Tag: movies

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Moon: Duncan Jones’ Great Gig in the Sky

MoonForty years, almost to the day, after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Duncan Jones’ directorial debut Moon (2009) was released. It is no secret that I am a big fan of both the moon and Sam Rockwell, so I went to see this (twice) as soon as I had the chance. There are probably spoilers in what follows, so read on with that in mind.

Ever since re-watching Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) recently, I’ve been wondering why Sam Rockwell isn’t way more famous. Maybe Moon will fix that. His performance is — as always — flawless, and although Jones wrote the role of Sam Bell specifically for Rockwell, it presented a challenging task regardless.

…and I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I
Don’t mind. Why should I be frightened of dying?
There’s no reason for it, you’ve gotta go sometime.
I never said I was frightened of dying. — Pink Floyd

Sam Rockwell

“I have always been a fan of science fiction films,” Jones says. “In my mind, the golden age of SF cinema was the ‘70s, early ‘80s, when films like Silent Running, Alien, Blade Runner, and Outland told human stories in future environments. I’ve always wanted to make a film that felt like it could fit into that canon.” Moon definitely fits into that canon.

Moon tells the story of astronaut Sam Bell, who is on a three-year solitary contract harvesting Helium 3 from the far side of the moon. We catch him two weeks before the end of his stay and just before the daily routine of his mission starts to devolve into madness and second guessing. The clues mount slowly, but finally crest and cave in.

One of the most powerful aspects of the film is its ability to make you feel a slight sense of unease. In this way it reminds me of Shane Carruth’s Primer (2004). Just the subtle but unavoidable feeling that something here is not quite right. Referencing several sci-fi classics, Jones creatively borrows elements from the golden age and appropriates them. Pieces from films past include a resurrection of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in the moon base’s in-house computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), a nod to the hallucinations of Steven Soderburgh’s Solaris (2002), and a similar use of the memory implants from Blade Runner (1982). While Moon borrows elements from older films, it mixes them in new ways. Duncan Jones addressed his references online, writing, “As much as anyone I know, I revere sci-fi from the past. If anyone feels I have overstepped the mark in the homages I pay, I’m sorry. But I would say this: I have talked to two of the three directors that made the films I mentioned above, and both of them loved Moon, and are thrilled that someone of my generation would care enough about what they made so many years ago to want to pay them the compliment of making a film like Moon.”

Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the moon
Planet earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do. — David Bowie

Moon Rover

The aesthetics of Moon are timeless, situating the story anywhere in the near future and the movie itself anywhere in the recent past. It also manages to avert cliché in several other ways. GERTY, for whom we wait to go amok and turn on Sam, stays true and helps him till the very end — even when it means erasing his own memory.

Like Solaris, Moon is more concerned with inner space than outer space (and Clint Mansell’s score recalls Cliff Martinez’s best work). It was written and directed in the style of the “golden age,” and in many ways, it’s the polar opposite of modern-day action sci-fi like I Am Legend (2007) or District 9 (2009). As Jones put it, “…there were quite a few personal things I wanted to put into this film. My feelings about how people change over time, questions that I felt we all have about our sense of worth, feelings that you go through during long distance relationships. Personal and human things. Things that, like the Moon itself, we could all relate to.”

Indeed.

———-

Here’s the trailer to Duncan Jones’ Moon [runtime: 2:07]:

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Teach Copyright Right!

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Last week, the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation — a nonprofit mouthpiece for the entertainment and software industries — unveiled plans to spread its protectionist ideas to the nation’s schools and libraries through the distribution of a curriculum titled “Think First, Copy Later.”  “Think First, Copy Later” and other intimidating educational materials were produced by the MPAA, RIAA, Business Software Alliance, and other content holders to scare students into believing that making copies is wrong.

EFF knows that the creators and innovators of tomorrow don’t need more intimidation.  What they need is solid, accurate information that will help them make smart choices about how to use new technologies. That’s why EFF is launching the free, Creative Commons-licensed “Teaching Copyright” curriculum and website to help educators explore copyright issues in their classrooms.  These materials encourage students to discover their legal rights and responsibilities — including how to make full and fair use of technology that is revolutionizing learning and the exchange of information.

The debates over copyright and technology — whether they take place in classrooms, pressrooms or courtrooms — should be based on facts, not fear.  Help EFF in our ongoing efforts to educate the public — including smart, creative and inquisitive young people — about the purpose and limits of copyright law.

Please donate to EFF today!

Sincerely,

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Teach Copyright Right

In addition, the release says,

The Teaching Copyright curriculum is a detailed, customizable plan that connects students to contemporary issues related to the Internet and technology. Teaching Copyright invites discussion about how creativity is enabled by new technologies, what digital rights and responsibilities exist or should exist, and what roles students play as users of technology. The website at www.teachingcopyright.org includes guides to copyright law, including fair use and the public domain.

