I've been writing quite a bit about movies lately with award season in full swing. I'm in the midst of watching the three Best Picture nominees I haven't seen yet, and after I'm done with that I'll be writing the Top Ten movies of the year list as well as the Oscar prediction post. However, in the mean time, I figured I'd write another "...of the year" post.
I know there has been a lot of music released this year, and I've quite enjoyed a lot of it. Mumford and Sons came out with a new album that was just as good as the last one, Green Day unleashed a triple album of awesomeness, and The Lumineers released one of my favorite debut albums ever. But the biggest album of the year, regardless of what genre we all listen to, was definitely Taylor Swift's fourth studio album, Red. I'll readily admit that I enjoy Taylor Swift, but her recent departures from country-pop to producing straight-up pop music on Speak Now wasn't something I enjoyed as much. Speak Now disappointed in my opinion, but I was interested to see what she would do on Red - go back to her roots or continue to distance herself from country.
I think that on Red, Taylor Swift officially mastered pop music and captured pretty much all of the biggest elements needed for a successful pop album in 2012. Her songs were always catchy, which is why she's been successful. But on Red, she really brought her music to the next level. I'm not someone who dislikes pop music just because it's popular, and frankly, the songs on Red are all quite good. But one song, I Knew You Were Trouble, the third single, definitely sums up where we are in music today, and in my opinion is the song of 2012.
The first reason is its catchiness. As I said, Taylor Swift is a master of writing the catchiest songs ever. She didn't get lucky by being picked to sing a pre-written, formulaic song and become famous that way. She writes her songs herself and has helped to create the template for catchy songs as we know them. Taylor Swift has had a much bigger impact on music than is seen on the surface. Music executives are trying to capture her formula to put in other, less talented pop singers' songs. She is the spearhead of the industry. I Knew You Were Trouble, without even considering who wrote or performed it, is so catchy that after three listens, you can instantly sing the chorus. And unlike a song like Call Me Maybe, the song doesn't tire with repeated listens. This is because it's catchy, but it's also really, really good.
I Knew You Were Trouble isn't just the song of the year for it's catchiness, though. It's also Taylor Swift's foray into dubstep. Obviously, it's not a dubstep song, but it includes a bit of it to compliment the song. I took this as Swift's acknowledgement of the impact that dubstep has had recently in the music industry. It's an entirely new and revolutionary genre and even though I don't really enjoy it, I still know it has permanently impacted music. House music is so much different today than it was as recently as five years ago. Dubstep isn't a fad and it isn't going away, and I Knew You Were Trouble utilizes it better than any other pop song I've heard. It's a perfect harmony of pop and dubstep and frankly, if dubstep is used in this way more often, my opinion on it might change.
I think the powers that be will be trying to capture what Taylor Swift brought us with I Knew You Were Trouble for quite some time. But nobody can do what Taylor Swift does. She knows something we all don't. By the time they give us something that scratches the surface of this song, she'll have delivered something even greater. She's a step ahead. Taylor Swift is not going away, and I'm happy about that.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
The Best Director Paradox, and Why the Academy is Terrible
I was going to write a full reaction to all of the Oscar nominees, but since the nominees were announced some time ago and the Golden Globes have just passed, I feel that the only category I have anything else to say about at this point is the Best Director nominees. Don't be sad, because I'll be breaking down the other categories in the Oscar predictions post, which will come closer to the actual award show.
The reason I chose the Best Director category for this post is because it is a pretty accurate summarization of the year in movies, and gives us evidence of how strong criticism from outside parties have already affected the Oscar race. Best Director is also an extremely subjective award, and this year, more than any other year in recent memory, we have a shift from including five strong nominees to excluding fantastic films based on pre-conceived ideas about them. In addition, there are only five slots for a Best Director nomination, as opposed to a maximum of ten for Best Picture, which creates a maddening paradox.
