Monday, August 22, 2011
Classic/Crap: Sunset Boulevard/Skyline
me: On one hand, it'd be fun to get a blog entry related to Skyline up; but like you said...pretty tough to beef up the "Sunset Blvd" part.
Some folks talk about the relative unlikeability of the characters on Mad Men, how they are sad and pathetic and unhappy and empty. To them, I say: watch Sunset Boulevard and measure Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond on that same scale. I bet you feel a lot more generous towards Roger Sterling.
The one thing Sunset Boooooolevard and Skyline had in common is that both set their story in the world of Hollywood and filmmaking. Of course, Sunset existed in a specific period of time when "talkies" were established but the remnants of silent films were still standing, whether in star (Norma) or director (Cecil B DeMille, who cameos as himself) form, and that history, along with Amanda's observation that "[Nowadays] Celebrities don't fade into obscurity so much as they fade into ironic t-shirt based nostalgia" makes the storytelling very specific, but relatable, not necessarily through yards of exposition, but via the characters and how they behave towards each other and talk about "the business."
In Skyline, Donald Faison's character is a...producer? Director? Hard to tell, because he yells movie words into a phone in a manner that suggests that either the screenwriter hesitates to let us into the fantastic world of moviemaking, or the screenwriter is some 10-year-old child that has been thrust into the role of screenwriter and is taking a childish guess at what moviemaking entails ("A man tells other people what to do real loud and then movies happen!"). In place of a sense of specificity, we're given...what's the mathematical equivalent of less-than-cliche? Is there a symbol in Microsoft Word for that. I never thought I'd see the day when Entourage feels like a more accurate representation of Hollywood than...something. Including a hand-drawn picture with stick figures that I made illustrating a plotline of Entourage.
Sunset is a classic from 1950; Skyline was made in 2010, yet retains many of the qualities of some of the terrible sci-fi films from the 1950s that were featured on MST3K. Amanda actually name-checked The Unearthly, and I think that's apt, as both had the same leaden lack of urgency in their pacing, the same one-set-fits-all feel, the same Godot-like rehashing of one or two arguments. The only thing Skyline had over The Unearthly was millions and millions of dollars of special effects that left us with this amazing feat of migs and megs of memories:
At one point, Amanda said, "Maybe it's not aliens. Maybe the city of Los Angeles has gained sentience, and is rising up to cleanse itself of douchebags." And if the movie had shown an ounce of that style of sense of humor and self-awareness, the fact that their menacing aliens were Itty Bitty Book Lights or Skynet Wacky Wallwalkers probably wouldn't have mattered so much.
And let us speak a minute about Eric Balfour. Who gave that guy a leading role? I mean, honestly...
That guy? Are we sure Mr. Sexy Plumber's Butt isn't an alien himself? He has such a weird head with way too much face on it! Norma Desmond once said, "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" Skyline apparently didn't feel the need for either of these things.
In the end, Sunset Boulevard ends with Joe Gillis cruelly demolishing his chances of lasting romance with Betty Schaefer, then attempting to flee Norma's prison to (supposedly) return to Ohio to work at a small-town paper. The movie starts to ends where it began: Joe is floating dead in Norma's pool. But since Norma is a star, the movie truly ends as she closes in on her imagined closeup, the picture blurring until she disappears as well. A tragic ending, flawlessly presented with only a few now-oft-quoted words and intelligent use of filmmaking technique.
Skyline ends...Well, it just sort of ends. As Amanda so adeptly put it, "Whatshisname Dumbtattoo is finally ready to be a responsible family man, and then gets his brain put into an alien cyborg body." That's...pretty much it. No one ever gets to the boat that is referenced as salvation.
me: What happened to the boat plan? Is that shot just because they don't have cars?
Amanda: I guess they were really not committed to that boat plan.
Or...the production could not afford a boat.
I think another option is that the boat was a conveniently created reason for the characters to have any kind of escape plan that didn't look like what they did for most of the film: hide behind cupboards and run around aimlessly like the maldeveloped idiots that they were.