“Kids are bombarded with messages that using new technology is illegal,” said EFF Activist Richard Esguerra. “Instead of approaching the issues from a position of fear, Teaching Copyright encourages inquiry and greater understanding. This is a balanced curriculum, asking students to think about their role in the online world and to make informed choices about their behavior.”

The Teaching Copyright curriculum was developed with the input of educators from across the U.S. and has been designed to satisfy components of standards from the International Society for Technology in Education and the California State Board of Education.

A worthy cause all around.

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It’s Better to Burn Out Than to Fade Away.

GermsDarby Crash had the perfect punk-rock plan: takeover the L.A. punk scene in five years, commit suicide, and become immortalized as a legend. Little did he know that Mark David Chapman would derail that plan very shortly after Darby followed through.

Biggie Smalls never had such a plan, but after a five-year ascent to the top of the rap game, unknown gunmen burned his name into music history forever.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. — Woody Allen

Darby Crash (born Paul Beahm and briefly known as Bobby Pyn) had a rough upbringing, but somehow ended up an intelligent, charismatic iconoclast in early adulthood. His sloppy but visionary leadership is exactly what made the Germs the incendiary and legendary act that they’re remembered as.

Biggie Smalls (born Christopher Wallace and also known as the Notorious B.I.G.) had a rough but loving upbringing and ended up an intelligent, charismatic poet in early adulthood. His street-influenced but hopeful rhymes put him deservedly in the running as one of the best emcees ever in the eyes of millions.

Darby Crash’s five-year plan included writing songs, putting together a band, booking gigs, and learning to play — in that order. Germs shows were so notorious for their violence, drug use, and insanity that by the time their first and only full-length record came out (the Joan-Jett produced (GI); Slash, 1979), the Germs weren’t allowed to play anywhere in L.A. Their perfrmance in Penelope Spheeris’s punk-rock documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, Part I (Spheeris Films, 1981) was shot in a space rented especially for the film.

Shane West as Darby Crash

Though his first full-length record didn’t surface until 1994, Biggie Smalls’ career was already in full effect. He’d signed with Puffy in 1992 and had dropped sixteens on several records. Ready to Die (Bad Boy, 1994) spawned three major chart hits and went on to become a certified Hip-hop classic. It was to be the only record he would see released in his short lifetime.

What We Do is SecretWhat We Do Is Secret (Peace Arch, 2008), Roger Grossman’s biographical film depicting the unlikely rise, loud and bright burn, and inevitable fall of Darby Crash and the Germs truly captures the spirit, if not of the times, of Crash’s presence. Shane West is mesmerizing. One reviewer wrote that West seems to be channeling Crash, and I’m inclined to agree. His performance reminds me of higher profile iconic nails being hit on their heads, such as Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X and Jim Carrey’s Andy Kaufman. Though West’s Crash tends to overshadow everyone else in the movie (as one imagines Crash did in real life), Rick Gonzalez and Bijou Phillips are also brilliant as Pat Smear and Lorna Doom.

NotoriousNotorious (Fox Searchlight, 2009) does a serviceable job of telling Biggie’s story from a fan’s perspective. To be fair, Voletta Wallace (Biggie’s moms) and Sean Combs (his A&R rep, mentor, and friend) are executive producers, so investigative reporting this isn’t. Also serviceable is Jamal Woolard’s depiction of Biggie. It’d be dead-on if it were based on mannerisms alone (everyone in this movie nails the nonverbals), and if Anthony Mackie’s performance as Tupac Shakur wasn’t so fresh (though it is jumped off by a “dear stupid viewer” scene in which he’s unnecessarily introduced by name several times). The studio scene that started the so-called coastal feud between Biggie and Tupac, Bad Boy and Death Row records — in which Tupac is shot several times and in the confusion blames Biggie and the Bad Boy crew — is written and filmed in a perfectly chaotic manner. You feel like a witness to the jumbled madness. Biggie’s coincidentally tying up all of his personal loose ends on the eve of his death on the other hand…

Jamal Woolard as Biggie Smalls

Following his coup d’etat of the L. A. punk scene (done) and in the spirit of the Neil Young quotation above, Darby Crash planned on killing himself via a lethal dose of heroin, thus becoming a punk rock legend. After one last Germs reunion show, he followed through on December 7th, 1980. Unfortunately, John Lennon was shot and killed the very next day, overshadowing the death of Darby Crash and one of the greatest punk rock bands of all time.