Why is this so? Just take a look at history. Over the past 26 years, 21 films have won both the Best Director Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar. Since 1999, only three Best Director winners have failed to see their film win Best Picture. The recent exceptions were ones I agreed with. In 1999 Steven Spielberg won the directing award for Saving Private Ryan, arguably his finest film outside of Schindler's List, but lost Best Picture when Harvey Weinstein bribed the Academy to vote for Shakespeare in Love. The other exceptions include Roman Polanski's 2003 victory for The Pianist (Chicago won BP) and Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain in 2006 (Crash won BP).
Why does this matter? Because outside of five exceptions, the seeming definition of a Best Director winner is the person who directed the best film of the year (the Best Picture winner). They don't nominate the finest direction of a film, but rather the merit of the film itself. This is drastically unfair, especially in the past few years, when there have been more Best Picture nominees than Best Director nominees. We can basically cancel out the chances of an Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, or Les Miserables Best Picture victory because the Academy has already chosen their five best films for the Best Director nomination. The other three are included in the Best Picture category for entertainment purposes for the awards show itself, not because they stand any chance of winning.
The Best Director award is thus a severely flawed one for this reason. As I said, the films are not nominated for being finely directed, but for being good movies. Best Director should literally mean "Best Director", not "Person who's name comes last in the opening credits for the Best Picture winner". Let's look at Les Miserables. The movie had its problems, yes. It's been rightly criticized for bland in-your-face cinematography. But lest we forget, Best Cinematography is also an Academy Award. Best Director is an entirely different award. Tom Hooper took the risk of letting his actors sing live (which, in my opinion, paid off very well), and adapted the stage musical into a powerful, riveting film version. He directed this extremely difficult adaptation, something an ordinary director could not do. His ability to do so should have earned him a nomination.
The two most maddening and perplexing exclusions from the category, however, are those of Django Unchained's Quentin Tarantino and Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn Bigelow. These exclusions did not happen because of concrete, technical issues like Les Miserables, but because of pressure put on the Academy based on the films' content. Tarantino's choices in Django Unchained (outside of letting Jamie Foxx play the lead) were all fantastic. Every element of the movie was absolutely sublime. He utilized the little things (soundtrack, staging, costumes, his own personal style) better than anybody in film this year. If not for the direction of Tarantino, Django Unchained would not have been as good of a movie as it was. However, it seems that the older, white voters of the Academy (average age in the mid-60s) didn't feel comfortable allowing Tarantino to be nominated for a movie about a slave killing slave owners. Tarantino is white, and made a movie that uses the N-word 109 times, and so he must be punished for it, plain and simple.
Last but not least, there's Kathryn Bigelow. My thoughts on Zero Dark Thirty and its exclusion have been made, but no words can really express how big of a travesty it is that she wasn't nominated (sealing the movie's fate for Best Picture, but that's beside the point). The movie was stunningly directed. I know there's a raging debate about the film's depiction of torture, but that doesn't matter. Frankly, a movie could contain nothing but a woman making grilled cheese sandwiches for an hour and a half, but if it's the best directed movie of the year, it should be nominated. And regardless of the subject matter, ZDT was brilliant. Federal lawmakers such as John McCain and Dianne Feinstein are taking the floor in Congress not to solve our fiscal cliff issue, but to criticize the finest film in a long while about it's torture scenes, which they HAVE NOT EVEN SEEN. And the Academy members are reading the "Does Zero Dark Thirty Promote Torturing Prisoners?" articles and have made the decision that they'd rather reward Lincoln, a three-hour self-congratulations for white people saving black people from slavery, than start a national controversy by nominating Kathryn Bigelow for the Oscar.
You suck, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and you should be ashamed of your cowardice.
The reason I chose the Best Director category for this post is because it is a pretty accurate summarization of the year in movies, and gives us evidence of how strong criticism from outside parties have already affected the Oscar race. Best Director is also an extremely subjective award, and this year, more than any other year in recent memory, we have a shift from including five strong nominees to excluding fantastic films based on pre-conceived ideas about them. In addition, there are only five slots for a Best Director nomination, as opposed to a maximum of ten for Best Picture, which creates a maddening paradox.