Soon, How Did This Get Made? will have a podcast regarding Skyline, and I imagine they will cover the other details I neglected, like:
If he had seen Skyline, he might have followed that with, "And sometimes it's not."
Other than pointing out that both films had characters involved in the movie industry.
Amanda: Maybe we could examine how Skyline would have played out differently in the days of the studio system, or...uh...what if Norma Desmond destroyed LA and harvested brains?
me: HEE HEE HEE!
Poor Joe Gillis...could have escaped his fate if he'd only thought to hide behind some cupboards.
Yes, it's harder than it was in the first round, where our crap movie actually had points of interest and competent performers (though I am still puzzled by what Adrien Brody was doing with that voice) and the classic movie we watched wasn't such a classic. An understandable classic, most definitely, but still... as Amanda pointed out right as we began, " Let's watch this movie that we have heretofore experienced only as familiar pop culture reference points!"
There were stretches of time during our Gchat where we sat in relative Gsilence during Sunset Boulevard (and thank you, Nathan Lane, for saying it Sunset Booooolevard in the movie version of Jeffrey--now I want to do that every single time). I don't know what Amanda was thinking, but I spent several stretches of the movie feeling a sort of dread I haven't felt since No Country for Old Men. During their New Year's Eve kiss, where Joe Gillis finally sinks full-on into rent-boy-ishness, Norma doesn't so much embrace him as entwine him like she is a poisonous plant that subsists on life force. [I was thinking, "This is a really good movie. No wonder people have been talking about what a good movie this is for fifty years. Probably going to be hard to find something new to say about how good this movie is." --Amanda]
Some folks talk about the relative unlikeability of the characters on Mad Men, how they are sad and pathetic and unhappy and empty. To them, I say: watch Sunset Boulevard and measure Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond on that same scale. I bet you feel a lot more generous towards Roger Sterling.
The one thing Sunset Boooooolevard and Skyline had in common is that both set their story in the world of Hollywood and filmmaking. Of course, Sunset existed in a specific period of time when "talkies" were established but the remnants of silent films were still standing, whether in star (Norma) or director (Cecil B DeMille, who cameos as himself) form, and that history, along with Amanda's observation that "[Nowadays] Celebrities don't fade into obscurity so much as they fade into ironic t-shirt based nostalgia" makes the storytelling very specific, but relatable, not necessarily through yards of exposition, but via the characters and how they behave towards each other and talk about "the business."
In Skyline, Donald Faison's character is a...producer? Director? Hard to tell, because he yells movie words into a phone in a manner that suggests that either the screenwriter hesitates to let us into the fantastic world of moviemaking, or the screenwriter is some 10-year-old child that has been thrust into the role of screenwriter and is taking a childish guess at what moviemaking entails ("A man tells other people what to do real loud and then movies happen!"). In place of a sense of specificity, we're given...what's the mathematical equivalent of less-than-cliche? Is there a symbol in Microsoft Word for that. I never thought I'd see the day when Entourage feels like a more accurate representation of Hollywood than...something. Including a hand-drawn picture with stick figures that I made illustrating a plotline of Entourage.
Sunset is a classic from 1950; Skyline was made in 2010, yet retains many of the qualities of some of the terrible sci-fi films from the 1950s that were featured on MST3K. Amanda actually name-checked The Unearthly, and I think that's apt, as both had the same leaden lack of urgency in their pacing, the same one-set-fits-all feel, the same Godot-like rehashing of one or two arguments. The only thing Skyline had over The Unearthly was millions and millions of dollars of special effects that left us with this amazing feat of migs and megs of memories:
At one point, Amanda said, "Maybe it's not aliens. Maybe the city of Los Angeles has gained sentience, and is rising up to cleanse itself of douchebags." And if the movie had shown an ounce of that style of sense of humor and self-awareness, the fact that their menacing aliens were Itty Bitty Book Lights or Skynet Wacky Wallwalkers probably wouldn't have mattered so much.
