U2 has once again descended from the heavens to impart new material on the masses. No Line on the Horizon is their third album of the decade and we're all wondering...will they continue creeping down the path of recycling and re-imagining Where the Streets Have No Name and Staring at the Sun? Of course, nothing new there. But what we also have (thanks to the expensive trifecta of super-producers: Eno, Lanois and Lillywhite) is a slick arrangement of their various sounds over the years (sans the electronica influences of Pop) resulting in a more texturally varied album than they've had in quite a while. It's vibrant, compact, has semi-memorable tunes and (compared to the last few efforts, at least) attempts minor risks...which is often more than you can ask from a band of their progressing years. With the exception of Get on Your Boots (which functions more as sound trying to rape your ears) the songs featured here are generic-ly radio-friendly as usual, but surprisingly more discreet (not unlike Zooropa) and most of the time succeed at toeing the line without crossing into "trying too hard" territory (like much of Pop and the often forced glory of Atomic Bomb).
Understated as the positives are, however, the bad is contrastingly obvious as we're confronted with the glaring vocal problems. Lyrically this is probably the most abysmal effort we've gotten from Bono. Some of the songs (No Line, Breathe, Stand Up) have enough musical gusto and energy that the lyrical content can be disregarded, others not so much. Like Unknown Caller whose botchy, circular (but strangely hypnotic) lyrics sound like he’s singing from the point of view of a computer that has performed an illegal operation. And Boots which is like a modern remix of Escape Club's Wild Wild West. Too often the combination of delivery and content is disjointed as if unplanned, causing some songs to drift off course. And also, it doesn't help that Bono has essentially been living in an ivory tower for decades. At least on last few records he still had a finger on the general pulse of humanity and could distract us with a strong hook. Now he's just throwing vague biblical jargon and greeting card morality into a blender and then retreating back to his hot tubs and Ferrari's.
The vocal mix on this record only adds to the frustration in that Bono seems to have been pushed (or resigned) to the sidelines, as opposed to his usual front and center-of-the-message role. Whether it be a style choice or necessity due to his age it causes the record to lose much of his charismatic persona. Where Bono usually acts as the anchor in contrast to the airy melodic songs, and the pompous rock star who powers along heavier tunes, on this he comes across more as a simple narrator, and U2 loses their pomp.
Diagnosis: although not as catchy or melodically refined it still has just enough going for it to keep within a few paces of the last two albums. My advice, they need to quit. They need to stop while fans still remember all the awesomeness they've produced over the years, because people can turn on you quickly. One more album of this will be the death toll. Get out while you can, Bono.
Or, spend some years trying to get in touch with the "average Joe". Move into some dude's two bedroom squalor, bring along your acoustic guitar and leave the sunglasses at home.
But that won't happen. So, realistically, I think it'd help if he stopped trying to be the world's moral compass and just wrote more lyrics about putting on boots and suffering from vertigo.
Bonus>
The following sample tracklist is the kind of album that U2 would have to make in order for the drooling masses to turn in revolt;
1. This Will Get Played The on the Radio Regardless
2. War is Bad
3. The Edge Plays a Riff
4. Fart Noises
5. Stop Fighting Over Religion
6. Jesus Said Some Good Stuff
7. Brian Eno Did This One
8. Vague Morality Lesson #245356457
9. The Drummer is Never Happy to Be Here
10. I'm Bono (And I'm Better Than You)
11. Song That Still Kinda Sounds Like 'Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For'
Worst U2 Song Ever: Get On Your Boots
Observations: White as Snow sounds like a discarded track from Fiddler on the Roof. Bono desperately tries to be John Lennon on track 10.
6.5/10
2.21.2009
2.17.2009
Genesis - Supper's Ready
"...If you go down to Willow Farm, to look for butterflies, flutterbyes, gutterflies
Open your eyes, it's full of surprise, everyone lies, like the fox on the rocks, and the musical box. Yes, there's Mum & Dad, and good and bad, and everyone's happy to be here.
There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag, he used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag. The frog was a prince, the prince was a brick, the brick was an egg, the egg was a bird. (Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hard on your tail) Hadn't you heard? (They're going to change you into a human being!) Yahoo, we're happy as fish and gorgeous as geese, and wonderfully clean in the morning"
2.13.2009
Ongoing List of Worst Classic Rock Songs
1. Shattered/She's So Cold - Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger wrote both of these songs specifically as dance numbers for the live show. They both have the perfect non-rhythm that a man of his extreme whiteness can shuffle and wag his finger to...and look good doing it.
2. Horse with No Name - America
In their classic folk-rock tune about getting stoned and subsequently harassed by local police for trying to eat at a restaurant nude, America imparts to us their divine hippie wisdom in the form of asinine lyrics, droll melody and obnoxious catchy-ness.
3. Magnet and Steel - Walter Egan
A favorite among the roller-rink masses in the 1970's, this song doo-wops its way into the crapper with a poorly constructed metaphor slash pickup line that would not be topped until Billy Ocean's 80's hit "Get Out of My Dreams and Into My Car".
4. Rock and Roll Fantasy - Bad Company
I'll admit, I love me some Bad Company, and this song does have a pretty sweet thump and guitar lick...but I generally start tuning out once Paul Rodgers begins describing his fantasy, which basically amounts to a list of generic concert staging. Except he mentions three jesters, perhaps this was supposed to be a Medieval Times fantasy and he aborted the idea after the first verse.
5. Imaginary Lover - Atlanta Rhythm Section
That's pretty "rock n roll", dude. You know you've hit the big time and then some when real women begin to lose their appeal and only your awesome, finely permed reflection can satisfy...or whatever other sick stuff you're into. Perverts.
6. Love Hurts - Nazareth
Always fools me into thinking that it's Joe Cocker's rendition of "With a Little Help..." Nazareth trudges through this quagmire of a song with a lethargy unparalleled in the pantheons of rock history.
7. Dirty White Boy - Foreigner
Before Nickelback was stinking up airwaves with their mediocre brand of cheese-rock, Foreigner was doing it better.
8. Lords of the Ring - Styx
I think the title speaks for itself, but this song is what would have happened to Zeppelin if Robert Plant had downs syndrome.
9. I'm Just a Singer - Moody Blues
This song sounds like the chase music for every single crime drama...every single commercial jingle...and the intro music to every sportscast....from the 1970's...smashed into one mind-piercingly atrocious package. It also sounds like a drill boring down into my skull.
10. Pink Cadillac - Bruce Springsteen
I don't mean to pick on the Boss but this is one of the most banal songs ever written in the rock & roll shuffle style. It also doesn't help that the pitch and key of his voice remain the same for nearly the entire song. It's like listening to the engine of a pink Cadillac on cruise control, so he achieved that effect if that's what he was going for. And also, no rock song should ever have the word "Suburu" in it.
11. Takin' Care of Business - BTO
I can, maybe, perhaps, imagine some time in the distant past, immediately after the song was released, when it was mildly entertaining. This is one of the those songs that is catchy only for the sake of being catchy. The band was fiddling around with a riff one day and they just kept going. Bachman (or was it Turner Overdrive?) sings the title in passing, yeah! Let's try that. The spark is lit, the band loves it! They jam until the break of dawn and people for thousands of miles around show up in campers and Harleys screaming for more and more...the song hasn't stopped being played since...and the car commercial royalties keep comin' out their wazoos.
12. Rock and Roll All Nite - Kiss
I always feel like this song is one elaborate pitch for all the merchandise the band is hawking. Gene Simmons is probably the greatest salesman of all time; just get your audience to buy into an image of all night rocking and all day partying which requires that they buy an assload of useless Kiss themed products.
13. Steve Miller
I'm just adding his name here as a kind of collective wag-of-the-finger for all the crimes against decent songwriting he's committed over the years. The prime example being Take the Money and Run in which he employs the ingenious rhyming of "Texas", "taxes" and "facts is".
14. Walk This Way - Aerosmith
This song was ok and I'm hesitant to put a song on this list because it's overplayed, but...this is different. Sweet Home Alabama, Back in Black, both have been run so far into the ground that they no longer carry any meaning and bounce off the eardrum like a mutated disease. Walk This Way, on the other hand, has reached a whole new level of irrelevance. The second that riff kicks in the brain either shuts down or goes into panic mode, filling your mind with other better songs to drown out what's currently playing.
15. Come Together - Aerosmith
The worst kind of cover; when the lead singer of a band goes out to a karaoke bar one night and decides to record his lackluster performance as to fill a vacant spot on their upcoming album.
in case you'd like to listen to any of these gems, you can use grooveshark to play any song and put them in playlists.
Mick Jagger wrote both of these songs specifically as dance numbers for the live show. They both have the perfect non-rhythm that a man of his extreme whiteness can shuffle and wag his finger to...and look good doing it.
2. Horse with No Name - America
In their classic folk-rock tune about getting stoned and subsequently harassed by local police for trying to eat at a restaurant nude, America imparts to us their divine hippie wisdom in the form of asinine lyrics, droll melody and obnoxious catchy-ness.
3. Magnet and Steel - Walter Egan
A favorite among the roller-rink masses in the 1970's, this song doo-wops its way into the crapper with a poorly constructed metaphor slash pickup line that would not be topped until Billy Ocean's 80's hit "Get Out of My Dreams and Into My Car".
4. Rock and Roll Fantasy - Bad Company
I'll admit, I love me some Bad Company, and this song does have a pretty sweet thump and guitar lick...but I generally start tuning out once Paul Rodgers begins describing his fantasy, which basically amounts to a list of generic concert staging. Except he mentions three jesters, perhaps this was supposed to be a Medieval Times fantasy and he aborted the idea after the first verse.
5. Imaginary Lover - Atlanta Rhythm Section
That's pretty "rock n roll", dude. You know you've hit the big time and then some when real women begin to lose their appeal and only your awesome, finely permed reflection can satisfy...or whatever other sick stuff you're into. Perverts.
6. Love Hurts - Nazareth
Always fools me into thinking that it's Joe Cocker's rendition of "With a Little Help..." Nazareth trudges through this quagmire of a song with a lethargy unparalleled in the pantheons of rock history.
7. Dirty White Boy - Foreigner
Before Nickelback was stinking up airwaves with their mediocre brand of cheese-rock, Foreigner was doing it better.
8. Lords of the Ring - Styx
I think the title speaks for itself, but this song is what would have happened to Zeppelin if Robert Plant had downs syndrome.
9. I'm Just a Singer - Moody Blues
This song sounds like the chase music for every single crime drama...every single commercial jingle...and the intro music to every sportscast....from the 1970's...smashed into one mind-piercingly atrocious package. It also sounds like a drill boring down into my skull.
10. Pink Cadillac - Bruce Springsteen
I don't mean to pick on the Boss but this is one of the most banal songs ever written in the rock & roll shuffle style. It also doesn't help that the pitch and key of his voice remain the same for nearly the entire song. It's like listening to the engine of a pink Cadillac on cruise control, so he achieved that effect if that's what he was going for. And also, no rock song should ever have the word "Suburu" in it.
11. Takin' Care of Business - BTO
I can, maybe, perhaps, imagine some time in the distant past, immediately after the song was released, when it was mildly entertaining. This is one of the those songs that is catchy only for the sake of being catchy. The band was fiddling around with a riff one day and they just kept going. Bachman (or was it Turner Overdrive?) sings the title in passing, yeah! Let's try that. The spark is lit, the band loves it! They jam until the break of dawn and people for thousands of miles around show up in campers and Harleys screaming for more and more...the song hasn't stopped being played since...and the car commercial royalties keep comin' out their wazoos.
