Like My Dad
Last night I realized that I’m more like my Dad than I ever imagined.
I work with a group of people who would spend their last ten bucks on magic beans. They don’t live paycheck to paycheck, or even day to day; they live second to second. “Oh, I found a dime on the floor,” they’d exclaim, while at the same moment making plans to spend it. Most people see the paycheck at the end of the week as the means to pay the coming week’s bills, but these guys think their paycheck is magic money that falls from the sky to pay for lottery tickets and cigarettes. The future? BAH! Who cares about tomorrow!
Last night a younger guy who works for me asked to leave an hour early. He does this every time I work with him, as if that extra hour will give him more time to do something more productive than smoke weed, which is always his true intention. I really didn’t care if he left early; the guy wasn’t accomplishing much anyway. But as we talked he mentioned that his shoulder hurt. “Why don’t you go see a doctor?” I asked, puzzled.
His reply? “I can’t afford it.”
I stared at him incredulously until he muttered “whut?” I began to explain to him that he doesn’t work for the things in his life, how he wastes his time getting high and blowing his paltry earnings on Pick 3 tickets, pot, and cigarettes. I tried to explain that leaving early is symptomatic of a larger problem: the idea that the future does not need to be prepared for or planned. You can’t just live second to second in life, I said, because you never know when you’re going to need to really need something. As I lectured him, a co-worker nearby, listening intently, started laughing. When I asked what he was laughing about, he said that he thought of me as everyone’s father.
Those words stopped me dead. I immediately began to think back to all of those times growing up when my Dad would yell at me about not saving money, not checking my oil, not being responsible with credit cards and my credit score. I remember chafing at the reminders, my face scrunched up in a displeased frown much like the fellow employee I was lecturing at that moment. I had the whole “the son becomes the father” moment that I thought would never happen to me. No, not to me.
I told the kid to get the hell away from me. I needed some time to think.
The Sons Of My Friend
You might categorize my relationship with my father as “cool.” Not cool as in Fonzie cool. I mean cool as in chilly. Or not warm. Nonexistent, even.
Lots of kids have relationships like that with their parents. It’s part of the natural awkwardness that invades the teen years, destroying the fragile bonds that were sewn before puberty. In my case, my Dad simply wasn’t interested in my sister or myself. We were financial burdens, obligations to be handled like the phone bill or the mortgage.
So you can imagine my surprise when I went over to my old friend Scott’s house tonight and saw firsthand his relationship with his two boys. Scott was always the most open and frank guy among our small group of friends, but I never imagined he would be so good at raising kids until I had the chance to talk with his boys. Or, rather, to watch them interact with each other. The walls that I once had with my father were not apparent between them, replaced instead by honesty and open dialogue.
I would never have wanted a conversation with my Dad about my masturbation habits, but there was Scott talking about it with his kids in obvious terms in front of me, a relative stranger. Scott seemed to be able to share his deepest secrets with his sons, and they seemed willing and eager to share theirs with him. Like Scott, I’m pretty blunt and to-the-point, and seeing their interaction gave me a glimpse of the type of relationship I would have built with my own kids had life offered the chance to me.
Besides that, it also made me feel good about the choices I’ve made in my friends. If one can be judged by the children one produces, then my friends are among the greatest people ever known. They have produced children who are warm, intelligent, thoughtful, inquisitive (an important one!), and funny. My friends have some pretty amazing kids, and it tells me something about those people I’ve chosen to populate my life. Through the children of my friends, I’ve learned that I’m a very lucky guy, indeed.
A Truth About Relationships
The other day my good friend Amanda told me a pathetic story about her friend Cindy. It seems Cindy got involved with a married man. Scratch that – a married man whose wife was pregnant with their first child. One month after the baby was born, this guy left his wife and newborn for Cindy’s carefree arms.
Of course, not long after shacking up together, Cindy found herself pregnant by this guy. “Oh, things will be wonderful between us,” Cindy likely thought as she rubbed her belly. Nine months later, Cindy popped out an adorable baby girl. A month later, the guy left her, too.
This story goes to illustrate one of the great truisms of human relationships: NEVER get involved romantically/sexually with someone who is currently in a relationship. Why would anyone want to be involved with a person that was willing to cheat on a relationship? If they did it to someone else, they’re willing to do it to you, too. You cannot change someone’s diseased mentality with your desperate genitalia.