Why is this so? Just take a look at history. Over the past 26 years, 21 films have won both the Best Director Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar. Since 1999, only three Best Director winners have failed to see their film win Best Picture. The recent exceptions were ones I agreed with. In 1999 Steven Spielberg won the directing award for Saving Private Ryan, arguably his finest film outside of Schindler's List, but lost Best Picture when Harvey Weinstein bribed the Academy to vote for Shakespeare in Love. The other exceptions include Roman Polanski's 2003 victory for The Pianist (Chicago won BP) and Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain in 2006 (Crash won BP).
Why does this matter? Because outside of five exceptions, the seeming definition of a Best Director winner is the person who directed the best film of the year (the Best Picture winner). They don't nominate the finest direction of a film, but rather the merit of the film itself. This is drastically unfair, especially in the past few years, when there have been more Best Picture nominees than Best Director nominees. We can basically cancel out the chances of an Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, or Les Miserables Best Picture victory because the Academy has already chosen their five best films for the Best Director nomination. The other three are included in the Best Picture category for entertainment purposes for the awards show itself, not because they stand any chance of winning.
The Best Director award is thus a severely flawed one for this reason. As I said, the films are not nominated for being finely directed, but for being good movies. Best Director should literally mean "Best Director", not "Person who's name comes last in the opening credits for the Best Picture winner". Let's look at Les Miserables. The movie had its problems, yes. It's been rightly criticized for bland in-your-face cinematography. But lest we forget, Best Cinematography is also an Academy Award. Best Director is an entirely different award. Tom Hooper took the risk of letting his actors sing live (which, in my opinion, paid off very well), and adapted the stage musical into a powerful, riveting film version. He directed this extremely difficult adaptation, something an ordinary director could not do. His ability to do so should have earned him a nomination.
The two most maddening and perplexing exclusions from the category, however, are those of Django Unchained's Quentin Tarantino and Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn Bigelow. These exclusions did not happen because of concrete, technical issues like Les Miserables, but because of pressure put on the Academy based on the films' content. Tarantino's choices in Django Unchained (outside of letting Jamie Foxx play the lead) were all fantastic. Every element of the movie was absolutely sublime. He utilized the little things (soundtrack, staging, costumes, his own personal style) better than anybody in film this year. If not for the direction of Tarantino, Django Unchained would not have been as good of a movie as it was. However, it seems that the older, white voters of the Academy (average age in the mid-60s) didn't feel comfortable allowing Tarantino to be nominated for a movie about a slave killing slave owners. Tarantino is white, and made a movie that uses the N-word 109 times, and so he must be punished for it, plain and simple.
Last but not least, there's Kathryn Bigelow. My thoughts on Zero Dark Thirty and its exclusion have been made, but no words can really express how big of a travesty it is that she wasn't nominated (sealing the movie's fate for Best Picture, but that's beside the point). The movie was stunningly directed. I know there's a raging debate about the film's depiction of torture, but that doesn't matter. Frankly, a movie could contain nothing but a woman making grilled cheese sandwiches for an hour and a half, but if it's the best directed movie of the year, it should be nominated. And regardless of the subject matter, ZDT was brilliant. Federal lawmakers such as John McCain and Dianne Feinstein are taking the floor in Congress not to solve our fiscal cliff issue, but to criticize the finest film in a long while about it's torture scenes, which they HAVE NOT EVEN SEEN. And the Academy members are reading the "Does Zero Dark Thirty Promote Torturing Prisoners?" articles and have made the decision that they'd rather reward Lincoln, a three-hour self-congratulations for white people saving black people from slavery, than start a national controversy by nominating Kathryn Bigelow for the Oscar.
You suck, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and you should be ashamed of your cowardice.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Zero Dark Thirty and the Politics of the Oscars
It's been quite some time since my last blog post. I haven't really had much to say over the past few weeks, and now that I'm back in Pittsburgh, I am settled in and ready to begin writing more stuff, especially with the Oscars coming up. I'm planning on an Oscar reactions post later this weekend, but I wanted to hold off on commenting on the nominations until I had seen Zero Dark Thirty. Normally, I would have been all over the nominations from the second they were announced, but I couldn't do that until I saw the highest-acclaimed movie of the year.