12. Rock and Roll All Nite - Kiss
I always feel like this song is one elaborate pitch for all the merchandise the band is hawking. Gene Simmons is probably the greatest salesman of all time; just get your audience to buy into an image of all night rocking and all day partying which requires that they buy an assload of useless Kiss themed products.
13. Steve Miller
I'm just adding his name here as a kind of collective wag-of-the-finger for all the crimes against decent songwriting he's committed over the years. The prime example being Take the Money and Run in which he employs the ingenious rhyming of "Texas", "taxes" and "facts is".
14. Walk This Way - Aerosmith
This song was ok and I'm hesitant to put a song on this list because it's overplayed, but...this is different. Sweet Home Alabama, Back in Black, both have been run so far into the ground that they no longer carry any meaning and bounce off the eardrum like a mutated disease. Walk This Way, on the other hand, has reached a whole new level of irrelevance. The second that riff kicks in the brain either shuts down or goes into panic mode, filling your mind with other better songs to drown out what's currently playing.
15. Come Together - Aerosmith
The worst kind of cover; when the lead singer of a band goes out to a karaoke bar one night and decides to record his lackluster performance as to fill a vacant spot on their upcoming album.
in case you'd like to listen to any of these gems, you can use grooveshark to play any song and put them in playlists.
2.10.2009
Heroes of Child Labor: Patricius McGrover III
Today the spotlight is on the industrial sensation himself; Patricius McGrover III.
Patricius, born in Livershire-Hamptington, England in 1886, holds the all-time record for most consecutive shifts worked at the Lords of Looohr Textile Factory: 6,840. Which equate to roughly three years, two months and eleven days worth of non-stop work. Though in truth a ripe 16 years of age at the time of his death, Patricius remained forever a mere lad in appearance due to stunted growth caused by malnutrition, overwork and the threat of termination if he were to ever grow past four feet in height. "Tiny people are cost efficient! Stay tiny, you limey bullocks!", the Boss would scream at the beginning of every shift.
On Christmas days, when his shift was only twenty-three hours, Patricius enjoyed thinking about work, rummaging through receptacles for half-eaten cans of white hominy, playing fetch with rats, And lashing himself to remind himself of the factory he so dearly loved.
dirty little fingers
needn't be at play
the good lord has written
how they shall spend their days
smelting.
preeming.
carding.
spinning.
spin until your filthy, undeveloped soul has found its way
suffer not the children to suckle on thy teet
nor climb to tops of countertops
with mud upon their feet
nor spare the rod
nor make no bargains
idol hands lower profit margins
"go forth and multiply"
was the creator's one request
for silk is one commodity
more sweet than baby's breast.
2.08.2009
International Star Registry
It makes the perfect gift...and makes for the most perfect scam of all time.
I can imagine a few resourceful twenty-somethings sitting around a broken coffee table, passing a dutchie and tossing out ideas for their own version of the pet rock. An asinine product that will help them achieve their dream of living permanently as grad students. They brainstorm, concepts fly, some hit the wall, some hit close to the mark, some life long bonds are formed, some hearts are broken...until finally it clicks. An endless commodity of a romantic nature?
No, you pervert...it's STARS.
Of course! Stars!
As presents!
Perfect.
1. Little to no overhead cost - God provides the capital
2. You can never run out of stars - however the universe IS expanding, so product DOES expire, unfortunately.
3. People are stupid
4. People aren't going to check to make sure the patent on their star name is not repeated.
5. People love having things named after them. Especially large gaseous object trillions and trillions of light years away.
It's so simple. In the olden days two lovers would lay on the hood of a 57 Chevy and exchange meaningless gestures of affection. The boyfriend would point out a certain star and say..."see that? That's for you, sugarlips, I wonder if there are any hot alien babes as hot as you living there, oooh yeeah" and then move in for the kill.
Now, however, we're in the age of thoughtless gifts; store credit, burnt CDs, e-cards, cell phone plans, restraining orders. Women want contracts, not promises. They don't actually want the star, they want the security of knowing that you called a 1-800 number, gave your credit card information, and had an "as-of-yet-undiscovered" star in an "as-of-yet-unknown" quadrant of space assigned her name..."Stephanie"...the red dwarf. AKA Beta Centari 293847298367854305823-4958-2103492-34-0002. The registry operator mindlessly scribbles down the name on a piece of notebook paper and shuffles it into a makeshift folder comprised of a Mexican pizza container from Taco Bell, which is then slid under the couch to be later filed under "Jackasses".
What very few people know is that if you happen to have a rare or unusual name like Trig or Apple or Orangelo or God Shamgod, you have to pay extra because usually they just lump similar names together...such as Jeff and Geoff or George Bush and John McCain. In actuality Stephanie is sharing a planet with whatever other Stephanie's (and Stefani's and Stefunee etc) whos boyfriends have "purchased" them a star. Another reason to date girls with the same name, it saves money...
This also raises the question as to why there isn't the option of naming other cosmic phenomenon after loved ones. Black holes, dark matter, asteroids, nebula, alternate realities, the monolith from 2001. The hate industry is very underrated, under appreciated and untapped in many regards. They should really think about expanding their catalog.
In conclusion, I hope to God that if and when we discover an inhabitable, earthlike planet, that it's not named something stupid like Amanda.
A thousand years from now when a descendant of Will Smith remakes Independence Day I don't want him saying "Welcome to Amanda". That would suck.
I can imagine a few resourceful twenty-somethings sitting around a broken coffee table, passing a dutchie and tossing out ideas for their own version of the pet rock. An asinine product that will help them achieve their dream of living permanently as grad students. They brainstorm, concepts fly, some hit the wall, some hit close to the mark, some life long bonds are formed, some hearts are broken...until finally it clicks. An endless commodity of a romantic nature?
No, you pervert...it's STARS.
Of course! Stars!
As presents!
Perfect.
1. Little to no overhead cost - God provides the capital
2. You can never run out of stars - however the universe IS expanding, so product DOES expire, unfortunately.
3. People are stupid
4. People aren't going to check to make sure the patent on their star name is not repeated.
5. People love having things named after them. Especially large gaseous object trillions and trillions of light years away.
It's so simple. In the olden days two lovers would lay on the hood of a 57 Chevy and exchange meaningless gestures of affection. The boyfriend would point out a certain star and say..."see that? That's for you, sugarlips, I wonder if there are any hot alien babes as hot as you living there, oooh yeeah" and then move in for the kill.
Now, however, we're in the age of thoughtless gifts; store credit, burnt CDs, e-cards, cell phone plans, restraining orders. Women want contracts, not promises. They don't actually want the star, they want the security of knowing that you called a 1-800 number, gave your credit card information, and had an "as-of-yet-undiscovered" star in an "as-of-yet-unknown" quadrant of space assigned her name..."Stephanie"...the red dwarf. AKA Beta Centari 293847298367854305823-4958-2103492-34-0002. The registry operator mindlessly scribbles down the name on a piece of notebook paper and shuffles it into a makeshift folder comprised of a Mexican pizza container from Taco Bell, which is then slid under the couch to be later filed under "Jackasses".
What very few people know is that if you happen to have a rare or unusual name like Trig or Apple or Orangelo or God Shamgod, you have to pay extra because usually they just lump similar names together...such as Jeff and Geoff or George Bush and John McCain. In actuality Stephanie is sharing a planet with whatever other Stephanie's (and Stefani's and Stefunee etc) whos boyfriends have "purchased" them a star. Another reason to date girls with the same name, it saves money...
This also raises the question as to why there isn't the option of naming other cosmic phenomenon after loved ones. Black holes, dark matter, asteroids, nebula, alternate realities, the monolith from 2001. The hate industry is very underrated, under appreciated and untapped in many regards. They should really think about expanding their catalog.
In conclusion, I hope to God that if and when we discover an inhabitable, earthlike planet, that it's not named something stupid like Amanda.
A thousand years from now when a descendant of Will Smith remakes Independence Day I don't want him saying "Welcome to Amanda". That would suck.
1.29.2009
Dear Michael Keaton,
...Please start making movies again. I know it's fun, easy and highly lucrative to do voice-overs for Disney animated movies, but I think it's time to consider a serious comeback. Don't get me wrong, White Noise was an extraordinary film, and Multiplicity could very well be the crowning achievement of your career, yet somehow I feel that something is lacking in the Michael Keaton department as of late. And so, I propose this great idea to help get you back on track, it's called "Watch Out! I'm Michael Keaton! " The show would feature you, Michael Keaton, as Michael Keaton, going about your normal routine (whatever that may be), except at certain designated times transforming into a character from one of your films! Just imagine all the mundane places you could burst into your trademark "not quite as crazy as Jack Nicholson" psychotic mode, making a huge scene and possibly freaking unsuspecting bystanders right out. And then when it's over you'll tilt your head ever so slightly, give that sideways glance of uncertainty, and then unleash your new catchphrase..."Hey, just Keaton'"...
Think about it.
Thanks, one of your loyal fans, Brett
enclosed is a portrait I spent many hours completing.
1.27.2009
Rare Earth, Celebrating Thirty Plus Years of Royalties
Has there ever been a song that's generated as much commercial/royalty based revenue than Rare Earth's "Celebrate"? If it weren't for the tricky time signature I'm confident this would have replaced "Happy Birthday" as the new Happy Birthday.
Every morning Peter Rivera skips expectantly to his mailbox to fetch the daily paper and his bundle of royalty checks that have just arrived.
"Dear Mr. Earth, we have decided to use your song in our new product advertisement for adult diapers and penis enhancement drugs"
"To: past and present members of rare earth, enclosed is a check in payment for usage of your 1970's classic r&b-funk super-hit "Celebrate, which we plan on using in our upcoming film "Celebrate" starring Owen Wilson and Renee Zelwegger, and a hundred other trailers of no particular relevance"
"Here, have $100,000,000 dollars, we plan on eventually using your song for any and everything we please, sincerely, NBC Television Corporation"
And of course it's no wonder that the auto industry is in trouble! If only the band could open up their hearts and wallets and return just a part of the massive revenue stream in the form of a bailout loan...as a small "thank you" gesture for the fact that car companies haven't stopped playing their song since the day it was released.
You're RIGHT! I do just want to celebrate...by buying a Kia! Yes!
I guess it's to be expected...is there anything more universal and elemental than celebrating? Everyone does it, and it doesn't even have to be a party or a superbowl per say, it could merely be the quiet gratitude for a good deed, or the satisfaction that comes from dumping a psychotic girlfriend. Or, just maybe, you want to celebrate another day of living...isn't that enough? I think so.
Every morning Peter Rivera skips expectantly to his mailbox to fetch the daily paper and his bundle of royalty checks that have just arrived.
"Dear Mr. Earth, we have decided to use your song in our new product advertisement for adult diapers and penis enhancement drugs"
"To: past and present members of rare earth, enclosed is a check in payment for usage of your 1970's classic r&b-funk super-hit "Celebrate, which we plan on using in our upcoming film "Celebrate" starring Owen Wilson and Renee Zelwegger, and a hundred other trailers of no particular relevance"
"Here, have $100,000,000 dollars, we plan on eventually using your song for any and everything we please, sincerely, NBC Television Corporation"
And of course it's no wonder that the auto industry is in trouble! If only the band could open up their hearts and wallets and return just a part of the massive revenue stream in the form of a bailout loan...as a small "thank you" gesture for the fact that car companies haven't stopped playing their song since the day it was released.
You're RIGHT! I do just want to celebrate...by buying a Kia! Yes!
