Pen to Paper

Sometime on Friday the Internet went out at my apartment.  I barely noticed this while I was getting ready to drive to Ohio, and figured it was a temporary hiccup.  When I got back at 9:30 last night it was still out.  So now there’s no Internet till a service rep comes on Wednesday, and I’m writing this in Panera bread.  Long story short (too late), this review is going to be much, much shorter than it could have been (and maybe not as well fact-checked as it should have been).

Dark Knight is brilliant.  Absolutely amazing.  The realism of Batman Begins, the violence of Sin City, the tight scripting of the Nolans, and villains that take all the best parts of Keyser Sose, Anton Chigurh, Darth Vader, and Hans Gruber, brings them together, and cranks it to 11.  If you have a strong stomach for violence and haven’t seen this movie yet, add it to your list.

Now, very quickly: my thoughts:

The big story for Dark Knight is Heath Ledger: his performance, his death, and his smile that has creeped me out since 10 Things I Hate About You.  The last actor to play the Joker (Jack Nicholson) won an Oscar.  While Nicholson was playing an evil, somewhat crazy clown, Ledger is a demon in a purple suit.  His Joker gets joy (not pleasure) from chaos and violence, and repeatedly confronts literally every other person in the movie with the aspects of themselves they are uncomfortable with.  I love it.

With all the attention on Ledger, though, I hope people don’t miss Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent.  He’s been growing more successful over the past few years; I hope that this is the role that brings him fully into the public eye.  That cooking movie last year certainly didn’t do it.

Watch for a certain Irish actor who refused to make a cameo in the sequel to his own big break.

Things to think about after you see The Dark Knight:

What would you think of a real police officer with Jim Gordon’s ends-justify-the-means philosophy?

What’s the difference between The Joker and Batman?

Pay attention to what the Joker says to other characters – he’s crazy, but he’s often right.

Think back to Harvey Dent’s lucky charm.  Think about when he used it, what he knew about it vs. what others knew, and when it changed.

That’s all I’ve got for now.  I need to leave before Panera Bread gets mad at me and decides to show me a magic trick with a pencil.

I saw Hellboy II on Friday.  Great movie – lots of fun, absolutely beautiful, and lots of practical effects.  George Lucas is probably complaining somewhere that del Toro will put computer effects people out of a job.

I kept wondering, though, why there was so much slow motion.  Not that there’s an incredible amount, just enough that I felt like I could have done without.  That got me to thinking about the whys of slow motion in cinema.

Sometimes, slow motion is a stylistic choice.  In Scrubs, for example, there are many examples of J.D. walking in slow motion while narrating, adding an emotional weight to the scene.  Consider Gladiator, where most of the fight sequences are brutal without using any slow motion, but occasional slow motion lends significance to  certain shots – a wounded soldier crying out on the battlefield, the death of Maximus, etc.

Other times, slow motion is a storytelling device.  In The Matrix, slow motion is used when the characters are “focusing,” or using their ability to bend the rules of reality.  Though I don’t think it holds for the entirety of the trilogy, the slow motion is by and large as much a character trait or ability as it is a directorial choice.  The Lord of the Rings used this a bit, shooting Cate Blanchett at a slightly different speed than the rest of the cast in order to give her character a more ethereal nature.

A lot of the time, slow motion is showing off.  The Matrix fits here, too.  Or 300.  Or Hero.  Anything by Michael Bay.  Movies where slow motion is the director’s way of slapping the audience in the face and saying, “Hey!  Look what we did!  Isn’t that an awesome stunt/computer effect?”  I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with this.  It doesn’t hurt for the director to love his baby a little bit.  Stunts and effects take a lot of hard work, usually from people who don’t get much credit.  It does make me wonder, though – why not just show the scene at full speed and trust the audience to see what you did?

Most of the time, I’m afraid, slow motion is lying.  The director wants you to believe something – that the action is too fast to process if they didn’t slow it down, that the stunts are incredibly hard and brutal, or that the slow motion somehow enhances the movie.  These times tend to break down quickly.  If you look closely, you’ll notice that punches aren’t landing, or that stunts aren’t going full speed.  The director is trying to cover his film’s laziness.  Sometimes, I felt like this was what I saw in Hellboy II.  I’ve seen it in dozens of movies.  And honestly, I’m tired of it.

I want directors bold enough to say, “We’re doing this full speed, fast and hard and brutal.”  I know it’s possible.  The fights in the Bourne movies and Gladiator, the stunts in the old Indiana Jones movies, most (but not all) of Black Hawk Down, even the parkour chase in Casino Royale.  These sequences could easily have been done in slow motion, but are more impressive because they are not.  They feel more intense, more real because we can see exactly what’s happening.  Couldn’t more movies follow this way of thinking?

