Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Watching the Fire
An abandoned military hospital, as many local reports termed it, burned over the weekend not far from Alameda Point. Scott and I took a long bike ride Sunday, the first part of which consisted of following, then getting away from, the noxious smoke. We circled around and got pretty close to the fire by riding into this weird ghost town on the west end. I think it's former Coast Guard housing and obviously the future site of the zombie apocalypse.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Eastbound & Down
The meteoric ascension of Danny McBride continues, after The Foot Fist Way, Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express, in HBO's "Eastbound & Down." McBride's redneck comic persona is similar to Will Ferrell's arrogant idiot with more desperation and a harder edge. Surely this affinity is what drew Ferrell and his comedy partner, Adam McKay, to McBride in Foot Fist, which they shepherded to festival slots and distribution and more or less franchised in this new series, which just ended its six-episode first season run.In Foot Fist, McBride was an unlikely children's martial arts instructor, dreaming of the big time; in "Eastbound & Down," he's a washed-up big league pitcher forced to return to his southern hometown and become a P.E. coach at the local middle school. The superficial attraction of the series is watching McBride's Kenny Powers, with his shockingly filthy mouth and stadium-sized ego, contend with the diminishment of his life and prospects back home. If you liked Foot Fist and McBride's memorable character in Pineapple, you'll love "Eastbound & Down."
Not all critics do, nor will all audiences, but there is a lot more to this series, as it turns out, that has made the first season such a pleasure. Not just Will Ferrell's recurring character or the talented supporting cast but an unexpected groundedness in real life makes the series something special. What's more, episodes 2-4 were directed by David Gordon Green, one of the best American filmmakers of his generation. Green directed Pineapple Express, but prior to that he was known for deeply-felt portraits of the decaying south, like George Washington and the heartbreakingly romantic All the Real Girls, a work of stunning naturalism and beauty (McBride has a small part in that one, too).
Green's skill and native southern sensibility, sympathy and rhythm lends his episodes, especially, a poetic lyricism amidst the raw humor, boobies and bad behavior. McBride's characters, notably in his work with Foot Fist director and series co-creator, Jody Hill (along with Ben Best), have hinted all along at a greater soulfulness we don't much get to see, obscured as it is by his super-loser antics. Here it's starting to shine through.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Spring begins in Sunol Regional Wilderness
The East Bay Regional Park District has a lot to offer. 65 parks, 98,000 acres, 1,150 miles of trails. I've enjoyed hiking in many of them over the years. I even shot my first film in one of them. On Friday, the first day of spring, Kim and I discovered a new one, the Sunol Regional Wilderness.
This is the perfect time of year to explore these parks, while the round, grassy hills are still an iridescent green under deep blue skies, slopes busting out with wildflowers, creeks and streams full of water, sun not too hot, a light, cool breeze blowing by late afternoon. We took the Canyon View Trail because the brochure promised a "gentle rise in elevation" and we needed a mild walk rather than a strenuous hike, as the pictures suggest.
The trees, trail, flowers and hill views were lovely enough, but the gem of the park was the rocky canyon on the Alameda Creek called Little Yosemite. We plan to return during the summer and try to sneak a dip, though the water will likely be reduced to a trickle by then. It'll still be worth the trip...
"Little Yosemite"
By the banks of the Alameda Creek.
On the way out, Flag Hill.
This is the perfect time of year to explore these parks, while the round, grassy hills are still an iridescent green under deep blue skies, slopes busting out with wildflowers, creeks and streams full of water, sun not too hot, a light, cool breeze blowing by late afternoon. We took the Canyon View Trail because the brochure promised a "gentle rise in elevation" and we needed a mild walk rather than a strenuous hike, as the pictures suggest.
The trees, trail, flowers and hill views were lovely enough, but the gem of the park was the rocky canyon on the Alameda Creek called Little Yosemite. We plan to return during the summer and try to sneak a dip, though the water will likely be reduced to a trickle by then. It'll still be worth the trip...
"Little Yosemite"
By the banks of the Alameda Creek.