I guess it's to be expected...is there anything more universal and elemental than celebrating? Everyone does it, and it doesn't even have to be a party or a superbowl per say, it could merely be the quiet gratitude for a good deed, or the satisfaction that comes from dumping a psychotic girlfriend. Or, just maybe, you want to celebrate another day of living...isn't that enough? I think so.
12.24.2008
Merry Christmas from the Pied Piper of Amtrak
I saw three ships come sailing in
on Christmas day
on Christmas day
Gabriel was riding first class
on Christmas day
and brought with him new amp for his horn
loud enough to say "the Savior is born!"
"the Savior is Born!"
Loud enough to blow bystander's eardrums out
Huzzah! He yells to us all with a shout
The yuletide train rumbles and shakes through the town
past the house, past the orphanage, waking all those
for thousands of miles around.
On his way to the north pole he goes
honking without ceasing to let the world know
that if he has to work at such an hour an day
"so will you...ya freakin idiots. It's 5am, get on the slave train."
and that's where the poem ends. After that all his robotic henchmen exit the train cars and make their way through the streets, going house to house putting children and old people into cages to be shipped off to Santa's factory.
on Christmas day
on Christmas day
Gabriel was riding first class
on Christmas day
and brought with him new amp for his horn
loud enough to say "the Savior is born!"
"the Savior is Born!"
Loud enough to blow bystander's eardrums out
Huzzah! He yells to us all with a shout
The yuletide train rumbles and shakes through the town
past the house, past the orphanage, waking all those
for thousands of miles around.
On his way to the north pole he goes
honking without ceasing to let the world know
that if he has to work at such an hour an day
"so will you...ya freakin idiots. It's 5am, get on the slave train."
and that's where the poem ends. After that all his robotic henchmen exit the train cars and make their way through the streets, going house to house putting children and old people into cages to be shipped off to Santa's factory.
12.23.2008
McDonald's Ever Shrinking Menu
As Hardee's menu continues to expand into a buffet-array of unneeded food choices; burgers, chicken, burgers, roast beef, deserts, breakfasts, hot dogs, chili dogs, coffee lattes, bistros, ice cream, pancakes, tacos....McDonald's continues to mysteriously shrink. Each time I enter the restaurant and look above the counter at the glowing plastic menus I spend a good two to three minutes searching for something that I want to eat. I don't know what I want, but I know that whatever I would get is not there, because there are only like seven things on the menu. Where each panel used to consist of numerous lines of text, they are now each dividded into seperate pictures. One big picture for each panel: a big mac meal, dollar menu, and two fancy sandwiches that don't look greasy enough for my consumption. And so I stare, look around for lesser advertised or hidden menu items...nothing. Are there menu items that still exist that you have to order through shady back-channels or code words? I'll have the you-know-what, covered in a s&^%$load of "ease-gre", please. McDonalds is widdling down its selection to the point where one day they will only specialize in double cheeseburgers covered in fries, like a hamhorseshoe, except it won't be covered in cheese because they're too stingy with it. I'm not sure where they get their dairy supply but it must be from some fancy cow reserve in Switzerland, where cows are each given a hundred acres of prime land to themselves, and whos teets are milked by only the smoothest of hands, preferably by hand-models. Yes, well, I just hope that in the years to come when they've regressed back to the 1930's and once again only serve HAMBURGER! (IT'S BEEF, GROUND INTO A PASTE!) that it will at least be the greasiest, most fattening, deeply satisfiying experience of my life. Grease is cheap, cheaper than whatever cheese they happen to be using, so by my calculations the only way they can make up for their poor selection is to increase grease production. Packets of grease next the ketchup dispenser would be fantastic. Thanks.
It could all just be psychology. Think about it, fewer choices usually make the available ones seem more seductive and delicious (like when you join the army and anything of the slightest femininity is coveted). Even if the best chefs on the planet were the cooks at Old Country Buffet, and prepared each dish with individual care, it would still suck. But, if you package crap in a way that looks like minimum wage employees are working ONLY on that ONE thing it fools the customer into believing the quality is higher, that it's something great. They imagine some elaborate process occuring in a secret kitchen area, where a team of Oompa Loompas dance and toss bags of secret ingredients back and forth to create a special ordered number 4 value meal.
It could all just be psychology. Think about it, fewer choices usually make the available ones seem more seductive and delicious (like when you join the army and anything of the slightest femininity is coveted). Even if the best chefs on the planet were the cooks at Old Country Buffet, and prepared each dish with individual care, it would still suck. But, if you package crap in a way that looks like minimum wage employees are working ONLY on that ONE thing it fools the customer into believing the quality is higher, that it's something great. They imagine some elaborate process occuring in a secret kitchen area, where a team of Oompa Loompas dance and toss bags of secret ingredients back and forth to create a special ordered number 4 value meal.
12.16.2008
12.15.2008
Sunset Grill, coming this fall to NBC
I think that Don Henley's hit song Sunset Grill was actually the themesong for a failed 1980's pilot episode of a show by the same title. It probably starred Rick Springfield as the easy going bartender slash live act of Pensacola's working man's bar; The Sunset Grill, where the only thing hotter than the fajitas are the guitar licks. Deuce (Springfield's character) loses his steelworking job in Pittsburgh and decides to leave it all behind, driving to Florida in his 1970 Ford Maverick in hopes of reuniting with his long lost uncle. When he gets there he learns that his uncle has unfortunately passed away but has left him the deed to a bar he owned. There was only one stipulation however..."make it rock" were his uncle's dying words..."make it rock hard! Aaarrrgh."
However, the evil fat cat (played by none other than Ben Gazzara) wants to buy all the beach front property and turn it into a toxic waste dumping ground. Once he gets wind of Deuce's hippy plan to revitalize the neighborhood, he sends his tight-panted cronies to strong arm Deuce into accepting his demands: by any means necessary...including excessive force. However, through the power of love, music and and shots of kalua, the simple patrons of Sunset Grill manage to save their bar...for one more day at least. Episode 2 gets even better when a new girl (Sean Young) arrives in town looking for a job, and how can Deuce resist her southern sass! I smell a romance!
UPDATE:
Well...I give up. Next time I'll be sure to do some research. The real thing is even more craptastic than I could have imagined...still, it's oddly similar... http://www.imdb.com/titl/tt0108253/
However, the evil fat cat (played by none other than Ben Gazzara) wants to buy all the beach front property and turn it into a toxic waste dumping ground. Once he gets wind of Deuce's hippy plan to revitalize the neighborhood, he sends his tight-panted cronies to strong arm Deuce into accepting his demands: by any means necessary...including excessive force. However, through the power of love, music and and shots of kalua, the simple patrons of Sunset Grill manage to save their bar...for one more day at least. Episode 2 gets even better when a new girl (Sean Young) arrives in town looking for a job, and how can Deuce resist her southern sass! I smell a romance!
UPDATE:
Well...I give up. Next time I'll be sure to do some research. The real thing is even more craptastic than I could have imagined...still, it's oddly similar... http://www.imdb.com/titl/tt0108253/
The Distant Narrative Hand of the C-Movie
Since the 1930’s the b-movie has taken on different forms and meanings but has always at it’s core been primarily about quantity, saturating the market and reeling in profit. This assembly-line output of low budget genre pictures continued in the usual studio controlled fashion until around the mid 1970’s when the popularity of new home entertainment such as cable, satellite and VCR began to quickly rise. In order to seize upon this newly expanding market, movie and television companies began distributing the work of small-time filmmakers which ushered in a new generation of b-movies primarily outside studio control called “c-movies” (Prince 186)Now that wayward projects from no-name studios finally had a home, the amount of low budget pictures began to rival (if not surpass) that of Hollywood’s golden age. But what’s interesting here is that even with the mass of new poorly financed films, budget issues really aren’t much more of a factor in determining their quality than it is for 1950’s b-movies. What did change with these films though is a sudden decline of editing and cinematography used to support the narrative. What I will try to argue here is that the primary cause of low quality in c-films (specifically from 1975-1990) is their failure to “deliberately guide the thoughts and associations of the spectator” (Pudhovkin 10) with the editing techniques laid out by Vsevolod Pudovkin. And because of this main deficiency the other filmic elements (which are unavoidably constrained by cost) are thrust into the forefront (made more obvious) by the non-existence of those responsible for the film’s final product.
In his article on editing from the book Film Technique Pudovkin defines the three basic overall structures that make a film; scene, sequence and scenario, and he then goes on to explain the specific editing techniques that are used to guide the spectator, to make them see and feel what the filmmaker wants them to. The prime issue with c-movies, however, is not their ability to piece together a scene in its basic form (alternating shots), but in the way their overall sequences try to build toward a climax yet rarely ever use any of the special editing techniques such as contrast or parallelism. Specifically what I will look at first is the buildup toward the supposed “moment of great tension” and then analyze the breakdown of suspense (or whatever emotion is trying to be evoked). The first film chosen for this discussion is the 1978 film Laserblast, directed by Michael Rae, it tells the story of a teenager named Billy who lives a cliché, 1970’s, southern California, slacker lifestyle. After discovering a giant laser gun that was left in the desert by aliens Billy begins to transform into a mindless killing machine, blasting everything in sight and getting revenge on all those who have been hassling him. The third act begins when Billy laser-blasts one of the town sheriffs who had questioned him the previous day about an incident. At this point in the usual Hollywood narrative we would most likely see simultaneous editing used; Billy’s girlfriend has discovered his transformation , the aliens are trying to recover their laser gun, and a government agent (as well as the police) are on his trail. So, the normal course of action would be to show these three or four threads of interests at the same time, cutting back and forth between each and inevitably coming to a head, resolving. But instead Laserblast inverts this formula by giving the most screen time to inconsequential events while totally glossing over the storytelling elements that build audience suspense.
