may ever see.

What has always stuck with me is that the central conflict is not really about Joel and Clementine, or any of the other characters or relationships. It’s about the internal conflicts that determine our success, failure and happiness in anything.

Sunshine is really a statement about memory and our ability to change. Memory is one element in how we define who we are. But memory can also trap us in feelings of resentment and failure, and make us reluctant to change. It can be knowledge that you learn from or it can be that voice in your head that says things can never be different, never be good, and will always be the same.

Sunshine, with all its darkness, is about how—even if we can’t have our memories erased—we don’t necessary have to be trapped in the past.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

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Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Summering at Red Pine Lake

12:00 Noon June 27, 2010.

Sandal weather.

Zebra Crossing.

Tent of Ages.

Ice Fishing.

Breakfast of Champions.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

The Downward Spiral (The Bottom)

Final Fantasy XIII

Awful. Simply awful. So bad it makes me question the viability of RPGs on contemporary consoles. Now that other genres have successfully co-opted the immersive storytelling, lush soundtracks, and addictive skill-point mechanic of RPGs, what left do they have to provide?

If Dragon Quest IX sucks, I may cry.

Grade: D+

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Just.

That was exhausting.

400 minutes of gameplay and the USA only held the lead for 2 of those. In fact, we can even tack on 270 minutes from the 2006 World Cup for additional enervation.

And it showed in the final overtime against Ghana. The players looked physically and emotionally drained from having to play constant catch-up. As exhilarating as the victory against Algeria was, I can't help but wonder how the USA would have played if those two stolen goals had counted.

For the past three World Cups, it has felt like we have not only had to compete against superior teams but against the referees as well.

2002: Torsten Frings's handball at the Germany goal line denying an equalizer.
2006: Haminu Draman's mugging of Claudio Reyna which resulted in a goal and a sprained medial collateral ligament for Reyna. Stephen Appiah's dive for a game winning penalty kick.
2010: Where to begin.

I might consider patching together some sort of conspiracy theory, if only the rest of the officiating for this World Cup wasn't equally incompetent.

At least we lost the 2010 rematch against Ghana by ourselves. I like Bradley, but starting Clark and Findley were fatal errors. And what a squandered opportunity with Uruguay as the only obstacle in the way of the Semifinals. Now we have to look forward to a World Cup hosted by Brazil and potentially 6 South American squads.

Finally, I am tired of the patronizing attitude that the announcers have displayed in portraying African teams as the underdogs, particularly with the constant display of the "Only 2 [now 3] African teams have advanced to the Quarterfinals" fact.

Newsflash: CAF has a better World Cup record than CONCACAF (and arguably AFC/Oceania as well).

Since the modern World Cup format was established in 1986, CAF has sent 3 teams to the Quarterfinals. CONCACAF has only sent 2: one of those was when Mexico hosted the Cup and the other was when USA and Mexico played each other in the round of 16. America did get third place once -- in 1930, when only 13 teams played and even then it was a retroactive ranking.

Yes, it is a shame that South Africa has the misfortune of being the first host country to not advance beyond the group stage, but that could have easily been the USA if not for a tragic Columbian own goal.

Surely the greatest sign of respect you can show for an opponent is hatred. I loathe Brazil and I pray every South American team is eliminated in the group stage in 2014.

Hopefully, when the next World Cup is hosted in Africa, we can root for that same result as well.