On the way out, Flag Hill.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Head of the Sinaloa Cartel is the New Drug War Billionaire
Following up from yesterday's post, about how our "War on Drugs" amounts to flushing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, where they are washed out to sea and turned into terns' nests, for which the terns are, no doubt, grateful, but which could probably be done more cheaply if tern-nest creation is our only goal, comes news today that Joaquin Guzman has made it onto Forbes' new billionaire's list.
Who's Guzman? Only the most wanted man in Mexico, a murderous drug kingpin, "one of the biggest providers of cocaine to the United States," according to Forbes' senior editor, Luisa Kroll.
From the AP: "Forbes said Mexican and Colombian traffickers laundered between $18 billion and $39 billion in proceeds from wholesale drugs shipments to the United States in 2008."
So how do you stop a criminal capitalist? The same way you stop any capitalist: gunships. No, wait, I mean, not gunships...what's it called? Oh, yeah: more capitalism! Legalization, Taxation, Regulation, Treatment = bye-bye cartels!
Who's Guzman? Only the most wanted man in Mexico, a murderous drug kingpin, "one of the biggest providers of cocaine to the United States," according to Forbes' senior editor, Luisa Kroll.
From the AP: "Forbes said Mexican and Colombian traffickers laundered between $18 billion and $39 billion in proceeds from wholesale drugs shipments to the United States in 2008."
So how do you stop a criminal capitalist? The same way you stop any capitalist: gunships. No, wait, I mean, not gunships...what's it called? Oh, yeah: more capitalism! Legalization, Taxation, Regulation, Treatment = bye-bye cartels!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Legalize It All
The Economist has published an excellent editorial in favor of complete legalization of drugs, found via BoingBoing. Here's hoping that other mainstream publications will follow up. It's one thing for a bunch of pot smokers to clamor for decriminalization; it's another for a sober, moderate, highly-respected news magazine to advocate wholesale, international legalization of all drugs.
It's a matter of honesty and the lesser of two evils. Honestly, the "War on Drugs," waged in one form or another for the past century, has been a complete failure by any possible measure. Sure, drug use in rich countries fluctuates over time; meanwhile, the human cost in poor countries rises ever higher. This will never end. The lesser of two evils would be legalization, taxation, regulation and treatment.
I find it strange that this is such a political hot-potato in the U.S. Most politicians cannot talk about it and journalists won't write about it. We are a deeply hypocritical people in certain ways. We claim to want justice, yet we lock up 1 in 5 of our black men. We think (some) drugs should be illegal to protect our children and communities, even if thousands of innocent Mexicans are slaughtered as a result of our drug war. Our new President aims to keep fighting that war, even though he used to snort coke. He likely still enjoys a cigarette from time to time; nicotine, though legal, is as addictive as the hardest drugs.
This hypocrisy is not merely tiresome and idiotic, it is far more dangerous than any drug.
It's a matter of honesty and the lesser of two evils. Honestly, the "War on Drugs," waged in one form or another for the past century, has been a complete failure by any possible measure. Sure, drug use in rich countries fluctuates over time; meanwhile, the human cost in poor countries rises ever higher. This will never end. The lesser of two evils would be legalization, taxation, regulation and treatment.
I find it strange that this is such a political hot-potato in the U.S. Most politicians cannot talk about it and journalists won't write about it. We are a deeply hypocritical people in certain ways. We claim to want justice, yet we lock up 1 in 5 of our black men. We think (some) drugs should be illegal to protect our children and communities, even if thousands of innocent Mexicans are slaughtered as a result of our drug war. Our new President aims to keep fighting that war, even though he used to snort coke. He likely still enjoys a cigarette from time to time; nicotine, though legal, is as addictive as the hardest drugs.
This hypocrisy is not merely tiresome and idiotic, it is far more dangerous than any drug.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Who watches Watchmen?
The long-awaited comic book adaptation, Watchmen, finally hit screens this weekend. I don't remember when I first read the graphic novel, but that is an experience no one should miss for its density, brilliance and humanity. The book is often cited as the greatest comic of all time; I'm not enough of a buff to dispute or validate this, but if there is a better one, I'd sure love to read it.