Essentially there are three important character points of view happening towards the end of this movie; Billy, his girlfriend and the aliens, but for some reason the film decides to forgo the fleshing out of those parts in favor of letting Billy blow some more stuff up. Throughout the third act crisis portion we see Billy on a rampage, this cuts back very quickly to two confusing, slow paced scenes at the house of his girlfriend where the federal agent has arrived to inform her that Billy is infected by an alien disease (though he never actually says this, it’s inferred). Also interspersed is one brief scene which shows the aliens inspecting a car destroyed by Billy, one of only three scenes that show the aliens searching for him; one at the beginning, middle and final scene). As I mentioned, a typical film would focus the majority of the final act on the rapid development of these three parts and, through quick cuts between multiple events, the editing would reflect the urgency of all parties trying to prevent Billy from causing further damage. Instead the editing focuses on three scenes (each of which lasts at least two minutes) that have no effect whatsoever on the final outcome. The first is a two minute and thirty second scene of Chuck and Eddie (the comic relief) driving along the highway in their classic car. Nothing of consequence happens here, Eddie delivers some silly lines about the recent mysterious laser blast incidents, and just they drive along the highway for 2 ½ minutes while a tracking shot shows us how beautiful their car is. Finally they see Billy appear on the side of the road who then blows them up with the ray gun. This relatively slow scene right in the middle of the final act kills whatever pacing might have otherwise been achieved. There are two more examples like this in the third act alone; the second is a long scene where we see Billy wandering the desert and suddenly a small aircraft appears. One of the passengers wielding a rifle begins firing down at him, the plane circles around and they begin exchanging fire until Billy finally destroys the aircraft. One of the major problems of this scene is that it happens out of sequence. The part of the film in which we see the authorities escalate their search happened a good ten to fifteen minutes earlier when this scene finally occurs it’s ambiguous as to who these people in the airplane are, and why they are just now attacking Billy. Since the scene occurs late in the film, and in a strange sequence, all it does is serve to disrupt the pace. The third scene that the film pointlessly introduces happens a few minutes later when Billy hitches a ride from a hippie and then kills him. He is picked up by the stereotypical stoner character who offers him drugs and tries to make casual conversation. Billy then puts on the crystal necklace that causes him to turn into an mindless monster and blasts the hippie out the driver side door. Taking control of the vehicle he drives to the location of the final scene. What I think these faults illustrate is not an overall flaw in the writing (though it is bad) but in the final decision making regarding editing. These long scenes inserted into the film which break up the cohesiveness of the climax do not introduce new narrative, so the scenes do not disrupt the flow of the story arc, they simply drag it down and divert the viewer from their desire to feel tension and get to the resolution. By the time we get to the final confrontation between Billy, the aliens, his girlfriend and the agent, their motivation and urgency in the moment has become so convoluted and dragged out that audience is basically lost. It’s similar to a roller coaster that makes you get off once it reaches the top, then let’s you back on once it’s reached the bottom, and so the scenarists do not, “in even rhythm”, transfer the interest of the spectator through a series of events (13)
Another film that has the same basic problem of building scenes in a way that manipulates audience expectation is the 1985 sci-fi picture Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. But Instead of the lopsided, jumbled scene order and length like we saw in Laserblast, we have a series of scenes that are edited in a homogenous, sequential style that’s a common flaw in many c-movies. In what is supposed to be the climax of the film the main character; Fingal (played by the late Raul Julia), is trying to escape from the evil Novicorp corporation mainframe that his mind has been trapped in during a routine therapy session (like Total Recall and The Matrix). With the help of a Novicorp employee named Apollonia he tries to hack the program and escape before the chairman can get rid of him. Unlike Laserblast which at least attempts simultaneous storytelling in the finale, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank employs no special editing techniques and barely achieves anything resembling a finale. Each scene concludes the action it begins and then, in an almost episodic manner, moves on to the next important plot point. First is a scene in which Apollonia is wondering where Fingal’s misplaced body is so that it can be reconnected with his mind. “Time is running out” she says to the character (Toobie) who’s actually doing the searching. Ten or fifteen minutes later, in a completely anticlimactic fashion, Toobie carts in Fingal’s lost body. Never once does the film actually show him searching for it, so one of the important parts of the “beat the clock” suspense happens completely off-screen, defeating the purpose. Next is a scene in which the Novicorp chairman tries to convince Fingal to stop causing problems for the corporation, to end his attempts at overriding the company’s mainframe and just assimilate and conform like everyone else. In just one scene we see the confrontation, the bargain proposed by the Chairman, and then Fingal’s refusal. Once again we see an example where the tension is thwarted immediately. In a plot device that’s usually used to make the audience wonder if the main character will do the right thing, often interspersed among other scenes of simultaneous heightened action, this movie settles the question without dragging it the point of highest tension, leading the audience nowhere. Needless to say the film continues like this right until the end.
These are just a few of many examples where c-movies do not use basic simultaneity editing, for whatever reason, and as a result lose the impact that could have possibly been created. As a result 1980’s low budget films play more like video game where the main characters complete each stage as they rush to complete their objectives. In the action based films of this c-movie category it’s often just an all out chaotic onslaught and the tension is never escalated in the narrative between what the antagonist is trying to do (what he does during the brief moments he has the upper hand) and the movement of the protagonist to stop him. In many examples these films (especially sci-fi, dystopia, fantasy “epics” like Deathstalker III, Space Mutiny and Warrior from the Lost World) simply plateau at a frenzied pace without reinforcing the importance of the stakes through careful editing. It’s the blandest of sequential editing that merely shows every element happen in order from least to greatest threat. The directors and editors in a majority of these movies are unable to build a web of even the most basic complexity, and as a result of having such a shaky foundation the other elements within the films are forced to carry the interest level, which they would have a hard time doing even if the editing and cinematography were good.
The third issue connected to editing is seen in the 1985 creature film Boggy Creek II; written, produced and starring Charles B. Pierce. Like the previous movies discussed this also suffers from awkward pacing and poorly arranged shots and scenes but introduces another issue common to many c-movies; using the camera as a passive observer instead of simulating the character’s point of view for the audience. Boggy Creek II is a typical group survival movie about three college students and their professor who go to the swamps of southern Arkansas in search of the legendary Boggy Creek creature. The scene in question here is when the professor first encounters the creature face to face. The group is woken up in the middle night by the perimeter alarm in their camper, after observing the creature’s movement on his computer Doc takes his rifle out for closer investigation. This type of scene where the main group first encounters and is cornered by a threat is very common and usually follows the same formula from film to film; wait for the creature to make the first move, build suspense through isolation, curiosity and wonder, etc. Low budget pictures often try to emulate the established conventions of larger Hollywood genre films, and while the basic elements are present this particular scene is unable to create a sense of panic. First is problem of perspective, director Charles B. Pierce puts the camera, and thus the audience perspective, in the corner of the camper looking in on the action. What we see is the group standing huddled inside their camper watching the creature’s movement on the computer screen. We can see that they are frightened but that’s all, because the director never uses the camera to make us aware of an external threat. For example the characters might glance out the window, in fact Tim (one of the students) does briefly look outside but the camera never shows what he was looking for or at, violating Pudovkin’s rule about editing the scene which says that the shot of a character’s gaze should be followed by the object of that gaze (7) The buildup of tension continues to diminish with two external long-shots of the camper. They are in a clearing in the middle of the woods that acts as a camp site. The camera is placed fifty or so yards from the entrance of the camper. With that, the director eases tension because we can clearly see there is no monster nearby. If the camera acts as the spectator’s eye then this also makes us feel safe and insulated because we’re in the general space of the creature, and nothing has happened, so it must be ok. Next in the scene Doc decides to go out and confront the creature, but first he and Tim must turn on the floodlight. Once again we are not given the character’s point of view at all and so we end up with another medium-long shot of Doc and Tim exiting the camper, looking cautious, but obviously not in danger. And because we aren’t shown the dark forest surrounding them we can’t identify with their panic since the aim of the camera shelters us from direction of the threat.
Continuing with the same kind of point of view deficiencies I’d like to look at the opening sequence of 1990’s The Final Sacrifice, a film about a teenage boy named Troy who, with the help of a burly drifter named Zap Rousdower, tries to follow a map to a lost city that his deceased father had previously discovered. The film starts off with Troy in the basement of his house, researching his dead father’s life where he discovers the map to the lost city. The next day we see Troy alone in the kitchen of his house when a mysterious hooded cult shows up and demands the map. This begins a three and a half minute chase scene that I would like to focus on in detail since chases and pursuits are a common feature in the genre film (which the majority of c-films are). First of all, the major problem that exists in the c-movie chase scene is that shots are often fixed in multiple locations surrounding the action. Instead of a steady flow of action emanating from the protagonist’s evasion of the threat it’s more like watching the event happen from the perspective of security cameras randomly planted around the location. In one thirty second long shot the film shows Satoris (leader of the cult) standing in the kitchen calling out for Troy to hand over the map, “Troy! I know you can hear me and I know you have the map, I want it”. The next shot is from outside the house which shows Troy looking out the basement window as cult thugs run by.
Because the film does not show us any response from Troy the purpose of Satoris’ threat becomes irrelevant. Next is a shot of the thugs running down a flight of stairs that we assume leads to the basement where Troy is. But once again there is no reaction from Troy, we just see him scurry out the window, followed by four shots that lead the action toward a fixed point in the street, where Troy then gets on a bike and ride away from the camera. It may seem inconsequential but the shot mentioned immediately separates the viewer from the involvement they’re supposed to feel in the scene. The sequence of shots brings the action away from the house and then into the street where the camera becomes a useless bystander, the third point in a triangle between Troy riding away on a bicycle and the thugs in pursuit. Once again we arrive at two more unnecessary shots; the first is of Rousdower somewhere away from the action trying to get his truck to start. Second, we see a thug get into his car to chase after Troy. Forty-five seconds pass before we see Troy again, an eternity in chase sequence time, and by this point we have no idea where he is or if we should even be worried anymore. In most chase sequences the director relies mostly either on shots close to the perspective of the protagonist or shots from the perspective of bystanders. What happens in Final Sacrifice is that there are no bystanders whatsoever so we end up identifying only with the camera, who’s presence alone should rarely (if ever) act as a character within the film.
Hopefully through this brief discussion I’ve been able to demonstrate some of the major problems that exist in the cinema category called c-films, all of which stem from the central issue of passive editing. This failure by the director and editor to take control of their story and manipulate the flow of emotions in an evenhanded manner is what I believe to be the greatest fault in this specific era of the low budget movies. Of course budget issues are more complex and varied than what I addressed here, and so a lot of this has been based on an assumption that filmmakers can overcome this obstacle, and that there are enough examples to prove it. Does this mean that the people working on these films are the bottom of the barrel, talent-wise? Not necessarily, and I don’t believe there was any great decrease in talent from the old days of Hollywood b-movies to the c-movies discussed here. What I think did change was the assembly line process. Old b-movies still went through the studio filter and as a result their final product still had a semblance of quality. 1980’s c-movies rarely had the backing of a major studio and had to rely on their own enthusiasm and love of the established conventions they grew up watching. That is why I’m hesitant to simply equate budget issues to the shortcomings of these directors and editors, something that’s very difficult to prove. Based on Pudhovkin’s statements that “editing is one of the most significant instruments of effect possessed by the film technician” (7) and “an important instrument of impression” (12) my goal here was to simply point out what I saw as an extremely common thread that runs through this specific niche in movie history. What does this all mean? What caused these filmmakers to be so predictable and hands-off with their creations? I’m not sure, there’s too much history to sift through. What is interesting though, and something that could help further investigation is the relatively recent rise in the ease and availability of computer based editing software which has made it easier for even the poorest of filmmakers to get flashy results. Somewhere between the mid nineties and this decade the c-movie died, or at least evolved into a new set of problems for the low budget filmmaker, perhaps inherent in all visual media of poor quality. We’ll see.
Works Cited
Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues. Dir. Charles B. Pierce. Perf. Charles B. Pierce. Charles B. Pierce Pictures Inc., 1985.
The Final Sacrifice. Dir. Tjardus Greidanus. Perf. Christian Malcolm. Flying Dutchman Productions Ltd, 1990.
“The Internet Movie Database.” IMDB. 30 Nov. 2008.
Laserblast. Dir. Michael Rae. Perf. Kim Milford. Selected Pictures, 1978.
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Dir. Douglas Williams. Perf. Raul Julia. RSL, 1983.
Prince, Stephen . A new pot of gold : Hollywood under the electronic rainbow, 1980-1989. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2000.
Pudovkin, Vsevolod. "Film Technique." Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Shaefer, Eric . "The Aethestics of B-Movies ." Film Reference. 2008. Advameg INC. 26 Nov. 2008.
"Wikimedia Foundation, Inc." Wikipedia. 22 Nov. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,. 26 Nov. 2008.
General historical information gathered from Stephen Prince’s book (Specifically Chapters 6 and 7 on the development of filmmakers and production in the 1980’s) wikipedia, film reference and internet movie database.
Other films screened
Time Walker. Dir. Tom Kennedy. Perf. John Lavachielli. Byzantine Productions, 1982.
City Limits. Dir. Aaron Lipstadt. Perf. John Stockwell. Film Ventures International, 1985.
Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell. Dir. Alphonso Corona. Perf. John A. Nelson. Concorde-New Horizons, 1988.
Escape 2000. Dir. Enzo Castellani. Perf. Mark Gregory. Fulvia Film, 1983.
Final Justice. Dir. Greydon Clark. Perf. Joe Don Baker. Arista Films, 1985.
Future War. Dir. Anthony Doublin. Perf. Daniel Berhardt. Cine Excel, 1997.
Hobgoblins. Dir. Rick Sloane. Perf. Tom Bartlett. Rick Sloane Productions, 1988.
Space Mutiny . Dir. David Winters. Perf. Reb Brown. A.I.P Productions, 1988.
Soultaker. Dir, Michael Rissi. Perf. Joe Estevez. Pacific West Entertainment Group, 1990.
Time Chasers. Dir. David Giancola. Perf. Matthew Bruch. Edgewood Entertainment, 1994.
Time Runner. Dir. Michael Marzo. Perf. Mark Hamill. Excalibur Pictures, 1993)
Warrior of the Lost World. Dir. David Worth. Perf. Robert Ginty. Royal Film, 1983.
Werewolf. Dir. Tony Zarindast. Perf. Joe Estevez. Tozart Publishing, 1996.
Zombie Nightmare. Dir. Jack Bravman. Perf. John M. Thor. Gold-Gems Ltd, 1986.
In his article on editing from the book Film Technique Pudovkin defines the three basic overall structures that make a film; scene, sequence and scenario, and he then goes on to explain the specific editing techniques that are used to guide the spectator, to make them see and feel what the filmmaker wants them to. The prime issue with c-movies, however, is not their ability to piece together a scene in its basic form (alternating shots), but in the way their overall sequences try to build toward a climax yet rarely ever use any of the special editing techniques such as contrast or parallelism. Specifically what I will look at first is the buildup toward the supposed “moment of great tension” and then analyze the breakdown of suspense (or whatever emotion is trying to be evoked). The first film chosen for this discussion is the 1978 film Laserblast, directed by Michael Rae, it tells the story of a teenager named Billy who lives a cliché, 1970’s, southern California, slacker lifestyle. After discovering a giant laser gun that was left in the desert by aliens Billy begins to transform into a mindless killing machine, blasting everything in sight and getting revenge on all those who have been hassling him. The third act begins when Billy laser-blasts one of the town sheriffs who had questioned him the previous day about an incident. At this point in the usual Hollywood narrative we would most likely see simultaneous editing used; Billy’s girlfriend has discovered his transformation , the aliens are trying to recover their laser gun, and a government agent (as well as the police) are on his trail. So, the normal course of action would be to show these three or four threads of interests at the same time, cutting back and forth between each and inevitably coming to a head, resolving. But instead Laserblast inverts this formula by giving the most screen time to inconsequential events while totally glossing over the storytelling elements that build audience suspense.
Essentially there are three important character points of view happening towards the end of this movie; Billy, his girlfriend and the aliens, but for some reason the film decides to forgo the fleshing out of those parts in favor of letting Billy blow some more stuff up. Throughout the third act crisis portion we see Billy on a rampage, this cuts back very quickly to two confusing, slow paced scenes at the house of his girlfriend where the federal agent has arrived to inform her that Billy is infected by an alien disease (though he never actually says this, it’s inferred). Also interspersed is one brief scene which shows the aliens inspecting a car destroyed by Billy, one of only three scenes that show the aliens searching for him; one at the beginning, middle and final scene). As I mentioned, a typical film would focus the majority of the final act on the rapid development of these three parts and, through quick cuts between multiple events, the editing would reflect the urgency of all parties trying to prevent Billy from causing further damage. Instead the editing focuses on three scenes (each of which lasts at least two minutes) that have no effect whatsoever on the final outcome. The first is a two minute and thirty second scene of Chuck and Eddie (the comic relief) driving along the highway in their classic car. Nothing of consequence happens here, Eddie delivers some silly lines about the recent mysterious laser blast incidents, and just they drive along the highway for 2 ½ minutes while a tracking shot shows us how beautiful their car is. Finally they see Billy appear on the side of the road who then blows them up with the ray gun. This relatively slow scene right in the middle of the final act kills whatever pacing might have otherwise been achieved. There are two more examples like this in the third act alone; the second is a long scene where we see Billy wandering the desert and suddenly a small aircraft appears. One of the passengers wielding a rifle begins firing down at him, the plane circles around and they begin exchanging fire until Billy finally destroys the aircraft. One of the major problems of this scene is that it happens out of sequence. The part of the film in which we see the authorities escalate their search happened a good ten to fifteen minutes earlier when this scene finally occurs it’s ambiguous as to who these people in the airplane are, and why they are just now attacking Billy. Since the scene occurs late in the film, and in a strange sequence, all it does is serve to disrupt the pace. The third scene that the film pointlessly introduces happens a few minutes later when Billy hitches a ride from a hippie and then kills him. He is picked up by the stereotypical stoner character who offers him drugs and tries to make casual conversation. Billy then puts on the crystal necklace that causes him to turn into an mindless monster and blasts the hippie out the driver side door. Taking control of the vehicle he drives to the location of the final scene. What I think these faults illustrate is not an overall flaw in the writing (though it is bad) but in the final decision making regarding editing. These long scenes inserted into the film which break up the cohesiveness of the climax do not introduce new narrative, so the scenes do not disrupt the flow of the story arc, they simply drag it down and divert the viewer from their desire to feel tension and get to the resolution. By the time we get to the final confrontation between Billy, the aliens, his girlfriend and the agent, their motivation and urgency in the moment has become so convoluted and dragged out that audience is basically lost. It’s similar to a roller coaster that makes you get off once it reaches the top, then let’s you back on once it’s reached the bottom, and so the scenarists do not, “in even rhythm”, transfer the interest of the spectator through a series of events (13)
Another film that has the same basic problem of building scenes in a way that manipulates audience expectation is the 1985 sci-fi picture Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. But Instead of the lopsided, jumbled scene order and length like we saw in Laserblast, we have a series of scenes that are edited in a homogenous, sequential style that’s a common flaw in many c-movies. In what is supposed to be the climax of the film the main character; Fingal (played by the late Raul Julia), is trying to escape from the evil Novicorp corporation mainframe that his mind has been trapped in during a routine therapy session (like Total Recall and The Matrix). With the help of a Novicorp employee named Apollonia he tries to hack the program and escape before the chairman can get rid of him. Unlike Laserblast which at least attempts simultaneous storytelling in the finale, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank employs no special editing techniques and barely achieves anything resembling a finale. Each scene concludes the action it begins and then, in an almost episodic manner, moves on to the next important plot point. First is a scene in which Apollonia is wondering where Fingal’s misplaced body is so that it can be reconnected with his mind. “Time is running out” she says to the character (Toobie) who’s actually doing the searching. Ten or fifteen minutes later, in a completely anticlimactic fashion, Toobie carts in Fingal’s lost body. Never once does the film actually show him searching for it, so one of the important parts of the “beat the clock” suspense happens completely off-screen, defeating the purpose. Next is a scene in which the Novicorp chairman tries to convince Fingal to stop causing problems for the corporation, to end his attempts at overriding the company’s mainframe and just assimilate and conform like everyone else. In just one scene we see the confrontation, the bargain proposed by the Chairman, and then Fingal’s refusal. Once again we see an example where the tension is thwarted immediately. In a plot device that’s usually used to make the audience wonder if the main character will do the right thing, often interspersed among other scenes of simultaneous heightened action, this movie settles the question without dragging it the point of highest tension, leading the audience nowhere. Needless to say the film continues like this right until the end.
These are just a few of many examples where c-movies do not use basic simultaneity editing, for whatever reason, and as a result lose the impact that could have possibly been created. As a result 1980’s low budget films play more like video game where the main characters complete each stage as they rush to complete their objectives. In the action based films of this c-movie category it’s often just an all out chaotic onslaught and the tension is never escalated in the narrative between what the antagonist is trying to do (what he does during the brief moments he has the upper hand) and the movement of the protagonist to stop him. In many examples these films (especially sci-fi, dystopia, fantasy “epics” like Deathstalker III, Space Mutiny and Warrior from the Lost World) simply plateau at a frenzied pace without reinforcing the importance of the stakes through careful editing. It’s the blandest of sequential editing that merely shows every element happen in order from least to greatest threat. The directors and editors in a majority of these movies are unable to build a web of even the most basic complexity, and as a result of having such a shaky foundation the other elements within the films are forced to carry the interest level, which they would have a hard time doing even if the editing and cinematography were good.
The third issue connected to editing is seen in the 1985 creature film Boggy Creek II; written, produced and starring Charles B. Pierce. Like the previous movies discussed this also suffers from awkward pacing and poorly arranged shots and scenes but introduces another issue common to many c-movies; using the camera as a passive observer instead of simulating the character’s point of view for the audience. Boggy Creek II is a typical group survival movie about three college students and their professor who go to the swamps of southern Arkansas in search of the legendary Boggy Creek creature. The scene in question here is when the professor first encounters the creature face to face. The group is woken up in the middle night by the perimeter alarm in their camper, after observing the creature’s movement on his computer Doc takes his rifle out for closer investigation. This type of scene where the main group first encounters and is cornered by a threat is very common and usually follows the same formula from film to film; wait for the creature to make the first move, build suspense through isolation, curiosity and wonder, etc. Low budget pictures often try to emulate the established conventions of larger Hollywood genre films, and while the basic elements are present this particular scene is unable to create a sense of panic. First is problem of perspective, director Charles B. Pierce puts the camera, and thus the audience perspective, in the corner of the camper looking in on the action. What we see is the group standing huddled inside their camper watching the creature’s movement on the computer screen. We can see that they are frightened but that’s all, because the director never uses the camera to make us aware of an external threat. For example the characters might glance out the window, in fact Tim (one of the students) does briefly look outside but the camera never shows what he was looking for or at, violating Pudovkin’s rule about editing the scene which says that the shot of a character’s gaze should be followed by the object of that gaze (7) The buildup of tension continues to diminish with two external long-shots of the camper. They are in a clearing in the middle of the woods that acts as a camp site. The camera is placed fifty or so yards from the entrance of the camper. With that, the director eases tension because we can clearly see there is no monster nearby. If the camera acts as the spectator’s eye then this also makes us feel safe and insulated because we’re in the general space of the creature, and nothing has happened, so it must be ok. Next in the scene Doc decides to go out and confront the creature, but first he and Tim must turn on the floodlight. Once again we are not given the character’s point of view at all and so we end up with another medium-long shot of Doc and Tim exiting the camper, looking cautious, but obviously not in danger. And because we aren’t shown the dark forest surrounding them we can’t identify with their panic since the aim of the camera shelters us from direction of the threat.
Continuing with the same kind of point of view deficiencies I’d like to look at the opening sequence of 1990’s The Final Sacrifice, a film about a teenage boy named Troy who, with the help of a burly drifter named Zap Rousdower, tries to follow a map to a lost city that his deceased father had previously discovered. The film starts off with Troy in the basement of his house, researching his dead father’s life where he discovers the map to the lost city. The next day we see Troy alone in the kitchen of his house when a mysterious hooded cult shows up and demands the map. This begins a three and a half minute chase scene that I would like to focus on in detail since chases and pursuits are a common feature in the genre film (which the majority of c-films are). First of all, the major problem that exists in the c-movie chase scene is that shots are often fixed in multiple locations surrounding the action. Instead of a steady flow of action emanating from the protagonist’s evasion of the threat it’s more like watching the event happen from the perspective of security cameras randomly planted around the location. In one thirty second long shot the film shows Satoris (leader of the cult) standing in the kitchen calling out for Troy to hand over the map, “Troy! I know you can hear me and I know you have the map, I want it”. The next shot is from outside the house which shows Troy looking out the basement window as cult thugs run by.
