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
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.
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).
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…)
25 Best Film Cities
MovieMaker.com released their top 25 best places to ride out the recession as an idie film person. You can find the full article here. I’m surprised Atlanta is the second to appear on the list and just above New York at number three. Honestly, most of the list surprises me.
Here, then, is MM’s ninth annual ranking of the country’s top movie cities:
1. Chicago, IL
2. Atlanta, GA
3. New York, NY
4. Shreveport, LA
5. Albuquerque, NM
6. Boston, MA
7. Stamford, CT
8. Memphis, TN
9. Milwaukee, WI
10. Austin, TX
11. Detroit, MI
12. Miami, FL
13. Seattle, WA
14. Portland, OR
15. Philadelphia, PA
16. Sedona, AZ
17. Salt Lake City, UT
18. Wilmington, NC
19. Boise, ID
20. Denver, CO
21. Bozeman, MT
22. Wichita, KS
23. San Diego, CA
24. Richmond, VA
25. Des Moines, IAHonorable Mentions:
*San Antonio, TX
*Lexington, KY
*Sheridan, WY
*Baltimore, MD
*Portsmouth, NH
You Too, Can have The Youtubes!
I was up pretty late/early researching video upload services and came across this:
http://www.nelsok.com/
Three hundred dollars gets you the source code for building your own youtube-esque site. If you’re a high roller, you can buy the exclusive rights for $6000.
Life of Revenant Persons
Preface: The following content is a PG-13 type of deal, due to the messy flesh eating subject. (more…)
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.
Getting your shoe in the door.
There’s no set path to crack the industry. Many will tell you cliches: they were “lucky” or “there at the right time”. True. But more times then less, the most common ways I hear of other people getting into sweet gigs are:
1) Internships: If you’re still in college — get one at the most prestigious place you can. Name recognition counts here. Work your tail off. Do something to get noticed. Have the right attitude and maybe they’ll keep you around for a paid position. Even if you don’t get into the company you work for, it’ll help you fill some lines on your resume and you’ll meet people. Which leads me into…
2) Networking: I read somewhere that 70% of people get their jobs from a reference. I wouldn’t be suprised if that’s actually higher. I’ve heard of employers who have vacancies and post their openings on the UTA List (industry list of jobs — but read on — not so insider) and get over 500 applications back. With that amount, odds may be they don’t even peep your resume. If you do see a job opening on the UTA List or hear about a posting in general that you’re after, see if you know someone who would know someone in that company. Personal references go very, very far. Because it’s one layer of screening passed.
Meet people. Remember names. Be nice. Be yourself (unless you’re a douche). And try to meet people in person. It’s harder for them to say no to you if they’ve met you and shook your hand, than it is if you’re just a voice on the phone.
Your career is a marathon. Wear durable shoes. Good luck.
By Daniel Vang.