Watchmen has a long, troubled history in Hollywood; its own author, Alan Moore, along with many readers, claimed it could not be filmed (and Moore famously removed his name from this version). Zack Snyder has proved them wrong, in the literal sense at least. I was never one of those readers who thought it could not be filmed, but I have long thought it somewhat redundant to do so. After all, there is no rule that says every single comic must become a movie. Watchmen, in particular, was perfectly conceived as a comic book - some comics, just like some popular novels, seem to be written almost in anticipation of the eventual film adaptation, but not this one. The greatest aspects of the book are those that would also make it most difficult to adapt: its dense, multi-threaded storyline, its long list of characters both in the 1985 "present" of the story and in its rich historical digressions, its philosophical musings, its cynicism and melancholy.
Nevertheless, I was pleased to lower my expectations and disregard the predictable critical onslaught of the last few days as the reviews began to appear, because I just wanted to see this great story on the big screen. For awhile, that was more than enough to satisfy me, right through the second act. A great story that you love, no matter how flawed the adaptation might turn out to be, can often be great fun to watch just to see the filmmakers' take on it. In this case, Snyder gets quite a bit right - for a fan of the graphic novel like myself, here it is, come to life.
I don't think the film could possibly make a lick of sense, though, to anyone who has not read the book - which ought to be enough to classify the enterprise as an expensive failure. This was a foregone conclusion, however; unless it had been made as a mini-series, there's no way the adaptation could have been both faithful and comprehensible to the uninitiated. I think that most of the critics who slammed the film have not read the book, which is not unreasonable, though I believe it contributed heavily to the level of snark (sounds like some people didn't get invited to join the club).
In my viewing, last night at 10:30 in the historic theater at the Alameda, I thought the biggest problem for the film was perhaps one that could never have been reconciled. The story is set in an alternate-universe 1985 in which Nixon is still president and the U.S. won the Vietnam war, thanks to the unstoppable powers of the giant, blue, atomic god-man, Dr. Manhattan. All of this is not nearly as difficult to swallow as our own knowledge of the radical changes the American perspective has undergone since the mid-1980s, when the comic was written. A couple of years later the Berlin Wall would fall, along with Soviet communism, leaving the U.S. as the world's lone superpower in a world where the notion of a superpower was already passe, robbing the story of its true backdrop, the spectre of nuclear annihilation in a quick and dirty World War III. Add in the optimistic boom of the 1990s and the further erosion of the nation-state as the seat of supreme power, borne out in the chaos of 9/11 and the Bush years, and you get a social, political, technological and psychological context almost unrecognizable to anyone under 30, and only a subject of misty nostalgia to anyone under 40. It's too late for Watchmen.
The narrative backdrop, therefore, acts as a kind of distancing mechanism, that is, the audience must make a number of intellectual steps prior to reaching a point of engagement with the film. We must accept the strange datedness of the material as a time capsule from the past that might yet have some relevance to our world today just as we must strive to avoid being distracted by the typically naked Dr. Manhattan's penis (and blue balls). There are also some missteps in the musical choices in the film and a generally on-the-nose literalism with those choices that takes us right out of the stream of things. These distractions mean Watchmen sometimes seems more like a museum piece than a movie, difficult to get swept up in.
A number of critics have mentioned the brutal, graphic violence as a serious flaw - but here's where they've got things really wrong. I think it might be a generational thing, or a problem for people without exposure to the comic book, but the violent action, especially around the Rorshach character, is one of the best elements here, often suddenly yanking the viewer back into an emotional engagement with the story after we've been allowed to drift away. Why we have come to accept the bloodless, inconsequential PG13 violence so common in our popular films I don't know, but the shocking brutality of man's inhumanity to man is very much a theme of the book and the film, even when both glory in it. This is one of the things Snyder does best.
Like I said, I was engaged enough with watching the great comic book unspool onscreen (not a glowing endorsement, mind you, but an acknowledgment of very low expectations somewhat exceeded) through the second act, but the final quarter of the film was interminable, muddled, cluttered and confusing. The truly unfilmable comic book ending (because it would have required too much explanation and might very well have looked super-ridiculous) was changed into drab monologuing, more slow-mo chopsocky, massive genocide and dumb rationalizing. Up to that point, though, there were some moments of real beauty, making me nostalgic for the real deal, the masterpiece that started all of this.