Highest-acclaimed. 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Universal praise from everybody, including Grantland writer Andy Greenwald, who said that ZDT made The Hurt Locker look like an episode of the Cleveland Show. So last night as I sat in my seat at the midnight showing, I knew this movie had to be incredible for me to like it, because I always have problems with my pre-viewing expectations. Especially with Kathryn Bigelow directing. I liked The Hurt Locker, but I loved about seven movies in 2009 and 4 of them are in or around my top ten films of all time. So going in I had the idea that Bigelow was overrated.
Well, I was wrong. Zero Dark Thirty is head and shoulders above every other movie I have seen this year. Everything about it was mesmerizing. From the opening scene, the viewer is dropped into the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and Bigelow does an outstanding job making you feel emotion with every bit of action. You end up feeling bad for everybody. The detainees, the CIA operatives, everybody. It's just such an engaging movie-going experience. One would expect to be rooting for Seal Team Six, but by the time the actual raid of Bin Laden's compound is happening, the intensity has been so encapsulating that there's no more emotion to do so. Instead, you're captured in the whirlwind of maybe the most visceral movie of all time, hoping that killing Bin Laden leads us to some sort of inner resolution. And after the final scene, which, in it's own right, contains the best final shot of any movie in recent memory, you're shaken to the core. I left the theater in stunned speechlessness and it took a solid ten minutes to put together a fragment of my emotions, which were left shattered in pieces on the theater floor, into words.
I would have no problems with Zero Dark Thirty winning every award it is nominated for. It is completely deserving of a landslide Best Picture, and Jessica Chastain should absolutely win Best Actress for the finest performance of any actor this year. But just as the Oscar race settled into a Lincoln -vs.-ZDT-for-Best-Picture affair, Kathryn Bigelow was shockingly left out of the Best Director nominations. Recent Oscar trends show that Best Picture and Best Director tend to fall hand in hand, and the Academy has seemingly made a statement that Lincoln will win both awards and sweep the Oscars.
I saw Lincoln a week ago, and didn't feel like I should write a blog post about it. It's just not my kind of movie. Daniel Day Lewis! Slavery! Freedom! It was boring to me, as I knew it would be when I sat down to watch it. It's a fine film, but it's pure Oscar bait, and frankly, I don't think it's that hard to make a great movie when you've compiled a bunch of A-listers debating over the most important events in American History. And I can see why people are loving it - because it's the kind of movie where you feel happy and accomplished at the end. That's the kind of movie that wins Best Picture.
Maybe it's the torture scenes, or that the events of May 1 happened too soon ago, or that Bigelow won the Best Director/Picture package in 2009. But simply put, Zero Dark Thirty was the best movie of the year. It was also the most important and the most engaging and frankly, I haven't had an experience like that in the theater for a long, long time. Five stars, and a pantheon-level movie for the ages.
Highest-acclaimed. 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Universal praise from everybody, including Grantland writer Andy Greenwald, who said that ZDT made The Hurt Locker look like an episode of the Cleveland Show. So last night as I sat in my seat at the midnight showing, I knew this movie had to be incredible for me to like it, because I always have problems with my pre-viewing expectations. Especially with Kathryn Bigelow directing. I liked The Hurt Locker, but I loved about seven movies in 2009 and 4 of them are in or around my top ten films of all time. So going in I had the idea that Bigelow was overrated.
