Star Wars: Uncut
Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.
Observers and filmmakers have talked about the democratization of the medium through digital technologies but these comments very rarely define whether that is a value to cinema and the things that can only now be accomplished. While the potential for lower budgets increases, so does Hollywood’s desire to assert its prominence in the only area it can always beat the little guys: production value. The illusions only money can buy.
What I like most about Star Wars: Uncut is it is the ultimate omnibus project, a giant clash of production values, creativity and ideas. Using whatever means are available, filmmakers and fans can recreate a 15 second clip from Lucas’ film, not with the intention of hiding low budgets, but with the pure intention of having fun (and often reveling in the low-fi resources). Sometimes it is the simple means incorporated that give a viewer enjoyment.
I can sense that some may see a project like this as a travesty, giving the tools of creation to the monkeys, destroying Lucas’ vision. Let me say this: Lucas has already destroyed his vision. He continues to destroy it. If anything, Star Wars: Uncut is putting the soul back into a film that Lucas has been all too content to destroy. After all, was it that long ago that George Lucas had to use his imagination and collaboration to bring something to life on the screen because he didn’t have all the money in the world? And all the monkeys who have held a monopoly on the process (and continues to in many ways) should have their world shaken up a little bit. It’s just a good thing for everybody.
So: where’s your scene? Here’s mine.
The Crying Number
A relic from an era when we used telephones to satisfy our shallow curiosities. Thankfully we got over all that when we invented the internet.
Man in the Mirror
I knew it would happen but I figured it all wrong. I had half-assumed a suicide and I knew it wouldn’t bother me. But when I read the news and the circumstances something inside me hurt.
It did bother me.
Michael Jackson is America. He is the best and worst of what America can be, he is the best and worst of what America means to the rest of the world, he is perhaps America’s greatest export. If I had a flagpole it would be lowered to half-mast for no recent politician, president, religious leader or celebrity comes nearly as close to Michael Jackson in symbolic power and world-wide appeal. He may have been past his prime, but he could sell out a 50,000-seat stadium at the drop of a hat, still make thousands upon thousands of people scream as he walked onto the stage. You can’t buy that kind of fame. No, fame’s not even the right word. Legend. Michael Jackson was America. Maybe America’s different now. Maybe it changed and he could no longer be a part of it. Maybe I’ll go listen to Off the Wall again.
And again.
And again.
After June 25, 2009, there were a lot of people in the world listening to Michael Jackson records again. Some people cried. Others scorned such a messed up individual making such catchy, exciting music. They liked the music, they hated who made it. There were still others who would not go close, would not listen anymore, knowing what they now knew about Neverland Ranch…or what they had decided they knew. In the end the ostentatious showman had been had. Some would never forget and would always remind those who held judgments. Such is the way, I suppose. For what does it mean to be famous if it is not the God-given right of every human who has ever read a news article about you to know exactly who you are, exactly what you do, exactly what you’re capable of. And what right do I have to say otherwise?
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
Burton envisions
German Expressionism’s
Updated syntax
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985)
My favorite superhero movie is Tim Burton’s debut feature film following the iconic hybrid child-man as he seeks to find his stolen bicycle in the basement of the Alamo. Burton has obviously — throughout his career — adopted some aesthetic tendencies in art direction and costume from the German Expressionist movement but he best evokes the cinema of Murnau and Wiene when he does what the original movement was based upon: the visual expression of a character’s inner thoughts. All aesthetics are grounded in principles, which is why Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is still the only film Burton has made that I think is truly great. Lofty influences aside, Pee-Wee is incredibly funny in a way that could only be funny in cinema. And like all good cinematic comedies, it isn’t afraid to point back at itself and laugh.
This film is available on DVD wherever DVDs are sold.
Cinema Haiku #0008
Cows in the Field
…from the film Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982)
Learning How to See
Water Fall in the Catskills (James H. White, 1897)
The Library of Congress now has a YouTube page where they are uploading (among other things) some of the early Thomas Edison kinetoscope films. These are the earliest known American motion pictures.