Slow motion is a waste of time, unless it serves the story.  If putting a shot in slow motion adds to the story somehow – giving a moment significance, or adding to a character – by all means, proceed with caution.  But if slow motion just says “Isn’t this cool? My camera can shoot 70fps!” then please don’t.  Run it at regular speed.  Either the movie will be a half-hour shorter, or the story will be a half-hour better. Either way, I win.

WALL-E might not be the best movie of the year.  After all, there’s a lot of year left.  But it IS a great movie, exemplary in every respect.

It bucks a trend that’s bothered me over the past few years:  the need for “kid’s movies” to nod and wink at parents – to include a few age-inappropriate jokes that the parents who were dragged along can appreciate.  The opposite side of this coin is when movies for teenagers and young-adults are marketed at young children, and wind up not working entirely for any one audience.  WALL-E does not have either problem.  Instead, WALL-E is a children’s story through and through; but is such a well told story that it will appeal to viewers of all age levels – much like classic movies such as Mary Poppins or Beauty and the Beast.

The visuals of WALL-E are always spectacular.  Toy Story was amazing when we first saw it, and Pixar had continued to push the limits of what audiences expect from computer animated movies.  The landscapes and skylines of WALL-E’s earth are epic, soaring, and beautiful.  Every setting is carefully and consistently designed, both interesting and easy to look at.

WALL-E’s story is simple, but appealing.  It begins simply, but builds smoothly into a an epic journey.  Much like Lord of the Rings, the characters of WALL-E have simple desires but are drawn into larger-than-life events, and carried forward by a sense of responsibility.  As the climax of the movie approaches, the danger and consequences of the action are very tangible, but not too scary for young viewers.

The dialogue of WALL-E is interesting to observe.  While humans do eventually join the story, the majority of the film is about robots.  While a few do speak highly digitized English, the majority of the movie’s communication is non-verbal.  We learn about WALL-E’s personality through the way he moves.  When he travels to the human space-cruise-ship, he meets many other robots who speak through their actions.  Though the lack of dialogue might bother some people, it is a strength of the film that it tells a strong story without speech.

I’ve heard a few people say that WALL-E has an environmentalist message.  While there is a moral to the story, I don’t think that’s it.  Instead, the movie warns against the dangers of a sedentary, consumeristic lifestyle.  It doesn’t carry this to an extreme, either – just enough to get you thinking.

Bottom line:  Go see WALL-E.  It will make you want to hold hands and watch Hello, Dolly!.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the waste of having lots of “stuff”.  How many of the things in my apartment have I not used in the past week?  The past month?  The past year?  If something is just filling space on a shelf or in a drawer, why am I keeping it?

There are some items whose value does not come solely from use.  Artwork and photos are not “used,” really, but they enhance the viewer’s life by providing beauty and meaning.  Photo albums and yearbooks spend most of their time sitting on a shelf, but justify their existence by storing memories and giving an emotional boost.  Also, whenever I think about getting rid of them I remember exploring records of my parents’ youth, and am reminded that someday I might have children of my own looking at my high school and college pictures (I feel far, far to young to be thinking this way, and posterity is a long, long ways off, but it’s easier to keep the yearbook now than it would be to find another years down the road).  Sometimes objects are kept just because of what they mean to the owner.

Other times, though, we keep things just so that we can have them.  This idea of stuff for stuff’s sake has been bothering me more and more over the past year.  I used to think that owning lots of books would be amazing – having my own personal library to browse in.  Now, though, it seems incredibly selfish.  Not only is it difficult and impractical to pack and move all the books each time I relocate, most of them I will never read again.  And if I don’t, then what will happen to them?  The books would sit on my shelf for the rest of my life, until I died and they were donated to a local library.  Why wait then?  After I’ve read the book, why not send it back out into the world and give it that much more time of utility?  Someone else may discover it and have their lives changed, for all I know.

This goes beyond books on the shelf.  CDs, DVDs, coffee mugs, clothes, shoes, linens, cars, office supplies, beach towels . . . how many pens, pencils, and markers do you have in that desk drawer?  How often to we dedicate time, money, and space to things we don’t need, or could use and then pass on to someone else?  As I’ve recently been trying to eliminate stuff in my life, I’ve found something.  Every item I get rid of makes me feel lighter, freer.  It’s as though one less object has a claim on me, and I’m now free to turn that time and attention to my own pursuits.

Where’s the dead weight in your life?  Is there anything you can eliminate or pass on to someone who will use it?  I’d like to encourage you to try letting go of the things you have and don’t know why, and focus on adding value to your life.