Watchmen has a long, troubled history in Hollywood; its own author, Alan Moore, along with many readers, claimed it could not be filmed (and Moore famously removed his name from this version). Zack Snyder has proved them wrong, in the literal sense at least. I was never one of those readers who thought it could not be filmed, but I have long thought it somewhat redundant to do so. After all, there is no rule that says every single comic must become a movie. Watchmen, in particular, was perfectly conceived as a comic book - some comics, just like some popular novels, seem to be written almost in anticipation of the eventual film adaptation, but not this one. The greatest aspects of the book are those that would also make it most difficult to adapt: its dense, multi-threaded storyline, its long list of characters both in the 1985 "present" of the story and in its rich historical digressions, its philosophical musings, its cynicism and melancholy.
Nevertheless, I was pleased to lower my expectations and disregard the predictable critical onslaught of the last few days as the reviews began to appear, because I just wanted to see this great story on the big screen. For awhile, that was more than enough to satisfy me, right through the second act. A great story that you love, no matter how flawed the adaptation might turn out to be, can often be great fun to watch just to see the filmmakers' take on it. In this case, Snyder gets quite a bit right - for a fan of the graphic novel like myself, here it is, come to life.
I don't think the film could possibly make a lick of sense, though, to anyone who has not read the book - which ought to be enough to classify the enterprise as an expensive failure. This was a foregone conclusion, however; unless it had been made as a mini-series, there's no way the adaptation could have been both faithful and comprehensible to the uninitiated. I think that most of the critics who slammed the film have not read the book, which is not unreasonable, though I believe it contributed heavily to the level of snark (sounds like some people didn't get invited to join the club).
In my viewing, last night at 10:30 in the historic theater at the Alameda, I thought the biggest problem for the film was perhaps one that could never have been reconciled. The story is set in an alternate-universe 1985 in which Nixon is still president and the U.S. won the Vietnam war, thanks to the unstoppable powers of the giant, blue, atomic god-man, Dr. Manhattan. All of this is not nearly as difficult to swallow as our own knowledge of the radical changes the American perspective has undergone since the mid-1980s, when the comic was written. A couple of years later the Berlin Wall would fall, along with Soviet communism, leaving the U.S. as the world's lone superpower in a world where the notion of a superpower was already passe, robbing the story of its true backdrop, the spectre of nuclear annihilation in a quick and dirty World War III. Add in the optimistic boom of the 1990s and the further erosion of the nation-state as the seat of supreme power, borne out in the chaos of 9/11 and the Bush years, and you get a social, political, technological and psychological context almost unrecognizable to anyone under 30, and only a subject of misty nostalgia to anyone under 40. It's too late for Watchmen.
The narrative backdrop, therefore, acts as a kind of distancing mechanism, that is, the audience must make a number of intellectual steps prior to reaching a point of engagement with the film. We must accept the strange datedness of the material as a time capsule from the past that might yet have some relevance to our world today just as we must strive to avoid being distracted by the typically naked Dr. Manhattan's penis (and blue balls). There are also some missteps in the musical choices in the film and a generally on-the-nose literalism with those choices that takes us right out of the stream of things. These distractions mean Watchmen sometimes seems more like a museum piece than a movie, difficult to get swept up in.
A number of critics have mentioned the brutal, graphic violence as a serious flaw - but here's where they've got things really wrong. I think it might be a generational thing, or a problem for people without exposure to the comic book, but the violent action, especially around the Rorshach character, is one of the best elements here, often suddenly yanking the viewer back into an emotional engagement with the story after we've been allowed to drift away. Why we have come to accept the bloodless, inconsequential PG13 violence so common in our popular films I don't know, but the shocking brutality of man's inhumanity to man is very much a theme of the book and the film, even when both glory in it. This is one of the things Snyder does best.
Like I said, I was engaged enough with watching the great comic book unspool onscreen (not a glowing endorsement, mind you, but an acknowledgment of very low expectations somewhat exceeded) through the second act, but the final quarter of the film was interminable, muddled, cluttered and confusing. The truly unfilmable comic book ending (because it would have required too much explanation and might very well have looked super-ridiculous) was changed into drab monologuing, more slow-mo chopsocky, massive genocide and dumb rationalizing. Up to that point, though, there were some moments of real beauty, making me nostalgic for the real deal, the masterpiece that started all of this.