Well, I was wrong. Zero Dark Thirty is head and shoulders above every other movie I have seen this year. Everything about it was mesmerizing. From the opening scene, the viewer is dropped into the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and Bigelow does an outstanding job making you feel emotion with every bit of action. You end up feeling bad for everybody. The detainees, the CIA operatives, everybody. It's just such an engaging movie-going experience. One would expect to be rooting for Seal Team Six, but by the time the actual raid of Bin Laden's compound is happening, the intensity has been so encapsulating that there's no more emotion to do so. Instead, you're captured in the whirlwind of maybe the most visceral movie of all time, hoping that killing Bin Laden leads us to some sort of inner resolution. And after the final scene, which, in it's own right, contains the best final shot of any movie in recent memory, you're shaken to the core. I left the theater in stunned speechlessness and it took a solid ten minutes to put together a fragment of my emotions, which were left shattered in pieces on the theater floor, into words.
I would have no problems with Zero Dark Thirty winning every award it is nominated for. It is completely deserving of a landslide Best Picture, and Jessica Chastain should absolutely win Best Actress for the finest performance of any actor this year. But just as the Oscar race settled into a Lincoln -vs.-ZDT-for-Best-Picture affair, Kathryn Bigelow was shockingly left out of the Best Director nominations. Recent Oscar trends show that Best Picture and Best Director tend to fall hand in hand, and the Academy has seemingly made a statement that Lincoln will win both awards and sweep the Oscars.
I saw Lincoln a week ago, and didn't feel like I should write a blog post about it. It's just not my kind of movie. Daniel Day Lewis! Slavery! Freedom! It was boring to me, as I knew it would be when I sat down to watch it. It's a fine film, but it's pure Oscar bait, and frankly, I don't think it's that hard to make a great movie when you've compiled a bunch of A-listers debating over the most important events in American History. And I can see why people are loving it - because it's the kind of movie where you feel happy and accomplished at the end. That's the kind of movie that wins Best Picture.
Maybe it's the torture scenes, or that the events of May 1 happened too soon ago, or that Bigelow won the Best Director/Picture package in 2009. But simply put, Zero Dark Thirty was the best movie of the year. It was also the most important and the most engaging and frankly, I haven't had an experience like that in the theater for a long, long time. Five stars, and a pantheon-level movie for the ages.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Django Unchained and Its Place in the Tarantino-Scape
Perhaps no director in this era has a more distinctive style than Quentin Tarantino. Since the early 1990s, the Tarantino style has exploded into the mainstream and each of his films can be identified as a "Tarantino". Highly stylized, with bright colors, taking bits and pieces of several genres and mashing them up in graphic films, with bold soundtracks.
No element of Tarantino's films, however, is as important as the unforgettable characters in his films, who are among the most memorable in all of cinema. Mr. Blonde. Jules Winnfield. The Bride. Aldo Raine. Hans Landa. The list is long and well-deserved.
So, as I took my seat in the theater waiting for Django Unchained to begin, I knew what I was about to see. Approximately two hours and forty-five minutes of badassery, driven by what was sure to be a character in Django ready to become a legend, and strongly supported by the other elements of Tarantino's films that elevate them to pantheon level: outstanding direction, an amazing soundtrack, and witty, bold dialogue.
And as the movie went on, I found these always-reliable elements to be fantastic. The set, cinematography, and soundtrack were the best in film this year. I mean, Rick Ross in a spaghetti western? Only Tarantino could pull that off.
But something was missing. It was kind of like driving a $250,000 Ferrari with all its bells and whistles and trying to accelerate with the engine of a Toyota Prius. And on the drive home from the theater, I figured out what that missing element was. Frankly, Jamie Foxx was boring. He was downright flat, for the entirety of the movie. He had one expression on his face the entire time, and while his actions most definitely fit with other characters in Tarantino's movies, the actor playing him didn't live up to that badassery. He was simply overwhelmed by Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio (who gave a brilliant and wildly entertaining performance in his own right).
I'm sure my point will be vastly disagreed with, but Django Unchained, to me, is the first Tarantino movie where the supporting elements of the film had to come in and save it from a boring main character. These elements were so fantastic that Django Unchained, as a whole, is still a very, very good movie. But Jamie Foxx dropped the ball on this one and I will vehemently disagree with his nomination for Best Actor when it comes from the Academy.