Because the film does not show us any response from Troy the purpose of Satoris’ threat becomes irrelevant. Next is a shot of the thugs running down a flight of stairs that we assume leads to the basement where Troy is. But once again there is no reaction from Troy, we just see him scurry out the window, followed by four shots that lead the action toward a fixed point in the street, where Troy then gets on a bike and ride away from the camera. It may seem inconsequential but the shot mentioned immediately separates the viewer from the involvement they’re supposed to feel in the scene. The sequence of shots brings the action away from the house and then into the street where the camera becomes a useless bystander, the third point in a triangle between Troy riding away on a bicycle and the thugs in pursuit. Once again we arrive at two more unnecessary shots; the first is of Rousdower somewhere away from the action trying to get his truck to start. Second, we see a thug get into his car to chase after Troy. Forty-five seconds pass before we see Troy again, an eternity in chase sequence time, and by this point we have no idea where he is or if we should even be worried anymore. In most chase sequences the director relies mostly either on shots close to the perspective of the protagonist or shots from the perspective of bystanders. What happens in Final Sacrifice is that there are no bystanders whatsoever so we end up identifying only with the camera, who’s presence alone should rarely (if ever) act as a character within the film.
Hopefully through this brief discussion I’ve been able to demonstrate some of the major problems that exist in the cinema category called c-films, all of which stem from the central issue of passive editing. This failure by the director and editor to take control of their story and manipulate the flow of emotions in an evenhanded manner is what I believe to be the greatest fault in this specific era of the low budget movies. Of course budget issues are more complex and varied than what I addressed here, and so a lot of this has been based on an assumption that filmmakers can overcome this obstacle, and that there are enough examples to prove it. Does this mean that the people working on these films are the bottom of the barrel, talent-wise? Not necessarily, and I don’t believe there was any great decrease in talent from the old days of Hollywood b-movies to the c-movies discussed here. What I think did change was the assembly line process. Old b-movies still went through the studio filter and as a result their final product still had a semblance of quality. 1980’s c-movies rarely had the backing of a major studio and had to rely on their own enthusiasm and love of the established conventions they grew up watching. That is why I’m hesitant to simply equate budget issues to the shortcomings of these directors and editors, something that’s very difficult to prove. Based on Pudhovkin’s statements that “editing is one of the most significant instruments of effect possessed by the film technician” (7) and “an important instrument of impression” (12) my goal here was to simply point out what I saw as an extremely common thread that runs through this specific niche in movie history. What does this all mean? What caused these filmmakers to be so predictable and hands-off with their creations? I’m not sure, there’s too much history to sift through. What is interesting though, and something that could help further investigation is the relatively recent rise in the ease and availability of computer based editing software which has made it easier for even the poorest of filmmakers to get flashy results. Somewhere between the mid nineties and this decade the c-movie died, or at least evolved into a new set of problems for the low budget filmmaker, perhaps inherent in all visual media of poor quality. We’ll see.
Works Cited
Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues. Dir. Charles B. Pierce. Perf. Charles B. Pierce. Charles B. Pierce Pictures Inc., 1985.
The Final Sacrifice. Dir. Tjardus Greidanus. Perf. Christian Malcolm. Flying Dutchman Productions Ltd, 1990.
“The Internet Movie Database.” IMDB. 30 Nov. 2008
Laserblast. Dir. Michael Rae. Perf. Kim Milford. Selected Pictures, 1978.
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Dir. Douglas Williams. Perf. Raul Julia. RSL, 1983.
Prince, Stephen . A new pot of gold : Hollywood under the electronic rainbow, 1980-1989. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2000.
Pudovkin, Vsevolod. "Film Technique." Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Shaefer, Eric . "The Aethestics of B-Movies ." Film Reference. 2008. Advameg INC. 26 Nov. 2008
"Wikimedia Foundation, Inc." Wikipedia. 22 Nov. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,. 26 Nov. 2008
General historical information gathered from Stephen Prince’s book (Specifically Chapters 6 and 7 on the development of filmmakers and production in the 1980’s) wikipedia, film reference and internet movie database.
Other films screened
Time Walker. Dir. Tom Kennedy. Perf. John Lavachielli. Byzantine Productions, 1982.
City Limits. Dir. Aaron Lipstadt. Perf. John Stockwell. Film Ventures International, 1985.
Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell. Dir. Alphonso Corona. Perf. John A. Nelson. Concorde-New Horizons, 1988.
Escape 2000. Dir. Enzo Castellani. Perf. Mark Gregory. Fulvia Film, 1983.
Final Justice. Dir. Greydon Clark. Perf. Joe Don Baker. Arista Films, 1985.
Future War. Dir. Anthony Doublin. Perf. Daniel Berhardt. Cine Excel, 1997.
Hobgoblins. Dir. Rick Sloane. Perf. Tom Bartlett. Rick Sloane Productions, 1988.
Space Mutiny . Dir. David Winters. Perf. Reb Brown. A.I.P Productions, 1988.
Soultaker. Dir, Michael Rissi. Perf. Joe Estevez. Pacific West Entertainment Group, 1990.
Time Chasers. Dir. David Giancola. Perf. Matthew Bruch. Edgewood Entertainment, 1994.
Time Runner. Dir. Michael Marzo. Perf. Mark Hamill. Excalibur Pictures, 1993)
Warrior of the Lost World. Dir. David Worth. Perf. Robert Ginty. Royal Film, 1983.
Werewolf. Dir. Tony Zarindast. Perf. Joe Estevez. Tozart Publishing, 1996.
Zombie Nightmare. Dir. Jack Bravman. Perf. John M. Thor. Gold-Gems Ltd, 1986.
12.04.2008
12.03.2008
Paging Mr. Herman!
So I've heard this rumor floating around for about five years now that Paul Rubens has been planning on doing two new Pee Wee Herman films; one a lighthearted romp and the other a black comedy. But only recently has the project been confirmed as "in production" on IMDB. Sure, that doesn't necessarily mean it's happening but it's a good indicator. This could very interesting, seeing what an aged Pee Wee has done with his life...hopefully he's still a recluse who talks to his furniture and plays with antique toys. And hopefully Mr. Rubens learned a lesson from his first two films and realizes that the beauty of Pee Wee is how the character works on multiple levels; he's kid friendly, he's silly, but at the same time he's not right in the head. He's about subtle and sarcastic humor that sometimes crosses the threshold of bizarre innuendo...it's about walking the razors edge between what's whimsical and what's psychotic...not a generic saturday morning carnival like Big Top Pee Wee.
11.11.2008
Twenty-Five Greatest Genesis Songs
1. Supper's Ready [Foxtrot]
2. Firth of Fifth [Selling England by the Pound]
3. The Musical Box [Nursery Cryme]
4. Dance on a Volcano [Trick of the Tail]
5. One for the Vine [Wind & Wuthering]
6. Dancing with the Moonlit Knight [Selling England by the Pound]
7. Watcher of the Skies [Foxtrot]
8. Mama [Genesis]
9. In the Cage [The Lamb Lies Down Broadway]
10. Back in NYC [The Lamb Lies Down Broadway]
11. Duchess [Duke]
12. Turn It on Again [Duke]
13. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight [Invisible Touch]
14. Fountain of Salmacis [Nursery Cryme]
15. Entangled [Trick of the Tail]
16. Behind the Lines [Duke]
17. Carpet Crawlers [The Lamb Lies Down Broadway]
18. Return of the Giant Hogweed [Nursery Cryme]
19. Get 'Em Out by Friday [Foxtrot]
20. Seven Stones [Trespass]
21. Afterglow [Wind & Wuthering]
22. Squonk [Trick of the Tail]
23. Fading Lights [We Can't Dance]
24. Can-Utility and the Coastliners [Foxtrot]
25. The Knife [Tresspass]
10.30.2008
Grim Fandango 10th Anniversary
Today is the tenth anniversary of Grim Fandango, a game that forever changed my outlook on what was possible in the realm of creativity, not only in video games but in all art. It will remain one of the standard bearers for imagination, and for me personally. Thank you Tim Shaefer.
10.25.2008
Wong Kar Wai’s Cinematic Sensuality
Over the span of his acclaimed directing career Wong Kar Wai has developed a reputation of being one of the world’s most romantic filmmakers, but the interesting thing about Kar Wai is that even though he is considered one of the best storytellers in this genre he almost never uses its common devices like explicit sexuality or overdramatic style which often result in the bland, cliché kind of films that are typical of the romance genre. Instead of the usual fairy-tale, ‘against all odds’ approach, Kar Wai takes a different angle and strips down the idea of romance to its basic forms; need and want. He orchestrates virtually every element of his films to subtly enhance the eroticism, and through these next few pages I will look at two important elements he uses to create his unique depictions of sexuality and desire.
The three films I chose to look at for this topic were Chungking Express, 2046 and the short film The Hand from the three part film called Eros. The first aspect of Kar Wai’s films that I believe is the most responsible for their memorable love stories and portrayals of relationships is his nearly exclusive use of unrequited love in his storytelling. One reason I’m sure he prefers this method of portraying love is that it allows his films to be almost completely about the topic of love while also having a myriad of other complex emotions to explore, all of which make the romance itself more intense. In a traditional love story where two people simply fall in love or are on a path toward romance the romance itself tends to drive every other aspect of the character’s lives and life itself suddenly points towards this filmic relationship. Wong Kar Wai’s love stories are different however, since his films are usually driven by one or more characters who love someone they can’t have, who are kind of on the outside looking in, it provides him as a director to focus on the subtleties of human behavior. For Kar Wai the use of unrequited love gives us a glimpse into the character’s private world, it shows us what they are really like when they’re alone, as opposed to traditional love stories when we only see the important encounters between two would-be lovers. In a 2001 interview with Kar Wai, Interview Magazine’s film writer Graham Fuller asked him why he often shoots lovers in isolation, citing how many of the characters in his films are shown by themselves. Fuller asks, “It’s as if love manifests itself most powerfully in isolation. Why is that such an important idea for you?” Kar Wai responds by saying; “When I was a child, I was the only one who came to Hong Kong; my brother and sister stayed in Shanghai. I didn't have a lot of friends, so I know about loneliness. I always consider my characters to be in orbit. They are in a routine, but then something happens--maybe they fall in or out of love--and they try to break from that routine. So we see them in transit, and at the end they are usually headed in a new direction.”
Kar Wai depicts love as something that’s not only a verbal and physical interaction between two people but also something that is dream-like and only exists in a person’s private world. By showing the restlessness, longing and desire that accompanies loneliness Wong Kar Wai gives his films a kind of sexual anxiety that subtly raises the overall level of sensuality. Two great examples of this are from the second half of Chungking Express when we see Tony Leung’s character (Officer 663) at home, sulking and talking to various inanimate objects in his house, telling them not to be sad and then eventually noticing the subtle changes that Faye has made to his apartment throughout the day. What’s interesting is that there really isn’t much of a traditional love story here, Officer 663 is mainly focused on his girlfriend who’s left him and Faye is kind of ambiguously trying to clean the bad memories out of his apartment. There’s basically a limited amount of interaction between the two characters in terms of actually sparking a romance, but in an indirect manner Kar Wai shows us that perhaps these two people are somehow destined to be together, maybe its not the right time, maybe they’re incapable of telling each other how they may really feel, but there’s something there. Seeing Faye’s silly way of expressing her affection and the subtle changes it causes in the policeman’s life makes us as viewers dream about what might happen to them. There is a quiet, innocent quality about this romance. The two of them don’t share anything physical on screen and they don’t openly discuss the prospect of getting together but through his very insightful, simple look at quirky human behavior Kar Wai still manages to create an incredibly unique portrait of a brief moment in two people’s lives.