The saddest aspect of this entire episode is that poor little girl, who will now live in shame and doubt for the rest of her life because Cindy failed to understand this basic fact of life.
Films As Time Capsules
I watched All The President’s Men recently, and it struck me: has there ever been a movie that so completely captured a lost time period better than that film?
Not only did it manage to crystallize the paranoia and confusion that the Watergate scandal inflicted on the American psyche – unsurprising considering that the film was finished a year after the event itself – but it also captured the essence of seventies Americana. Technology has changed so much of our lifestyle in subtle and unsubtle ways. Watching All The President’s Men reminds one of the society that once was, and will never be again.
In particular, it’s striking to see Redford’s Bob Woodward and Hoffmann’s Carl Bernstein thumbing through telephone books and other records in order to track leads, or dialing rotary telephones. One quickly gets a sense of the enormous effort it took a reporter in the seventies to produce even one story. Research like that today could be accomplished with a few flicks of the keyboard, yet it took them days and untold amounts of persistence back then.
Most films don’t capture a moment in time like that, since most films deal exclusively in creating a time period rather than simply allowing it to exist. In fact, it’s difficult to really pinpoint films like All The President’s Men that really accomplish that with their respective time periods. Network did something like that with the state of televised news in the late seventies. One could argue that King Of Comedy did something similar with the state of eighties talk shows. Wall Street did a decent job capturing the late eighties era of greed and emerging technology like computers and cell phones. Perhaps Wargames did the same thing with computers in the eighties.
Are there any movies that you can think of that manage to capture the essence of their respective time periods?
So That’s How They Did It
I’d always assumed that the climactic lightsaber duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker had been filmed against a bluescreen backdrop and superimposed against a Cloud City background, but I guess I was wrong. They actually built a surround (obviously to scale in order to create the illusion of depth) to film this classic movie moment. 
Thanks, Slashfilm!
MEN IN BLACK III Takes Flight
One of the funniest shows to ever grace that bastard entertainment stepchild called television was the severely underappreciated Flight of the Conchords. The show involved two droll, dry-witted New Zealand singer/songwriters in a band called Flight of the Conchords who try to make it big in America. The two leads were played by Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, who, of course, actually are singer/songwriters in a band called Flight of the Conchords.
It’s very meta.
The show’s trippy visuals, its unrelenting deadpan deliveries, and the wondrously clever songs made my heart do parkour. So much creativity and energy went into each episode that cancellation was probably a mercy; nothing that perfect could sustain it forever.
The show’s odd and peculiar heartbeat was provided by Clement, an actor whose mere presence onscreen made me start giggling. He has a face that looks like it was sculpted in plasticine Jello, with nearly impossible curves swirling around his unmoving, heavily-lidded eyes. He is the proverbial human cartoon.
I was bummed when the show was cancelled, because I truly feared that Clement and McKenzie would have trouble finding parts in which to continue their fascinating comedic work. Those fears are proving unfounded, fortunately. The pair have just completed a very successful tour. And now comes word that Clement has scored a big blockbuster role as the new villain in the upcoming Men In Black III, which seems like a perfect fit.
I guess someone could yell “SELLOUT” to such news, but what’s the point? Physically Clement looks like part of that universe, and the franchise doesn’t take itself too seriously. I’m betting that Clement’s wry deadpan will be a nice foil for the craziness going on around him.
I LOVE IT!
Down On Up
The Oscar nominations are set to be announced early tomorrow morning in Los Angeles, and a steady stream of Oscar talk has pegged Pixar’s Up to be one of the ten films nominated for Best Picture. This is disheartening for several reasons.
First and foremost is the fact that Up is an animated film. The category Best Feature Length Animated Film was created following the confusion over Beauty and the Beast in order to prevent live action films from competing against the more manufactured charms of animated films. While I don’t necessarily agree with this in years when there was a truly special animated film – Finding Nemo or The Incredibles, for instance – this year’s crop of animated films is of a distinctly second-tier quality. Only Coraline really seemed especially worthy of such consideration. Still, why have that category only to nominate an animated film for Best Picture anyway?