No element of Tarantino's films, however, is as important as the unforgettable characters in his films, who are among the most memorable in all of cinema. Mr. Blonde. Jules Winnfield. The Bride. Aldo Raine. Hans Landa. The list is long and well-deserved.
So, as I took my seat in the theater waiting for Django Unchained to begin, I knew what I was about to see. Approximately two hours and forty-five minutes of badassery, driven by what was sure to be a character in Django ready to become a legend, and strongly supported by the other elements of Tarantino's films that elevate them to pantheon level: outstanding direction, an amazing soundtrack, and witty, bold dialogue.
And as the movie went on, I found these always-reliable elements to be fantastic. The set, cinematography, and soundtrack were the best in film this year. I mean, Rick Ross in a spaghetti western? Only Tarantino could pull that off.
But something was missing. It was kind of like driving a $250,000 Ferrari with all its bells and whistles and trying to accelerate with the engine of a Toyota Prius. And on the drive home from the theater, I figured out what that missing element was. Frankly, Jamie Foxx was boring. He was downright flat, for the entirety of the movie. He had one expression on his face the entire time, and while his actions most definitely fit with other characters in Tarantino's movies, the actor playing him didn't live up to that badassery. He was simply overwhelmed by Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio (who gave a brilliant and wildly entertaining performance in his own right).
I'm sure my point will be vastly disagreed with, but Django Unchained, to me, is the first Tarantino movie where the supporting elements of the film had to come in and save it from a boring main character. These elements were so fantastic that Django Unchained, as a whole, is still a very, very good movie. But Jamie Foxx dropped the ball on this one and I will vehemently disagree with his nomination for Best Actor when it comes from the Academy.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Les Miserables Review
Last night, I went to see Les Miserables at the 10:00 premiere. I had been waiting for this movie for most of the year, and I had seen the trailer (my favorite of all time) about thirty times. I suppose I should start this post with a bit of personal background, as many other reviews have done. I have never seen Les Mis performed on stage, but I've seen the 10th and 25th anniversary concerts multiple times and have listened to the soundtrack many, many times. I know the words to the songs, some of which are my favorite in music, theatre or not. "On My Own", "Do You Hear The People Sing", and "I Dreamed A Dream", among others, just pack such an emotional punch that nothing else can.
Sitting next to me was my mom, who has seen the show performed multiple times and knows the words as well. Next to her was my dad, who, though he has seen the show live, doesn't know the words, but still loves all movie musicals. Then at the end of the row was my brother, who hasn't seen the show and doesn't know any of the songs. Seeing the movie with my family, who have different perspectives, has really helped put the movie in context.
Now, to some actual reviewing. Personally, I loved the movie. I absolutely loved it. To adapt the stage version of Les Mis and put it on screen, with actors singing live on set, is a very, very difficult thing to do. Thus, after reading early reviews, my expectations were a bit tempered going in. I knew I couldn't expect perfection. But I was drawn in by the acting and the music immediately, which was fantastically pulled off. Everybody in the movie delivers a great performance acting-wise. As for the singing, I thought everybody did a great job as well, but there was a very clear divide between the theatre actors (Samantha Barks/Eponine, Eddie Redmayne/Marius) and the A-listers. Russell Crowe acted Javert very well, but he just couldn't keep up with the singing talent around him and the emotional ride slowed a bit as I realized Javert was Russell Crowe just trying his best to keep up with everyone else. That said, there was not a single song I didn't like and the biggest element of the film, the music, was great all around.
Cinematically, the movie could have been better. The direction didn't do much to help the film in any way. I wasn't focusing too much on the camera movements trying to keep myself together, but in hindsight I know that Tom Hooper shifted his style right from The King's Speech to Les Mis. Hooper isn't a great director camera-wise, but I do have to give the guy credit for managing to pull off a colossal project. The staging and set design was magnificent. The barricade (THE BARRICADE!!!!) was really well done, and though I have nothing to compare its visuals to, Hooper pulled that one off.