And let us speak a minute about Eric Balfour. Who gave that guy a leading role? I mean, honestly...
In the end, Sunset Boulevard ends with Joe Gillis cruelly demolishing his chances of lasting romance with Betty Schaefer, then attempting to flee Norma's prison to (supposedly) return to Ohio to work at a small-town paper. The movie starts to ends where it began: Joe is floating dead in Norma's pool. But since Norma is a star, the movie truly ends as she closes in on her imagined closeup, the picture blurring until she disappears as well. A tragic ending, flawlessly presented with only a few now-oft-quoted words and intelligent use of filmmaking technique.
Skyline ends...Well, it just sort of ends. As Amanda so adeptly put it, "Whatshisname Dumbtattoo is finally ready to be a responsible family man, and then gets his brain put into an alien cyborg body." That's...pretty much it. No one ever gets to the boat that is referenced as salvation.
me: What happened to the boat plan? Is that shot just because they don't have cars?
Amanda: I guess they were really not committed to that boat plan.
Or...the production could not afford a boat.
I think another option is that the boat was a conveniently created reason for the characters to have any kind of escape plan that didn't look like what they did for most of the film: hide behind cupboards and run around aimlessly like the maldeveloped idiots that they were.
Soon, How Did This Get Made? will have a podcast regarding Skyline, and I imagine they will cover the other details I neglected, like:
- How tremendously unappealing Donald Faison's character was, which is so weird, because Donald Faison is fantastic and funny and charismatic.
- How chintzy the special effects are, especially for the people/company credited with Avatar.
- How tremendously unappealing Eric Balfour is. Period.
- Los Angeles: is this the best they could do? Really?
- Hey, it's That Guy! (that blog doesn't exist anymore, right?) from Oz and Dexter. Boy, he's sure great until his character has his brain removed.
- Death of a Dog: just goes to show what a lazy sack of crap with no emotional depth this movie is/has/was/forever will be.
Amanda's light bulb as we continued to discuss the film and writing a blog entry: Billy Wilder (or maybe it was his partner, Charles Brackett) wrote, in the sardonic, 'I may be dead but I'm still jaded' voice of frustrated artist/struggling hack Joe Gillis as he sat down to read Norma Desmond's undoubtedly loony script for her comeback film, Salome, "Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be."
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Adventures in The Talkies: Crazy Stupid Love
First of all, Kate and I went to the movie at the Lake Theater in Oak Park, which became my new favorite theater. They have $6 matinees, cherry Icees, and free refills on everything... which you don't need, because their large beverage is basically a five-gallon pickle bucket.
We saw trailers for 30 Minutes or Less (the trailer makes me laugh really, really hard, but Dave White's review, where he likens it to public school pizza, makes me a little hesitant to spend even $6 on it), the MTV Presents remake of Footloose (which I think Kate and I enjoyed equally as fodder for a 2+ minute opportunity to show off our wittiness and disgust), and Contagion (Kate loves, loves apocalypse-type and/or virus-type films; I like them too, and it's the first Soderbergh film that has appealed to me in a while; plus, look at the cast! Geez, it's everyone!).
Then Crazy Stupid Love. It was basically the movie I wanted Larry Crowne to be: genial, mushy, predictable but aware of its predictableness enough to tap its nose at the audience, and charming, charming, charming. Everyone was charming. Steve Carell was sad-sacky charming. Julianne Moore was slighty nervous, slightly emotional charming, Emma Stone was just flat-out amazing charming. Ryan Gosling was...
How can one man have washboard abs, aggressively masculine energy, and beep people's noses? It's like he was made in a lab! And not, like, Data, where he's all programmed without emotions. He's programmed with nothing but emotions. There is a scene he shares with Steve Carell at a bar towards the end of the movie, and it could have been such a hacky, trite emotional climax scene, but the way Gosling delivers, I felt him being disappointed and upset and fed-up and loving. And he basically says nothing in the last three or four minutes of the scene but clipped, unfinished sentences and exasperated sputters.