Though Biggie’s debut record was titled “Ready to Die,” he had no such plans of becoming a martyred legend, but the first-person theatrics of Hip-hop storytelling were lost somewhere in the mix of “keeping it real.” Poetic first person doesn’t always mean the man on the mic. The space between that person and the one on the street are walls closing in, and on March 9th, 1997, those walls closed for Christopher Wallace.

If Notorious let its dynamic characters stand on their own like What We Do Is Secret does, it’d be a better movie and a more fitting tribute for it. Both Darby Crash and Biggie Smalls deserve the attention and these movies though. They both rebelled, rose above, and rocked shit. People with their abundant talent, unyielding drive, and unfettered commitment don’t come around very often.

Though some may see the comparison as forced, the parallels between these two men and these two movies are myriad. Even their mode of rebellion and the related conspicuous consumption are integral to their similarities. Biggie’s Hip-hop (i.e., that of the mid-to-late 90s) and Darby’s punk rock (i.e., that of the mid-to-late 70s) used consumerism to stake their positions relative to mainstream America. Though they do it in different ways, both speak for the frustrations and aspirations of marginalized, working-class youth. Both are undeniably angry, but both are ultimately hopeful.

————

Shot live at The Whisky in L.A. circa 1979, here is “Lexicon Devil” by the Germs — a glimpse of the captivating chaos that was Darby Crash (runtime: 2:02).

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And to keep it rugged and raw, here’s a clip of a seventeen-year-old Biggie Smalls battling on the street in Brooklyn (runtime: 1:05). Listen as he deftly switches his pitch to follow the break of the beat. Fresh.

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Reality Sandwich and Disinformation Present A Sneak Preview of 2012: Science or Superstition

From my friend Gary Baddeley at Disinformation:

Come out for a night of thought-provoking cinema and conversation on one of the most fascinating subjects of our time. On December 21st, 2012, the “Long Count” of the ancient Mayan Calendar comes to an abrupt end, finishing off a grand cycle that spans 5,125 years. Some believe it portends an apocalyptic End Times of earth-shattering cataclysms; others disagree, claiming the date as the start of a new era of enlightenment and advanced human consciousness. Continue reading “Reality Sandwich and Disinformation Present A Sneak Preview of 2012: Science or Superstition”

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WALL-E: Here to Save You All

I’ve been holding off on writing about WALL-E as I felt it needed to marinate for a while. There are so many things to comment on, I scarcely know where to start. I’ve seen the movie twice now, and it could definitely stand several more viewings. The accolade is often used recklessly, but WALL-E is the very definition of an “instant classic.”

Though I don’t care for Disney otherwise (or particularly any other animation outfit), I’m a dedicated Pixar fan. After last year’s absolutely abortive and formulaic Ratatouille, WALL-E is a welcome return to form and one of their very best films to boot. One aspect of the genius that is WALL-E is the well-developed characters, and the fact that they’re sculpted in such relief with some of the sparsest dialog to hit the screen since 1981’s Quest for Fire. As painfully adorable and engaging as WALL-E himself is (some say he’s the direct descendant of Johnny 5 from 1986’s Short Circuit), even the minor characters (the feisty M-O being my favorite) have depth and appeal.

Thematically, WALL-E takes several modern memes and pushes them to extremes. WALL-E‘s is a world where our destruction of all the resources on Earth, our leaving it behind, and robots patrolling the planet after we’re gone are reality. The big-box retailer (Buy n Large) has grown so big as to replace the government and eventually moved us all off-world aboard its all-inclusive space community — the “Axiom” — where our every need is provided by machines (e.g., hoverchairs, ubiquitous screens, meals in cups eaten through straws, etc.).

The idea that our time on Earth is limited due to our own negligence is not new. The late George Carlin once quipped, “Humans are like a virus. Earth will shake us off like a bad cold and continue on its path.” Dave Allen calls WALL-E, “a parable for our eventual extinction,” and while eschatological themes are disturbingly rampant lately (Children of Men, I Am Legend, Cloverfield, Southland Tales, and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening all toil similar thematic soil), I’d much rather watch a movie laced with global misanthropy than selective racism (as seen in Kung-Fu Panda, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, and The Love Guru. I mean, really… WTF?).

Of course the idea that our replacements will be of our own creation isn’t new either, but neither of these themes are necessarily integral to the central plot or appeal of WALL-E. To me, breaking out of our technologically mediated, workaday trances is the most subtle but most pointed theme in WALL-E (admittedly, that’s my lens), while doing so by way of connecting with each other is its most direct. WALL-E is a lonely collector, and, spurred on by scenes from the 1969 film Hello Dolly, is searching for love. On his quest for companionship, WALL-E nudges everyone he meets out of their normal path. Like the Harlequin in Harlan Ellison‘s “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (who deliberately knocks a clockwork world out of its scheduled whack), WALL-E breaks everyone — human and robot — out of their routines and shows them a different way, his intentionality notwithstanding.