So I've had the night and morning to think about the movie. I know that when I compile my favorite movies of the year list in a couple weeks, Les Mis will be near the top. But I think that's because it's Les-freaking-Miserables, not because it's a perfect movie by any means. I also understand that people who don't connect with the music like I do will have a hard time with the movie. My brother had no idea what was going on and the emotion was lost on him, and I get that. It's a hard movie to follow if you don't know what's being said (sung) or the plot. So I understand the harsher reviews the movie has gotten. That said, I wouldn't be upset if the movie won a lot of Oscars because I know how hard this project must have been. It won't be the best movie of the year, but it will be the grandest in scale.
So should you go see the movie?
If you're like my mom and me, absolutely. I can only assume that most of the people in the theater last night loved Les Mis going in, and by the end, you could hear sniffling and sobbing in the entire room.
If you're like my dad, somebody who just really likes movie musicals, I would go see it. The music in Les Mis is better than every other musical's.
Now, if you're like my brother, somebody who has no connection with the musical but just wants to go see a good movie, I would pull up a plot summary of the musical and read it a couple of times, and then go see it. The movie will be hard to follow otherwise. But if you have a little bit of background, I think you'll enjoy it for what it is.
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men,
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again.......
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Why The Dark Knight Rises is the Film of 2012
We live in the information age. Every important thing that goes on in this world is broken down by the masses at the moment it happens. Thirty years ago, one needed a job writing op-ed articles at the newspaper to be able to express an opinion on a worldly event. Now, since the Facebook and Twitter revolutions, everybody and their mother has a medium for expressing themselves. And no part of society is more thoroughly discussed, broken down, and criticized than American popular culture. There are post-show podcasts, blogs, and countless other parts of the public that shout their opinions, whether they are well-constructed or not.
During the spring and beginning of the summer of 2012, one bit of our culture was broken down more comprehensively than anything before it. The build-up to its release on July 20th was unlike anything I had ever seen. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises was the cinematic event of the information age. I personally read more articles, listened to more podcasts, watched more TV discussions, and had more conversations about TDKR before its release than any other bit of culture in my lifetime. The Olympics were about to start, the American Presidency was up for grabs, and the Middle East was falling apart, but all anybody could talk about, for months, was what was going to happen in The Dark Knight Rises.
I saw the movie myself on Friday of the opening weekend. And I thought it was great, but lacked so much of the elements that had me anticipating it for months. I don't think that's the film's fault, really. I think Christopher Nolan was put in a tough place - he had so many people demanding so many things of this film that he got caught up in trying to make people happy. All the blog posts and Cracked articles about what would happen in TDKR ruined the movie, even though they didn't mean to. They expected perfection out of Christopher Nolan, a human being. No film is perfect and if we didn't live in this age, with opinions and theories everywhere, I would have enjoyed the film more.
I could have discussion after discussion about the film's quality and how it stacks up to the other two films and other third movies in other trilogies, but it's not about that. I think TDKR, and the hype surrounding it, really shows where we are in society today. These studios read what we write, and they know that they have to please us. If somebody doesn't like a movie at the midnight release, they go to Twitter and Facebook and tell everybody what they thought. Movies these days need to be so broad and please everybody so the studios can sell tickets. And that was especially so with this film, the conclusion of THE trilogy of our generation. Nolan tried too hard instead of just making a movie. He had three endings when he needed to choose one. SPOILER ALERT He spent the entire trilogy talking about sacrifice and the importance of being a symbol, and then keeps Bruce alive frolicking with Catwoman in Europe for the rest of his life. Great sacrifice, Bruce.
But if this were thirty years ago, I wouldn't have cared, because I wouldn't have had an idea of how this movie should have been constructed for me months in advance. And now, with every highly anticipated release, I can sigh and slump in my theater chair knowing that the movie I'm about to see won't meet its otherworldly expectations.