But the Best Picture talk for Upbugs me even more because it simply is not worthy of consideration. Most positive reviews (including mine) mentioned the truly beautiful and wordless montage at the outset that tracked the lifelong love of Carl and Ellie. This sequence is easily among Pixar’s finest work, mixing complex emotions with a truly magnificent series of images. But twenty minutes does not a Best Picture make. Those who were blown away by the opening sequences found themselves an hour later staring at talking dogs flying airplanes. And awkward, annoying birds as comic relief. And an old man performing gravity-defying aerial gymnastics. Cartoons are not supposed to be real, of course, but they should have some sort of internal logic.
The entire last section of the film completely dumps on the idea of internal logic, something Pixar usually screws down tightly. Where did the bad guy Muntz come up with all of this technology while living in a cave in some remote jungle? Who built miniature planes for his pooches, or any of the other devices used throughout the climax? If he had that kind of technology, why was he having such a hard time finding a few stupid (and very loud) birds in the jungle? Again, I realize these are quibbles, but these are also elements that Pixar has mastered in the past.
Even worse are the unappealing characters placed at the forefront of this film. Carl is crabby and mean-spirited. Russell is an overweight and insecure kid who constantly yammers throughout the film. The bird is incredibly annoying, sounding unpleasantly like the feathered lizard creature from Revenge of the Sith. Dug the dog had some funny moments, but much of his character is just a blank representation of a dog’s mind. The other evil dogs have more personality, but their “arc” is fairly silly. Muntz has very little plausible motivation, and makes an unrealistic turn into pure, unadulterated evil near the climax. These are serious problems in character development, a disappointing first for Pixar, a studio that once carefully crafted their screenplays.
Yes, there are moments of visual wonder in Up on par with anything else seen in theaters this year. My personal favorite is the launching of the balloon house, the light scattering wild color all over the ghetto in which Carl lives. But these brief flashes of Pixar’s imaginative style cannot disguise the limp plot, terrible character development, and general silliness. Upcannot even compete against Pixar’s own catalogue, where it might rank just ahead of only Cars and A Bug’s Life in quality. It certainly should not be considered one of the finest achievements in all of film in 2009 despite the weakness of the competition.
More than anything, including Up in a list of ten Best Picture nominees means that another, more worthy film might be excluded. This is especially true in a weak year like 2009, when films are struggling to be noticed in the fray. I would be disheartened to see Up nominated while worthy films like District 9, Antichrist, The Watchmen, or Moon remain overlooked for consideration.
Hopefully the Academy realizes what a mistake it would be to nominate a film like Up simply based off of fleeting and manipulative feelings of poignancy. The purpose of voting for a Best Picture is to distill the finest composite example of craftsmanship. Up simply does not achieve such rarefied air.
Have Avatar Haters Lost Their Sense Of Wonder?
I walked out of Avatar confused, struggling with certain feelings. The special effects were amazing, I knew that for sure. The 3D, while not yet perfect, was the best I’d ever seen. On the other hand, I also knew that I didn’t care at all for the “characters,” all of whom are less substantial than the floating CGI dust particles on Pandora. The story was predictable and rote, although I thought Cameron told it well enough. Those two opposing opinions within me continued even after I finished my review, bleeding over into discussions in my personal life and online.
Since its release, Avatar has fueled a fiery and emotional debate throughout the online movie community. A majority of movie fans feel that Avatar‘s wondrous, transporting effects and Cameron’s ability to tell stories trumps the lack of originality in the screenplay or the lack of depth to the characters. Meanwhile, a vocal minority has consistently hammered at the film’s lack of originality, the flat characters, and the lifeless storytelling. Of course, any movie experience is subjective, and no individual opinion can rightly “prove” itself to be absolutely correct. But, without a doubt, the massive box office numbers – in addition to the glowing reviews – indicate that most people are experiencing something transcendent in Avatar that we dissenters are not.
This bothers me a little bit because it hits me at the core of why I love movies. It makes me ask – have I fallen behind? Have I lost some part of my childish ability to be transported, to be enthralled, to be enchanted, to let myself go off into adventure blindly and willingly and disappear in a sense of wonder?
I certainly had that ability at one time. As a child of the Star Wars generation, I was hard-wired to suspend my disbelief and give in to wonder. Even as I learned more about the technical aspects of special effects, I was still able to turn the analysis off at some point and allow myself to transport into the imaginations onscreen. Films like E.T., Aliens, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park never fooled me with special effects, but I was able to give in to their power, suspend disbelief, and let my inner child roam in the fantasy of each film.
But I seem unable to do that with Avatar, and I’m not sure why.