To me, these are fascinating artifacts of a time when people were just learning how to see for the first time through a new medium, a medium that was captivating for its movement and realism. But some of these kinetoscopes are also moving documentary captures in themselves. Simple, unobtrusive, committed to basic compositional form and dynamic movement. It wasn’t certain whether motion pictures were going to develop beyond a penny arcade novelty, but Edison, ever the capitalist, made sure he had what he needed to ride the wave while it lasted.
Is New Release Your Favorite Genre Too?
I swore off Blockbuster Video in summer of 2003. It wasn’t anything personal. The store ceased to offer anything that I wanted by way of non-New Release titles. Not to mention their wacky return policy for New Releases at the time (Oh, I can only keep this for three days? And tonight counts as the first day? And it’s due back at 12 noon the day after tomorrow?).
In an interview with Rafat Ali for paidcontent.org (Aug 18, 2008), Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes tries to make it sound like Blockbuster is going to be around for a long, long time. My favorite part was when he uses his personal film taste to describe his market strategy.
I don’t care how many movies are available to me. As my personal taste as a customer, I want to watch the new stuff so whether we have 10,000 movies or 200 movies it doesn’t matter if I don’t want to see any of the movies that we have. So, our assortment is heavily weighted toward newer releases and mainstream staple titles.
To be fair, Keyes is not nearly as aloof as Wired Magazine would have one believe, but he certainly believes that technology is the savior of Blockbuster Video in a way good customer service, clean facilities, a well-maintained catalogue of diverse movies and reasonable rental fees could never do. Of course, these are several of the reasons that I have heard ex-Blockbuster-customers state as things they no longer found. What I don’t think Keyes understands is that when people leave the brick-and-mortar store with a bad taste in their mouth, they are not real quick to hop online and fill up an online queue with the same company.
As Blockbuster’s shares dwindle down to roughly 70¢ a share (it was closer to $2.50 in August of 2008) and their lawyers “evaluate restructuring options, including a possible pre-packaged bankruptcy”, all the technology in the world may not be able to save it. Corporate branding works both ways, you know.
The Beautiful You
Few items speak more potently and immediately to a superficial culture’s obsession with some undefined notion of beauty. This is a consumer culture’s gasping breath for self-importance and self-acceptance. Give your face life by putting on a lifeless mask and stare dully into the future of the beautiful you.
Sad, beautiful, painful, funny, maybe a little creepy.
An Active Audience
If the film is active, the spectator becomes passive; that’s a very general rule. Hollywood films try to persuade the audience to give up their own experience and follow the more organized experience of the film. In my opinion, the opposite is right.
– Alexander Kluge
For more insights into the work and ideologies of a leading New German filmmaker, read the whole Film Comment Interview (from Nov/Dec 1974).
Top Image: A still from Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed (Alexander Kluge, 1968).
Blast That Solid Christian Rock
Ever wish you could be a worship leader at a megachurch? Well now you can!
Lead a thousand happy faces in handclaps over the head! Power-chord bridges! ”Jesus is My Boyfriend” lyrics!
Feeling down? Don’t worry: Onscreen lyrics reflect positive Christian messages!
Faces
Discontentment works
On suburban souls needing
Words and affection
Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968)
The films of John Cassavetes are some of the most brilliant, observant and complex portraits of adult relationships in all of world cinema. There are no stereotypes, no clichés, no simple motives. These are the stories of Americans struggling to communicate, seeking some sort of resolution or emotional connection. The emotional squalor of late-60’s suburbia is being tapped here, the offhand camera finding bits and pieces of people as they circle each other like predators or hide behind their verbal assaults. Few film experiences leave me as devastated as Faces, but even then, the devastation seems cathartic as the morning seeping through the curtains, down the stairs into the kitchen as the night ends and the silent walk up the stairs to bed.
This film is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.
Cinema Haiku #0007
Magical Maestro
Equality found
Under the spell of magic
Stereotyping
Magical Maestro (Tex Avery, 1952)
Tex Avery’s films are under attack. It is not a planned assault, but the powers that be have decided what is decent and what is not decent for a supposedly intelligent, enlightened and tolerant society to see. Among those things not allowed are old cartoons that make any play on ethnic physicality or cultural costume. Magical Maestro falls squarely into this category, a film where no ethnic group, no cultural expression is left unspoofed, least of all the dominant cultural and ethnic paradigm (the presumably “white and cultured” opera singer is, of course, Poochini — a dog). But forget all that and remember this: Tex Avery was a madcap genius, filling a short film with a ratatat barrage of gags that build and build into a crescendo of chaos. Often, there is at least one self-reflexive moment where the characters acknowledge the existence of the audience or the fact that they are in a film. The self-reflexive moment in Magical Maestro is one of the most brilliant gags in any comedic film of any era.