Local Developments in Fried Chicken
The KFC at the corner of Encinal and Jackson Park, the deep-fried stank of which has long enshrouded the surrounding blocks, has been knocked down.
What will take its place, you ask? The construction company, helpfully, has hung a sign on the fence. This has left me both amused and dismayed, AKA dismused.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Matt Zoller Seitz on Kevin B. Lee
Came upon a fine essay by critic and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz on The House Next Door blog, about more YouTube takedowns. This time, YouTube has apparently taken down critic Kevin B. Lee's entire archive of video essays because they make use of copyrighted film clips for the purpose of scholarly commentary. Rather than drone on about this myself, I'll just encourage anyone interested to read Seitz's essay.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
OMG, UMG, WTF?
Amidst ongoing reports of the Universal Music Group's abuse of YouTube's automated Content I.D. system, which uses a digital "fingerprint" to identify copyrighted content and remove it from YouTube without regard for Fair Use, comes an article in today's NYT, which begins thusly:
"Google's YouTube and the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music label, are in advanced discussions over a licensing agreement that could lead to the creation of a premium site for music videos, according a person briefed on the talks."
The backstory here is that the sub-divisions of the sub-divisions of the media leviathans that control all the world's music, probably going back to our simian ancestors' rhythmic stick-banging, if they had their way, had worked out a way to accept uses of their music tracks in YouTubers' uploads, namely by running advertising against those videos on the YouTube site. This arrangement was worked out as a way for the labels to avoid looking like Super-Colossal/Special-Gigantic Dickheads for, say, taking down 30-second videos of toddlers dancing around to music by Prince (even though such a use is absolutely, unequivocally and obviously an instance of Fair Use, a legal principle neither the music labels nor the film and television studios appear to grasp, and not a violation of copyright in any way).
Except, apparently, UMG decided there wasn't enough money in this arrangement which, to be fair, would also have allowed potentially infringing uses to stay up and generate ad revenue. So now UMG has changed its policy to Automatic Takedown when the Content I.D. system finds one of its songs on YouTube. This has led to the usual indiscrimate corporate censorship, in which even uses of Universal content falling under Fair Use result in robot takedown with the added chilling effect that the victims are afraid to seek redress because they don't want to be sued by the Big Bad Wolf. Don't think this is happening? Well, here's an example:
This viral video, made by DustFilms, was a smash on YouTube until UMG took it down. Now it's a smash on Funny Or Die.
Parody has long been acknowledged as Fair Use - and it's not even one of those difficult-to-figure-out Fair Use cases. The US Supreme Court, in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., a landmark case, held unanimously that a parody that reproduces a substantial portion of a copyrighted work, even for profit, is still protected speech under the Fair Use clause of the 1976 Copyright Act. DustFilms' amusing series of "literal" music videos are clearly parodies. Case closed.
So, automated takedown or not, YouTube's removal of this video (and subsequent "literal music videos") at UMG's request is nothing less than illegal corporate supression of protected speech. The trouble is, when this kind of thing happens, no small-time artist has the financial ability to take on Universal's legal machine. This is where we are today with copyright in America. The corporations that control the vast majority of the intellectual property that makes up our popular culture - which many would suggest is the stuff of our collective consciousness as a people, and very much a subject for art and criticism - are rich enough to illegally cock-block anyone who dares to create that art or criticism.
I know this firsthand, after having worked at a smallish media corporation with a giantish fear of being sued for infringement and seeing the chilling effect, every single day, of that fear on the media we were trying to create. That's bad enough, but at least that company had a legal department and a world-famous top executive; hell, if we had gotten sued, we could have noisily fought back. Individual artists rarely have that chance.
Then today comes this news that UMG's new "solution" for this "problem" is to start a new "premium" website with YouTube for their music videos. Sigh. Just what we need, another fucking online video site.
I get that these old media companies are desperately trying to navigate the uncharted waters of the new media space - or rather, are desperately trying to ignore the long-existing charts because they don't like the lay of the land and hope to miracle some kind of Northwest Passage through it - and it's not easy to do. Nor is it easy for them to watch their old business models crumble all around them. I can sympathize with them, if I screw up my face and squeeze my eyes shut and clap really loud and believe in fairies, just a little bit.