The Avatar dissenters have a variety of arguments against the film, but most of them fail to work. The argument propped up against Avatar‘s weak, derivative storyline does not work, because films like Star Wars and E.T. had been told a thousand times prior, but it never mattered then. While I believe the performances of Star Wars are much more enjoyable than anything in Avatar, the characters themselves are probably written about as well as those found in Avatar. Dissenters often point to the spectacle of Avatar overwhelming the derivative storytelling, but the same argument could easily be made for Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Haters also mention how manipulative Avatar feels, but the very same accusation could be leveled at E.T. or Jurassic Park. So what argument works here?
For me, I’m not exactly sure why I dislike the film. I know I didn’t really like any character in it except Neytiri; I cannot really name any trait unique to any other character in the film except that the helicopter pilot chick is Latino. The editing is not as crisp as in films like Star Wars, and, in terms of sheer transportation, there isn’t a single sequence in this film that feels as propulsive as the T-Rex attack in Jurassic Park, the bike chase in E.T., the truck/motorcycle chase in Terminator 2, or the final battle in Aliens. Still, those are very subjective aspects, and as criticism they do not really hold much weight.
But it is that struggle within myself that I find so disturbing. Has my inner child died? Have I lost touch with the youthful ability to lose myself in wonder? When I think back to more recent cinematic feelings of jubilation I’ve had – Pan’s Labyrinth, Children Of Men, No Country For Old Men, The Dark Knight – I realize that all of those films are darker visions. None of them operate solely on that childish level of pure fantasy; all of them have subtext, adult ideas that stimulate my adult thinking abilities. I felt transported more by the intellectual worlds of those films, rather than the physical fantasy worlds they inhabit.
And that’s a key problem. Although people have read much into Avatar, it’s not operating on a deeper subtextual meaning. James Cameron just wanted to create a kick-ass adventure film with his revolutionary digital toys. To sit through Avatar means to shut off your brain and let yourself be transported to a galaxy far, far away. It is a film made for children, or the children still existing within starry-eyed adults who tightly grasp their sense of wonder.
I guess I must have lost mine somewhere. I see all of the flaws in Avatar, but I feel no wonder. As I watch massive audiences move in and out of screenings of Avatar like joyous, exuberant tides, I secretly wish that my little child of wonder could return just one more time.
Adult Situations
While watching the new Jason Reitman film Up In The Air, which I loved, I was struck most by the adult relationships on display. The characters played by George Clooney and Vera Farmiga are mature, complex, fully-developed people who engage in thoughtful and intelligent conversation. It’s amazing how something that simple can lift and enervate you in ways that $400 million in special effects cannot.
The film made me think back to some other film moments when two characters engaged in relationships, conversations, and situations that felt alive, fresh, and adult. One of my all-time favorite scenes comes from Victor/Victoria. Victoria (Julie Andrews) and King Marchand (James Garner) find themselves sitting on a bed after months of an extremely complicated courtship. The two discuss their relationship – or, rather, potential relationship – in adult, frank, and honest ways. It helps that Blake Edwards’ excellent dialogue is delivered from two terrific performers at the top of their game. But what is so refreshing, so exhilarating, is listening to honest dialogue from two adult characters we have come to care about in the film. Check out this scene right here:
Wonderful, isn’t it?
Another example of this is one of my all-time favorite films, Remains Of The Day. It’s a romance film about unrequited love – the most painful kind – starring two of the most powerful actors of this generation. Again, keen dialogue forms the basis of this dynamic onscreen relationship, and it’s built upon by nuanced performance to make movie magic. Why can’t we see more adults coping with complex emotional situations in mature and fascinating fashion? Why must everything be dumbed down, farted on, and shoveled into the hog trough all the time? Check out this amazing and beautifully-acted scene between these two fine actors:
In the face of intense, realistic, fluid scenes like these, isn’t it shocking that anyone wastes their time watching eye-gouging garbage like Transformers? Mature films like these with adult emotions cost nothing to make, yet they sink deep into the hearts of audiences and stay there forever. Why would we ever want anything else?
Knight And Day Trailer
This is a pretty decent trailer for the Cruise/Diaz spy comedy Knight And Day except (a) it reveals way too much, and (b) looks way too generic. Hate that punny title, which is always a bad sign. Is Diaz really going to scream constantly? This will be a huge hit. You can smell it.