Another example of Kar Wai’s use of unrequited love is from the film 2046. This film is pretty much packed with lost souls, nearly every character in it seems to be longing for something they can’t have. But the example I’ve chosen from this movie is similar to the previous one in that the two characters here, played once again by Tony Leung and Faye Wong, don’t seem to recognize the feelings that are between them. In this film Tony Leung’s character, a writer named Chow, begins to write a book based on the memories of women he has or hasn’t met in his life, we don’t really know though because the line between reality and fiction is blurred. But at one point the film, in between his many casual, sparkless encounters, he makes friends with his landlord’s daughter named Wang Jing Wen who we find out is dating a Japanese man against her father’s wishes. Chow decides to help her hide the relationship by having her boyfriend’s letters sent to his address instead. Later on she learns that Chow is a writer and tells him that she too is interested in writing, after showing him some of her work he lets her write parts of his short stories which he gets paid to write in quantity. Through a few brief scenes, as if some memory mixed with wishful thinking, he remembers “the best summer of my life” that they spent together. The final shot of this portion of the film shows the two of them standing on the apartment’s rooftop where Wang Jing Wen stares off into the distance as Chow just watches her. Nothing results from their brief time spent together and it’s only a small part of 2046 but it’s still one of the more touching moments and is a good example of Kar Wai’s talent for using the space that exists between two characters to give his films a special kind of sexual mystery. In an essay about Wong Kar Wai for the website Mediacircus, Anthony Leong describes “doomed” nature of relationships in Kar Wai films when he says “very few of the relationships found in Wong's films are based on emotional connection, and the struggle that his characters face is to cultivate deeper forms of association. Unfortunately, many of his characters do not form these emotional connections, out of fear of rejection, and find it much easier to have transaction-based affinities.” The “transaction” in this particular scene of 2046 being the job of writing that brings the two together for a short time, they seem incapable of relating on a greater level than that.
The final example of unrequited love comes from Kar Wai’s short film The Hand, which is considerably darker than the other two films. In this movie a tailor’s apprentice named Zhang falls in love with a customer who happens to be a prostitute or escort of some kind named Ms. Hua . Throughout the film he faithfully makes her clothes and secretly longs to be with her, all the while she never seems to notice his interest. At the end of the film, a few years have passed and she has grown sick and loses most of her money because she can no longer work. Still though, Zhang stays by her side by paying her rent and continuing to make clothes for her. Here, Kar Wai uses another one of his common variations on the unrequited love formula by making one character the hopeless pursuer of someone they’re in love with. As is true with all three of these movies the person who doesn’t return the love never explains or are asked to explain why they can’t love. Kar Wai presents these characters as almost ghostly figures who exist only in the mind of the person trying to win their heart, people who almost look like they’re under a spell, like they haven’t yet come to the moment of realization that they are actually in love with the person who loves them. In The Hand Zhang keeps his feelings to himself for most of the film, only toward the end truly showing love by taking care of her in her darkest hour. Over the course of most of the movie there is a very slow buildup until the end when twice the woman says “you are so good to me, Zhang”. It seems like so little but by the time we’ve reached that point in the movie you feel happy for Zhang and it’s a sweet moment when she finally realizes how much he loves her. One of the things I love about Wong Kar Wai is that he can take seemingly insignificant declarations of love and turn them into something beautiful and deep. As we can see by these examples unrequited love is probably Kar Wai’s most effective tool in making simple but sexy films. The storytelling device lets him create the needed tension that results from the desire for the forbidden fruit.
The other prominent feature of each of these Kar Wai films is how the worlds depicted in them are almost exclusively private spaces where the main characters have limited interaction with their immediate surroundings. They seem to exist in environments that are visually appealing but cramped and worn. As is true with most movies, everything we see and hear is a conscious choice made by the director and everyone on his artistic team, so the question is what is Wong Kar Wai trying to make the audience feel by placing his main characters in relatively confined, highly stylized and stimulating atmospheres? Like most every detail of his films I believe he’s chosen this specific style of environment in order to make the concept of unrequited love, which he’s famous for, even more tense and heart wrenching for us as viewers. What I mean is that when Kar Wai shows us characters who are separated by some invisible force and incapable of giving or receiving love from another their physical environment (in this case confined and visually busy spaces) has a kind of subtle, psychological affect on the viewer. The close proximity of interior spaces seem to squeeze the two lovers together but the detail and beauty of the space almost sucks the characters in like they could get lost in the background. So there’s this dual effect going on where the two would-be lovers are pulsating to and from each other, creating a more dramatic sense of longing and desire of wanting to know how the two will end up. Chungking Express has two parts that I think are interesting example of this. The first, which I really like, is the scene between woman in the blonde wig (Brigitte Lin) and He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) at the bar. In this shot Kar Wai places the two next to each other at the bar and fixes the camera at a medium close-up encompassing both from about their chest to top of head. The two could basically turn and be right in each other’s faces, so there is that tension, but what Kar Wai to also distance them is how he puts a puts a harsh red glow on the two. In the background of the shot we have dark, blurry images muddied by darkness and neon light, all framed by two thick, red curtains on either side of the frame. The red glow saturates the room and since these two characters have an exaggerated amount of light on their faces they almost begin to fade into the surroundings. Another interesting thing about this shot is that the woman still wears her sunglasses, by never taking them off she remains a mystery, we can’t see into her eyes, can’t see who she “really” is and neither can He Zhiwu. At this point in the movie we want to see him find someone so he can start to get over his old girlfriend May, and in this scene when he meets the woman, as viewers we almost expect that the two will get together but Kar Wai places visual roadblocks that make even small encounters seem like uphill battles.
The other scenes in Chungking that illustrates both togetherness and distance existing simultaneously are the recurring marketplace scenes between Officer 663 and Faye. Once again Kar Wai places the two in extremely close proximity in a crowded market where they are forced to get close, but again he does a few things to visually tear them apart. One quality of these sequences is the shaky camera movement that is fairly uncommon for the rest of the scenes between men and women. The movement is meant to convey a sense of chaos, to exaggerate the crowdedness of the marketplace, like this is worst possible place for these two people to try and get to know each other. It’s frustrating and charming at the same time, every day she comes down the same street carrying her basket just so she can see the officer eat lunch, and it seems as though he might enjoy seeing there but there’s also a little bit of frustration at the time and place of the meeting. It’s loud, it’s tight, it’s probably hot, but ok, he’ll still help her carry the basket, it’s cute. Also in one of the shots when the two are walking down the street through the market you can see the use of a color scheme once again. This time Faye and the officer are wearing almost solid yellow and blue. As she walks on the left side of the shot in her yellow shirt you can see other yellow objects appearing behind her catching the eye. For instance there is a large umbrella, some fruits and vegetables and a couple other people wearing the color. The same goes for the officer on his side of the shot, wearing blue.
In his short film Eros Wong Kar Wai creates this style of “close but separate” through a combination both visuals and storytelling. In this particular film, like I mentioned earlier, the sexual tension is created by showing Zhang as coming from a completely different world than Ms. Hua. He is shown working hard on her new clothes in a dark and dreary shop far away from her well kept, upscale apartment. In the scenes when he arrives at her home to fit her for the new garments he is always silent, like he knows he’s intruding and she is always busy doing something that distracts her from really acknowledging his presence; talking on the phone, arguing with a “client” or simply doesn’t have time to see him at all. But there they are, standing close together in an ambient lit apartment, waiting for a spark between them. Sometimes its hard to even see that there’s supposed to be anything between them at all but what Kar Wai does to hint at Zhang’s feelings are little acts of patience towards her lack of patience. Kind of like in Princess Bride when Wesley always says “as you wish” every time Buttercup bosses him around. In one particular scene Zhang is measuring Ms. Hua’s waistline and she says how she’s gained so much weight recently, Zhang looks at the measuring tape which confirms it but he replies that it’s only a couple of inches.
As we can see through these various visual and storytelling techniques Wong Kar Wai consistently and uniquely plays with the concept of what it means to connect with another person. Whether it be on a romantic level or just chance encounter that has potential, Kar Wai is still able to grab the viewers attention through subtle indicators that point to a possible love between two strangers. He creates these characters that seem so impenetrable and shut off from an uncaring world that we as viewers are compelled to focus harder, look for subtle clues about who these people are, what they’re looking for and we desire for them to find somebody special and break out of the cycle that seems to have them bound.
Citations
Fuller, Graham. “Wong Kar-Wai.” Interview February 2001: 15-17
Leong, Anthony. “Meditations on Loss: A Framework for the Films of Wong Kar Wai.” Mediacircus.net. 1998. Mediacircus.net. 20 April 1998
Wright, Elizabeth. “Wong Kar-wai.” Sensesofcinema.com. 2002. Sensesofcinema.com. 8 May 2002
The three films I chose to look at for this topic were Chungking Express, 2046 and the short film The Hand from the three part film called Eros. The first aspect of Kar Wai’s films that I believe is the most responsible for their memorable love stories and portrayals of relationships is his nearly exclusive use of unrequited love in his storytelling. One reason I’m sure he prefers this method of portraying love is that it allows his films to be almost completely about the topic of love while also having a myriad of other complex emotions to explore, all of which make the romance itself more intense. In a traditional love story where two people simply fall in love or are on a path toward romance the romance itself tends to drive every other aspect of the character’s lives and life itself suddenly points towards this filmic relationship. Wong Kar Wai’s love stories are different however, since his films are usually driven by one or more characters who love someone they can’t have, who are kind of on the outside looking in, it provides him as a director to focus on the subtleties of human behavior. For Kar Wai the use of unrequited love gives us a glimpse into the character’s private world, it shows us what they are really like when they’re alone, as opposed to traditional love stories when we only see the important encounters between two would-be lovers. In a 2001 interview with Kar Wai, Interview Magazine’s film writer Graham Fuller asked him why he often shoots lovers in isolation, citing how many of the characters in his films are shown by themselves. Fuller asks, “It’s as if love manifests itself most powerfully in isolation. Why is that such an important idea for you?” Kar Wai responds by saying; “When I was a child, I was the only one who came to Hong Kong; my brother and sister stayed in Shanghai. I didn't have a lot of friends, so I know about loneliness. I always consider my characters to be in orbit. They are in a routine, but then something happens--maybe they fall in or out of love--and they try to break from that routine. So we see them in transit, and at the end they are usually headed in a new direction.”
Kar Wai depicts love as something that’s not only a verbal and physical interaction between two people but also something that is dream-like and only exists in a person’s private world. By showing the restlessness, longing and desire that accompanies loneliness Wong Kar Wai gives his films a kind of sexual anxiety that subtly raises the overall level of sensuality. Two great examples of this are from the second half of Chungking Express when we see Tony Leung’s character (Officer 663) at home, sulking and talking to various inanimate objects in his house, telling them not to be sad and then eventually noticing the subtle changes that Faye has made to his apartment throughout the day. What’s interesting is that there really isn’t much of a traditional love story here, Officer 663 is mainly focused on his girlfriend who’s left him and Faye is kind of ambiguously trying to clean the bad memories out of his apartment. There’s basically a limited amount of interaction between the two characters in terms of actually sparking a romance, but in an indirect manner Kar Wai shows us that perhaps these two people are somehow destined to be together, maybe its not the right time, maybe they’re incapable of telling each other how they may really feel, but there’s something there. Seeing Faye’s silly way of expressing her affection and the subtle changes it causes in the policeman’s life makes us as viewers dream about what might happen to them. There is a quiet, innocent quality about this romance. The two of them don’t share anything physical on screen and they don’t openly discuss the prospect of getting together but through his very insightful, simple look at quirky human behavior Kar Wai still manages to create an incredibly unique portrait of a brief moment in two people’s lives.