Maybe this UMG/YT premium site will be the answer to old media's prayers. But if it incorporates the same censoring, restrictive, Big Brother-ish, anti-fan oafishness of their efforts so far, there's little chance of success.
"Google's YouTube and the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music label, are in advanced discussions over a licensing agreement that could lead to the creation of a premium site for music videos, according a person briefed on the talks."
The backstory here is that the sub-divisions of the sub-divisions of the media leviathans that control all the world's music, probably going back to our simian ancestors' rhythmic stick-banging, if they had their way, had worked out a way to accept uses of their music tracks in YouTubers' uploads, namely by running advertising against those videos on the YouTube site. This arrangement was worked out as a way for the labels to avoid looking like Super-Colossal/Special-Gigantic Dickheads for, say, taking down 30-second videos of toddlers dancing around to music by Prince (even though such a use is absolutely, unequivocally and obviously an instance of Fair Use, a legal principle neither the music labels nor the film and television studios appear to grasp, and not a violation of copyright in any way).
Except, apparently, UMG decided there wasn't enough money in this arrangement which, to be fair, would also have allowed potentially infringing uses to stay up and generate ad revenue. So now UMG has changed its policy to Automatic Takedown when the Content I.D. system finds one of its songs on YouTube. This has led to the usual indiscrimate corporate censorship, in which even uses of Universal content falling under Fair Use result in robot takedown with the added chilling effect that the victims are afraid to seek redress because they don't want to be sued by the Big Bad Wolf. Don't think this is happening? Well, here's an example:
This viral video, made by DustFilms, was a smash on YouTube until UMG took it down. Now it's a smash on Funny Or Die.
Take on Me: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos
Parody has long been acknowledged as Fair Use - and it's not even one of those difficult-to-figure-out Fair Use cases. The US Supreme Court, in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., a landmark case, held unanimously that a parody that reproduces a substantial portion of a copyrighted work, even for profit, is still protected speech under the Fair Use clause of the 1976 Copyright Act. DustFilms' amusing series of "literal" music videos are clearly parodies. Case closed.
So, automated takedown or not, YouTube's removal of this video (and subsequent "literal music videos") at UMG's request is nothing less than illegal corporate supression of protected speech. The trouble is, when this kind of thing happens, no small-time artist has the financial ability to take on Universal's legal machine. This is where we are today with copyright in America. The corporations that control the vast majority of the intellectual property that makes up our popular culture - which many would suggest is the stuff of our collective consciousness as a people, and very much a subject for art and criticism - are rich enough to illegally cock-block anyone who dares to create that art or criticism.
I know this firsthand, after having worked at a smallish media corporation with a giantish fear of being sued for infringement and seeing the chilling effect, every single day, of that fear on the media we were trying to create. That's bad enough, but at least that company had a legal department and a world-famous top executive; hell, if we had gotten sued, we could have noisily fought back. Individual artists rarely have that chance.
Then today comes this news that UMG's new "solution" for this "problem" is to start a new "premium" website with YouTube for their music videos. Sigh. Just what we need, another fucking online video site.
I get that these old media companies are desperately trying to navigate the uncharted waters of the new media space - or rather, are desperately trying to ignore the long-existing charts because they don't like the lay of the land and hope to miracle some kind of Northwest Passage through it - and it's not easy to do. Nor is it easy for them to watch their old business models crumble all around them. I can sympathize with them, if I screw up my face and squeeze my eyes shut and clap really loud and believe in fairies, just a little bit.
Maybe this UMG/YT premium site will be the answer to old media's prayers. But if it incorporates the same censoring, restrictive, Big Brother-ish, anti-fan oafishness of their efforts so far, there's little chance of success.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Taken
Felt like a movie this gloomy afternoon, so Scott and I headed to Taken at the Alameda Theatre. Currently the number 4 movie in America, the film is a gloriously preposterous ticking-clock Frantic revamp that swaps daughter for wife, Liam Neeson for Harrison Ford, Pierre Morel for Roman Polanski and Paris for...okay, Paris. It's about a one-time "government worker" (read: super-spy) whose formerly-estranged 17-year-old daughter gets abducted by Albanian sex-slavers while she's on a trip to Europe to - get this - follow U2 around on their summer tour. Of all the hilarious absurdity in this film, this last detail might be my favorite, were it not for the fact that U2 has a new album about to drop, making this sublimely ridiculous notion seem like mere product placement. (I mean, she may as well be going on tour with Bing Crosby, for all the relevance U2 has for the high school demographic.)