This short film is unavailable on DVD from the rights holders (MGM/Warner Brothers). However, if you click quickly there may still be a valid link to a version made available by some noble outlaw.
Cinema Haiku #0006
Breathless
Belmondo/Seberg
Jump cut to the boring parts
Of a French outlaw
Breathless (À bout de souffle) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
It feels like cinema is being discovered for the first time, slowly finding itself on the streets of Paris, in a stolen car, on the side of the road, at night in the city of lights. It learns grammar, learns technique, learns convention. It is the end of “old Cinema.” Breathless is an anomaly in Jean-Luc Godard’s oeuvre: a loose, jazzy film tying itself to the American gangster genre of Otto Preminger and Howard Hawks with silver shackles. Existential malaise and the boredom of criminality are one and the same and ultimately fall prey to the conventions of genre and morality. Breathless is both a love letter and a critical treatise in the same moment. As Godard himself said in 1962: “Although I felt ashamed of it at one time, I do like Breathless very much, but now I see where it belongs—along with Alice in Wonderland. I thought it was Scarface.”
This film is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.
Cinema Haiku #0005
Nashville
Celebrity crazed
Country of musicians sell
Ideals for records
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
Robert Altman’s American quilt of a film is a fascinating interweaving of 24 major characters, real world locations and music written and performed by the actors involved. Purportedly despised by Nashville elite at the time, the movie was about more than just Nashville celebrity — indeed, the very nature and idea of celebrity in America: who is a celebrity, who orchestrates the magic behind the scenes, who flocks to the events to give their hearts to their throbs and their minds to the birds? In a sense Nashville is a perfect time capsule of mid-70’s Americana; in another sense it could be anywhere, anytime fame has ever been desired or achieved.
This film is available on DVD from Paramount Pictures.
Cinema Haiku #0004
Young Mr. Lincoln
Fonda is tall and
Can carry a speech like Abe’s
American myth
Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939)
John Ford’s expressionistic portrait of the formative years of Lincoln’s life is praised as a fitting piece of American lore. But what works about Ford’s myth is the dichotomy one could take in viewing the film: one part being an approximated version of reality, the other being pure cinema. Which part is which is a completely different question but those who understand it least are turned off by something that has the air of simplicity. Thus is the genius of John Ford: a filmmaker of astounding ability, a man who made complex films that seem as simple as folk tales.
The film is available on DVD from The Criterion Collection.
Cinema Haiku #0003
Exiting the Factory
As subjects pass by
Are documentary film’s
Questions still looming?
Workers Exiting the Lumière Factory (Louis Lumière, 1895)
Most cinema studies courses point back to two major works as the foundation of the entire history of cinematic theory: the Lumière Brothers’ actualities and Georges Méliès’ fantastic shorts. Realism and formalism, respectively. All of the controversies of truth and fact in documentary film, manipulation versus documentation, art versus reality are contained in these 46 seconds of film from 1895.
Film available to view online at the InstitutLumiere.
Cinema Haiku #0002
Burden of Dreams
Pull a ship through the
Jungle and you can swallow
Indigenous spit
Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982)
Les Blank follows legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog into the jungle to witness the pulling of a steamship over a mountain. Blank’s documentary lens has a tendency to stray from the production dramas, however, finding instead the rituals of the locals who worked as actors in Fitzcarraldo, the diversity of plant and animal life, and bearing witness to Herzog’s Shakespearean monologue about the obscenity of the jungle.
The film is available on DVD from The Criterion Collection.
Cinema Haiku #0001
Best Films of 2008?
End of the year lists can be silly ego exercises. (more…)
A Trophy
I saw a sign that was telling me
Do something important.
I bought American cars
Some awards
Put the rest of my money into Citigroup
Which was when I realized
The joke was on me.