Another example of Kar Wai’s use of unrequited love is from the film 2046. This film is pretty much packed with lost souls, nearly every character in it seems to be longing for something they can’t have. But the example I’ve chosen from this movie is similar to the previous one in that the two characters here, played once again by Tony Leung and Faye Wong, don’t seem to recognize the feelings that are between them. In this film Tony Leung’s character, a writer named Chow, begins to write a book based on the memories of women he has or hasn’t met in his life, we don’t really know though because the line between reality and fiction is blurred. But at one point the film, in between his many casual, sparkless encounters, he makes friends with his landlord’s daughter named Wang Jing Wen who we find out is dating a Japanese man against her father’s wishes. Chow decides to help her hide the relationship by having her boyfriend’s letters sent to his address instead. Later on she learns that Chow is a writer and tells him that she too is interested in writing, after showing him some of her work he lets her write parts of his short stories which he gets paid to write in quantity. Through a few brief scenes, as if some memory mixed with wishful thinking, he remembers “the best summer of my life” that they spent together. The final shot of this portion of the film shows the two of them standing on the apartment’s rooftop where Wang Jing Wen stares off into the distance as Chow just watches her. Nothing results from their brief time spent together and it’s only a small part of 2046 but it’s still one of the more touching moments and is a good example of Kar Wai’s talent for using the space that exists between two characters to give his films a special kind of sexual mystery. In an essay about Wong Kar Wai for the website Mediacircus, Anthony Leong describes “doomed” nature of relationships in Kar Wai films when he says “very few of the relationships found in Wong's films are based on emotional connection, and the struggle that his characters face is to cultivate deeper forms of association. Unfortunately, many of his characters do not form these emotional connections, out of fear of rejection, and find it much easier to have transaction-based affinities.” The “transaction” in this particular scene of 2046 being the job of writing that brings the two together for a short time, they seem incapable of relating on a greater level than that.
The final example of unrequited love comes from Kar Wai’s short film The Hand, which is considerably darker than the other two films. In this movie a tailor’s apprentice named Zhang falls in love with a customer who happens to be a prostitute or escort of some kind named Ms. Hua . Throughout the film he faithfully makes her clothes and secretly longs to be with her, all the while she never seems to notice his interest. At the end of the film, a few years have passed and she has grown sick and loses most of her money because she can no longer work. Still though, Zhang stays by her side by paying her rent and continuing to make clothes for her. Here, Kar Wai uses another one of his common variations on the unrequited love formula by making one character the hopeless pursuer of someone they’re in love with. As is true with all three of these movies the person who doesn’t return the love never explains or are asked to explain why they can’t love. Kar Wai presents these characters as almost ghostly figures who exist only in the mind of the person trying to win their heart, people who almost look like they’re under a spell, like they haven’t yet come to the moment of realization that they are actually in love with the person who loves them. In The Hand Zhang keeps his feelings to himself for most of the film, only toward the end truly showing love by taking care of her in her darkest hour. Over the course of most of the movie there is a very slow buildup until the end when twice the woman says “you are so good to me, Zhang”. It seems like so little but by the time we’ve reached that point in the movie you feel happy for Zhang and it’s a sweet moment when she finally realizes how much he loves her. One of the things I love about Wong Kar Wai is that he can take seemingly insignificant declarations of love and turn them into something beautiful and deep. As we can see by these examples unrequited love is probably Kar Wai’s most effective tool in making simple but sexy films. The storytelling device lets him create the needed tension that results from the desire for the forbidden fruit.
The other prominent feature of each of these Kar Wai films is how the worlds depicted in them are almost exclusively private spaces where the main characters have limited interaction with their immediate surroundings. They seem to exist in environments that are visually appealing but cramped and worn. As is true with most movies, everything we see and hear is a conscious choice made by the director and everyone on his artistic team, so the question is what is Wong Kar Wai trying to make the audience feel by placing his main characters in relatively confined, highly stylized and stimulating atmospheres? Like most every detail of his films I believe he’s chosen this specific style of environment in order to make the concept of unrequited love, which he’s famous for, even more tense and heart wrenching for us as viewers. What I mean is that when Kar Wai shows us characters who are separated by some invisible force and incapable of giving or receiving love from another their physical environment (in this case confined and visually busy spaces) has a kind of subtle, psychological affect on the viewer. The close proximity of interior spaces seem to squeeze the two lovers together but the detail and beauty of the space almost sucks the characters in like they could get lost in the background. So there’s this dual effect going on where the two would-be lovers are pulsating to and from each other, creating a more dramatic sense of longing and desire of wanting to know how the two will end up. Chungking Express has two parts that I think are interesting example of this. The first, which I really like, is the scene between woman in the blonde wig (Brigitte Lin) and He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) at the bar. In this shot Kar Wai places the two next to each other at the bar and fixes the camera at a medium close-up encompassing both from about their chest to top of head. The two could basically turn and be right in each other’s faces, so there is that tension, but what Kar Wai to also distance them is how he puts a puts a harsh red glow on the two. In the background of the shot we have dark, blurry images muddied by darkness and neon light, all framed by two thick, red curtains on either side of the frame. The red glow saturates the room and since these two characters have an exaggerated amount of light on their faces they almost begin to fade into the surroundings. Another interesting thing about this shot is that the woman still wears her sunglasses, by never taking them off she remains a mystery, we can’t see into her eyes, can’t see who she “really” is and neither can He Zhiwu. At this point in the movie we want to see him find someone so he can start to get over his old girlfriend May, and in this scene when he meets the woman, as viewers we almost expect that the two will get together but Kar Wai places visual roadblocks that make even small encounters seem like uphill battles.
The other scenes in Chungking that illustrates both togetherness and distance existing simultaneously are the recurring marketplace scenes between Officer 663 and Faye. Once again Kar Wai places the two in extremely close proximity in a crowded market where they are forced to get close, but again he does a few things to visually tear them apart. One quality of these sequences is the shaky camera movement that is fairly uncommon for the rest of the scenes between men and women. The movement is meant to convey a sense of chaos, to exaggerate the crowdedness of the marketplace, like this is worst possible place for these two people to try and get to know each other. It’s frustrating and charming at the same time, every day she comes down the same street carrying her basket just so she can see the officer eat lunch, and it seems as though he might enjoy seeing there but there’s also a little bit of frustration at the time and place of the meeting. It’s loud, it’s tight, it’s probably hot, but ok, he’ll still help her carry the basket, it’s cute. Also in one of the shots when the two are walking down the street through the market you can see the use of a color scheme once again. This time Faye and the officer are wearing almost solid yellow and blue. As she walks on the left side of the shot in her yellow shirt you can see other yellow objects appearing behind her catching the eye. For instance there is a large umbrella, some fruits and vegetables and a couple other people wearing the color. The same goes for the officer on his side of the shot, wearing blue.
In his short film Eros Wong Kar Wai creates this style of “close but separate” through a combination both visuals and storytelling. In this particular film, like I mentioned earlier, the sexual tension is created by showing Zhang as coming from a completely different world than Ms. Hua. He is shown working hard on her new clothes in a dark and dreary shop far away from her well kept, upscale apartment. In the scenes when he arrives at her home to fit her for the new garments he is always silent, like he knows he’s intruding and she is always busy doing something that distracts her from really acknowledging his presence; talking on the phone, arguing with a “client” or simply doesn’t have time to see him at all. But there they are, standing close together in an ambient lit apartment, waiting for a spark between them. Sometimes its hard to even see that there’s supposed to be anything between them at all but what Kar Wai does to hint at Zhang’s feelings are little acts of patience towards her lack of patience. Kind of like in Princess Bride when Wesley always says “as you wish” every time Buttercup bosses him around. In one particular scene Zhang is measuring Ms. Hua’s waistline and she says how she’s gained so much weight recently, Zhang looks at the measuring tape which confirms it but he replies that it’s only a couple of inches.
As we can see through these various visual and storytelling techniques Wong Kar Wai consistently and uniquely plays with the concept of what it means to connect with another person. Whether it be on a romantic level or just chance encounter that has potential, Kar Wai is still able to grab the viewers attention through subtle indicators that point to a possible love between two strangers. He creates these characters that seem so impenetrable and shut off from an uncaring world that we as viewers are compelled to focus harder, look for subtle clues about who these people are, what they’re looking for and we desire for them to find somebody special and break out of the cycle that seems to have them bound.
Citations
Fuller, Graham. “Wong Kar-Wai.” Interview February 2001: 15-17
Leong, Anthony. “Meditations on Loss: A Framework for the Films of Wong Kar Wai.” Mediacircus.net. 1998. Mediacircus.net. 20 April 1998
Wright, Elizabeth. “Wong Kar-wai.” Sensesofcinema.com. 2002. Sensesofcinema.com. 8 May 2002
9.21.2008
And it came to pass... that Rock & Roll is dead
If Hendrix were alive to see this commercial he would probably smoke a garage full of weed to ensure no memory of this lingers in his mind. If this doesn't signify the official "death" of rock and roll as we know it, I don't know what does. In this commercial for Rock Band 2 we can see that the poser/hipster/apatheticool scenes have (like the Borg) assimilated all sacred remnants of Rock's discernable legacy. Now we're left with grinning videogamers who stand just long enough to turn on their xboxs which now spin the former soundtracks for social destruction. Video Killed the Radio Star...indeed...and so did irony, the ultimate killer of meaningful movements. Remember the phrase "sex, drugs and rock & roll"? Yes? Well, the first of those isn't likely to happen if you're prancing about your living room like a jackass playing a guitar video game.
Who knew that AC/DC would help usher in the extinction of what they helped create.
9.18.2008
"Jesus Is My Friend"...
or at least he was until they wrote this song. Looks like Danny and Armi have serious competition for the worst musical performance ever caught on tape. Sonseed, the Assembly of God's answer to Regatta de Blanc, pushes the boundaries of pentacostal honkyness and paints a disturbing portrait of God as a persistent mountie who will zap you...zap. because he does that. Remember Sodom and Gomorah? They weren't indulging in fleshly carnalities, they were writing late 70's, light-pop hits. I have to admit however the rhythm is fresh and uplifting...like a thousand sunday school lessons crammed into my skull. Like wearing a three piece suit to the beach...or the shower.
and as if that weren't enough for one day, dig this, messa'me...A Bob Jones offertory is temporarily possessed by the spirit of the dragon: Siquo...Maybe it's just my rigid Baptist upbringing but I don't think the Apostle Paul would have approved of cabbage-patching and moonwalking as a means of worship, I'm pretty sure he condemns it in one of his letters to Corinth.
and as if that weren't enough for one day, dig this, messa'me...A Bob Jones offertory is temporarily possessed by the spirit of the dragon: Siquo...Maybe it's just my rigid Baptist upbringing but I don't think the Apostle Paul would have approved of cabbage-patching and moonwalking as a means of worship, I'm pretty sure he condemns it in one of his letters to Corinth.
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