This set-up is simply an excuse, of course, for Neeson's snarling sadist to go all Jason Bourne on a bunch of thugs, or all Abu Ghraib on a sleazy kidnapper, depending on whether you read the film as a delightfully post-narrative exercise in mindlessly kinetic cinematic bone-crunching or a delightfully post-9/11 ironically enthusiastic argument for the Bush era's tough-love foreign policy. I chose to read it both ways, my delight intact. We laughed our way through the whole thing, both at the consistently risible plot devices and the genuinely pulse-quickening action.
Thankfully, the filmmakers do not take any of this seriously, which is the only reason why the film works (apart from Neeson's strong work) - an observation that I suspect will become a refrain for me if I continue to write about film. When a wholly preposterous film takes itself seriously I find it far more irritating than a trifle of a film that just wants to have fun and blow things up. Taken is a case of savvy filmmakers, with a decent sense of fun, having a lark and taking the audience along with them. It's a propulsive revenge flick with a pleasingly savage and unsympathetic hero and zero sentiment. It adds up to a fine time at the picture show - which is not to say that the film couldn't be a great deal better.
It would have been better if the daughter had been lying about following U2 around when in reality she just wanted to gallivant around Europe for the summer flirting with, and maybe fucking, a bunch of silly Euroboys.
It would have been better if Liam Neeson had spoken French when posing as a Parisian cop who, as far as I know, speak French. Filmgoers can take a minute or two of subtitles, for chrissake - it's not about authenticity, it's about making him appear like even more of a badass. He can kick the asses of twelve guys at once and speak French!
It also would have been better if the first act - in which we learn that Neeson has been estranged from his daughter, but is trying to connect again - had been, you know, cut. We don't care, and daughter Maggie Grace (of "Lost," my current TV obsession) sucks too much for us to care that we don't care. She is just a hottie MacGuffin, and the sooner those fuckers abduct her, the sooner Liam can kick much ass. Get on with it.
Finally, just a point of interest. I don't know whether it's our "post-9/11 world" or what, but, man, are Americans really this afraid to let their kids do anything? I get that daddy Liam is overprotective because he's a paranoid former spook who has seen all kinds of whatever, but the girl is 17 (although it's true that 25-year-old Grace's version of 17 makes her seem 13) and it doesn't seem entirely far-fetched that she could go to Europe and not get sold into sex-slavery. That is, the filmmakers do an especially weak job of convincing us that this all-important aspect is even possible - I know I just said that I wanted less exposition, and I'll stand by that, but I'm just surprised that the filmmakers thought they needed none about this part of the story.
Two notes: this is a PG13 film that really feels like an R. It's very violent, though there's almost no blood which is how they get away with it. I was convinced it was an R and that the chatty young boys in our aisle had snuck in (for which I applauded them, though we know how I feel about talking in the movies). Also, once again, the projection was substandard. I had to leave the film to ask the staff to correct the framing - the frame line was visible at the top of the screen as was a sliver of the bottom of the next frame. This is pure carelessness.
This set-up is simply an excuse, of course, for Neeson's snarling sadist to go all Jason Bourne on a bunch of thugs, or all Abu Ghraib on a sleazy kidnapper, depending on whether you read the film as a delightfully post-narrative exercise in mindlessly kinetic cinematic bone-crunching or a delightfully post-9/11 ironically enthusiastic argument for the Bush era's tough-love foreign policy. I chose to read it both ways, my delight intact. We laughed our way through the whole thing, both at the consistently risible plot devices and the genuinely pulse-quickening action.
Thankfully, the filmmakers do not take any of this seriously, which is the only reason why the film works (apart from Neeson's strong work) - an observation that I suspect will become a refrain for me if I continue to write about film. When a wholly preposterous film takes itself seriously I find it far more irritating than a trifle of a film that just wants to have fun and blow things up. Taken is a case of savvy filmmakers, with a decent sense of fun, having a lark and taking the audience along with them. It's a propulsive revenge flick with a pleasingly savage and unsympathetic hero and zero sentiment. It adds up to a fine time at the picture show - which is not to say that the film couldn't be a great deal better.