During the spring and beginning of the summer of 2012, one bit of our culture was broken down more comprehensively than anything before it. The build-up to its release on July 20th was unlike anything I had ever seen. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises was the cinematic event of the information age. I personally read more articles, listened to more podcasts, watched more TV discussions, and had more conversations about TDKR before its release than any other bit of culture in my lifetime. The Olympics were about to start, the American Presidency was up for grabs, and the Middle East was falling apart, but all anybody could talk about, for months, was what was going to happen in The Dark Knight Rises.
I saw the movie myself on Friday of the opening weekend. And I thought it was great, but lacked so much of the elements that had me anticipating it for months. I don't think that's the film's fault, really. I think Christopher Nolan was put in a tough place - he had so many people demanding so many things of this film that he got caught up in trying to make people happy. All the blog posts and Cracked articles about what would happen in TDKR ruined the movie, even though they didn't mean to. They expected perfection out of Christopher Nolan, a human being. No film is perfect and if we didn't live in this age, with opinions and theories everywhere, I would have enjoyed the film more.
I could have discussion after discussion about the film's quality and how it stacks up to the other two films and other third movies in other trilogies, but it's not about that. I think TDKR, and the hype surrounding it, really shows where we are in society today. These studios read what we write, and they know that they have to please us. If somebody doesn't like a movie at the midnight release, they go to Twitter and Facebook and tell everybody what they thought. Movies these days need to be so broad and please everybody so the studios can sell tickets. And that was especially so with this film, the conclusion of THE trilogy of our generation. Nolan tried too hard instead of just making a movie. He had three endings when he needed to choose one. SPOILER ALERT He spent the entire trilogy talking about sacrifice and the importance of being a symbol, and then keeps Bruce alive frolicking with Catwoman in Europe for the rest of his life. Great sacrifice, Bruce.
But if this were thirty years ago, I wouldn't have cared, because I wouldn't have had an idea of how this movie should have been constructed for me months in advance. And now, with every highly anticipated release, I can sigh and slump in my theater chair knowing that the movie I'm about to see won't meet its otherworldly expectations.
Monday, December 17, 2012
...of 2012 Part I: TV Show
One of my favorite parts of the internet is Cracked's ...of the year lists. I've been a loyal Cracked reader since middle school, and the end of the year breakdown of all things that best represented the year is one of my favorite running articles they have. So I figured I would do a similar series of blog posts, about the shows, movies, people, etc. that are those that most encapsulate the ideas of the year 2012. And since Cracked hasn't yet published their TV Show article, I figured that would be the first post I would do.
The TV Show of 2012: HBO's Girls
It's not the grandest show on TV (Game of Thrones), or the most polarizing (Homeland), and it doesn't include any zombies. But no show really shouts 2012 like Girls does. I saw the season 1 trailer and was pretty intrigued, and from the get-go, the show has been one of the most consistently funny half-hours on television. Lena Dunham is brilliant on screen as main character Hannah, and her writing is top notch. Critics have hailed Girls as this generation's Sex and the City, the show about four other New York females that our moms watched.
And though Girls is indeed funny, and about women in New York, I find it appealing for broader reasons. Simply put, no other show is more self-deprecating about the state of the current youth generation in the year 2012. Let's face it. We're the hipster generation. We're entitled. We think we're more cultured than everybody else. We think our liberal arts degrees will land well paying jobs in this economy and if not, we think our parents will give us money for our apartments in Brooklyn until somebody discovers how artistic we are.
The show takes a jab at both the men and women of the hipster generation, a group of people who, though they might like to think they are in the minority, is much bigger than one might think. Don't believe me? Acoustic folk music is more popular right now than it has ever been. Vinyl records have had a 500% increase in sales in two years. And nobody watches network TV anymore, because it's too 'broad' and not 'niche' enough. And yes, these qualities apply to me too. I'll be the first to point out that I am an English major with both Mumford and Sons albums on vinyl, and I wear Sperrys and flannel shirts just like everybody else. Which is why I love Girls, because it's a great reminder that our generation kinda sucks, but it's ok to laugh at that.
I guess this post was slightly shorter than what I was expecting. I guess I'll go tweet about it or something.
Season 2 of Girls premieres on January 13.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)