Ryan Gosling is the best. And if people are starting to get tired of him being in movies, I want people to know that I put up with a time where I couldn't escape Tom Cruise if I tried, so America owes me oversaturation on a performer that I like.
He is handsome.
Anyway, I don't know that there's a lot to say about the movie that I didn't encapsulate in my initial reaction (genial! mushy! very, very funny!). Even things I normally pick on in other movies--wiser-than-their-years kids; biiiiiiig music cues--engaged me and made me laugh and happy and sad, squinchy, trying-not-to-cry eyes. And best of all, unlike Larry Crowne, the redheaded female(s) were as charming and delightful as possible, and the movie did not try to teach me any lessons about America. I have friends for that, Rom-Com Movies (and sometimes Michael Moore) .
In conclusion, Ryan Gosling is so terrific, and if you thought The Notebook looked too maudlin, Lars and the Real Girl looked too indie-darling, and Blue Valentine and Half Nelson looked like they were specially designed Dysons that vacuumed hope and joy instead of crumbs and cat hair, this is your opportunity to enjoy a Ryan Gosling performance.*
*Though if you haven't watched Murder by Numbers 22 times on Oxygen, I am sort of disappointed in you. He rocks that red leather jacket.
We saw trailers for 30 Minutes or Less (the trailer makes me laugh really, really hard, but Dave White's review, where he likens it to public school pizza, makes me a little hesitant to spend even $6 on it), the MTV Presents remake of Footloose (which I think Kate and I enjoyed equally as fodder for a 2+ minute opportunity to show off our wittiness and disgust), and Contagion (Kate loves, loves apocalypse-type and/or virus-type films; I like them too, and it's the first Soderbergh film that has appealed to me in a while; plus, look at the cast! Geez, it's everyone!).
Then Crazy Stupid Love. It was basically the movie I wanted Larry Crowne to be: genial, mushy, predictable but aware of its predictableness enough to tap its nose at the audience, and charming, charming, charming. Everyone was charming. Steve Carell was sad-sacky charming. Julianne Moore was slighty nervous, slightly emotional charming, Emma Stone was just flat-out amazing charming. Ryan Gosling was...
How can one man have washboard abs, aggressively masculine energy, and beep people's noses? It's like he was made in a lab! And not, like, Data, where he's all programmed without emotions. He's programmed with nothing but emotions. There is a scene he shares with Steve Carell at a bar towards the end of the movie, and it could have been such a hacky, trite emotional climax scene, but the way Gosling delivers, I felt him being disappointed and upset and fed-up and loving. And he basically says nothing in the last three or four minutes of the scene but clipped, unfinished sentences and exasperated sputters.
Ryan Gosling is the best. And if people are starting to get tired of him being in movies, I want people to know that I put up with a time where I couldn't escape Tom Cruise if I tried, so America owes me oversaturation on a performer that I like.
He is handsome.
Anyway, I don't know that there's a lot to say about the movie that I didn't encapsulate in my initial reaction (genial! mushy! very, very funny!). Even things I normally pick on in other movies--wiser-than-their-years kids; biiiiiiig music cues--engaged me and made me laugh and happy and sad, squinchy, trying-not-to-cry eyes. And best of all, unlike Larry Crowne, the redheaded female(s) were as charming and delightful as possible, and the movie did not try to teach me any lessons about America. I have friends for that, Rom-Com Movies (and sometimes Michael Moore) .
In conclusion, Ryan Gosling is so terrific, and if you thought The Notebook looked too maudlin, Lars and the Real Girl looked too indie-darling, and Blue Valentine and Half Nelson looked like they were specially designed Dysons that vacuumed hope and joy instead of crumbs and cat hair, this is your opportunity to enjoy a Ryan Gosling performance.*
*Though if you haven't watched Murder by Numbers 22 times on Oxygen, I am sort of disappointed in you. He rocks that red leather jacket.
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