It would have been better if the daughter had been lying about following U2 around when in reality she just wanted to gallivant around Europe for the summer flirting with, and maybe fucking, a bunch of silly Euroboys.
It would have been better if Liam Neeson had spoken French when posing as a Parisian cop who, as far as I know, speak French. Filmgoers can take a minute or two of subtitles, for chrissake - it's not about authenticity, it's about making him appear like even more of a badass. He can kick the asses of twelve guys at once and speak French!
It also would have been better if the first act - in which we learn that Neeson has been estranged from his daughter, but is trying to connect again - had been, you know, cut. We don't care, and daughter Maggie Grace (of "Lost," my current TV obsession) sucks too much for us to care that we don't care. She is just a hottie MacGuffin, and the sooner those fuckers abduct her, the sooner Liam can kick much ass. Get on with it.
Finally, just a point of interest. I don't know whether it's our "post-9/11 world" or what, but, man, are Americans really this afraid to let their kids do anything? I get that daddy Liam is overprotective because he's a paranoid former spook who has seen all kinds of whatever, but the girl is 17 (although it's true that 25-year-old Grace's version of 17 makes her seem 13) and it doesn't seem entirely far-fetched that she could go to Europe and not get sold into sex-slavery. That is, the filmmakers do an especially weak job of convincing us that this all-important aspect is even possible - I know I just said that I wanted less exposition, and I'll stand by that, but I'm just surprised that the filmmakers thought they needed none about this part of the story.
Two notes: this is a PG13 film that really feels like an R. It's very violent, though there's almost no blood which is how they get away with it. I was convinced it was an R and that the chatty young boys in our aisle had snuck in (for which I applauded them, though we know how I feel about talking in the movies). Also, once again, the projection was substandard. I had to leave the film to ask the staff to correct the framing - the frame line was visible at the top of the screen as was a sliver of the bottom of the next frame. This is pure carelessness.
Salman slams Slumdog
Salman Rushdie, writing in The Guardian:
"The problems begin with the work being adapted. Swarup's novel is a corny potboiler, with a plot that defies belief: a boy from the slums somehow manages to get on to the hit Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and answers all his questions correctly because the random accidents of his life have, in a series of outrageous coincidences, given him the information he needs, and are conveniently asked in the order that allows his flashbacks to occur in chronological sequence. This is a patently ridiculous conceit, the kind of fantasy writing that gives fantasy writing a bad name. It is a plot device faithfully preserved by the film-makers, and lies at the heart of the weirdly renamed Slumdog Millionaire. As a result the film, too, beggars belief.
It used to be the case that western movies about India were about blonde women arriving there to find, almost at once, a maharajah to fall in love with, the supply of such maharajahs being apparently endless and specially provided for English or American blondes; or they were about European women accusing non-maharajah Indians of rape, perhaps because they were so indignant at having being approached by a non-maharajah; or they were about dashing white men galloping about the colonies firing pistols and unsheathing sabres, to varying effect. Now that sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead. In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."
Finally. Thanks, S.R. Now, quick--duck!
"The problems begin with the work being adapted. Swarup's novel is a corny potboiler, with a plot that defies belief: a boy from the slums somehow manages to get on to the hit Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and answers all his questions correctly because the random accidents of his life have, in a series of outrageous coincidences, given him the information he needs, and are conveniently asked in the order that allows his flashbacks to occur in chronological sequence. This is a patently ridiculous conceit, the kind of fantasy writing that gives fantasy writing a bad name. It is a plot device faithfully preserved by the film-makers, and lies at the heart of the weirdly renamed Slumdog Millionaire. As a result the film, too, beggars belief.
It used to be the case that western movies about India were about blonde women arriving there to find, almost at once, a maharajah to fall in love with, the supply of such maharajahs being apparently endless and specially provided for English or American blondes; or they were about European women accusing non-maharajah Indians of rape, perhaps because they were so indignant at having being approached by a non-maharajah; or they were about dashing white men galloping about the colonies firing pistols and unsheathing sabres, to varying effect. Now that sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead. In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."
Finally. Thanks, S.R. Now, quick--duck!
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