Unique Snowflakes
There’s a funny thing about terrible screenplays: they are not unique in their awfulness. Most bad scripts are blandly bad because the folly is so common. Apart from formatting errors (please make sure to format a script properly before submitting it to a production company or producer), these four problems plague the majority of the bad scripts I’ve read (even the best of the worst) during my time as a script reader.
1) Conflict is the Basis of Drama
This is basic but it never fails to elude many scripts. Conflicts that are connected (or growing) through cause and effect are very effective; conflicts that are easily overcome or overcome accidentally or coincidentally are less effective. Interesting characters become less interesting real fast when they are not overcoming obstacles, attaining goals, or problem solving.
2) Dialogue Says More When It Says Less
There is such a thing as saying too much. Many characters in bad scripts reason through every word they say, replying in turn to each comment made by another character. The dialogue becomes long, cumbersome to say, uninteresting to read, and useless in its revelation of plot, character or world. The most natural written dialogue in a script is between one and four lines and the best lines of dialogue are usually not trying to be memorable scene enders.
3) Originality is Not Finding Out It is All a Dream
Many scripts try to find originality by having a unique metaphysical hook (time traveling, shapeshifting, angels, demons, aliens, etc.). The problem is that originality is found through specificity and logic, not generality and a knowing suspension of disbelief. If there is a specific character that follows their own inner logic, a story has a much better chance of finding a unique voice. If the writer wants to tread down the path of potential fantastic plot devices, the writer should make sure the device is just as specific and that it follows its own inner logic.
4) Screenwriting is Visual
“Joe feels the weight of the world as he thinks about Irene and their conversation earlier. He wishes he could take that moment back.” Unless a character is speaking this, these sentences should not exist in a script. The words that appear in a script that are not sluglines (“EXT. HOUSE – DAY”) or dialogue are called action/description. They are called action/description because they are for writing about physical, visual things the audience will witness. Joe opens the door. Joe sits down at the bar. Joe holds his head in his hands. They don’t have to be as simple and pragmatic as this, but they must be visual, they must be specific. An audience is going to be watching this scene eventually (a writer hopes!) – not reading it.
Screenwriting is not easy. Nothing is. There are plenty of other mistakes that a writer can make in a script that ruin the integrity of the story and threaten the audience’s interest. These are just four of them.
Casualties of War
The department store is a battlefield where the fashion wars are lost and won. I make a brisk survey of the grounds, taking in like fresh spring flowers what children nowadays are wearing. Catalogue bought stripes of primary colors were a common occurrence with me. Looking through racks of pre-whore girl’s clothing, I don’t see many stripes. The way I figure: Stripes don’t have an ad campaign; don’t have a pre-teen girl who sings about how boys love her when she wears stripes, about how she just wants to be a kid again.
I am a man now so I wear men’s clothes. The pictures on the wall have a rough-and-tumble breed of men striking existential poses with dogs and stubble. “Who am I, really?” one of the pictures asks.
A pink tie is on sale for two dollars and eighty cents and I wonder: Is it worth it? Would I wear it two dollars and eighty cents worth of the time? Interest fades like a good loan and I leave the tie with the other dead and dying, stepping over a pair of pants that found freedom only to be trampled by designer shoes.
Leaving the department store, I realize it has become more of a fashion national park, where streams of low prices flow in picturesque patterns in front of mountains of soft fabric with price tags as birds in their natural habitat, making themselves to home. The existential pictures loom over the landscape as gods who refuse to smile by themselves: this sunset brought to you by Tommy Hilfiger. I want to come back and see the sights again, see how they change over time and how I can become one with nature.
Some Call It a Mission Statement
The desire of the Vancar blogs is to provide interesting and thoughtful prose concerning the things that interest us in the world that are not politics. Politics are okay, but they are so specific to a particular time and place and generally get people angry, even though the angry people can’t do much to change politics .
So: at the Vancar blogs, we talk about art, music, culture, video games, movies, music videos, comic books, the internet and anything else that interests or meta-interests us. These things are important, or they’ve been integrated into our lifestyles to the point that we must continually talk about them to make ourselves feel like we aren’t wasting our lives .
You decide .