Pixar has always been infamous for their easter eggs, but they’ve outdone themselves this time. There are WALL-E appearances in most previous Pixar films, and artifacts from past films in WALL-E!

In the age of the long tail, it’s refreshing to see a movie that holds appeal for everyone and is still well-crafted in every aspect. Seriously, be wary of the person that doesn’t like WALL-E.

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Southland Tales: Not with a Whimper, but with a Bang

Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales finally hit DVD this week, and I’ve been soaking it up ever since. It’s a lot to take in and a lot to decipher (as Salon put it, “It’s filled with so many references and so much self-conscious irony that it’s nearly impossible to make sense of it all.”), but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s worth it. I agree with Steven Shaviro that it’s “not only a brilliant film, but an extraordinarily important one.”

Southland TalesLike Donnie Darko, this is another absurdist eschatological fairy tale, albeit on a much grander scale, with a Pynchon-esque sprawl and a large focus on politics. Where Donnie Darko shows remarkable restraint whenever the plot threatens to spiral out of control, Southland Tales just pushes that much further, reveling in its own chaos and spectacle. It’s a carnival, a war, an end to humanity, a social comment, a political satire, a science fiction romp, and a laugh-out-loud comedy — it bends and blends genres so much as to be “as radical as reality itself” (to borrow a phrase from several sources). Not that it doesn’t have a plot or a focus, it does, but a single viewing will not provide one with all the clues to its many secrets.

This is the way the world ends.
Not with a whimper, but with a bang.

The full story spills over from the film into three prequel graphic novels and borrows liberally from The Book of Revelation, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” Jane’s Addiction’s “Three Days,” T.S. Eliot’s “Hollow Man” (quoted in its adapted form above), Kiss Me Deadly, Repo Man, the writings of Karl Marx, and many other places. The full scope of the story is ridiculously vast. As Richard Kelly explains, “I spent the last four years of my life devoted to this insane tapestry of Armageddon,” adding that this was about “getting the apocalypse out of my system once and for all.”

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The centerpiece of this “insane tapestry of Armageddon” is a drug-induced music video sequence featuring Iraq veteran Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake) recontextualizing “All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers (embedded above; runtime: 2:56). Like the rest of the movie, it’s over-the-top delirious, but its delirium eventually disintegrates into head-hanging melancholy and the beginning of Part VI, “Wave of Mutilation,” the final act, ridden by the motif of “friendly fire” and self-destruction. This movie must have the highest incidence of characters putting guns to their own heads in the history of film-making. It also must have the highest incidence of cameras: They’re everywhere. This movie is nothing if not panoptic.

Southland Tales is rich with metaphors and self-reference, and it breaks harshly with conventional story-telling and film-making. I think it is the latter that resulted in its wholesale dismissal by critics and abysmal box office performance. Southland Tales bucks the traditional narrative paradigm that audiences are used to, and in doing so, leaves viewers lost in its hallucinatory haze. This is not to say that I got it the first time through, because that certainly isn’t the case: I’ve watched it three times in as many days, and I’m just scratching the surface. I just think that the film is not only a bit too ambitious but also breaks with form to its financial detriment. Its layers of reality (e.g., a reality TV show, a prophetic screenplay, time-traveling doubles, the musical piece — all constantly surveilled and recorded) — often reminiscent of those in Scream 3 — only add to its surreal ontology and unorthodox narrative presentation.

The Rock

There are so many jarring non sequiturs throughout the film that when Boxer Santaros (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) dropped his signature line from the film (“I’m a pimp, and pimps don’t commit suicide.”), I was surprised that I was surprised. Absurdity is the rule here, not the exception. In one scene, Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott) makes Martin Kefauver (Lou Taylor Pucci) put on his seatbelt, just after stopping him from blowing his own head off! Some of the lines that seem to come from out of nowhere are a part of Southland Tales‘ “self-conscious irony,” as after “officer” Bart Bookman guns down two performance artists he utters, “Flow my tears.” On the side of his police car is the Latin phrase “oderint dum metuant”: “Let them hate, so long as they fear,” which was a favorite saying of the Roman Emperor Caligula. These are only a few examples of the film’s many references and absurdities.

With that said, I also think this movie is worth the investment it takes to unravel. Maybe, like Donnie Darko, Southland Tales will find its cult audience. Here’s hoping Richard Kelly is on his way to becoming the next Kubrick and not the next Gilliam, because with only two movies, he’s proven that he has the chops to share their company.